by Lucia Jordan
Brooke looked as though she were transfixed by the words that I was speaking.
“Am I close?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “Dead-on.”
“Then it is my fault that I didn’t let you in to see who I really am, and for that I am sorry. I hope that I get the chance to show you that still and that I haven’t forever lost what we could have had. I care about you much more than you know, Brooke, and although I can be a real ass and a real moron sometimes, that doesn’t negate my feelings for you. I know you don’t think that I see you or that I listen to the things inside your heart, but I do.”
I stopped talking and noticed that our glasses were empty.
“Do you want me to walk you to your car?” I asked. “It’s been one glass already.”
“No,” she said. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’d like to stay a little longer.”
I smiled at her and thought about how much I hoped she would never leave, but then reminded myself that it was one little step at a time.
“You are more than welcome to stay the night,” I said. “I have plenty of spare rooms, and I promise I’ll leave you alone.”
“Okay,” she said as she refilled our glasses.
We spent time around the fire talking about all of the important things that we should have talked about a long time before now. We talked about our dreams and fears, our passions and goals, and all of the little and eclectic things in life that we found odd and interesting. I even let Brooke convince me to take out my guitar, which I only kept here, and play for her. I thought she was surprised when she heard that I actually could play with some proficiency. I was so drawn to her as we sat together by the firelight and talked and laughed and stared up at the moon. But this time, I wouldn’t let my desire for her ruin anything.
As much as I wanted to touch her and hold her, I wanted to be able to keep her and have her choose to return to me more than the pleasures of just one night. Because the longer I’d had to go without her, the more I had realized that I wanted to be with her every night. Whatever we had been before as a dating couple before we broke up, was no longer enough for me.
I wanted to fall asleep with her in my arms every night and wake up with her still there. I wanted to hear about all of her thoughts and ideas, even the ones that she thought didn’t matter. I never again wanted to go through a period of time where we didn’t talk, or that I took for granted that she would just be there waiting for me to get home like a puppy. I learned and grew from the sad excuse for a man that I was. I knew now that I wanted her to come with me everything, not just wait for me to return.
If I thought that telling her how sorry I was a million more times would help, then I would do it gladly. But I knew that wouldn’t be enough. Brooke needed something more; she needed to see that I meant it, not just hear my words. She needed me to show her what Max had been trying to tell me right from the start. I knew what he meant now, and I knew that Brooke needed and deserved to have that from me; I just wasn’t sure how to show it to her yet.
12
Chapter Eight (Brooke)
It wasn’t the bourbon, or the fire, or the starry sky that were making me feel so smitten with Tim again. Maybe it was a million things all together, or maybe it was just the simple fact that I felt like I knew him now and that he really wanted to know me. I watched as he held himself back with such restraint tonight, even though I could see the passion burning in his eyes as ferociously, if not more so than the flames in the fire.
His eyes seemed to change from a deep brown to a more orangish-amber depending on which way the shadows fell. I wanted him so badly that I felt like the fire was inside of me, threatening to burn me up from the inside out. But I fought against myself, my head and heart in a war over which reality to believe in. I wanted to choose a reality in which I was with Tim. I wanted to believe that he was this man, the one who played his guitar on the side of the mountain, and not the man who was nearly passed-out drunk in the back of a limo with girls on his lap.
If I did this, if I trusted him again, and he broke that trust, I would never be able to forgive him again. I would never be able to return to the job that I just got back. And it would taint my trust toward any man I was ever with in the future. That was a lot riding on whether or not I made a wise decision here tonight. I already felt myself falling. I already knew which way this was going to go because I wanted it to be that way so badly. I just hoped that it wasn’t the wrong thing again.
“Tim,” I asked as we both stared ahead into the flames. “If we were to give our relationship a second chance, what would you want to do about it.”
“What do you mean?” he asked as he turned to look at me with hopeful eyes.
“I mean if I were to tell you right now that I wanted to give us another shot. What would you want to do right now, right here?”
He looked as though he was carefully contemplating an answer.
“Do you want my honest answer?” he asked. “Or the answer that I would be willing to adhere to because I know it’s the one that you want to hear.”
I wanted both. I wanted to hear the change of tone in Tim’s voice when he told me what he really wanted.
“Let’s start with the one you think I want to hear.”
“Okay,” he said. “I would tell you how happy that makes me and how grateful I am that you’re willing to give me a second chance. I would say that you should spend the night here and that we can talk and snuggle under the blankets by the fire and maybe even fall asleep outside tonight for a bit before I would carry you back into the bed to sleep until morning. Then we would get up together, have coffee, and go to work. We could hold hands in the car again, and I can kiss your beautiful face again, and from now on, you’ll come with me on the projects instead of being left behind.”
“That was a wonderful answer,” I said. I could hear in his voice that he meant every word of it. I could hear that he would live up to all of the things that he said, and it sounded wonderful. I could also tell that he now knew how important some of those things were.
