Marriage For One

by Maise, Ella

  “That’s it?”

  “No, you add something too. What do you want?”

  “Pepperoni. You’ll have water?”

  I nodded and let him finish our order then, just as the girl left after promising to get our drinks ASAP, my gaze caught on an empty booth toward the back.

  “Did you hear anything from your cousins?”

  When I gave him a confused look, he continued.

  “About your surgery. Did they call you to check on you?”

  “No. I’m not even sure if I want to hear from them. I’m surprised that Bryan never showed up again though. Did he call you? I feel like he gave up too easily.”

  “No.”

  Because I wanted tonight to be just about us, I changed the subject and didn’t think too much about his angry expression.

  Pointing with my finger at the booth in the back, I waited for him to follow my direction.

  “Yes…that’s a table, I believe.”

  “Ha ha.” Giving him a pointedly blank look, I ignored his dry comment. “Can we sit there?”

  “You don’t like it here?”

  “No. No, I do, but a booth…I don’t know, it feels more intimate.”

  Jack caught the attention of the girl as she was bringing a soda to the cute little kid next to us and then helped me out of my seat and carried my coat. The touch of his hand on the small of my back practically seared me through my dress. I got in first and scooted.

  Instead of sitting next to me as I had assumed he would and wanted him to do, he went to sit across from me again.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, perplexed.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Jack, you’re gonna sit here.” I patted the seat next to me. “That’s why I wanted a booth.”

  “To sit next to me,” he echoed.

  I nodded slowly.

  “We could’ve moved our chairs closer to each other.”

  “It’s not the same thing. Come on. Move.”

  “No touching, Rose. I’m serious. Do not drive me crazy in public.”

  Hearing that I had any kind of power over him was exhilarating. Happy and excited, I laughed and raised my hands. “No touching—got it. Come on, I won’t bite. I promise.”

  And what do you know…as soon as he settled next to me, he reached for my hand and tightly clasped it in his, playing with my ring the entire time. He was the one who couldn’t stop touching me, and I loved every second of it. We talked for hours in that little Italian restaurant, accompanied by some romantic Italian tunes. If Jack wasn’t touching my face, he was holding my hand. If he wasn’t holding my hand, he was offering me bites of pizza as I chattered away at him. When he wasn’t making me laugh with his dry comments, he was resting our linked hands on his leg. When I wasn’t smiling or laughing, I was melting.

  He also kissed me. I didn’t know why I was surprised, but he kissed me so many times. Every time he leaned forward and I felt his lips moving against mine, asking for entrance, my heart lost its steady rhythm and I felt excitement bubbling up inside me, the kind of excitement you don’t know how to hold in, an excess of happiness. I loved it. I completely fell for him on our first date.

  It was the most perfect first date I’d ever had in my life.

  My husband was perfect. With all his arrogance and prickliness, Jack Hawthorne was perfect for me.

  He wasn’t what I’d had in mind or even what I’d wanted for myself, but he was perfect and already mine, truly mine. There was no doubt of that in my mind.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rose

  It was after the official first date, not days after, only hours when I woke up with a weird feeling.

  It was so hard to sleep in the same bed with Jack after I’d started feeling better from the surgery. As much as I talked about wanting to get him into bed naked, I never actually did anything about it, at least not when we were in bed like this.

  That being said, I wasn’t actually surprised to find Jack spooning me—that happened a lot. I woke up in a lot of different positions in the morning, usually with my face tucked under his chin, my hand across his chest. Sometimes my face was on his chest with his arms wrapped around me, and there had been a few instances where we had woken up fused to each other just like we were right then.

  Little spoon, meet big spoon.

  In the hospital, that had been the only position we had slept in, but that was only because the bed wasn’t big enough for any other positioning. At the hospital, sex had been the last thing on my mind, but out of it…the last two months, things had been different. In those instances where we had woken up with his front pressed to my back, he usually got out of bed as quickly as possible and I said a silent goodbye to his lovely erection that had been pressing into me from behind.

  Those mornings were my favorite, because it was something else to wake up wrapped in his arms. I felt protected, cared for, and maybe for the first time in a very long time, like I belonged somewhere: in his arms. Those times, I wasn’t brave enough to tease him, and I just closed my eyes and took my fill instead.

  When we were both vertical and wearing actual clothes, that was when I flourished in making him squirm. So much for my bravery.

  “Jack?” I mumbled, peering over my shoulder. His lips were right there, only inches away, and I shivered when those same full lips pressed a kiss on my bare shoulder. He was already awake, apparently. I tried to turn onto my back so I could look at him, but with his body covering mine, it wasn’t possible. I only managed to turn halfway, craning my neck back the rest of the way. “Is everything okay?” I croaked out, my voice heavy with sleep. Apart from the city lights casting a shadow on his face, there were no lights on, just us.

  “Go back to sleep,” he whispered.

  Jack’s hand found mine and I held it up, palm against palm, his skin warm against my fingertips.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Watching our hands dance as he gently tapped his fingers against mine in the low light, I linked my fingers with his, tightly, and listened to him release a long breath.

