Never Let Go (The Storm Inside #4) Page 5

  He ran his nose over the skin of my breast before moving to free the other. “I think we leave this on tonight.” The he gave me a wicked grin. “They’re right where I want them.”

  “Your shirt must go, I’m afraid. But…” I bit my lips as I helped him yank the t-shirt over his broad shoulders, “leave the jeans on.”

  He whimpered. It was a scenario we didn’t use nearly enough. We loved to draw out our pleasure, but the quick, hurried, totally inappropriate public sex we used to have in secret was our favorite.

  It was also something we’d stopped almost entirely since Max was born. We weren’t quite as wild and carefree with our passion as we used to be. But every so often we pretended.

  “Woman…” he hissed as I pushed his jeans down just enough to free his thick cock.

  “Don’t make me wait too long.”

  His eyes smoldered and his muscles rippled with tension. Oh yeah, I’d done my job setting a scene that would drive Jake absolutely wild.

  And he was doing his: using that restrained passion to light me up at warp speed. His fingers dove hungrily into my heat as his mouth closed over my breast. A livewire snapped and zinged between the two points, heating my skin.

  “Jake,” I whispered.

  “Oh darlin’. Be careful saying my name like that,” he murmured against my skin. I could feel the smile curving his lips. I could feel the raw need coursing from his fingers as they dug into my hips as if he needed purchase to keep himself from flying apart.

  This was going to be fast and intense.

  “I can’t wait.”

  He froze, probably weighing the options. On the one hand, he could force me to endure another couple of minutes of foreplay. He’d be guaranteed a quick and successful orgasm from me if he chose that route. On the other hand, he could give in to my plea and get lost in the moment. He might have to help finish me off, but then again, neither of us ever minded the million different routes we took to orgasm.

  “I hope you’re ready for this,” he growled, holding my panties to the side and thrusting the head of his cock up and in so that he was seated just inside me.

  I arched backward at the familiar invasion, clutching at his strong, steady shoulders. “Oh, I’m ready.”

  His eyes flashed. He held himself steady over me as he rocked his hips in long, firm strokes. He stretched me, inch by inch, until he filled me completely, watching the transformation he caused. “Fuck, it’s so hot to watch you.”

  I shivered as he rocked against my clit and ran my fingers up his neck and into his hair, giving the short locks a gentle tug. “I like it when you watch. I want you to see what you do to me.”

  And from there, Jake never took his eyes off me. Not for a second.

  It was even more erotic to imagine this was a darkly lit hallway somewhere we’d snuck off to for a quick minute or two. His naked torso melded against mine through the opening in my robe, my breasts out on full display, my nipples gliding against his chest as he pumped into me hard and fast.

  I loved the feel of his jeans against the inside of my thighs. Remembering the urgency he always felt with me. It wasn’t any different here, alone and appropriate in a bed, but there was always something special about the way we could never wait, no matter where we were.

  His breath was hot. His cock filled me over and over. The knot of pleasure wound tight and low, right where we met. Each thrust forced me to stretch around his girth, and he paused at the end of each stroke to enjoy the infinite pleasure of being completely enveloped in my heat. I grabbed his bare ass, holding on to each of those waves. When the head of his cock hit deep, it sent a cascade of overwhelming pleasure out from my core. It lit up my clit. My nipples tingled, making his erratic strokes that much more pleasurable.

  Jake was quickly losing control. His orgasm was close, and so was mine. I forced myself to focus long enough to figure out what I needed to tip off the cliff into white-hot bliss. But Jake beat me to it. That man… he always knew what I needed. He could read my body like a book he’d memorized a hundred times over. I was as familiar to him as he was to me.

  He bent down, panting against my shoulder, and kissed his way up the sensitive stretch of skin that ran behind my ear. Then he nuzzled the outer rim with the tip of his nose, all while thrusting inside me with a jagged urgency that came from being totally lost in pleasure.

  Then he whispered, “Come for me, darlin’. Let me watch you fall apart in my arms. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

  The combination of his breath on my skin sending shivers of pleasure over my body, with the deep, rough sound of his voice pleading for that emotional and physical connection between us to be solidified, along with an even harder and wilder thrust that sent a wave of fire through my body and into my soul, sent me crashing over the edge into oblivion.

  I mashed my lips together and tried desperately not to moan and whimper. He continued to pound into me for another three strokes before he kissed me, muffling the sounds of both our orgasms and connecting us in every way possible.

  I trembled as wave after wave of pleasure tore through me. I absolutely loved the feeling of being full, so when Jake finally stilled, carefully lowering his heavy weight on top of me, another gentle round of waves squeezed his cock. He twitched in response. I smiled.

  “Amazing,” he whispered, then began sucking and kissing the sweat from my shoulder.

  I massaged his ass, wondering if I’d ever stop contracting around him. His weight on top of me was always so reassuring. This man was mine—all mine.

  5

  JAKE

  I couldn’t sleep. Not even after awesome sex, which meant I was pretty much a lost cause because sex always put me to sleep. I tried for a while. Eve was curled up on my chest so it was easy to drift around in my head while listening to the steady rhythm of her breathing, but I kept getting lost in questions that had no answers.

