Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories) (31 page)

“Vanessa,” he said, his voice turning her name into something foreign—something beautiful. “Stay.” That one word was heavy with eloquence. He wanted her. He wanted her. “Please.”

“Oh,” Vanessa managed as she stood up, sliding the length of her body against his in the process. She told her legs to move her backwards, away, anywhere but where she was, but she couldn’t find the will to do so. She simply stood there, an inner battle raging inside of her, and the rational part of her brain was losing quickly.

So what if there was a woman? He had said ‘at the time.’ Didn’t that mean that they had since broken up? Or been engaged, her mind whispered. Shut up, she told it. To her surprise, it complied. Her mind usually loved tormenting her.

So what if she had sworn off men for the next year? This was a one night stand. She would never see Zeke again; she would never go back to that little bar ever again. No, she would stick to her art galleries and libraries. Just after tonight.

Zeke seemed to understand her internal battle, because he didn’t attempt to kiss her or touch her in any way. He simply stood, hardly breathing as Vanessa determined how detrimental this would be to her.

As she took a deep breath and looked at him in the eyes, she saw the flicker of lust that lay just beneath the surface, something waiting to explode into physical motion at a moment’s notice. Could she handle the fire?

She wanted to. God, she wanted to. That was what ultimately drove Vanessa to say, “Yes.” It came out as more of a cross between a whisper and rasp. Something that was most definitely not her voice. There was a moment more of hesitation in which Zeke’s eyes skipped between her own, so bright that they still looked nearly fake.

Then, he kissed her.

Vanessa had never quite been kissed like the way Zeke was kissing her. Her few romantic encounters in high school had mainly contained unsure virgins and sloppy jocks who were full of themselves. In college, she had met Rich and they had gotten married. He had kissed her, and she had thought it was good.

Zeke kissed Vanessa as if she were air and he was a man dying of asphyxiation. His tongue spilled syllables in a language that would never meet the human ear onto hers, and Vanessa felt as if she were breaking apart from the inside.

After her first initial shock of how utterly intense this was, she melted against Zeke, feeling how perfectly his hips fit against hers, sharp hipbones pressing into flesh just inside of her own hipbones. Vanessa couldn’t help a small sound that issued from her throat as Zeke tilted his hips up just a fraction, rubbing that definitely-not-knife against her core. She felt the bolt of desire shudder its way from her head to her toes, causing her to nearly fall over from the sheer intensity of it. No, Vanessa had certainly never felt something like this.

She wanted this, this passion that she couldn’t even begin to comprehend fully. She wanted it for more than just one night. She wanted to feel this every single moment of her life.

She wanted to feel alive.

Vanessa drew back and screeched in a breath, breaking the current of thrumming energy that coursed through her, and without Zeke to complete the circuit, the sensation died down. It didn’t disappear, because he was still so close to her, and yet not nearly close enough. She tried to think clearly. No, this was a one-night stand. She didn’t want this for the rest of her life. Just tonight. Yes. Tonight.

“Do you want to come to bed?” Zeke asked, and his voice was different than before. It had gotten impossibly lower, a purr that sounded nearly animalistic in nature. It sent chills down her spine.

Vanessa nodded wordlessly, unable to make her vocal cords work, unable to think of words to string together in a way that would make any logical sense. So she simply nodded.

Zeke drew away, and just that slight separation that lasted for only a few moments caused Vanessa to feel cold inside, as if her very soul had chilled. She shivered and tried to shove just what that meant in a place deep inside of her. It went in that box with everything else, because she most definitely didn’t want to think about what would happen in the morning when she would have to leave his side and the warm bed he was offering to take her to.

Zeke reached out and grasped Vanessa’s hand, drawing her away from the couch, away from the bag she hadn’t bothered to actually find, away from their empty wine glasses. Vanessa also left a part of her there. The last part of herself that loved Rich. There would always be a part of her that held him dear, as a friend and a comrade, but she left the feelings she had felt for him on that sofa where she had been sitting.

