“I need you.” I could feel the burn and tingle growing rapidly inside me, spreading from my core and radiating out of my body.
“I need… oh, harder, Jax. Faster.” I’d lost all sense of reason and reality. All I could focus on was his mouth and the orgasm he was ripping out of me. “So close.” I hung my head forward and felt my pussy clench and pulse as he worked his magic.
My clit popped out of his mouth, and a mewling sound came from my throat as he thrust two fingers into me and curled them into my sweet spot, making me writhe and buck against him.
“Yes. Fuck, yes.” I didn’t know what I wanted more, his fingers, his mouth, or his cock. I wanted it all. I didn’t care how, I just needed it all.
He pumped his fingers inside me, then pulled them out and swirled his finger around my clit, around then up and over. It felt unreal, pure heaven. I never wanted it to stop. His mouth clamped over my pussy, sinking his tongue inside me. The double delight of mouth and fingers sent me into that orgasmic orbit, bucking and convulsing as I came hard on his face. My inner muscles clamped down, clenching on his mouth and tongue as my clit throbbed out of control on his fingers. The best type of orgasm ever. Fact. And the aftershocks rippled through me like the sweetest electrical current, turning me into a very compliant and satisfied little kitty.
I didn’t have time to stop and wallow in the afterglow that was the most awesome climax ever though. I should’ve known better where Jax was concerned.
I heard the familiar jingle of his belt behind me, then I gasped at the unexpected movement as he dragged my body to the edge of the desk, letting my legs drop down over the side of it.
I felt his hard cock pressing against me; he was rubbing it along my clit and then up and up until it was circling my ass. Shit, was he going to go back on his promise? Didn’t we need lube or something? My breath caught in the back of my throat, and sensing my apprehension, he leaned forward, his warm breath dancing over the delicate hairs on my neck.
“Trust me, angel,” he whispered, then without hesitation, he thrust his cock hard into my pussy, making me scream his name and forcing my whole body to fly forward. My hips hit the hard wood of his desk and I grabbed the surface, trying to push back into him and give myself some support. But my palms were sweaty, and I couldn’t stop myself sliding over the surface. Jackson pulled me into him, wrapping his arm around my hip to give me some protection from the hard surface of his desk, and allowing him to pull me back onto his cock like he wanted, giving him full control.
“Oh, baby, come for me. Show me how much you love me,” he growled as he pounded into me, the sound of our moans and the slapping of our two bodies coming together bounded off the walls, making both of us more urgent to reach that nirvana together. To give each other the greatest gift we could give with our bodies. Lust. Love. Forever.
“Yes, that’s it,” he moaned, as I felt myself come undone, coming on his cock and crying from the sheer sensitivity and raw feelings he was creating.
I was mumbling incoherently and totally lost to the orgasms he was giving me. As one orgasm subsided, another stronger shockwave blasted through me. My body was on fire, my tangle of nerves no longer in control. I was no longer in control of any part of me.
He kept one arm around my hips and moved the other to my shoulder, giving him an anchor so he could thrust harder and deeper into me. All I could do was try and gasp for breath and claw at the desk, enjoying the ride.
I felt his cock thicken and pulse inside me, then he let out a primal roar as he came hard. That sound and that feeling of him giving his all to me was the single most sexy thing I’d ever experienced.
His thrusts slowed down, but he stayed inside me and leant over my body, holding me tightly against him. Both of us were panting like we’d just run a marathon, our sweat making our bodies slippery and shaky.
“I love you so much, Ryley. I love us.”
“I love us too.” I turned my head to look at him and ran my hand along his beautiful cheek. “I love you, Jax. I always will.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
The next morning, I was woken from a beautifully deep sleep by a soft kiss on my cheek.
“You’re up early.” I prised one eye open to find him standing over me in his sweats and a tight black t-shirt that stretched over his delectable muscles perfectly.
“It’s almost midday, angel.”
