One Night

by Best, Victoria J.

  Jackson Radcliffe was a rare specimen. Controlling, gruff, and arrogant one minute while the next, he was gentle and kind and showing me he wasn’t as invincible as he wanted everyone to believe. I realized he wasn’t trying to shut me out, but was used to fighting his battles alone, so he didn’t know how to include me. Sighing, maybe with relief because I finally figured out why he closed himself off, I scooted towards him and rested my head on his shoulder.

  “We’ll figure it out, Jackson,” I said as I wound my arms around his waist.

  “I dragged you all the way to France for this shit.” He shook his head as he said it.

  “But I’m still here,” I reassured him, which I knew he needed to hear, even if he didn’t say it.

  “I thought you were going to bolt earlier when we got back to the hotel.” He pulled me into his lap and I straddled him, draping my arms around his neck.

  “I won’t lie. I thought about it, for just a second or two.”

  A dark look passed over his face and he turned away from me, looking towards the French doors. What I said hurt him and he didn’t want me to see it.

  “But I didn’t,” I reassured him again.

  “I don’t know why you’re still here,” he said.

  My stomach clenched because for a minute, it sounded like he didn’t want me here.

  “If I were you, I’d have never even set foot on that plane this morning,” he added, and I relaxed again at his words.

  “What does Frank think you should do?” I asked him finally, after we sat there unmoving for several minutes.

  “Wait. The bastard wants me to wait four months.” He shook his head.

  “Maybe we should listen to him?” My brain was screaming it was too soon to get married anyway, though my heart wanted it more than I cared to admit.

  “I can’t spend another minute married to that woman,” Jackson growled. “She’s been making my life hell for the last five years, in one way or another. I’m not surprised she pulled this shit. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t get herself inseminated just to stick it to me.”

  “You really think she would stoop that low?” The idea Natalie would try so hard to make Jackson pay for some unknown crime was unbelievable to me.

  “Nothing she does surprises me. I should have heeded the warnings people gave me about her when we were engaged, but my aunt thought it would look good for me to marry her since her dad is prominent in the PR industry.”

  It struck me then that I was still sitting on his lap and we were having a conversation. Usually, by this point, we were naked and he was inside of me, and the only sounds coming out of my mouth were moans of pleasure. I looked up at him and our eyes met. He was thinking the same thing because his once neutral facial expression had changed. His eyes were darker, his jaw tight, and his breathing had increased. My breaths mirrored his, sharp and fast, my chest rising and falling as if I were panting. Our conversation was forgotten as he swept me up before laying me down flat on the bed underneath of him.

  “Why are you still here?” Jackson asked me again in a tight whisper, searching my face for his answer.

  I wanted to tell him it was because I loved him, but bit my lip to hold the words inside. It was too soon to say those words. How did I know if it was real or lust clouding my judgment? How did I know he wouldn’t pull away from me the same way he did before in the plane once I said them out loud? No, I couldn’t say it yet. Because of that, I decided to show him. I gripped the back of his head, pulling his mouth down to meet mine in a fierce kiss. The question was gone from his eyes when he sat back up. He tore his shirt off over his head and my stomach didn’t fail to jump at the sight of him without a shirt. We both finished undressing quickly, not wanting to waste time. I needed to feel him on top of me, inside of me, to know the feelings bubbling in my chest and begging to escape were real and not my imagination.

  Jackson’s mouth slammed back onto mine, wrapping his large muscled frame around me, blocking out the chill in the room and replacing it with his heat. I became enveloped in Jackson, wrapped up in my passion and lust in a way that pushed every doubt and fear from my mind, the way he always did. I needed him physically, not only to satisfy the itch of my desire but to chase away the demons of my past and his, to destroy the trepidation and uncertainty of the future and replace it with something else. Jackson trailed rough kisses down my neck, nipping my collarbone gently with his teeth as he made his way to my chest. He took my pert nipple in his mouth, grounding his teeth against it tenderly before sucking ferociously at the stiff peak. My back arched off the bed, the sensation zinging straight to my core. Jackson was my undoing, my addiction, and my body threatened to fall to pieces before he even made it to my most sensitive parts.

  “God, Jackson,” I hissed the words out, breathless.

  But he didn’t stop the assault on my senses, moving to the next nipple and repeating the torturous sucking and nipping combination until I was writhing with need on the mattress. His fingers found my center, wet and waiting for them, and he pushed two inside of me, causing me to cry out again. My inner walls clenched around him, the beginnings of an orgasm already building. I bucked my hips with his rhythm and when his thumb pressed against my clit, my ass came off the mattress again at the shot of electricity that came with it. Seconds later, I was coming undone, my pussy clenching around his fingers.

  Jackson flipped me over onto my stomach and positioned himself between my legs. Without giving me any time to recover, he plunged inside, gripping my hips and pulling me back so hard my ass slammed into his front. I cried out again, the pleasure and pain so glorious I was on the verge of coming a second time. He took me hard and rough, winding my hair around his wrist to pull me back with one hand as his other hand dug into my hip, sure to leave bruises in their wake. But I didn’t care, because it all felt so wonderful the only thing I could focus on was where our bodies were connected.

