The Winter Games Box Set

by Rebecca Sharp

  I choked on the warm winter-scented air. This is why I came back to him. Why I kept coming back for more even when more had promised to destroy me.

  I kept coming back to him like he was the last breath of air left that I needed to breathe. I kept coming back because this was an all or none kind of thing.

  Except it was only-ever-always an all.

  I would have to melt over his words later. Right now, I was melting under his touch.

  He slammed inside of me and stars shot across my vision.

  My strangled gasp echoed throughout the vaulted ceilings of the house. The feel of his hot naked flesh sliding tightly into mine broke me.

  “Oh God, Chance,” I whimpered. Maybe I was imagining it, but I felt every twitch, every pulse of him inside my core. He paused at his own peril when he was fully seated inside of me—so far inside that it felt like his dick was entering my womb with each thrust.

  “Jessa…” My name a plea that slipped from the man who was dying a small death inside of me. His teeth locked onto my neck as he slowly slid in and out of me. “God, you are so tight, J-bird,” he growled angrily as my sex clenched at his words. “Is that what you want, gorgeous? My cum inside of you making another baby?”

  He ground his hips into mine, somehow pushing himself deeper. Hand in my hair, he tugged my head to the side so his lips could speak over my ear. “Because I’ll give it to you, J-bird. I’d give you any fucking thing.”

  He tore me apart. Demanding, yet completely willing to do anything for me.

  “I just need all of you, Chance. I just need to feel all of you inside of me.”

  He shook above me—a sign of acquiescence before his punishing thrusts began, giving me exactly what I needed. He slipped inside easier now that I was dripping wet, gliding through muscles that would realize in the morning that they were still not equipped to handle him. Each time sending a tremor through my body, a sign that the earthquake was coming.

  “This is mine,” he rasped as his finger pulled on my nipple. I squirmed underneath him, my orgasm hanging on a string right in front of me, just out of reach. “You are mine.” His cock drove into me, harder this time and my hips rose eagerly, needing more and eager for further invasion.

  It was raw and wet and I’m sure, in the morning, the mess we made on the floor would tempt me to be embarrassed. But right now, all I could feel was Chance, sliding inside of me over and over again. Claiming me. Never letting me go.

  This was what my dreams were made of.

  My nails dug into the carpet and then into his back, searching for a foundation as my body rocketed towards the edge of cohesive existence. The bright little bulbs of light seemed to be floating around me as I lost sense of all reality except for him.

  The moans and wet slapping noises that echoed between us probably could have been heard by the neighbors, but the scream that erupted from me when I came could be heard from the mountaintops. My orgasm incinerated me and then remade me stronger and brighter from its flames.

  Seconds later, his shout shook the windows and the only thing I felt was the heat from his release spreading through my body from the hard flesh pulsing inside of me.

  He stayed there. In me. On me. With me. For me.

  Our chests moved in sync. The past and the present dissolved into one.

  With a grunt, he rolled over and pulled me against him.

  “We should get up,” I murmured.

  “Why?”

  “I think we’re making a mess on the carpet.”

  “Don’t give a fuck about the carpet, J-bird.” He sighed, leaning over to kiss my forehead. “But for you, I will clean it.”

  He kissed me one more time before he slid out of my sex. It felt like I’d lost a limb.

  I tried, but I couldn’t move. So, I lay there in the sea of candles watching the flurries outside the window until Chance came back with a warm cloth. I moaned as he reached between my thighs cleaning up what had become of the two of us.

  I almost drifted to sleep as he went back into the kitchen, but his arms underneath me, hoisting me up off the floor quickly ended that thought.

  “What are we doing?” I asked as he sat on the couch, holding me on his lap and wrapping a blanket around the two of us. Naked and cocooned, I’d never felt happier than I did at that moment.

  “I want you to tell me,” he whispered, brushing stray pink strands of hair off of my face.

  “Tell you what?” I stared up at him.

  “Everything that I should have been there to hear. Everything that I should have been there to hold you through.”

  Chance made me a liar. I said I’d never felt happier and he’d gone and proved me wrong.

  “I like to think it would have been a little girl,” I began quietly. They weren’t good memories, that was for sure. It hurt to revisit and remember what had happened and everything that I’d felt. But he demanded to know it all.

  “I didn’t know when I left. You have to know, I wouldn’t have left and not told you that I was pregnant.” My hand rested over his heart, like it could force him to believe it was the truth. “I didn’t know until a month later. I was so busy with moving and then moving into my dorm. I didn’t realize until almost a week after I should have had my period.”

  “Who was with you?” he rasped.

  “No one.” My heart thudded in the silence as his arms around me tightened.

  “I’m so sorry, Jessa,” he whispered against my hair, the heartfelt hurt seeping into his voice like water soaks through clothes. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  I continued because if I stopped now, I didn’t think I’d ever get started again. “I-I took the test in the bathroom on my dorm floor. And when it came back positive, I thought the world had stopped. I-I had this whole plan—everything I’d worked towards in high school, coming back to Texas for college. I just hadn’t planned on falling in love with you. And I hadn’t planned on getting pregnant.”

