by Ward, Alice
Oh God, this was what it felt like to be a sheep, swooning over the sex on legs Jace Richardson. If something didn’t happen soon, I was going to come sitting right there on that chair.
“Andrea?”
“Hmmm?”
“Have you made your decision yet?”
I gulped. Of course I’d made my decision. I wouldn’t have walked into the lion’s den if I hadn’t. Because I’d known, all along, that the moment I gave in, he would devour me whole and there would be nothing left for anyone else. Nothing but an intense burning desire for the man who owned the stage as much as he did any woman that dared to cross his path.
But I didn’t say those things. Because tangible thought was impossible when you were under the heated chocolate gaze of Jace Richardson. Instead, I think I gasped. Or moaned. Whatever it was, it had him out of his seat, swooping me up into his arms, faster than I could find words in that empty brain of mine.
Thankfully, my body didn’t need my brain cells because it had impulse; my legs wrapped around his waist as he lifted me up against the wall. My head fell back, exposing the tender flesh of my neck and collarbone as his lips seared a tantalizing trail to the neckline of my dress. And my arms clung to every muscle in his shoulders, his arms, and his back as though he were the lifeline that would save me from a life of monotony and unrealized passion.
As his eager hands mad their way up my thigh, under my dress, and then found their target between my legs, I released something that could only be described as part moan, part sigh of relief. My hips bucked as he used his palm to create friction beneath my noticeably moist panties, but rather than meet my frenzied movements, he continued with his slow, firm movements.
I wanted more—no, I needed more. And more is exactly what he gave me when he slipped his hand through the side of my panties. First, a lone finger, slow and gentle, massaging the nub of nerves. Then a second finger, extending to penetrate my dripping entrance. The sensation, shooting through my entire core, pushed a moan of ecstasy from my lips. He brought his lips to mine and devoured my cry of pleasure. Then came the whimpers as he worked his fingers deeper, and even slower than before.
Just when I thought I couldn’t take the slow, measured beat a second longer, he plunged two fingers into me. I broke my mouth away from his and released a sound of pleasure that I didn’t even recognize as my own. Right then, he picked up the pace, but only a little, only just enough that he was pushing me from a panting, heaving mess to the pure white bliss that I knew hung just on the other side.
“That’s it, baby. Cum for me. And when you finish, I’m going to claim you, make you mine.” The depth, the melody, the absolute need in his tone as he nipped at the fabric of my dress between his mouth and my hard nipples became my undoing. I was teetering, ready to take the fall, so close... and yet so far.
“Ignore it,” Jace growled as he worked my core harder, trying to pull me away from the incessant ringing of my cell. “This is my time.”
The ringing stopped and I started to melt back into the moment, but then it started ringing again.
“I—I—Let me shut it off,” I panted, torn and conflicted between the distraction of him and the distraction of my obnoxious ring tone. “It’ll just take a second.”
His lips pursed in annoyance, but he gave me a quick nod and then slowly slid me down from the wall so that I could silence my phone. It wasn’t an easy task, making my way across the room with shaky legs and a pounding heart, but I did it. I wasn’t even going to look. I wasn’t supposed to care about whomever it was pulling me away from this moment of absolute bliss. But as my phone went off in my hand, signaling a text and then ringing again, I had a strange feeling, something that told me I needed to look and see who was trying so desperately to reach me.
As soon as I registered Becca’s name on the caller ID, panic struck. Sean calling like he had no respect for whatever I might be doing at the moment would have been expected. But Becca? She never rang more than once... unless it was an emergency.
“Who is it?” Jace asked, walking up behind me to look over my shoulder at the phone grasped within my tremoring hands.
I gulped and then twisted my head to look at him. “It’s Becca. Something’s wrong. I—I’m sorry. I have to take this,” I said, just as the phone started ringing again.
He nodded and then swept the hair away from my neck to place a gentle kiss. “I’ll be in the bedroom.” And with that, he left me to my phone call.
I hit the call button and slowly raised the phone to my ear. “Becca?” my voice croaked out. “What’s wrong?”
“Andy... I—I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice trembling a bit. “Sean. He—he—I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve already called the police, but..."
I heard something crash in the background.
“Becca! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. He—he’s here. But I’ve never seen him like this. I—he started screaming at me when I told him you weren’t here. Shoved his way inside. I locked myself in the restroom. I don’t think he’ll hurt me, but he—he’s pissed. Like, really, really mad.”
I damn near dropped my phone out of my hand from the tremors that were trying to take over my entire body. “Fuck. You called the cops?”
“Yeah.”
“Stay in there. I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER NINE
Five years.
You think you’d know someone after being in a relationship with them that long. But never, not once ever, would I have expected to find Sean the way I did when I plowed through the door of my dorm.
Crouched on the carpet on his hands and knees, head touching the floor, he sobbed uncontrollably.
