“I love you too,” I moaned, my pussy gushing around his girth as his hips pounded against me.
“Arella,” he choked out my name as I watched his face twist as if in utter agony. “Baby, I can’t hold back.”
My legs tightened around his hips. “I don’t want you to. Give me everything you have, Jordan. I need it.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chanted as he stepped away from the door and dropped to his knees right there on the floor. I squealed, but his arms held me close to him, protecting me from any impact. But then he was drilling me into the floor as if he couldn’t get deep enough inside me. “How many gallons do you think I’ve already emptied into you?” he rasped at my ear as he increased his pace even more. “How many more do you think it will take until you start to swell with our baby?”
The pleasure was so intense, I couldn’t even answer him. But he didn’t seem to care. I loved that he seemed so determined to get me pregnant. Earlier that evening, I’d thought once we were over, at least I would have a part of him to hold on to. But now, I couldn’t wait to give him all the babies he wanted, to raise them together, and to have the life I’d dreamed about for so damn long.
“As soon as I can breathe again, I’m going to take you to bed and do this over and over again,” he vowed. “You’re going to get sick of my touch.”
Unable to speak, I could only shake my head adamantly. Never. I was never going to get sick of his touch. I ached for it every minute of the day. Even when he was right beside me, I craved him to the point of madness.
“No?” He grinned like a predator, and the thought that I was his prey only made me clench around him tighter. “You sure about that, babe? You’re mine now.”
“You…say that like…it’s a bad thing,” I panted.
“I’ve held back for so long. What I feel for you, it’s become an obsession. Now that you’ve said you love me, I can’t contain it any longer. I am never going to let you go.” His head fell back on his shoulders, the muscles in his neck straining as he shouted my name, and I felt him come deep inside me.
The feel of his hot release shot me over the edge, and my pussy locked down on his cock, my walls contracting around his shaft and milking every last drop out of him as I whimpered my way through the strongest orgasm of my life.
Nineteen
Jordan
She loves me.
That was all I could think as I found the strength to stand and lift her into my arms. Carrying her into our bedroom, I placed her carefully on the bed before going into the bathroom to get a damp washcloth and towel to clean her up.
When I returned, she was already half asleep, her eyes barely open as she watched me with a contented smile on her kiss-swollen lips. I wiped up the mess coating her thighs and then stripped off the rest of her clothes. Once she was naked, I tucked the covers around her before taking the washcloth and towel back into the bathroom. Dropping them into the hamper, I finished removing my own clothes on my way back to her.
An adorable soft snore reached my ears before I even returned. Stopping beside my side of the bed, I looked down at her.
She loves me.
Everything I’d spent so long trying to contain was free now. There was no holding back the obsessive, possessive part of myself that needed to be her everything. Just as she was mine.
Pulling the covers back, I slid in bed and pulled her against me. She snuggled against me, her hand resting right over my heart as she pillowed her head on my chest. I covered her hand with my own and dropped the other to caress my fingertips over one of her hips. She sighed happily and squirmed even closer, tossing one of her legs over both of mine until she was lying half on top of me.
“Sleep,” I said, kissing the top of her head.
“’Kay,” she murmured, and I felt her lips touching the skin of my chest. “Love you.”
“I love you, baby.”
Soon she was lightly snoring again, and I let the sound lure me to sleep as well.
The next time I opened my eyes, sunlight was pouring through the window, and my home phone was ringing. The cordless extension in my bedroom had never sounded more annoying than it did right then. Groaning, I reached out to grab the noisy thing, but Arella grumbled unhappily and tried to cling to me.
“Let it ring,” she slurred sleepily. “It will stop eventually.” As if on cue, the phone stopped, and I felt her smile against my skin. “See? Told you.”
“Mm,” I agreed, closing my eyes again. Sleep tried to take me under again…
And then the phone started ringing again. Arella whined, her smile turning into a pout. “Who even has a landline these days? I changed my mind. Make it stop.”
“Motherfuck,” I growled, wishing whoever was on the other end of that call to the deepest bowels of hell. “When we buy a house, we won’t get a landline, I swear.” Picking up the cordless, I turned it to silent and then threw it across the room.
The clang of it shattering as it hit the wall made Arella giggle, and I rolled her onto her back. After kissing her, I pillowed my head on her chest and closed my eyes again. Sleep was fading quickly, my cock forcing me to wake up fast, but I needed to talk to her before I put my dick in her again.
She combed her fingers through my hair, scratching my scalp with her nails. Nothing outside of sex with her had ever felt so good.
The doorbell ringing echoed through the entire apartment, causing her to pause her coma-inducing scratches.
“Maybe it’s whoever was trying to call earlier?” she suggested.
Muttering curses under my breath, I pushed up onto all fours over her. Fuck, she was so beautiful with her hair all tousled and her eye makeup smeared under her eyes. I could have stayed like that all day, just staring down at her and soaking up the sight of her relaxing in our bed.
But then the doorbell rang again, reminding me that the outside world was trying its damnedest to intrude. Lowering my head, I kissed her quickly before jumping out of bed. Grabbing a pair of basketball shorts out of my dresser, I pulled them on and stomped unhappily to the front door.
