Sweetened With a Kiss (22 page)

“Yes, you can.” He lifted her up and her whole body arched back when he connected them again in one swift, scorching move. She was still sore from earlier but it felt so good to have him back inside of her that she didn’t care. She loved this. Absolutely adored it. He kept his hands on her hips, helping her find the way that worked best when she moved. Then his hands reached behind her then the zipper gave way. The bodice slipped and she had no choice but to let it go, baring her breasts to hot, hungry blue eyes. He thrust up against her, and she would have fallen back if his hands hadn’t held her.

“Is this what you wanted?” she asked.

He groaned, his face almost pained. He couldn’t speak, she realized, stretching and wondering how anything could possible feel this good. She loved having him inside of her, and she was starting to like being in control of their movements. And she could watch him. His eyes were closed and she was fascinated by the play of emotions across his face. He was so breathtakingly beautiful. Transfixed, she ignored what was raging inside her. Her body was going wild with pleasure but it was secondary to what she was seeing on his face. She’d seen this look before. She knew it so well. She just never dreamed she would see it like this. She moved again and he eased even deeper inside her. His lips parted on a sigh. Tears pricked her eyes. This was how he looked when he ran. Joy. Pure, breathless, singing joy. She’d never seen it any other time. She was absolutely shattered to see it now.

She couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t really need air for this.  She found a new rhythm that hit different places and made it impossible to see. Her tears turned hot and she couldn’t blink them back any longer. She’d been so stupid. So ridiculously stupid and blind and selfish. She bit her lips together, sucking back tears. If being with her made him feel like this, it would be more than enough. More than most had. And it hit her so hard, she stopped, arching over him, one primitive word screaming through her.
Mine
.

And, as usual, he read her mind. His eyes opened and he sat up without warning, stilling their movements but not breaking contact. He caught her face in his hands, “Jen,” he gasped, bringing her back down. She opened her eyes and kissed him before he could kiss her. She didn’t even realize she was crying. Her hands caught the back of his head, and held him to her.

He wrenched away from her, looking at her in shock. She knew she looked wild. She could feel the heat in her eyes. “No more fragile, broken princess,” she pleaded, not recognizing her own voice, not even sure if he would know what she meant.

But he did and he grinned at her, “You got it,” he said, almost laughing as he pulled the dress off her and threw it across the room.

And then they went places she had never even considered.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Now you’re just showing off.”

He shuddered with laughter and kissed her. He held her tight as he drove them past madness. She blew apart in his arms, every atom in her body splitting and going in a different direction faster than light. Then she was light, but she held on until he joined her a moment later.

Jen floated for a long time, somewhere between sleep and the space they had created. Stefan had his arms around her. His fingers trailed tiny sparks up and down her spine. “Curiouser and curiouser,” he whispered, absently, pressing kisses to her neck.

The words pricked through the mist at her. At first they were sweet and she sighed.
Curiouser and curiouser
. They played through the daze she was drifting in. There was a tiny lick of something in her belly that made her press even closer into Stefan’s arms.
Don’t go chasing rabbits
.

Why always rabbits? Then they turned darker as they filtered into her mind, swirling around, digging up shadows, chasing shadows away she hadn’t even known were there. Shadows she didn’t want to lose. Sometimes the shadows were trying to keep her safe.

She went very, very still and raised her head. “Stop talking backwards,” she told him, irritated.

“Jen,” he said, trying to keep his voice gentle. It was not the same voice she had been hearing. “You were dreaming. Come back to sleep.”

“What did you say?” she asked, a little more desperately. “I heard you say something.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he told her, leaning to kiss her. “You were dreaming.”

But she pushed back from him. “No, you said—” The words escaped her. Something about telescopes, or maybe feet. She tilted her head, not seeing him anymore. “Stop talking backwards,” she whispered.

“Jen,” he said, starting to sound concerned. “You aren’t making sense.” He caught her face in his hands again. “Don’t.” he said softly, trying to kiss her again and she knew he was trying to distract her.

It was right there. She could almost see it. There was something just there out of reach. It flickered just out of the corner of her eye. She knew Stefan knew what it was. She also knew he wouldn’t tell her. He hadn’t told her everything. Her head started to throb. She could hear him. She really could. But the words were backwards. She sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at the floor and her feet. They seemed very far away. “Who pulled me out of the car?” she asked, her voice very low and controlled. “And say it right this time.”

She wouldn’t let him touch her. She batted his arms away and heard him curse under his breath. He got out of bed and knelt down in front of her.

“Jen,” he bit out her name, his voice really harsh but she knew he was trying to snap her out of it. She didn’t want to snap out. She had finally found the rabbit hole in her head. She needed to find out where it went. And then just like that...

“Robert,” she said finally, the name coming out of her gut, up her throat, and across her lips like a razor blade, stripping everything inside her. “Robert,” she repeated, “Robert pulled me out of the car.”

