Illicit: A Forbidden Romance (9 page)

A
manda wasn’t pregnant
. She never was.

The relief that washed over me was like a tsunami, sweeping away everything else in its path. But when the water ebbed, all that was left was guilt and sadness.

“You must hate me,” Amanda said at the parking lot of the clinic.

I looked up, noticing the dark clouds that had gathered in the sky. “Why would I hate you?” I asked, wiping away the tears on her cheeks. But they kept coming, kept rolling down in rivulets.

She stared up at me with her woeful green eyes, her head shaking side to side. “Because you don’t want to be with me, Jake,” she said softly. “We both know the baby is—was—the only thing keeping you here.”

My breath hitched in my throat. I hadn’t realized how transparent I’d been. “Amanda, I—”

“Who is she?” she cut in.

I opened my mouth to speak but a booming crack of thunder intervened. I looked up in time to see light streaking down from the sky followed by another loud thunderclap a few seconds later.

Amanda ignored the weather, instead choosing to focus on the storm that was our relationship. “Her name, Jake,” Amanda said.

“Whose?”

“The woman you’re in love with.” She let out a humorless laugh when I couldn’t answer. “Come on, Jake. We’ve been through some shit. The least you could do is be honest with me. I can tell you haven’t been with me, emotionally anyway, for a while now.”

The air left my body, leaving me deflated. “It doesn’t matter who she is,” I said.

Amanda’s lips trembled. “But she does exist.”

I unlocked her car and held the door open. “Let’s not talk about this here. It’s about to rain.”

But Amanda wouldn’t let up. “This explains so much. Why you’ve been so distant, why you keep turning me down for sex,” she said, ignoring the open door. “You fell in love with someone else but stayed with me out of honor.”

I couldn’t look her in the eye, couldn’t say anything. As much as I tried to do the right thing, honor had been in short supply the past few weeks.

A raindrop fell on her cheek and joined the rest of the tears trickling down her face. “Well, you’re free to be with her now.” Her voice broke at the last word and she turned away and slid into the car just as the rain began to fall.

“Are you saying it’s over between us?” I asked, leaning down and setting my hands on the car.

She wouldn’t look at me as she started the car. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You go your own way and I go mine.”

“Let’s talk about this, Amanda.”

Finally, she looked up. “I need to go away for a few days. To think.” She set the car to Drive. “Take care of Joss, will you?”

My ears burned at the mention of the name. Once again I came so close to telling her about the affair. Instead I stepped back and watched her drive away, getting soaked to the bone.

T
he rain had become
a blinding rainstorm by the time I made it home. Amanda’s car was absent from its usual parking space, but there were two cars in the driveway.

Fucking Eli
.

With long, furious steps, I went into the house and left wet boot prints all over the floor on the way to Joss’s room. Without bothering to knock, I threw open the door. “Joss, we need to t—” I froze at the sight of Eli sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands at his open fly.

Joss spun around to me, her face flushing red. “What the hell?” She lunged across the room and pushed against my chest to force me out the door. “Haven’t you ever heard of privacy?”

I didn’t give an inch. I stood immobile, glaring holes into Eli’s forehead. But instead of being embarrassed, the punk just casually stood up with a smug look on his face. “Try knocking next time, man. We were kind of in the middle of something.”

In my thirty years I’d only completely lost my shit a handful of times. Once in middle school when my brother had taken my brand new bike for a ride and scraped the paint off, and another time when an older kid at school was bullying said younger brother. But the one that stuck out most in my mind was the day I had come home early from work and found Eleanor kissing another man in the driveway. I had lost my temper then and was ashamed to say I’d resorted to violence.

This time, however, there was no shame. I charged Eli and swung, my fist glancing off his jaw when he managed to twist out of the way at the last minute. He was lucky. The rage that propelled that punch probably would have unhinged his pretty boy jaw.

He took a shot at me and missed; I may be bigger, but I’m also faster. In two moves I was behind him with my arm around his neck, holding his arm locked at his back. “I think you forget I’m the man around here and I will not be disrespected in my home.”

Dimly I could hear Joss shouting at me to stop, but I was in that dark place and couldn’t think past my rage. I dragged the asshole out of Joss’s room, down the hall, and literally launched him out the front door into the full-blown rainstorm outside.