“Now tell me your honest answer,” I said.
“That actually was an honest answer, too,” he said.
“I know, I believe you,” I said. “But now I want to know what your honest answer to that question was. The answer that you would want to do right now and right here in this very moment.”
Tim took a huge and heavy breath. He sucked the air into his lungs and forced it out powerfully as if he were summoning the energy of a storm to get through his next answer. He looked at me with half-lidded eyes that oozed a sense of seduction, which make my body tremble.
“My honest answer,” he said as he turned to face me without letting a single part of his body touch mine in a painfully delicate balance of control. “Is that I would want to make love to you here and now by the fire and below the stars. I have missed your body so much that it makes my very bones and teeth ache. I long for you in a way that only the wild things on the earth can understand, and my body feels as though it will quake open and break into pieces if I can’t have you. But it’s also more than that because as much as I feel like I have missed your body, I also feel like I don’t fully know it yet.
“I feel like there was something missing before, something lacking that I had to figure out for myself. Now there’s nothing missing anymore. I know what I want, and it’s you. I want to feel you in the way that I couldn’t before—fully and with reckless abandon. I want to feel my body swell inside you and fill every space within you until you can feel that we are together. I want to make love to you endlessly, and I want to start right now and never stop.”
I watched as his heaving breaths made his muscular shoulders move up and down, and I could see by the pulsing vein at his neck that his heartbeat was rapidly increasing as each moment passed. I saw his clenched jaw and his tightened fists as he tried to hold himself in and not give in to the passion that was burning furiously within us both. And I felt my own body become upsw
ept in the torrent of yearning that threatened to swallow me whole.
“That’s my honest answer,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” I asked, barely able to speak as I tried to calm the sensual thoughts in my head.
“Sorry that I want you so badly.”
I couldn’t stop this any longer. I can’t resist him. “You don’t need to be sorry,” I said. “I want you to.”
Tim looked at me as if I had just shattered the truth and let it come flying free. His whole body was trembling, and as soon as I reached my hand up to touch the side of his face, he lunged forward and put his mouth over mine as he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a tight embrace. As his tongue thrust between my partially open lips, I wrapped my fingers in his hair and kissed him as if I needed his body in order to stay alive in my own.
In a frenzy, more intense than the flames dancing around us, our hands began to undress each other and toss any clothing between us to the side. The chilly air slapped against my skin, but when I trembled from the cold, Tim pressed his warm body against mine, and we created our own heat. When all of the clothing between us had been tossed aside, and our intertwined tongues were no longer just enough of a connection between our bodies, I lay down with my back against the blankets as he crawled over me. He held his body in a tortured stillness, his hard and throbbing cock laying against the top of my thighs, and looked deeply into my eyes as if he could see further into me than I thought possible.
“Brooke,” as he tried desperately to hold onto control. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t stop.”
At my words, I parted my thighs and urged my body against his as I tilted my hips upward and rolled my pelvis back. He moaned into the clear night air as he pushed himself into me with a slow and steady strength that sent tremors throughout my body. Tim moved within me as I kissed him and ran my hands along his body. He was right; we had never made love like this before. There was a higher, stronger, and more intimate connection now than I could even fathom. Even the stars in the sky looked down upon us with jealousy for such intimacy. When the moment came to release the steady, upward climb of ecstasy, our bodies quaked together so powerfully that the ground beneath us must have felt it.
Afterward, our intimate sexual encounter by the bonfire, we lay together beneath the blankets. I rested my head against his shoulder and stared at how stunning he was as he kissed the top of my forehead right between my eyes.
“That was the most amazing physical experience I have ever had,” he whispered to me.
“I want you to make love to me more,” I said.
“I will make love to every night and every morning, if you’ll let me,” he smiled.
“I meant that I want you to make love to me more now.
His eyes lit up again as if his body’s need for rest had suddenly just abated. He stood up, fully naked, and then reached down to pick me and the blanket wrapped around me up. Tim carried me into the house and up into his bedroom, where he laid me down and hovered above me. He was already fully erect and ready to satiate our devouring need again. He paused for just a short moment, as he had done outside by the bonfire, and then when I smiled and leaned up to kiss him, Tim didn’t hold back as he pushed into me again.
That night of love-making lasted until the wee hours of the morning and until our bodies finally gave-up to rest. We slept in late in the morning, and then even when we did wake up, we were still so tired that Tim texted the office and told Max he wouldn’t be in for a few hours. As incredibly wonderful as the sex was, it also felt so good to sleep with Tim curled around me and then wake up in his arms. Maybe everything had happened for a reason. Maybe if we hadn’t gone through all of the trials and tribulations that we did, we wouldn’t have recognized and appreciated the moment of where we were now.
When we woke up for good this time, Tim kissed me softly, and I nuzzled against his chest for a few minutes before we got up. Then we went to make coffee together to try to bring our brains online. It was nice to be able to walk around his house completely naked since there was literally no one else around in the mountains. It was even better watching him walk around naked.
