Jayson: A New Adult / Coming of Age Romance (28 page)

“
J
ust tell
me what you did,” I plead softly, tearfully. I inhale on a broken sob as I stare my mother down.

Candace takes a step towards me, but I put my hands up defensively. I dash the tears from my face and square my shoulders. Her gaze drops guiltily. “I told you I wasn’t proud of it. I apologized.”

“What did you do?” I say louder.

“Oh, for goodness sake!” Candace shouts back angrily. She yanks open her desk drawer and pulls out a folder. “There! That’s what I did. I found out what he didn’t want you to know.”

“And you used this against him,” I accuse without even looking at the contents of the folder. The doorbell chimes through the house.

“Kitrina, I was doing it for your own good,” my mother insists. I shake my head vehemently, refusing to accept that line this time.

“I want to know everything! Every detail,” I command, arms crossed. The doorbell rings again.

“Kit, let me get the door. We can discuss this some other time. We were doing so well, weren’t we, darling? Why the need to fuss and fight?” she purrs.

“No, I’ll get the door. You figure out how to say what you need to say because I am not backing down until I find out the truth.”

I scoop up the folder from Mom’s desk and march out of her office to give her time to get her story together while I see who’s at the door. I fully anticipate I’ll get half-truths and white lies from her, but it’s better than nothing. All this time I was thinking Jayson had someone else. Suddenly the missing pieces of the puzzle came together after talking with Castiel. Who was the one woman who would insist he break up with me? Not a mistress. Not another girlfriend. No, my very own mother. How could she do this to me?

Gracie was right. I pass her as she's pacing in the informal living room, looking nervous and uncomfortable.

“Grace, why don’t you take my car and get home. I don’t want to keep you here.”

“Had I known any of this would happen, I never would’ve told you to stop and talk to Castiel. You have to believe me.”

“I know. I know, friend. Here are my keys. I’ll call you later tonight to come pick me up. I can’t stay another day in this house. It’s built of lies, deceit and grudges, and my mother seriously needs help.”

We hug briefly and stroll together to the door where the insistent doorbell pusher chimes the bell again. I throw the door wide with irritation. “What is it?” I growl.

“Jayson,” Grace gasps.

My eyes widen. He stands there in a bomber jacket and a pair of jeans and flannel shirt, a thermal cap covering his crew cut. Nothing, no one, has ever looked so good to me. His amber eyes melt me on the spot, despite the nipping March wind gusting in through the open door. My first instinct is to run into his arms. I hear a strangled sound behind me and whip around to see my mother coming down the stairs.

“You! What are you doing in my house?” she asks coldly.

“I came here to talk to Kitrina,” Jayson dauntlessly states. A surge of protectiveness moves through me and I step between the two of them.

“Are you ready to tell me what you did?” I confront Candace. She puts her hands on her slender hips and saunters forward. The diamond choker on her swan-like neck catches the light.

“I think I’ll leave now,” Grace whispers. I nod imperceptibly, and she dashes out the door, closing it behind her. Now, there’s no one here but the essentials. It’s time to know the truth.

Mother stares at Jayson as if he has the plague, and he squares his jaw. I glance down at the folder in my hand, curious. “Everything you need to know is right there,” Mother intones ominously upon seeing the direction of my gaze. I hesitantly flip the folder open and quickly glance over the paperwork. It doesn’t take long to realize it’s a legal document of some sort. Getting to the meat of it, I discover crimes attributed to Jayson when he was in his teens. A knife fight, I think I remember him mentioning.

A charge for reckless endangerment and driving under the influence. My eyes narrow, and I suddenly know exactly why mother thought she could leverage this against him. Memories of the agony following the death of my father resurface. The anger and grief come back as fresh as the day we found out he had been killed by a drunk driver. There’s no getting over that kind of loss. Not for her, not for me. It makes me sad to learn that Jayson would do something so careless as getting behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated.

But it doesn’t affect me the way my mother must’ve believed it would. He was a kid. He doesn’t behave like that now and I very much doubt he ever did it again. He learned. I look up at Jayson. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know how.”

“We talked about everything. Everything.”

“Everything but what really mattered, apparently,” Mom quips smugly.

I close the folder and calmly hand it over to her. “Yet, as much as you think it mattered, you didn’t tell me either. You preferred, Mother, to use this information to manipulate, to bend me to your will…and now you expect me to thank you for it?” I ask incredulously. I look into her blue eyes, trying to find some semblance of the woman I used to know.

