“Hold up,” Liam took his cigarette out of his mouth, and a small smile played on his face. “Erotic romances?”
“Dude, you do not want to know, this is all womanly shit. I want to forget I read it to be honest with you.”
“That badly written?”
“No,” Steele shook his head. “That damn good. Was up all night if you know what I mean, but I can’t think about her writing that. That’s Layne’s woman, so I wish I could scrub that shit from my eyes.”
“Hmm,” Liam grunted. “Anyway, continue.”
“Reading between the lines of some of the correspondence I’ve found, I think Jackson Wright is in town visiting, and he’s sold the nudie pics to the highest bidder. The checks I found were made out to him. Thomas Stanton wants some of that money, since he’s going to lose out on his income now. I’m thinking there are more pictures. The two of them are going to sell to the highest bidder on those more provocative ones. I’m also thinking the Vojnik have gotten wind of this and want in on the plan, or they’re going to sell him out to whoever they can to get him gone. He is the only one who can put two and two together with the bank robberies, the Vojnik, and Money Bags.”
Liam interrupted him. “And if Jessica breaks the morality clause, let me guess, she has to buy herself out of her contract.”
“Bingo. It’s a win/win for him. He loses money, but he doesn’t have to pay it. She’s an adult now, that comes down to her.”
“Shit,” Liam breathed. “I hate when motherfuckers get greedy. Call a meeting for tonight, let’s see what we can get together.”
“Me? Call a meeting?” Steele asked, pointing at himself.
“That’s exactly what I said.”
Changes happened every day, and Steele just wasn’t sure he liked when he was part of those changes.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Where are we going?” Jessica asked Layne as the two of them sped along the road towards Bowling Green. She had become very familiar with this road, with its twists and turns and hills, but there was no one she felt safer to ride with on it than him.
“Someplace where we can be alone.”
That made her heart speed up. The only other place the two of them had always been alone had been a hotel room. Something inside of her knew that Bowling Green, Kentucky probably did not have hotel rooms that you could rent for the hour. Well, unless they were attached to Wet Wanda’s, so she hoped he meant somewhere a little nicer.
“You got quiet. Is that okay?” he asked, reaching over and taking her hand in his.
“It is,” she nodded, glancing back out at the scenery as it passed.
He was content to let her sit quietly beside him as he drove them through the back roads that would take them to Bowling Green. He wondered what she was thinking, but something told him that maybe he didn’t want to know.
She tensed as he pulled onto the road that led to Wet Wanda’s but let out a breath when they turned the opposite direction. There were two hotels on the other side, one considerably nicer than most in town. She sighed happily as he pulled into that parking lot and put the car out of gear.
“I know we don’t even have clothes, but I need some time with you, without everyone else around,” he told her, taking her hand in his.
“I think I like the sound of that,” she said, her tone careful, so as not to scare him or even herself.
He was quiet for a few moments, and then the side of his mouth tilted in a short grin. “C’mon.”
Jessica waited for him to get out and then followed behind him as they made their way into the lobby. It felt like an hour, but she knew it was only minutes as he held out his card for the woman at the registration desk. To keep herself standing there, she grabbed hold of his bicep with one hand and then tucked her other arm beside that one, moving her fingers down his forearm to grasp their fingers together. Once she held him, she felt better, like he wasn’t going to run from her and she wasn’t going to run from him. Transporting herself to a different time, she leaned her head against his shoulder…they had been in this exact situation before, and tears came to her eyes as he leaned into her and dropped a kiss on her head. The woman was speaking, but she had no idea what she was saying. Her fingers gripped his tighter and he leaned deeper into her, his lips brushing her ear.
“Soon,” he whispered.
They finally received the room key, and holding onto his hand was the only thing that made her walk down the hallway to their room. If Layne wasn’t being her anchor, she would have been there in five seconds flat.
He stopped in front of the door, glancing up at her before he put the key in the slot. “You sure about this?”
She turned to face him, tilting her head up to his. “I don’t care if this is just for today, Layne, or maybe it’ll last for a week, but my God, I need you. I need to feel you against me, and I need to know that you’re still in there.”
In that moment, Layne realized just how stiffly he had been holding himself for these years. It had started with his talk with Doc Jones, but he finally heard the words she was saying. His real self was being hidden to keep himself straight, to keep him from freaking out. He was still inside his body. It was the aspect of letting his guard down that was scary. As he put his hand on the handle to turn it, he told himself that for the hours they were here, he was going to be the person he used to be, the person she knew, and the person he wanted to get back to.
Turning that door handle was metaphoric. He breathed easier as soon as he did it, and it almost felt like he was opening the door to the next phase of his life.
Jessica followed him into the room, gasping when he shut the door and pushed her up against it.
“I need this just as much as you do,” he whispered in her ear before his lips moved down to her neck and claimed a section, sucking roughly.
