“You? Nervous?”
“You were too good for me, Jessa. I was a fuckin’ thug living on the streets because I’d been taken away from my mom at her last visit to the hospital. Did you know what happened the night after I saw you for the first time? When I got transferred to your school?”
She shakes her head. “No. I had no idea.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to go to the fuckin’ group home, so I just lived on the streets until my mom did her court-ordered rehab. Anyway …” I sit up a bit and take off my sweatshirt since I’m so warm now with her body half on mine. “When I heard you scream, I swear I’ve never been so mad in my life. I wanted to kill him. I think I would have if you weren’t standing right there.”
“Ty.” She reaches up and holds my face. “You saving me that night … You never really gave me a chance to thank you.”
“Never needed or wanted a thank you, baby. I only ever wanted you to be safe and happy. Even if I had to watch from the sidelines.”
When she sits up, I scoot over a tad from the end of the couch so she can straddle me.
“You may have looked on from the sidelines, but you were the one who was front and center in my mind and in my heart. Now”—she gets off me and kneels on the floor—“let me thank you how I’ve always wanted to.”
My cock is already straining, and when she pulls my pants down, it slaps against my stomach. Her soft hands gently cup my balls, and I grit my teeth together. She teases me, scraping her nails on my inner thighs and kissing everything but my dick.
I’m trying to let her have her fun. But only for a minute. I won’t be able to last long when her lips wrap around me.
A drop of pre-cum leaks out, and she leans forward, licking me from my sack all the way to my tip. As soon as she gets my flavor on her tongue, her entire body transforms into a piece of marble, solid and hard.
I sit up and reach out for her, her hand frozen mid-air. When the tip of my fingers touches her wrist, she screams and falls back on her ass. “No!”
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I pull my pants up and kneel before her, searching for a sign of something.
Her head frantically shakes, and tears roll out of her eyes silently.
“Baby, talk to me.” I’m hesitant to reach for her again but do anyway. She fights me, flailing her body and whipping her head back at me. She manages to clip me in the chin, and I grunt when she falls backward and lands on my chest. I can feel my wound tear open.
“Let me go!” she screams. “You’re not doing it again!”
“Shh, it’s just me, Jessa.”
She continues to fight me, and I can only imagine what’s happening inside her head right now, but it’s gutting me. Absolutely gutting me that something triggered this.
“It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
“He wouldn’t stop … I tried. I tried,” she mumbles between cries.
Marco’s lucky he’s dead.
Her crying subsides, but she begins to shake, so I lift her up and carry her to bed. I situate myself behind her and pull her close.
Eventually, she calms down, and her breathing evens out and her shudders go away. I hold her a little longer to be sure she’s sleeping, and then I slide out of the bed, get dressed, and close the door behind me.
Chapter 20
Jessa
When Ty leaves the room, I take a shuddering breath. I miss the safety I feel when he’s holding me, but even knowing he’s in the house makes me feel better. Nobody will get to me with him around.
I haven’t deliberately blocked out the things that Marco did to me, but being with Ty made me forget about them, I guess. When I tasted his flavor—so different, so much better—it just hit me. Railroaded me out of the blue. I was thrown back into that cold, wet room, so scared, so alone, and being violated in a way I didn’t ever think could be so degrading.
My hand rubs over the baby bump, and the ferocity I felt trying to protect my unborn child puts a triumphant smile on my face. She doesn’t know it yet, but she saved me, too. If it wasn’t for me being pregnant, who knows what Marco would have done.
The house is quiet, and I can hear a thumping sound coming steadily from somewhere. I tug on a pair of socks before I go looking for Ty. He’s not in the kitchen or living room, but the noise gets louder as I reach the patio door.
When I slide the glass open and look to my right, Ty pauses for a split second but then continues pounding a bag. I walk closer and hesitantly reach up to touch his sweaty arm.
“Go back to bed.” He shrugs me off, but I just take a step back and sit in one of the patio chairs. Without stopping his jabs, he says, “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s safer inside, Jessa.” I make no move to leave, and he huffs. “Go inside.”
“No.”
He ignores me and continues to beat on the bag. I watch as his arms and shoulders flex, his knuckles starting to turn red. Sweat drips down his bare chest and dampens his hair.
