His rough, callused fingertips brushed up the insides of her thighs, raising goose bumps on her flesh and making her shiver. He teased the lips of her sex before easing two thick fingers into her slick channel. The rhythm he set for her was hard, punishing, his fingers and tongue working her until her eyes rolled back in her head. Her entire body shook, fire flowing through her in scorching waves. Her pussy spasmed, locking tight around those fingers. Then he twisted them, hooking his fingertips until they rubbed her in just the right place. A high wail broke from her throat as she convulsed in his arms. Still he pushed her, stroking her and sucking her wet flesh until the need rebuilt, until she was sobbing with the force of a second orgasm rocketing through her.
“Jericho. Jericho, please. I need…I can’t…please.”
“Oh, but I think we’ve already established that you can.” He all but purred the words, his lips brushing against her clit as he spoke.
She licked her lips, trying to focus. “I want you inside me, Jericho.”
“I want to be inside you,” he whispered, his cool breath on her hot flesh making her pussy clench around his fingers. “I want to be deeper inside you than you’ve ever let anyone. Even me. I want you to trust me enough to let me in that deep.”
The words sent an ominous shiver down her spine, and she knew he was talking about a lot more than trusting him during sex. It was more than she could give him. She closed her eyes, pulling at the silk around her wrists. She wished it was just the bindings that made her helpless in his embrace, but she knew it wasn’t. He didn’t need to know that though. She swallowed, moaned when his hand began thrusting again. “Jericho, please…”
He sighed, and she could feel his disappointment roll over her, and it hurt to upset him. She knew she shouldn’t feel that way, but logic and emotion were two very different things. Rising on his elbows, he settled over her and slid his cock into her. It was so good she wanted to cry.
The hair on his chest rasped her nipples, and she couldn’t help how she arched under him to increase the stimulation. He moved within her in tiny thrusts that drove her mad. She lifted her face for him to kiss, wanting his lips on her skin, but he just smiled down at her. His fingers stroked over her cheekbone, and the way he looked at her, so hot and sweet and tender… God, it was the look he used to use when she’d told herself he loved her. What a joke. And, in the end, the joke had been on her. She turned her head into her arm, unable to bear the memories that bombarded her, but she was tied down, so there was no escaping him, even if she wanted to. She shivered. What a horrible, awful mess.
“Don’t look away from me, darlin’.” He feathered a kiss over her jaw. “Be here with me.”
Meeting that silver gaze that always saw too much, she waggled her bound wrists. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His gaze searched her face for long moments before a look of stubborn determination molded his features. “That isn’t what I meant, but it’ll do. For now.”
The slow strokes of his cock picked up speed, and she wished she could wrap her legs around his waist to lift herself into his thrusts. As if he’d read her mind, he angled his hips so he moved within her just right. It was so perfect it was painful, and something crumpled inside her. God, it was going to hurt to lose him again. She stared up at him, wanting to see his every expression, wanting to remember every detail. Wanting something to offset the ugly way things had ended the first time.
Squeezing her walls tight around him, she smiled when he groaned for her. She saw the moment his control snapped, felt the shudder that wracked his big body. He plunged into her hard enough to make stars burst behind her eyes, and she gasped. He buried his face in her neck, but his rhythm didn’t falter and his cock filled her again and again, his sharp hipbone slapping against her clit. Orgasm shimmered through her, building so high and fast, she had to bite back a scream.
His bellowing breath rushed against her throat. “No one else has ever done this to you before, have they, Tori?”
“Only you.” As if she’d ever been able to let anyone take control of her pleasure this way. As if she’d ever put herself out there again after how monumental her failure had been the first time. She bucked beneath him, jerking at the silk ties. She wanted him to go even faster, to push her over that blissful edge.
“Only me.” His voice was warm, possessive. Dangerous.
A warning sounded in her mind, distracting her from the drive to ecstasy. Her movements faltered.
His didn’t.
If anything, he only made it worse, going faster and deeper, just the way she needed him to. He pounded into her, grinding against her clit, and sent her careening into ecstasy. Her sex pulsed around him, and she did scream then. His head lifted, and his gaze snared her. There was nothing but him, her whole world narrowed to this moment with this man, this fulfillment. Her pussy milked his cock, the contractions rippling deep within her, her orgasm going longer than she’d ever experienced before. He kept thrusting, kept dragging it out for her. She whimpered, writhing in her bindings, her skin so sensitized it was almost more than she could bear. “Come with me, Jericho.”
Shuddering, he gave her what she wanted, coming hot and fast inside her. His eyes closed, and he groaned, the sound rough and helpless. “I love you. I’ve loved you since that very first night. I love you so fucking much it’s enough to kill me again.”
Shock punched her in the belly, knocked the breath out of her lungs. Then reaction kicked in. The agony was like ripping open a festering wound that had never healed. Bitter rage screamed through her, blackened her vision and she heaved underneath him. “Untie me, Jericho! Untie me right now.”
His reaction was immediate. He lunged for the scarves that bound her, letting her loose. She jackknifed on the bed, scrambling to get away from him. He caught her wrist to steady her when she tripped over the tangled bedspread. “Don’t touch me,” she shrieked, ripping her arm from his grip. “Don’t you touch me ever again.”
