by Alice Ward
The tone of Jake’s voice was enough. My heart flipped. I could feel the sweat collecting in my palms.
He continued. “It wasn’t the first bombing I’d seen of course… but it was the worst.” He spoke in a monotone voice, as if he was a robot emotionally detached from the story. A shiver went down my back.
“What happened?” I whispered.
Jake pursed his lips and lifted his eyes from his lap. “There were twenty-six civilian deaths and five of my buddies didn’t make it. Plus, a number more injured. The hostages we were supposed to save…” He shook his head.
Quick imaginings of all the things Jake might have seen flashed through my head. I pushed down the pain in my chest and forced myself to speak. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
He gave one quick shake of his head. “It’s what I signed up for.”
So he wouldn’t have to see me again.
I swallowed hard, knowing the truth of that thought. Jake had signed up with the Navy to escape our small town and the memories there, but to also escape from me.
“Still, no one should have to see those things.”
“No one should have to die at the hands of bombers.”
The coldness in his voice made me want to break into a million little pieces and fly off into the universe. Though his words were clipped and strong, sorrow bled out of them. The agony crept across the room and made its way into my own heart. Still, I knew I only felt a fraction of the pain he did. A fraction of the pain the civilians who watched their loved ones die did.
I kept my features calm. There would be no point in showing just how much the conversation upset me. This was about Jake. “Is that why loud noises bother you?”
Jake flinched the slightest bit, as if someone had made a move to hit him. “They don’t bother me.”
For a few moments, I weighed my answer. “Okay,” I eventually said, knowing it would be counterproductive to call him a liar. “What does bother you?”
Jake’s eyes flashed. “My own ineptitude.”
I smiled, trying to lighten the mood that had grown dark and heavy. “Well, I already knew that.”
One corner of his mouth twitched upward the slightest bit. “Because you’re a studying to be a therapist?”
“Because you make your feelings about yourself so obvious.” I drew my legs up to my chest and hugged them. “Have you tried therapy? I’ve been going for six years. I still see my therapist every other week.”
“Therapy’s not for me. No offense to the future therapist sitting in front of me.”
I didn’t crack a smile. “It’s for everyone. There’s not a person alive who doesn’t deserve to be happy. You’re so much better than you think, Jake.”
He shook his head. “You say that, but there are things you don’t know.”
“So tell me.”
“I...” He trailed off and looked out the sliding door. Another flash of lightning brightened the sky. “I didn’t do my job. That day the bomb went off… if I had done what I was supposed to, we wouldn’t have suffered such a big loss.”
I struggled to speak. It felt like someone was pushing all the air out of my lungs. “You’re telling me you… what? Didn’t follow orders?”
“I did,” he snarled. “But I should have done more. I should have saved them. It was a trap and I should have seen it. It should have been…”
He trailed off, leaving me to fill in the blank.
Me.
It should have been me, was what he was going to say, I knew with every cell in my body.
I shook my head in despair and disbelief. “You just said you followed orders, but what more could you have done?”
His eyes whipped back to mine. “Whatever it took.”
I chewed that over. Once again, we’d talked ourselves up against a wall.
“McCall had three kids,” Jake said, staring at something just over my shoulder. “Three kids and a wife… and now they’re forced to go on without him.”
“Not because of you,” I pleaded, silently begging him to understand.
“Any time a person who is there doesn’t stop the situation, doesn’t step in and save someone, Skye, it’s their fault.” He looked at me hard. “You should know that.”
A hurricane of pain hit me. I shut my eyes and watched the red spots dance around. How much more? I silently asked. How much more pain are we supposed to take?
The whole world was bleeding. Every day. Every night. Once the tunnel of pain ended there was bound to be another one with only flashes of light in between. I wanted to believe that all the hurt was taking us somewhere, that it was turning us into better people, that it was making us evolve. I wanted to believe that, somehow, the darkness was the pathway to the light.