He landed on the soggy lawn, slipping a few times before getting back to his feet. “You’re crazy!” he shouted while buckling his belt. “You’re not her dad, you asshole! You’re just a piece of shit lowlife freerider who’s using her mom!”

I stood in front of the house with my hands clenched into fists, my chest swelling with each ragged breath. “You’d better get out of here,” I said in a calm voice that belied the storm roiling inside. “Before I rearrange your face.”

Eli looked behind me. “I’ll call you later,” he called out to Joss.

I stepped in his line of vision, folding my arms across my chest. “Like hell you will.”

He ran a hand through his wet hair and stomped back to his car. Without another word, he got in and pealed out. Once his car disappeared around the corner, I spun on a heel and went back inside the house.

“You had no right to do that!” Joss cried, following me to the laundry room.

I ripped off my soaked shirt and threw it into the washing machine. “No right?” I straightened to my full height, intimidating her with my size. “I had every right.”

She pushed at me but I would not be moved. Not now. “No, you don’t! We’re not together, remember? If I want to fuck someone, I can.”

“Watch your language,” I said between my teeth.

“I don’t have to watch my language,” she said, rising to her toes to get in my face. She poked a finger in my chest. “Because you’re nothing to me, Jake.”

I gnashed my teeth, sure I was about to grind my molars into dust. “That may be true, but I’ll be damned if I let anyone else fuck you.” I stepped away and ripped off my belt, instinct taking over. I pulled my dick out, not at all surprised to find it hard as granite.

Her eyes flew down to watch me stroke myself then back up to my face, her breathing ragged, her entire body trembling. Before I could blink, she lunged for me, her hands grasping the back of my head as she dragged me down to meet her lips. I sank into the kiss with a groan, pouring into it every moment of torture I’d been through without her.

My hand slid down her body, tugging wildly at her cutoff shorts.

“What are we doing?” Joss asked, gripping my wrists. But I kept going until her panties and shorts were down around her ankles. I spun her around and bent her over the washer, jerking her hips back. “This isn’t… we shouldn’t…”

“We can,” I said, guiding the head of my cock to her warmth. And God, was she warm and so wet. “Your mom and I are over.” The guilt tried its best to steal its way back in but I shut it out, determined to have this moment. Guilt be damned, this was about me and Joss and nobody else.

Joss gasped, looking over her shoulder. “You are?”

I bent down and kissed her shoulder, breathing her in. “Yes,” I whispered against her freckled skin.

“I should go find her.”

She tried to twist around but I held steady. “No. She’s gone, Joss. She left.”

“But she probably needs me.”

“Joss!” I wound my fingers through her hair and tugged until she was looking at me. “
I
need you.”

It was possibly the most selfish thing I’d ever said, but it was also the truest. I had just lost Amanda and the baby. If Joss left me now, I didn’t know how I’d cope.

The fear was clear in her eyes, but beneath that I could see the yearning. She burned for me; I could see it all over her face, could feel it radiating from her skin. Her lips parted and, with a stuttered breath, she arched her back and sank halfway down my length.

I let out a low groan against her ear. My fingers dug into her hips and I tugged her to me, her warmth enveloping me completely. I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

I molded myself to her back, holding her tight, trying to get as close as humanly possible. Here, like this, was the rightest place to be, the only place free of any doubts.

“I’m here,” she said on a sigh. “You have me.”

I turned her around and set her up on the machine, needing to look into her eyes. I floated my fingers across the soft lines of her face, lightheaded and completely intoxicated with this being in my arms.

“I love you, Joss.” I hadn’t planned on saying those words, but once they came out, I found I didn’t want to take them back. I loved her, had loved her for a long time now. It was about time she finally knew.

She sucked in a breath and looked up. “What did you say?”

“I love you,” I repeated, holding her face in my hands. “I’m so fucking helplessly in love with you.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, absorbing my words. As I watched her, a tentative smile curved her lips upward, releasing the knots in my stomach. She wrapped her legs around me and guided me back into her warmth, her entire face glowing as we locked back together. “My wooden heart has always been yours, Jake.”

I took my time rocking into her, kissing her with equal parts tenderness and intensity. Her breathing turned ragged as she touched my face, staring at me in disbelief and awe. “Is this real? Is this really happening?”

A short laugh escaped my throat. “Oh, this is really happening,” I said and kissed her again.

I gave her everything I had to offer, loving her the best and only way I knew how. And when she came shuddering around me, I followed her down into the unknown without any hesitation.

