Jahleel (33 page)

Jahleel pressed his palm over my folds, keeping it there until I calmed. Getting up from between my spread thighs, he fetched my clothes and handed them to me.

Sprawled out on the chaise, clenching with desperation to feel that part of him inside me, I resorted to begging, “I know you said no, but, please, just this once—”

“Aren’t you hungry? Sure you are,” he cut in, his mood a bit off, eyes avoiding mine. “I’ll head upstairs and fix you something.”

“JK—”

“Every girl just wants to
fuck
!” he erupted, surprising me. “All of you, the same. You all just wanna fuck me because I look or act a certain way. None of you really want to know
me
. Women claim they want ‘more’, but I don’t give them shit, because their definition of ‘more’ is for me to tell the world I’m
with
them so they can slap a label of ownership on me, even though they know nothing about me, except the length and width of my dick, or the flexibility of my waistline. Tiara? The same. She was obsessed with my cock and that’s it. Naming me as her boyfriend in a high-profile magazine, when I’m pretty sure if they asked her my date of birth, she wouldn’t have a clue.”

Glancing wildly around the room, he shoved a furious hand through his hair. “I wanted you to be different.
Convinced
myself you were different. But the only difference between you and the others is that I actually want
more
from you. Yet I have to fuckin’ force it out of you.

“I’m tryin’ to share parts of myself with you that I’ve never shared with anyone else. Not even Krissy knows I sketch. But you don’t want more. More bores you. You just want to fuck. Like the rest of them. So you can say you’ve fucked me. Because apparently I’m some type of achievement? The popular face of the season? What? I dunno. I’m still tryin’ to figure that out.

“You don’t seem to care about protecting your emotional state or what I could do to it. See, I’m an asshole, and I know I’m an asshole, and I wanna get the most out of you
as a person
before I fuck you and end up doing or saying some fucked-up shit, as I tend to do. Because when I do, you’ll want nothing more to do with me. And that will be that. But at least I’ll have memories like what I’ve tried to create today to hold on to. I wanna know that the moment I slide my cock inside you, you’ll know
whose
cock is inside you. Not just my name. But absolutely everything about the man who’s on top of you. Fucking you. Sharing himself with you.”

He threw his arms out. “My efforts here are futile, though. You’re disappointingly just like the rest. A woman’s definition of more is evidently different from mine. Or maybe I’m the one who’s the bitch?”

Shirtless, barefooted, my cum on his fingers, he turned and strode out of the basement.

Halfway up the stairs, he stopped, stood there for a moment, before slowly turning to calmly say, “You have me, you know. But you’re not ready for me.” Pausing, he bit down on his bottom lip pensively, then went on, “You have the power…But you’re not yet constant.”

Then, he was gone. While I laid there, mouth hanging open at his explosive tirade.

What the fuck just happened?

Chapter Nineteen

I
got attached.

As if being obsessed and in delusional love wasn’t enough, now I went and got a-friggin-ttached. As in, I needed to hear from him, whether via text message, phone call or email, before I started and ended each day.

He wasn’t complaining yet. And I was making the most of his non-complaining compliance. Not after his harangue when he accused me of wanting him solely for sex.

Unable to refute his postulation without giving off I was a stalker and a creep, who had obsessed about
him
and not his cock for over five years, I didn’t address the topic that day after I joined him in the kitchen. Instead, I stopped bringing the conversation around to sex all the time and gave him the ‘more’ he wanted.

We spent every free time our busy lives afforded together. Doing unbelievably mundane things in unbelievably mundane places. But every moment spent with Jahleel was, for me, extraordinary. More didn’t bore me. That was all in his head.

I already lived an extraordinary life, doing extraordinary things. Jahleel, he was the equanimity I needed. The balance. The ordinary in my over-the-top life. He wasn’t a normal guy, but he managed to live his life that way. Got no idea how he did it, but he made everything seem natural.

I loved him.

Our favourite hangout spots were down in his basement, where we ate crap, got drunk, talked about nothing and fell asleep locked in each other’s arms. Or in my theatre room, where we cuddled and watched movie after movie, ‘til we fell asleep.

Weird enough, cuddling and watching television was one of his all-time favourite things to do. Not usual for men. But here I had Jahleel, a complete movie addict.

Want to calm him? Just put on a good movie and he’d just immediately go placid.

Nature taking its course I see…

Too bad I’m not there to fuck with it.

I will, though.

As soon as I’m back on U.S. soil.

*Don’t reply*

I smiled at Chad’s message as Amanda steered the vehicle into Jamie’s neighbourhood.

Don’t reply.
Such a muted command.

Not that I would’ve replied anyway. After getting so much closer to Jahleel, more than I ever thought possible, I was being prudent in not frigging it up.

For all I knew, Chad was testing me. He’d said it himself that he would never do anything to screw Jahleel over, so if he was positive I was in Jahleel’s corner, he wouldn’t come after me.

Amanda steered the vehicle down Jamie’s street. We were both knackered. I had spent the day in a bloody hotel suite, doing back-to-back ten minute interviews for a truckload of magazine journalists. Question after question. Most of them repetitive. Ennui didn’t even begin to describe it.

After that, on to training and rehearsals.