Her hands grabbed him around the waist, pulling him tightly against her body, needing to feel every inch of him against every inch of her. Pushing the T-shirt he wore up over his stomach, she let her fingers rest there, digging her nails into the flesh when he used his teeth to nip at the soft skin of her neck.
Layne was scared to touch her after what had happened the week before, so he kept his hands pressed firmly against the wood of the door. They itched to move to her hips and hold her just as closely as she held him. Using his forehead, he moved around the side of her neck and finally let his lips capture hers. It was like coming home. Her scent, her taste, the texture of her mouth was still the same.
“Touch me,” she told him as she pulled her lips away from his.
“Scared to,” he admitted, breathing heavily against her. He let his head fall against the wood of the door, trying to get his racing thoughts and hormones under control.
Jessica pushed him away from her body and took a step forward so that her back was no longer against the door. Reaching down she slid her hands under the hem of her T-shirt, slipping it up and over her head. Throwing it down on the floor, she reached behind her and unhooked the bra, the whole time her eyes holding his. When he didn’t make a step towards her, she kicked off her shoes, barely missing his head.
“Hey, woman, watch it,” he laughed.
It was a real laugh from him, and she couldn’t help but giggle back. Feeling playful, she turned around so that her back was to him and unbuttoned her jeans, bending over slightly at the waist to shimmy them down her hips.
“You’re mean.” The laughter was still in his voice when she did the same with her underwear and threw them at him. He caught them one handed and stuffed them into his pocket.
“Are you going to give those back later?” she asked, placing a hand on her hip and sticking it out.
“We’ll see,” he answered cryptically.
She walked a few steps backwards and flattened herself against the door again, this time placing her own hands there. “Come and get me.”
It was the tone of her voice and the look in her eyes that got him. They told him everything he needed to k
now. She trusted him with every part of her; she wanted this just as much as he did. As he made his way back over to her, he shrugged out of his cut, throwing it on a couch that sat nearby, and then tore his shirt off. By the time he made it to where she stood, he was working on the buckle of his belt. “Fuck,” he mumbled as he had trouble getting the clasp off.
Jessica reached down and moved his hands out of the way, making quick work of it for him.
Before she could move on to the button of his jeans, he took her arms and looped them around his neck, clasping her hands where the edges of his hair ended. When he was sure they were clasped tightly, he put his hands at her hips and lifted strongly. She got the idea and wrapped her legs around his waist. Once he was sure she was secure, he turned and directed them towards the bed off to the side of the room. When they got close enough that his knees knocked the mattress, he lay her down, gazing at her for long moments before toeing off his boots and making quick work of the rest of his clothing. Finally just as naked as she, he got nervous. What if this didn’t go the way they remembered it? There must have been a look on his face, something that tipped her off that he was having a second thought, because she opened her arms to him and used her feet to pull him down so that every part of their bodies touched.
“I missed this.” She pushed her fingers through his hair and yanked to expose his neck to her mouth. Once she got hold of him, she decided she was never letting go.
In the moments that followed, she would never be able to tell another person just what happened or how it happened. All she would remember would be a flurry of lips, hands, tongues, and breathes that mingled into one cohesive unit. When he slid his knee up so that it made contact with the part of her body that wanted him more than anything, she cried out sharply against his shoulder, sinking her teeth there.
“I don’t want to wait, Layne,” she begged. “Don’t make me wait anymore.”
He clasped their fingers together as he rose over her, pressing their hands into the mattress. “You’re sure?”
“Don’t ask me again.” She turned her face away from his. “Neither one of us have has been perfect, but never think that I don’t want this between us.”
That was all he needed to hear. Entering her body for the first time in so long made him want to cry. In every memory he’d ever had of home when he was overseas, this had been it. Layne stopped for a few seconds and actually had to collect himself.
“You’re it,” she whispered when he breathed heavily against her cheek. “You’ve always been it, no matter what’s happened. Know that, no matter what happens, you’re it,” she repeated again. When he didn’t move against her, she planted her feet and pushed against his body.
He had to touch more of her than her hand. Unclasping one of them, he trailed his fingers down her side, down to where her lower back met her ass, and grasped. It might have felt like he was bracing her for the impact of his thrusts, but really he was hanging on to her—making sure that she wouldn’t leave him. Making sure that he knew exactly where he was and what was going on. As long as he held onto her, he knew this wasn’t a dream.
The only sound in the room was that of their bodies meeting and their heavy breathing. All too soon, he felt her thighs tighten around his. She held on so tight to him that he thought he would die. The way she gave herself up to him made him want to whisper prayers of forgiveness and make promises that he knew he would probably in this life never be able to keep. She thrust hard against him one more time before she threw her head back and dug her fingernails into the skin of his back. Only then did he let himself go.
