by Eden Bradley
He felt like he’d been slammed in the chest with a sledgehammer. “Fuck, Summer Grace,” he said quietly. “Really? That was years ago. I was a sad, fucked-up kid myself. And now . . . now you’re going to hold that against me? To let it make up how you see me? I thought things were so amazing between us lately.” Anger was welling up in his chest, making his pulse throb hot in his veins, making his head ache. “You said you trusted me—how many times did you tell me that? But how much trust do you really have in me?”
“As much as I’m capable of, given that I lose everyone. Everything.”
He shook his head, his fists clenching at his sides. But when the tears slid down her cheeks unchecked, the anger drained away. This was the woman he loved. The woman whose entire history he knew—a history he shared. His shoulders fell as he swept her into his embrace. She fought him, squirming and pounding on his shoulders, his back, but he let it happen. He held her safe until she calmed down. There was more crying, but he knew she needed it. Finally he pulled back and helped her wipe her face with the soggy edge of the sheet.
“Baby. You’ve held so much in all this time. I know it’s because you’ve had to,” he told her. “And I know I could have been there for you, that I could have helped you get through it all. I thought I was the broken one—so damn broken I wasn’t good enough for you. And ultimately I held back with you because of that stupid crap in my head about being a death magnet—”
“Maybe I’m the death magnet, Jamie. First Brandon. Now Madame.”
“She was a cat. And she was old. And two losses in a lifetime don’t make you a death magnet.”
Summer Grace shook her head. “And three make you one? But Brandon . . . Jamie, I have to tell you . . .” She stopped, visibly swallowed a sob, but it was still in her voice when she continued. “We had a fight that morning. I was so selfish. So immature. I was totally in the wrong, and I was such a bitch to him when he was only looking out for me. That was the last conversation we had. And maybe if he wasn’t so pissed at me, so annoyed with me, or fuck, hurt by me, he would have seen that car coming.” She shook her head again, her gaze on her hands twisting the edge of the quilt. “It really wasn’t you who had some fault in Brandon dying. It was me.”
His heart broke a little at her words. At her self-condemnation. He knew that feeling too well.
“No, sweetheart. No, it wasn’t either of us. Just hearing you say that out loud makes me see it wasn’t me or you or anything else, and how mistaken I’ve been all this time in thinking it could have been my fault—Brandon or Ian or Traci losing the baby. It’s just the way the fucked-up world happens sometimes. But, Summer Grace . . .” He reached out and stroked her cheek and she looked up at him. He saw the remnants of tears glistening on the tips of her long lashes. “Sweetheart. I am so damn sorry. I should never have left you alone to deal with the whole mess. Maybe if I’d been there for you, if I hadn’t been so damn . . . afraid of myself, and what I thought I was, I would have been able to protect you from some of it—the pain and the loneliness and that sense of being lost. From all the times your life broke, then broke again. And I am more sorry than I can say that some of the times things broke it was because of me. But I let you down because I was too wrapped up in my own shit. And that wasn’t just when we were younger. It was right up until I saw you at The Bastille the first time. Not because you were there, or playing with someone else. But because it made me see myself through your eyes, and I wasn’t too happy with what I saw. I was the guy who disappointed you, who let you down. But when I saw you that night, I was also the guy who was done doing that.”
She was blinking fast, but not so fast that he didn’t see another tear escaping from her eye.
He wiped it with his thumb. “Don’t cry anymore. Come on, sweetheart. I’m trying to apologize.”
“I know you are. Just give me a minute to pull myself together and absorb everything.”
“Jesus on a cracker, you two.” Dennie stepped into the room.
“I thought you went with Annalee to her dinner,” Jamie said.
“Oh, we’ve been hanging out until we were sure Summer was okay. And I see she is. So now we’re really leaving—and leaving you two to work it out. But first I want to say this: I have never seen two people more in love. I’d kill to have what you have. Don’t fuck it up, okay?”
