Present Day
Hannah Michaels Crestfall
THE FIFTH DRINK was to blame for my bad behavior.
I was certain of it.
By the time I got home, I was shivering and felt sick, both mentally and physically. Not only had a headache begun to throb in my temples, but my belly was flip-flopping. Worst of all, tears stung my eyes, and as hard as I tried to fight them, they fell.
I ignored them.
I’d gotten good at that.
Running through the family room and past the small Christmas tree Jonah and I had put up a couple of weeks ago, I climbed the steps.
There was something in Jace’s stare tonight that felt different, but I couldn’t dwell on it. The fundraiser was his responsibility and it wasn’t like he could have just left to chase me down and tell me.
In the bathroom, I unzipped my dress and let it fall to the floor in a heap. Once I removed my underwear, I stood naked and stared at myself in the mirror for the longest time.
Why hadn’t I just talked to him?
What did he want?
What was I hoping for?
The air suddenly felt incredibly cold, and I ignored my own questions. In fact, I went to turn up the thermostat instead of trying to answer them.
A hot shower was just what I needed, but before I could get the water hot enough, there was a knock at the front door.
Grabbing for my bathrobe, I wrapped it around myself and started down the hall. My heart thudded in surprise when I peeked out the window and saw his BMW parked on the street.
So he had come after me this time. It didn’t matter. I still had no intention of letting him in. Nothing good would come of it. We had nothing to talk about. That’s when I remembered I hadn’t locked the front door after I closed it.
Just as I was padding down the stairs to quickly bolt the door shut, it banged open hard enough to hit the wall.
Jace was covered in white flakes, and he simply strode inside like he had the right to be there. Kicking the door shut behind him, he glanced up. He nearly filled the small entranceway with his presence. Snow fell on the floor beneath his feet, but he didn’t seem to notice.
I stopped where I was on the landing and stared down at him. As soon as he spotted me, I took a step back. Feeling breathless and out of sorts, I hit the wall behind me. I couldn’t move. I was frozen in place. “What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice shaky.
Within seconds, Jace started up the steps and then he was standing in front of me. He put his hands on the wall, one on each side of my head. I’d seen him happy, sad, angry, and mad, but I’d never seen him look so fierce.
Fear and anticipation filled me.
“I told you—” he said, his voice deeper than I’d ever heard it. “That we need to talk.”
I wanted to tell him to leave, but I think what came out was something more like, “And I told you, there’s nothing to talk about,” or something that sounded like that.
“Fine. Have it your way. We can talk later.” Jace drew in a deep breath. I knew what he was doing—trying to calm himself down.
Before I could make my mouth move with the words I needed to say, something like leave now or better yet, get out, Jace crushed his mouth to mine.
Unable to resist him, I opened beneath the onslaught. I couldn’t help myself. But I didn’t touch him any place else except on the lips. A part of him still poised to protest, but then his tongue swept inside my mouth and stole away my every thought.
“Put your hands on me,” Jace demanded around the kiss.
I was doing no such thing.
“Please,” he begged.
With a tenderness so unlike him, I felt like my heart was bleeding, and there was no way I wasn’t doing what he so desperately needed. So I spread my hands on his chest. His shirt was cold from the rain, and still I could feel every ripple and ridge of his muscles. My palms began to move and landed on his nipples, which were hard as iron. And when I ran my fingertips over them once, twice, he muttered a curse.
“Jace . . .” I tried to say.
“Are you ready to talk now?” he said around our kiss with a smile.
“Nothing has changed. There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You’re wrong. Everything has changed.”
I pulled back. “What are you talking about?”
His hands were now on my hips, and he squeezed them. “I want you, Hannah.”
“Jace, please.”
“Hannah, listen to me. I want to be with you.”
I stared at him, searching, trying to figure out why everything between us seemed different, right.
“I sold my house. I found out a few hours ago,” he blurted out.
Shock overtook me. “What? Why? I didn’t even know you were trying to sell it.”
“As a grand gesture,” he said with a smile.
“I don’t understand.”
He shook his head. “Ignore the Ethan talk. I did it so that nothing stands between us. No ghosts. Nothing. Hannah, I want you to know, to believe, that when I look at you, you are the only woman I see.”
There was so much to process. “Jace, what about Scarlett? How does she feel about it?”
“She’s excited.”
“Where are you going to move?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to talk to you about all night. I was thinking we could move in here with you and Jonah. That the four of us could make this place, ours.”