  My climax built as he slammed into me, thrust after thrust, stoking the pleasure higher and higher until I was on the precipice of combustion. Several more hard thrusts, as he pulled my head back so my back was arched and I was looking at the ceiling, and I came, quick and brutal, as he drove into me, over and over again. Jackson wasn’t far behind me, and with a guttural growl, he came.

  Both spent and weak, we collapsed in a heap on the bed, with him still inside of me. He released my hair, massaging my scalp afterward, which made me moan with a different kind of satisfaction. We lay there for a bit, not moving, as our breathing evened out and our heart rates slowed. I disengaged first, turning to face him, and wrapped my arms around his waist. The words I promised myself I wouldn’t say yet were on the tip of my tongue again, and I cleared my throat to dissipate them before I did something I’d regret. I thought for a minute, carefully, before I formed a different question.

  “Why France?”

  “My mother loved France,” he said quietly.

  It was the first time he ever mentioned his mother to me. I knew she had died but beyond that, I didn’t know anything else about her.

  “Tell me about her.” I risked asking the question because I needed to know more about him. I wanted to know everything.

  Jackson sighed heavily, and I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all because he paused for quite a while.

  “She was beautiful, kind, and nothing like my aunt, even though they looked like twins,” he began, tenderness creeping into his voice.

  “How old were you when she died?” I wanted to know, but I was also afraid of scaring him away from answering me, so I worded everything as carefully as I could.

  “I was eight. It was a car accident caused by the paparazzi.”

  My heart broke for eight-year-old Jackson and I couldn’t keep the tears that formed in my eyes from falling. There were so many more questions I had to ask—about his business, his family, and everything else—but because I started with the hard ones, I wasn’t sure I should ask anything else and risk him shuttering his fee
lings. So instead, I offered something of myself.

  “My mother left us when I was eleven,” I said, emotion clogging my throat and threatening to choke me. I never talked about my mother, not even with Nicolette.

  I felt his eyes on me but I didn’t look up. In order to get him to open up to me, I knew I was going to have to give him something of myself. Because of that, I took a deep breath and forced myself to keep talking.

  “My dad was a total mess for a year, and I did everything I could to take care of him and keep the house running the way she had before she took off, but I don’t think it was enough. He still wears his wedding ring, even though I know she’s never coming back. We never heard from her again.”

  I let the tears fall freely now, since it was the first time I shared anything about my mom with someone who wasn’t paid to listen. Jackson held me, rubbing my back in slow circles as I sobbed against his chest. This started because I wanted to hear more about him but ended up with me baring my soul to him.

  “My dad left us when I was five,” he started talking again, his voice soothing away my sobbing hiccups. “We never heard from him again either. My aunt tried to find him after my mom died but there was no trace of him. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

  We talked for another hour, our voices hushed and our heads close, as we poured our hearts and souls out to one another in a way we hadn’t before. When we had said all we could say, our eyes slipping closed with fatigue and our breathing growing slower, the words ceased but the connection remained. We were sated, satisfied from sex and sharing, and I exhaled as he continued to rub lazy swirls around my back. We lay there, in the darkening room, both bare in more ways than one, and fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.

  “When do you have to go back to work?” Jackson asked me as we ate our room service breakfast in silence.

  “Not until Monday.” I pushed my omelet across the plate with my fork, unable to finish it because I had a knot in my stomach.

  It was only Friday and we were still in Paris. We didn’t discuss our conversation from the night before and I didn’t bring it up. Instead, we ate, or mostly ate, our breakfast and pretended we weren’t in France for a wedding we weren’t actually having.

  “How about we stay here for the rest of the weekend?” Jackson set his phone down, frowning at the screen before he finally looked up and met my eyes.

  “Don’t you have to get back to the office?” I took a bite of toast but it felt like sawdust on my tongue, so I followed it with a large gulp of orange juice. I was done eating.

  Jackson shook his head. “Aunt Beatrice and Henry are covering for me, and there are things I can do remotely since I brought my laptop. After the drama with Natalie, I think we could use a break.”

  While I discarded my half-eaten breakfast on the room service tray, Jackson devoured his, oblivious, or so it seemed, to the fact I had barely touched my food. I made my way back to the high-backed wing chair, tucking my legs underneath me, and wrapped my arms around my waist. Jackson looked up at me again after polishing off his eggs and looked from the table to the tray.

  “Why didn’t you eat your breakfast?” Apparently, he wasn’t as oblivious as I thought. I should have known better.

  I shrugged. “I’m not that hungry this morning.” It was the truth.

  Jackson sighed. “Fuck it,” he declared suddenly, and I wondered what he had planned now.

  He grabbed his phone, tapping something into it quickly before he set it back down on the table, a little too hard. His shoulders were stiff when he looked back at me again.

  “Go pack your suitcase. We’re leaving in thirty minutes.” He growled the words out and walked away. I watched his retreating back with confusion.

