Pulse - Part Four (The Pulse Series) (6 page)

"Maybe you should just reconsider, Jess." Bryce is sitting on the edge of my bed, his heels resting on one of the many cardboard boxes that are now cluttering my space. "You've been looking for more than a week now. There's nothing out there."

"There are places," I correct him as I rest my head on my pillow. "They're all just out of my price range."

"I'd move with you but I'm going to pop the question to Trudy soon and then we'll get a place of our own." His entire face glows with the announcement. Every single time I see him with his girlfriend, I feel a slight pang of envy race through me. They're so happy and content and their history isn't clouded with lies, mysteries and secrets. That's what I want.

"There is one place I can afford to live," I whisper. I haven't even really wrapped my head around the concept yet, but now is as good a time as any to talk to Bryce about it.

"With Nathan?" The scowl on his face speaks more than the tone of his voice.

"No," I scoff. I had considered that option for a hot two seconds before I walked out of his apartment last week. Since then, I've ignored most of his text messages and calls. He wants me to reinvest myself in him again and that stock has crashed enough times that I know I'll just end up burned to an emotional crisp. Men, like Nathan Moore, don't change. It's simple.

"Where then?"

"I'm thinking I should just go back home." It's a coward's plan. When I lived in Connecticut everything was easy. Josh was so uncomplicated and right now I miss that. I don't necessarily miss him but the simplicity that life there offers me is beckoning me like a lighthouse in the dark sea.

"That's not an option." Bryce is on his feet, his hands firmly planted on his hips. "You're going to run away?"

"It's not running." Who exactly am I trying to convince? "It's more about trying something on for size and then realizing it doesn't fit so you return it."

"You're complicated." He laughs. "You can't go back there. You left there for a reason. Don't forget it."

"It's easier there," I confess. "I can just live without all the drama. I can go back to being an EMT."

"When I came to New York I was scared shitless." His expression is even and serious. "You and Rebecca helped me see it's where I belong."

"I don’t belong here."

"You're not running away from the city, Jess." He doesn't mince words. "You're running away from him."

***

"Are you opposed to me just using you for sex?" I clench my fist in his hair as he circles my clit with his tongue.

"No," he whispers into my folds. "Use me however the fuck you want, Jessica."

"If I come over here just to get fucked once a week, that's okay?" I lean back on his bed and let the pleasure rip through me.

He shakes his head slightly and the sensation pushes me closer to the edge. "You need to come over every fucking day."

I chuckle at the idea. "This is so good," I moan through parted lips. "Please, lick it like that."

He shifts his large body and cups my ass in his palm so he can lick me harder. "So good."

"I'm going to come." I don't need to say it. I know he can feel it. I know he senses it just by the way my body tenses when he's touching me.

"Slow down," he pants as he licks my folds softly. "I don't want you to come yet."

"Nathan." I pull on his hair causing him to wince. "Please, lick me harder."

"I'd give anything to do this every day. Let me wake up to this, Jessica. This is my heaven." He pulls my clit between his lips and sucks hard.

I race to the edge with an uninhibited scream. "Oh, God. Nathan." I can't control the words. I can't control the way it feels.

He crawls up my body so he's hovering above me. "I was tested." The words are foreign and misplaced in the moment. "Let me fuck you like this."

I look down at his engorged cock. "No." I can't. I won't.

"I haven't fucked anyone else in months, Jessica. Jesus, please. Give me this," he's pleading. His voice is coarse and rough from want. "You have to take the fucking pill. Tell me you do."

I nod as I stare at his cock. I want to feel it like that too. "Do you have proof?" Did I really just ask that right now?

"Proof that my dick is clean?" He's leaning back on his heels now. One hand is slowly stroking his cock, the other circling my clit.

"Yes," I moan as he pushes his index finger into me. "Oh, yes."

"You don't believe that I'm clean?" He groans as he slides another finger next to the first. "You're so fucking tight I can't stand it."

"You say things…" I can't talk. I'm close to coming again already. "You say things…"

"You're so smooth and slick." His eyes are blazing with desire as he kneads his fingers within me. "I want so much to shoot my load in this beautiful body so you can feel my cum inside of you."

"Nathan." The shamelessness of his words spurs me closer. "Don’t say that."

"I've never filled any woman with my cum before." His breath is on my lips now. "I want to with you. Let me, Jessica."

I push my hips from the bed to grab more of him. I want him to take me to the edge again. I need to come. "Christ, Nathan."

"This is all mine." He clenches his hand around and in my sex. "Mine." The animalistic growl that flows through the word sends me into the center of an intense orgasm. I cling to his body as I scream out his name.

"Here." A piece of paper flutters past my face as he sits down across from me in the mid-town bistro.

"What's this?" I scan it quickly with my eyes.

"My ticket to ride you without a saddle." He cocks a brow as he reaches across the table to steal a bite of my fruit salad. "Nice of you to wait to order until I got here, Jessica."

"You're late." I hold the paper steady so I can read every line. "Is this your test results?"

"I was in court." He pulls the entire bowl across the table and steals the spoon from my hand. "I'm so hungry."

"These are your test results?" I ask again. I can't believe he actually got a copy of them to give to me.

"I want in that." He waves the spoon towards my body. "I want in it without any barriers. That's the golden ticket right there."

"You were serious?" I thought he was half-joking the other night when he talked about fucking me without a condom. "You want to have sex without a condom?"

"Where's the waiter? I need a drink." He surveys the entire span of the room in mere seconds.

"Bourbon doesn't go with fruit salad."

"Bourbon goes with everything, Jessica."

I glance at the paper again. "This makes me nervous."

