by Jewel E. Ann
Rory?
Me?
God?
“What are you going to do, Reese? Move back to Texas because your mom is going to Hell?”
“I don’t know, Fisher. Would that make me a total asshole?”
I inwardly laughed at how much my asshole comment bothered her. “Probably,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, you would know what it’s like to be a total asshole.”
“Why? Because I wouldn’t fuck you?”
“Well, from what I hear, I’m the only single female in a twenty-mile radius you haven’t put your dick into. That makes me a unicorn. Maybe that makes me the one woman you can’t have.”
She had it all wrong. It made her the one I gave a shit about. It made her special, but not in the way her crazy brain thought. I stood and plucked the bottle of beer from her hand, taking the rest down in one shot. “If I wanted you, I could have you, and we both know it.”
No more cat and mouse. I gave her the facts.
“No.” She shook her head. “You can’t have me. Not now. Not ever. I don’t want you anymore.”
“You do.” I handed her the empty bottle.
“I don’t!” She bolted from her seat, chin up, determination etched into her face.
I had to fight the laughter that tickled my chest. “It’s almost too easy.”
“What’s too—”
I kissed her so hard she didn’t have a chance to protest worth a shit. The bottle dropped to the floor. Her fingers claimed two fists full of hair. I grabbed her ass, lifting her up to me and carrying her straight up the stairs without letting go of her mouth. God … that mouth of hers …
As soon as I set her on the bed, I tore off her shirt.
She kept a defiant expression on her face, despite her greedy hands reaching for me as I ripped down the front of her bra, sucking and biting her tits.
“Fish … er …”
Kneeling between her legs, I peeled off her jeans. She eyed me with something so distinctly different than anything I had seen from her before that moment. I was done letting her be the indecisive teenager grappling with her sexuality and where it fit with her god. We weren’t in high school, hiding from parents. We were adults doing very adult things. I no longer gave a fuck about her stupid V-card.
I just … wanted her. And I knew she wanted me. So I was going to take everything. And she was going to hate herself … and me. I didn’t fit on her pedestal. I was too human. I was too fucking flawed.
Kissing my way up her leg, I paused along her inner thighs and slipped my finger beneath the crotch of her panties, circling her clit.
She moaned, hips jerking.
My finger slid lower. My tongue teased the skin along her leg, and I pushed my finger inside of her. She gasped. Pulling it out, I repeated it over and over again.
Yes, Reese … I’m going to fuck you like this. I’m going to take what you’ve been begging me to take. And you’re going to hate me because you’re still too tethered by the guilt of it all.
Removing my finger, I slid off her panties, ignoring the conflicted expression on her beautiful face. Then I unbuttoned my jeans.
“I’m …” She breathed heavily. “I’m not having sex with you.” The lies came so easily by that point. They weren’t even her words. They were regurgitated sermons filling the space that belonged to her real conscience, her true self.
“No?” I snaked my hands behind her, unhooking her bra. “We’ll see.”
She didn’t protest.
“Ah!” She jumped when I bit her nipple, when I slid not one but two fingers inside of her.
Pumping them.
Prepping her.
Kissing her.
She whimpered when I released her, standing to remove my jeans. After a quick swallow like she needed to swallow the part of her that was losing control, she whispered, “I won’t do it. You don’t deserve it. You had your chance.”
“We’ll see.” I crawled onto the bed, working my way back up her legs, my tongue making a slow, deep swipe between those sexy legs.
She jumped, back arching from the bed, hands flying to my hair.
Her perfectly curved hips, her breasts and hard nipples, the delicate skin along her neck … I took it all.
We kissed as I settled between her legs, once again, in the familiar spot separated by nothing but my briefs.
I rocked into her over and over. She lifted her hips, searching for the very thing she said she wouldn’t do. I wasn’t her savior. If she didn’t want it, she was going to have to be a grown woman and stop it.
Rolling onto my back, I took her with me. I gave her the upper hand, every opportunity to stop it.
“No sex,” she said in a fractured voice.
I was breaking her. And maybe that was wrong, but she needed to learn so many lessons in life, and that moment was one of them. Even if she regretted it, I knew she would be a better woman—a better lover—because I didn’t try to make it (that damn V-card) feel special; I just … loved her. All of her.
I sat up, face to face with her. “We’ll see.” I kissed her, and she denied me nothing. She just kept giving more and more as I grabbed her hair with one hand and guided her hand beneath my briefs with my other hand.
She stroked me.
I fingered her slowly, making her squirm with need for more.
Breaking our kiss, I reached for the nightstand drawer and retrieved a condom, using my teeth to open it as Reese gazed at me with wide eyes and parted lips, body stiff. I pushed down the front of my briefs and rolled on the condom.
Then I kissed her, but gentler, slower. She had the chance to stop it.
She didn’t. And I wasn’t going to save her.
Ghosting my lips across her face, to her ear, I whispered, “Your husband can thank me.”
Again, her whole body turned rigid against mine, but she said nothing. Did nothing.
I lifted her hips and positioned her over my cock. I knew I’d go slow … but I also knew I’d go all the way and ignore every last pang of regret that she had managed to make me feel over the previous months.
