The Storm Inside (18 page)

He studied me for a moment longer, but then released my arm. “Fine.” he bit out.

I glared at him, “You can’t keep me here. Figure out what you want, Jake. I think you’ve forgotten and I’m not in the business of standing by and waiting for you any longer.”

I wrenched open my door and this time Jake let me leave. He just stood there on the side of the road watching me leave with a hollow look on his face. I was grateful for the speed and power of my expensive engine as my heart squeezed in my chest. I needed to flee. Jake was lost but it wasn’t my job to help him find his path.

***

I didn’t go home.

Instead I went to work. It was after hours and there was no game tonight, but going home felt all wrong. Work felt safer. My office was one place that was completely mine and no one else’s. Besides, there was plenty to do there to keep my mind from fixating on things I did not want to face.

Like the possibility Jake might really be gone this time.

The minute I stepped into my office I felt better. My dark wood desk stood in the middle of the long, large room. I wasn’t a manager yet, I didn’t have an office as enormous as Josh’s, but it was a very comfortable size, more than large enough for my desk, the two leather chairs that faced it, a small bar and refrigerator to one side of my office door, a couch on the other, a book case along the far wall, and a gorgeous window looking out over the twinkling lights.

I didn’t flick on the harsh overhead light; instead I reached for the lamp on my desk, setting a soft glow to the room. I threw my bag in the drawer I always kept it in and plopped into my comfortable leather chair. I wanted to hate him, but somehow I couldn’t find it in me. There was just hurt.

A lot of hurt.

I was disappointed. I knew he would be thrown by Sebastian and I knew we would have our setbacks in life. But I had really hoped he would handle all of this better. It worried me. If he could get this lost to his insecurities, to lock himself up inside his head away from me, then what would happen if something truly difficult came along? Like Jake Sr.?

I hadn’t even dared let that name cross my lips and I cringed thinking it now.

Work. I needed to focus on work. I opened my laptop and gave it a moment to wake. My foot was tapping nervously and my fingers were drumming on the wood of my desk.

The moment my desktop appeared on the screen I navigated to the file holding my event notes, searching for last year’s playoff notes. Our planning meeting was coming up next week and I was going to be so damn prepared no one would need to do anything else.

I spent an hour going over my old notes and making a plan. Then I thought of the new fan experience we were beginning construction on the moment the season was over. I thought of all the things we’d be able to do next season. And I thought of the lead engineer and his brilliant plans.

Damn Jake. Why couldn’t he just stay out of his own damn way? I wondered where he went when I left. I wondered what he was doing right now.

My phone lit up with a text message.
Please let me in. I’m outside.

My heart started racing. I’m not sure if it was with relief or fear, but it was racing out of control. I didn’t think, I just grabbed my keycard and walked out to let Jake in.

He looked like hell. His eyes were haunted and his face was pulled down, a hard set to his jaw. But he was tall and sure, his shoulders were square and his back was straight. I could feel his immense energy wash through the air the moment I opened the door.

It hit me like a wave and took my breath away. This man, for all the things he’d done to me, all the demons he’d fought, still had something about him that made me utterly stupid in his presence. My knees were weak and I felt that delicious spin of dizziness I got when he is in full male mode.

“Can we talk?”

I stood aside to let him in, his arm brushing me as he walked past. He waited while I secured the door, waving at the security camera to let them know all was well, and then he placed his hand on the small of my back. Whenever I was in charge, when he accompanied me to my work functions or met with us here in an official capacity for work, he always assumed that position: almost a half-step behind me, but his hand possessively on my back. It connected us without being too intimate. It made my belly quiver with nervous energy and all the muscles between my legs clench like I was falling.

Neither of us said anything. Not until the door to my office was safely closed.

He pressed me to the door, his warm breath dancing across my lips, “I’m sorry baby. You are right, I’ve been gone.”

I looked up at him through my lashes. I was relieved he was here, but I was still mad and hurt. “I never loved him.”

Jake closed his beautiful green eyes and grimaced at the mention of Sebastian. He leaned into me and placed his hands on either side of me, trapping me against the door. “I hate he took my place.”

“I hate he took your place. I thought you were never coming home.”

He opened his eyes and they were burning. I felt all the emotion in them, I felt his regret wash over me. “I know. And I still can’t help myself. I can’t tell you how much I’ve beat myself up.”

“I can’t do this, Jake. I can’t be with you if you’re not going to talk to me. You can’t just check out. You scare me.”

He stepped back and ran his hand through his gorgeous dark hair. “Eve,” he sighed, “I should have gotten over myself and called. I should have done something… ten years…” He shook his head, wandering across my office and settling in front of my window. For some reason I started to follow, but stopped at my desk. I felt like he needed space. “I still can’t believe it took me ten years.”

“But you’re here now. Remember?”

He turned, his eyes pinning me where I was. “Yes… I am.” He stalked toward me. Only stopping once he was pressing me into the desk. This was the intense Jake I’d come to know over the last couple of weeks. The primal one who took me as his, who possessed me at his will. I enjoyed this Jake as much as I enjoyed the sweet lover who worshipped me. I loved his two sides when they weren’t being driven by his self-loathing. They were both passionate and merciless. He took my lips, his rough hands grasping my face and holding me while his tongue explored.

“I’m done. I will pull my shit together,” he rasped. The husky quality to his voice made me quiver. He wanted me.

“I missed you.”

