Holy. Fucking. Hell.
His words shocked me and lit an inferno in my veins as tingles shot through every part of my body. I was putty in his hands. I would do anything, anything, for this man.
“I need you too, Jesse,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I want everything you just said. I want you to fuck me. I want you to make love to me.”
“I want it every single way that’s ever been invented, and then I want to invent a few of our own. But I know we need to wait, so we’ll wait.”
“This is torture,” I said.
“I agree,” he muttered. “But it will be worth it.”
I knew it would be, too. But now we had pressure. We both wanted it so badly, and forcing ourselves to wait only added to that pressure.
It had been a long time since sex had made me nervous. But I never had the pleasure of being with someone like Jesse. While I’d been attracted to every man I had been with, not a single one of them held a candle to Jesse’s appearance, intelligence, sex appeal, or modesty.
We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. Through dinner, Jesse took the chair next to mine so our legs could touch. He took me to Quinn’s to get my stuff, and we told her the story of what happened at Human Resources while his arm slung loosely around my shoulders and mine laced around his waist. When we got back home, we cuddled on the couch. He kissed me, held me close, and loved me.
I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d felt so treasured by a man. I could literally feel how much he loved me just in the way he looked at me or in the way he gently tucked my hair behind my ear or in the way he pressed his lips to my forehead.
Richard had intended to tear us apart and ruin our lives, but he failed. Yes, we had been apart for those two months, and those were two months we would never get back; but now we were back together, and our time apart had only managed to draw us closer, to bond us in a way that neither of us had ever expected. My feelings for him grew stronger every single day we had been apart, and now that we were back where we belonged, I felt deeper and more for him with every passing moment.
As we lay in bed holding one another in the dark later that night, I sighed with pleasure. These quiet, intimate moments were the ones I had missed most during our time apart.
“How’s Carly doing?” I asked quietly.
I felt his fingers dig into my shoulder. He leaned over and kissed my forehead, but he didn’t answer my question. He just lay quietly beside me.
He sighed a long, shuddering breath, and I knew without him saying a word that something bad had happened.
I squeezed him a little tighter in my arms. He’d been dealing with his own personal hell all by himself because of Richard. I could’ve been there for him, held his hand, cried with him. But instead, he had to deal with whatever had happened alone. I hadn’t been there to help. He hadn’t been able to hold me in his arms through the night to ban the demons.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I whispered.
He was still quiet.
“You don’t have to, Jesse, but it might help for you to get it out.”
“I know,” he murmured, his soft voice full of emotion. “She died about a month ago.”
My heart broke for Jesse. He didn’t talk much about Carly, but I knew he had done everything he could to save her.
“I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t respond. My words of apology weren’t going change what happened or make it any easier, anyway.
“You have no idea how much just seeing you has helped ease the pain, V,” he said softly.
I leaned up and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips.
“Can I ask what happened?” I asked, smoothing his brow under my fingertips. I wished we had the light on so I could see his eyes.
“She had issues with addiction. She’d been in and out of rehab for years. She was only nineteen, and I guess that’s why she reminded me of my sister. Her parents made her go to rehab, and she tried to kill herself. They brought her to the hospital so she’d have twenty-four hour supervision, and we all thought she was getting better. She even had me fooled. And then as soon as she was released, she was taken back to rehab, and this time when she tried to kill herself, she succeeded.”
“That’s so horrible,” I said. I couldn’t imagine being in such a dark and lonely place. The saddest part to me was that Carly had people who cared about her, like her parents and Jesse, but she just couldn’t see it. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here to hold your hand through it.”
“I know, baby,” he whispered. “It’s not your fault. You’re here now.”
We clutched each other a little closer before falling asleep.