All of Me: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel

by Jackson, A. L.

  I tried not to fidget as I forced the words from my tongue. “I’ve only been with two men in my life. I’m not sure I know what I’m doing.”

  I felt so far out of my element.

  Gone to who I was.

  A prisoner to this man who was commanding all of me.

  A harsh gush of surprised air left him, and I felt the tension fill that beautiful, powerful body, the pants he released at my neck rippling with restraint and hesitation and questions.

  Ian ran a hand down my left arm, his touch searching as he hit my left finger, as if he were looking for the proof of a rusted ring.

  “There’s so much you don’t know about me,” I whispered.

  Slowly, he spun me away so I was facing him, which didn’t help matters at all. Because all that energy spiked, a thrum in the space between us.

  He backed me deeper into his condo, his presence so profound as he edged closer and closer. “There’s plenty that you don’t know about me, either.”

  He’d taken on a predator’s stance. Lust a gleam in those crazy-colored eyes. Maybe there was a bit of demon to him, after all.

  “Two?” he continued. The grit grinding from his tongue made it sound like a challenge.

  My belly tightened, and I could barely nod as I was taking a fumbling step back, then another, until I’d backed myself into a wall.

  He watched me from the middle of the room. So gorgeous I couldn’t see straight.

  “You want to leave?” he asked, so low I felt his voice scrape across my skin. “Because I’m about to make it three.”

  “No,” I managed.

  Not even close.

  I wanted to run to him. Let him hold me and keep me and pray that he wouldn’t break me.

  But I knew that he would.

  Knew it so deep with the way he was watching me, with the way a storm of mayhem and chaos and menace whipped around him as if he were commanding the night.

  I think we both knew that’s exactly what it was.

  He’d taken control. He had me, and he was going to annihilate me.

  “Good,” he almost growled as he kicked off his shoes and socks. “Think I might die if I don’t get to show you. If I don’t get to feel you. If I don’t get to touch you. I don’t think I’ve ever needed to be inside a woman the way I need to be inside of you. Is that what you want? To feel me inside you, Grace?”

  His words hung in the dense, thick air, his chin lifted as if he were daring me to deny it.

  To deny him.

  Impossible.

  He stayed in that same spot as he worked his tie the rest of the way from his neck.

  Purposed, he ticked through the buttons of his vest, peeled it off his massive shoulders, and dropped it to the floor.

  Then he started to do the same to his shirt.

  I leaned against the wall, my knees weak with want, pressing my thighs together as if it might relieve the flames that lapped higher.

  He shrugged his shirt off his shoulders.

  I nearly came undone right there.

  “Is this what you want?” he challenged, those words he fired from his mouth nothing but seduction.

  The man was an overwhelming surge of severity that washed over me.

  Oh God. Was this really happening? Or was I just having another one of those hallucinations, my mind conjuring the most dangerous sort of perfection?

  My lips parted on a needy gasp, and my mouth went dry at the sight in front of me, my back hitched to the wall as if I were hanging from it.

  “Yes,” I managed.

  From where I was pressed to the wall, my eyes raced over him, trying to take in every inch where the man stood there like a fortress.

  A predator sent to protect or destroy, I still wasn’t sure.

  The only thing I knew was he was nothing but packed, solid muscle.

  Carved, chiseled stone.

  Chest and shoulders so wide. Abdomen flat and defined, muscles shaking with his own need.

  It left me feeling half deranged, half a second from dropping to my knees and licking across the deeply cut grooves.

  Bowing at his feet.

  “You should see what you look like right now, Grace. Like art hanging on my wall. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a girl as beautiful as you.”

  “Ian.”

  He took a step forward, and I was slammed with another blast of his potency.

  My eyes moved everywhere, from that gorgeous face and down that striking body. The waistband of his pants hung on his narrow hips and barely concealed the v that dipped down beneath the fabric.

  But it was the marks written all over him that had my own chest pressing full.

  Heart beating manic as my gaze traced over the designs etched and marred across his skin.

  Scarred like brands of anguish.

  A trademark of torment.

  More of those demons screamed across his flesh. It appeared as if they were howling as they flew into his world that had been dimmed in the blackest night.

  Roman numerals were stamped across his collarbones, and his abdomen and sides were covered in barren trees and devastated landscape and a watch that seemed to have run out of time.

  Everything was a little warped, a dark fantasy, as if it all was being viewed through a veiled, distorted mirror.

  But it was the words printed on his side as if they had been scribbled onto his skin by a small child with a crayon that had my spirit screaming.

  Forever and Ever.

  There was something so heartbreaking about it that I felt mine reaching for him, every inch of him something I wanted to touch and soothe and ease.

  Because all of that ink was covering scars.

  As if he’d been whipped and burned. Battered and bruised.

  It seemed impossible that he had grown to stand the most powerful, influential kind of man.

  I was overcome with the need to know him. To climb inside. To search and hold and stay.

  Did any of my worries matter, anyway? Because something about this felt so fleeting while there was a huge part of me that wanted to reach out and hang on for forever.

  See him, know him, understand him the way I wanted him to understand me.

  He started to edge toward me, barefoot, wearing only his suit pants.

