Chapter 17
Jade
“Once you peel an orange, you can’t put the rind back on.”
~ Nora O’Sullivan
I relished the feeling of Hayden’s dick in my mouth, as stiff as a rod of steel.
This all felt so natural. It was like I didn’t even have to think about what to do, or give my muscles instructions. My mouth had its own instincts and they led the way perfectly.
A flick of the tongue here, a tightening of the lips there. I could tell easily enough by the flexing of Hayden’s fingers on the back of my head and the grunts that escaped from his throat that my instincts were dead on.
With every centimeter that I moved my mouth, the ache deep inside my belly grew just a little bit. Conflict raged within me—the want to surrender to my feelings for Hayden and be done with it, and the want to let my pride win out and escape with the upper hand.
For now, I was holding strong to that upper hand. But the more time that I spent with Hayden’s hands on my body, the less I cared about my pride.
That was why we were here in the first place. I wanted to even the score. I knew I didn’t owe him anything just because of what he’d done. It was more of a one-upmanship that I was worried about. But, now that I was well into it, I had to admit to myself that there was a better than even chance that I’d just craved the taste of him and had been using that whole “even the score” justification to give myself a reason to do it.
Whatever my true motivation was, the action itself was incredible. I loved having his hard member throbbing against my tongue as I moved my head up and down. I loved tasting the little drops of his arousal that leaked out at the tip every time I drew my head back and swirled my tongue around it.
I was trying to live in the moment, but a little voice in the back of my head whispered, “Wouldn’t it be nice if it was like this all the time? Wouldn’t it be great to just be with Hayden again? This could be happening every single night, except even better, because you’d be comfortable in a bed. Naked. What could be wrong with that?”
I did my very best to grab that little voice by the throat and strangle it, but it just kept on with its damned whispering no matter what I did.
My head bobbed up and down, up and down, again and again in a hypnotic rhythm. It started to fool me into thinking that I could stay there like that forever, just giving Hayden pleasure. That this bubble that we were living in would never pop.
“Oh, yeah. Jade, that’s so good. It feels so good.”
I wasn’t used to hearing Hayden’s voice so drawn and desperate, and it caused an earthquake of pleasure to erupt in my belly, traveling south and settling as a heavy, low heat between my legs.
God, that man. His body was hot, but his voice. His voice would do me in every single time.
I slid my free hand onto his thigh and gripped him tightly. Feeling his muscles constrict and ripple under my palm was thrill-inducing. I knew in that moment, even if I wasn’t yet ready to admit it to myself, that I was toast. All of my tough talk about keeping feelings out of it was on its last legs. Sooner or later, it was going to go up in a puff of smoke. It was just a matter of when.
“Fuck, Jade. This is so damn good.”
I sensed that Hayden was about to come before he said anything, and moved my hand around to grasp his shaft just underneath my lips so that I could increase my speed and maintain even more coverage on his sensitive skin. I knew that he’d try to push my shoulders back, just out of courtesy, if nothing else. And I wasn’t about to let that happen.
“Oh, shit, I’m gonna—”
His words were cut off by a strangled cry as he exploded. It was hot and satisfying as it hit the back of my throat, and I gulped greedily as I swallowed down every drop.
His fists tightened in my hair, sending tingles shivering down my scalp.
God, I loved the possessive tinge to those fists, the way they made me feel as if his hands were not just tangling into my hair, but instead were claiming me as his own.
Even though, you know…you don’t want to be “his own.” Right?
Damn, that little voice! It just wouldn’t shut the hell up.
I sat up in the seat of the truck, wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, and waited for him to open his eyes.
When he did, his face was still flushed and his eyes a little bleary, as if he weren’t quite sure if what had just happened between us was real or some kind of dream.
I wanted to tell him that it was real. That it wasn’t some kind of dream. I wanted to tell him that what I felt was real. That I loved him, that I’ve always loved him, and that I always would.
I might talk a big game but the truth was I was terrified of my feelings for Hayden. Losing him had devastated me. I was wrecked. Demolished. All this time later and I was still dealing with the aftermath.
Thinking that I could keep him at arm’s length while doing this was crazy. There was no way.
“Jade.” He reached up and ran his fingers through my hair before running his thumb along my jaw. “That was…”
I knew that I couldn’t talk to him about what that was. Or anything else for that matter.
So instead of facing the situation like a mature adult, I grinned. “That was great. Now we’re even.”
And with that flippant statement, I opened the door and hopped down from the truck, waving to him over my shoulder as I walked to the front door, and never looked back.
As soon as I was inside I shut the door and fell back against it, panting as my hand pressed against my chest. Tears began falling down my cheek. It had been years since I’d cried over Hayden.
But as I slid down the door and my butt hit the floor I became that scared, sixteen-year-old girl again that lost a baby and the love of her life and had no one to talk to about it. I’d kept it all bottled up.
My phone buzzed in my purse. I pulled it out and saw a message from Hayden.
Are you OK? We need to talk.
I shook my head as I stared at it. No, we didn’t. Not if I was going to feel like this.
I’d dropped my guard and now I was sobbing on the floor. We didn’t need to talk. Because I knew something now that I didn’t know even a week ago. Nothing he could say could change the past. And that past is still painful and real to me. I just didn’t see the point in me reliving it so he could get something off his chest.
Hayden was my past, and that’s where he needed to stay.