I didn’t need to say any more than that. I knew things would be right between us again. But Jake didn’t. He still needed something more. He looked deep into my eyes and smiled, a wicked grin I recognized all too well. It was a side of Jake I hadn’t seen in a very, very long time. It was a side of both of us that was very dangerous.

And as he left me to lock my office door I knew we were about to unlock something we might not be able to handle.

The click of the lock sent the familiar thrill surging through my body. We were going to have sex in my office. Every time I came in to work from today through the rest of time I would think of Jake making me come against this desk.

That thrill of excitement was like a drug, it was a high, the adrenaline flooding my veins as my heart continued to pump faster.

“Turn around.” he commanded, his dark energy reaching across the room and closing the distance between us.

I wanted him so badly I couldn’t seem to stop myself from following his commands.

He pushed up my skirt and slowly slid my panties down my legs, coaxing each foot up until they were free. Then he laid them out on the desk beside my hand.

His warm, firm body pressed up against mine. I could feel every muscle as they flexed against me and his erection as it dug into the small of my back. Jake was so damn sexy, everything about him turned me on, even his scent and demanding voice.

I ground back against him as his hands reached around to my front, pushing my head back onto his shoulder, running down my exposed throat as his lips found my skin. “Darlin’ you smell so damn good,” he groaned as his hands wandered to the buttons of my shirt.

I was helpless in his arms, and I liked it. The two of us together didn’t need thoughts, just instincts, just pure reaction. His warm breath danced across the skin of my neck, tantalizing me as his fingers glided against my skin, button by button.

Then my shirt was open and his rough hands sampled all of my exposed skin. “Do you know what your skin does to me?” he pulled my body tight against his erection. “I can’t think straight.” And then his hand ran all the way down between my legs, where my skirt was still hiked up, and clutched me with his large hand.

I moaned, bucking into his firm grip.

I could feel him smile against my neck, “That’s right darlin’. We’re good together. Don’t you forget that.” Then his fingers reached inside first one, then the other, cup of my bra, pulling my breasts up and out for him to play with. The underwire of my bra holding them in the perfect position.

A glance down told me what I already knew: they looked damn good like that.

Jake chuckled, “I love it when you do that.”

“Fucker,” I purred back. I liked that he loved it. It was hot and it made me hotter. Especially between my legs, which was getting wetter by the minute.

His fingers closed on each of my nipples, sending a shot of pleasure throughout my body. I writhed against him, gasping for air. He played like that, pulling a symphony of noises and pleasures out of me until suddenly he was done, his hands sliding down my sides to my hips. “I’m going to taste you now. Bend over.”

Taste me?

He pushed gently on my back as he dropped to the floor behind me. Was he really going down on me now, when I was so wet, so hot and bothered? His tongue running from my clit to my core was my answer. It was like fire. It was pleasure in every sense of the word. He was fucking crazy.

“You taste like heaven,” he murmured. Like everything else with Jake, it didn’t matter how hard I tried to fight it, my body loved what he did to me. I tried to ignore how good his tongue felt gliding everywhere and plunging inside me, but I couldn’t. Just like I couldn’t ignore my clit as it started to throb for attention. It was burning and pulsing. It was begging to be touched.

But instead, his hands glided up the back of my legs, spreading me wider for him. “Hold yourself just above the desk so that those perfect nipples hit the top while I blow your mind.”

For some reason his words made me gasp. It wasn’t like they should have shocked me, he was already as far deep inside me as he could get, and yet… it sounded so dirty, so crass. And my stupid body liked that, too. I felt the pulse deep inside me calling for him to do everything he had just promised.

So I did just as he asked, repositioning my bent torso so that my dangling breasts just barely brushed the cool surface of my desk.

First one, then two fingers slid inside me. My breasts swung gently back and forth, the nipples catching the surface and sending little spikes of pleasure everywhere, making the muscles in my core contract with anticipation of more, getting wetter and wetter with each glorious movement.

And Jake was clearly enjoying himself. Occasional grunts of approval vibrating against my clit, his tongue doing glorious things to the most sensitive parts of my body, until I was shuddering from the waves of pleasure and the promise of yet another powerful orgasm.

That was when he pulled me hard against his mouth at the same time he pressed his fingers inside me. It was what I needed. I came hard, collapsing on the desk as my body throbbed. Jake teased every last ounce of pulsing pleasure out of my core until I shuddered one last time against the cool desk.

I was dazed, but I heard him stand up behind me and unzip his pants. They fell to the ground and I saw them as they were tossed to the side. I knew what was coming next. At least I thought I did.

So I was surprised when his hand gently glided over my throbbing sex, his fingers diving inside for just a moment.

There was a pause and then he was beside me where I could gaze at his perfectly chiseled body and fully erect cock. “You see this?” he asked. “This is all you. I am this hard because I want you and no one else. And this?” he ran his hand up and down his entire length. It was glistening. With
me
. “All of this is from you, every single bit of it. You are so… fucking… wet.” His eyes rolled back in his head as a wave of pleasure shuddered through him.

I was hot all over again.

Then he moved back around behind me, pulling off first my shirt, then stripping me of my bra. Finally my skirt fell to the floor. “So I’m going to fuck you now.”

He plunged inside me and the heated throbbing started off like a racehorse again. I called out his name as my body bucked up off the desk. He stilled for a moment as we locked our bodies together and he gently ran his bare hands down my back and over my bottom, “Oh your skin…”

Then he hooked his hands around the front of my hips and started to move. Slow at first, but he quickly picked up speed. I was definitely still wet for him and my body was quickly responding to his pounding. I started to push back looking for more, using the desk as leverage.