Then … she resisted my hands pulling on her hips, preventing me for taking it any further. Her blue eyes turned into enormous pools of tears that spilled over and down her face.
I knew I’d love her for saying yes, and I knew I’d love her even more for saying no. For finding her voice. For taking that first step toward finding her place in the world—even if it wasn’t with me.
Reese pressed her hands to my face. “Thank you, Fisher.” She climbed off my lap.
I didn’t stop her.
She dressed.
I didn’t stop her.
“I’m volunteering to go on a mission trip to Thailand for six months. And then …” She shrugged while taking a shaky breath. “I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure me out.” She turned. After a couple steps, she glanced over her shoulder, offering a sad smile. “There’s more to life than crossword puzzles, right?”
I could barely breathe past the lump in my throat, let alone speak. Letting her go felt infinitely harder than holding on to her. Clenching my jaw to keep my emotions from changing her mind, I nodded and my eyes burned with my own tears. “I hope so.”
Once again … and maybe for the last time … my heart left my body with an eighteen-year-old cruciverbalist.
The Lost Fisherman
Chapter One
Six months in Thailand turned into twelve months in Thailand with Brendon. Rory was right. Friendships had a way of turning into more.
Playful nudges.
Teasing.
Flirty glances.
Hand-holding.
Stolen kisses.
All the little things checked off the boxes. If the boxes were checked, it had to be love. Right?
A stop in Tokyo and another in Los Angeles was all that stood between me and my mom—between me and the naked fisherman.
Brendon spent the month prior to our trip home hi
nting about marriage.
Did I see myself having a destination wedding or a church wedding?
How many kids did I want?
Would I choose to live in the city or in the mountains?
A dog and two cats? Or no cats and two dogs?
Brendon still had his job waiting for him at the law firm in Denver. He would make good money with room for advancement, maybe even make partner one day.
I had the chance to do … nothing. Well, not true. There would be kids to raise, dogs to walk, and cakes to bake.
Fisher made good money. If I was destined for the life of a wife and stay-at-home mom, why did I leave him? I thought about Fisher more in the days leading up to our departure than I had done for the previous twelve months.
Brendon convinced me to prolong our trip by a few days so we could spend a few nights in Tokyo.
“Reese, slow down,” he mumbled over my mouth—my anxious mouth—as we took the elevator to the hotel room.
I had this clawing feeling that Brendon’s reason for the extra days in Tokyo had everything to do with a marriage proposal.
Proposal.
Wedding.
Sex.
That was his plan.
I had other plans. For some reason, I didn’t want to lose my virginity, or what was left of it, on my wedding night. What if I married Brendon and the sex wasn’t good? What if I spent every second comparing him to Fisher?
I had to know.
“Whoa … seriously, what’s up with you?” Brendon pulled my hand away from his crotch just as the elevator doors opened.
“I don’t want to wait. I know … I know it’s wrong, but I don’t want to wait.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Reese, I think you’re just experiencing some mixed feelings over going home after being away for a year. Go take a shower, drink some water, and sleep on it. Okay?” He stopped at the door to my room.
His answer to sex was shower, hydrate, and sleep on it? Would every man I met reject me? Would I ever have sex?
“Okay.” I nodded. “You’re right. Night.”
That night, I showered, thought about Fisher, and I touched myself.
The next morning, we were first in line to go to the observation tower of the Tokyo Skytree. With Mt. Fuji visible in the distance on the clear day, Brendon got on one knee and proposed to me with his grandmother’s diamond ring.
Onlookers smiled and gasped, all eyes on us. No … all eyes on me.
“You’re the woman of my dreams, Therese Capshaw, and I think I knew it from the day we met. Do me the honor of being my wife.”
My brain was paralyzed. But in the moment, all I could do to make everyone stop staring at me, including Brendon, was nod.
“Yes!” He slipped the ring on my finger and stood, pulling me in for a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.
I was engaged, and I got a kiss on the cheek.
On the way back to our hotel, I pulled on his arm, tugging him into a drugstore.
“What are you doing?” He laughed.
I led him up one aisle and down the next, stopping at the condoms.
He narrowed his eyes. “Reese …”
“It doesn’t mean we have to; it just means … we’re prepared.”
“Prepared to sin?”
“Prepared to not have to explain why we need to rush our wedding if we do happen to sin.”
Brendon shook his head, and I knew he wasn’t comfortable with it, but I wasn’t comfortable marrying him and not having sex with him first. And that should have been the only sign I needed.
But I was still that teenaged adult with so much to learn, and my favorite teacher happened to be half a world away and retired from teaching me any more than tough love and the oh-so-important “sink or swim.”
With a miserable grimace and his teeth digging into his lip, Brendon nodded.
That nod led to anticipation.
Anticipation led to the allure of the forbidden.
He might not have initiated it on his own, but when we found ourselves in his hotel room after dinner that night, things quickly moved in the direction of that box of condoms.