As the two of them lay there, breathing heavily against one another, Layne knew there was no turning back. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t even want to.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“What are you thinking?” Jessica asked as she lifted herself up off the mattress onto an elbow. Her red hair fell into her face, but she didn’t bother to push it away. She liked the way it rested against the tattoos on Layne’s chest.
He cleared his throat and turned his head so that they faced one another. His eyes moved past her, taking in that daytime had changed to evening and onto night as the two of them had been in their own little world. Outside, he could see the world light up as a storm raged over Bowling Green, the lightening giving him enough time to see her face. He’d taken her three more times since they’d made their way into this hotel room, and he felt as if each time he re-gained a part of himself. “That I don’t want to go back to the clubhouse tonight.” He lifted his hand up to cup the back of her neck with his warm fingers.
“Mmm, I don’t either.” She let her head fall against his shoulder, snuggling up beside him.
“But I’m thinking we need to. I could feel some tension earlier, and we’re waiting on someone to get back to us about a few important things.”
She closed her eyes against the warmth of his chest, running her fingers over where his heart beat heavily. Here, in this place, they were protected. No one could bother them. The outside forces that caused his anxiety to ride high and hers to respond to his weren’t here. “If you think we have to, then I guess we need to.”
“It’s not that I really want to, but I have responsibilities that I have to deal with there.”
Jessica nodded. “I do understand.”
“Before we make a decision though,” he sat up, pulling her with him as he lay against the headboard, “I have a question, and I want you to be completely honest with me.”
That sounded foreboding if she’d ever heard anything in her life that sounded foreboding. “Okay.”
“How do you know Jackson Wright?”
The name knocked the wind out of her sails. She opened her mouth once, closed it, and then opened it again. “How do you know that name?”
“Let’s just say, it came up in one of my travels. Obviously, you know who he is.”
“Unfortunately.” This made her uncomfortable. He hadn’t ever wanted to tell her much when it came to his time overseas, and now she was going to have to lay the biggest mistake of her life out on the line for him.
“Be honest with me, please. I can’t protect you if you aren’t honest with me.”
She pulled away from the warmth of his body, physically setting herself apart from him. When she was at what she deemed to be a far enough distance, she tucked her legs underneath her chin and began to talk. “He’s an up-and-coming actor in Hollywood. At least he was when we first met. He needed me to help him get a foothold there; I needed him to help me get over you.”
That cut him like a knife.
“For a while we each served a purpose for the other, but then I started to rebel. I’m not even sure how, why, or when it happened. I think it was around the time you stopped answering my emails and letters in Iraq. It hurt so much—that you could just throw me away like that. I knew I wasn’t a part of your everyday life, and there was no way I could understand what you were going through, but I wanted to, I wanted to be there for you so bad, and you didn’t want me to.”
“It’s not that I didn’t want you to,” he interrupted.
“I know that now, I truly do. But back then, it just hurt so bad, I wanted to hurt you. Neither one of us had ever talked about feelings, but I knew how I felt about you,” she told him, tears coming to her eyes and her voice growing thick. “I knew that if you felt two percent of what I felt for you, then you loved me, I just knew it. Because I was so totally in love with you.” She stopped and bit her bottom lip. “Completely and totally. I didn’t give a shit that you came from a different background than me. I didn’t give a shit that you were a soldier. I was so damn proud of you for getting on that plane and going to fight in a war, I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
Layne didn’t know what to say. “I did some stupid things.”
“I did too,” she interrupted him this time. “Number one on that list was getting involved with Jackson Wright. He ended up being an asshole. One night we got drunk
together and went and got tattoos. He got my name on his wrist, and I got this,” she turned so that he could see the side of her hip.
“I can’t believe I’ve never noticed that,” he breathed as he saw the little yellow ribbon there. Words were inscribed inside the ribbon, and he leaned closer to get a better look. They read PFC. Layne O’Connor. “Didn’t sit well with him, huh?”
She laughed. “No, not at all. It was then that he started to ask me questions about you, and he wanted to know just what in the hell I was doing with him. He would get me drunk and then ask me questions, but you have to realize…I was so lonely. You were the only one who knew the real me, and you were gone. I couldn’t get to you. I couldn’t get you to call me back or answer my mail—nothing. Then I got the call that you had been injured.”
He breathed heavily, for the first time realizing what he had done to her. He’d hurt her much worse than he’d hurt himself by trying to protect her from his temper.
“Apparently, I was listed on your notification paperwork. A military spokesperson came to the set where I was and informed me that you had been injured and they were flying you to Germany and then back home. I took off, pissing off my agent and everyone else. That’s really when all this started. They began calling in favors on contracts I had signed. Of course Jackson hated it. He couldn’t understand why I wanted to be with you. He started to become harder to deal with, and one night I got mad and told him that all he was—was a distraction. He was a distraction for me from the hurt that you’d caused me, and every time I was in bed with him, I dreamed it was you.”
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