Strong Enough(90)

With a guttural grunt and the thrust of his tongue, Jasper pulls out of me and pumps back in. I know instinctively this is the moment he’s giving up his fight. Seconds later, with a near-violent abandon, he begins to ravage my mouth, both hands now at my hips, guiding me into a wild, hard rhythm on him.

He moves me on him, grinding and sliding, the friction unbearably delicious. When his hand slips between us and his finger finds my folds, I tip over the edge I was so precariously clinging to.

“J-J-Jasper,” I half pant, half moan.

“God, you’re amazing,” he growls, rolling over until he’s on top of me, pounding his body into mine.

Sensation ripples through me in explosion after explosion. His thick, rigid body inside mine, his lips sucking at my nipple, his hand wrapped around the top of my thigh, holding my hips up and keeping me open.

And just before I catch my breath and begin my descent, I feel Jasper stiffen in my arms as his cock pulses and throbs within me. Heat pours into me and I take it all in, hoarding it greedily and milking him for more.

“I can’t be without you again,” he breathes into my ear in a harsh and winded voice. “Ever. Not ever, Muse. Do you hear me?”

He flexes his hips, spurting the last of himself into me just before he tips me up to take him a fraction deeper. Like he wants to bury himself in me as far as he can. And I want him to. I want anything he’ll give me. And I don’t ever want to let it go.

I wrap my arms around his shoulders as far as they’ll go and I hold Jasper to me. We are as joined as two people can be, the indelible bond we share transcending even that which just happened between our bodies. I know this moment has changed everything. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, I don’t know what heartbreak might lie ahead, but I don’t care. I can’t care. He is the ocean that swallows my emptiness. He doesn’t fill it; he makes it as though there was never a space there. He is a part of me and with him it’s all or nothing. And I’ve had the nothing. I’ve lived with the nothing for months. I’m not interested in one more minute of it.

“I love you,” I mumble, my lips pressed to the salty skin of his throat. “Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou.”





FORTY


Jasper

I have to make myself pull out of Muse, regret setting in once my mind returns. I roll away and sit up, running my hands through my hair as I think of the best way forward.

I feel the bed shift as Muse sits, too. She presses her front to my back, draping her arms around my neck. I can feel the delicious points of her nipples pressing into my shoulder blades and my mouth waters reflexively.

I stand, breaking free of her hold as I pace to the other side of the room.

“I’m sorry,” I confess, unable to look back at her. I can picture perfectly what she must look like, sitting on her haunches, legs spread to reveal that beautiful pussy, lush nipples now a darker pink from the assault of my mouth.

“Why?” Her voice is small. Hurt.

I turn to find her head downcast. “I let you go so that you wouldn’t get hurt, so that I would never hurt you, and yet here I am . . .”

“You didn’t hurt me, Jasper,” she says, raising her liquid green eyes to mine. I can see the glitter of them in the moonlight streaming through the window behind her.

“I came inside you, Muse. What if you get pregnant? Do you think you’ll ever be able to get rid of me then? I took your choice away from you tonight.”

“No you didn’t. I let this happen. I was here, too, you know. And I don’t want to get rid of you. I want you here. With me. Always. And I thought that’s where you wanted to be.”

I say nothing. She’s right. I knew what I was doing. And I knew I didn’t want her to have a choice. I want to be bound to her forever. And her to me.

“Your last painting,” I begin. “I saw the hurt in it. I saw the pain and the anger. I did that.”

“You’ve been watching me.” Not a question. A statement.

“Yes.”

“I hoped you were.”

“You did?” That surprises me.

She nods. “I also hoped that one day you’d let me see you.”

“I had no intentions of that ever happening, but when I saw him on you . . .”

My blood boils instantly. I curl my fingers into fists so tight my joints ache.

“If you had no intention of ever being with me or letting me see you then why did you come? Why do that to me?”

“I wasn’t doing it to you, Muse,” I snap a little more harshly than I mean to. “Don’t you get it? I’ve never loved someone before. Not the way I love you. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I hardly eat. For months, I prayed to go back to the way I was, when I didn’t feel. Didn’t want. Didn’t love. But it wouldn’t go away. The more I tried to run from it, the worse it got. Nothing could make me forget you. Not drinking, not drugs, not other women, not—”