{Kayla}

I can’t lose him. Jake’s the only guy I can be myself around who doesn’t run away screaming. Well, until now. I run outside into the darkness of the night. Of course, it’s raining. I whip around, looking for him. I don’t want him leaving, not like this. Not ever. We have serious issues to work through, but storming away instead of working through them is not the way to start a relationship—if that’s even what we’re doing. He taught me that.

I spot him and yell, “Jake!” He doesn’t stop. “Jake!” He still doesn’t stop. Fine. He wants me to go there, I’ll go there. “Don’t you dare walk away from me, you asshole!”

That got his attention. In a flash, he’s in front of me, dragging me inside the apartment. By the time we get inside, we’re both dripping from the rain. “What the hell is wrong with you? You don’t scream shit like that outside our apartment. We have to live here, for Christ’s sake. If you want to star in your very own episode of Cops, do it without me.”

Without warning, I reach up to slap him. He grabs my wrist before I make contact. “Are you kidding me? We’re back to that?”

“Yes.” I don’t know what else to say to justify my stupidity, so I thrust out my chin and give him the most pompous look I’ve got in my arsenal.

“Fine.” He drops his hands to his sides. “Beat the shit out of me and get it out of your system. Do it. What are you waiting for?” When I don’t raise my hand, he nails me with a glare. The hardness in his expression softens, but he’s not about to forgive me for slapping him, then or now. Hell, I wouldn’t forgive me, either. “Well?”

In a moment of weakness, I blurt out, “I hate you.”

“You called me back here to cut me deeper?” His entire being tenses and he steps back, devastated from my confession. I see it in his eyes. I feel it in the way he’s now looking at me. Based on that look he has hanging over him, the slump of his shoulders like the weight of the world just collapsed on him, he doesn’t have the fight left in him.

Jesus, what’d I just do?

“Look at me, Jake.” I reach for his hand and squeeze his hand until he does. The pain swirling in his eyes shatters my heart. I caused that look. God, what the hell is the matter with me? I can’t stop the tears as they swell in my eyes and break free.

“Do you really hate me?”

“No. I hate me.” I sob, accepting the truth. All this fighting, everything I’ve done to push him away, isn’t to protect me. It’s to protect him from me. “You deserve better.”

“Than what?”

“Than me. I’m just like the one person I never wanted to be like. My mom is insane. She’s mean. She’s judgmental. She keeps lists and lists of rules. So many stupid rules! If something isn’t part of her perfect plan in life, she rejects it. She rejects everything! She rejects…” I stop before admitting the painful truth.

“You?” he asks softly.

I nod as tears burn down my cheeks. “I’m exactly like her. God, I’m seriously messed up. You’re better off with someone more like you. Someone beautiful and confident. Someone who deserves a guy as great as you. I’m not any of those.”

“You’re all of those.”

“I’m not!” I wish I could believe him, but I can’t. “I’m the one with the cushy job after graduation. I’m not the wild one. The rebel. I’m not the one anyone wants to be with. I’m the safe one, the one who gets the trophy wife.” I wave at him. “Or, in my case, trophy boyfriend.”

I stop at the realization and inhale sharply. Holy shit. I’m not just like my mom at all. I’m just like my dad. I’m not the settler. I’m the settlee.

“And yet I still love you.”

With all the other emotions at my arsenal now drained, I turn to anger and slam my finger into his chest. Hard. “I never said you could love me.”

“I never asked permission.” He grabs my wrist and moves closer.

I inch toward him. “You made me care, damn you.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s not good.” I inhale deep and hold it, taking him in.

“You broke one of your precious rules.”

“Which one?”

He nods at the towel on the floor. “Rule eight.”

I admit nothing and lift my chin. “That’s only because I threw it at you.”

“Oh, so it’s okay to break the rules, but only on your terms? It doesn’t work that way, sweetheart. Either we break them together or we don’t break them at all.”

“Let me go.” He has no right to make me question my own rules. I made them. Therefore I get to decide when to break them or not.