What hurt me most was seeing that Jake didn’t believe anything close to the same thing I did. It was clear he had nothing to cling to on his darkest days. He was trapped in a whirlwind of regrets, self-hatred, guilt, and pain.
Jake’s words broke through the black. “I didn’t save McCall or the others, and I didn’t save Trey. Every day I get to live remembering that, and it shouldn’t be any other way.”
I jumped to my feet. “Stop. You have to put an end to this… this insanity.”
Jake stared at me like he didn’t recognize who I was. I closed the few feet between us and stopped right in front of him. “Look at me, Jake. I’ve been through shit too. Okay? And I’ll never understand exactly what happened to you over there. I don’t doubt that you’ve been through way more pain that I will ever experience, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what it’s like to hurt. I understand what negative cycles are, and how we get trapped in them. You have to pull yourself out. No one else can do it for you.”
“Skye—”
“No. Don’t tell me you don’t deserve it or that you’re hopeless. I’m standing right in front of you, Jake, and I’m telling you you’re worth it. You may not see that, but I always will.”
The aching in my chest grew stronger, spilling into my limbs and head. In front of me sat a man experiencing real hurt. A man I’d always loved. A man I would always love, I realized, no matter what happened. I needed to pull him out of the dark well he was trapped in. I needed to help him heal. And in the process, maybe I could heal as well.
Jake’s shoulders shook with an exhale. “I promise to keep myself in check around Jagger. I promise.”
He didn’t understand, and I didn’t know enough to help him see how his thought process was hurting him. “This isn’t about Jagger. This is about you.” Our eyes connected and a magnetic force sprang up between us. “This is about us,” I whispered.
Jake lifted a hand the slightest bit, like he wanted to touch me but wouldn’t let himself. “Skye.”
I seized the sides of his head and pressed my lips to his. Jake’s mouth parted, and his hands grabbed my hips. Just as quickly as the kiss began, it ended. He pulled away and looked at me in despair. “We said that we couldn’t do this.”
“You need me, Jake. I need you. All that stuff in the past is over. We’re together now. Something or someone brought us back into each other’s lives. How about we just stop trying to fight it?”
His eyes searched mine, and I could see the turmoil playing out in them. “You have no idea how much I want that.”
“Try me.”
His face collapsed with the emotion he was trying to hold back. “I’ll hurt you.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
Something new glimmered in his eyes. He was breaking. Hope sprung in my heart and filled me up. Maybe things really could work out.
I had to believe they could. If I didn’t, what the hell else did I have?
Without warning, Jake seized my waist and pulled me onto his lap. I collapsed against him with a shudder, relief flowing through me. My knees fell to either side of his lap and my chest pressed against his. Hot kisses covered my mouth, my jaw, my neck. Wherever Jake touched me, I burned with heat.
&nbs
p; I dug my fingers into his shoulders and hung on with all my strength. I wanted to bind us together, to seal our broken hearts into one strong one, a heart that could weather anything.
Jake’s mouth found mine again, a new force and hunger alive in his lips. Holding tight onto my waist, he stood, taking me with him. I wrapped my legs around his hips, each inch of me now clinging onto him for dear life. We’d said this was wrong, but what did we know? Maybe there was no way to avoid the fire. We just needed to walk through it and, eventually, make it to the other side.
I was used to walking through fire. I’d spent the last six years doing just that. With Jake by my side, it would be easier. We could weather the world together.
Jake walked us down the hallway as we continued to kiss. I broke my mouth off for one moment, just to tell him where to go. We burst into my dark bedroom, and he closed the door behind us. I could barely make out the outline of the furniture, but somehow Jake found the bed.
He flipped on the bedside light. “I want to see you.”
My stomach twisted. I wanted to see him too.
His mouth was hard and demanding against mine. Hungry. There was no other word to describe it as his teeth scraped across my bottom lip. I gasped at the nip of pain, and his tongue slid into my mouth, curling around mine. My hands clutched his hair, fingers threading into the silky strands. When my nails scratched his scalp, he moaned. The sound was desperate, needy.
