Jake sat on the edge of the bed watching me as I struggled to hold the small white hotel towel closed while I walked over to the overnight bag to grab my pajamas. I could feel him following my every move. I started making my way over to the bathroom to change. As I was entering the doorway, he came up from behind and put his hand on my arm, stopping me.
His voice was gruff. “Where are you going?”
I leaned my back against the sink. “I was going to change in here.”
“Away from me? Why don’t you want me looking at you anymore? You never used to hide from me like that.”
I swallowed nervously, not knowing how to answer. I wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt him. “I…guess it’s just a habit.”
That wasn’t an answer, and I knew it. There was no good excuse. I had just become used to hiding myself from him lately because I was still self-conscious about my body. He thought it was more that that. I looked into his eyes and saw that the fear I had instilled in him was very much alive and well. One day of my acting normal, telling him things were getting better—even if I meant it—could not suddenly undo weeks of denying him, shutting him away, not even letting him touch me. For the first time, I really saw how deeply I had fucked him up…fucked us up.
“It wasn’t a conscious thing, Jake. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He lowered his head onto my breasts and let out a long deep breath through the towel over my skin, holding me against the sink. “Well, I didn’t mean to let it show…how badly you hurt me. I’m sorry. It’s just that you hid yourself from me just now and I thought…that meant…it was back again.”
“You have every right to be angry.”
He didn’t respond.
He wouldn’t look at me. His head was still buried in my chest. His breathing was rapid and my legs began to quiver because I wanted him badly. “I want you,” I said. “If you’re mad…take it out on me…make love to me.”
He spoke against my skin. “I don’t know if you can handle me…the way I’m feeling right now.”
I tore the towel from in between us, throwing it on the ground. That triggered a visceral reaction in him, and he began to suck on my neck hard as he pulled my hair back roughly. My full breasts tingled, a reminder that I needed to wake A.J., but I couldn’t move from this spot. My nipples hardened, and when milk began to trickle out, Jake sucked the excess out of each breast. It was the first time he had ever done that. The sensation of his hot mouth sucking the milk out of me while he moaned, drove me mad. I almost came and could feel liquid pooling between my legs. I couldn’t ever remember being that turned on by anything in my life and felt like I couldn’t see straight.
His mouth then moved down to my abdomen as he dropped to his knees. He knew I was most self-conscious about my stomach. When he felt me tense up, he kissed it harder, grazing it with his teeth, unwavering in his determination to stake his claim on that part of my body, despite my insecurities.
He looked up at me with both palms on my belly, then gently brushed his finger lower over my c-section scar. “Don’t ever hide this from me again. This is where my baby was, where my other babies will come from. It’s precious to me, and it’s beautiful.” He kissed it one last time softly. “You’re beautiful.”
For the first time, I believed him when he said it.
He stood up, towering over me. His hair was disheveled, and a stray piece fell over his darkened green eyes. His erection was straining through his beige cargo shorts, and he was looking at me like he was about to attack. He then took my bottom lip into his mouth and sucked it hard, slowly releasing it. I was growing impatient with need and tugged at his black Nine Inch Nails t-shirt trying to pull it over his head. I jumped when he abruptly moved my hands off of him.
Then, he walked away.
“Go feed your son. I’m going to take a shower.”
CHAPTER 32
JAKE
I turned the lever to make the water colder. I needed to calm the fuck down. I didn’t know what came over me out there, but it wasn’t good. Even though she was encouraging it, if I had taken another step forward, it would have been like a tornado touching down. I felt incapable of being gentle and knew the end result of the possessive urges flowing through me would have scared the shit out of her.
I had snapped tonight, and it was about more than just her shielding her body from me. It was the fact that from the beginning, I never felt like I deserved her. Aside from the past couple of months, she had always wiped away that doubt with her love and her strong physical need for me. When the postpartum stuff happened, almost out of the blue, she started to push me away, and all of my insecurities moved to the forefront, growing like a cancer I couldn’t stop.