I groaned and snuggled down farther into the bed. I didn’t care that it was so late, I’d had the best sleep ever courtesy of him and his mind-blowing orgasms.
“I’m off to the club. I need to get on top of the paperwork that Cill’s been avoiding for the last few weeks. I’ll try not to be too long, okay?”
He didn’t need my permission to go to work, but I thought it was beyond sweet that he was checking in with me. Justin would’ve just gone without a second thought.
“You take as long as you need. I’m just going to enjoy this warm bed for a little longer.” I stretched out and buried my face into the pillow next to me that smelt like him. He groaned at my little kitten-like display.
“When you’re rolling around all naked like that under the covers, you make it hard for a man to leave you. Literally.”
I bobbed my head up from the bed to see his impressive erection tenting under his sweats and couldn’t help but laugh. He crawled over me, but I stayed determined and gently pushed him back.
“Easy tiger. I’ll take care of you later. Go get the boring stuff over with first. You can’t avoid work forever.”
He gave another animalistic growl and turned on his heels and out of the bedroom. I loved playful Jackson. He could be a puppy one minute and a lion the next, and I loved both. I loved him. He was my absolute everything.
I lay in the bed napping for a while, then decided I had to start my day and get proactive. I couldn’t spend the day in a sex coma, no matter how good the sex had been.
I showered and got ready and then headed out to the kitchen to make a snack.
“Did you have a nice lie in, love?” Sylvie was busy in the kitchen, crouching down under the sink and cleaning the cupboards out.
“Sorry. I’m so lazy just lately. I’d have got up sooner if I’d known you were here.”
“Don’t apologise to me, I love a good lie in.” Sylvie pulled herself up on a huff and puff. “It’s not usually my day to work, but I wanted to get these cupboards sorted out. It’s been bugging me for weeks now, but I always get distracted with other jobs when I’m here.”
“I think you work hard enough. I hope he pays you well.”
I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl for my late breakfast and clicked the coffee machine on.
“I’d do it for free, but he won’t let me. He insists on paying me. We don’t spend it though. I put it all into an account, you know, in case he ever needs our help. We call it our Jackson rainy day fund.”
I was dumbstruck. Did Sylvie have any idea how much money Jackson had? He didn’t need help, but it was the cutest and kindest thing I’d ever heard. That she saved all the money he paid her, and would give it back to him in a heartbeat. This woman really was one in a million.
“You sure don’t act like any employee I’ve ever met. How did you meet Jackson?”
Sylvie popped a pod into the coffee machine for me and proceeded to make my coffee, even though I was quite capable of doing it myself. That was just her way. She liked to be the one in charge, the mother hen.
“Sit yourself down, love, and I’ll tell you all about my boy and how he came to be in our lives.”
She popped the steaming mug of coffee in front of a stool at the island and jumped up onto the stool opposite.
“I’m guessing he didn’t advertise and interview you.”
Her eyes glazed over as she tilted her head upwards and started thinking back over the years gone by in her head.
“He must’ve been about sixteen or seventeen when we first met him. He wasn’t the dashingly handsome m
an you see every day back then though.” Her expression dropped slightly, giving away a hint of sadness behind her proud eyes. “He was scrawny, hungry, and in need of a good shower when we first saw him.”
“So you met him on the streets? He’s told me a little bit about that. He didn’t tell me about you though.”
“He’s a proud man, Ryley. He wouldn’t like to admit to anyone what times were like for him back then. We’ll never forget though. He broke our hearts quite a few times in those early years.”
I dreaded to ask the next question, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Was he cruel? Did he hurt you?”
“God, no!” Sylvie looked offended, but then smiled warmly at me, as if to ease my guilt. “We wanted to help him, but he’d never let us. It broke our hearts to know he was on the streets and not with us.”
Sylvie hopped off her stool and went over to the coffee machine to make herself a drink.
