Chapter 22
Jade
“Trying to control love is about as easy as catching a greased pig.”
~ Nora O’Sullivan
When Hayden’s fingers touched my skin, every inhibition inside me melted away. There was nothing that I wouldn’t do for him. Or to him for that matter.
The man had always made me crazy and reckless, no matter the circumstances, and there was no exception to that rule when my clothes were off.
There was no denying it anymore. I knew it, maybe I’d always known it. Hayden was it. He was my fish. The Clyde to my Bonnie. My soulmate. I didn’t know what the future held, if we would end up together or if our lives would take us off on different paths again.
But to my heart, it didn’t matter. My heart, I realized now, didn’t know the difference between us being together or apart when it came to how hard I loved him. It only knew the difference in pain. It only knew if it was whole or broken. But when it came to love? No. I would never love anyone the same way I loved him.
The truth that I’d been running from and not willing to admit was that there was a good chance I would never love anyone else at all. Hayden and his strong, broody silences had very likely ruined me for all other men.
I didn’t want to think about that at that moment, though. All I wanted to focus on was the delicious way that his tongue flicked my nipple, or the way his fingers cupped my ass, or the way his lips devoured mine in a passionate kiss.
There was only one thing missing, and I was about to remedy it.
“We need to get these clothes off of you,” I said through shallow breaths as my fingers nimbly unfastened the buttons on his shirt, scrambling to remove the barriers to his naked flesh.
Hayden assisted me in taking off his clothes, our fingers fumbling a bit against each other in the rush to get him just as naked as I was, and as fast as possible. Or better yet, even more naked than I was.
Finally, after a fair bit of shuffling with buckles and buttons and rustling of fabric, he stood in front of me, naked as the day he was born. Not one stitch of clothing blocked my view of his gorgeous, Adonis-like bod.
“Mmmm…”
I wanted to be more articulate, but that wordless hum was all I could manage.
My eyes alighted on his face and the cocky grin I saw there told me that he wasn’t too distressed by my lack of eloquence.
“You got some new ink since I’ve seen you naked last.”
Across his sculpted chest there was an eagle with its wings extended and in the claws it held dog tags with Corey’s name on it. Below that, on his sternum, was a Celtic cross. I had a Celtic cross that was passed down from my grandparents to me, and my parents had them all around the house, but I’d never known of Hayden having one. Until now. The tattoo was an exact replica of mine.
Reaching out, I traced my finger along the outline. “Is that?”
“Yes,” he confirmed my unspoken suspicion.
His heart was pounding beneath my touch and I lifted my eyes to his. “When did you get it?”
“The day I sent my last letter to you.”
So many emotions warred inside of me but the main one was guilt. I’d never read a single letter he’d sent to me. I kept them all, but I never read them. He was gone and in my mind there was nothing he could say that would change that.
“Do you see what it says?”
“What it says?” My eyes shot down and as I stared at it, I saw my name was woven into the knots. It was like one of those magic eye puzzles. “It says Jade?”
Even as I said the words out loud, I couldn’t quite believe it.
He placed his hand over mine. “Yes. That way I could always keep you close to my heart.”
I sniffed as tears began to fill my eyes. Emotions were crashing into me in tsunami-sized waves. I hooked my thumbs in the waistband of my panties and slid them down over my hips. I took a step closer to him, stopping when we were standing so near each other that I could feel the heat radiating from his body in waves. I tilted my chin up so that we were face to face.
Without a word, I reached out and wrapped my hand around his stiff dick, sliding it up and down slowly. He gave no reaction save for the flash of intense heat that lit up his eyes like Fourth of July fireworks.
He bent down toward me. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he did something that I liked hell of a lot better. He slipped his fingers in between my legs and traced the outline of my lips pushing them between my soft folds a little deeper with every new millimeter that his rough pads traveled.
“God, that feels good,” I gasped.
“This is just the beginning,” he murmured. “It’s about to feel a hell of a lot better.”
I groaned at the promise, mostly because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was going to keep it.
As his fingers picked up the pace of their back and forth motion along my slit, my hand matched his speed as it moved up and down his hard shaft.
I felt so connected to him. Not only was he sending amazing sensations rushing up and down every part of my flesh, but I was giving him pleasure in return at the same time. We never broke eye contact. The powerful energy flowing back and forth between us was expressed in the seemingly synchronized gasps we let out, the synced up rhythm of the moans and cries that escaped from each of us, and the speed at which we moved our hands.
