Chapter Twenty-Three
Paul
She’d left and walked out the door with my heart.
I knew I’d been a complete asshole the moment I woke up on the couch, my head pounding and the tequila bottle staring me in the face. I’d tried calling her over and over and over, but she never picked up the phone.
Rolling off the couch, I stood and walked down the hall to her empty room. I half expected her to be in there, but she wasn’t. I’d seriously fucked up. If it weren’t for my fucking mouth, she’d be sleeping in our bed and I’d be making us breakfast. So what if her name was Joselyn and not Andi—at least Joselyn’s a girl’s name. A gorgeous name; as gorgeous as she was. And she worked for the FBI. Well, If she didn’t, we would have never met. I was a fucking idiot. I’d let the best thing that had ever happen to me walk out the door. And worst of all, I had no one to talk to about it.
I kept trying her cell over and over, but she never picked up. I just wanted to tell her I was sorry. We’d had a fight. People fight. We’d had a fucked up, crazy day and we needed to be with each other—I needed her.
She never answered. Instead, like she’d said, a moving company came and took her stuff. They packed up her room as if none of it mattered. As if we hadn’t matter.
Well, fuck that shit.
If what she’d said was true and everything we had together was real, then she wasn’t getting away that easy. I refused to love for this reason, and now that I’d opened my heart to love again, I wasn’t going to lose it—again.
I wanted what Gabe and Autumn had. I wanted to feel what I saw on their faces—the love they felt when everything around them didn’t matter because they had each other. I wanted to know what it felt like to have the family I’d always wanted. To have the child I’d once lost.
We all had our flaws, and I didn’t care about Joselyn’s. I knew she worried that I cared about her past, but I still loved her. Her past didn’t define her future. It was how she’d overcome it that made her who she was now.
I just had to prove it.
As the moving truck pulled away, I followed it. Joselyn said she was staying undercover. I didn’t know if that meant in Vegas, but I had an idea. It also involved me quitting S&R and stat.
Add stalking to my resume. Or creeper—whatever. Joselyn was either going to arrest me after what I was about to do, or have hot monkey sex with me. I was obviously hoping for the latter. I wasn’t used to the whole dating for real thing, so if this went south, Gabe was going to need to bail me out of jail.
After I’d followed the truck, I wrote down the address. It was a house still in Vegas so I knew Joselyn was staying in town. I called Mark on my way to the jewelry store where I was going to buy her the biggest diamond I could afford. I didn’t care we were broken up and she’d moved out. I loved her.
Mark was pissed he was losing another one of his escorts. In fact, he’d said he was losing his best escort. What could I say—I knew how to fuck. Joselyn hadn’t seen my best moves yet because she was only getting into her groove, but if she said yes … oh, if she said yes, she’d know why I’d had so many dates and repeat clients.
After the jewelry store, I went home to pack and wait.
That was the worst part.
Waiting for the right time to make my move felt like torture.
My entire house was packed in boxes and my Jeep held my suitcase. I told Mark that I’d be out by the end of the month. If what I was about to do didn’t work out, then I would find a place of my own.
I was sitting out front of the house that I’d seen the moving truck deliver all of Joselyn’s belongings to and I was beginning to get nervous.
I was starting to second guess my plan.
I wanted this.
I wanted her.
I wanted her more than anything in the world.
But what if she didn’t want me?
Taking a deep breath, I opened the Jeep door and got out. I needed to find out my fate. My heart was racing, my palms were sweaty, and the damn velvet box with the two-carat, solitaire cushion diamond on a platinum band was burning a hole in my jeans pocket. I’d never been so nervous in my life. War wasn’t this nerve racking and that was crazy to think about. Going into combat, you had no time to over-think, but the last few days, that’s all I’d done.
I walked up to the front door, my suitcase in tow, and rang the doorbell. I hadn’t seen her for almost a week and it had been the longest week of my entire life. I hadn’t eaten. I’d canceled my classes at the gym. Gabe and Autumn had tried to see me, but I’d told them I was sick. I didn’t want to see anyone until I knew what the future held for me and the girl who’d come into my life like a wrecking ball.
She opened the door with a smile spread across her face and then it fell—so did mine along with my heart.
“Are you going to let me in or are you going to leave me standing on the porch?” It was the same line she’d said to me the first time we’d met. It was my only saving grace.
