“My beast. The most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.”
I let it slip out. My own confession that staked through my spirit. Letting go of a little of the reservations. Walls slipping. Letting him see. It didn’t matter that it came with a streak of guilt painted like a scarlet A slashed across my chest.
I never forgot you.
You always held a secret place inside me.
I’ve always, always loved you.
I ached to say all those things aloud. But I couldn’t make them form on my tongue.
Instead, I stared, my gaze tracing over the magnitude of him. His wide, wide shoulders and the strength in his ripped, carved abdomen.
Lust twisted low in my belly, a pool of desire that welled, overflowed as it slipped like liquid fire across my skin.
The boy I’d once known was all man.
A picture of sheer masculinity.
His fingertips brushed through my center. An illicit gasp wrenched from my throat and struck in the air as he touched me.
“So wet. So sweet,” he murmured.
Those big fingers parted me and slowly slipped into the heated well of my body.
My walls clenched around the intrusion.
It’s been so long. So long.
I wanted to feel all of him. Wanted him to take me and love me and promise me it would all be okay.
The realization of it brought a tremble of fear shaking through my body. The questions of how I’d allowed things to get this far between us when I had no idea what direction we were going.
The only thing I could feel was my heart tipping that way. Asking him to hold it. Carefully.
I swore, Jace felt it, sensed it, those eyes so soft as he reached up and cupped my face with his free hand as he explored me gingerly with the other.
Soft pants rose from my mouth.
Everything at odds.
My need and my regret and my guilt.
They were a blaze in the room.
Amplified in the energy that thrashed and whipped in that living space between us.
“I’ve got you, Faith. Relax, baby. Let me take care of you. I won’t hurt you. Just . . . please let me. Don’t want to go on a second more without touching you.”
There was no longer any resisting.
Nothing I could do but give. On a needy sigh, my back hit the hard table.
The man lowered his big body into a chair.
Trembles rolled.
Was this really happening?
He tucked me closer to him, his hands up high on my thighs as he dragged me right up to the very edge.
That was where he had me. On the edge and tumbling over.
Falling faster and faster. Where I’d no longer be able to claw my way back up to safety.
He slipped his hands under my thighs, wrapping all the way around until he was holding me by the tops, wedging those big shoulders between them.
“Shit, Faith. Do you have any idea how many nights I spent dreaming of this? Thinking about you? Wishing I was the one who was with you?”
Oh, God, he needed to stop saying those things. But he was dipping down, running those soft, soft lips up the inside of my leg, his voice a rough murmur at my overheated skin. “You marked me, baby.”
A shiver rushed, and part of me wanted to beg him to stop, because I didn’t think I could handle this. The onslaught of emotion coming up from the depths, breaking free of the dam that’d held it back.
But it was too late. Because he continued, his lips and tongue roaming higher.
Higher and higher.
Dizziness slammed me.
An assault of need.
My hips jerked from the table in their own plea.
A dark chuckle rumbled from his massive chest. “Tell me you want me, Faith. Tell me you want this.”
“Yes . . . please . . . make me feel good. I need you, Jace.”
For a beat, he looked at me.
His gorgeous face could have been smug with what he did to me.
But no.
There he was, his expression written in stark adoration.
Maybe that was what scared me the most. But I didn’t have time to contemplate it before he dipped down and gave one long lick through my slit.
I jumped.
Body and soul.
“Oh, God.”
My fingers searched for something to hold on to, scratching at the wood as he started to explore me with all the devastation of that mouth.
His lips sucking. Soft, delirium-inducing pulls at my clit.
Desire lit. A throb through my body.
Arrows in the air.
Staking me.
His hot tongue licked and lapped, delving deep into my folds before he was back to laving at that sweet, sweet spot, setting my flesh ablaze.
“Oh, Jace . . . Jace.” His name was all a whimper. A plea.
Mumbles fell from his mouth. Promises as much as a demand. “I’ve got you. Let me take care of you. I told you I was going to take care of you.”
He pulled back for the barest flash when he said it, copper eyes somehow aglow, glimmers of gold in the sun.
So beautiful I forgot to breathe, rasping sounds barely making it into my lungs when he drove three big fingers into me while he pinned me with his stare.
Possessively.
Pumping slow and sure while I writhed and continued to cry out his name.
“That’s it. Do you feel that, Faith? Do you feel what I do to you? What I was always supposed to do to you?”
Then he ducked back down and flattened his tongue against my clit.
Rolling and pressing.
His fingers drove deeper.
Deeper and deeper while I went higher and higher.
Climbing right into the darkness where the boy had always lived.
My beast.
I rode on it. Holding on. Falling into this man. Where my body splintered and shook.
Broke apart.
I was lost to the most mind-blowing kind of pleasure. The kind of pleasure that streaked and surged and consumed.
Filling every hollow.
Every inch.
Erasing every question. Where he became the answer.
Until he possessed everything.