Zeke took her down the hall a new person.

###

Zeke made love like he kissed. That was the best way that Vanessa could describe the sensations that were thrumming through her body.

After he had slowly stripped Vanessa of her clothes he had kissed down the length of her body, proclaiming that she was the most beautiful creature he had ever set his eyes on, the words warm caresses of breath against her skin.

She had cried at that. Rich’s last words to her had been, “A woman like you cannot satisfy me. Your body isn’t right; it’s the furthest anyone could get from the male body.” No one had ever told her that she was perfect before. Not even her mother, who had put her on countless diets to attempt to make her lose the extra pounds that had later turned into curves that Vanessa sometimes loved and sometimes hated. She had told Zeke as much when he had asked her if she was okay.

Now, as Zeke lifted Vanessa’s hips up and wrapped her legs around his torso as gently as if she were some delicate creature he had found in nature, Vanessa felt as if she had finally found a piece of herself that was missing.

He lowered himself carefully into her, every few breaths asking if she was okay, and if it hurt. She reassured him each time that it was amazing and that she was perfect.

As he began moving, at a maddeningly slow pace, Vanessa watched the shift of his muscles under his skin. Working on a ranch had left Zeke ripped, and she ran her hands over washboard abs and biceps that could easily crush small children.

Eventually, Zeke stopped asking Vanessa if she was okay and bent over her to kiss her once more. The building pleasure mixed with the soul-scorching kiss that was filled with words unspoken and enough passion to light an entire city was enough to send Vanessa over the edge. She cried out Zeke’s name as she came, clutching tightly onto him.

Vanessa came down from her high just as Zeke went over the edge. In a hazy state that was nearly on the edge of sleep, she watched as he arched above her, muscles straining against skin. It was her name that came out as a breath, and when he looked back down at her, his eyes were only for her.

They stared at each other in a moment suspended in time. Neither breathed for the longest time, caught in the gaze of the other and the feeling of wanting pleasure that brought with it a warmth that nothing else could produce.

For several moments, Vanessa forgot what she was doing here and what this man was—or wasn’t—to her. She felt such a complete and utter love that there was no way to put it into words. She simply wanted him to be with her for the rest of her life, she wanted to be able to see those beautifully mismatched eyes returning the emotion in her heart that she had never received in this way before.

Zeke was not like Rich, as Vanessa had originally thought. No, Zeke was better than Rich could ever hope to be, at least to her. Perhaps this is what Rich felt with his lover, perhaps all of the love had been given to him and there had been none left for Vanessa. She could understand why, now, in this moment.

Then, Vanessa took a deep breath in and looked away, because she couldn’t stand the thought of leaving Zeke. She had planned on simply getting up, getting dressed and leaving.

One night couldn’t hurt, she thought as Zeke pulled out and got up to go to the bathroom. Vanessa closed her eyes as she heard the shower turn on, and was fast asleep by the time Zeke returned.

###

Vanessa awoke slowly, much more slowly than she had in the past few weeks. She had crashed into reality none too gently after finding the opposite side of the bed empty and remembering just what had happened.

This morning, however, she could hear a steady heartbeat underneath her ear, feel a hand entangled in hers and a foot resting lightly against hers. It took her several moments to realize just who she was in the bed with.

Memories of last night flashed like small movies across the backs of her eyelids. Vanessa opened her eyes, squinting directly into the sun as it streamed across the bed.

She wished she could simply go back to sleep, but now she knew exactly what had to be done. Vanessa disentangled herself from Zeke slowly. He was still asleep, by the pace of his breathing and the softness of his face, and she got caught up in staring at his lashes, which were like dusky smudges against his high cheekbones. She ran a finger over his bottom lip, light as a feather and pressed that same finger to her lips in an imitation of the kiss that she couldn’t steal for fear of waking him.

