The Storm Inside (13 page)

He was sex on a stick. He was triggering every sexual instinct I had. He was hot, successful, and he wanted me. Which made my body seriously want him. Not even my brain was helping in that department. It was older and wiser—which meant it knew just how fucking hard decent men were to find. Jake broke my heart and ran away from his past… didn’t mean he’d do it again. Otherwise he was a fantastic guy.

The only thing holding me back from all of this was my heart.

You know, the broken one.

It knew if Jake and I got back together we’d make our past relationship look like child’s play. It would be a sweet footnote to this new torrid love affair. Jake and Eve 2.0 would be an uncontrolled explosion of sex and adoration.

Uncontrolled explosions were dangerous. Everyone knew that.

And yet, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from wanting to play with the matches…

“Just in time!” Jake called, slamming the door shut and throwing his towel over a rusty folding chair. “Fuck that was fun!”

His crooked smile did all of those things it always did to me. It twisted my belly in a delicious can’t-feel-the-floor-beneath-me way; it heated my skin, and sent my pulse racing.

Why did he make me excited when no one else did?

“What?” he asked, his voice suddenly hoarse. He was frozen, watching me watch him.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do you make me different?” I asked. “Why doesn’t anyone else do that? Why
you?
” I simply didn’t understand it. I’d tried so hard to find that spark with someone else. Hell, I’d even wondered if there was something wrong with me.

“Why not me.” It was a demand not a question. Jake was making his case. “No one will
ever
love you like I can. You know it and I know it. Don’t let the past keep ruining everything.” His eyes wandered over my heaving chest and trembling body, growing darker and lustful. His fist clenched and his jaw went slack as his eyes zeroed in on me.

“I won’t survive you a second time,” I choked out.

“You know me better than anyone ever has,” he growled. Jake was mad. At me. “Do you honestly believe I’d hurt you a second time? I did what I had to do, I
never
meant to break your heart.” His anger softened into a plea, “I love you.”

That was when I understood what I did to Jake. I made him different, too. I wasn’t sure exactly how I made him different, but I knew I did. I could see it in his eyes, in the hungry way he was looking at me. He craved that rush of being different as desperately as I did.

Somehow we made each other more.

I was strong and capable on my own. I’d proven that many times over. But Jake brought things out of me no one else could. He calmed me, gave me a special sense of confidence—he made me even stronger than I already was. It was a special gift. One I gave him in return.

Jake stood where he was, begging me to make the first move. It had to be my choice; we both knew that.

“Eve…” his voice was so deep and rough.

My name did me in. I wanted to hear him say it over and over again, in a thousand different ways. And right then, I wanted to hear him groan it.

I closed the gap between us in a second, throwing myself around him, my legs wrapping around his waist as his arms wrapped around my body. His hands on my skin were electric, shooting a thousand volts of pleasure through my body and taking my breath away.

I loved this man. I hated this man.

He would ruin me, maybe I’d ruin him.

But for that moment, locked away from the world alone in a fishing shack on the water, all I wanted was to feel him.

A rough grunt came out of Jake’s throat as my hands wrapped around his face, kissing him deeper and deeper.

That was when he turned and slammed my back into the wall of the shack.

Chapter 8

My back was pressed to Jake’s front and he was still twitching inside me. My arms hung lifelessly at my sides, the sweat rolling all the way down their length, dripping from my fingertips to the wood floor beneath us.

I was numb, every muscle in my body gloriously relaxed, every ounce of energy sapped away. I couldn’t move or think. It was a wonderful change to feel nothing, to be lost to the oblivion of complete and utter satisfaction.

Just the sound of the rain slowing, the thunder drifting away, and Jakes heavy breathing.

When was the last time I felt this relaxed? I couldn’t remember. And the more I chased that thought the more I honestly wondered; when was the last time I felt this good?

It all came crashing in on me at once. It had been years, probably a decade, not since Jake. Jake who was inside me. Jake… who would leave me all over again, taking with him all of this good.

The panic flooded me so fast, flooding my veins with equal parts fear and fire, that I shot off of his lap, surprising him.

I’d made a mistake. A huge, massive mistake, by giving in to all of this.

I’d slept with my black hole. He’d sucked me back in, and I’d let him.

I scrambled to the bag I’d dropped by the door, finding my cover-up and sliding it over my head. I was in a pure, frantic panic. I wanted to run, but we were in this stupid shack. I wanted to explode into a billion molecules.

“Eve…” his voice was low and when I turned around he was up, naked, and his hands were out in front of him as he cautiously moved toward me.

“No!” I shouted, scrambling backward. He couldn’t come near me, when he came near I became stupid, I started believing in silly things like happiness and futures.

I was such a fucking idiot.

He stopped dead in his tracks, “Calm down, darlin’. Everything is ok.”

Ok?
Nothing about this was ok. “This is pure stupidity! What was I thinking?”

He didn’t blink at my insult, just continued to calmly stand on the other side of the room from me. “We had sex, Eve. We’ve had sex hundreds of times. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

My eyes went wide—I felt it. “Doesn’t have to mean anything?
Doesn’t have to mean anything?
Jake, everything means something between us.”

His hands fell to his sides and his jaw tensed as he stood up straight, “Trust me, I know that.”

“Then why did you say it?” I shouted back.