But that wasn’t the worst part of it all. No, the most disturbing part was the state of my dorm room. Everything I owned was flung around, like an F5 tornado had ripped through it and left a trail of destruction. Pictures had been ripped from my ceiling and were shredded all over the floor, on my bed, and on my desk. My books and papers lay strewn all the way from one side of the room to the other.
“Andy!” Sean exclaimed, shooting up from the ground and rushing to me as I stood there in shock, unable to do anything except stare in wide-eyed horror at the chaos he’d created. That was until he tried to wrap his arms around me.
“Get off!” I screeched, shoving him away.
But he wasn’t listening. He fought my swinging arms and fists and wrapped his arms around my waist, pinning my arms beneath his. “Andy, what—why are you doing this? I came to get you back. To apologize. I love you.”
“This isn’t love, Sean! Now, get off!”
“Andy?” His voice cracked as he finally released me and took a step back, his head hung in defeat. “I—I don’t understand. You wanted me to make the effort. I’m here. Now you’re—why are you acting like this?”
That was about the time that Jace walked through the door.
“What the—?” Jace didn’t even have a chance to get the rest of words out before Sean took a swing. But his fist never made contact. Jace dodged it and then grabbed a hold of Sean’s arms, swinging them around and pinning them behind his back. “Dude, what the fuck?”
“I knew it was you,” Sean bellowed, squirming against Jace’s hold. “All along, it was you. You took her from me.”
“Man, I didn’t take anything. Andrea is a big girl and she makes her own decisions,” Jace said, so cool and calm that it sent a shiver down my spine. “If you’d have been paying attention, you would have known that already.”
That was when Becca came out of the bathroom. Everything was moving so fast, and yet almost like it was in slow motion. I noticed each bead of sweat on Becca’s forehead, likely from the fear, and the smudges of black makeup around her eyes. Tears pooling in Sean’s eyes, the twisted expression of anguish and brokenness on his face as he looked at me, silently pleading for me to give him another chance. Jace’s cool, calm demeanor that seemed both protective and cocky, all at the same time.
<
br /> “Stop it!” I screeched, not even recognizing my own shrill voice. “Just stop!”
Sean quit squirming. Jace released him. Becca’s sobs turned into sniffles and whimpers. And I stood there in the middle of it all, realizing that I had been the one who had created this chaos. This was my fault, and I had to fix it.
“Jace?” My eyes found his. He was already inhaling, his shoulders lifting, his nostrils flaring a bit because he probably already knew what I was about to say. “Thank you. But I need to take care of this myself.”
Lips drawn into a tight, thin line, he gave a quick nod. “I’ll check on you later,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Sean, as if sending a silent threat, just before closing the door behind him.
“Becca?” I turned to my best friend, the woman that had been by my side through everything, but shouldn’t have had to witness such a massive disaster. “Why don’t you go grab us some coffee?”
Conflict evident on her downturned features, she bounced her eyes back and forth between Sean and I. “Andy—“
I shook my head and forced a smile across my lips. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’ll take care of this. I just really need some coffee.”
Becca nodded her head in understanding but gave Sean one last uneasy look, probably for good measure, before turning to leave. “Call me if you need me,” she said, opening the door and looking back one last time.
It was just me and Sean now, me and the man I’d loved for five years, the man who had once held my whole future in the palm of hand... before I’d shredded it to pieces, much like he had all the photos and memorabilia that lay at my feet. I didn’t speak. I just let it all sink in, the look of embarrassment and pain etched in his tight features, the guilt of my choice resting heavy on my heart, the massive feeling of loss that comes with destroying something you once treasured and loved.
“Andy?” Sean started, taking a hesitant step in my direction. “I’m sorry. I—I heard you were with him, and..." His throat worked for a moment, as if the rest of his words had somehow become trapped. “I lost it. I just want us to start over, start fresh. Forget the wedding. Can we just... can’t we try one more time? You know this isn’t me. That I love you, and I support you. It’s just that I can’t stand the idea of losing you, and to some—some—riff raff who could never give you the life you dreamed of.”
“Sean... I—“ A sob escaped my lips as the tears started their treacherous journey down my cheeks. How could I have gone from being enveloped by sheer ecstasy just moments before to... this?
“You don’t have to answer me now,” he said, raising his hands as though he wanted to comfort me, but then he must have thought better of it because he let his arms flop down to his side. “Just think about it, okay? No pressure. No time limit. Just know that I’m here, waiting with open arms. I love you. I always have and I always will.”
My chin trembled as the hot tears grew into thick streams. I couldn’t speak. All I could do was nod my understanding.
We stood there, staring at each other, nothing but a deep, depressing emptiness between us where once there was so much love and adoration. Finally, he looked at the door and then back at me. “For what it’s worth, I—I brought you something.” He shoved a hand in his pocket. It came out holding a little velvet box. Refusing to make eye contact, he set the tiny black box on my nightstand. “It was meant to be yours, and I thought you should have it, no matter what you decide.”