I see hurt, paranoia, distrust. I see love. Misguided love.

“Let me tell you once and for all, Mother. I cannot be controlled.”

“I wasn’t trying to control you, but I knew you needed a firm hand to guide you,” she insists. “Be reasonable, Kit. Would you have left him otherwise? Look how wonderful things have turned out since you did.”

“I cannot be controlled. I will not be controlled. You will not control me. I love you. I’m not going to say I never want to see you again. We both know that wouldn’t be true,” I reply resolutely. “But, it is going to take me a while to desire to be in your presence after this, and you’re just going to have to respect that. Goodbye, Mother. Come on, Jayson.”

“Kit! What are you saying? You-you saw the records for yourself! You know what kind of man he is now!”

“No, Mother, I knew what kind of man he was well before I saw the dirt you dug up on him. He’s a good man, a responsible one. He’s a hard worker and a fierce lover, and he doesn’t deserve your disdain. In fact, he has more integrity in his little finger than you’ve been showing me lately. I sincerely hope you seek psychiatric help to work through your problems. I wish you the best.”

Jayson’s amber eyes swing from me to my mother, then back to me. This time he doesn’t try to make me stay. There’s nothing left to linger for. I walk out the door without a backwards glance. “Let’s go home,” he murmurs.

I
walk
up the steps and cross the porch to the front door, producing the keys from my pocket. It feels good to slide it into the lock and hear the satisfying click of my house opening its doors to me. Stepping inside, I inhale the familiar smell of my home.

“Let’s get some heat going,” Jayson replies. He walks in as if he owns the place, and he goes straight to the furnace to turn up the heat in the house I’ve only visited a time or two in the months since I lost my job at Devil in the Details. I was able to keep up with the bills with help from my mom. I expect that’s over and done with now.

“Are you hungry?”

“There’s nothing in the fridge. The place is nearly empty. Matter of fact, I don’t even have any clothes here. Was that hasty or what? Back to the daily grind of being independent,” I sigh.

He stands in the middle of the living room. “I can run out and grab take-out.” I shake my head, not hungry, not thirsty, not tired…only craving him. His muscular chest and shoulders fill out his shirt enticingly. My gaze sweeps down his long legs and back up to his angular face. I see uncertainty in his eyes. Has it occurred to him that he might need to question his stance with me?

“We need to talk,” I say. I gesture to the sectional.

“You’re right. I should never have hid anything from you, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart. I knew you’d find out and it would be the end of us the minute I saw Lamont, my brother, with your mom—”

“Your brother?”

He ambles over to the sectional and sits, pats the space next to him. I settle beside him, intrigued to hear more.

“Speaking of secrets, turns out I’m not quite a Zephyr. Lamont Stephens and I have the same father. I suspect that’s the reason for Lamont’s animosity towards me now that we’re older. He feels the affair his father had with my mother led to the downfall of his family. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, Kitrina, I really didn’t stay away because your mother was blackmailing me. I stayed away because I felt you needed the space and opportunity to grow into yourself…and I was right. Look at you. You’re flourishing.”

“Is that what you see?” He nods as he gazes intently into my eyes. I shake my head. “Because what I see is an empty house without you. A cold, hungry place with no love. It doesn’t matter how big it is or how well furnished. Don’t you see? None of my success brings me joy without you in my life.”

He takes my hands. “You sound like your old self,” he says with a tremulous smile.

“I love you. Do you love me, Jayson Zephyr?” I was afraid to ask before. I was afraid to take charge of the direction of this relationship because there were so many things that could go wrong. Now that I’ve hit every last pitfall and bump in the road, the fear is gone.

Jayson licks his lips thirstily. He leans forward and sips delicately from my mouth. I inhale his aroma and get lightheaded with desire. My hand rises to his chest. “I love you,” he whispers against my lips. His tongue eases into my mouth. He swallows my soft moan and nibbles at my bottom lip, pulling back to flick his tongue against the top. “I love you, Kitrina Schneider,” he repeats.

“Then, why don’t you let the future take care of itself, now that the past isn’t in our way anymore?”

A deep chuckle rumbles up from his chest as he wraps his arms around me. “I hear,” he says, “if you stick with a guy like me, you’ll be living paycheck to paycheck.”

“I’ve heard something like that, too. Fortunately, I’ve had a little experience with living paycheck to paycheck. I survived.”

He kisses me again. “I hear you’re out of my league.”

“I’m in your arms.”