  So I slid out of bed and threw on a shirt before opening the door and going for a walk. The house was big enough that I should be able to wander for a while. I mean really, did anyone expect me to sleep this weekend? The whole thing was an out of body experience.

  There was odd, then there was strange, and then there was this. And tomorrow we were going to get up and do it all over again. This time with my grandmother and cousins.

  It was still so weird to hear the words your and grandmother in the same sentence. I didn’t have a grandmother. But now, suddenly, I did. And cousins. By the sounds of them all piling into the house throughout the night it sounded like a small army was here for the weekend.

  I was going from zero family to more than I could count in no time at all. What were they like? Were they all stiff and power-mad like the Senator, or were some of them normal like Adam and Elizabeth? Okay, so neither of them was “normal” in the sense that their lives were typical, but they were normal in the sense that they laughed and made jokes. They saw the humor and the horror in reality. They were real people with hopes and dreams, just like Eve and me.

  I think I was starting to realize that this was the clincher for me. Was the McKinley family a family or were they an institution? I wanted them to be a family. It scared the crap out of me to admit it, but I’d slowly fallen in love with the idea of having a family. I didn’t give two shits about the political stuff, or the money, or the power—I had everything I needed and wanted in those arenas—what I didn’t have were people to fill the seats beside me at the kid’s school plays and soccer games. Eve’s family was so overwhelming I didn’t think the girls had ever noticed there were no aunts and uncles and grandparents from my side, but I did. I noticed every time.

  I hated that I felt jealous of the other families. All those proud grandparents pretending to love the silly songs, or cheering as a herd of kids fell over each other as they tried to kick a ball. I had everything I’d ever need, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to myself that I wanted more.

  So yeah, it was exciting and terrifying to walk around this
massive house that had been in my family since the turn of the century, had seen generations of McKinley’s born and raised, been the center of a political dynasty, and wish it could be part of my life, too.

  Or stupid. There was a huge chance I was being stupid. Sometimes I couldn’t stop the kid in me from wanting to come out and play like all the other kids had. They had hopes and dreams, but I couldn’t. They had gotten in trouble for honest mistakes, where I’d gotten beaten for being stupid.

  Even thinking about it hurt like hell.

  Somehow I managed to wander back to the study where we’d met the Senator. There was a light on inside. Apparently insomnia ran in the family and since my only other option was to go back upstairs and stare at the ceiling while I tried not to wake my wife, I decided to see who else was up.

  Adam was stretched out on the sofa with a book and a scotch. Which was a really good idea, now that I thought about it.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked, looking over his book.

  I shook my head and poured myself a drink.

  “Don’t blame you,” he said.

  “What are you reading?” I asked, sitting across from him.

  He closed the book and stared at the cover as if he didn’t know what book he was holding. “The Firm. It’s my favorite. I always keep it in my bag.”

  I took a swig of the liquor and let it sink into my veins before I did anything else, letting it take the edge off my nerves. “Why can’t you sleep?” My insomnia was obvious, his not so much.

  He sat up and tossed the book onto the cushion beside him. “The Senator has a way of making it hard to sleep at night.”

  We toasted to that and relaxed for a few minutes.

  “What was it like coming here as a kid?” Maybe Adam could answer my questions.

  He shrugged, looking around. “Intimidating. We didn’t come for several years because of the fallout between my mom and the Senator, but when we finally did, it was tense. He’s a hard man to please but it only took a couple of years for the cousins to finally figure out that he didn’t have as much power over them as he did over our parents.”

  “Kids figure that shit out fast, don’t they?” I chuckled.

  “They do. You would have thought Pandora’s box had been opened the way the Senator reacted to the new order, but he eventually sank into it and has accepted the fact that family means forgiveness and even, occasionally, having fun.”

  There was so much to unpack in those short sentences, but the most important part was the end. Family. Forgiveness. Fun. Maybe I wasn’t completely stupid for hoping.

  “You’ve made it work. I’m hopeful I can, too,” I murmured.

  “Can I ask you something?” The way he was wringing his hands and his eyes were a little wild gave me the impression he was grappling with something.

  “Sure.”

  “How…” he shook his head and took a breath starting over, “what helped the most with putting your past behind you?” He hung his head. “I know that was a stupid question considering we are no longer behind you.”

  I saw right through his words to the meaning hidden underneath. He wasn’t asking for himself—he was asking for Elizabeth. He was asking as the partner who needed help in a situation he couldn’t fathom. I knew the type of desperation Adam had in his eyes all too well. I saw it in Eve’s all the time.

  “What’s troubling your beautiful fiancée?” I asked, cutting straight to problem he hadn’t actually voiced.

  “We’re happy,” he said. “But I know it’s temporary. She and her sister are close. Eventually the parents will come back into the picture. It’s like Elizabeth is stuck in pause, waiting for them to show up and ruin everything.”

  Probably because they’d done it more times than she could count. She wasn’t stuck, she was preparing—not that Adam wanted to hear that. But then again, as a couple, they had cut ties to her family and made the drastic move across the ocean to start over fresh. Her parents may show up in their lives again but I had serious doubts about their ability to ruin anything Adam and Elizabeth had built.