Ours.
“Jace, I don’t know. What about—”
“Is that a yes?” He cut me off.
I stared at him.
“You’re not going to let my little girl be homeless, are you?”
I stared harder.
He stared right back, but his gaze was intense and raw and dare I say, loving. “I know we have a lot to talk about, and we will, I promise. I promise.”
Promise. One word, one simple word, but I believed him. So I did the only thing that made sense, and nodded.
He nipped at my lip. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes, but—”
His voice deepened. “No buts. We’ll iron out the details later, love.”
Love.
I’d only ever heard him call me that once, and I never thought I would again.
Love.
The word was like music.
There was nothing I could do to stop how I felt. Not then, and not now. I wanted him. No, I needed him. And I believed he really was ready for what came next. So I slid my arms around his neck as he molded his mouth to mine in a heart-pounding kiss.
Like that, our tongues twisted and danced until I felt him shiver against me. Only then did I break the kiss.
“Jace, you’re freezing.” My voice was soft and full of concern.
His eyes were still so intense as he stared down at me. And although I thought he was going to say something, he didn’t. Jace didn’t answer me with words. Instead he planted another kiss on my lips.
His mouth was hot, if nothing else was.
Unable to stand his shivering, I put my hands to his waist and tugged his dress shirt from his pants.
Our lips remained locked as I worked my fingers up the buttons, from the bottom to the top. Once I reached his neck, I yanked off his bowtie and then pushed the wet shirt fabric from his body.
As our tongues greedily licked and our mouths sucked at each other, I smoothed my hands over his bare skin and hoped the warmth I had to share was enough.
Jace didn’t take his mouth from mine as he put his hands on my waist and lifted me. Without a second thought I wrapped my legs around him.
The strength he carried made me dizzy with arousal, and I knew there was no turning back.
In that position, my robe had opened, and my nakedness beneath it was more than obvious as my pussy rubbed against his flat belly.
Almost immediately, his hands found their way into the opening of my robe and to my ass, and when they did, he pushed his body against mine.
With the wall hard against my back, he held me in that position, kissing me, touching me, needing me, and I swear I felt the earth move.
It wasn’t that I wanted to stop kissing him, but I had to pull away so I could gasp for air.
Jace knew exactly what he was doing. He always did. And he kept right on doing it, only this time finding my throat and swirling his tongue around the pulse at the base of it.
The noises I made were obscene, and I couldn’t have cared less. Only he had ever made me feel this way.
As if sensing that, he pulled back and used a hand to push the hair from my face. “You’re not my before and you’re not after, Hannah, you’re my forever.”
Surprise shot through me. Never had I been expecting anything like this.
His eyes were so bright when he spoke. “I love you. I always have and I always will. I should have told you back then, but I won’t make that same mistake again. I love you. You. Do you hear me?”
I nodded and ran my fingertips up his arms just to make certain this was real.
“I. Love. You.”
If I thought the earth moved before, now it was spinning on a new axis. His words took all my breath and emotion swallowed me whole. I didn’t hesitate. “I love you, too, Jace. I never stopped,” I said softly, and crashed my mouth to his.
Somehow in the emotional enclave we were in, I slid down his body just a little. It was enough though that the cold metal of his belt buckle made contact with my soft, naked flesh.
I nearly lost my mind.
The grin I felt form on his lips around my mouth was so him. “Are you ready for me?” he asked, his tone dark and lustful.
I nodded.
After my slight slip, he was holding onto me even tighter, and with my acceptance acknowledged, he then started up the short flight of stairs.
With all of my senses reeling, I couldn’t wait to have him.
When he reached my bedroom, he flicked the light on. I thought he’d toss me on the bed and take me in that animalistic way he had about him, but instead he laid me carefully on the mattress, and stared down at me.
The gentleness of his touch as he untied my robe took my breath away. There were so many things in life I’d come to expect, but that was not one of them.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered as his eyes drank me in, and his fingers drew a line down the slight curves of my body.
I swallowed my emotion, not wanting to ruin the moment in any way.
After kicking his shoes off, he crawled up the bed on his forearms and bent his head to find my mouth. We kissed for that way for what seemed like hours. Licking and sucking each other without hurry, and it felt so good.
And we both knew when it was time to stop just kissing because I moved my hips at the same time he did.
