Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories) (25 page)

The man was still there as I blinked away the memories, my heart pounding wildly. I felt a kind of panic I hadn’t felt in years start to build in my chest. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening again. It couldn’t be happening again. What kind of cruel fate would shove this very same situation into my hands the moment I was with Peter again?

“I—I don’t think so,” I managed to stammer out, attempting to look over the heads of all of the people to find Cat. Damn her for being so short.

“You don’t sound so sure.” He resisted my hand, and it collapsed like an easel underneath the weight. Why hadn’t I taken Cassie up on going to self-defense training with her?

“I’m quite sure,” I said, a bit more firmly, though the fear was only making me feel weaker. My knees began to wobble, and my breath came in short pants. “Go away?” It was more of a question than anything else, and I hated myself for this weakness.

This wasn’t who I was anymore, was it? I’d toughened myself up just so that this kind of thing wouldn’t happen again. “Just one dance?” the man pleaded. His blue eyes looked almost dead in this strange light.

“No,” I said. “No.”

Still, he pressed forward. His arms encircled my hips once again, cupping my ass. I ground my teeth and considered slamming his foot with my heel. But that would only bring attention from the bouncers, who were probably already suspicious of our ages. His lips found my neck, and I felt dirty as his tongue slid up my shoulder to where my hair began. I needed to wash every inch of my body.

I fisted my hand against his chest and shoved him away once more. “You’re drunk,” I said, and my voice sounded two octaves too high. “I don’t want this and neither do you.” It sounded pathetic, even to my ears. Stupid, stupid, stupid, my mind chanted at me. Why couldn’t I gather my wits and make up some excuse that would get me out of here?

He didn’t let me go, only gripped my ass tighter, his fingers digging painfully into the soft flesh. I jerked at the sudden change in pressure, and my heart, which hadn’t calmed down in the least, picked up pace again. “Let me the fuck go,” I growled, pushing at his chest again. I was done being nice. I just needed to get away.

Just when he opened his mouth to say something else, I felt another pair of hands on my shoulders. “Get your hands off of my girlfriend.”

Peter? Was that really Peter behind me? I could feel the slight electrical tingle as his fingers brushed against my clammy, sweaty skin, thumbs resting on my shoulder blades.

The guy finally backed up. “My bad,” he mumbled, bumbling through the crowd once more. I stood there for several moments, still feeling the phantom of his digging fingers, and then the shaking began. I tried to move away from Peter, tried to turn around, but I couldn’t even lift a finger, even if I had wanted to. All I could do was sit there and shake like a leaf in the wind.

Peter must have felt the tremors running through me because he took his hands off of my shoulders and slid them around my waist, pulling me so that I was leaning against him. He didn’t move, as everyone else around us did, simply stood there with his arms pressed around me, hot and reassuring.

I closed my eyes, pretending for a moment that I trusted him. I needed something or someone to help me stave off this sudden invasion that had completely toppled my world and my sense of safety. Even if it was my worst enemy-who-may-have-changed.

When I could move again, I stepped away from the comfort of peter’s arms. I turned around, expecting to find him grinning at my plight, but his face was dark and unreadable amid the strobes and flashing lights.

“Are you okay?” he had to nearly shout over the sound of the deep bass, but I read his lips perfectly. Never once in his life had Peter Cavanaugh asked me if I was alright. He had always been too much of a self-centered bastard for that.

“No.” My lips formed the words before I gave them permission. Peter reached out and touched my cheek. I flinched away, wondering what he was doing, and when he drew back, I saw the shine of a tear trailing down his finger. Shit, I was crying.

“Let’s get you home,” he murmured, drawing me close once again. I didn’t question him, didn’t even think of resisting as he drew me to the entrance of the club. He had his arm snug around me, keeping me from falling or wandering off, though it probably would have been more of the former than the latter.

The walk home was completely silent, and not once did he shift or change his position around me. It must have been pretty uncomfortable with my head hitting the underside of his arm with every step that he took, but he made no movement to change his grip.

When we got to my dorm, he took the keys from my shaking fingers and opened the door for me, pushing me inside.

I sat down on my bed and watched him go to the bathroom to find a washcloth. He wet it under the sink and wrung it out. The sound of water was the only sound besides the flutter of my heartbeat in my ears. It was a painful silence that begged to be broken. I couldn’t find the words at first. I was still trying to figure out what elaborate scheme Peter was planning. He wouldn’t do this out of the kindness of his heart; that was for certain. Peter didn’t have a kind heart.

I finally gave up. “Why are you doing this?” I asked in a low tone.

Peter brought the washcloth over to me and pressed it to my forehead. The cool water was blissful against my burning skin. He shrugged. “Would you believe me if I said that I wanted to?”

“No, you don’t do things like this.”

“People change, April. They grow and go in different directions.” He swiped the cloth down the bridge of my nose. “If you can believe that.” There it was, a bit of the old humor that he so loved directing towards me at every possible moment.

“But why now? Why this?” I asked. “The last time I needed your help in a situation like that, you told me to fuck off and mind my own business so that you could keep dancing with that stupid girl.” I couldn’t help the flare of anger that sprung up in my words.

“Did you not just hear what I said?” he asked, drawing back and sitting down on his haunches. I didn’t break his gaze as he lowered himself, looking into the beautiful turquoise depths for some sort of deceit. I found no trace; only a deep, lingering sadness. “I regret what I did to you that night, and this is a second chance for me to redeem myself.”

“Redeem yourself?” I asked, clenching my fists in my lap. “You want to redeem yourself? Try taking away the last nine years of torture you have put me through. Or better yet—”

I never got to finish. He was on me in a flash, lips pressed against mine; hot, eager.