“You told me he didn’t rape you.” I’ve never heard his voice so pained. So defeated. The Ty I know has always been confident. Strong.
“He didn’t.”
His head whips toward me, and he wipes his forehead with his forearm. “Then what was that about? You were yelling ‘
you’re not doing it again’
. Fuck, I can’t believe it took us three days to find you. He shouldn’t have had a chance to do fucking anything to you!” He screams the last part and hits the bag so hard I’m afraid it’ll rip out of the beam.
“Ty, come inside.”
“No.”
“Ty,” I try again, a little firmer this time.
“No, Jessa. Fuck! Just leave me alone, okay?”
“No.”
Then he screams—roars, almost—his neck straining from the pressure. I ignore my gut to stay away from him when he’s this mad, and I wrap my arms around him from behind. His body is warm, so warm, and he’s shaking violently.
“Ty, relax. Shh.” I hold him tighter, and when he reaches up and grabs my hand, I sigh out of relief.
He turns me in his arms and falls to the ground so he’s holding me like a baby, one arm behind my back, the other under my knees. He pulls me so I’m crowded into his body and buries his face in my hair. I’m kind of stuck in this position, so I just let him do what he needs to. He sniffles. I can’t tell if he’s crying, but still, my chest swells out of love and heartbreak.
“I’m so sorry,” he mutters. “So fuckin’ sorry.”
“None of this is your fault.” I extract myself from his tight grip and sit on my heels in front of him. I hold his face in my hands, forcing it up so he’ll look at me. “This is not your fault.”
“It is, baby. I should have stayed far, far away from you.”
“Ty, the night that Marco saw me was because I walked into that bar. Me. I walked into your world. You didn’t lure me there or bring me into it under false pretenses.” I wipe the moisture from under his eyes, not sure if it’s sweat or tears. “You saved me that night. If you hadn’t been there … I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened.”
“We never stood a chance, did we?” He gazes past me in contemplation. “I tried to stay away from you, but you kept running back into my life.”
“Because we’re supposed to be together.”
“We shouldn’t.”
“We don’t have a choice. I love you.”
He focuses back on me again. “It hurts my chest sometimes, what I feel for you.”
He’s such a manly man, so alpha, that sometimes I forget how rough his life has been. How he’s been denied the basics every human should be granted—love, acceptance, security. “I don’t want you to hurt anymore, Ty. I want you to finally have happiness.”
“I’m happy when I’m with you, baby.”
“Me too.”
His hands caress mine, and he looks away and asks, “What did he do to you?”
“Ty …”
“I need to know. Otherwise, my imagination goes crazy, and it makes me want to go dig him up from his grave and kill him all over again.”
I take a deep breath. “I hadn’t eaten or drank anything in what felt like forever, and when I said I was thirsty—” I have to pull my hands away from him so I can dig my nails into the palm of my hand. “He, um, made me … or tried to make me swallow his semen.”
Ty’s eyes flash with anger, and he growls but doesn’t move. He just sits there for me to continue.
“I fought him the first time, so he had someone come in and hold me back while he … took care of himself. I ended up throwing up the first time. But aside from starving me and roughing me up a little bit, that was all he did … sexually. And when I … with you. I’m sorry. I know—”
“How many times did he do it, Jessa?”
“The second time he tried, he put it in my mouth, and I bit it. That’s why the side of my face is bruised.”
One side of his lips kicks up in a small smile of pride. “Good girl.”
“And I think he was going to try again after he recovered, but that was when you showed up. Saved me.”
He leans forward and kisses my cheek, pausing a brief moment before pulling back. “I need a shower.”
I try to stand by myself, but he stands up and has me in his arms before I have the chance. “I can walk, Ty.”
“I need to do this, okay?”
Understanding the need to be close, I snuggle into him and let him carry me to bed. “I’ll be right back.”
He takes a shower, and less than five minutes later, he’s climbing under the covers, pulling me impossibly close. I let sleep take over me, even though an annoying buzz in the back of my head tells me not to.
* * *
When I wake up the next morning, Ty’s side of the bed is cold, and I shuffle out from under the covers. After a quick stop in the bathroom, I head to where the noise is coming from.
