Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories) (28 page)

I didn’t listen, simply sat there in the embrace of his arms. The world, which had faded away to a dull roar ever since I had sat down on the kitchen floor began coming back into focus, once sense at a time. I heard Mom and Charlie whispering in the other room first, and the steady pound of Christian’s heart beneath my cheek a moment later. Then, I found the courage to open my eyes and look up into Christian’s. Mom and Charlie were far enough away that I felt that it was safe to have this conversation.

“Did you see the paper?” I asked. My voice cracked as if I had been coughing a lot or sick recently.

Christian’s lips thinned and he nodded.

“Why didn’t you say anything? I thought you had it all taken care of,” I accused, trying to push myself away from Christian. He held me tight in the confine of his arms. I sighed dramatically and grimaced at him. “How could you do this to me, lull me into a false sense of security and then have it all slap me in the face at once?”

“I didn’t know anyone would look for him. I tied up all loose ends that I knew how to tie up, and I thought that it would be enough,” Christian said in a low voice, glancing over at the door to the living room, where Mom and Charlie’s voices were still murmuring quietly. “We can’t talk about this now.”

“When are we going to talk about it?” I asked, reaching up and yanking Christian’s face down so that he was forced to look at me. “We are not just going to let this go. They will find a connection eventually and they will arrest me and you and we will never be able to do anything again. My dreams of becoming a Criminologist? Poof. They’re never going to take someone who was arrested for obstruction of investigation or conspiracy.”

“If there is nothing else I can do,” Christian said, his voice and eyes intense, “I can save your reputation. I paid the hotel man well; he won’t talk, and he was the only other person that knew that you were with me that night.”

“You would do that?”

“You have no guilt.” His eyes softened, and he reached up, brushing tears off of my face. “That night was supposed to be the first of many,” he murmured, his finger lingering just along the edge of my lip. When I didn’t pull away, he slowly brushed the pad of his thumb across the delicate skin. I knew that I would regret it later, but in that moment, I leaned into his touch, closing my eyes. I needed the physical touch, the comfort.

“Honey?” I shot up and away from Christian as I heard Mom’s voice in the hall. I turned away from Christian, trying desperately to stop the blush from spreading across my cheeks. She was looking at me, some sort of odd gleam in her eye. For a moment as she opened her mouth, I was sure she would call me out on the much too intimate position she had just found me and Christian in, and I tensed, expecting the worst. “What’s wrong?”

I blinked, looking over at Christian and then back at Mom. “What do you mean?”

“People don’t collapse like that for no reason,” Mom said sternly. “What is going on?”

“I—I,” I began, unable to continue. I was terrible at making up on-the-spot lies. If I could have, I would have been able to get away with so much more. “I haven’t been sleeping,” I finally blurted after several heated moments in which I was pretty sure I produced gallons of sweat and bumbled around like a blind beggar.

“Do we need to take you to the doctor?” Mom asked, frowning.

“No—no, It’ll be fine,” I said quickly. They’d give me something and then I really would have issues sleeping—too much of it. Being a college student basically meant that I had to not sleep and do work during the night, because I was very unmotivated throughout the day.

“Honey,” Mom said, this time a bit sternly. “You need to do something about this. Insomnia is a serious mental disorder that can lead to other complications which…” She trailed off when she saw my face. “I didn’t mean to imply that you’re having mental disorders,” she said. “Sorry, I was quoting from the DSM-IV in my head.”

I smiled thinly at her. “I’d really just like to go lie down now,” I said.

“Of course,” Mom said. “Try to get some rest. Christian, can you help her?” she asked. “I’ll make some soup to bring up to you.”

“No, that’s fine, I’m not hungry,” I said. I didn’t think that I could manage anything solid at the moment. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to eat again, knowing that the police were still investigating a disappearance that was actually a murder. I hoped that they never found the body. I hoped that Christian had used whatever skills he had learned from being a bad boy and quite possibly a criminal to his best advantage.

Christian wrapped an arm around my waist, leading me up the stairs. “You don’t have to worry about anything,” he murmured as he helped me into my bed, pulling the covers over me. “I will take care of everything, and there is nothing linking you to being with me that night. We were careful to keep anyone from knowing; you were so adamant about that. Now I’m happy that you were so worried about your reputation as the perfect angel.”

I sighed. “I worry,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “There’s nothing I can do to stop worrying. I won’t be able to stop until they file it as a cold case, which they might not. What if they find something that incriminates us, what if they talk to that hotel owner and discover that I was with you that night, what if—

Christian put a finger over my lips, and I. Just. Stopped. All logical thought disappeared from my mind, and there was just the feel of his calloused, utterly comforting skin against mine. And I wanted more of it.

I didn’t think as I pulled Christian down on me. “Tara,” he said in surprise. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You shouldn’t have to ask,” I said softly, reaching out to touch his air. It was as soft as I remember it from the first time I had allowed myself to touch the hair of a biker, a criminal. It had seemed like such a big thing at the time, something that I would be put in jail for, but I realized how trivial it was just a few hours later, when I was lying naked, skin against skin with the very same man—boy at the time.

Christian made a noise of surprise and reached up to twine his fingers through mine. “You still want me,” he said in surprise.

“I never stopped,” I admitted without hesitation. I had hesitated for years over telling him that, but now that it came down to it, I was more than happy. “Even after you had shot him and I thought that you were a murderer, I couldn’t help but turn to jello when I thought of your lips against mine.”

