Watch Me Fall (Ross Siblings, #5)(77)
“Then I only wish we could have found each other sooner.”
She chuckled sadly. “You would have been married.”
“Hmm.” His lips pressed into the top of her head, and finally she was able to relax her grip on him a bit. Her fingernails must have been biting half-moons into his back, but he hadn’t complained. “Our timing sucks all around, doesn’t it?”
“Honestly? I don’t know how I could get through this without you. So our timing couldn’t be more perfect, as far as I’m concerned.”
“When you put it that way, yeah, you’re absolutely right. I’m glad I could be around to help.”
She lifted her head and looked up at him for what she had to say next. “I want you to know I’m clean. I’m not going to say I’ve been safe every time, but I’ve gotten the all-clear since all that, and I’ve been safe ever since.”
“I haven’t been with anyone since my ex. Pretty sure you already knew that, but, you know, there it is.”
“Shelly seems nice. I guess I didn’t expect that. Exes are supposed to be evil, malicious bitches.”
He chuckled. “She’s very nice. For so long I wondered what the hell was wrong with me that I couldn’t get along with someone as good as she is.”
Wow, didn’t that hit close to home at the moment. “I would think the same of you. I’m so sorry for…just now.”
“Stop apologizing. I think you have some things to work through, more things than you realize. But it’s all right, I imagine everyone does, even me.”
“Any deep, dark secrets you’d like to share so maybe I don’t feel like such an idiot?”
“You already know my deepest, darkest secret, but then so does the whole damn town.”
She supposed he meant that he allowed his marriage to derail over Macy. Maybe that should bother her more than it did, but considering their other problems, Macy seemed like a nonissue. He went on, playing with a pink strand of her hair. “Imagine walking around here knowing that. I got so sick of the gossip, I wanted to move away, but I’m stuck. I love this house, this place, I love that my girls are growing up around family and friends. Leaving here would mean leaving them since Shelly has primary custody, and I would never try to fight that or put them in a position where they had to choose between us.” Those incredible eyes strayed from his fingers’ preoccupation with her hair to return to her gaze, and the intensity there took her breath away. “I do have one confession.”
“What?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
Jared’s hands smoothed down the small of her back to cup her ass cheeks and lift her against him. Instinctively, she wound her legs around his waist, gasping as a delicious shudder went through her. “I don’t want to hear about you with anyone else. Ever. One thing you should know about me: I don’t share. If you’re mine, then you’re mine, and I’ll only be yours. Can you handle that?”
Starla couldn’t kiss him fast enough, couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t believe and had never imagined how hearing those words would affect her. Even in her more meaningful relationships—which, she had to face it, were usually based more on great sex than anything else—she’d always felt expendable. Like if she wasn’t down for something, there was always someone else who was. To belong unconditionally…
He pulled away and looked into her eyes, not letting her avoid his question. “Can you?”
“I can. I think I might cut a bitch over you.” When he moved forward to kiss her again, though, she caught his jaw with one hand, staring hard into his eyes. Such beautiful, soulful eyes. “Don’t make me regret it.” Because I don’t know if I would ever come back from it.
“Never.” He broke her grip to claim the kiss. Then another. “Never, never.” Dropping kisses all down her neck, her shoulders, oh—the room tilted dizzily and her back met the mattress, his powerful body still trapped by her thighs. Desire sang through her as she pushed her hands through his thick hair, guiding him where she wanted, where she desperately needed for him to go. But he wasn’t going. The damnable man took his precious time dropping slow, delicious kisses across her breasts, savoring every inch of her and taking special care to play with her nipple rings while Starla tossed her head and arched against him. The backs of his hands caught her behind both knees and he pushed her legs open so wide it almost hurt, and she did cry out, but that cry died in a rough gasp as he dove down to lick her clit.
Where her hands had been pushing, now they were pulling, clenching in his hair. The way he feasted on her was desperate, almost selfish, as if he were more concerned with fulfilling his hunger than giving her pleasure, but oh f*ck, how he did. “God, I love that!”
“I love how you love it,” he growled against her, the vibrations sending her need into the stratosphere, pulling her body taut as a drawn bowstring. He released her legs—she obediently left them where he’d positioned them, wide open—and one of his fingers slid inside, teasing more wetness from her. A moment later, another joined it. Thick, hard…his calluses created the most perfect friction against her slick inner walls, and his tongue drew the most devastating patterns around the little beads of her piercing. Soon she couldn’t open wide enough for him, couldn’t stop the agitated undulating of her hips as her body begged his for release.