She looked down at my suitcase and didn’t say anything, so I moved to the next part of the plan and just walked in. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m barging into your life, gorgeous, just like you barged into mine. You don’t get to walk out of mine when we have a fight.”
“We had more than a fight.” She closed the door, but I was on the inside. This was a good sign.
“Did we?”
She nodded. “We broke up.”
“Why?”
She stared at me. “Because you didn’t think that I really loved you.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ring box and got down on one knee. “This will answer my question once and for all now, won’t it?”
Her eyes became huge and her hand covered her mouth. Tears pricked her eyes and she uttered the words I didn’t want her to say. “Stop.”
“What?”
She removed her hand. “Stop,” she whispered.
My head hung. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I’d thought her tears were tears of joy and she was on the verge of saying yes. I had no idea that her tears were because she wanted me to stop. I started to stand, but it was no use; I had no energy. All of it was consumed by everything in me trying not to break down and cry. No one had ever seen me weak and no one ever would—not even Joselyn. She didn’t deserve it. I stuffed the ring back into my pocket and stayed on my knees.
“It’s not that I don’t want to marry you,” she continued, “but I can’t.” My head shot up. She knelt down to my level and we were eye-to-eye. “I’m undercover. I can’t get married. Plus, how would it look when two escorts got married?”
“One escort,” I clarified.
“One?”
“I quit.”
“You quit?”
I nodded. “I don’t want any of that anymore, gorgeous. I just want you.”
She looked up at the ceiling not saying anything for a long time. “Then we’ll figure something out because I want you, too.”
“Is that a yes then? Will you marry me?”
She smiled and nodded, more tears in her eyes. “Yes!”
I acted fast, scooping her up off the floor. It had been over a week since I’d tasted her skin. I was about to find out what this new house was made of because I wasn’t going to be able to contain myself once I was buried deep inside my fiancé.
A frame shattered on the wood floor as I pushed her back against the wall. Our mouths didn’t break from savoring each other at the crash. I missed the feel of our lips together, of our tongue mixing and of her—just her.
I brought her T-shirt over her head and tossed it onto the floor then cupped her breast in my hand roughly. Maybe too roughly; I wasn’t sure. I was on fire.
“I missed you so fucking much,” I confessed against her lips.
“I missed you, too,” she panted.
My hand slipped down into the waistband of her shorts and straight into her panties. She was dripping wet. “Jesus, baby.”
I slid and dropped to my knees, unbuttoned her jean shorts, and pulled them and her panties down her legs. I could smell her arousal and my mouth watered. Hooking one leg over my shoulder, I spread her pussy and she glistened. I groaned as she moaned and tilted her head back.
I took my first swipe of her sweetness. Her legs shook as my tongue licked and swirled, causing her thighs to clench. My fingers pumped in and out of her as she came apart above me. She reached down, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and hung on for dear life.
Not giving her a lot of time to come down from her climax, I sprung to my feet, grabbed her ass and lifted her so she could wrap her legs around my waist. “Where the fuck is your bedroom?”
She pointed upstairs, still panting. Once we were in her room, I kicked the door shut, spun around and slammed her into the back of the door. I stripped her of her bra and kissed her from her head to her tits, all the way to her toes and then back up to her pussy where I made her scream again.
When I stood up, Joselyn reached for my belt buckle and started to palm me through my jeans. My dick was hard enough to pound nails. I needed inside her. It had been a week too long and I wasn’t waiting another fucking minute.
I placed my hand over hers that was stroking me and stopped her. In something that sounded like a groan, I partially begged, “You gotta stop, gorgeous. I want your tight pussy gripping me when I come.” I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and grabbed a condom—hey, what could I say? I’d had high hopes shit would go down like this.
After rolling the rubber down myself, I slammed my mouth back onto hers and sucked her tongue into my mouth. Her hands returned to my hair and she started climbing up my body.
Nothing else existed. I had my girl naked with her legs wrapped around my hips, grinding her hot, sopping wet pussy hard on my dick. When I felt her body start to tremble, I knew she was getting ready to explode again, so I grabbed her hips and pulled her down a little harder, making sure the head of my cock hit just the right spot.
“Fuck, Paul!”
As she hit her peak, I reached between us, grabbed the base of my shaft, and slammed home. Shifting one arm at a time, I hooked my elbows under both her knees and pumped hard again.
Heaven.
Pure fucking heaven.