“The night we met Jackson, Len had taken me out for our weekly date night. There was this little Italian restaurant in the city. Nothing pricey, mind you, just a quaint old place down one of the backstreets that served the best carbonara I’d ever tasted, and I make a mean carbonara.”
I nodded. I knew how badass Sylvie’s Italian cooking was; they were my favourite dishes of hers.
“Anyway, that night we paid up and headed back out arm in arm, ready to make the slow walk back to the bus stop. We couldn’t afford a car in those days, you see. We were walking down the street, when I noticed a pile of cardboard and what looked like old blankets down one of the alleyways opposite the restaurant. Then I spotted the top of a head poking out underneath. Len told me not to look and move on; there were a lot of homeless people in the city even back then, but something told me I couldn’t walk away. Some other force was pulling me towards that alleyway, and before I knew it, I was standing next to that grubby pile, with a disgruntled Len behind me, moaning about us getting mugged for our bus fare home.
“I bent down and shook the pile of rubbish and it fell away, revealing the prettiest, grubbiest face I’d ever seen. He was thin and scrawny. He needed to bath for a week with the amount of dirt on him, but he was beautiful and it made my heart hurt just to look at him.” A tear came to Sylvie’s eyes as she talked, but she wasn’t ashamed and didn’t wipe it away, just let it fall freely down her gentle face.
“I’d always wanted to be a mum. I yearned for it, for years. But we couldn’t afford IVF and it just never happened for Len and me. We tried. Boy, did we try. We tried everything to have a baby, but it wasn’t meant to be. But through it all, I came to realise that being a mother doesn’t mean you have to give birth to a child. You can be a mother in many ways. So when I saw that young lad lying there, shivering in the cold November chill that we’re all used to here in England, I vowed then and there that this boy needed my help. He was a boy without a family, and we were a family without a boy.”
I couldn’t believe what she was telling me. I didn’t think this woman could be any more awesome than she was, but right then she zoomed to the top of my awe-inspiring list.
“So you took him in?”
“Oh, no. He was a stubborn little thing, even back then when he had nothing but his name and an alleyway to call his own. That first night we offered him money for a cheap hotel or to take him to a hostel, but he refused. So Len went back to the restaurant and ordered food and drink to go. We gave him something to eat, sat and chatted to him and then, when it was clear he wouldn’t take much help, we gave him our coats and left him. Ryley, I cried all the way home and all night in bed thinking about him out there on his own.”
“What happened next?” We both took a sip of our coffee, probably to gulp down the bulge of a cry that had built up in our throats.
“We started visiting him most days after that, checking he was okay. If I couldn’t make it, Len would go down there on his lunch hour from work and take him the homemade food I’d send down for him. We brought him blankets and sleeping bags to keep him warm, and eventually we gained his trust. He started coming back to our house, so we could give him a proper home-cooked meal, a bit of warmth and the love of a family that he was so desperate for. I even decorated our spare room for him, but he wouldn’t live with us. He said he had friends on the streets that he couldn’t abandon.”
I knew straight away that meant Cill, but I didn’t want to interrupt her story, so I kept quiet.
“He spent some nights with us though, especially if the rain was thrashing down or the snow was too deep. I loved looking after him, and he became like a son to Len and me. Len took on extra shifts at work and I started cleaning at some of the houses in the West End. Between us, we managed to save up enough to get Jackson a little one bedroom apartment just outside the city. We helped him get on his feet, so he could find himself. Make something of himself. We’re both so proud of the man he’s become. I know he’s a little rough around the edges. No one can live on the streets of this city and come out the other end being all sweetness and light, but he’s turned things around.”
“He certainly has. I can’t believe you did all that for him.”
“It was our pleasure. He’s given us far more than we ever gave him. He gave us a purpose in life. He gave us a reason to live, and work. It was all for him.”
I couldn’t hold it back. I started to cry, thinking about how truly selfless Sylvie and Len had been, taking a chance on a scruffy runaway like Jackson. Just the thought of what could’ve happened if they hadn’t met him made me shudder.