“
W
hy are you reading that
?” Joss asked in her bed a short while later.

I gathered her closer into the crook of my arm, resting the tattered copy of Jane Eyre on her shoulder. “Because it’s your favorite book.”

“But right now?”

I read aloud, “I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good Angel—I am bound to you by a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely; a fervent, solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you—and kindling in pure, powerful flames, fuses you and me in one.”

She sighed. “One of my favorite parts.”

“It’s a long-winded way of saying I love you.” I kissed the top of her head, feeling a sense of rightness blanketing around us. I would have happily stayed like that forever, naked in bed with Joss, reading a book. It was my version of heaven.

She turned around and fit her back into my chest so that I spooned her. “Mmm. Read to me some more,” she murmured, kissing the arm supporting her head.

“How about I tell you another story?”

She looked over her shoulder. “Oh? Who’s the author?”

“Jake Mitchell and Jocelyn Blake.” I set the book down and wrapped both arms around her, drawing her close. With my lips grazing the shell of her ear, I whispered, “Once upon a time there was man who fell in love with a woman he could never have.”

“Ooh, a forbidden love story. My favorite trope,” she said with a smile in her voice.

“Despite their circumstances, the two were inexplicably drawn together. They fought the attraction, tried to deny it even existed, until—”

“Can we get to the end of the story already?” she asked, rubbing her backside along my erection.

“So impatient.” I parted her folds and slid inside in one strong thrust.

She gasped. “I’m not impatient. I just want to make sure there’s a happy ending.”

“Oh, there’s definitely going to be a happy ending.” To punctuate, I reached around and began to play with her clit as I dragged my cock in and out.

She pulled away and turned around, her eyebrows wrinkled with worry. “Jake, I need to know that you and I will be together at the end of all this.”

“You’re co-author, Joss. You get to decide the ending.”

She mulled over my words, a smile forming on her lips. She hooked her leg over my hip and slid my cock back inside her sex. “Well then, spoiler alert,” she said, clutching at my ass and urging me to thrust harder. “The boy gets the girl and they lived happily ever after.”

She stopped then, the smile fading away, reality seeping back into our fairytale. “Even though I don’t think we deserve it,” she added with a quiver in her voice.

I held her by the back of the head and kissed her hard, reminding her of what we had between us. “I don’t know how, but your mom can have a happily ever after too, Joss. Her story doesn’t have to end in tragedy.”

A tear slid down the side of her face and soaked into the pillow. “It already has.”

J
ocelyn
and I stayed awake into the early hours of the morning. In between making love, we talked about books, school, work, about anything and everything that popped into our heads. It was as if we’d been mute all our lives and now we were finally free to speak.

When her alarm went off in the morning, I planted soft kisses all over her face, excited at the prospect of waking up with her every morning from here on out.

She giggled and cracked open her eyes. “Morning.”

“Morning.” I nuzzled her neck, my hand straying down south.

“We don’t have time,” she said, grabbing my wrist. “I have to get to work.”

I groaned. “I was hoping we could spend the whole morning in bed together.”

“You can take a shower with me, if you’d like?”

She didn’t have to ask twice. I practically carried her out of bed and into the shower. Once under the hot spray of water, Joss stood back and eyed my naked body with open appreciation.

I set my hands on my hips and let her look her fill.

She bit her lower lip. “I’ve daydreamed about this—you—in the shower." She reached out and touched her fingers to my stomach. I flexed, my abdominals popping up.

“Since when?”

“My friend Ashley put the idea in my head that night you picked us up,” she said tentatively, looking so adorably shy I wanted to pinch both sets of cheeks.

I wrapped an arm around her back instead and pulled her flush against my naked, wet body. “Is that why you faked that illness and pulled my towel off?” I asked with a grin.

Her cheeks flushed. “No! I was legitimately sick.”

“Sick in lust with me,” I teased, sliding a finger down her spine and into the crevice of her ass.

She gasped when my fingers found her cleft, gliding through her slippery folds.

I was too caught up in Joss, wholly absorbed by the look of unadulterated pleasure on her face, to notice the bathroom door opening. To see the woman walking inside.

“Jake?” Amanda stood a few feet from us, separated only by the foggy glass shower door. Her eyes flicked from me to the woman in my arms, her mouth falling open when she finally discovered her identity. “Joss?”