“Okay. Okay, let’s just be calm for a second.” He lifted his hands in a placating gesture, wariness and hurt flashing in his gaze. “I’m confused by what’s happening here. I told you I loved you and—”
“Liar.” The word exploded from her throat. “You never loved me. Never. Don’t even try to feed me that line of bullshit. Those words never crossed your lips, not once. Don’t try to rewrite the past, Jericho. I was there.”
“Never loved you?” His laugh was an ugly, painful sound. “Hell, woman, I never stopped loving you. I couldn’t. And God help me, I tried.”
“Right,” she sneered. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She wouldn’t cry in front of him, and he sure as hell didn’t deserve her tears. He wanted to have this out? Drag the past into the present? Fine. Jericho always got what he wanted anyway, so she might as well give it to him. With both barrels. “That’s why I found you in a brothel, draped across a prostitute’s bed. If I remember it right—and I do—you left me with Enrique and never bothered looking back. Yeah, you loved me. You loved me so much, you couldn’t even go a whole night without a woman to warm up the bed. You never stopped loving me, but I sure was easy to replace, wasn’t I?”
Fury flushed his face, and he loomed over her, every muscle in his body taut with rage. “That wasn’t what happened. I never even looked at another woman, let alone touched one while we were together. I took you back to your brother like you wanted, and I was so fucking miserable about it, I got drunk enough that I couldn’t see straight. Hell, I don’t even know how I got up the stairs to the room you found me in. I passed out, and I didn’t wake up until you came to get me. Nothing else happened.”
Her laugh was every bit as horrible as his had been. God, she hated herself for still loving him. Her voice was little more than a scathing hiss, bile burning the back of her throat. “Nothing happened in a prostitute’s bed? Sure. Of course. Right. That’s an easy claim to make now, but I know what I saw.”
“You know what you think you saw. You know w
hat you wanted to see.” He caught her arms, and she tried to jerk back, but he tightened his grip, giving her a little shake. “And that was always our problem, wasn’t it? Hell, it’s still our problem. You don’t trust me. Sure, you’ll give me your body, you’ll come for me so often I don’t know how either of us is walking straight, but you’ll never believe in me. Believe in us. You may have said you loved me back then, but you’ve spent every second we were ever together, then and now, just waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for me to hurt you, waiting for me to leave you, waiting for us to fail. The only person you actually trusted was your yellow-bellied coward of a brother.”
“You leave Enrique out of this!” She tried to wrench herself from his grasp again, but couldn’t. He was too strong, and she had to settle for glaring at him. “The man’s been dead for a hundred years or more, and you still have to attack him. The only thing I ever asked you for was to not hurt him, but you denied me, said you’d kill him without a second thought. So, tell me, Jericho, exactly what did you ever do to make me trust you? We were enemies, and you made it very clear I was a sexual convenience. I’m sure you enjoyed ruining my reputation to spite my brother. It was always about you and him, wasn’t it? It was never about you and me. There was no us to believe in. I was just a pawn in the game you two were playing.”
His silver eyes blazed to liquid mercury, and he shook her again, harder this time, his breath bellowing from his lungs. “You make me insane. You did then, and you do now. I couldn’t keep my mind on anything but you, let alone figuring out how to dick with your brother’s mind. I should have known his attack was coming, but I let myself get distracted by you.”
“So now you’re blaming me for your death?” Despite herself, tears sprang into her eyes. She blinked them back and finally managed to squirm out of his grasp. Her legs felt like limp noodles, so she stumbled to the end of the bed, grabbing the footboard for support. She looked up at him, and let herself ask the questions that had nagged at her for over a century. “Why, Jericho? Why didn’t you leave when I told you to? I sacrificed so much to go to you, to save you. I betrayed my country, I betrayed my only family. I died to give you the chance to live. Why didn’t you run? Was it really so important to kill Enrique? Was it worth your life?”
She expected him to spout some bullshit about honor and duty and standing his ground and not being a coward, but instead he met her gaze head on. “I did run. We were outnumbered, and I knew it. I told my men to retreat, put my lieutenant in charge, and then I chased after you. They were overtaken anyway, but…I was coming for you, not to kill your brother.”
“Wh-what?” Of all the things he could have said, that stunned her the most. Jericho would never admit to abandoning his men to an inferior officer. Unless it was true. She shook her head, tried to pin down her reeling thoughts.
“But to answer your earlier question—no, I don’t blame you for my death. I blame your brother, since he’s the one who killed me.”
All the blood drained from her face and she clenched her fingers into the iron footboard. “No. No, he couldn’t have.”
“He sure as hell could have. He did.”
“It—it had to have been an accident.” She swayed where she stood, her stomach twisting into knots. “He knew how I felt about you. He would never have done such a thing.”
Jericho snorted. “You have no idea how much I would have given for even an ounce of that trust, but the truth is what it is, darlin’. Enrique put a bullet in me. He knew it was me, and whether he knew you loved me or not, it was no accident.”