My fingers drove into his hair, pulling him closer while he continued his assault, tongue lapping and suckling, keeping me held high, a hostage to everything he was.
Finally, he slowed. My breaths catching as he did. He nuzzled the inside of my thigh with his face, and his hands cinched down tight, holding me as I came down.
“There’s nothing more beautiful in this world than watching you come,” he murmured. “I could look at a million other women. A thousand sunsets. Every exotic beach. And you would still be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
And I didn’t know how to process what it was that I was feeling.
Swept up.
Caught up.
Trapped.
Freed.
I didn’t know.
All I knew was I was slipping from the table, sliding over him as I went, dropping to my knees.
A sharp wheeze pulled from his heaving chest. “Faith . . . I—”
“Shut up, Jace Jacobs. Don’t say a word. Don’t make me think about what I’m feelin’. Just let me touch you. Give me this.”
I needed this. Maybe proof that I wasn’t the only one who was subject to it.
The energy that swelled.
Obliterating.
Annihilating.
My mouth was pressing all over his chest, wanting to devour him the way he’d just devoured me.
I kissed down, across the flat planes of his abdomen, and licked over the spot where he’d written me on his body.
It was like tastin’ what we’d lost. The sweetest flavor of what might have been.
His muscles jumped and twitched when I did, and before I lost my nerve, I let my fingers find the waistband of his pajamas.
He was already straining outside of the confines
of it.
As if the man couldn’t be contained.
The fat head of him swollen and glistening with his own need.
I ripped the fabric down, and Jace hissed as he was freed.
Instantly, his fingers plunged into my hair. “Shit . . . Faith . . . what are you trying to do to me?”
I pulled back so I could look at his face. “What you’ve always, always done to me.”
He angled up, kicking his pants the rest of the way free. That was right as a rasp of a sound was leaving me at the sight of him.
The man so hard and big as he strained from the chair.
“What is it I’ve always done to you?” It was a grated challenge from his mouth.
Maybe he wanted a confession.
Proof.
My hand was shaking like crazy when I wrapped it around the velvet flesh. Then I added the other. I gave a firm squeeze, and my tongue darted out to wet my parched lips. “Make me want things that I shouldn’t have. More of you.”
Always, always, more of you.
Copper eyes glinted.
Fire.
Flames lapping at my soul.
“Who says you shouldn’t have them?”
I almost laughed. It would have been maniacal, frenzied, a mirror to the way this boy made me feel. The way he’d always made me let go. Forget every worry and reservation.
I stroked the long, hard length of him.
A shiver rippled across his golden flesh.
Oh goodness, was the man beautiful like this.
Bare and ready for me.
And I knew I had to be delirious.
Because I was taking him in my mouth. My lips stretched around the hard mass of him.
So big.
Too much.
Everything. Everything.
I wanted to possess him the way he possessed me, and he growled out a sound that shot straight to my core when I licked at the underside of him.
“Fuck . . . Faith . . . you feel so good. So damned good. No one . . . no one has ever made me feel like this. No one. Not ever.”
I couldn’t stop them, the tears that sprang to my eyes as I began to suck him. As I opened myself up to him. Taking him deeper and deeper.
I’d wanted to possess him.
But it was Jace Jacobs who was possessin’ me. Filling my mouth with the measured surges of his cock.
Filling my mind.
Filling my heart.
My knees dug into the floor, and he twisted his hands tighter into my hair, the man rocking harder, deeper, taking more.
Taking all of me.
And I wanted to give it.
But I was so scared. So scared of fully lettin’ go.
Only, sometimes, we didn’t even realize we’d tripped before we were in a free fall.
Unstoppable.
The ground gone.
Ripped right out from under our feet.
I was just terrified of where we would land.
“Fuck . . . Faith . . . baby. That mouth. You have the sweetest mouth. Take it, Faith. Take me.”
He started cursing, barely sitting in the chair, wedging deeper and deeper into my mouth, hitting my throat, desperate for more.
More.
More.
More.
I let go of the chains that were holding me back, and my hands moved to either side of him on the chair. Holding on to it before I floated away.
He was holding on to it, too, the other hand on the table as he jutted and rocked, as if it was the only thing that was keeping us grounded.
Then those hands were back in my hair, tugging hard as he pressed himself as far as he could into me, my jaw sore and burning from the force of him.
And still, I relished every second.
His cock jerking.
His pleasure given to me.
He roared. A prayer he offered to me. His come in my mouth and my name on his tongue.
For a second, I owned it.
Relished it.
This boy I hadn’t been able to keep.
Panic climbed into my chest.
I couldn’t lose him again.
I couldn’t.
I’d never, ever survive.
I realized my eyes were pinned shut when he eased out of me, and I only squeezed them tighter when I felt his hands on my face, tipping it up so he could take me in.