  The soft strokes of his hand along my arm and then my back calmed my heart during memories that normally made it frantic and emotional.

  “You’d think you would call someone, you know?” I laughed weakly. “Not that I thought about this ever happening, but I guess I just always figured in that moment I would freak out and call my mom or a friend or someone… but I didn’t. It’s like, if I spoke it, that meant it was real,” I continued softly. “But the more I thought about it, the more I just wanted to call you. To talk to you. To tell you that I was stupid and I didn’t know what I was doing and I shouldn’t have tried to decide your life for you. To tell you that what happened with Nick was a lie and that, with my whole heart, I was sorry.”

  A sob escaped me, the perfect accessory to the weakest point in my life—the point where I felt like every decision I’d ever made up to that moment was a mistake. The moment where, because the future felt like a giant unanswered question, I began to question everything about my life and myself.

  “I-I wanted to beg your forgiveness and beg you to come down here because I was so lost and you were my mountain. You were the only thing that had ever been true… and I, selfishly, needed you. In that moment, I didn’t care about your dreams. I didn’t care about anything that I thought you deserved except what kept you with me.”

  “Oh, Jess… baby… fuck…”

  My fingers clutched into him as he pulled me closer, kissing any part of me that his lips could reach.

  “I should have known,” he said thickly. “I should have known better than to think you would ever think about Frost like that. I should have—fuck. I just… Fuck… I just saw you… with him… and my fucking pride blinded me. I loved you so damn much that when I saw you with him, all I could think was that you must have never loved me at all.”

  “Don’t…” I sobbed. “I never should have done it. I never should have left.”

  Warm hands cupped my cheeks and tipped my face up to his.

  “Is that when you called me?”

  I stared up at him
. My mouth parted but no words came out. It was when I called him… but to tell him that in my weakest moment, he’d, unknowingly, thrown my cry for help back in my face. I couldn’t say it, but I didn’t have to for him to know the answer was yes.

  “God, I’m such a fucking idiot,” he said even though his lips were glued to my skin. “I was out that night… partying… trying to drown every memory of you. I remember seeing your call… I remember the rage… I remember telling whoever the hell I was with to answer… Fuck.” His words were choked and a second later I felt his tears slip between his mouth and my skin. “Tell me the rest, J-bird. Tell me, lean on me… You’ve carried this alone for so long. Let me carry it with you.”

  “I was lost and confused and hurting so, so much, Chance. There was blood. Too much blood that night. S-so I went to the emergency room.”

  “Alone?” he demanded.

  “Yeah… I-I couldn’t think. Everything was happening so fast. And then there were needles and tests and pain. And loss. Another part of me… another part of me that was also yours… gone. Just like my heart.” The tears came harder and faster now. “I-I called my parents in the morning.”

  “So, you were alone?” His voice was so tight with pained anger, I was afraid he might snap. “You were alone. And all because I didn’t answer the goddamn phone.”

  It was then that I felt how his body shook with mine. It was then that I felt him break with me.

  Tears. Salt water. Saline. Something so simple that can do so much. Used to wash wounds and infections, saline pulls out the bad and even though it can’t fix the damage, it allows the body to be able to do its job: to heal. And that’s what our tears did. They didn’t fix our mistakes. They didn’t fix the loss—the wound. But they cleansed it. They allowed us to heal each other.

  “We can’t go back, Chance,” I said through my crying mess. “We can look back now and say all the ‘coulds’ and ‘woulds’ and ‘shoulds’ that we want, but none of it can change who we were or what we felt in that moment.”

  “I should have—“

  I kissed him to silence him, tasting the mix of tears between us. “We were young. We were young and maybe what we had was too much for us to handle then. Maybe we had to live and learn… learn that sometimes the things that are meant to be forever aren’t always meant to happen right in that moment.”

  “I love you, Jessa Lynn,” he whispered against me. “I’m sorry that I was a proud asshole. I’m sorry that I fucked up. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for our baby, but more importantly, that I wasn’t there for you. But I swear to God, the mountain, and you, that you are my forever and that wherever this ride of life takes us, I will always be by your side.”

  And then he held me as I sobbed all over again. He rocked me as he asked to hear the rest of whatever I could… would… tell him about that night in the hospital and the moment-to-moment life I lived after. He wiped my tears as I cried, and when I finally finished telling him about how this took the last piece I had of him from me, he kissed me and told me over and over again that nothing would take him from me ever again.

  And then he repeated over and over that he loved me.

  He said it so much that it started to not even sound like words anymore. Just sounds. Sounds that only my heart could hear.

  “You are the strongest woman I’ve ever met, Jessa. You went through this all alone when you shouldn’t have and then you came back here, put up with all my shit, and to top it all off, you were willing to sacrifice yourself again to heal me.” He planted soft kisses in every spot where he wiped one of my tears away. “I don’t deserve you. But I will, I promise you.”

  “I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.” A watery laugh escaped me. “I pushed you away. I lied to you. I kept the truth from you because I was afraid of letting you in. I don’t deserve this, but I will. I promise you.”

  “Can I ask you something?” He brushed a stray pink strand away from my face.

  I nodded.

  “What is The Star?” My head cocked to the side. “The card in your deck.”