When I jerked the door open, Mia squeaked in surprise. “Gods, warn a person!” she scolded. “I swear, I thought you might have been dead when you didn’t answer your cell or the landline.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face, grunting at the feel of the stubble on my jaw. I needed to shave before I chafed Arella’s skin, but all I wanted was to crawl back into bed with her and continue just lying on top of her while she scratched my head.
“What do you want, Mia?” I groused.
“Excuse you, Moreitti,” she snipped and pushed something against my chest
I dropped my hand in time to catch the small box wrapped in metallic red gift paper. Seeing the unopened present, I remembered the favor I’d asked of my best friend the night before.
“No one was home when I stopped by Uncle Drake’s house last night, so I had to wait and get it this morning.” Her green eyes skimmed over me dispassionately. “By the looks of you, I doubt you minded the delay. You’re welcome, by the way.” She hmphed and turned away.
“Thank you,” I called after her belatedly. “I owe you one, Mia.”
“You’re damn right, you do.” The elevator doors opened, and she flipped me off as she stepped into it. “By the way, you look like you got into a fight with a wildcat. Apparently, the cat won.”
Confused, I glanced down at myself, wondering what she was talking about, only to find scratches and a few bite marks on my chest, arms, and shoulders. The sight of how passionate Arella was only made my cock harden, tenting my shorts. Closing the door, I turned to go back to the bedroom.
Arella was sitting up in the center of the bed when I walked in. The covers were pulled to her chest, and her glossy dark hair had been finger-combed and pulled over her shoulder. The sight of her stole my breath, and I just stood at the end of the bed, looking down at the angel that was all mine.
She loves me.
Her blue-gray gaze fell on the p
resent in my hand, and I saw her stiffen. “Where did you get that?”
I tightened my fingers around it, but I didn’t take my eyes off her. “Don’t be angry.”
Her brow furrowed, but after a brief hesitation, she gave a firm nod. “Okay.”
“I asked Mia to pick up the present my parents delivered on your eighteenth birthday.”
Arella sat up a little straighter, her arms crossing over her chest in a protective, guarded kind of way that made me ache to have the soft, cuddly version of my girl back.
“That was at my parents’ house,” she muttered.
“Mia made up an excuse that she needed to pick up something from your old room.” I sat on the end of the bed, turning so we were facing each other. Placing the present between us, I left it there as I watched her cautiously. “She tried to get it last night, but no one was home. So she had to wait until this morning.”
Her eyes dropped to the pretty metallic red wrapping before quickly looking away. “Why does it matter so much? It’s just a present.”
“If it’s just a present, why didn’t you open it?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the rasp of emotion out of my voice.
She lifted one bare shoulder. “I just didn’t.”
“But you kept it. Didn’t stomp on it or throw it away.” I touched my index finger to the matching red ribbon. It was still perfectly wrapped, even though it was over eighteen months later.
“It was from you. I might have been too upset and hurt to open the damned thing, but I couldn’t bring myself to destroy it or even toss it out.”
I nodded in understanding. “When you never mentioned the present, I just thought maybe you didn’t want to hurt my feelings or ruin the friendship we had. I had no idea you hadn’t even opened it.”
“Jordan, the only thing I wanted for that birthday was you. And then you bailed, sent your parents and that stupid present.” She nudged the box with her foot, pushing it closer to me and farther away from herself. “Then…” She swallowed roughly and started again. “And then I saw you all over social media with Letizia. You were leaving some nightclub in Italy. You had her lipstick all over you, and then someone tweeted that they saw you going into her place…”
“Open it,” I commanded when I heard the hitch in her voice.
Her gaze snapped to mine, and I saw hurt flashing out of those blue-gray depths. “I don’t want to.”
“Please,” I rasped out. “For me, love. I need you to open it.”
“No,” she argued mutinously. “If it was so important to you for me to see what was inside, you should have given it to me yourself in the first place.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. Taking a deep breath, I went for broke and started from the very beginning. “Nevaeh’s eighteenth birthday was a life-changing night for me. I know it was a hard time for you and your family, with your dad so sick, but I’ll always remember that night because it was the moment my heart felt like it finally started to beat.”
My eyes caressed over her lovingly as I remembered that party. Everyone standing around trying to put on a brave face for Nevaeh but failing because Drake was so sick, they didn’t know if it was the last birthday party he would ever share with his children. I’d been talking to Mia and Barrick, flirting with Nevaeh to piss off Braxton and distract myself from the utter boredom—and loneliness—that seemed to be my constant companion.
Then I’d heard this sweet, bell-like giggle, and something inside me had lit up. I’d glanced around, looking for the source of the sound that had made me able to actually feel my heart beating in my chest for the first time. When my eyes fell on Arella, I hadn’t even recognized her for a moment. It had been years since I’d seen her. With Mia living in Virginia at the time, I was rarely in California, and when I was, it was only to visit with my parents.
There she’d stood, with her dark hair flowing down her back in soft waves, wearing a red dress that clung to her perfect curves. I’d taken two steps toward her before I even realized what I was doing when Mia grabbed my arm and dug her nails in my arm. “You realize she’s only sixteen, right?”