“I want you to stay with me,” he said as he wrapped one arm around me while the other held his coffee cup. If we’re going to give this a second shot, I think you should stay with me.”
“What do you mean, here in the mountains?” I asked.
“Yes, on nights that we come here. And then in my downtown apartment on the nights that we stay in the city.”
“But what about Kate?” I asked. I knew she would be okay if I moved out, although we would miss each other and our girl’s nights. She’d probably have Nick move in. But still, I was paying rent for my room, and she needed the help.
“I’ll pay her rent for the remainder of the year,” Tim said.
“Really? You’d do that for her?”
“Kate is your friend, and I’d do that for you. I’d do anything for you, Brooke.”
We had coffee and got dressed for work together, and I agreed to move out of Kate’s apartment and to move in here with Tim. It was a pretty rushed decision, considering I’d just agreed to give him a second chance last night. But there was just this overwhelming sense to take a leap of faith this time and know that it would work. Maybe it was one of my stupidest decisions; I didn’t know, we’d see. But I did know that if I didn’t go for it now with Tim, that I would regret it for the rest of my life. I could deny it all that I liked him and fool as many people as would believe me, but the truth was that I had fallen so hard for Tim that it was too late for me to save myself from drowning in my feelings for him. I was putting my tiny, exposed heart in his hands.
When we got into the car to go to work, I felt good. I felt good about my job and about my relationship with Tim, and about my change in the living situation again. I felt like I could trust and believe in Tim, and that was all I had really wanted to begin with. I thought Tim felt that way, too, and that he was excited to walk into work today, hand-in-hand, and show Max that we were back together.
“There’s a photo shoot at the office today, Tim said on our drive into work. “The Spokane client wants us to make some sort of promotional material for them to use both on their website and in hard copy. There’s an agency that I usually work with for the photo shoots, and they should be bringing all the gear and the models.
“That sounds pretty fun and interesting,” I said. “What do you want me to be working on during the photo shoot?”
“Maybe backing up some of my computer files and exporting them to an external hard drive.
“Sure.” I wanted to see the photo shoot, too, so maybe I would sneak down and take a quick peek after it had started.
As soon as we walked into the office holding hands, Max looked up and smiled at us both.
“See, this is why I knew you guys would work out. You had to. You’re too perfect for each other, not to be together.
Tim beamed at Max, and even his new office assistant, who he had forgotten to reassign, picked up on the fact that he looked exceptionally happy today.
Tim, Max, and I began working on the project together until it was time for Tim to go to this photo shoot. Max had a bit of a strange look on his face as Tim left, almost as if he knew Tim was headed into a storm.
13
Chapter Nine (Tim)
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said under my breath as I walked into the building’s lobby where we would be doing the photoshoot.
Chelsea stood there in her tight, plunging black dress that looked like it had been painted onto her body. I wondered how she even got that thing on without tearing it. She wasn’t overweight by any means, but she was curvy and voluptuous, and her breasts made it look like the dress was bursting at the seams.
“Tim!” she smiled as she sauntered toward me in her towering heels. Balancing all of those curves with that catwalk swagger on those heels was also a feat u
nmatched in the natural world.
She tried to put her hand against my chest when she reached me, but I took a step backward and left her arm dangling in the air. For some reason, she was always trying to touch me.
“What are you doing here, Chelsea?” I asked as she formed her mouth into an oversized pout at the fact that I backed away from her.
This woman got me into trouble, and I was almost certain she knew it and liked it.
“I’m doing the photo shoot with you for the Spokane project,” she smiled. “Isn’t that great? You and are going to be in another photo together. Except for this time, it’s going to make me money.”
I ignored her and walked right over to my publicity director.
“I want a different model for the shoot, take Chelsea off of it.”
My publicity director looked at me and shook his head. “You’re the boss, so I’ll change her out if you say to. But the client saw a portfolio of models to choose from and specifically requested Chelsea. I even asked him for a backup second choice, like I always do in case a requested model can’t make a shoot. But he said he only wanted her. He liked the look of her long black hair and umm, curves.”
Ugh, crap.
I couldn’t afford to piss the Spokane client off; this project was way too important.
“Looks like we’re doing the shoot together,” I said to Chelsea as I walked back over toward the backdrop where she was standing and primping herself.
“Yay!”
This should only be a few innocuous photos for the website and print materials that the company decides to use. It’ll take less than an hour, be in front of several of my employees who are here to assist the photographer, and be an innocent set of poses in front of the backdrop banner that shows a landscape of Spokane with one of our builds in the forefront. All that Chelsea and I have to do is stand in front of the screen in whatever platonic poses the photographer puts us in. Brooke was upstairs working with Max still, and I would tell her everything about Chelsea being here and how it went just as soon as I got back upstairs to my office. There was no reason to overthink this at all; I just needed to do it and get it over with.