“I love you so much,” Brendon chanted over and over between kisses and amid discarding our clothes. Maybe he thought God wouldn’t be so critical of our decision if he kept reminding me (and God) how much he loved me. It wasn’t merely a physical need—and hopefully not an immoral act; we were in love and committed to each other.
And by “we” I meant Brendon more than me.
I just wanted to know what it felt like to have sex with him. And I loved him; it just didn’t feel like it did with Fisher. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to feel like it did with Fisher.
“I’m so nervous my hands won’t stop shaking,” Brendon said as he fumbled the condom.
After he rolled it on, I closed my eyes—another sign things weren’t great with Brendon. He touched me, and I imagined it was Fisher.
He started to push into me, and I replayed moments with Fisher. But Brendon didn’t touch me like Fisher had touched me. He didn’t really touch me at all, just his cock suited up between my legs and his lips nervously hovering over my lips.
Did he not notice my breasts? Maybe he wasn’t a breast man.
Did he not want to kiss me between my legs? Locate my clit? Run his tongue along the length of my neck before biting my earlobe?
It was all so different.
I winced when he pushed all the way into me. It didn’t feel great, maybe because he wasn’t doing anything to make it feel at least a little less than awful and painful.
For the next five minutes, maybe not even, he jabbed me with an erratic rhythm. He missed my clit every time while his heavy breaths washed over my face—grunting and occasionally pressing a limp, sloppy kiss to my mouth.
“Oh my …” Brendon squeezed his eyes shut and stilled for a few seconds before a full-body shiver shook him. He opened his eyes and grinned. “That was…” he blew out a breath “…amazing. I love you so very much.”
When he rolled off me, I slowly sat up with my back to him and tears in my eyes. I gave him my virginity, and I didn’t regret it, not on my part. Brendon deserved it because it meant something to him. I think it meant more to him than it meant to me.
The tears?
Guilt?
Not because I’d sinned.
Because I tempted him. He sinned for me. He did it because he loved me. He did it because it seemed a little less wrong since I agreed to marry him.
Tears … I couldn’t stop the tears because I knew I couldn’t marry him.
And I couldn’t go home to Rory … to Fisher.
It was time to do something for myself. It was time to fall in love with endless possibilities. Time to walk alone. Time to grow up.
Time to “fucking think for yourself.”
Chapter Two
Four years later …
“Oh my BABY GIRL!” Rory threw her hands in the air and charged me like she did at the airport in Denver after getting out of prison.
I was a teenaged adult then. Deer in the headlights. And no clue where my journey even began, let alone where it might take me.
It took me to Fisher, then it took me to Thailand, then it took me to Ann Arbor, Michigan. In Thailand, I volunteered to help a woman named Alesha. She was fifty-three. A midwife. Much like working for Fisher, I was grunt labor. No experience needed. And much like Fisher, Alesha taught me a lot. I watched (sometimes helped) her deliver thirty-three babies during my year in Thailand. But I knew after the very first delivery, that she had the best job in the world.
After breaking Brendon’s heart that night in Tokyo, I changed my travel plans. Instead of going back to Colorado, I returned to Houston. My grandparents helped me make financial arrangements for college.
Nursing school at the University of Michigan.
A new place where I didn’t know a soul. The perfect place to follow my dream.
“Your dad would be so proud.” Rory hugged me the day
I received my bachelor’s degree.
I loved her for acknowledging Dad. He really would have been proud of me.
My mom’s parents were overjoyed for me too. My dad’s parents plastered on their fake smiles, watching Rory and Rose congratulate me. They were not okay with my mom and her lesbian partner. I loved my mom, and I loved Rose too. During my four years in Ann Arbor, they averaged three visits a year. I never made it to Denver, but they didn’t mind coming to me.
The sour looks on my dad’s parents’ faces didn’t bother me. They were old. Set in their ways. And their opinions no longer shaped mine.
I thought for myself. I found a way to love God without fear or guilt—the most liberating feeling ever.
Sex? Yes … I’d had a handful of boyfriends during my four years in Michigan. And they were all better lovers than Brendon. To be fair … it was his first time too.
Alcohol? I wasn’t a binge drinker, but I enjoyed a fun night out with friends.
Friends … I had so many friends from nursing school. They felt more like sisters and brothers to me.
I even got a tattoo … but no one, aside from my lovers, had seen it. Fisher wasn’t the only one who deserved a harem.
“Lunch?” Rory asked.
“Sounds perfect!” I hugged my grandparents just before we headed toward the parking lot. Mom and Rose rode with me while my grandparents drove their rental cars.
“So when do you start your new job?” Rose asked.
I laughed. “First I have to pass my NCLEX exam. Then I’ll find a job.”
“Then you’ll be able to start your master’s degree next fall, correct?”
I nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“We’re moving out of the basement. Getting our own place. There will be plenty of room for you if you decide to come back to Denver,” Mom said.
“Moving out of Fisher’s basement?” I shot her a quick side-glance. It felt weird saying his name. I’d thought about him a lot, but I hadn’t actually said his name.
“Did you ever get to meet Angie?” Rory asked.
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Um, I think so. His childhood sweetheart?”