“Who?” I’d muttered, annoyed that she was keeping me from my destiny.
“Arella,” she’d hissed. I reluctantly tore my gaze away from my angel and looked down at Mia, still not completely understanding what she was trying to tell me. “The girl you were about to grab and probably disappear with, that’s Arella. And you should really remember that she is sixteen.”
“That goddess is only sixteen?” I choked out as I turned my head back to run my eyes longingly over the beauty standing in a group of her cousins. Her smile lit up the whole room, her musical laugh pulling every gaze to her, and even though I knew the majority of the people in the room were related to her in some way, I wanted to hide her away so no one but I could have the privilege of seeing and hearing all that sweetness.
Mia grabbed my chin and jerked my head back to look at her. “Read my lips, Jordan. Sixteen. S-I-X-T-E-E-N.”
Jerking my face out of her hold, I stepped back from her. “Yeah, fuck. Okay. I get it.” I turned my back on Arella just as she started to look in my direction, telling myself that Mia was right. The girl was too young.
I locked down what I was feeling, told myself to stay far, far away from her, and focused on torturing Braxton and even Barrick a little.
Only, it didn’t work. I couldn’t help looking over at Arella every few minutes. Each time I did, I would catch her looking right back, curiosity shining out of those eyes, the blue-gray my new favorite color.
Blinking away the memories, I grasped Arella’s hand and tugged. She came willingly, and I pulled her naked body into my lap. Cupping her face in one hand, I kissed the tip of her nose then her lips. “I fell for you that night, baby. I fell so hard and so deep that I didn’t know which way was up. I told myself that we could only ever be friends, and I was okay with that. As long as I got a fix of you every now and then, I could survive without you. I threw myself into work, tried to fuck you out of my system with other women…” She flinched, and I kissed her again. “And every time I fucked them, I would feel physically sick afterward until I eventually gave up trying to work you out of my system. But I kept telling myself that I was okay with us just being friends.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear all of this,” she muttered unhappily.
“I’m not sure I want to tell you all of it, but I don’t want there to be any more misunderstandings between us.” I pressed my forehead to hers. “I told myself and anyone who even so much as breathed your name in my presence that we were only friends, but the lock I’d put on my feelings for you was starting to crumble. The closer your eighteenth birthday got, the more I could feel it breaking away, and it scared me. I knew if I let go and showed you how much I loved you, how much I wanted you, it would scare you away. I was worried it would make you run from me, and I didn’t know if I could survive that.”
“Never,” she said with an adamant shake of her head. “I would never run from your love for me.”
“You haven’t seen the full extent of how much I want and need you yet, Arella. It might scare you.” I glanced down at the present and picked it up. “I wanted to buy you a ring, but I figured your dad would have killed me if I’d asked to marry you while you were still in high school. And I still didn’t know if what I was hoping you felt for me was as strong as what I was feeling. My biggest fear was that it was just an infatuation and you would eventually get bored with me and move on.”
Twenty
Jordan
“If you had shown up at my party with a ring, I would have married you that night,” she confessed, blowing my mind. “It wouldn’t have mattered to me if my dad didn’t like it. I wouldn’t have cared that I was still in high school. All I have ever wanted was to be yours and for you to be mine.”
“I realize that now.” Placing the present in her hand, I wrapped her fingers around it. “I’m so sorry I wasted so much time. If I hadn’t been such
a pussy about your feelings for me fading, or of scaring you off, then we could have been together this entire time.”
The beginnings of a smile teased at her lips. “Jordan, you seem so worried about me being scared of your feelings, but I don’t think you truly understand my own. I’m just as possessive of you as you say you are of me.” The ghost smile disappeared, and her gaze hardened. “And I can promise you, if you cheat on me or I see any other woman who isn’t related to you or me within two feet of you, I will destroy you both.”
A relieved laugh escaped me. “Baby, you will never have to worry about that. I swear on everything I love, I am yours. Now and always.” Kissing her to seal the vow, I tucked her closer and lifted my head. “Please open your present.”
She huffed like it was the biggest inconvenience of her life, but I saw the glitter in her eyes. Taking her time, she lifted one edge of the wrapping paper. I sat there holding her as she finally unveiled the jewelry box and lifted the lid.
When she looked down at the necklace, her free hand touched the one that was still around her neck. “It really is the same,” she murmured.
“Not quite.” I took the box and pulled out the necklace. Laying the charm in my palm, I turned over the double hearts to show the inscription I’d had added.
Now and always, our hearts are one.
I watched as she read the words. Her chin began to tremble, and tears spilled over her lashes as she lifted her gaze to mine. “Jordan,” she sobbed. “You… Damn it, I should have opened this that night.”
“No,” I told her, wiping away one of her tears. “I should have given it to you personally.” Reaching around her, I unhooked the necklace her parents gave her for Christmas and placed it in the now-empty jewelry box. “You can pass this one on to one of our daughters. But this one…” I placed the one I’d bought around her neck and fastened the clasp. “I want to see it around your neck often, love.”
Needing Arella (Rockers' Legacy Book 6) Page 14