“It all worked out for the best, love. Don’t cry.” Sylvie reached across the island to take my hand in hers and rub it to soothe me. “Len calls him son, and they still go on their fishing trips together every couple of weeks. I helped Jackson decorate this apartment when he bought it. I like that he lives with all this luxury now. Soft beds and sofas you can sink your butt into. I made sure everything was the best when we went shopping together. When I asked him if I could pop round and keep things clean and tidy for him, he insisted on paying me. I refused, of course, but he got hold of my bank details and has a ridiculous amount of money transferred into my account every month. Like I said, I don’t touch it, but I appreciate how thoughtful he is. He knows the value of money and hard work. Nothing came easy for him, so he values things all the more, and people too. He doesn’t trust many people, but when he lets you in, you’re there for life. And he’s really let you in, Ryley. A blind man could see how much he loves you.”
“I love him too. So much.” I felt like I was justifying myself to his real mother now. Telling her I was worthy of her son.
“Oh, I know you do. I think I saw it happening before the two of you did.”
“I’m so glad I met him. I’m glad you did too.” And I meant it, every single word.
“Shall we make him his favourite muffins today?” Sylvie said, all light-hearted and carefree. I felt like I’d been sucker punched in the gut. I could barely breathe.
“I can’t cook. I burn boiling water.”
“Anyone can make blueberry muffins. I’ll teach you.”
“Blueberry is my favourite too.”
“See… match made in heaven.” She chuckled, as I thought about my description of Jackson’s home when I first got here. I came to experience hell and found my very own slice of heaven.
We spent the rest of the afternoon baking; the smell that radiated around the apartment was sublime. I felt a twinge of sadness to think that such a motherly, loving woman like Sylvie never became a mother to her own children. But I was beyond thankful that she’d assumed that role in Jackson’s life. I could just imagine how amazing she’d be as a grandma, baking cookies and taking her grand kiddies to the park. Running around with more energy and vitality than all the other grandmas put together. I wanted that for her. I wanted to give that to her. Boy, Jackson and I hadn’t even talked about marriage, and there I was daydreaming about our kids going to Grandma Sylvie’s and Grandpa Len’s for weekend sleepovers.
&n
bsp; I was just arranging the latest batch of hot muffins onto the cooling rack when I heard the front door close, and seconds later, my stunning man came bounding into the kitchen with the biggest grin on his face.
“You’ve been baking.” He took a deep breath in to savour the sweet aromas swirling around us. “And it smells amazing.”
He came up behind me to squeeze me tight and kiss my neck.
“Our favourite, blueberry muffins. But all the credit has to go to Sylvie. She’s an awesome baker.”
“She certainly is.” He gave her an adorable smile and she melted right there on the spot.
“Oh, get away with you. Ryley did as much as I did. She knows my secret now, so you’ll have to keep her around forever. We can’t let this one go. She might spill my secret recipe. Plus, she can make them for you whenever you want.”
Sylvie winked at me as Jackson picked up one of the warm muffins and sank his teeth into it, like a kid who couldn’t control himself.
“Sweetness on tap. Sounds like heaven,” he mumbled behind the muffin he was devouring.
Sylvie took off her apron and loaded the dishwasher with the last few bowls and spoons.
“I’ll have to love you and leave you. Len will be getting restless. I promised him a roast dinner tonight. I better get my skates on and head home.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek and then yanked Jackson’s head down to her level to kiss him too. He didn’t argue.
“She’s a keeper. Don’t mess it up,” she whispered, but loud enough for me to hear. Then she waltzed out of the kitchen and left us to enjoy the mounds of delicious muffins covering every work surface.
“She’s a feeder,” he said as he reached for his second muffin.
“I’m glad she is. She feeds you,” I replied, kissing his cheek and then hugging him as close as I could. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
This Cruel Love (A Dark Hearts Stand-Alone Novel Book 2) Page 25