I had to stop or I was gonna blow way too fucking quick. After taking a breath, I leaned in again to suck the skin between her collarbone and her neck, when she started to moaned. “Still the best fucking sound, ever.”
I started moving my hips in long, hard, deep thrusts using the back of the door as leverage. When she lifted her hand to find her own leverage against the nearest wall, it lined the tight pink nipple right up to my mouth. A little flick and suck was all it took. Joselyn had one hand holding the wall, and the other attempting to tug at the hair on the back of my head to keep my mouth on her tit. She turned her face up and screamed my name, the best sound that beat out all others.
Balls deep in my girl, her screaming my name and her pussy clenching down on my now over sensitive dick, I pumped a couple more times before filling the rubber.
“Fuck,” I groaned. “We’re gonna take a little break, and then we’re going to do that again. Us taking a break killed me and I couldn’t last as long as I wanted to.”
“That’s okay.”
“I love you, Joselyn.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “I love you too, Paul.”
“What’s wrong?”
She started to cry a little more. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to call me Joselyn and to hear you say that you love me.”
I wiped her tears. “Knowing your real name doesn’t change how I feel about you, gorgeous.”
She nodded. “I know, but it’s still nice to finally hear.”
“What’s your middle name?”
“Olivia.”
“Joselyn Olivia Marquez, I fucking love you!”
She blushed and kissed me quickly.
“And if you want you can call me PJ.” When we met, she knew me as Paul. It was weird to correct her after all this time. Now since she had a new name, it felt as though she could call me by a new name as well. After all, my close friends and the ones I loved and cared for all called me PJ.
She laughed. “Oh yeah?” I nodded. “Well, you can call me Joss.”
“I’ll stick to gorgeous.”
“I’ll stick with sexy.”
I kissed her again, finally pulling out of her and carrying her to the bed. I went to clean up before crawling into bed with her.
I needed a few more minutes to build my stamina up for round two.
We lie wrapped in each other, my fingers lightly caressing her arm as she twirled the ring I’d finally put on her finger after we were done showing each other how much we’d missed one another.
I caught a glimpse of her tattoo on her side and it finally clicked:
she always had a way
with her brokenness
she would take her pieces
and make them beautiful
“Is your tattoo about that night?”
She stopped fidgeting with the ring. “For so long I felt used. I was broken.” She turned over, placing her chin on my chest and peered into my eyes. “I never felt beautiful until you. I got that tattoo hoping that one day I would find my missing piece—and I have.”
We kissed briefly again. There were no more words spoken. I knew what it was like to be broken and to find the missing piece. She was mine. Joss returned to staring at the ring; the afternoon sun shined through the window, reflecting the diamond against the wall.
“Can I live here?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” she replied.
“Fuck.”
“We’ll figure it out. Maybe the case won’t take that long. Can you stay with Gabe and Autumn?”
“I will until I buy us a house. Wait … after the case is over, will you live here or D.C.?”
She thought for a moment. “I wasn’t planning on it, but I guess here since you have Gabe and Autumn living here and they’re your best friends.”
I kissed her lips. “Then yes, I’ll live with them until I buy us a house. I’m sure they’ll let me and if not, rent’s cheap here.” I laughed.
“Are you sure you’re okay with me going back undercover?”
“Do I have a choice?” She shook her head. “Then I have to be. Can I be your bodyguard?”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Well, actually—”
Before she could finish, the doorbell rang.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
She smiled brightly and jumped out of bed. “That’s who I thought was going to be here when I answered the door and it was you.”
I scrunched my eyebrows at her as she hurried and threw on clothes.
“You’ll probably want to get dressed to meet him.”
“Him?” I asked.
“Yep,” she yelled as she ran out of the room.
I hurried and pulled on my jeans. As I walked down the stairs, I put my T-shirt back on. I could hear her laughing the closer I got, and when I turned to go into the living room, I met the eyes of a man I’d never seen before.
“Paul, this is Seth. Seth this is—”
“Her fiancé,” I clarified.
He turned to her. “Fiancé?”
I pulled her to me and kissed the top of her head.
“A lot has happened since I moved to Vegas.” She smiled up at me.
“Apparently.” He laughed. “Well, let’s pop the champagne and you two can tell me all about it before we dive into why I’m here.”
The End … for now.
Seth’s story will continue in and will be released in 2016!
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