We’d expected Jamie to show up at the studio, but she never did so Amanda and I decided to swing by to check on her. More Amanda than me, as a matter of fact. If it were me alone, I would have directed Thomas to take me straight home. But one of Amanda’s functions was to provide rational, thoughtful behaviour to my life. So Thomas took Ferbie home, while we set off for Jamie’s.

The night was a windy one. Wild winds. The clouds, a bloated puff of coral meets tangerine, covered the sky in one uniform colour. Not a single star dared to peek, and the moon’s shine was non-existent, hidden by swollen clouds biding their time before they unleashed their wet wrath over the city. The thunder grumbled on, rattling the earth, but had yet to release its growl, its roar.

One of those nights perfect for dragging on a pair of thick socks and curling up under a thick blanket with a large cup of hot chocolate, your significant other nuzzling your neck.

But such a life was for the contented poor, wasn’t it? Fortunate as I appeared to be, I didn’t have a significant other to curl up with whenever the rain decided to pound in unrelenting showers.

For the past two hours I’d tried ringing Jahleel to no avail. So shower and bed it would be for me tonight.

Amanda pulled up outside Jamie’s, while I mindlessly scrolled through text messages. “Go check if she’s breathing,” I mumbled. “You stay longer than two minutes, I’m driving off.”

“Shite,” I heard Amanda mutter under her breath.

Before I could question the reason, she swung the car into a neighbour’s lot to make a U-turn. “Her car isn’t here. So she’s not home,” she rushed out.

“I told you this was a waste of tim—” I stopped short as Amanda got the car around, me on the opposite side now, able to see what she didn’t want me to see: Jahleel’s bike parked in Jamie’s driveway.

“Stop the car.”

Amanda ignored me and kept driving.

“Stop the bloody car, Manda!”

“Why?” she demanded. “So you can go make an arse of yourself?”

Reaching over, I grabbed the steering wheel and tried turning the car around, while Amanda fought to regain control of it. The car swayed from side to side, until it swerved up on someone’s lawn and ran over a garbage bin, careening back onto the road.

“Alright! Alright!” Amanda yelled. “You trying to get us killed, you daft cow?!”

“Turn. The. Car. Around!!!” My shrieks reverberated through my temples.

“Get your fucking hands off the steering wheel then, yeah?”

I spared her one last don’t-fuck-with-me glare before I removed my hands from the wheel.

Slamming the car in reverse, she furiously hit the gas pedal, and the car sped back down the street. She stopped with a sharp hit to the brakes at Jamie’s curb.

Amanda got out of the car faster than me, getting in my face. “I’m coming with you to ensure you don’t do anything dumb.”

Ignoring her, I tried to get around her, but she pressed a firm palm to my chest, stopping me. “Just remember, he’s
not
yours. He has no obligation to you. He owes you
nothing
.”

When I said nothing, she glared at me with those hard, intimidating onyx eyes, making sure I got it.

Being obdurate, I glared back at her, but it wasn’t long before I sighed and gave in. “I know.”

“Good. We’re here because we were worried about Jamie and came to check on her.”

“But that’s the truth,” I pointed out.

“Exactly.”

We walked up the driveway to Jamie’s cute, brick-faced bungalow. As usual, her door was negligently left unlocked, which made it easier for me to catch them in the act.

I heard the groans first, coming from the direction of her living room.

We turned off the first wing to her living room. Jamie’s auburn mane was dangling over the edge of her lime-green couch, as her head was tossed back on it. Because the couch faced away from us, I couldn’t see much else.

“Be gentle, JK,” she moaned out.

A cocktail of raging emotions laced through me at her words, his name, and rendered me immobile, speechless.

Picking up on this, Amanda stepped forward. “Jamie?”

Jamie’s head jerked up at her name, and she slightly turned to glance over the edge of the couch at us. “Oh, hey, Manda. Kia,” she casually greeted, as if she wasn’t in the middle of getting pleasured by my…not my…
my
…Jahleel.

“We were worried and—” Amanda started and stopped when Jahleel’s head popped up over the edge.

Our eyes connected and I inhaled a sharp, painful breath. We stared at each other for half a minute. His expression held no apology, no remorse, his hair falling devastatingly deliciously into his eyes.

Arse
.

Amanda grabbed my hand and tried to pull me out. “We’ll just go and—”

“You’re still fucking her?” I impulsively directed at Jahleel, unable to just walk out like it was nothing. Not when my insides felt lacerated.

The arsehole’s lips curved up in his signature crooked smile, and he slightly shook his head before disappearing behind the couch again.

As I prepared to make my way towards the couch, Amanda pulled me back, while Jamie just stared, brows raised.

“So you’re just going to ignore me?” I questioned the out-of-sight Jahleel. “You know what, raisin dick, I’m Saskia D—”

“Shut up, Sassy,” Jahleel’s voice calmly ordered from behind the couch.

With one sharp tug, I pulled from Amanda’s grip and power-walked towards the couch. “You don’t get to tell me to shut—” I skidded to a halt when I rounded the couch, words and movement arrested.

Jamie reclined fully clothed in a white Capri and pink top, and her left leg, which had a huge red burn on the calf, rested in Jahleel’s lap. He knelt before her, applying some kind of ointment on the burn.

Well, wasn’t I the idiot.

But then again, he was here at her house. Maybe he planned on shagging her. What the hell was he doing here?

“Bike burn,” Jamie explained. “Hurts like hell.” She dropped her head back on the couch and groaned unhappily. “I’m freakin’ scarred!”