  “You want me to believe you just woke up to hold hands with me?”

  “I talked to your doctor today.”

  I turned my body a little more toward him and cautiously watched his face.

  “When?”

  “After dinner. I called his private phone.”

  “And?” I prompted anxiously when he didn’t go on. I was starting to hate the word doctor.

  “He sent the email today with the results, and I thought it was a bill so I opened it. The MRI was clean. The surgery worked. There is no tear in your membrane anymore.”

  I closed my eyes and dropped my head back onto the pillow, releasing the biggest sigh in the world. I was feeling a little dizzy with relief. A weight had been lifted off my chest with his words, the equivalent of a baby elephant. I felt worlds lighter.

  “But you still need to be careful—you know that, right?” Jack reminded me.

  That I did. The doctor had warned me that usually when a CSF leak happens out of nowhere, there is a high chance that the same issue can pop up in a different part of the membrane. If the pressure is constantly high, it really is inevitable.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Jack with a big smile. “I know, I know, but I’m still happy to have good news.” However, Jack didn’t look all that happy. My brows lowered. “Is everything else okay? You don’t look very excited.” I touched the space between his brows with my fingertip after I pulled my hand out of his grip. “Why this frown?”

  Catching my finger in his hand, he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss on my temple that caused my eyes to fall closed and my entire body to wake up and take notice of the man looking at me with such an intense expression on his face.

  “Jack,” I mumbled. My brain was screaming Danger!—the good kind.

  “I asked if we were cleared for sex.”

  That shut me up. M
y heart rate slowly picked up, and suddenly the room felt hotter.

  “And?”

  I swallowed and held my breath.

  His victorious fingers found a way to link mine with his again, and he gave them a squeeze as he stared into my eyes. “He said if we took it slow, it’d be fine.”

  “Huh.”

  That was all I could come up with to say. Huh. I was a genius for sure.

  I gave him my back but kept my tight hold on his hand so he was forced to spoon me again.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I thought we should wait the last five days.”

  “Now? Now you don’t think we should.”

  “No, I don’t think we should.”

  “What are you thinking?” he whispered into my ear in a hoarse voice, causing all the hairs on my arms to rise. “I thought you were waiting for this. I thought you wanted this.”

  I worried my teeth over my bottom lip. I could hear every little noise in the room. His breathing was low and deep, and the sound the sheets made when he tucked his legs behind mine was a soft swoosh, caressing my senses.

  I was on the edge of whimpering like a little girl when I felt his tongue on my neck, kissing me, tasting me.

  “I do want to,” I whispered, my eyes fluttering closed as if I was afraid he’d hear me.

  Silence followed my words for at least a full minute.

  “It’s okay, Rose. Go back to sleep,” he whispered back.

  How could I when his hard-on was getting harder and harder to ignore? I squeezed my eyes shut and went for it.

  “I didn’t think you’d ask me.”

  “Ask you what?”

  Groaning, I turned my head and burrowed it into the pillow, trying to be careful with my nose. “It sounds weird when I say it out loud.”

  “How would you know that if you don’t say it? Come on, let’s hear it.”

  Releasing my breath, I opened my eyes and looked out the windows in the terrace doors. “I thought when it happened, it’d just…happen.”

  His hand let go of mine and he started stroking my waist and then my arm. “What do you mean exactly?”

  How could I think of anything when he was touching me?

  “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed that I talk a big talk, Jack, but I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to getting busy. I’m not saying I’m bad or anything, I’m just saying I’m nothing special when it comes down to it. I’ve only been with three and a half people—”

  “Half? No, I take it back. I don’t want to know. I already want to kill all three and a half of them.”

  “Cute. You know I’m a romantic, so I thought when the time came, you’d just wake me up in the middle of the night and take me, you know, because you couldn’t wait any longer…or we’d walk into the apartment and you’d just lift me up and I would wrap my legs around you and you’d say fuck it and we’d go for it, or you could push me against a wall and do it like that. I didn’t think you’d ask my permission to have sex with me. It’s making me feel nervous.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been thinking about the logistics of this.”

  “Of course I have.”

  “I didn’t ask your permission.”

  “It was implied.”

  “You feeling nervous about something? I wouldn’t believe it if I saw it with my own eyes.”

  Frowning, I turned my head so I could look at him as his fingers pressed into my skin, holding me at my waist. “Are you making fun of me?”

  I caught his smile right before he captured my lips in a deep kiss and my eyes closed on their own. I slowly slipped my tongue in, brushing it against his as I turned onto my back so I could kiss him deeper. This time he let me, and his response was glorious. His fingers lifted the bottom of my shirt and, with no hesitation whatsoever, he pushed his hand right down into my underwear, going straight for my core.

  I moaned into his mouth and let my thighs fall open. He growled right back and pushed one finger inside me then he slowly added another. My body offered no resistance, already wet for him. I made a low sound in the back of my throat when he pushed his fingers as deep as they would go, moving excruciatingly slowly.

  I just kept kissing him through it, holding his face to me with both of my hands, hungrier by the second. I was so ready for this, for us to be a real thing, and this was sealing the deal. We had done everything backward—I’d even fallen for him before having an official first date—but this…this would make everything right.

