Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(92)

Screw it. I did.

I moved the dog over and climbed into Jacob’s lap. I straddled him in my blue summer dress and wrapped my arms around his neck and put my lips to his ear and just kept whispering the same thing over and over and over again. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

He responded immediately. Like I’d reached him in the fog and he was clinging to me before he lost me again. His arms wrapped around me and he buried his face in my hair and it felt like the magnets that had been flipped and turned and flipped and turned had finally snapped together and spun to a halt.

“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so much.”

Even if you don’t love me back. Even if it never matters to you or means anything or goes anywhere. I love you.

His breathing was labored.

I put my hands on his wet cheeks and looked him in the eye and started reciting the grounding exercises I used for panicking patients in the ER.

“Look for five things you can see,” I whispered. “Four things you can touch. Three things you can hear. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste.”

But he didn’t look for any of them. He just looked in my eyes. It must have worked, because after a few moments, I felt him calming down. His breathing steadied, his heart rate settled. When it was clear he was coming out of it, I put my forehead to his and closed my eyes.

Love me. Just love me instead. I’d take care of you. I’d protect you and shield you and be anything you needed. I’d be harmless to you…

He shook his head gently against mine like he could hear my thoughts. “I can’t fucking do this anymore…” he breathed.

Neither could I. But then I couldn’t even bring myself to get off his lap. The power this man had over me terrified me because there was so little I wouldn’t do. I was glad he never asked more of me after he asked me on that date, because I wasn’t capable of saying no to him. Even if it was against my own best interest. Especially if it was against my own best interest.

Why was I spending all my time pretending that I wasn’t in love with a man in love with someone else? Why was I doing this? Why was I torturing myself? Again.

It was so unfair.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, trying to hold it back, but a sob choked me. He pulled away to look at me, worried. I turned, but he tipped my chin back to him. “What’s wrong?”

I just shook my head.

“Briana, look at me.”

I opened my eyes. His face was so close I could see the tears on his lashes, the red rims of his eyelids. We breathed into each other’s space and he stared back at me, one of his quiets, the one I couldn’t ever read.

He was so perfect.

His face was like art to me. The slope of his nose. The angle of his jaw. The black flecks in his eyes, the fullness of his bottom lip. I studied him unapologetically. Canvassed him up close with so much longing I felt like my heart would give out under the strain of loving him this much.

I was aware of everything. Every point of contact. My hands on his warm, firm shoulders. My dress hiked up, my bare thighs against his thighs. The tickle of his breath on my face, his belt buckle pressing low into my stomach.

He was looking at me too. His face looked tortured and pained, and I hated that she did this to him. That she could.

We just peered at each other. Me loving him, and him loving her. He raised a tentative hand and wiped a tear off my cheek. “Briana…” he whispered.

The sound of my name caressed my ears.

There was something so intimate hanging in the space between us. I was hypnotized by it. By the proximity to him and the hand on my skin and the way his sad eyes were roaming my face.

His gaze moved to my mouth.

He pressed a thumb to my bottom lip and pulled it down the slightest bit. And then he did the worst possible thing. The absolute worst thing he could ever do. He drew my face to his and kissed me.

Just a light brushing of his lips to mine. A little test.

I failed. I kissed him back.

It all unraveled after that.

Any boundaries, any semblance of propriety or politeness that we’d maintained all these months, were instantly gone. Hands raked into my hair and I wrapped my arms around his neck and the kissing became a desperate, starving, frantic extension of everything we’d already been doing—only there was nobody here to see and no reason for it other than I couldn’t deny him anything he wanted and both of us were out of our fucking minds.

This man was hurting. He was looking for some kind of distraction or escape from what he was feeling and I knew this.

I devoured him anyway. And he matched my energy a thousand percent.

His tongue plunged against mine, he nipped at my bottom lip, parted for me and started again. Opened and tasted, pulled back and nibbled, and kissing him was everything I’d imagined it would be and more. We already knew how to do this. We already had a rhythm, like we’d already kissed a thousand different ways over a hundred different lifetimes. I knew his mouth. I knew his whole body. I knew all of him with my eyes closed after months of watching and wanting, and he knew me too. I could feel it in every touch.

I drew in closer and his hands started to wander. He ran a palm up my calf, under my thigh, and pulled me into his growing erection with a grip on my ass. I lifted his shirt and pressed my fingers along his bare chest, rocking against the hard edge in his lap. When he slid fingers into my underwear and circled, kissing roughly down my neck, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was about to fuck him on this futon. I had zero control over any of it and I didn’t even care. I literally couldn’t stop.