Holy mother of all that is good, I thought distractedly as he kissed me. Damn, he was amazing at this. His hands slid over my shoulders, pushing me down into the mattress. I felt the rough fabric of my quilt underneath my bare back a strange but not unpleasant sensation.

Patrick shifted himself so that he was straddling my legs, his fingers sliding over my bare arms. Strangely, his touch did not elicit the sort of response that it should have. I should feel shock and disgust at the fact that the man I called brother was touching me in ways that no brother should. I only felt the electricity jumping between his skin and mine, creating a deep, burning desire in the core of my body.

Yes! My body crowed in jubilation as his tongue touched the seam of my lips dragging a deliciously slow line against my lower lip. This is what I need. I thought about breaking away briefly, insisting that he stop and that this wasn’t right, but the thought went straight out of my head the moment his fingers brushed the hem of my shirt. I shifted my legs slightly so that I could arch up and allow him to remove the fabric as his fingers skimmed the bare skin underneath the shirt.

I didn’t even think about telling him to stop as he pulled it over my head. As he broke the kiss, I realized that he was panting just as much as I was, and I allowed myself an inner smile. I was affecting him much the same way he was me.

“Do you want this?” he breathed, hesitating before touching my bare skin once more.

I gave him a look that equated to my most potent bitch-face. “I’d like to see you try to stop.”

He grinned and leaned down once more, lips moving from the corner of my mouth to my jaw. As he reached my ear, he breathed, “You have no idea how long I have wanted to do this.” Each word was a hot caress against the delicate skin, and I felt shivers of desire trill down my body. I reached up with my fingers, finding the bowtie and quickly undoing it. My fingers were still shaking as I began unbuttoning his shirt, but I couldn’t seem to remember the reason why.

“You have no idea how much I didn’t know that,” I breathed back, propping myself on my elbows so that I could whisper the mock in his ear. He let out a laugh, one that didn’t truly leave his body, only rumbled in his stomach and up through his throat.

As I shucked his shirt off, I sucked in a deep breath. The sneaky bastard had been lifting weights. How had I not noticed the difference when I first saw him? I traced the defined contours of his chest as he began working at the zipper of my skirt. I grinned as he cursed, attempting to yank it down.

“Here,” I said, guiding his hand through the motions of correctly removing the skirt.

“Damn women’s clothing,” he growled. “Such a pain in the ass.”

“You’re a pain in the—oh,” I started to say, and then was cut off as his hips dipped down and ground against mine. I could feel him, hard and ready, pressed against me and that made me considerably speechless.

“Much better,” Peter said, and I did a repeat of the bitch-face up at him as I realized he was saying as much due to my sudden lack of words.

I reached down and gripped his length through the trousers, and he arched against me, eyes going wide.

“Wanted to say something?” I asked dryly. He grinned down at me and swooped low to capture my lips once more. We spent the next few minutes undressing each other, and even though I was fully naked before him, I felt the safest I had around him in years. He had always managed to make me feel small and insignificant and too big for my own skin at the same time, but now there was only the comfortable camaraderie of two people who knew each other well. That, and the burning pulses of desire that ran like lightning down my body with each stroke of his fingers against my skin. That was a bit distracting.

“Are you sure you want this?” Peter asked again, lips only centimeters from my own. I closed the last few breaths between us in answer. I hadn’t been surer of a single thing since I’d decided that this would be the college I would go to.

When he entered me, it was as if the entire world shattered into tiny little fragments and reshaped themselves into something new and completely foreign. I had never felt something quite so exquisite, such a mixture of pain and pleasure.

I cried his name out over and over, each thrust he administered heightening my pleasure. It was as if I was suddenly a pan of water on the stove, simmering and drawing nearer and nearer to the point of boiling. I had never thought of it that way before, but the analogy seemed to fit perfectly in that moment.

I reached up and wrapped one arm around the back of his neck, fisting in his golden locks while the other traced its way down his stomach, feeling the tense and release of muscle in his body with each thrust.

I don’t think I had ever come so hard in my life. It was like a whirlwind that came upon me quite suddenly, taking the boiling water and tossing it up into the air to become a tsunami. I screamed wordlessly in pleasure, not giving a damn about what the people next door thought.

As my muscles contracted around Peter, he soon joined me, stilling and arching his body in a perfect shape. I reached up and kissed the straining skin of his neck as we rode the wave of pleasure out together.

Afterwards, I realized that we hadn’t even drawn down the quilt. I griped about it internally, wondering where the hell I’d get another quilt that was homemade by grandma, but decided to not worry about it for the time being. I simply rested with my head on Peter’s chest, listening to his heart pounding wildly against his ribcage like a caged bird wanting to escape.

His heart calmed, and his breathing slowed, and I knew that he was dozing. I shifted so that I could look up at him. His dusky blond eyelashes brushed his high cheekbones, but I could tell that he wasn’t asleep by the wrinkle between his eyebrows. As I looked up at him, his eyes opened to slits, and I caught a glimpse of turquoise. “Regretting it already?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. What I had done tonight with Peter was something I wouldn’t have done without being so emotionally shaken before. True, I’d always admired his good looks, but just when I had thought that he was bearable, he’d open his mouth and it would make his beauty irrelevant.

But tonight, I’d caught a glimpse of someone he could be. Women always talked about changing men and how it was impossible. I completely believed that; man is a stubborn creature, set in his own ways. But what if this man had decided to change himself without the prompting of anyone else? I narrowed my eyes up at him thoughtfully, my hand mindlessly tracing his palm.

Then, it would be a true change, something that had come from within, not from without. From that brief glimpse and what had come after, I decided that I completely believed that it was possible that Peter, the devil whom I had despised for so many years, had finally taken a turn for the positive.