I fumbled with his belt, and once I had undone it, I tried to push his pants down. The wet fabric bunched, but Jace repositioned himself and somehow managed to work both his pants and boxers down his strong thighs, where he promptly kicked them to the floor.
Finally naked, he slid back on top of me and found my mouth again.
Between my thighs, I felt his erection. It was so familiar, and yet I wanted him more than ever, and I didn’t care when I closed my eyes and told him, “I need you,” because it was the truth.
“Hannah . . .”
I opened my eyes and looked into his.
“I don’t have anything,” he said with a sigh.
“Neither do I, but I’m on the pill, and I’m clean.”
I already knew he was.
He breathed in.
I breathed out.
We were in rhythm like we once had been, and I couldn’t stop anticipation from fizzing in my veins.
Then he reached down with his own hand to grasp his cock, and the moment the heat of his erection pushed at my opening, I raised my hips.
With slow movements, he thrust in and then out, in and then out, until finally he was buried deep inside me.
Jace kissed me as he moved with a steady rhythm. He wasn’t fucking me, he was making love to me, and the thought almost made me cry.
Slowly, he rolled to one side, pulling me with him until I was the one on top. With me in a sitting position, he stared up into my eyes.
That’s when I saw it.
That soft side I’d discovered so long ago, the one I feared was only for his daughter now, was there, and my heart felt so full.
Bending, I placed a chaste kiss on his lips, and he smiled at me. That smile made my heart nearly explode.
After a beat, he placed both his hands at my waist and began to thrust upwards, holding me in place as he arched up and then withdrew.
His pace remained steady, not fast or hard, and I couldn’t believe when the feeling rushed over me.
The upsweep of curls I’d pinned around my head was coming loose piece by piece. Not all at once though, unlike my orgasm. I came first, and it felt like a frenzied, bright flash of light that blew over me and took all of my breath.
The clenching of my inner muscles was something we both felt. I was still panting as he began to plunge into me. Harder. Faster. And I couldn’t believe it but I felt myself building again. Needing stability, I gripped his shoulders to hold on to him, and when I did, I knew I never wanted to let go.
With a curse, Jace erupted, and I immediately felt his heat spurting deep into my body. With urgency, he pulled me all the way down on his cock until there was no room left between us as he orgasmed inside me.
In all the times we’d been together, it was the first that he was bare. Everything about it was the same and different. Jace felt it too, I knew from the way he laid beneath me for a long moment with his cock still pulsing and twitching inside me.
Again, completely out of character to the Jace I’d known, he raised his hand and cupped my face. Staring at me and stroking my cheeks in a gentle manner, he then pulled me down to him and kissed me. It was long and sweet. Warm and tender. And again, so very much unlike him.
In the distance I could hear the cuckoo clock downstairs strike midnight. Time didn’t seem to matter. He simply held me tight against his body and stroked my hair. For several long minutes we stayed that way as he softened within me.
When he moved, it was to angle me beside him. Propped on one elbow, he swept the hair from my eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head, feeling out of sorts. Everything bad that had transpired between us had happened because of the two of us.
Not him.
Not me.
But us.
Our mistakes.
“You don’t have to be,” I said, taking his hand and bringing it to my mouth for a kiss.
He eased his body closer to mine until our noses were almost touching. “I shouldn’t have shut you out.”
Our heads shared the same pillow. He was beside me. Not running out the door or pushing me away. And the enormity of everything we had been through crashed down on me.
“What about my job?” I blurted out.
“What about it. Nothing changes.”
Tears filled my eyes as uncertainty loomed. “What do we do now?”
His thumbs stroked my tears away. “We plan the future, starting with Christmas. I want you and Jonah to come with Scarlett and me to Disneyworld. The trip is one of her Christmas presents, and I want it to be one of Jonah’s too. And while we’re down in Florida, I’ll take both the kids to watch a football game in Tampa or Jacksonville, and you can spend the day at the spa.”
My shaking hands flew to my mouth. “Oh my Gosh, Jonah would love that, but—”
“No buts. We leave Christmas night at five.”
With wide eyes, I stared at him. But—”
Placing a finger across my lips, he quieted me. “We have a lot of things to work out, Hannah, but there is nothing between us to stop us from doing that, I promise you that.”
Jace was talking about Tricia, of course, and it was his way of telling me he was ready to move on.
Tricia would always be in his heart, that I knew, but as long as he had room for me in there too, he was right . . . everything would work out.
With the love we still shared after all these years . . . it was impossible not to.