Page 35 of Holiday Grief

“You’re still recovering, you need rest. We have a big day tomorrow, lunch with my family and dinner with yours.”

Lunch and dinner.

In the same day.

Two Christmases.

She hardly dared to believe it.

The fear that she would wake up and find this was all a dream and she was still chained to that wall in Bobby’s basement was ever-present.

But she wasn’t.

She was free.

Not just free from that house of horrors that had stolen two years of her life, two years that were supposed to be filled with dates, and proms, and graduation. Years she’d spent being raped by older men so Bobby Johnson could make easy money. The next six years had been lost to her too as guilt and shame had consumed her.

Now she had a whole new life to look forward to. A future she hadn't thought she deserved, but now she was beginning to accept that even though she’d been incredibly naïve to believe Bobby was who he pretended to be she hadn't committed any other sin. She’d done the best she could to protect her baby sisters the only way she knew how.

Her future was there, waiting for her to reach out and grab hold of it.

Exactly what she planned on doing.

“I’ll go to bed if you come with me,” she said as Adam nudged open the door to the master bedroom where she’d been sleeping since he brought her here after the hospital.

“As soon as I put the presents under the tree and in Claire’s stocking, I’ll join you.”

“Uh uh, I want to help with that, but after, first I want you.”

“You have me, green eyes.”

Okay, so he was going to make her spell it out. Sex was something she was both experienced and inexperienced in. Not a virgin when she’d been forced into prostitution, she’d had a boyfriend her sophomore year and they’d slept together a few times, but nothing these last six years. She knew how to be used by a man for sex, but not what it was like for that man to know how to, or care to, make her feel good.

“I want all of you, Adam.”

His head turned so their eyes could meet, sparks danced between them but he made no move to do anything. “You’re going to have to spell it out for me, green eyes. You’ve been through a lot and are still recovering. I don’t want to assume anything.”

“You trying to embarrass me?” she grumbled.

Adam laughed. “No, sweetheart. But given your past, I need you to be clear on exactly what you want.”

“You, me, in that bed, having se— making love,” she amended.

A growl rumbled through his chest, and he took two long steps to get them to the bed. “Been waiting a long time to taste you, green eyes.” As he laid her out on the bed and stared hungrily at her, Jasmine felt heat flush through her system.

She’d never had a man go down on her before, but as Adam reverently unzipped her jeans and slipped them down her legs, pulling off her boots and then tossing them and her jeans on the floor, she was excited to see what it was like.

“Lacy panties,” he groaned as he looked at the green lace underwear she’d bought a while back when she and Adam first started dating.

“I'm wearing the matching bra,” she informed him.

Another groan. “Babe, you're killing me here.”

She giggled a little nervously, but when Adam took her hands and sat her up, pulling the hem of her sweater up and over her head, tossing it to join the rest of her clothes on the floor, that nervousness morphed into desire.

There was no way she could be nervous when he was staring at her with so much hunger in his deep, brown eyes.

“Lie down, green eyes,” he ordered softly, and she rested back, laying her head on the pillow.

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