He looked me dead in the eye with an intensity that almost made me want him all over again. Confident Jake was not someone to be messed with. “Because I don’t want to scare you away before you give me a chance to show you who I am now.” He stepped toward me, and this time I didn’t back away or flinch. “Eve, let me show you.”

I was flying apart, the sadness and fear exploding from the center of me out. “We are too much Jake. You and I aren’t good for each other. I love you too much, remember?”
I will give you everything.

“Do not throw my words back at me like that,” he demanded.

“But you were right, weren’t you? I do, I love you too much for it to ever be healthy. We destroy each other. We can never be enough for what we each need.”

I believed in those words completely. What happened between Jake and I was so explosive there was no option other than destruction. Self-destruction.

“That wasn’t what I meant when I said that, Eve.” His voice was eerily low and even, as if he were using extreme restraint to control himself. “I needed your love so much, but not in the way you think.” He pulled his fingers through his hair, ruffling up his long dark locks. Finally he blew out a breath and cracked his neck. “I was desperate. Desperate to survive and I would have done and taken anything around me to do it. I would have used you and abused you until there was nothing left of you.” His fists were tightly clenched at his sides, every muscle in his body taught as he spoke. “I would have consumed you to save myself. And the worst part is I wouldn’t even know I’d done it until there was nothing left of you to save.”

The reality of what he was saying hit me hard. There was no win here. There was no scenario where this situation would have come out in my favor. The deck had been stacked against me from the beginning.

This was the only possible conclusion. There was only one outcome to loving someone so damaged.

Whether he stayed or left, the result was the same: my heartbreak.

I don’t think I’d ever allowed myself to see that possibility. It was probably too painful to recognize our love had been doomed from the start.

And that led me to understand something very important. Jake leaving me was a conscious choice to love me, even if I didn’t realize it until just now.

To stay would have been selfish. He left because he loved me too much to destroy me.

Oh fuck.
The realization hit me like the lightning we were hiding from.
He left me to save me
.

Suddenly I saw Jake in a whole new light. Despite everything he was going through he’d still been strong enough to leave me when he probably wanted me more than ever. That act of selflessness took my breath away.

“Jake…” the emotions were overwhelming me. I was confused, incredibly confused by the combination of things reeling through my mind.

I’d known from early on Jake had baggage. By the time I realized how deep his problems ran I was already hopelessly in love with him.

But that was what loving Jake meant. I had chosen to take on that responsibility. By choosing to love someone damaged, you accept the consequences along with it. And that meant I needed to accept all of this. That Jake hurting me was inevitable. That Jake had to leave and it was his choice to make. It had nothing to do with me. I had accepted those terms for loving him.

I needed to get over myself.

“Eve, I will never run again. I will say it one more time, and I want you to really hear what I’m saying… I am
not
the boy who ran away ten years ago. I dealt with my crap and I finally grew up. Nothing anyone—including my shit dad—
anyone
can do will break me ever again.”

Then his eyes flashed with something wicked. Gone was the controlled anger from before. It had been replaced with something much more erotic. “And you are right about one thing: what we did wasn’t just sex. It was you and me right with the world again. I know you still love me. And now that I
know
that, I will never leave you. If you run, I will follow. What we have is special… it’s unique. You know how I know that? You aren’t married. I told you the other night you should be. I see the way men look at you, you could have anyone you wanted. You should be happy and married… but you aren’t.”

He took two more steps toward me, I felt like I was being stalked. Jake was the predator and I was the prey. He was tall and strong, his shoulders square, his jaw and fists clenched, holding back the emotions he was keeping at bay. He was gloriously naked, reminding me with every glance how strong and powerful he was, and how very, very attracted to him I was.

“You waited for me Eve. I know you did. And I will wait for you, just please don’t take too long. I’ve already wasted so much of our lives together and I don’t want to lose any more than we have to.”

Had I waited for Jake? Was that why no one was ever good enough for me? Had I secretly been hoping every night I would find Jake waiting on my doorstep? I think I might have been—I think all these years I’d been waiting for Jake to reappear.

I couldn’t keep fighting all of this, but I couldn’t just jump back into love with Jake. “Ask me out.”

Jake blinked. I think I’d really and truly surprised him. He’d been pushing and he knew what he wanted, but having me actually give-in a little wasn’t what he was expecting. It was kind of cute how surprised he looked. His normally masculine, confident face suddenly looked shy and young. He straightened himself up and looked around the room, grabbing his towel back off of the folding chair and wrapping it around his naked waist.

Then he took a deep breath, a mischievous twinkle gleamed in his eye, and walked slowly across the room to stand in front of me. “Eve, would you give me the pleasure of your company at a barbeque this evening?”

I tried to fight the smile on my lips. I really wanted to play this off a little cooler than I was, but hell, he was so damn adorable asking me on a date I couldn’t stand it. “I’d love that.”

He bounced his eyebrows and smiled just enough for his dimple to show. “One step at a time?”

I nodded, “I think so. I don’t know you anymore and I want a chance to see all these changes you keep telling me about.”

“That sounds smart. I think we should date. We never really did that, did we?”

I shook my head and laughed. “No, we most certainly did not.”

“Think we can manage it this time?”

I thought about it for a moment. Considering we were both barely clothed, I had my doubts.
Serious
doubts. More than likely we’d get lost along the way. But damn it was gonna be fun to get lost with Jake again.