It matched my own.
Without taking his eyes from me, he slowly stripped my clothes off, leaving burning trails everywhere his fingertips touched.
“Absolutely perfect,” he breathed as he lowered his head to my breasts.
I whimpered as he teased first one and then the other, circling them with his tongue. When his mouth closed over a tight nipple, I cried out. He sucked as his hand moved to the other, squeezing, kneading. Pinpricks of pain went through me as he tugged and pulled on my nipple, twisting even as his teeth dug into my other one.
The pain and pleasure danced through my nerves, leaving me breathless and wanting more. And he gave it without any hesitation.
I yelped when he picked me up and tossed me onto the bed, then grinned up at him as he stripped, revealing one delicious body part at a time. Once fully naked, he kneeled on the bed and crawled to me, the strong grace and power of his body not diminished by the scars that twisted his skin. As he climbed up me, the look in his eyes made me shiver, reminding me of the predatory look a prey must see moments before it was devoured. For a brief moment, I saw the dangerous soldier he once was, still was in many ways, and felt simultaneously afraid and protected as he leaned down to take my mouth.
He turned until I was lying on his chest, our mouths still connected. He squeezed me so tight it was hard to breathe, but I didn’t care.
Curling my braid around his fist, he held my head in place as he plundered my mouth, his teeth raking over my bottom lip. His erection pulsed against my thigh, evidence of how much he wanted this, wanted me.
“I’m going to fuck you until you beg me to stop,” he growled against my mouth, “until you come a thousand times on my tongue, fingers, cock.” His teeth nipped my jaw, and he turned my head until he was whispering in my ear, his tongue tracing the lobe between his words. “And when you think you can’t take any more of me, that’s just the beginning. Do you understand?” He pulled harder on my braid when I didn’t answer. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
He growled again, and his teeth found my throat, then the top of my shoulder. He yanked me up his body until his lips wrapped around my nipple. He sucked, and I felt the pull of his mouth all the way to my sex, causing me to ache for him to fill me.
My desire for him became a living thing, so powerful it frightened me. I’d felt this way just once in my life, and that had ended so badly. Should I be doing this? The first time, yes, it was because of the emotion of seeing Jake again. But now? Now, my eyes were wide open. I knew he wasn’t the same man as before. I knew he didn’t want a relationship with me, probably wasn’t able to give himself to a relationship with me. Was I so willing to lose myself to him again?
“What’s wrong?”
The fire between us tamped down as he looked up at me, my head between both of his hands. I scooted down until we were face-to-face again and kissed him softly. “Nothing. Just overwhelmed a little, I think.”
“Worried?”
Maybe he should’ve been the therapist, because he nailed what I was thinking with a single word. “A little. This attraction between us is so powerful, I don’t want it to burn itself out.”
I don’t want you to leave, was the truth.
His face was solemn as he gazed up at me. “If I was a good man, I’d walk out the door right now and never look back. I’d leave, and you’d never have to worry about me again.”
My heart pounded, and I was grateful that I was on top of him, holding him down. Not that I could’ve made him stay if he didn’t want to. God, please don’t let him want to go.
Then he grinned, and the old Jake was back as that devilish dimple appeared. “Since I’m not leaving, sounds like you need to make a choice. You can either worry about flames burning out…” he wrapped his hands around my waist and pulled me until I was sitting on his chest, my mound just inches from his mouth, “or you can come on my face.”
I smiled down at him, at the delectable dimple winking back up at me. I loved that playful Jake was back, if only for a little while. I would play along. Tapping my lip as if I was thinking hard, I murmured, “Decisions, decisions.”
Then he pulled me forward, and his tongue was inside me. All playfulness vanished in that instant. Teeth and tongue explored and tasted as I ground down harder on his face, seeking the first of the releases he promised. And I was close. So very close.
