Page 29 of Mr. On Your Knees
His shoulders sagged instantly with relief, those lines in his brow smoothing as he relaxed his face. “Oh. Okay, then that’s cool.”
Were they really doing this? Sitting here the morning after a night of really great sex, acting like they were still together after all this time. “What are we doing, Jared? What is this?”
He pulled his lips into a tight line and she resisted the urge to touch them. Last night they’d lapped at her pussy until her climax hit and she’d felt like she was having an out-of-body experience. She’d watched those lips close over her tight nipples, sighed heavenly when he’d taken each one of her toes into his mouth for a sensual kiss. There was a good chance that she was still in love with his lips.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said and then licked those lips like he had no clue she’d just been mesmerized by them. “I wanted to share something with you. Something I should’ve said a long time ago.”
“Okay,” she said.
He cleared his throat and locked gazes with her. “I love you, Desi. Still. I never stopped.”
She sighed. “Jared I know good and damn well you haven’t gone without sex for three years.”
He gave a wry chuckle. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I mean is I didn’t love any of the women I’ve been with since you’ve been out of my life. Or, hell, even before you came into my life. I’d never been in love before, Desi.” He rubbed his thumbs over the backs of her hands. “I’d been with plenty of women, some for months at a time, but I never loved them and they all knew it. I couldn’t love them.”
There was a brief silence as he glanced down at their joined hands. “I didn’t know how to love them because what I thought was love had turned out to be nothing. A situation my mother could walk away from without looking back.”
Her heart began to ache all over again for all that he’d lost in his parents’ divorce. She’d vowed a long time ago that if she were ever blessed with children she’d be extra careful about the moves she made in life because her decisions would ultimately affect them in some way, good or bad.
“I know that hurt you, Jared. But you aren’t your father and every woman you date isn’t your mother,” she said.
He nodded and looked at her again. “Part of that’s true,” he said. “Every woman I date is not my mother. But I am just like my father, or at least I was just like him.” He cleared his throat again. “The same day my dad had a heart attack, my mother called me. You know she used to call on my birthday and Christmas and we’d have our same ‘ole dry conversation. More my fault than hers. But this wasn’t my birthday or Christmas and she’d called.
She said it was just because she was thinking about me and then I hurriedly told her about my dad and that I had to get on the road so I could be at the hospital with Bronx and Liam. Thinking back on that call now, she seemed startled by the news but she let me get off the phone without too many questions. Then, the next day she was in Jacksonville. She came to the hospital and I was sitting out in the waiting room while Dad slept. Bronx had gone to get us some lunch and Liam was taking care of a few things at the restaurant so he could spend the rest of the evening at the hospital.”
Desi gripped his hands tighter, encouraging him to keep going when she knew this was hard for him. Emotion had his voice trembling at some points, his eyes blinking faster.
“I’d asked her before why she left us and she’d dodged the question. By the time I was eighteen I stopped asking,” he said. “But for some reason I felt like asking her again that day. My dad had almost died and if that had happened she would’ve been the only parent I had left. She owed me an explanation. So I asked again and this time…this time, she told me.”
There was another one of his dry chuckles before he looked up toward the ceiling and then back at her. “It was my dad’s fault. He didn’t listen to her, didn’t understand what she needed to be whole and as a result she felt she had no choice but to leave.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“My mother had always been a stay-at-home mom. Taking care of us, the house, my dad, everything while he worked at the restaurant all those crazy hours. When we were older and able to toss something in the microwave for dinner if we needed to, she wanted to start her own personal assistant business. Most of it she could’ve done remotely but she’d looked at a small office space she could lease for meetings with clients and mailing purposes.”
“But he didn’t want her to work outside the house,” Desi said, hating where this story was going for Jared’s sake.
He shook his head. “No, he didn’t. And she was tired of him dismissing her, on top of not being there with her most of the time. She felt like she was sacrificing everything to stay there with us and that she had to make a choice. She said it was the hardest choice she’d ever made.”
“I bet it was,” Desi said. “Choosing herself over the family she’d loved and nurtured.”
“But I thought she left because she didn’t care. All those years I hated her for leaving. I hated seeing my father so broken because she’d left and I swore I’d never willingly put myself in that position. So, when you moved in—I swear I was so happy at first, Desi. I really was. I loved waking up next to you each morning and laying beside you every night. I loved our date nights and having sex all over the damn place.”
She grinned at that. “Yeah, we were pretty horny back then.”
“Speak for yourself,” he said with a sexy grin. “I’m still damn horny every time I’m near you.”
Now, she blushed and he released one of her hands to bring it to his face and cup her cheek. “I heard all those things you were saying you wanted in life. Your own business, a house, kids, all that. And I was scared out of my mind. Scared that if I told you I couldn’t get behind any of those things that you’d pick up and leave.”
“So you went to a sex club instead of just communicating with me?” she asked because it didn’t seem to make sense, but then, it kind of did.
“I know baby, that was just… Slay came to town and we were gonna get dinner. Like I said, I just rode along with him. I didn’t fuck anybody in that club and none of those women touched me. I just sat on a couch watching all the wild shit that was going on around me. That’s all.”
She leaned into his hand, tears filling her eyes. “I believe you,” she said. “I think I’ve believed you all along.” But she’d still left him. She’d had to.
When the first tear fell, he caught it with the pad of his thumb, then he was moving in close, touching his lips lightly to hers.
Desi closed her eyes and let the warmth from his touch move through her. It felt like parts of her were melting, thawing to this love that she’d sworn she wouldn’t entertain again, not with him. But here she was, in his house, in his precious game room, letting him kiss her again. When his tongue snaked inside her mouth she welcomed it, dragging hers along his until they were both moaning.