Something in her died as she got out of the bed. A small part of her that she had only discovered hours before screamed at her to get back into the bed and curl up next to this man who was perhaps the most decent human being she had ever met in her lifetime.

She steeled herself and pulled her clothes off from the floor. They weren’t in just one pile. Vanessa was mortified by how far they had managed to get her bra across the room.

She bundled her clothes together and left the room, sliding the door open just enough to squeeze out and not bothering to close it behind her in case it made too loud of a noise. The smell of Zeke was all over her, something that smelled like pine and leather, and she buried her nose in her clothes to try to get rid of the smell. It only mixed with her perfume, reminding her of what a perfect combination they had made last night, how perfectly they had fit together, how—

No, she mustn’t think about that. Vanessa talked herself in and out of leaving at least three times before she made it to the door, clothes haphazardly pulled back on and hair a mess. She needed a shower and to brush her teeth, and maybe remove the makeup she had been wearing yesterday, but she couldn’t risk it. She needed to leave before—

“Vanessa?” Vanessa paused at the voice, a sliver of dread going through her at the voice. She lowered her hand from the door handle and pivoted slowly. Zeke hadn’t even bothered putting on a stitch of clothing, and Vanessa couldn’t help but glance over his physique, which looked no less impressive in the morning light.

“Morning,” she said awkwardly.

“Were you just going to leave?” Zeke asked.

Vanessa blinked at him a few times. Had he never done a one-night stand before? Wasn’t it customary for the woman to sneak out before the man woke up? “Yeah,” she finally admitted, because she could think of nothing else to say.

“Vanessa,” Zeke said, and that one word, her name, was so full of emotion, the kind of emotions that men usually didn’t let leak into their words or actions. She swallowed and took a few steps away from the door.

“I suppose I could stay for breakfast,” she said grudgingly. She looked over at Zeke, and then quickly away, because his eyes had that magnetic pull to them that she had somehow forgotten about during the night. If she looked at him for too long, she would be compelled to simply stay for as long as he wished.

“I want you to stay for longer than breakfast,” Zeke said.

Vanessa did look at him, then, the realization of why he had brought her home last night suddenly becoming apparent to her. Zeke didn’t want a one-night stand, she realized. He wanted something more, and Vanessa wasn’t sure if she could do anything more. Her heart was still too fragile to handle something as complicated as a relationship. “Zeke,” she said, and he turned away after hearing her tone. “Zeke,” she said again, and this time it was an apology. “I think we miscommunicated.”

Zeke let out a breath and glanced over at her before sliding past her and into the kitchen. She turned to watch him turn on the coffee maker. The drizzle of the coffee into the pot was the only sound in the spacious room for several moments. Vanessa felt her heart squeeze as she saw the pained look on Zeke’s face that he concealed swiftly as he realized that she was watching him.

“I went into that bar last night,” Zeke said softly, “to find someone to spend a night or two with and have some fun. When I found you, I realized that I wanted something more.”

“I realize that now,” Vanessa said softly, wanting to go and touch his shoulder but not daring to. “And I apologize. I…” She paused and took a deep breath. She needed to give him a damn good reason for refusing him, she owed him that much. “I can’t do this, not right now. Even though I’ve broken up with my husband a few months ago, I’m still feeling it, and that distrust is still there. No matter who I am with, it won’t go away until I’m ready to trust someone again. I don’t know how long that will be.”

Zeke’s fingers wrapped into a fist on the edge of the counter, but Vanessa couldn’t read his face. “I want to find the man who did this to you and rip his arms off,” he said after a few moments. Vanessa blinked and felt something in her heart give a twist. No one had ever stood up for her before in her life.

Zeke was most definitely the most decent human being she had ever met in her life. She swallowed. He was certainly more decent than anyone else she had met. She didn’t know if she would be able to do what he was asking, to give herself over to him and trust that he would keep her safe and not hurt her as she had been hurt so many other times, but she would try. For him.