by Leona Lee
She looked torn, and it burned me up inside to know that I was possibly standing on the precipice of losing her. I had to do something to remind her of what I knew to be true, all the way down to my bones. There was something undeniable between us.
So I threw my Hail Mary pass, reaching one hand around her neck so that it rested at its base, kept the other on her cheek and slanted my lips over hers, kissing her so hard that our teeth gnashed together. It was raw, powerful, and irrefutable evidence of exactly how deeply I felt for her.
Chapter Ten
JORDAN
Brad’s lips were firm and tender, his kiss hungry and demanding. The way he had me caged against the kitchen counter turned my confused thoughts to mush and my muttered protests about my feelings to encouraging moans.
My hands glided up to his chest, over every hard dip and curve under his button-up shirt. He kissed me until I couldn’t remember what we’d been talking about or that there was a world outside of my kitchen. One of his hands dropped to the hem of my t-shirt, and a shiver ran up my spine from the point of contact.
Brad gripped at my shirt, pulling it clean off, our kiss breaking only long enough for the cotton to pass between our lips. Then his mouth was back on mine, and my hands fumbled with his belt buckle, finally managing to get it unhooked.
With unsteady hands, I undid his button and unzipped him, tugging his pants down just far enough to get his cock out of his briefs. Our kisses were feverish, consuming us. I was vaguely aware of his thumbs hooking beneath the waistband of my sweats and tugging down my pants and panties at the same time.
I whimpered, rolling my hips against his erection. The stupid buttons of his shirt wouldn’t budge under my trembling fingers. Brad’s hands closed over mine, lifting them away from his shirt. Before I could question what he was doing, I felt him bunch the expensive material in his hands and tug, ripping the shirt open.
His bare chest crashed into mine, and his arms gripped my hips. In the distance below my windows, there were the sounds of the city, hooting cars and music blaring from somewhere. In my kitchen, however, there was only the sound of wet, furious kissing.
“Tell me if you get too uncomfortable,” Brad growled into my ear, guiding me to a stool a couple of steps back from where were standing. “Jordan, did you hear me?”
I nodded, dragging out my answering groan. “Yesssss.”
Brad’s fingers skirted over my skin, igniting my blood and setting my nerves on fire. I was so ready for him, primed and wet when those fingers skimmed to my core. He nuzzled at a spot beneath my ear, biting down gently on my earlobe, groaning when his fingers slid through my silky juices.
The kitchen counter pressed into my back, the edge of it cold and hard against my skin, but Brad was so warm against me that I didn’t care about the sharp edge biting against my back. My head fell back, and my eyes closed as he worked his fingers into me, his thumb pressing down roughly on my aching clit.
The stool threatened to tip over, but he kept it upright, his free hand and arm wrapping around me to shield my back from the abrasive counter and keeping me braced against his chest. He kissed me with wild abandon, and I returned his kisses as tension started knotting between my legs.
I dug my fingernails into his back, clinging to him as an orgasm crashed into me and ripped through my body, hard and fast. Waves of pleasure that could inspire a thousand songs and sonnets swept me under until I was a trembling mess.
Brad wasn’t done with me yet, though. He stroked me through it, and then he must’ve retrieved a condom, because the next thing I heard was the sound of foil ripping. Then he was standing between my legs, his cock nudging me open and sinking into my still pulsing core.
There was nothing gentle about the way he pushed into me, feeding me inch after delicious inch until he was buried in me, stilling for a second only once.
“Still okay?” he asked.
I nodded again, the art of speaking having gotten lost to me as I lost myself to him, to the feeling of being filled so very perfectly.
When he started thrusting properly, I could’ve sworn that I saw stars exploding and heard angels singing. Having Brad inside me was even better than I remembered, everything that I’d ever wanted. I felt the muscles in his lower back quiver under my hands as I clung to him. His breathing became ragged, and his soft groans sent me flying, almost straight back to the edge.
He kept a steady rhythm, sliding into my slick warmth with sure, long thrusts. His pelvis pressed down on my clit with each stroke, and too soon, I felt myself clenching around him as my mind shattered into pieces that flung themselves to the four corners of the globe.
Brad gripped my biceps when I came back to earth, sliding out of me to bend me over the counter. My knees were jelly and refused to hold me up, but they didn’t have to. He propped my elbows on the counter, securing one of his arms around my chest and the other around my hips, holding me up with his strong body as he thrust back inside me. I cried out, delirious with pleasure and somehow desperate for more.
All the negative emotions and feelings brought on by the day had disappeared and been replaced by being devoured, consumed, and owned by Brad. He slammed into me over and over again. His chest pressed to my back, and it was covered in a thin layer of sweat. His heart hammered as fast as mine did.
The hand around my hips reached down, brushing against my sensitive clit as his muscles started trembling and his groans grew louder in my ears. It seemed impossible to me, but I was so worked up, so overly sensitive, that a few soft brushes of his fingers later, I found myself toppling right over the edge again.
Brad kept driving into me, hard and needy, until he finally found his own release shortly after, soundlessly emptying himself into me, grabbing my face and kissing me hard as his body jerked against mine.