  When I was sure he wasn’t ending the kiss before I wanted him to, my hands managed to find their way down into his pants, and the kiss turned into something much different once I had my hand wrapped around the base of his cock.

  Still kissing him uncontrollably, I took a deep breath through my nose and whimpered into his mouth when he started fingering me in earnest, his thumb firmly pressing on my clit. I moved my hips as much as I could, his hand driving me out of my mind.

  My body burning and tingling at the same time, I tore my mouth away from his and bit on my lip to hold in an embarrassingly long and loud moan. My hand tightened around his cock. I could hear all the noises him fingering me was making, and it was only getting me more worked up.

  “You’re dripping all over my hand again,” he murmured, and I was happy to see that he was just as out of breath as I was. He nipped my jawline, my neck, my earlobe.

  All I could manage in return was to hold on to his cock, giving it a very rough pull every now and then when I could remember to do so.

  My entire focus was on his fingers and then his lips were trailing along my neck, biting softly and licking. I was seconds away from coming on his hand. I worked my hips, pushing them down to take more of his fingers even though he was giving me everything. I wanted more, deeper, harder.

  I only realized I was saying my thoughts out loud when he said, “Okay. Whatever you want, Rose, I’ll give it to you.”

  When he pulled his fingers out of me, I sobered up a little.

  “But…”

  “Shhh.”

  I closed my legs, trying to find some kind of relief, and started pulling on his thick cock a little faster now that I could use my brain again, but he put a stop to that pretty quickly by sitting upright and gently pulling my hand out of his pants.

  When I tried to sit up too, he softly pressed a hand on my shoulder and kept me in place. “Stay still for a second.”

  I huffed but stopped squirming when he went for my underwear and pulled them off.

  “Shit.” When his fingers parted me and I felt the cool air between my legs, I was already panting. My entire focus was on Jack and what he would do next. He put his big hands on my inner thighs and opened me wider for his perusal.

  Two possessive fingers entered me again, and then those two quickly turned into three scissoring inside of me. For the life of me, I couldn’t keep still, and the more he didn’t take his eyes away from where his fingers were disappearing into, the hotter and brighter the fire inside of me burned. He leaned down and started licking my clit and all around it with a firm tongue.

  “Jack,” I mewled embarrassingly.

  “Right,” he mumbled, and after one final delicious lick, he stopped again.

  I groaned and tried to close my legs with his fingers still inside. I was pretty sure that would help me get some relief.

  His palm pressed into the sensitive skin on the inside of my thigh. “No, keep them open.”

  “I want to see you too,” I admitted. “I don’t feel particularly patient at the moment.”

  “Neither do I,” he agreed, his eyes devouring me. The next thing I knew, his fingers left me and he was taking off his shirt. I was still trying to get over his pecs and abs that were just out of my reach. He had insisted on being fully clothed at all times when he was in bed with me. I had disagreed wholeheartedly, but he had won. He got off the bed. I sat up straight and got up on my knees in the middle of the sheets.

  “Jack,” I started,
but I didn’t get far as he got rid of his pajama pants next. I couldn’t take my eyes away as his thick, veiny cock bobbed in the air, almost reaching his navel.

  Oh, this was really happening, and I was all for it.

  Holding his eyes with my own, I reached for the bottom of my shirt and took it off. Clothes were overrated anyway. Then I reached behind my back and took off my bra, throwing them both on the floor. A second later, Jack released a long groan and he was back in the bed with me, slamming into me and going straight for my mouth.

  Compared to the kiss he gave me then, all the kisses we had shared so far would be considered innocent. I tilted my head to the side and let him go in deeper. One of his hands cupped the back of my head, the other gripping my waist in an almost bruising hold. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that he was holding me to himself so he could take as much as he wanted. His cock was pressed between us, the wet and swollen head brushing my stomach. His other hand released its hold on my waist and trailed up, the drag of his skin on mine tipping me even further into delirium as he found my breast and molded it into his hand, squeezing and pulling on my nipple until I was moaning and making all kinds of noises.

  The second his lips gave mine a break, he went for my ears, licking and nipping his way down my throat to my boobs. I arched my back, offering myself to him. He latched onto my nipple with his mouth and started sucking with deep, sensual pulls as his other hand moved to caress and knead the other, getting it ready for the same treatment. I let my head drop back and tangled my fingers through his hair, gripping tight.

  My heart felt like it was beating in my throat, my pulse all over the place. There was one thing I was sure of: I would never forget Jack Hawthorne and his touch in this lifetime.

  When he sucked my nipple into his mouth deeper and harder than I was expecting him to, I had to steady myself with one hand curling around the hard muscle of his shoulder as I tried my very best to catch my breath. I’d never in my life come from just that, but I was surprisingly close.

  “Jack,” I murmured on an exhalation as he hummed and sucked my nipples, sending electricity all over my body. I wasn’t sure how I was even staying up on my knees. “Jack,” I repeated. “I want you. I can’t wait. I don’t want to wait.”