Chapter Nine
Natalie
Laying my head back on the pillow, I pulled the covers up and around myself and closed my eyes. But I knew I wouldn’t be getting to sleep any time soon.
There he was in my head once again, there every time I shut my eyes. We had continued our little affair, and there was no denying that it was pretty much the hottest thing that had ever happened to me. It wasn’t often that two people so perfectly matched came together, but when it came to sex, it felt like Jacob and I were a meeting of the minds the likes of which had never been seen before. When it came to everything else, though? I wasn’t sure.
I drummed my feet against the sheets and tried to force myself to focus on something other than him. The article. It was going well, and I was being deadly careful to keep any feelings that I might have had for him out of the text as much as possible, I had read it through a thousand times, scrubbing out any hint of romantic affection I might have had for the man - I held my breath when I sent it in to the editor first time round, but the only thing she had any notes on were the flow of some of my paragraphs.
Nothing on the fact that I was having the craziest, wildest affair I’d ever had in my life and it was obvious through the text. I was surprised that nothing had sneaked its way in there, considering that I felt my lust for him oozing off me in waves whenever we were together.
Even thinking about him now, alone in this bed, my stomach flipped and I felt a heat beginning to rise between my legs. I squeezed my eyes a little
tighter, and slipped my hand between my thighs, hoping to at least get that part of the equation out of my head.
My fingers found my clit quickly, and I let out a small sigh of relief as I started to play with myself. I did my best not to think of him but it was nearly impossible; my brain was still freshly seared with the memories that we’d made the night before, when he’d made his way down to my hotel room in the middle of the day, brazen as all hell.
“What are you doing here?” I’d hissed as I opened the door, and he shrugged coolly.
“We still have a few interview questions left yet,” he pointed out, and pushed past me and into my room. I glanced around the corridor, closed the door behind us, and moments later he had pinned me up against the stiff wood. He always seemed to get me rooms in the most sequestered-away parts of the hotels we stayed in, and I wasn’t complaining. Not when it meant he could stop by here whenever he wanted.
My muscles tensed as I remembered the way he’d pushed me down on to the bed, climbed on top of me, and started to unbutton my shirt and push up my skirt before I had a chance to get so much as a word out.
We had spent long enough hooking up that he seemed to know exactly how to please me, his hands moving deftly across my body as though he had practiced for days to build the necessary skills. He fucked the way he fought – animalistic on the outside, but actually carefully considered and perfectly practiced. I knew we didn’t have long before someone noticed that he was away from his hotel room, and I pulled my panties down before fumbling with his jeans for a couple of seconds.
“Fuck,” he growled in my ear, brushing my hands away and pulling down his pants to expose his fast-growing erection. I fumbled in my drawer for a condom, and he tore it open with his teeth before quickly sheathing himself and positioning himself at the entrance to my cunt.
“Ready?” He panted, and I nodded. He asked every time, and it never got less hot. I loved that he wanted me to enjoy it so badly, loved that he knew exactly which buttons to push to get me going. He pushed himself inside me in one swift motion, leaning down to take one of my nipples into his mouth as he did so, and I let out a deep groan.
I moved my fingers quicker, my breath coming faster than before, as I lay in that bed alone and thought about him fucking me. I could almost smell the remnants of his aftershave on the sheets around me, and they just took me further into the moment; I pushed two fingers into my pussy and could almost pretend that they were his cock, that he was here right now, that he was making me-
My eyes sprang open when I came, and I let out a small gasp of pleasure as the orgasm washed over my body. It was more relief than anything else, something to clear my head and remind me that I didn’t need to go to him to get myself off. I withdrew my hand as the pulses in my pussy retreated, and tried to convince myself that it had been enough for me, even though I knew it wasn’t even close.
If he’d walked in that door that instant, I would have spread my legs and dragged him on to this bed with me. I still needed him as much as ever. And it didn’t seem like there was a remedy for that.
I sighed, tucking my hand behind my head and staring up at the ceiling vacantly. How the fuck was I meant to get this guy out my brain? It didn’t seem like there was an obvious answer, no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise. We only had a few more days together, and I had no idea how to confront the notion that the two of us were going to be split apart so soon.
My heart flipped sadly before I could stop it. Only a few more days together, and then we’d both have to return to our real lives, to the lives we’d left behind. The tour had been a great success, earning Jacob notoriety across the country and landing him a couple more sponsorship deals into the bargain. Basically, he’d gotten everything he wanted from this endeavour. At least, that’s what it looked like on the outside. Maybe he wanted me, too - maybe I was part of it. Or maybe I was nothing more than a distraction while he was out on the road.
Although…he could have found plenty of that in the women who flocked to him every night after he was done fighting. Those women would have been all too happy to get his mind off whatever was bothering him, and they wouldn’t have come with the baggage that I did - the article, his agent’s disapproval. If that was all he had truly wanted, then why wouldn’t he have just gone with them? A little twinge of hope found its way into my chest, and I tried my hardest to ignore it.
Even if he did like me as more than just a good fuck, I reasoned with myself, our lives wouldn’t exactly slot together seamlessly when we returned home. I would have to go back to covering stories across the city, and that didn’t leave me a lot of time to nurture a budding relationship. Not to mention the fact that it seemed unlikely his agent would have changed his mind on Jacob getting together with me just because we had returned to the city.
If anything, his reputation was even more important now, worth more than it had ever been, what with the new sponsorship deals and everything that came with them. Life wouldn’t suddenly straighten itself out just because we liked each other. I wasn’t fool enough to think that, even if that’s all I really wanted to believe.
I flipped over on to my side and stared at the wall, my brain humming with thoughts. I knew I wasn’t going to get much sleep that night, and I glanced over at my laptop where it was sitting on my bedside table. I sighed, reaching over for it, and pulled it onto my lap, tapping in my password and picking up where I’d left off with the article. If I wasn’t able to catch some shut-eye, then I would at least get this thing put to bed for the time being. And then I could focus on the other issue at hand – what the hell I was going to do about my feelings towards Jacob.