“I have thought about you every day since you ran out of that hotel room,” Christian growled. He was laying alongside me, his entire body pressed against mine. I shivered at the sensation of such an intimate closeness, even though the blankets and sheets and several layers of clothes separated us. I shivered at the raw and untamed emotion that was roiling through his words. I had never allowed myself to feel so deeply, not before my night with Christian. It wasn’t deeply, but more like erratically. I had always planned everything, allowed no surprises and no spur of the moment actions. Everything had to be planned or else my entire life would fall apart.

That had been what had driven me to doubt myself and my straight-as-a-board path that had one destination in mind and minimal obstacles. It had scared me, and it had exhilarated me.

The fear won over, and I had never called Christian back after that first and final date. We had seen each other at school, of course, but the terrible events of the night and my fear prevented me from ever talking to him. We had drifted apart, until we were complete strangers from two different worlds, and then graduation came and we went our separate ways. He had dropped out the year before, and I had gotten my diploma and my scholarship for my degree in criminology.

I had never expected to hear from him again. That was why, when I heard his family name when Mom called, I high-tailed it back as fast as I could manage. It hadn’t been easy to get out of my classes, but I had classified it as a family emergency and no one had asked questions after that.

“I’m glad that I got to see you again,” I said breathlessly as I realized that he would be here, no matter what happened. The bond between us that had been half-formed in that night was not dissolved as I had thought it had been, but had grown stronger in absence. I felt more deeply towards Christian than I ever had for anyone else except for my own family. We had shared something that was completely different than anything I had ever experienced before, something that I could have gotten used to if that gambling debt collector hadn’t burst into the hotel room and pulled that gun.

But he was here now, and it wasn’t wise to dwell on the past.

I pulled Christian towards me, slanting my lips across his. They tasted just the same as I remembered, like cinnamon and things forbidden. It had terrified and exhilarated me the first time, but now I only felt calm wash through me quickly accompanied with a wave of desire. I let out a shuddering breath and drew back. “I believe you when you say that you will take care of everything,” I told him.

He smiled down at me, pressing a finger to the hollow between my collarbones gently, dragging his finger to the collar of my t-shirt. “I’m glad that you trust me enough.”

Trust. He had used that word last night when he had taken me for the ride on his bike. I hadn’t trusted him then, but now I realized that he was the only one that I could trust, because he was the only one who knew the true me, the one that wanted out from this pretty prison I had put myself in my entire life. Going away with him for a night had been stepping out of my comfort zone, but once I had stepped back in, it hadn’t fit quite right.

I shivered at his touch and reached up, lacing my fingers through his hair and pulling him down for a second kiss. He shifted his weight so that he was hovering above me, deepening the kiss by flicking his tongue out to slide across my lower lip. I felt a bolt of desire skitter down my spine and quickly allowed him access to the inside of my mouth. As we kissed, I felt him working the blankets that he had just tucked me into away from my body, sliding his fingers up my bare arms the movement he freed them. I reached up and felt underneath his leather jacket, running my fingers along the powerful chest and taut expanse of stomach. There was too much fabric between us, and I made a noise of discontent.

Christian broke the kiss frowning down at me. “Do you not want me to do this right now?” he asked, smoothing a hand over my hair.

“No, I want it faster,” I managed to say, and yanked his shirt out from his pants. He grinned down at me, the grin that only lifted part of his mouth. It used to drive me insane, until I could kiss that mouth and realized that he must have been very talented to be able to only move part of his mouth, and he was talented indeed.

He leaned back, shucking off his customary jacket and pulling his shirt over his head in one quick movement. He swooped down onto me once again, and I sighed in relief as I felt his bare, smooth skin sliding along my palms. This was what I had been craving the entire time I had been away from Christian. No amount of beautiful model could make up for the way Christian made me feel. He was divine in a way that no one else would ever compete with.

I shimmied up and out of my shirt, granting him access to sliding his hands along my skin as well. He took full advantage of that, beginning at my sides and then running his fingers over the mounds of my breasts. I arched up against him, and that is when I could feel him, hard and ready.

“Do you know how long I have wanted this?” he growled in acknowledgment to my gasp.

“As long as I have?” I asked, unzipping his pants.

“Longer.”

He kissed me again, and we quickly discarded our remaining clothes. It was a feat that I had never known could be possible, to undress without breaking the kiss.

While he had been an amazing lover years ago, the time we had spent apart had made him better. I felt the passion in my stomach glide through my entire body as he entered me and began moving inside of me at a slow, rhythmic pace.

I was soon begging him to go faster, but he silenced me with a tender kiss. “Let me savor this, because I don’t know that you won’t go running off after we’re done this time,” he whispered.

“Christian,” I said, pulling him closer to me so that I could feel the heat of his body only centimeters from mine. “I am not going anywhere.”

He picked up the pace then, soon sending me into spirals of pleasure.

I had to resist the urge to scream his name to the heavens, to let the entire world know that he was mine and that no one else would be getting this exception to my tightly controlled world, but Mom and Charlie were downstairs.

I explained to him in syllables not a part of the human language the same concept as he kissed me again. Soon, his thrusts became erratic, and he joined me in the pleasure, straining against and away from me, yet pulling himself towards me at the same time as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be as far away from me as possible, or draw me into his very skin and meld us into one human being.

Afterwards, we lay together, panting. I felt each puff of air against my bare shoulder.

The anxiety was gone. I trusted Christian, I found in those moments between pleasure and coming back to the real world. I reached out and stroked a hand over his arm, reveling in the pure power that was contained in his arms.

“What are you thinking about?” Christian asked, his voice heavy with sleep. I considered telling him about the trust I had no placed in him, but I felt as if that would ruin the moment.