Ty’s fully dressed and sitting at the kitchen table, fingers flying across a keyboard. “Mornin’,” he greets me without turning around.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“Always know when you’re near.”
“Aww.” I begin walking toward him.
“Plus, I heard the toilet flush.”
I leave a very wet kiss on his cheek. “Ha-ha.”
“There’re pancakes in the microwave.” He nods in the direction of said microwave. “Bacon’s in the oven.”
“You’re the best!”
He chuckles when I run to the kitchen and a few minutes later sit down across from him with a huge pile of pancakes and four strips of bacon. Baby’s hungry in the morning, what can I say?
“Did you eat?”
He holds up a protein shake and takes a large swallow while staring at the computer screen.
“What are you working on?”
“Updates. Intel.”
“Ty?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Look at me.”
A breath slowly releases from his mouth, and he looks up. It only takes a quick glance at his handsome face to see the bags under his eyes, the red eyes, and his tight jaw. “Honey, how long have you been at this?”
“I couldn’t sleep last night.”
My stomach suddenly isn’t hungry, and I set my fork down.
“You need to eat, Jessa.”
“You need sleep, Ty.”
“What I need is to end this. I’m sick of living this way. I want a goddamned normal life. I want to be able to go to the fuckin’ store with you, or the beach or a damn bar, and not have to look over my shoulder. I’ve had to watch my back my entire life, and I’m fuckin’ sick of it.”
I wish I could say something to make him feel better, to make everything go away, even if only for a little while. But I want this over just as bad as he does, so I understand where he’s coming from. Even though I have no idea how he even survived growing up the way he did, I understand his need to end this.
“Will you take a break and sit on the couch with me for a little while? Maybe take a nap. Then you can show me what you’re doing, and I can help you?”
For the first time in a long time, he smiles. Then he comes over, pulls my chair out, and squats down in front of me. “You tryin’ to trick me, baby? A little reverse psychology?”
His voice is so smooth, and even though he’s clearly tired, he’s still so damn sexy. “No”—I mouth then clear my throat—“I just want you to get some sleep.”
He motions for me to come closer, and when my mouth almost reaches his, he puts a hand on the back of my head and closes the distance between us. His mouth works against mine, and his tongue sweeps inside my mouth, claiming, demanding.
I moan into the kiss, loving that even after what I told him last night, he still wants me like this. He abruptly stands and pulls me up. Sitting on a chair, he brings me down on his lap so I straddle him.
His sweats leave little room to the imagination, and when his hardness presses between the lips of my pussy, I grind down on him.
“Fuck, Jessa. You feel so good.”
“You do, too.” I rock into him again while he grabs my hair in one hand and tilts my head to scatter kisses down my neck. Once he reaches my collarbone, he nibbles his way across and switches hands to twist my neck the other way and kiss up it.
I slam my mouth down onto his, our teeth clash, and he grips the cheeks of my ass, squeezing them and pressing up against me. I pull back, gasping for air, and decide to finish what I started last night.
When I attempt to drop to my knees, he pulls me up.
“Ty, please. Let me.”
His face softens, and he runs his fingers over my lips. When I suck the tip into my mouth, something I’ve found he really likes, his mouth falls open. With almost glazed over eyes, he watches as I twirl my tongue around it.
“As much as I’m dying to have your lips wrapped around my dick, baby, I want to feel your pussy around me. Take your pants off and climb on.” He pulls his finger out, and I stand while we both rid ourselves of our lower garments.
I don’t waste any time and do as he says, guiding him inside me. “Better every fuckin’ time,” he groans. I nod my head in agreement, unable to form words since I’m already on the brink of orgasm.
Once he’s all the way inside, he lifts up my shirt and presses my sensitive breasts together. I slowly ride him as he tweaks my nipples. He brings me closer to the brink by flicking them with his tongue and sucking on them.
I ride a little harder now, a little faster. With every downward thrust, I grind myself onto his pelvic bone, teasing my clit with the pressure. My toes begin to tingle, and the sensation travels up my legs and meets at my core, making me shake and cry as pleasure wrings me dry.