He grips my other wrist and pulls me to him. “Say please.”

I inch even closer. My fury melts to want. He’s looking at me with such a dark hunger I tremble. His jaw tightens, his nostrils flare, as the truth settles in the air between us. This entire fight has led to this. The inevitable blowup. The thickness in the air crackles with energy. “Let me go.”

To my shock, he does and then cups my face. His gaze darkens more, sizzling with need. I rest my hands on his hard chest. He rocks his hips against mine. “What if I don’t want to?”

I don’t want him to. Still, I can’t give in so easily, not after our epic battle. “What if I don’t give you a choice?”

“I’m not letting you go.”

“I don’t want you to,” I admit in a whisper.

“What do you want, Kayla?”

I sob against his lips as my defenses crumble. I’m not sure how he did it, only that he succeeded on breaking through all my walls when no one else could. Then again, no one else stuck around long enough to try. “I want you to fight for me. I want you to save me from myself. I want to live, damn it. I’m too scared to do that. I need you, Jake. I need you to teach me how to live.”

“Challenge accepted. Now, kiss me.” He licks his lips.

I almost do and stop. “But we’re fighting.”

“Not anymore,” he murmurs and moves in. “Now we’re making up.”

He crushes his lips to mine and I whimper into his mouth, the sound a cross between hunger and desperation. All the anger churning in my senses melts into a driving need to make up—in every sense. I claw at his shirt, anxious to tear it from his body.

When he growls into the kiss, I completely lose it. It’s a primal sound to match the primal urges rushing through my body. He nips my lips, driving me wild. I rake my nails over his bare shoulders.

He hisses in a breath. “Jesus, Kayla. I can’t think straight when you do shit like that.”

I bite his shoulder and then kiss it. “Better?”

“Baby, I’m going to paddle your ass. You know better than to bite. Bad Kayla.”

“You’ve not seen bad,” I taunt and throw my shirt over my head. Screw nice, quiet Kayla. She’s held me back long enough. I want to be bad Kayla. I want him to experience the Kayla I want to be, not the pathetic, scared of everything Kayla I’ve become. I writhe against him, desperate to get closer. After opening his jeans, I reach in and fist his cock, stroking it as I squeeze.

“Good God, baby. Easy. I’ll completely lose it if you do that too many times.” He grabs my hand and pulls it to his chest. “It’s not a weekday morning. We don’t have to rush. Come on. There’s something I’ve wanted to try with you.”

I’m intrigued and a bit scared of that wicked glimmer in his eye. We’ve just had the biggest knockdown, drag-out fight we’ve ever had, and now he wants me to follow him? He leads me into his bedroom and over to the bed. His gaze never leaving mine, he strips me down and flattens me out on the mattress, my head on his pillows. “What are you going to do?”

“You’ll see.” He then pulls out a silk scarf and wiggles his eyebrows. “And now you won’t.”

“Jake, what—”

“Relax.” When he holds up the scarf, he asks, “You trust me, don’t you?”

Despite the alarms screaming in my head, I nod. I trust him wholeheartedly. He wraps it around my head and ties it, covering my eyes. My heart shoots to my throat and thuds in my ears. “I don’t know about this.”

“You’ve admitted to being scared on multiple occasions,” he points out as I feel the heat from his body over mine. His breath is hot and moist against my ear as he whispers, “Are you scared now?”

“A little.” Okay, that’s a lie. I’m pretty freaked out, but I do trust Jake, more than anything. That scares me more than being blindfolded.

“I could always tie you up.”

“Not if you want to keep going.” My heart skips. The idea of him tying me up blows my mind. I suck in a breath when he runs his fingers down my ribcage. He knows I’m ticklish, damn it. I feel his lips on my skin, first on my ribs, then under the curve of my breast. He reaches my hard nipple and I cry out.

His chuckle catches in my ear and whispers across my skin, charging it. He captures my other nipple and I arch my back. Sweet Jesus, he’s good at that. I’m about to climax on the spot and he’s not even touched me below the waist.