“I hear—.”

“Did you hear me telling you I’m in love with you?” I interrupt.

Suddenly he reaches for the buttons of his shirt and begins to unbutton them. My eyes drop to his belt as the shirt comes free. My lips part slightly in anticipation. I take a deep breath when the shirt drops to the floor. “Are we ready for this type of commitment?” he asks.

“What type?” He grabs my face and brings my mouth to his. “Touch me,” I plead, eyes squeezing shut. My arms race around his neck, and my body presses against his warm, bare chest. The minute his arms encircle me I feel it. Home. He plunders my mouth with a passionate kiss that steals my breath.

“I want you to be mine, Kit. I want to marry you. Say yes.”

With wild abandonment, we come together in a clash of ribcages and thighs. Jayson lifts me off the sectional and stands me between his legs. “Yes!” I gasp, gazing down at him through a haze of desire. I run my hands over his crew cut.

“We’ve spent too much time with uncertainty,” he pants as he fumbles with the tie on my jogging pants, managing to push them down my legs. He groans lustily when he realizes I don’t have panties on underneath. He hoists me up and positions me on his lap. Time halts. “I’m still not certain, Kitrina. Not of anything but that I want to be with you. Forever. Can you accept that? I’m a work in progress. You’ll have to help renovate—”

“Shut the hell up and make love to me!” I cry. The hardness of his cock pulsates through his slacks. Dogged by desire, I anxiously tear open the fly of his pants and shove aside his boxers to wrap my fingers around the meaty sword.

“Kitrina, oh my God, baby,” he whispers hoarsely.

I shimmy down to show him with my mouth how I’ve missed the very taste of him. Sucking and fondling him, driven by overwhelming need, I draw ragged cries of pleasure from him with the tip of my tongue. I feel his gonads tighten, his cock grow ever harder. I rise back to his lap and sit astride, ready to receive.

“I love you. I want you,” I repeat over and over into the hollow of his neck, inhaling him and kissing him at the same time. His skin tastes like tears, salty and sweet. Jayson rips off my sweatshirt and tosses it to the floor. He grabs my breasts with both hands and runs his mouth from nipple to nipple. I cry out at the searing heat. Unspeakable pleasure zips through me from areolas to cervix with the tug of his mouth, suckling, licking, laving. He grabs himself and puts his swollen member to my entrance as if he would never forget how to get to me, and my body responds as if it will always remember how to open for him.

Jayson slips inside with a throaty moan, past the tightness of my untouched state. He powers into me deep and true, only to pull out and surge inside me again, writhing together like the fierce human animals we are. After months of not having him, my body explodes with excitement. I throw my head back and cry out in a long, loud wail as convulsions sweep through me. His arm snakes around the base of my spine to hold me as I climax, the length of my hair cascading down to the curve of my ass, my breasts pressed to his face.

As soon as the ecstasy returns to a high-pitched frenzy for more, I dance against Jayson with every single day of missed opportunities between us turning the desert into a rainforest, lush and steamy. Our mouths devour. Our hands chase swirls of pleasure through each other. I know he feels it too because he clings to me, sobbing my name just as intensely.

He takes me down to the floor and stretches above me, stroking sensually in and out, as my back arches above the antique rug. I take it. I take it all. Pleasure bursts through me in waves. Jayson coos love words that erase the hurt of thinking he had been with someone else. His nails dig into my hips as he clutches at me like he’ll never let go. His pelvis grinds against mine. His shaft slams inside of me. Pleasure, smoky and hot, races through my veins. Clinging to him, I counter-thrust with aggressive pumps of my hips, meeting his force and raising it.

I want him to feel every silky, pillowy, wet inch of my womanhood stroke and squeeze him as I take him deep and let him go. “Don’t stop,” I urge. I feel my sex become engorged. I feel it spasm. I feel my body slick and ready, ready to go tumbling over the edge into oblivion. Screaming out his name, I climax so hard my thighs clench around his hips as his pelvis juts forward to push all the way into me. “Jayson!”

He growls and lets go. My wetness multiplies.

But the frenzy doesn’t leave. I need him. My lips clamp against his, swallowing his throaty moans and groans. “Take me again,” I demand, half-sobbing. His arms come around me and he rises shakily to his feet. His lips burn a kiss on my shoulders, and he carries me up the stairs to my bedroom. We make love until our bodies give out. Until the panic fades. Until we fall asleep, positive we’ll wake up in each other’s arms.