Erotic wasn’t a good enough description of what was happening to me now. When he opened his warm chocolate eyes and watched me watch him, I’d never experienced anything so sensual in my life. His hands reached up, his palms capturing my breasts as his tongue thrust into me, then sucked my labia into his mouth. His teeth grazed my clit, and I ground down harder. He took it, giving back. And when I exploded, he took that too, his fingers pinching my nipples as I clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle the scream.
Then I was on my back, and he was between my legs again, two fingers diving inside me as he took my clit between his teeth. His knuckles grazed my walls as he twisted his fingers, finding my G-spot. He thrust hard and fast, his tongue working its magic as he drove me toward yet another edge.
I leaped, again stifling my screams as my legs clamped around his head. But he didn’t stop. I hadn’t stopped falling before he was building me up again. I began to cry deep, heaving sobs of pleasure that were so overwhelming, I couldn’t contain everything I was feeling.
When I exploded again, he climbed up my body, crushing his mouth to mine. “Taste how good you are,” he demanded and I licked his lips, his chin, finding it sexy as hell to do so. “Can you taste how perfect you are?”
The thing was, I felt perfect for the first time in forever. And I didn’t want the feeling to end.
“I fucking want you,” he said against my mouth and caught my lower lip between his teeth. I shuddered as he sucked it into his mouth.
“Then take me,” I begged. “Hard.”
He raised his head until our eyes met. “I will, baby. I will.”
Sliding away, I groaned at the loss of his weight, then yelped as he dragged me by my ankles to the edge of the bed. Standing in front of me, he spread my legs wide, gazing down at my sex until I squirmed.
“Please,” I begged, and his eyes snapped back to me. He pulled me again until my ass hit his thighs before lifting my feet until they were resting on his shoulders.
“Play with your nipples,” he instructed, then growled low in his chest when I licked my finger before circling the puckered flesh.
His eyes seemed to grow darker and he lowere
d himself to the bed, pressing my legs back, bending me until my knees were resting on my shoulders. His cock nudged my entrance, and I willed him to slip inside me, give me what I needed.
“Watch me fuck you.”
I licked my lips and lowered my gaze to the point where our bodies almost connected. He entered me slowly, and I gasped at the burn of him stretching my already raw flesh. Inch by inch, my body consumed him, until the hardness of his pubic bone pressed against my clit.
When he was balls deep, he shifted until both of my wrists were in his hands. With ease, he pulled them over my head, holding them captive as my legs began to shake from the burden and blessing of his weight.
I was at his mercy.
And heaven help me, I loved it.
I loved how vulnerable I was to him. How much trust I held.
“I’m going to fuck you now,” he growled, “and you’re going to come on my cock, understand?”
I nodded, and he withdrew just enough that I moaned at the loss of him. I didn’t have to wait long before he was filling me again with a body shattering thrust.
There was a hard edge to Jake’s hunger for me as he found a rhythm, spearing me over and over with his delicious cock. My breasts rocked on my chest with each violent thrust vibrating through me. My hips ached. My fingers itched to touch him. My mouth needed his kiss.
“Touch you,” I panted, wiggling my fingers, trying to fight my hands from the hard circle of his grasp. He let me go, and my fingers went straight for his hair, his shoulders.
He released my legs, and I groaned, pain radiating through my hips as I wrapped around his waist. His hand curled around my braid again, pulling my head back until our mouths met, our tongues clashing in sync with our bodies.
I cried out, and his mouth captured the sound as my body tightened and I raced toward the cliff. He cursed as my body clamped down on him, but he didn’t stop, didn’t give me time to recover. He pounded, slamming into me over and over, the sound of skin slapping together so erotic.
Without warning, he pulled out and flipped me onto my stomach. He pulled my hips up until my weight was resting on my elbows, and his mouth was on my ass. His tongue washed down my crack, and I gasped, trying to pull away from the unfamiliar sensation. His fingers dug into my hips, holding me still while he tongued the hard rim of my anus. It was so different, so wrong but right, and I found myself pushing back harder against his face instead of trying to pull away as my mind screamed for me to do.