My eyes bored into his. “Earn it.”
“I’m not going to tell you I love you. I’m not going to lie to you.”
“Stop lying to yourself,” I commanded. “You want this. The difference between us is that I’m willing to try.”
My fingers dipped into my pussy, pumping in and out. I lifted my slick fingers to his lips, coating them like I had lip balm on my fingers. Like the good boy he was, Jack licked them clean, humming like I was the most delicious dessert.
“I can make you a happy woman, Mara. It doesn’t have to be this hard. Just drop this whole love thing and let us be what we’re going to be.”
“If you can’t love, you don’t get this. I deserve it all.”
His hands rested gently on my shins, my legs still spread wide as I toyed with myself. “You do deserve it all, Mara. I tried to tell you that I’m not good enough for you. But we’re here, and it doesn’t have to be this hard. Why do you make it like this? You think I can’t handle it?”
My resolve was breaking down by the second. I snapped, grabbing his jaw and pulling his face down to mine. “You think you can handle it? Prove it.”
Jack’s lips latched onto mine for a kiss that was bruising, burning, fierce. His fingers trailed over my thighs, one to hold me steady and the other up the inside of my thigh. He pulled away to watch my eyes. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I whimpered.
Jack’s fingers slipped through me easily and he let out a guttural sound. “So fucking wet, Mara. Need you now.”
He shoved his underwear down until his cock sprang free. He lifted under my ass to bring me to the edge of the bathroom counter. He ran his head along my folds, the divine pressure against my clit threatening to make me explode. I put both hands on his chest. “Jack, wait. I can’t get pregnant again. My body can’t go through that again?—”
“Vasectomy,” he said, interrupting me. The crown of his cock continued its firm grind against my clit, making my fingers dig into his biceps.
“And no one else?”
“Just you,” he said with a smirk, feeling like he knew victory was at hand. “Not bare with anyone else.”
“I knew it,” I hissed.
“I save some things for wifely privileges,” he said with a flick of his eyebrows, his first joke this whole time.
“You saved yourself for marriage,” I said as his cock notched at my entrance, but didn’t press inside. “But I’m still not getting what I need.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do, Mara. We can have a happy life, but this is one place we can’t meet.”
His words were a mallet knocking the fight out of me. My eyes searched his, looking for some other answer. Jack shook his head. “Anything but that, sweetheart. Every other part of me is yours. But that’s all I have to give.”
I had to accept. We’d done the deed and signed it too. We were married. This was it.
No man had ever given himself so fully to me, and it was fair of him to not let his deepest wounds be up for sale.
Jack needed time, maybe forever, for that to heal. He needed to be loved by someone who wouldn’t take it away when he did something wrong. He needed me to receive the rest of him before he could give me everything.
If that was the closest we’d get to love, it would have to be good enough.
His eyes searched mine, his brows drawn. “I want this, Mara.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” I whispered, gripping the back of his neck. Jack’s arms locked around me, lifting me up to him as his hungry mouth took mine.
Jack said he couldn’t give me his heart, but I knew better.
He’d already started.
It was just battered and bruised and shy. But I could be patient. And I could take this while I waited.
His lips were fevered, seizing the skin of my neck, his hands squeezing my ass to roll me against him, still not inside me. Theplace where we met brought exquisite, blinding pleasure and I was shameless in my pursuit of it.