  So I took a breath and reassured my cousin in the best way I knew how.

  “It takes time for it to fully sink in that they don’t have that power anymore—that you don’t care what they do or what they think because you have a new life.” I took a swig of my scotch. “To realize that the other shoe isn’t going to drop.”

  Because even when they try, you’ve moved so far beyond them that it doesn’t matter. Like a fly trying to annoy a giant. One swat puts an end to the buzzing.

  “Time,” he repeated. “I keep telling myself that, but sometimes I need to hear it from someone else.”

  And that got me thinking about when I finally came to terms with my ability to control my future. “You know, the best therapy I ever got was having kids. They throw an entirely new perspective into things. You see the world through a new lens, put yourself into some new shoes. As hard as I’d worked, I hadn’t been able to completely flip things around like the girls did for me.”

  “Well, I don’t think kids are anywhere in our future,” Adam chuckled.

  “It doesn’t have to be kids. For me it was the shock of seeing so much of myself in Sam and Max. My issues are tied so strongly to my childhood and how I was raised. Find the same thing for her.”

  We talked for a little while longer before he excused himself and went back upstairs. He left his book for me in case I wanted to read, but I didn’t. I was stuck in a moment and I wanted to think this one all the way through.

  Sometimes when I looked at Eve I wasn’t just seeing the woman I loved, I was seeing a piece of my life in motion. Watching her in her role as mother was what knocked my head into place. I could see how much of a loving mother she was…and how much mine was not. It was like I could see the past and the present at the same time. How they chose different paths, handled situations differently. It hit me hard every time because the way I was raised was the only way I knew. The first time it happened, Sam had asked for a cookie.

  A cookie.

  It was such a simple request. Something every kid asked for. Who didn’t want a cookie if they could have one?

  But on this particular occasion I was putting groceries away in the fridge while Eve lined everything up on the counters. Sam came skidding in asking for a cookie. Eve scowled, but it was a pretend scowl. A game.

  My mother’s scowls were always real.

  “A cookie is a treat, Sam. Those are special.” Eve had said.

  And even as she was saying the words I could feel my entire body tense up and my veins flood with strange emotions, but I was so locked up in watching the situation unfold that I couldn’t stop and figure out what it was that I was feeling.

  “So…can I have a cookie?” Sam asked again.

  She was so cute. So mine. And I wanted to give her the entire box of cookies, and then go buy her a bakery so she could have as many cookies as she wanted forever.

  But that feeling was stupid. It was bad. I wasn’t supposed to think that way. So I shoved it down.

  Eve kept making faces; each one more ridiculous than the last, then sighed dramatically and opened the box. “Eat a cookie, baby. Every day is special. Name something that made you happy today.”

  Nothing in front of me made any damn sense. That wasn’t what Eve was supposed to do. She was supposed to say no. She should be lecturing Sam about how ungrateful she was, how bad sugar was for her teeth. She was supposed to send Sam to her room for being disrespectful and tell her that her father would teach her a lesson when he came home.

  And that was when it hit me. I wanted to die right then and there.

  That wasn’t who Eve was and it sure as fuck wasn’t who I was. Sam was a good, sweet kid and I would never, ever feel the need to “teach her a lesson” about respect over asking for a cookie.

  Fuck, I’d probably give her another damn cookie for asking nicely.

  I had some serious, deeply ingrained bullshit clogging up m
y brain if I could look at Eve and Sam and honestly expect them to behave in any way like my mother had. And my mother had some serious issues if she felt that a child asking for a cookie was cause for punishment. My parents used everything as a lesson, but that lesson was never really about respect, it was about control. Some twisted belief that treats were a pathway to corruption and I was doomed to be evil.

  Over cookies.

  And then there was Eve, smiling and laughing with our daughter about cherishing life. She was always so good about making sure the girls understood that it was a gift—one they should take full advantage of. She used cookies as lessons too, but her lessons were about looking for the good in each day. Her happy thoughts.

  The difference between Eve and Lydia was night and day. My kid’s lives would never look anything like mine.

  Sitting here in this house was forcing me to think about my mother, really think about her, for the first time in years. I loved my mother because that’s what you do, and because she was the only one to ever show me any kind of affection. She was who I spent most of my time with, especially when they pulled me out of public school for all the “bad influences.” In hindsight I realized they knew they were getting close to being reported to the authorities, so they removed as much outside contact as possible. It meant my world consisted of two people. That was it.

  It’s hard to imagine something you’ve never seen, and all I knew of love was what I got from her. But what I’d finally come to understand was that she didn’t love me. What she did wasn’t out of love. She was as much an abuser as my father was; she just preferred to play the passive role instead of the aggressor. She made it seem like it was my dad, but she was the one pulling the strings behind the scenes. She encouraged him to take things to the next level, reassured him—and herself—that they were “raising me right.”

  She was so fucked up and she worshipped my father like a king. She would—and did—do anything to please him, including feeding her own son to the wolves as a sacrifice. It took me a long, long time to come to terms with that feeling, one I still had trouble voicing because it hurt so much: I hated my mother.