  As usual, he was running hot and cold on me since we opened up to each other last night. A noose gripped my heart because I wasn’t sure where we were going, or if we were heading back to New York. My emotions were all over the place again, when only last night, I felt like Jackson and I made some progress. Releasing a deep breath, I stood and walked into the bedroom to pack my things. Once again everything was so uncertain.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, I got the answer I was looking for—we were headed to the airport. Our destination was still unknown because Jackson was icing me out with one-word answers and frosty stares. I desperately wanted to say something, to tell him he was being an ass, but after last night, the fight had all gone out of me. Too much had happened the day before and I wasn’t sure I had the emotional headspace to deal with another confrontation. So, I sat back and watched the landscape of Paris fly by again from the back of the car as we made our way to the airport.

  We arrived at the same hangar as before, and Monroe opened the door. I followed Jackson to the airplane silently as Monroe trailed behind with our bags.

  “When you arrive, sir, I’ll have the car waiting to take you to the chateau,” Monroe said as he handed the baggage over to the plane’s staff.

  Chateau? There were no chateaus in New York.

  “Very well.” Jackson climbed the stairs without looking back at me.

  I shook my head and followed after him, my chest bursting with the need to speak.

  “Are you going to ignore me the whole time? Because if that’s the case, I think I’d like to go back to New York.” Instead of plopping into the butter leather seat just as Jackson did, I stood in front of him with my hands on my hips.

  “I’m not ignoring you,” he growled, his voice deep and filled with irritation.

  “Ha!” I let the sound come out with a puff of air as I turned on my heel and finally dropped into the seat next to him.

  “You’re being childish.” He didn’t even turn to look at me as he said it.

  “I’m being childish?” I snorted because, of all the things he could have said to me, this was not something I anticipated.

  Frustration mingled with rage as I buckled my seatbelt and did my best to ignore him. I was hoping the plane ride was a short one. This whole weekend was a complete bust and I wanted nothing more than to be away from Jackson Radcliffe and back in my apartment.

  “Liza.” He said my name as a command rather than a question and despite my best efforts, my head snapped in his direction. “Do you really want to go home?”

  The question caught me off guard because I almost thought he was going to demand I drop the bad mood he inflicted. The look on his face showed a modicum of remorse for the way he was acting.

  I shrugged, the fight going out of me as quickly as it entered. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”

  Jackson sighed, resting his head on the seat back, and gripped the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t easy for me.”

  “It’s no picnic for me either,” I said, shrugging again for no particular reason.

  “I’m not used to sharing things with someone else,” he replied, finally admitting what I knew all along.

  With a heavy sigh, I unclipped my seatbelt and stood up. I walked slowly to where he sat, positioning myself in his lap, facing him.

  “I get it, but when you shut me out the way you have been, the way you did this morning, it pushes me away.” I wanted him to know exactly what he was doing. “Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t know what I want anymore.” He repeated my words back to me.

  My heart broke a little when he said it because I wasn’t sure if that meant he did want some space from me. Nodding as if I understood, though I didn’t, I started to stand. Jackson didn’t let me, grabbing my waist with both hands to keep me where I was. Our eyes met and I stifled a gasp. There it was—the heat, the electricity, deep in his dark eyes. It zinged through me with a fierceness I didn’t see coming. Just when I doubted it, doubted him and the way he felt for me, I got lost again in the depths of his eyes.

  “Jackson, I’m so confused,” I said. My voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Me too. About everything but this.”

  His mouth foun
d mine, rough and needy, and I sank into him, pressing my chest against his as I tangled my fingers into his hair. This was his way of apologizing, of letting me know he saw me and he wanted me to be here. I could see that now, when before I thought it was just about sex. But this was more than that now. I could feel it in the desperation of his kisses, the need in his grip, and the clarity in his eyes. The confusion started to dissipate like fog burning off of a summer morning. I knew where I had to be—with Jackson, and I would stay as long as he needed me to.

  * * *

  The plane landed just over two hours later in the mountains, and I watched as we landed, though I usually hated it, because the landscape outside of the window was so beautiful. Jackson sat beside me as I gripped his hand. After we made up, we retired to the bedroom for an hour to show each other just how sorry we were, and I couldn’t wipe the goofy smile from my face the rest of the trip.

  “Are those the Alps?” I asked as the plane slowed to a stop on the runway.

  Jackson nodded, his mood still reserved but not withdrawn. “What do you think?”

  “It’s beautiful. Are we going to another hotel?” I had so many questions, but knew I’d have to be patient if I wanted any information out of Jackson.

  Jackson shook his head. “I have a house here, a chateau.”

  I tried to hide my shock but wasn’t truly surprised about the revelation. Jackson had more money than he knew what to do with, and it seemed I would have to get used to his lavish lifestyle if we were going to be together. The flight crew opened the doors and Jackson and I gathered our few belongings and disembarked. As promised, Monroe was waiting in the hangar with a Yukon, appearing out of nowhere.

  “Does Jackson make you fly business class?” I asked him jokingly as he opened the door for me.

  Monroe’s expression never changed, though Jackson let out a deep laugh from behind me.