by S. Ann Cole
“Thought you realize by now that ‘I love you’ aren’t my favorite words,” he said, shaking his head. “Not because they’re hard to say, but because they’re too easy. Just words. How do you ever know if they’re genuine or not? I prefer the challenge of steppin’ out of my comfort zone to show the woman who owns me how much she really means to me.”
“Well… in that case”—I grinned, toeing off my high-tops and moving out onto the red carpet—”I one hundred percent, absolutely, positively fucking love it!”
“Great. ‘Cause I’m starving,” he said through a laugh, moving forward on the carpet as I moved back.
“What’s for dinner?”
“Indian.”
My stomach actually growled at that. Embarrassing.
Jahleel laughed at me. “Take it you’re hungry, too.”
“I love you, JK.” I needed to stop saying that. It had to be annoying for him, but I couldn’t help it.
“I know.”
“Can’t you ever say it back?”
“I love you.”
“Was that genuine?”
He stopped advancing.
I stopped backing up.
“No, Sassy, I just said it for the fuck of it. ‘Cause I’m that big asshole who goes around tellin’ chicks that I love them and askin’ them to marry me as a fuckin’ pastime.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m just—”
“What? Insecure? Worried? Afraid?” he prodded. “Guess what, Sassy, I’m all of those things, too. I might’ve been the one who cheated the last time, but you’re the one who left me. Bad as it looked then, I never would’ve left you.”
“So you expected me to stay with you after you—”
“I expected you to fuckin’ fight for me!!” he exploded as if this was something he’d been holding inside him for a while now. “It was so easy for you to leave me with her and run straight into Chad’s arms. So easy for you to just hand me over to Marsha when she played her tricks. You claim you love me, but you never, ever fought for me. You just allowed people to push you out of my life while you assume that’s what I wanted. That’s all you ever do: assume. Now we’re back here again? I slapped a fuckin’ ring on your finger and it’s still not enough for you? What the fuck else do you want me to do, Sassy? You’re drivin’ me shit crazy.”
“I want you to promise me you won’t leave me no matter what.”
“Jesus Christ, are you even hearing anything I’m sayin’ to you?!” he shouted. “Since when did you become so whiny? Where’s the strong Sassy I fell in love with? Did she die when you tried to kill yourself and now all I’m left with is an empty shell of her?”
“No,” I whispered. “She died when losing you again became her greatest fear.”
Walking up to him, I gripped his biceps hard and stared up into his irritated gold eyes. “You must understand that I’m nothing without you, JK. You must understand that you are my air, my purpose, the reason I wake up in the mornings. You must understand how much I need you, crave you, love you. You must understand why I’m being so whiny and pesty and perpetually seeking your assurance: it’s because I’m my own enemy, my own murderer. I fear my own self and what I’ll do to me if I don’t have you. My obsession with you is deep. My love for you is depraved. You must understand that you cannot leave me.”
Jahleel blinked. Quite possible that it was starting to dawn on him that he’d popped the question to a complete loon, wondering what the bloody hell he’d gotten himself into.
Several minutes of silence ticked by as we stared at each other, nothing but the sound of the light night winds whispering nature’s secrets through the tree leaves, crickets being the usual nuisance, and the words of Kings of Leon’s Beautiful War travelling smoothly on the wings of the wind towards us from the gazebo.
Sighing audibly, Jahleel moved in and wrapped his arms around me. “We’re never gonna have a relationship if we keep lingering in this area: you worryin’ about a future we can’t see into. You got to let go of your fears and let us enjoy each other, our time now, and when storms come, we face them together. We never know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, Sassy. Hell, I can’t even see into the next hour from now. We need to move forward, and in order to do that, you have to stop worrying. Don’t know how many times I have to say I’m not going anywhere for you to believe me. So, let’s wait and see, shall we? In the interim, let’s eat. Food’s gettin’ cold.”
“But—”
“Shh,” he shushed me. “C’mon.”
Forcing me into a 360 turn, he urged me towards the gazebo.