He had to be wrong. It had to be a mistake. Enrique had been devoted to her, and she’d worshipped him. She couldn’t have been so wrong about him. They couldn’t both have betrayed her. “Stop. P-please, stop.”
His pewter eyes flashed. “I did what you asked. I didn’t go after your brother. And when he found me holding your dead body in my arms, he shot me like I was a rabid animal because I refused to give you to him.”
“Noooo.” The word was a low, keening plea. Not that. Please, God. Anything but that. Her fingers fisted in her hair, trying to block out the truth. She’d begged him, pleaded with him to leave her brother alone. Her last remaining family member, her blood. And it had cost him his life. She’d murdered the only man she’d ever loved as surely as if she’d pulled the trigger herself. Shame curled her spine, and she buried her face in her hands. “It’s my fault. It’s my fault. Oh, God. I failed you and it’s all my fault. We died because of me.”
“No.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind, his lips nuzzling the nape of her neck. “No, Tori, it’s my fault. I failed you. I should never have let you walk out of that saloon in the first place, but I was too hurt that you didn’t trust me not to cheat on you, that you dared to have any doubts, that you needed an explanation. I was too stubborn to see that if I’d just reached out to you then, given you what you needed, I might have had everything I ever wanted. But I couldn’t swallow my pride enough to tell you that you were everything, and I let you leave thinking you were nothing.” He crushed her to him, squeezing her so tight he compressed her ribs. Almost as if he never intended to let her go again, and a sob ripped from her throat at the thought. “It would have cost me so little, just a few words, but I was too fucking stupid to see it. So, we both died. I watched the life drain out of you, and I still never told you I loved you. I’ve been waiting a long, long time to say those words.”
“Jericho.” His name was a breathy sob on her lips. She didn’t know what else to say, what else to do. He was right—she’d never really trusted him, not all the way, not with everything. She’d trusted her brother instead, and she’d been wrong. “If I had only—”
“No.” His soft lips brushed her shoulder. “No more of that. No more worrying about failure. No more blame. We both did things we regret. A lot of things. But we can’t change the past. We can just move forward from here—and I want to move forward with you. I want a future.” He swallowed audibly, there was a hesitancy in his voice that she’d never heard before. “If—if you want me too.”
“I…I…” Her mind spun in circles, far too much information jockeying for supremacy in her mind. Jericho had come after her that night. He’d cared. Tears slid down her face as deep sobs wrenched out of her. He rocked her in his arms, crooning soft comfort to her, just...holding her. Somewhere in that dark and ugly storm of guilt and realization, some fragile fragment of joy began to surface. Her soul mate hadn’t betrayed her; he’d loved her. He still loved her, and he was here, now, with her. They had a second chance, if only she dared to reach out and take it, if only she was willing to trust it.
Trust. It had always come down to trust, just like he’d said. Trust, and her fear of failure. Pain cinched around her heart at all the time they’d lost, at the life they’d lost. In their own ways, they’d both been unable to truly believe in their love enough to reach out, to make that final step, and it had cost them. But they didn’t have to repeat those mistakes. They’d both learned, both grown in the time they’d been separated.
“I love you, Vitoria.” He turned her to face him, his silver gaze open and more vulnerable than she’d ever imagined possible. He didn’t hold back, everything he felt was there for her to see. His big hand smoothed her hair back. “My Tori. I love you. I always have. I always will. There was never anyone else. I would never betray you. I love you. If you don’t believe anything else I ever say, believe that.”
“I believe you,” she whispered, tears still slipping down her cheeks. “I love you too.”
His beautiful eyes closed, and the skin drew taut across his sharp cheekbones. “Say it again.”
“I believe in you, Jericho.” She reached up to curve her palms around his face, waiting for him to look at her again. “I believe in us. I love you. I never want to spend another day apart from you.”
“I love you.” He buried his nose against her temple, his lips brushing her ear. “God, how I love you.”
She swallowed and let herself hold and be held by him, letting herself trust that their love could last, that they wouldn’t fail this time. Just…letting herself absorb the miracle of him. She’d waited so long, needed him so much.
Leaning against his chest, she hugged him tight as sudden fear speared her. “Wait. We’re not human anymore. Do you think we’ll be allowed to stay together?”
“Oh, yeah.” He smiled against her skin. “The Big Man wants soul mates to be with each other—look at what we do for a living. We’re working together from now on.”
“How can you be sure?” If Heaven compelled them to go to different jobs, that was that. Guardian angels didn’t get a say in these things. Her heart sank, tears filling her eyes. To have found him again, only to be forced to separate, would be more than she could bear.
He chuckled, the sound rich and warm, and it made her toes curl. “Because I had two assignments, darlin’. Celia…and you.”
About the Author
Crystal Jordan began writing romance after she finished graduate school and needed something to fill the hours that used to be eaten away by homework. Currently, she serves as a librarian at a university in California, but has lived and worked all over the United States. She writes paranormal, futuristic and erotic romance.
To learn more about Crystal please visit www.crystaljordan.com. Send an email to Crystal at [email protected] or join her Yahoo! group to join in the fun with other readers as well as Crystal! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crystal-jordan
Look for these titles by Crystal Jordan
Believe in Me: Unbelievable, Book 2 Page 5