He tapped the box a couple times and, still refusing to look at me, turned toward the door. He hesitated, just before opening it, as if waiting for me to say or do something. But nothing came out. My body wouldn’t move. I just felt like I would crumble, as if my heart would shatter into a million tiny pieces if I dared breathe. So I held my breath, waiting for my heart to stop beating as I watched the man I’d loved for so long walk out the door and out of my life.
But something even worse happened.
I was forced to feel everything as unseen hands ripped my heart from my chest. I was forced to stare at it, bloody and beating outside of my body, the empty hole it left behind burning with uncontrollable spasms. The ache was so raw, so debilitating, that I couldn’t do anything other than scream in agony and fall to the floor. Doubled over on my knees, fingers clawing at the carpet, I searched for anything to grab a hold of, something tangible, something real.
I never did find what I was looking for there on the floor, but after a while, the sobs started to ease up a bit. Unfortunately, the pain didn’t. I wasn’t sure why it hurt so bad in that moment; Sean and I had broken up weeks ago and I was ready to move on. Maybe it was just because I’d finally seen the damage I’d done first hand, or maybe it was the guilt over having the man I’d betrayed and the man that I’d done it with in the room at the same time. Or maybe it was that I felt like I’d hurt both of them in that moment by not choosing a side.
Either way, I was a complete and utter mess by the time that Becca walked through the door. “Oh, Andy,” she said, taking a moment to set down the coffee mugs in her hands and then dropping onto the floor next to me. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“I hurt myself,” I muttered, weakly, crumpling the rest of the way to the floor.
“Oh no,” she said, pulling me up by the armpits. “You don’t get to do this again. You did nothing wrong tonight, Andy. He is the one that showed up here all asshole-ish. And, in case you’ve forgotten, he’s the one that broke up with you.”
“But—“
“No buts. You had every right to be out, enjoying yourself with a man that obviously cares about you. You were not in the wrong here, Andy.”
“You really weren’t.”
“Jace,” his name sounded like a breathless promise in that moment.
“Becca... I’m sorry to ask you to leave again, but do you think Andy and I could have a minute alone?”
Becca nodded, a lot less hesitant this time than she had been when I’d asked her to leave me alone with Sean, and then left the dorm.
Once Becca had closed the door behind her, Jace cleared his throat and then motioned to my bed. “You want to sit down? You look a little worn out.”
I nodded and then took a seat at the edge of my bed, careful not to get too comfortable. For all I knew, this was my good-bye from Jace as well. Maybe, now that he’d seen just how crazy my ex-fiancé was, he’d decided that he wanted nothing to do with me. I wouldn’t have been surprised.
But instead of giving me some awkward speech about how he wasn’t sure if we were meant to be together, Jace kneeled on the floor in front of me, gathering my hands inside his as he looked up at me with soft chocolate eyes.
“I know I said I would be patient, that I would give you time to work through all of this stuff with your ex,” he said, pausing to kiss my knuckles. “But I want a fair chance. A fair fight. So I have a proposition for you.”
I blinked, bewildered by the meaning of his words. “Proposition?”
“Well, more like a deal, or an agreement. It’s nothing crazy. No Fifty Shades of Grey contract or anything like that. Just a fair chance.”
“Okaaaaay,” I said, drawing the word out, still awfully confused about where this conversation was going.
“Give me six weeks. Six weeks of your time. Six weeks that you are all mine. And, in that time, if you don’t fall in love with me, or at least think you might be able to..."He paused and then looked away. “Then you go on with your life and we go our separate ways. No hard feelings. But if you do..."
“If I do, then I won’t want Sean anymore.”
“Maybe. I realize that you might always love him, but I believe that I can be the better man for you, the right man, the one that will lift you up instead of bringing you down. You’ll never live in my shadow because I’ll put you on a fucking pedestal... But I also know that talk is cheap and I want time to prove it to you, that this thing we have—“ He lifted his hand, pointing to me and then himself. “This is real. You can’t fake this. It’s not a fling. And it
’s not an accident. I want to prove that to you. To show you there’s something more out there for you than kids and a picket fence. There’s an entire life to be lived.”
“Six weeks?”
“Six weeks,” he said, nodding.
I melted into those chocolate eyes, but out of my peripheral, I could see the unopened box on the nightstand. I had a choice to make.
I could go back to Sean, choose the safe option—a man that had supported my dreams and loved me for the last five years, a man that I had loved enough to almost marry—or risk it all on this man in front of me, the wild card, someone who made absolutely no sense but stirred things in me that I hadn’t felt in a very long time... if ever. Yet, all of those feelings could be chalked up to nothing more than sexual attraction. Or they could be something more or at least something that could lead to more. Only problem was, I wouldn’t know unless I gave Jace that chance... but at what cost? Was it really worth risking my future over a second time?
It would be the hardest decision I’d ever make and I didn’t have the slightest idea what to do.
End of Part 2
To Be Continued in Part 3…
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