Inside, were two huge sofa cushions pushed together, spread over with a thick, red blanket, boxes of Indian food on trays in the middle.
“Seriously?” I laughed.
“You were right. I’m not a sit-around-the-table-with-wineglasses kind of man. I’m a drink-Jack-straight-from-the-bottle kind of man, so I kinda went halfway with all this—if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Right up my alley.” I smiled in reminiscence. “Reminds me of our first time together…”
Jahleel groaned. “Was really hoping you wouldn’t say that.”
“Why?”
Backing me up against a column, he pushed his hips into me so I could feel his hard-on. “‘Cause now I gotta turn the menu upside down.”
“I’m…totally okay with that,” I breathed out just before our lips met, his tongue dipping inside to rub against mine.
Locking my hands around his neck, I pressed into him, my nipples hardening as my arousal heightened. Whenever Jahleel was around, I was usually just a second away from wet knickers. Aside from the fact that I loved him something fierce, every damn thing about him made me hot. He was all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever dreamed of, and now I had him.
Ask me. Go on. Ask me if I’m not the happiest woman in the world right now….
Jahleel hoisted me up by the waist and perched me up on the gazebo railing, shimmying himself between my now spread thighs, never once breaking the kiss.
….Sorry, my mouth is occupied at the moment. Will have to answer your question later…
Warm hands slid up under my sleeveless denim shirt-dress and smoothed up my thighs until they reached their destination. Jahleel groaned into my mouth, breaking the kiss and pulling back to look at me. “No underwear?”
“Why bother wearing any when I knew precisely what I was coming here for?”
“Not the food?” He smirked. “Or the schmaltz?”
“Definitely not,” I said, slamming my mouth back to his while he removed his hands from under my dress and worked on popping the buttons open.
In a second, cold night air was whispering over my skin as he removed the only item of clothing I had on. But my blood was roiling far too hotly to take notice of the night chill. That’s what Jahleel did to me. Made me forget everything; making him, his touches, my only focal point. He was my master. He owned me. All my moans, all my screams, all my orgasms.
When his tongue flicked around my right nipple, I dug my fingers into his shoulder and arched into him, whispering his name. Cupping both my breasts in his hands, tweaking my nipples, he moved up so our eyes met. “I wanna eat you out, Sassy. Can I eat you out?”
Oh hell and damnation… “Please, please…do.”
“So you need me to, huh?”
“Fuck, yes,” I all but wept, squeezing my thighs around him.
“Tell me, then,” he said, moving down.
“What?”
“Tell me to eat you out. Those exact words. Not ‘lick’ or ‘suck,’ ‘cause those are completely different from eating you out.”
The hell?
Diffident, I hesitated. The words were raw and harder to say than lick and suck. He knew that. That’s why he was forcing me to say them.
Getting down on his knees, he moved my thighs further apart and I gripped the railing for balance.
I was stark naked in his backyard, spread-eagled on his gazebo railing with him kneeling down betw
een my legs, his mouth in direct line with my core, waiting.
“C’mon, Sassy,” he said with that crooked grin of his. “You’re a badass. You can say it.”
“Eat me.”
Jahleel chuckled. “That sounded more like a curse than a sexual demand. You also left a word out. Along with the golden word.”
Oh, Christ. I’d forgotten how much of a pain-in-arse tease he could be. And the self-control he had when it came to sex.
“Eat me out…please, JK.” It sounded so weird, but it worked.
Jahleel’s head moved, and then his tongue was inside me. Tongue-fucking me, licking me out.
I gripped the railing hard as pleasure ripped through me, my heels digging into his back. “Ohfuck…Ohgod!”
Slowly, he slid his tongue up my seam, and instead of licking my clit, he just outright sucked it between his teeth, and sucked, and sucked, and in 0.25 seconds I was blacked out, juddering with an unheralded, unexpected orgasm that rolled on and on, sharp spasms jerking me.
The thing with Jahleel was, you never know what you were going to get. He was unpredictable and full of tricks, and that made me ever-ready and ever-excited to shag him.