Stefan nodded, watching her closely.

“If you lie to me now,” she told him in a low warning tone, “If you lie to me now.”

He sat down next to her on the bed and closed his arm around her. “Robert pulled you out of the car and went back for your mother. The car exploded.”

Everything went white hot as she remembered screaming for her brother.

And it all came flooding back.  Stefan had been right. It was better not to remember.

“Hold on,” he’d said, laying her on a patch of cool grass, and she was grabbing his hand, begging him not to leave her. “Be right back.” He’d been trying to keep her calm. He’d pressed a kiss to her forehead. By the time she’d been able to push up, he had reached the passenger door and was trying to wrench it open. The fireball blew up into the sky, throwing him up and back across the pavement, burning him beyond recognition.

Stefan caught her as she tried to stand up. She was going to be sick.  He got her into the bathroom just in time. When she finished, he turned the shower on and dragged her in with him until the water banished all the smoke and flames from her mind.

“He didn’t die,” she kept repeating, because the horror of it was too much to accept. Even ten years later, her brain didn’t want to deal with it. But she was tired of shadows, and she pushed them back. “How long did he live afterwards? Don’t lie to me. Say the words right.”

He sank down to the floor of the tile shower and took her with him. “Seventeen hours.” The words ripped out of him. “Jen, let it go, please.”

She buried her face in his throat and cried. “It should have killed him.”

“Yes,” Stefan rasped out. “But it didn’t. Not right away.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

He lifted her face up and held it between his hands. “How could we tell you something like that? You didn’t speak for a year, Jen. And when you did, you didn’t ask about him. You never mentioned him. Anytime his name came up you would just fade away. We didn’t want to lose you, so we didn’t talk about him either.”

She nodded but tried to push away from him. He didn’t want to let her go because he knew what was coming next. Robert had been a year older than Stefan and Rogan. They had all worshiped him. Stefan especially. Anything Robert did, Stefan did. If Robert jumped off a cliff, Stefan was right behind him. Except with the way things usually went down, Robert would tell Stefan to jump first. And there was nothing Stefan would not do for Robert.

“Tell me the rest of it,” she said.

“He had called 911 when he got you out of the car so the paramedics were already on the way. They found you curled up next to him on the side of the road. He was talking to you, telling you everything would be okay, that your parents were in heaven. You didn’t need to be afraid. The paramedics told Mom and Dad all this. No one knows how he could even speak.” Stefan’s voice broke.

“I remember Mac telling me all that. When he picked me up from school that day. Why do I remember being at school?”

“I think it’s just your way of protecting yourself. You had a serious injury, Jen. It’s a miracle you survived at all.”

Stefan watched her wrap a towel around herself.  How had everything gone from beautiful to destructive so quickly? She was so pale. Her eyes bruised with shadows. His stomach twisted when he saw her fingers trembling as she tried to tuck in the edge of the towel she’d wrapped around herself.

Then she turned to him, her brown eyes so vulnerable he almost couldn’t breathe.  “You promised him you would take care of me, didn’t you?”

The accusation broke something in him.  It set something loose that he was completely unprepared for.  “You think I’m with you out of some misguided sense of duty. I get that. But do you really think what went on in that bedroom earlier had anything to do with promises I made to my best friend while he was dying?”

Each word ramped up his anger another notch. His fingers clenched into a tight fist when she took a step back.

“That’s why you want to marry me,” she said, taking another step back from him, dragging the anger farther up his throat as she moved back.”

“Jen,” he rasped out, wishing it didn't feel like the ceiling was about to crush him.

“No, don’t. I’m trying to understand.”

“Understand?” The word ripped out of him. “You're trying to understand? Why don’t you try to make me understand why you don’t want to be my wife but you have no problem provoking me into fucking you blind.”  He would have cut off his arms before he’d ever hurt Jen, but he just couldn’t help what was climbing to the surface in him. He had held it back for so long. Pushed it down so deep and run and run and run until he couldn’t feel a trace of it. But what had happened between them earlier had stripped him bare and he just didn’t have the resources to keep the fury in check any longer.  So he didn’t. He did the only thing he could do.  He ran.

Jen flinched as he shoved the metal vanity stool out of his way and slammed out of the bathroom.  A few heartbeats later she heard the front door slam.  She sat down on the edge of the whirlpool tub and just tried to breathe for a moment. She’d been so selfish, so totally oblivious to things that had been right in front of her all along.

But the bottom line was she did want to be his wife.  She wanted to live in this house and have his children and build a life for them.  He wanted that too.  Did it really matter if they wanted the same thing but for different reasons?  Could she live with that?  She took a deep steadying breath.  She wasn’t sure if she could live with it, but she was certain that she couldn’t live without it.