He pulled me close to his chest as our breathing calmed, holding me tightly to him and keeping us both from collapsing to the floor. His heart thudded against my back, racing with my own. We stayed like that for several long minutes, just savoring being together.
“You okay to stand on your own?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure if I was. My knees still felt weak, and my legs felt wobbly, but I gripped the counter so hard that my knuckles were white. “I think so.”
“We’re going to get through this,” Brad promised, buttoning up his slacks but not reaching for the rest of his clothes, strewn all around the kitchen. I felt bad about his shirt, but he’d ripped the buttons off himself, so it wasn’t really on me.
When I’d caught my breath and my legs felt like they could take my weight, I stepped into my panties and tugged my favorite comfortable t-shirt back on. As soon as I was covered up, my phone started ringing from across the kitchen. I froze when I recognized the song that was playing. It was “I’ll Be There for You” by The Rembrandts.
It was also the ringtone Nicole had set for herself on my phone. I lurched forward, rushing for the phone. She was finally calling me back. There was no way I was missing that call.
Brad watched me, looking slightly confused by my sudden spur to action, but then his eyes lit up in understanding when I answered it and smashed it to my ear. “Nikki? Hello?”
“Jordan,” she said. Her voice was cold and flat. After only that one word, I could hear distance she was putting between us. “I’ve packed up all the shit you’ve left lying around here. Meet me at Lucky’s tomorrow. One o’clock. Be there if you want it back, or else I’m leaving the box on the sidewalk.”
She ended the call without saying goodbye. I blinked at the phone in my hand, unable to believe that just like that, it was over. I’d lost her. My heart shattered on the spot, sending deep, heaving sobs wracking through my body and fat tears streaming down my face.
Brad was beside me the next second, wrapping his arms around me and holding me so tightly it was like his arms were the only things keeping me together. His lips moved gently against my ear. “What did she say?”
“She… she...” I
couldn’t get it out.
Brad whispered soothingly to me, stroking my hair and hugging me even tighter. “Hey. Hey. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”
He didn’t understand how not okay it was. “It’s not.”
Holding me until the sobs started subsiding, Brad just kept whispering to me. I cuddled up against his warm chest, breathing him in from the crook of his neck, letting his spicy scent envelop me. When I finally stopped crying so much that I couldn’t speak, I took a deep breath and told him what Nicole had said.
“So you see?” I asked when I was finished. “It’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay.”
He swiped the tears from under my tears, drawing me close again. “It will be. Come here.”
Chapter Eleven
BRAD
God, what a fucking mess I’d made of things. Despite my whispered promises to Jordan all night that everything was going to work out in the end, I had to at least be honest with myself. I had no idea whether it would or not.
Nicole was as stubborn as a mule. She’d also blocked both Jordan and me on every single platform. She refused to take our calls and didn’t even read our messages.
I didn’t know how to get through to her, or even if I could. While I was as sure as I’d always been that she would eventually at least speak to me again, fixing things between her and Jordan might not prove possible if I was being realistic about things.
It made me feel like shit, but it was the truth.
Jordan was a complete mess about it. Broken up didn’t even begin to cover it. I stayed with her after that phone call the night before. The only reason I’d left after the first time we slept together was in case Nicole showed up.
Well that, and I wasn’t a big fan of sleepovers. But that was different with Jordan, and since there wasn’t much of a chance that Nicole was going to show up at Jordan’s place, staying over felt like a foregone conclusion.
Leaving her in that state hadn’t even crossed my mind. I held her all night, even when bouts of sobbing interrupted our sleep. Jordan’s heart was broken, and I understood why. Those two girls had been stitched together by the hip since they met.
I just wished there was something I could do make things better for Jordan, because seeing her so upset triggered the “I need to fix this. Kill, slay, maim. Anything to make it better” instinct.
It was an instinct that had only been triggered by two women in my life before, Anastasia and Nicole. I hated seeing women cry as much as the next guy, but generally speaking, the only thoughts running through my mind when I saw it happen pertained to how best to escape the situation or wondering how long it was going to last.
With Jordan, however, that wasn’t the case. If nothing else, that was what made me realize the true depths of my feelings for her. The natural instinct to protect and solve every problem she’d ever had didn’t come out to play for just anyone.
The only problem with the situation was that the only person I could kill, slay, or maim was myself. And that still wouldn’t fucking fix it.
Sighing, I squeezed her hand that was resting in my lap. After a few false starts where she dashed back into her apartment to reapply smudged makeup, and Donald bringing me a change of clothes, we were finally on our way to the office.
“How’re you holding up?” I asked.
Jordan rested her head on my shoulder, looking up at me with darkness under her eyes that betrayed her lack of sleep, almost like someone punched her just hard enough to leave little black, quarter-moon smudges there. “Can I get back to you on that?”
I half-smiled at her and kissed her forehead. “Sure, whatever you want.”
And I meant it. I would give her whatever she wanted if it would make her feel better. As long as I didn’t lose her.