Getting to his feet, he breathed out, “That was fast,” while unzipping his jeans, pushing them down his hips in a slow fashion.
Commando.
I spied the nest of silky smooth hair first, and as the jeans slid lower, his cock sprung out, pointing at my core as if it was trained to detect a wet pussy and aim right in its direction.
That big guy wanted in.
My heart rate picked up all over again at the sight of his lovely cock. The most beautiful cock I’ve ever seen. A cock I now owned. A cock that promised to poke only one pussy for the rest of its virile life.
Mine.
Jahleel moved in and I opened up even wider for him, easily, freely. He cupped my face and kissed me. Hard, deep, fierce, hungry. Like he was trying to tell me something through this kiss. He wasn’t a man of words, but of actions and expressions. And I knew this kiss was saying I love you.
“You have absolutely no idea how deep I’m feelin’ you,” he whispered when we broke. Situating his wide, blood-red head at my entrance, he added, “I want this forever. Want you forever.” He inched in a little. “Can I have that, Sassy? Forever with you?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer as he surged right into me a second later. Growling in his throat, he flexed back then surged in again, then back and in again until he picked up a rhythm, fucking me to his own beat, dragging both of us in a pleasure ride.
Knowing he didn’t like being legged during sex, I kept my legs far apart even though I really wanted to just wrap them tight around him. But he liked having the freedom to flex around, and wrapping my legs around his waist prevented him from fucking me in control as he wanted.
Now, he was fucking me deep, with grunts of pleasure, groans of my name, and moans of praises. Deeper and harder he drove into me, his hooded gaze never leaving my lips, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
Then he stopped suddenly and pulled out, his breathing ragged. Lifting me down from the railing, he spun me to face away from him. “Bend over. Grab on to your ankles.”
When I did as he ordered, my sea of raven curls hanging down over my face, he muttered, “‘Sas, Christ,” before gripping my butt cheeks and driving into me again, letting out a loud expletive as he bucked deep into me, his pleasure cry overriding my pain cry.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but getting fucked from behind is painful as shite. But it was a sweet, sweet pain. Pain I never want to end.
So I sank my teeth down onto my bottom lip and took it like a “badass” as Jahleel drove into me over and over again, each of his grunts louder than the first as he screwed the daylights out of me, racing to the finish line.
See, if I was going to be JK’s forever girl, I had to be a badass in the bedroom. Simple. He got bored easily, and he took fucking seriously. He didn’t “have sex.” He fucked (his words). And whenever he was fucking, trust me, he was fucking. So whenever he issued orders like “bend over and grab your ankles,” I tried never to hesitate. I just bent the fuck over and grabbed my ankles. Hesitating could throw his mood right off. It had happened before.
Fuck time was fuck time. Talking and complaining and everything else was for later.
Want to keep the man you love? Pay attention to what he likes and doesn’t like during fuck time, and be everything he wants in the bedroom. Outside the bedroom, be as defiant as you want, but inside that bedroom, don’t fuck around.
God is love. Animals are food. Women are emotions. And men are sex.
Simple.
A familiar tingle darted up the back of my knees, shooting up my thighs and settling to a roil at the pit of my stomach. I was a blink away from imploding.
“Don’t stop, JK,” I panted out. “I’m gonna…ohgod…come.”
“No, wait,” he panted back. “Wait for me.”
Letting go of my butt cheeks, he grabbed my hips, steadied himself, and began fucking me even harder. No way could I successfully wait for him if he was going to shag me like that.
“You have to hurry, yeah?” I cried, squeezing my eyes closed, curling my toes.
“Tell me you love me,” he growled out.
“I love you. Always.”
Holding on another second was next to impossible.
“Tell me again.”
“I love you.” Right now. It was going happen right now. “JK, I’m sorry, I can’t—”
“Yeah, now,” he strained out as he slammed into me, one, two, three times and stilled. “Fuckkkkk.”