“Faith, sweetheart.” His voice had gone soft, and his thumbs were brushing my cheeks, gathering the moisture I hadn’t realized soaked my skin in hot, terrified streaks.
“Don’t cry. Fuck. Please, don’t cry.”
Oh, I was a mess. Such a mess. But I didn’t want to hide from it anymore.
So, I let him wrap me in his arms.
Let him hold me while I wept.
The problem was, I didn’t even know what I was weeping for.
The future or the past.
Or maybe it was for what had come in between.
Because I felt another piece of its hold break away.
Like all of those memories had gone into a free fall with the rest.
Jace sighed into my hair. “I’ve got you.”
The scariest part of that was I’d never felt so whole.
Twenty-Nine
Faith
Seventeen Years Old
Faith gulped around her nerves, around her fear and trepidation and what threatened to be a broken heart as she stood at the end of the lane.
“Stop being a coward,” she scolded herself under her breath, forcing her feet to keep moving down the road that was little more than a path carved out by tires with a bunch of weeds growing up the middle.
Her heart beat harder and harder with each step she took, her mind racing with the different scenarios of what might have happened two nights ago.
Of where he might have been.
She hadn’t heard from him in all that time.
Faith faltered when she came around a leafy bend, trees growing wild all around her, and saw the trailer sitting in the middle of it, rundown while the foliage seemed to try to swallow it whole.
Her heart climbed her throat, throbbing and pulsing as she tried to shove her reaction down.
Jace was always so worried what she’d think about where he lived, but what he didn’t get was it could never make her think less of him.
It only made her want more for him.
Made her hate it all the more that he had to live this way.
She was trying to instill the courage inside herself to knock on the door when it banged open.
A surprised gush of air left her, only for a slight smile to find her face when Joseph came out. “Joseph,” she said as a soft hello.
“Faith . . . hi.” He was all timid smiles and slightly curly, dark brown hair.
Cute in an almost studious, boy-next-door way.
“What are you doing here?” he chanced, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels.
She raked her teeth over her bottom lip, trying to stave off the nerves. “I’m lookin’ for Jace. Have you seen him around? He was supposed to meet me a couple nights ago, and he didn’t show, and I haven’t heard from him since. I’m worried about him.”
A glower streaked through Joseph’s expression, and his lips pursed in concern. “You shouldn’t worry about a guy like that.”
Taken aback, Faith frowned. “What does that mean?”
Joseph took the three steps down to the ground, and he came her direction, his voice lowered like a warning. “It means he’s not a good guy, Faith. It means you deserve someone better than that.”
She rubbed her palms up her arms, chills lighting on her skin even though it was blistering hot outside.
“How can you say that?” she whispered. Her question wasn’t out of anger. It was bred from an insecurity she didn’t want to feel.
The barest hint of some of those worries had needled their way into her consciousness.
The what-ifs.
What if he didn’t really love her the way he
’d said?
What if he’d found someone he liked better?
What if her dreams of staying in this town weren’t big enough for him?
“It means he got arrested for assault.”
Air shot from her lungs, and she stumbled back as if she’d been kicked. “What?” she wheezed.
Joseph started to say something else, but both of them froze when there was a clatter from the trailer.
Jace was suddenly standing in the doorway, staring at them both, his entire body vibrating with that same hostility that had both terrified her and captivated her the first time she’d seen him.
Faith’s heart started to beat wild, that attraction and disorder racing through her veins. Overcome by that sensation she’d only ever felt with this boy.
Copper eyes flashing their turmoil, she was sure she was bein’ held hostage by their intensity. Almost scary in their severity.
But it was the cut on his cheek that had her stomach twisting in tight compassion, with all the love she felt for him.
Instantly, she was moving his direction. She had an overwhelming urge to reach out and heal anything that might hurt him.
“Jace,” she whispered into the heated day, squinting up at where he stood at the top of the steps.
Jace swallowed hard. Shame etched all over him like a stain. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to check on you. Obviously, you needed it. What happened?”
“Yeah, Jace, what happened?” This from Joseph, who was standing behind her.
Jace suddenly flew off the steps. She spun around to see Jace had pinned Joseph’s back to a tree. “I’m warning you, Joseph. I told you to leave Faith out of this.”
Joseph thrashed, and Faith rushed up behind Jace, touching his back. “Jace, what are you doing?”
Jace released Joseph, and Joseph shrugged away, shaking himself off. “Told you,” Joseph told her as if he were offering a warning.
She didn’t respond, just stared dumbfounded at Joseph’s back as he retreated toward the trailer. He sent her a single glance over his shoulder before he slammed the door shut.
She whirled back around. “What is happening?” she pleaded.
Jace’s shoulders slumped. Defeat in his stance. “Exactly what I warned you was going to happen. I’m not good enough for you, Faith. I told you I was going to mess this up.”
She blinked at him, not believing a word he said, and she reached out a trembling hand to gentle her fingers across the cut on his cheek.
More of You: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel Page 22