“I love you, Den,” Summer Grace said.
“I know you do, honeypie.” She turned and left the room, and they both held their breath until they heard the front door slam shut and the distant rumble of Annalee’s Cadillac.
Jamie stroked her hair, her cheek. He wanted to kiss her so badly, but he sensed they had more talking to do. That she had more to say. “Okay. Talk to me, baby. What do you need to tell me about what’s happened?”
She shrugged, but he could see she was turning ideas over in her mind. She bit her lip, opened her mouth to speak, then paused for several moments. Finally she started.
“When Brandon died it was . . . like the end of the world to me. He was my big brother. I worshipped him. My entire world revolved around him, maybe even my crush on you in the beginning.”
“What did Brandon have to do with a teenage girl’s crush on me?”
“You were the sun Brandon revolved around, Jamie, just like I revolved around him.”
He shook his head, ran a hand over his stubbled scalp. “No. There’s never been anything remotely sunshiny about me. Brandon was the one with the sunshine. Our whole group revolved around him. That’s why it hit everyone so hard when we lost him.”
She reached out and took his hand. “But not like it hit us—you and me. They were all hurt by it. We were both . . . destroyed by it.”
“You know,” he started, his tone low and soft, “I never knew how affected you were by Brandon dying. I thought maybe you were too young to really get it, but now I know better. You hid it so well.”
“I had to. My parents were so messed up. I felt everything falling apart. I needed to be the one who held it together.” Tears welled, and she let them pool in her eyes. “But I couldn’t do it, Jamie. I feel like . . . I failed. My family broke apart. Shattered into a million pieces, like some puzzle I couldn’t put back together. And I broke. I broke and you were too broken by it for me to lean on you.”
“But fuck, Summer Grace—that was my job. You should have told me how bad things were.”
“There were times I wanted to, but you weren’t really around after a while. You got married and I couldn’t talk to you then. Impossible. Because I loved you even back then, when I was sixteen years old. People say a teenager knows nothing about love, but I did. I knew.” She looked up, caught his gaze with hers. “I knew, Jamie. I still know.”
His throat was so tight with emotion he could barely get the words out. “Summer Grace. Goddamn it, I love you so much.”
He moved in to kiss her and she turned away with a sharp laugh. “I love you, too, but Jesus, Jamie—you can’t kiss me when I look like this.”
He grabbed her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. “I can and I will. I want to. I want to kiss you all the time. I don’t fucking care if you’ve been sobbing for twenty-four hours straight, except that I never want that to happen again.”
He looked into her swollen eyes—they were the same cornflower blue. His girl’s eyes. He smiled at her for a moment before he moved in and kissed her. There was a small hiccup from her, then she gave in, her mouth going loose under his. Her arms twined around his neck and he pulled her closer, held her tight until he could really feel her, heartbeat to heartbeat.
He pulled back to ask, “Okay. What else are you mad at me about? Let’s get it all out of the way right now—get it over with.”
“I don’t think I’m mad anymore. At myself, maybe, but that’s just going to take some time. I should have faced this stuff years ago—or at least once I became an adult. I feel like
I don’t really have an excuse. Except that it was all simply too big for me to deal with. I think . . . I think I’ve been afraid that if I let myself feel it, I’d end up like . . . well, like this.”
“But you survived it.”
“Only because of you and Annalee and Dennie.”
“Hell, I’m half the reason you ended up here. But in the end you survived it because of how strong you are.”
She tucked her hair behind one ear. “I don’t know about that. I think a lot of the strength I let people see is me covering up the part that’s too raw to show anyone.”
“You’re showing it to me now. You’ve shown some of it to me every time we’ve played together. The people who think there’s some intrinsic weakness in being submissive have no concept of the strength it takes. And you have it, Summer Grace—you do. You’ve always had it. You had the strength to hide your pain. It doesn’t matter that eventually it kind of exploded. You were strong enough to keep a lid on it all that time.”