It happened. My orgasm tearing through me with a raging force as we came together, my muscles clenching around his pulsing cock, milking him.
Once we were both wrung dry from our orgasms, he leaned over my still bent body, holding on to my ankles with me, cock still inside me even as he nuzzled my neck and told it, “I’m so fuckin’ stupidly, crazy in love with you. I’m seriously fucked.”
Knowing he couldn’t see because of my hair curtaining around my face, I grinned, replying with his favorite words, “I know.”
Chapter Three
“Wanna ask you to do something for me…” Jahleel said, forking in the last of his yellow rice. He was propped up on his side on the cushions, and I sat crossed-legged, stark naked upon his insistence, even though he was still in his cut-off jeans. “But I’m wonderin’ if you’ll agree.”
“Seriously?” I actually guffawed at this. “What wouldn’t I do for you?”
He didn’t laugh in return. “I want you to go back blonde.”
“You don’t like me raven?”
“‘Course I do. But I’m kinda cravin’ that blonde girl I fell in love with at first sight.”
Picking around the little food left on my plate, I took my time, thinking before answering. “You’re asking me to change my image. I didn’t become Saskia Day as a blondie. This with the purple ends is my signature. I…I don’t know if I can do that. I’d have to run it by Lion first.”
“Lion?” He scoffed. “Wasn’t I the reason you went raven in the first place?”
“Yes, but—”
“This is your career. Your image. I get it.” He dismissively waved a hand. “Never mind. Forget I asked.”
Uncomfortable silence followed for a few agonizing moments until he thankfully broke it again. “There’s a particular discussion you’ve been avoidin’ having.”
I drank down some Perrier water before asking, “What’s that?”
“Our wedding.” He turned to lie on his back, crossing his arms behind his head. “You want a long engagement?”
Casting a loving glance to the ring on my finger, I shrugged. “I haven’t been avoiding it. I guess…” I sighed. “I’ve wanted you for so long it’s just kind of surreal, ya’ know? I think I’m just trying to get used to having this ring on my finger.”
“You keep forgettin’ it’s there,” he sai
d in a soft voice. “That’s why you always worrying and wondering. Never take it off, it’s a reminder that I’m always with you, always on your side. ‘Kay?”
This was true. I kept forgetting the ring, that we were engaged, and then I ended up seeking assurance, being a whiny, annoying twat.
Swallowing past the newly formed lump in my throat, I nodded. “Okay.”
“So?” he prodded. “Long engagement?”
“That’s what you want?”
He seemed to think about it for a minute, then, “Doesn’t matter to me either way. Whatever makes you feel secure. Long as it’s a small wedding.”
“On small we can agree.”
I resisted the urge to pinch myself. This had to be a dream. Here I was, naked, in Jahleel’s backyard, in his gazebo, planning our wedding. If anyone ever tries to tell you dreams don’t come true, tell them to take Miley Cyrus’ rubber finger and stick it up their ass.
“What do you say about not planning at all? And whenever it hits us, wherever we are, we just find a pastor and do it. Just us,” I suggested. “We both have to agree the time is right, though.”
Jahleel blinked at me. Then shook his head slowly. Then he grinned. “This, this is why I’m fuckin’ crazy about you. I’m in. All in.”
“Well, that’s it for our wedding plans.” I reclined onto my back, turning my face to him. “No headaches. No chaos.”
“Prenup?” His face serious as he asked this.
Definitely no. Without him, I had nothing. My suicide attempt should have proved as much to him. The wealth, the fame, none of it was worth what he worth to me. He was everything and I was nothing.
Before I could give an answer to his question, his cellphone hollered for attention. He reached up over his head where the cell was dancing across the floor.
Leaning over to touch his arm, I begged, “Don’t answer it. Please.”
We were having a good time. I left my cell home. Why did his have to be in the bloody gazebo fucking up our schmaltzy moment?
He glanced at my hand on his arm, thought about it for like zero seconds, before apologizing, “Sorry, I have to. That’s Marsha’s ring tone.”