  Menacing and persuasive.

  Sexy and sure and brimming with that arrogance.

  Tension held fast to the atmosphere, the man more intense than I’d ever felt him before.

  “Don’t ever fucking feel pity for me. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t fucking go there. Just know that every one of those scars made me who I am today.”

  I wanted to shout it back. Beg him to let me in. To show me what that meant. Tell him that my scars made me who I was, too. Though mine were invisible. Written deep. My children a gift given in between.

  But my tongue was locked up, held in a blast of that energy that surged, higher and higher with each step that he took in my direction. My empty lungs filled up with the scent of cinnamon and orange, an insinuation of sex that dripped from his skin.

  The man a bottle named Bliss.

  He planted his hands on the wall over my head.

  Towering.

  Obliterating.

  Casting me in shadows.

  I didn’t know whether to hide or run toward the mayhem.

  To dive into his disturbance or crawl for safety.

  But I was stuck, helpless but to fall for him.

  He trailed his fingertips from the cap of my exposed shoulder, dipping it down across my collarbone.

  A shiver rolled, trembles shaking me all the way to the core.

  “Cold?” he murmured, his voice a blast of heat across my skin.

  “No,” I barely managed to choke out.

  Ian ran his nose up my jaw, and he inhaled as he went.

  All the while I struggled to breathe, emotions flying at me from everywhere. Questions and concerns and worry, my judgment cast into the surety of his hands.

>   His chest expanded, his heart racing just as fast as mine.

  As if the two were catching time.

  Was it possible that he felt this, too? As if he were standing at the precipice of something great? That one second more, and we would never be the same?

  Because I knew in another breath, I would forever become a part of him.

  He pressed his pelvis to my belly. “Grace.”

  The man was so hard. Enormous.

  “Ian . . . I . . . I don’t understand how you make me feel this way. How you make me want things I don’t want. Give myself in a way that I don’t.”

  I watched his expression sift through a million emotions—anger and need and lust and fear.

  I wanted to reach out and hold every one.

  Oh, I was in so much trouble. Stumbling over the edge as the ground crumbled out from under my feet.

  He pressed his hard length deeper against my trembling belly. “And you’ve been driving me out of my mind because I can’t get you off of it. Who do you think you are, Angel Girl? Stealing my time and my thoughts and my sleep?” He ticked each one off like a threat.

  A quiver staked at my center, and I was speared with my own arrows of need. Greed and lust and things I didn’t realize I’d been missing. But the truth of it shined bright, red embers that singed my insides and glowed white hot at my throbbing center.

  I wanted this.

  I wanted it so desperately that I no longer recognized who I was.

  “Do you know what you are, Grace?” he murmured at my jaw, running those soft, soft lips all the way up to my ear. “A goddamned temptation, that’s what.”

  His intoxicating scent came off of him in waves.

  The man an ocean. Liquid. I could feel him seeping into my veins.

  He nipped the lobe of my ear, and I moaned just as he scraped his teeth across the sensitive flesh.

  “Ian, what are you doing to me?”

  Tingles flashed, and my entire being rocked toward him.

  “I think the better question would be what am I not going to do to you, Angel Girl.”

  That mouth was moving over my jaw. My chin. A whimper bled free like a pathetic plea.

  A dark chuckle rumbled from Ian’s tongue that licked out to taste my flesh. “I love that sound, Grace. That I’m the one responsible for it. Do you have any idea how much it turns me on? How fucking hard it makes me?”

  His words coaxed another whimper right out of me.

  I could feel the wicked grin against my throat. “That’s it. Just like that. I want to hear you making those sounds all night.”

  His lips traveled up and down the racing pulse at my neck. “Want to hear them growing louder until they’re screams. Are you a screamer, baby?”

  Oh my God.

  I couldn’t stop shaking. This man too much. Overwhelming.

  Everything, everything.

  His mouth moved to my ear, his words a deep, growling rasp. “Because you’re going to be tonight.”

  This time the whimper was nothing but a needy moan, my body vibrating with want.

  Everything stretched taut and tight, my breaths shallow. My heart was stampeding so far out ahead of me that I couldn’t catch up.

  I couldn’t catch up to his touch and his hands and the words from his mouth.

  The air flames and friction, his body a match.

  The man was going to devour me. Ruin me. I knew it. I knew it.

  I should stop. Put an end to this madness. Heed all the warnings I’d given myself when he’d first come into my space.

  He nipped at my chin. “Tonight, you’re mine.”

  And I knew he was right, because I wasn’t going anywhere. I was a prisoner.

  Willing to lose.

  If only I got to experience this one moment with him.

  I felt desperate to taste him on my lips. To taste him on my tongue. I angled my head, lips parted, begging for relief. “Ian, please.”

  Those eyes flashed to mine, intense and hard. But he angled back and let his fingertips flutter down my cheek.

  A tease. A tease. Two seconds in, and the man was already wrecking me.

  My hands landed on his shoulders, nails scraping, sinking in. I ran them up the sides of his neck, trying to get closer to him, for him to put me out of this achy misery.

  My lips sought his, and he dipped down and away, his lips carving a path down one side of my quivering throat and up the other.