She cracked a smile. “How do you manage to make me sound so grand when I’m sitting here in tear-soaked pajamas that don’t even belong to me because a bad-tempered old cat died?”
He smiled at her, smiled at the light reappearing in her blue eyes. “I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
“Well I’ve got news for you, Jamie Stewart-Greer—there’s not going to be any ‘having’ me until I’ve had a good long shower and maybe some food.”
“Deal. But brace yourself, because I’m about to kiss the pants off you, sugar.”
He threw back the covers and pulled her into his lap, his arms tight around her slender body, his mouth coming down hard on hers.
Her lips were so damn soft. She opened to him right away, the resistance gone out of her. Her hands went to his shoulders, then his cheeks, behind his neck. She held on to him so tight—tight enough that he knew she was going to be all right—that they would be all right. And all was right with his world.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
SUMMER TENSED AS they walked into her house, but Jamie had asked Duff to take Madame to a local veterinary office to have them dispose of her body, and to air out the house. She inhaled carefully, but she smelled nothing but the sultry New Orleans air and maybe some of the rosemary and hibiscus growing in her garden.
As Jamie closed the front door, she turned to him. “Jamie? Is it bad that I didn’t say good-bye to Madame? I didn’t want to come home to that—I couldn’t—but I feel bad.”
“You’re more into this spiritual stuff than I am, but don’t you think she knows you loved her? And isn’t that the only important thing—the love?”
“You’re right.” She smiled up at him as she snuggled into his arms. “I love you, Jamie.”
“I love you, baby. Love you, love you, love you,” he whispered into her hair. “And I’ll love you forever. I will. Don’t you dare doubt it.”
Her smile spread until she felt her cheek crease against his muscled chest. “Yes, sir.”
“Sassy girl.”
“But you wouldn’t have me any other way.”
“It’s true. I only want you, Summer Grace, exactly as you are.”
“Jamie?”
“Hmm?”
“Can it be time for that ‘having’ me you were talking about earlier?”
“I think it was you who was talking about it, my insatiable girl,” he said, but he was sliding his hand into her hair and up the back of her scalp, pulling tightly.
She sighed. “Mmm, when you pull my hair like that, I am.”
He picked her up and she laced her legs around his waist, and he kissed her as he carried her into the bedroom. Setting her down on the bed, he knelt to pull off her sandals, then her yoga pants.
“As much as I love the pretty lingerie you get from work, I think I prefer it when you go without.”
“It’s only because I didn’t have any clean stuff with me at Dennie’s.”
“Either way, it’s working for me.” He took her hand and pressed it against his erection under the denim of his jeans.
“Oh, so it is,” she agreed, her body melting.
Cupping his hard length in her palm, she remembered what it felt like to have him inside her. Her sex squeezed, ached for him.
He moaned softly, covered her hand with his and pressed down hard.
“Sugar, if you keep this up—not that I’m complaining—this is gonna be over before it starts.”
She bit her lip. “What if I want to put it in my mouth?”
He groaned. “Christ, you kill me.”
She looked up at him. “I haven’t even tried yet,” she said.
“Oh, you are a sassy girl. Come here and let me teach you a lesson.”
He grabbed her, and before she knew what was happening, he had her over his knee, her bare bottom in the air. He gave her a good smack, making her yelp.
“Oh, come on, sugar—that was nothing.”
“I’m a delicate flower tonight, Jamie.”
“Ah, baby.” He turned her over and lifted her into his lap. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“Jamie, it’s okay. I was joking.” She reached up and stroked his strong cheek, let her fingertips trace the metal bar through his eyebrow. “Thank you for being so sweet to me. And I love you. And I’m also needing you. Please?”
She boldly took his hand and placed it between her thighs, holding it there until he began to explore, his fingers slipping into her wet heat.
