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I sighed. "Because of the money." Disappointment washed through me. Jace just wanted to say thank you for the things I'd done for his family. I began to pull my hands from his, but he clamped his fingers down more tightly.
"Not for the money. For being you. You've made me a better man," he said, pulling me a little closer. "Not only have you helped my family immensely, but you've made me look at things differently, understand that we don't all live in a cookie cutter outline in the world, a place set for us at birth."
"Of course not," I agreed. Wasn’t I in the midst of trying to break out of my own mold? I had to believe this was true.
"There's more though," he said, his warm breath on my ear now, as he lowered his head to whisper. "When I'm around you, it's like I can finally breathe, like there's more air or space or light in the world. When you're near me, I feel alive." His lips found my neck, brushed the sensitive skin lightly, erupting more tingles. "You make me happy," he said, his tongue darting out to taste my earlobe. "And you're so fucking sexy, I think I could probably die now, knowing I've gotten to taste you and there is nothing else in the world I ever need to see, feel or try. You're it."
My heart lifted inside my chest and I pushed Jace away from me a bit so I could look into his eyes. I needed to see the emotion there to believe it, maybe. But when our eyes met, it was like seeing the horizon out in front of me, like looking into the distance, knowing forever could be there, that you could spend your life on the journey to reach it. "You're it for me too."
Jace kissed me then, our tongues tangling for a long deep kiss as his hands pulled my body into his, the warmth of him washing all the doubt and pain from inside me.
I slid my hands up the hard planes of flesh and muscle inside his shirt, and he lifted his lips from mine for a moment to whip it off over his head. His eyes met mine again then, and the hunger and want I saw within the depths actually made my knees shake as something flipped over in my belly. Need spiked inside me, and I pressed myself against him again, wanting contact, friction, firm fullness.
Jace slid to his knees, hooking his fingers in the waist of my jogger pants, pulling them down my hips along with my panties, while my hands buried themselves in his thick dark hair. Jace lifted one of my legs, placing it gently over his shoulder as I gasped at the exposure. It felt lewd to have him there, to be opened this way. And it was also so hot I could barely stand still. I let my eyes drop shut as his hot breath hit my flesh, and when his firm warm tongue licked once along my seam, my mind screamed out more, more, more. I pressed a fist to my mouth, wanting to make sure Gran wasn’t going to hear me again.
He teased and licked me, his hands finding my ass and pulling me into his face as his tongue pushed deeper into me. He flicked and sucked as I tried to stifle my moans, impaled on his tongue. I needed his shoulders for support as he added a finger, then two, and sent ribbons of sensation up my spine and inside me until I couldn't imagine ever walking out of this room, couldn't imagine anything but this—heat, sensation, warmth, love.
Jace picked me up before he let me come, settling me gently on the bed and then standing in front of me. My eyes flickered open as I moaned, missing him, missing the feeling of his fingers and tongue and all that hard warm flesh. He slid his pajama pants from his firm lean hips and stood before me for a few seconds, his thick erection jutting dark and glistening against his stomach. A moment later he was climbing over me, helping me slip my shirt over my head and removing my bra.
His eyes darkened, and he took my mouth with his in a kiss that roared through my body, made my feet flex and curl. I pulled him to me, loving the hard strength of him, the almost predatory way he hovered over me as his erection pressed against my stomach, inflamed and swollen. I reached down and took him in my hand, using the head of his cock to rub my clit a few times, sending sparks through me.
"Fuuuck," Jace ground out, his voice like a prayer in my ear.
I notched him against my entrance and lifted my hips to accept him, to make more room for his engorged crown. As he pressed just inside, we both gasped and then our mouths came together, searching, finding. He backed up and pressed again, slipping farther into me as my body stretched to accommodate him. Inch by inch, gasp by gasp, breath by breath, he filled me. And when he was inside me, every hot thick inch of him stretching and filling my channel until I could barely breathe, he began the gentle slide in and out, in and out.
I let go. I let go of the uncertainty I'd felt earlier, of the preconceptions I had of him, of myself. I let go of everything I'd been before and let myself become something new. Someone new. In Jace's arms, connected like this, I found myself and the woman I wanted to be.
And when he held me later, as we drifted off to sleep, I knew that no matter what happened, I couldn't go back.
We woke as light filtered beneath the dark shades drawn against the windows, and I looked at my watch.
"What time is it?" Jace asked, tightening his grip on me.
"Early," I told him. "Go back to sleep."
I planted kisses across his perfect nose, and then slipped from the bed. When I was dressed, I opened the door as quietly as I could and slipped out, turning to the hallway just as it clicked shut. To find Chad standing there, watching me with a little smile on his lips.
"Has Jace been working overtime?" He asked.
My stomach turned. I didn't know what Chad's angle would be, but I was sure he had one. "No, I just needed to speak with him in private."
"At five o'clock in the morning. In his bedroom," Chad said, nodding. "Want to come chat with me privately?" He pushed open the door to the room across the hall, and I tried to hide the disgust I felt at the idea.
"No, I ..." I started walking, realizing I didn't want to talk to him, that nothing I said would erase what he'd just seen. And I didn't want to end up getting pulled into his room. For the first time, I felt a tingle of fear.
I heard him chuckling as I moved away, out into the dark quiet of the front room. My mind was whirling around everything that had happened, with Jace, now with Chad—and so when I nearly ran right into someone moving silently through the room I nearly keeled over before I realized it was Tess.
"Oh, Tess!" I heard myself exclaim.
"Hi," she said. "Getting coffee," she said, clearly still half asleep.
"Good, yes," I said, hoping she wasn't about to ask what I was doing down here. I followed her to the kitchen, and we sat down across from one another at the little round table. Tess looked upset, and while I was a bit hurt over the words she'd said the night before, I knew there was likely more to it. Something to do with Ryan. "You doing okay?" I asked her.
"Jules," she said, her voice small and apologetic. "I'm sorry about what I said last night."
"No," I told her. "You were right. I know it isn't easy being my sister, Tess. I know I make it hard." Before last night I would have sworn I'd never asked to be the center of attention, I'd never wanted to make everyone pay attention to me. But I'd been thinking a lot, and maybe that wasn't quite right. When my parents had died, I think I reacted by working to replace their love, to fill in that void with as much love and adoration as I could collect. And what better way than by becoming a movie star? Not that I controlled it entirely, but once I figured out that people did react naturally to something I had, some kind of charisma or charm, I learned how to use it. But the void remained.
"It's not always you," she said. "It's just all the things that come with you now."