“They say if you take away one of the senses, the others kick in even more.”

I’ll say. I feel every kiss, every lick, every breath. His touch ignites my soul and I’m helpless but to lie here and let him have his wicked way with me. Well, okay. I may not be entirely helpless, but I don’t want him to stop, so I hold still and wait.

He moves to my belly button and kisses it. The heat from his body sears me. I anticipate his touch everywhere and am ready to cry out from the anticipation. “Jake,” I whimper when he doesn’t touch me again right away. “Please.”

“You have no idea how beautiful you are right now.” He runs his finger down the top of my thigh and then up the center, stopping a hint before brushing against my curls. And then I feel his breath on them. When he flicks at my flesh with his tongue, I jerk. He kisses my inner thigh. “I’m going to drive you crazy, first with my mouth, and then the rest of me.”

He knows I can’t come that way. He’s tried and it just doesn’t happen. I tense and try to sit up. He pushes me back down. I grab for the blindfold. “Playtime is over, big boy.”

“Relax. Keep the scarf over your eyes.”

“Is that why you wanted me blindfolded? So you can try to get me to come?”

He doesn’t answer and instead slowly, lazily, runs his tongue between my saturated folds. When he hits my clit I almost jump off the bed. He’s right about the blindfold on this, too. I’ve never been more tuned in to his every touch. I want to reach for him but stop myself and instead fist the sheets as he attacks. His assault has me writhing, the tension tightening inside me like an angry snake. I’m shocked and can’t make sense of why now, after all the times together, after any time with anyone else, I’ve never come close to an orgasm when someone goes down on me.

Not so this time. He doesn’t let up and I’m crying out as my climax grows and grows, intensifying so much it scares me. I’m whimpering and speaking in tongues. It’s building. So close. So very close.

He flicks my clit and I shatter, screaming out from the force of it all. I see red as I squeeze my eyes shut. Jake doesn’t let up and I’m begging, pleading. For what, I don’t know. Just when I’m sure I’m about to pass out from the strength of my release, the heat of his body envelops me and then his sheathed cock presses into my entrance. I scream again as my orgasm comes back for another round.

He lifts the blindfold from my eyes and I blink against the light. “I love you, Kayla.” He then kisses me, consuming my soul. He pumps his hips and I can’t stop crying out from the pleasure. I feel every thick inch of him inside me and again, the tension builds. I’m going to come again and I whimper, not sure I can take another hit like that. I haven’t recovered and am still seeing little red dots in my vision. But the orgasm builds, burns, tightens. I whimper again.

“Move with me.” He grabs my hips and directs the pace. I hold onto his shoulders and rock my hips to meet his. Soon we’re slamming into each other, driving the other to the release that’s just out of reach. He moves faster and I’m there.

I scream and lock my nails onto his shoulders as the explosion rocks my center. “Jake!”

He thrusts hard and stiffens. I ride out my orgasm as my body milks his from him. Only after I’ve dug my nails out of his flesh does he slow and eventually collapse to me. “Holy,” he pants, “shit.”

I don’t have the power to speak so I nod in agreement.

“We need to have make-up sex more often.” He rolls to the side and lands on his back. “The blindfold definitely did the trick.”

That it did. “Maybe we can find a better way to have make-up sex.”

He rises to his elbow and props his head on his hand to look down at me. “Are you complaining?”

“About the sex, no. I just don’t like fighting.” I hold his gaze. “I’m sorry for saying those things to you. I don’t hate you.”

He leans in and kisses me. “I know.”

“I’m just scared.”

“I know.”

“And you’re right. I really do have control issues.”

“That’s why I blindfolded you,” he tells me. “You gave over control. And you know what? You liked it.”

I laugh. “Maybe a little.”

“Maybe next time you’ll let me tie you up.”

“Not if you ever want to have sex again.”

He grins and pulls me to him. I curl against his body, loving the way we fit together. “How about we call that a maybe?”

I nod. It’s a definite maybe.