He scratches the tip of his nose and raises a brow. "My cock makes you nervous? You haven't been shy around it up to this point."

"What if I don't want to?" I push back. "What if I say we can't?"

He stops eating and places the spoon down on the table. "Then we don't." There's no emotion in the statement.

"Just like that? We just don't."

"Jessica." His hand snakes towards mine. "Listen to me. Jessica, listen."

I smile at his insistence that I listen. He always does that when he's got something important to say. "I'm listening, Nathan."

"I would never…" He pulls in a heavy breath and squeezes my hand tightly. "I would never do anything with you that you didn't want. Ever."

"You say that but… but I don't know." I don't know. I want to believe him. I wish I could believe him. "I feel like you push me sometimes. You want things I'm not ready for."

"Listen to me." He stands and throws his linen napkin on the table before he kneels down next to me. "Please, Jessica, just hear this one thing."

I stare down at his calm, beautiful blue eyes. His face is unshaven and his hair a mess from the wind. He's so gorgeous. He's more striking than the night I met him. "What?"

"I fucked this up more than once." He bites his bottom lip. "I am going to work every single fucking day of my life to make you want me as much as I want you. I will wait forever for you. Forever, Jessica. Don't doubt that."

I don't respond. I just stare at his face. My heart is telling me that he means it. My head wants to embrace it.

"I love you, Jessica. I fucking love you." He swallows hard just as I see the pool of tears in his left eye. "My life is nothing without you. Nothing. The day you get that will be the happiest day of my life."

I can't handle the emotion in the room. I can feel the weight of it suffocating me. "No. The happiest day of your life will be when you get to come in me without a rubber."

He licks his bottom lip. "That's going to happen sooner than you think."

"How many women have you fucked in here?" I'm sitting in one of the chairs opposite his desk while he works.

"In here?" He doesn't break his gaze from his laptop screen.

"Christ, you're annoying as fuck sometimes," I tease. "Is that like a lawyer thing?"

"Is what like a lawyer thing?" He reaches for a manila folder on his desk.

"That diverting thing you do." I playfully punch my fist into the folder. "You do it all the time. You ask me the same question I ask you."

"I don't do that." He smirks as he pushes my hand to the side. "That's quite a fist you have there."

"Have you fucked that receptionist?" I nod back towards the area outside his closed office door.

"What?" His head bolts up. I finally have his full attention.

I look directly into his eyes. "Have you banged her in here?"

He furrows his brow as he leans back in his office chair. "You're asking me if I've rammed my dick into my receptionist here in my office?"

"Seriously?" I try not to laugh. "You just did it again."

"I didn't," he says softly. "On both counts."

"She hates me." It sounds as childish leaving my lips as it does when I think about it.

"My receptionist hates you?" He can't hold in his obvious amusement. "That makes you think I banged her?"

"She never says my name correctly." I push my bottom lip out in a fat pout. "She did it again today."

He stands, walks with determined steps around the desk and leans against it. "Jessica." He reaches forward as he drags the pad of his thumb across my bottom lip. "You want to suck me off, don't you?"

I laugh at the no-so-subtle request. "The receptionist, Nathan," I whisper as I run my hand down his pants and trace the outline of his erection.

He slowly pulls the belt out of its loop before the sound of the zipper lowering fills the room. "She has a lisp, Jessica."

***

"I just didn't think I'd have to live here alone without you." I hug Bryce tightly at the doorway to our apartment. "You got engaged so fast."

"I love her a lot, Jess." He reaches to pick up the last of his boxes from the floor. "I'm so excited for this. You're going to come over tomorrow night, right?"

"It's my night off." I remind him and myself. "I'll be there at seven. I'm cooking, so don't touch anything. I'll bring everything I need."

"You just need to talk to her, Jess." He motions towards Rebecca's closed bedroom door. "You two need to have it out with each other. Until you do that, it's always going to be like this."

I nod as I watch him walk through the door and out of my everyday life for good. He's right. Until I talk to Rebecca about what happened with Nathan, things are never going to be right between us. There's no time like the present.

"Did he go?" Her voice startles me enough that I almost lose my balance. I have to wonder if she was listening to the two of us talking about her.

"He's gone," I offer as I finally turn to face her. "You didn't come out to say goodbye."

She shrugs her shoulders. "We weren't close. Not like you and I…"

"I'm still looking for a place." I want her to realize that I was serious when I told her that I'd be moving out too. Every night when I get home after work, I scurry to my room like a timid mouse afraid that the big, bad cat will catch me in its grips.

"You don't have to." She doesn't pull her gaze from the floor. "It would be cool if you stayed. We can look for another roommate."

The offer is touching, albeit completely misplaced. I know that she has to feel the same awkward tension floating through the air every time we happen upon one another. She's gotten surprisingly good at avoiding me at all costs. "I think I need to go."

"I'm sorry about everything, Jess." Her voice cracks slightly. "I was just trying to help."

"You've helped me more than anyone I've ever known." They aren't just words strung together to appease her anxiety. They are real, true and meant with love and affection. "You helped me escape Connecticut and my life with Josh."

"Bryce told me you were thinking of going back." She finally looks at me. "You can't, Jess. It's a hellhole."

I laugh out loud at the description. "It is a hellhole." I nod my head in eager agreement. "I don’t belong there. I don't really belong anywhere right now," I whisper. It's not meant to garner any sympathy from her. It's just how I feel.

"My door is always open." She glides her hand through the air. "My home is yours."

I feel a sense of comfort with the words. "That means a lot."

"Anything I've done is because I want to protect you." She glances at me. "We're going to work at this and get back to being best friends."

"We are best friends." I pull her into a weak embrace. "We'll fix it," I say believing that in time we will.