“Nice.” He smiled, kissed her lips, pulled back to whisper, “Very nice,” as he rubbed her juices over her clitoris, then began to slide his fingers back and forth over the sensitive nub. “Come on, my sugar girl. Tonight I’m going to be a service Top. I’m gonna make you come, over and over. That’s what I want more than anything—to make you feel good.”
“Jamie . . .”
“Shh. This is what will please me most. This is what I need. Say yes.”
What else could she do? “Yes,” she answered, a small smile on her face, her cheeks going warm. Her body going warm.
He pulled her tank top over her head and she was glad she’d tucked her bra into her purse rather than putting it on after her shower. It felt so good to be naked with him, with the man she loved, in the soft, sultry New Orleans air. He laid her back on the bed, then undressed slowly, his gaze on her face as he undid his belt, then his jeans, opening the fly just enough that she got a hint of his beautiful skin, his beautiful cock, underneath. He kicked off his big black boots, then pulled his T-shirt over his head. And in some way it was as if she’d never seen his bare torso before—he was so perfectly made she gasped, her sex clenching as she looked from his gorgeously pierced nipples to the tattooed script running up his right side. She wanted to run her tongue over the tattoo, to find the small areas where the skin was still raised with ink. She wanted to take his nipple rings into her mouth, to work them until his nipples were as hard as his cock. She wanted to trace every sleek rise and angle of his tight abs with her tongue. But for now she would focus on what he wanted to do to her. Gladly. Deliriously.
He slid the jeans down over his leanly-muscled thighs, exposing all of his golden skin, and she had to grab handfuls of the bedding beneath her to keep from reaching out to touch him. She’d never seen a more beautiful example of the male form in her life—he was pure art. Pure sex. Pure love.
Hers.
“Jamie?”
“What is it, love?” he asked as he knelt at the foot of the bed.
“I’m yours.”
“Oh, yes, you are. All mine.”
“And you are mine.”
He smoothed his hands over her calves. “Sweetheart, I am as much yours as you are mine. I have been from the start. You have my heart, which means you have all of me.” He bent and laid a sweet kiss on her ankle. “Don’t you know that, Summ
er Grace?”
“Yes. Just checking. No, not checking. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“In that case you can ask anytime.”
“You’re pretty wonderful, you know that?”
His features sobered. “I didn’t, until you.”
Her smile faded for a moment. “Neither did I.”
“We need each other.”
“Yeah. We do.”
Her smile came back as he lowered his head, stretching up to kiss her lips before sliding down and down, until his lovely, sweet mouth was between her thighs. He kissed her there, too, then started in with his tongue, hitting all the right spots, taking her higher and higher. When her body tensed with her oncoming climax she expected him to halt her, to make her wait. But he only dove deeper, his fingers thrusting inside her, his hot, wet mouth sucking her flesh until she came, crying his name. But he didn’t stop, and soon pleasure crested again, and she was coming and coming. She had no idea whether it was a new climax or more of the first—there hadn’t been any time for her to separate them. Didn’t matter. It was her Jamie, bringing her pleasure, making her fly. Flying for the first time with nothing but pleasure and love, no pain. She didn’t need it right now. All she needed was him.
He took one moment to glance up at her, a sensual smile on his damp lips, then he was on her again, making her squirm. And this time it did hurt a little, she was so sensitive. But in moments she was coming again, and this time she screamed his name, her throat raw.
When she was certain she couldn’t take any more, he rose above her, guiding her to wrap her legs around him. Poised at the entrance to her body, he gazed down at her.
“Do you know what it does to me to bring you pleasure? How it fills me up? And fuck, Summer Grace . . .” He swallowed, and the expression on his face made her heart swell. “I want to do everything for you. And to you. And for us. I want to be inside you so badly it hurts. But I had to tell you how much I love you. How much I love your beautiful body. Your strength. Even the parts of you that are almost as fucked up as I am. Seriously. Maybe we’re broken together, but we can also heal together. I think this is the only way I can.”