  My head rocked back on the wall. “Ian.”

  “Grace,” he murmured at my skin, the vibration traveling to my bones. Those big hands traced my sides, gripping and kneading and exploring as his mouth delved to the cleft between my breasts and licked back up again.

  I chased his mouth again, and he kissed up to my ear. An unfair game of cat and mouse.

  “Please,” I begged, holding onto his shoulders as I angled my head to press my lips to his.

  He moved the other direction, and I tried again.

  His head rocked back, and his teeth ground so tightly I could hear them grating.

  “Don’t,” he forced out.

  Rejection sank to the pit of my stomach. “Ian—”

  Two of his fingers flew to my mouth, the pads pressing the words back inside, his tone coarse with his own desperation. “Don’t. Please, don’t.”

  Confusion spun, and I searched him where he hovered two inches away. His breaths mingled with mine, his stare fierce, his eyes blazing when they captured mine in his warning.

  Mouth parted, I was gripped by the overpowering emotion that spun, lost in the flare of vulnerability that erupted from the churning depths.

  A silent conversation transpired between the two of us.

  A wall he barely allowed me to peek over.

  Hurt and misery and pain.

  Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.

  So deep and dark that my heart fisted in my chest. Emotion squeezing so tight, the tension binding us in that bare, naked moment crushing us under its weight.

  “Don’t,” he commanded again, and I knew he was back to making demands.

  Pride and arrogance filled his demeanor. The man control and dominance.

  And I wanted to beg that he let me in. Let me hold a little of that pain.

  “Tonight, you’re mine,” he repeated, those eyes spinning that ferocity through the air as he slowly climbed down onto both of his knees.

  A god making an offering.

  I didn’t know what to do with my hands when he reached down and unzipped one of my boots and pulled it from my foot, then turned and did the same to the other.

  Ian never released me from that unnerving gaze as he did.

  His tongue darted out to wet his lips when he edged up a fraction and tugged at the button of my jeans, and I was shaking more, this moment becoming so unbelievably real.

  The fact I was going to give myself to this man.

  Wholly.

  Completely.

  The sound of him dragging the zipper down hit the air like a sonic boom.

  “Oh,” I whimpered at the sound, at his stare, at the emotion that twisted so tightly, as tightly as the need that rose higher and higher inside me when he hooked his fingers into the heavy material of my jeans, digging all the way down to get my underwear in his grasp.

  He dragged both down my legs.

  Slowly.

  Purposefully.

  “Shit,” he hissed, head dropping for a beat as if maybe he could possibly be half as affected as me, those hands at my calves and working the jeans off my ankles and tossing them to the side.

  “You are a fucking vision.”

  Hot hands smoothed up the outsides of my legs, from my ankles, over my calves, to my knocking knees, all the way up to caress my thighs.

  “Did you know the second I saw you, I wanted to get lost in these legs?” He glanced up, so damned beautiful the breath I was trying to inhale hitched. “I chased you down that night, Grace, because I couldn’t imagine not getting the chance to feel them wrapped arou
nd my waist.”

  His fingers dug deeper into my thighs, but I swore that it was vulnerability that flashed through his gaze. “Because I hadn’t ever been so instantly attracted to someone in all my life.”

  He pressed his nose to the inside of my thigh, inhaling deep. “It was so intense, I knew I had to take the chance and go after you. The thought of never being inside of you was almost unbearable. I wanted you that fucking bad.”

  His hands rode higher, under my sweater to my bottom that was bare underneath. “And now I’m going to have you.”

  Those big hands squeezed my ass.

  Possessively.

  As possessive as his stare as he looked up at me.

  And the words were falling free before I could think to stop them. “You have me. You have all of me, Ian. You have me in a way I’d never imagined a man could.”

  Ian nudged my legs apart, teeth raking his plush bottom lip as he hissed, “So sweet.”

  The movement inched up my sweater and bunched it at my waist.

  My bare pussy was right in his face.

  And I was trembling. Trembling and trembling as he looked at my nakedness as if he were being offered a gift.

  He slicked a single finger through my lips, my body so wet and achy and needy that I whimpered again. “Ian. Oh God. Please.”

  A dark chuckle rumbled from his massive chest. “Barely touching you, and you’re already shivering. How bad do you want me, Grace?”

  He pressed two fingers into me, my walls clenching in a plea. “Why are you teasin’ me?” I whispered.

  “Teasing you? I’m not teasing you, Grace. I’m just making sure you’re prepared for what I’m getting ready to do to you.”

  “Ian.” It was a choked sound of surrender. My body on fire. Flames and lashes of need. A dark intensity held fast to the atmosphere, bouncing from the walls, the man the air that I was breathing.

  I only sucked it down deeper when he burrowed his shoulders between my thighs and dragged one of my legs over his shoulder.

  It spread me wide open.

  Exposing me in a way I was sure I’d never been before.

  Heart and body and soul.

  All of it for him.

  My fingers scraped at the wall, searching for something to grasp onto when I was certain it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  I was falling.

  Falling fast and hard and completely.

  Crashing to the ground was going to hurt. But somehow, my spirit understood that one night with this man would be worth the pain.