  He nodded to the side table that sat next to the armchair where I saw a singular Tarot card—the Star—lying by itself on the surface.

  “How did that get there?”

  “When I came home last night and you were upstairs,” he began, his hands absentmindedly rubbing the muscles at the top of my ass, “I sat down and your deck was on the table in front of me. So I cut it and picked a card.”

  “What hand did you cut it with?” I immediately asked.

  “My left…” I’d have to explain to him later that typically your left-hand is more associated with your emotions and inner self; it is used when doing a reading to draw the cards that are supposed to depict those emotions.

  I bit my lip. The Star. After the Tower.

  “It means that you’ve endured what life has thrown at you. That anger and revenge has burned out, leaving you open to happiness and new meaning for your life.” My voice broke as a tear slipped from my eye. “It means hope—hope for a brighter future.”

  “I don’t have to hope for it, J-bird. You are my future,” he murmured and my heart swelled.

  He kissed me, his lips tugging softly at first and then more insistently on mine. And I let him in—to every part of me. I felt his cock stirring underneath me; it had been half-erect for most of our conversation, never going completely limp. Now, it was hungry again, sliding eagerly against my folds.

  Moaning, I rubbed my hips over his length, pressing his hardness into my clit.

  “No matter what happens, J-bird. There’s no one I’d rather take this ride called life with,” he rasped as his hand came up to knead my tit.

  I arched into him, biting my lower lip as his fingers found my painfully tight nipple—toying and teasing it until I was gushing all over his cock.

  Kissing along the tightly trimmed beard on his jawline, I bit down on his earlobe. He hissed and jammed his arousal up against my swollen core.

  “I love you.”

  My sex clenched all the way to my womb. I was drunk on him and his words and his love. In a stupor, I straddled him, raising up onto my knees so that the head of his cock tapped against my entrance.

  Staying steady against his hands that now firmly gripped my hips with a gentle pressure to have me sink down on his length, I said, “I love you, Chance.” I stared at him through heavy lids, my body begging to be filled again. “There’s no one that I’d rather enjoy this ride with.”

  And then I collapsed on top of him, impaling myself with his thick cock.

  The flames of the candles shook as I rode him. A slippery, smoky, slapping rhythm resonated through the room. Tears streamed down my face from the pleasure as he hit my G-spot over and over again—he hit it and then pushed right through it.

  With a jerk, he yanked my torso to his, whispering, ‘I love you’ against my mouth to push me over the edge. I took him down with me, hearing his groan as he erupted inside of me again, warmth gushing over every corner of my sex.

  We fought for the same air, trying to come back down.

  “How much do you love me?” I asked, staring into his eyes.

  “Too much,” he answered with a smile.

  “How much is ‘too much?’”

  “Never enough.”

  The World: This card signifies completion and fulfillment and is closely associated with the Wheel of Fortune, reflecting the progression of time and the chances involved in the human experience. Everything has come together and you are in the right place, doing the right thing, feeling fulfilled and complete. In a sense, this card also heralds the new beginnings that naturally emerge out of the completion of a cycle.

  HOW MUCH I LOVED TO watch her sleep was only topped by the need I had to be inside her. She looked so peaceful, the sunlight brightening her already bright hair as it came through the windows of the master bedroom.

  The day she promised me forever was the last moment either of us thought about her livi
ng elsewhere. But we did decide that instead of staying in my old room, this was now our home, and so we’d moved up to what was my parent’s room. The bad news was that I inevitably knocked over some sort of make-up shit every morning on my way into the bathroom. The good news was that I threw away every fucking pair of underwear she had when I’d helped her unpack.

  I’d already moved the sheet off of her, watching the soft rise and fall of her chest. I was going to marry her. I was already thinking about the ring. And how. And when.

  Mostly, I was thinking about how fucking soon.

  J-bird.

  My wife.

  She sighed in her sleep and immediately my body hardened. I loved when she had wet dreams. Fuck, I loved it. The way her nipples peaked in the air, the way her thighs would start to rub together.

  My mouth watered when I saw the soft skin of them start to glisten.

  I waited though. I waited until I could barely distinguish my name on her lips before I shifted lower, carefully spreading her legs so I could settle between them.

  Softly, I blew over her slick, swollen folds.

  Last night, we’d traded oral in the shower before bed, both exhausted from the day. This morning, I regretted every second that my dick wasn’t inside of her. She whimpered again and I knew whatever I was doing to her in her dreams was about to get a whole lot better—and a whole lot more real.

  “Oh, God, Chance…” she gasped as her hips rocketed against my mouth. I grinned even as my tongue was shoved deep inside her.

  I loved waking her up like this—and making her late for wherever she had to be.

  Groaning, her fingers speared through my hair at the sharp pleasure as I ate at her and brought her wide awake. My mouth wasn’t getting her orgasm this morning, though. Still, I slowly and longingly kissed her sweet little pussy, dropping a hard kiss on her clit before I looked up to her needy, glazed eyes.

  “Good morning,” I rasped, my smirk not hiding any of my lust.

  She whimpered and shifted her hips underneath me. She’d been close in her dream and I’d just left her right on the edge.