Hayden pushed two fingers inside me, moving them back and forth to stimulate the tender nerves that lined my inner walls, hitting my G-spot with every motion.
A flood of juices gushed between my legs, coating his hand. With his thumb, he made small, insistent circles on my clit, giving me floods of pleasure from two distinct sources at the same time. The electric shocks and waves of sensation rushed through my muscles, and I knew I couldn’t hold out much longer. The combination of my emotions and my pleasure was simply too potent.
“Oh yes! It feels so good!” I cried out, the words seemingly ripped from me against my will.
That was another way I knew I was getting close, and that there would be no turning back the tide once it started to crest. My conscious mind was being bypassed completely.
“Yes, baby, fuck. That’s what I want. I want you to feel so damn good,” Hayden grunted, and my body immediately acquiesced to his desire. The waves of climax claimed me with their strength, sweeping me away whether I wanted to go with them or not.
I refused to let up on the strokes I was performing with my hand, my feverish rhythm never abating, not even for a second. I wanted us to stay just as connected as we had been this whole time.
That was more important to me even than taking my own pleasure—which made it pretty damn important, because there wasn’t much in the world that would’ve taken precedence over my pleasure in that moment.
As my brain exploded in glittering particles behind my eyes, white lights exploding like flashbulbs, I surrendered myself, body and soul.
I forgot that there were still people in the building as a cry tore from my throat. Hayden pressed his mouth to mine to cover up the noise, and I was grateful. He could always be counted on to keep some shred of a cool head about him, even when I lost all control.
As my bone-crushing climax came to a close I opened my eyes, my breath still coming in feverish pants. “Wow.”
Hayden took a step back and grinned. “That was a nice warm up.”
I had no response for that except to nod. If that was just the warm-up then I was ready for the work-out.
Reaching down, he grabbed his wallet, pulled out a condom, and unwrapped it swiftly with his teeth. He rolled it onto his stiff erection, and then looked back at me and met my eyes. He was all serious business now. “I need to be inside you, Jade. Now. It’s been too long, and I can’t wait one more minute.”
He wasn’t going to get any argument from me. I nodded furiously, unable to form words. He stepped back up to me and placed his strong hands on my waist, spinning me around with no more effort than it would take to pull a chair out from a table.
My breath sucked into my lungs and a whole new flutter invaded my belly at the ease with which he handled my body. He was so strong, so competent, so capable. I felt so tiny and delicate—two things I never felt—in his hands.
Immediately, with no build up, he plunged into me, his steel-hard thickness spreading my inner walls and making me feel full, tight, and stretched out.
I cried out again, but he anticipated that. Before the sound could leave my throat, his hand was already clamped over my mouth, where it stayed firmly until the involuntary cry was complete.
My body reached new heights of pleasure that I’d never even imagined as he drew back and then pounded into me again and again, the rhythm of his thrusts building more pressure and tension inside my body with every single stroke. His forearm snaked around my waist and pulled me back against his chest, and I could feel every ripple of his strong chest muscles as he moved within me. It was more than I could bear, and within just a few minutes, I knew I was headed for another orgasm.
I held out as long as I could, wanting only to release my pleasure when I could feel that he was cresting that peak as well. I wanted this to be one more thing that we would experience together.
Just as I was on the brink of losing control, I felt his muscles clench and tense. His chest against my back, his belly against my ass. His forearm over my stomach, his legs against my thighs. Every one of these points of contact told me that the time had come, and I released the flood of pleasure within me.
This climax burst through my muscles, even more powerful than the one that had come before. Maybe it was because my body was already primed, or maybe it was because of the emotional weight from the two of us climbing that mountain together. Either way, it was more than just a physical experience. It was emotional, it was spiritual. It was like my soul was joining with his.
If I’d been able to process those thoughts consciously at the time, they probably would’ve scared me with their significance. But as it was, I was simply lost in the sea of sensation that Hayden was drowning me in, and loving every minute of it.
When both of us were spent, he stepped back and dropped into the chair that he’d been sitting in when I first entered the room. His arm was still hooked around my waist and he pulled me into his lap after him. I leaned my head against his shoulder and gave a deep sigh of contentment. He stroked my hair and kissed my neck, pulling me tightly to him.
“Well damn,” he said, his voice light and still a little breathless. “You sure do know how to cheer a guy up.”
I grinned. This was how it had always been with us. Easy. Explosive. Perfect. I didn’t know what the future held, but no matter what it was, nothing could take this night away from me.