Page 70 of Returning Your Love
I eyed the whiskey I’d left on the kitchen table. A few shots would chill me the fuck out, but I needed to learn to cope without the alcohol. Emotions were healthy, I’d been told, and I ought to let them happen. Feel them. Hell, the therapist hadeven suggested talking to them as though they were my children, as though nurturing them would create a better relationship between us.
Sadness over wanting what I didn’t deserve was the most prominent. Yearning for connection attempted to overrule the first, a not-so-sweet war between my head and heart.
If Jamie stood before me?—
Headlights flashed on the wall, and I moved toward the front windows as a red SUV pulled into the driveway, causing the motion-detecting floodlights to flick on across the yard.
My mouth dried, pulse thrumming with unsteady beats.
We hadn’t spoken in a couple of weeks. He’d finally given me the space I’d asked for, and every necessary second without him had sucked.
Eyes closing, I rested my forehead on the front door, hand gripping the handle.
Silence settled in my mind, all thoughts of being torn in two directions going quiet. Hadn’t we been headed toward this moment for our entire lives? Whether proper or too soon to be ethical, this was always where we’d been meant to be.
I wasn’t sure I was ready, but I couldn’t say no any longer.
He knocked quietly as though knowing I waited a mere panel of wood away, heart in my throat.
Refusing to give in to the shame wanting to creep into the back of my mind, I pulled the door inward.
Dark blue eyes shadowed by the overhead light atop the stoop met mine. Emotions poured through them and off his body. Pain. Longing. Perhaps even his own sense of guilt.
“Can I?—”
I grabbed the front of his fleece and hauled him inside, causing him to stumble into me.
Our mouths slammed together as our bodies collided, hard and hungry. We were desperate with aching desire, making theshow those two boys had gifted the town on the sidelines look like child’s play.
Somehow, the door shut behind him, leaving us alone in oppressive silence broken by heavy breathing and low moans. Jamie held my face in his warm palms, moving my head at an angle so he could plunder my mouth, own me with deep strokes of his tongue along mine.
My legs went weak, and I clutched at his thick fleece, his strength kept me upright.
How could this kind of lust be healthy? This consuming craving to connect on a spiritual level far beyond the caressing of flesh?
I had to touch him. All of him.
I shoved my hands up the back of his shirt, hot skin meeting my fingertips. Mapping the muscles along his spine and across his shoulders, I submitted to his kiss, to whatever he wished to do with me.
Jamie Forester owned me in that moment, and no amount of shame or guilt would convince me we were in the wrong.
Maybe later, but right now?
“Want your dick, Chaz.” Jamie’s statement lit my insides on fire.
There was no stopping us.
Chapter 25
Jamie
I’d acted on instinct, driving to Chaz’s rather than Frenchie’s where I would be expected to show up. Discretion and honoring my best friend’s wish for space could go to hell.
Seeing Josh and Kyle kiss in front of the entire town, coming out loud and proud to tell the world who they loved, had hit me like a bullet to the chest. My heart had stalled out, and my breath ripped from my lungs.
Lifting my focus to Chaz right where I’d somehow known he’d be, I found his gaze promising me we had both secretly wanted the same back then—and now.
Intense ache didn’t begin to describe the draw toward him, the need to claim him reminiscent of how my players had each other. Chaz was always meant to be mine, and even though circumstances had led to the passing of miserable years apart, we were both finally in a place where nothing physical stood between us.