Jordan crawled into my lap on the backseat of the car, and my arms went around her automatically. “Will you just hold me some more for now?”
“Of course,” I said.
Traffic was a damn nightmare, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t mind. The circumstances were fucked, but having Jordan in my arms was heaven. She smelled like soap and the berry shampoo I’d seen in her shower that morning.
She was soft and perfect, her body fitting to mine like a puzzle piece. Definitely heaven.
“What time are you meeting Nicole today?” I asked, my lips buried in her hair.
Jordan huffed out an unhappy little breath. “Lunch. I might need to leave the office a little early to get to Lucky’s by one. That okay?”
“Absolutely. You can leave whenever you want.”
She cuddled closer to me. “Thanks. I’m really not looking forward to it, though.”
“I know.” I wished I could somehow protect her from the showdown that was bound to happen. Take the hit for her.
Wait, maybe I can.
Nicole, Jordan, and I were going to have to sit down and talk sometime anyway. There was no reason why that couldn’t happen right away. Sure, Nicole had just found out, but time had a way of making things a lot worse when it came to her. Once her grudges had a chance to harden into place, it took a long time before she abandoned them.
“How about if I come with you this afternoon?” I asked.
Jordan pulled away from me slightly, frowning up at me and shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. At all.”
She had a point, but I wasn’t backing down just yet. “Why not? We could talk to her together.”
Jordan shifted in my lap, her eyes leaving mine to stare at the crowded freeway outside. Red brake lights snaked for miles ahead before they finally disappeared into the fog that enveloped the city that morning.
It was another rainy day, but the weather suited my mood. Dark, heavy, depressing. I usually didn’t think twice about it, but like everything else in my life, it was different with Jordan. Things came into sharper focus when I was around her, like someone had turned the wheel on the lens of the camera that was my life and adjusted it until the blurriness was all gone.
Her blue eyes drifted from the traffic to mine. “I know that we could talk to her together, but I just don’t think it’s a good idea yet. It’s still so soon. If we have any hope here, we need to give her time to adjust to the idea of us together. Shoving our relationship in her face by showing up together the day after she found out about us is not going to achieve anything good.”
“Maybe,” I told her. “But maybe it would help if she could see how we are together.”
Jordan tilted her head slightly, and one of the corners of her lips curled up just a little. “Yeah? And how exactly is it that we are together, do you think?”
“Good,” I answered earnestly, pressing a soft kiss to that corner of her mouth.
It pulled up a little farther. “Just good?”
Okay, I saw what game she was playing. I kissed her again, deeper this time. “Not just good, no. Great.”
Our lips were barely apart, and I felt her smile against mine, her breath fanning my face as she released a soft exhale. “How do you know that? You sound so sure, but it’s only been a couple of weeks.”
“I am sure, that’s why. One day with you was enough to convince me, Jordan. I just didn’t want to see it before. Nicole wants us both to be happy. You know that as well as I do. Maybe if we can show her that we are, it’ll soften the blow.”
Jordan still hadn’t told me how she felt about me, but that was okay because I already knew. I would wait forever to hear her say it, if that was what it took.
The small smile that I managed to elicit from her fell from her face when I resumed our conversation about me going with her to meet with Nicole.
“It’s not going to soften the blow,” she said. “It’s going to be another. Especially if we ambush her with you just showing up when she’s only expecting me.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. “She’s not talking to either of us, so how do we not ambush her? It’s not like she’s going to read any message that we send her
to warn her I’m coming with you.”
“Easy,” Jordan said. “You don’t come with me, not to lunch anyway.”
“Okay, what do you have in mind then?” I still thought it was better to confront the situation, and Nicole, head on. But I also surprised myself by trusting Jordan’s instincts on the subject.
“Let me try talking to her this afternoon. She didn’t invite me out to lunch or anything. She just chose lunchtime because of work, I’m sure. I don’t think she’s going to be ready to talk yet, but I’ll try. I’ll ask if she’ll be willing to sit down with us.”
I thought over the new plan. It could work. “Fine, ask her to come to my house tonight at seven. We’ll talk there.”
“Tonight?” Jordan squeaked, uncertainty flashing in her eyes. “You really want to do it so soon?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m trusting you about not going with you this afternoon, so trust me when I tell you that the band-aid needs to be ripped off sooner, rather than later. She’s going to build up the whole thing in her mind if we don’t do it soon. Before you know it, she’ll be thinking we were together behind her back from the first day we met.”
My daughter had inherited her tendency to be overly dramatic from her mother. It was exactly why Jordan was so good for her. She grounded her. Kept her in the here and now.
Jordan turned her gaze toward the window again, contemplating quietly. We’d made it to the city and would be arriving at the office soon. We needed to wrap the conversation up, and I needed her to say that she’d talk to Nicole.
“Babe?” I prompted her. “What’s it gonna be?”
I saw determination in her eyes when she looked back at me. “Fine, I’ll try. But I’m not making any promises.”
Leaning forward slightly, I bumped her nose with mine and then planted a soft kiss on its tip. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Jordan said. “We don’t know that it’s going to work.”