“But then you married Michael an hour later.”
“You hadn’t asked me not to.”
“Are you saying…”
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” I slip off the chair. “I think I should go.” I turn to leave, but Jericho's arm wraps around my waist, pulling me back into him.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he says against my ear before spinning me in his arms. “We’re far from done.”
He’s right. I don’t think my heart will ever be done with him. From the moment his lips had touched mine all those years ago, he’d stolen it. Now he’s doing it all over again.
9
JERICHO
I kiss her like I want to claim her soul. My tongue dives between her lips to devour the sweet recesses of her mouth. My hands clutch her body close. She opens her mouth wider and molds the curve of her body to the hard planes of mine. I start to walk her back against the island, the table, any flat surface. Need pounds in my head. I have to have her. I’ve waited for so long but not another minute. I tug at her shirt, pulling it up until I can palm the bare skin of her waist and then the plump weight of her tit.
It takes me a half second to recognize this, to corral my lust and set her away from me.
“I’m sorry.” She holds a hand up to her mouth and stares at me with stricken eyes. “We shouldn’t be doing this. Michael just died.”
I clench my jaw tightly so I don’t say something I’ll regret. She walks out. I stand still and don’t move until I hear the door of her bedroom closing. I’m always staring at her back, and it pisses me off. I swipe an angry hand across my face and press a fist into the marble top of the kitchen island. Lust simmers in my veins and yells at me to chase her, take her, plunder her. Bare strings of decency keep me rooted to the floor, but how long will these bonds keep me from her? How long do I have to wait?
I loved Michael, too, which is why I let her walk away from me three years ago. Michael confided in me once that he didn’t feel like a man because he wasn’t attracted to anyone. He could love someone, though, but not want them. I didn’t understand it, but I supported him because if he didn’t want to sleep with someone, it didn’t make him less of a person.
When I kissed Sera before the wedding, I didn’t know she was Michael’s bride. I didn’t even know that he was going to get married. He just told me that he had plans for his future and would I mind coming to visit him for the weekend.
“I think I’ve found someone perfect for me,” he’d said.
“Like you?”
“Maybe not like me, but she fits the empty places in my life. I want to have a kid, Jericho, a family. I can have that with her. I hadn’t thought it was possible. Be happy for me.”
“I am, man. I support you one hundred percent.”
“I know. You’re the only one I can rely on. Everyone else thinks I’m odd but not you, and not her either.”
I was happy for him. I came to the hotel, had a drink at the bar, and saw a gorgeous girl standing on the pool deck looking at the sunset. She was too pretty to be alone, but after fifteen minutes of watching her, no one approached.
I ordered another drink with a pink umbrella and carried it out to her.
“A sunset like that one deserves a toast.”
She’d turned to me in surprise. “It was pretty but so short.”
“There’ll be another one tomorrow.”
“It won’t be the same. No two sunsets are the same.”
“That’s life in general, right? No two days are the same?”
“I suppose. I wish there were days that were the same sometimes. It would be comforting.”
She looked so pensive, and something unexplainable rose inside of me. I could make her happy. I could make each day different. No other person had ever moved me this way. I traded the drink for her hand and led her into a small alcove covered with trees, and she asked me to kiss her. I’d already planned to do more than that.
I kissed her like I could claim her soul, and she kissed me back. Her hands clutched my shoulders, and my fingers dug into her ass. If there’d been a deck lounger close by, I would’ve laid her flat and made love to her then and there.
I didn’t hear Michael. I was too lost in sensation and feeling. She heard him though. He’d called her name—once, maybe three times. Her head jerked up, and she’d looked at me with the same expression on her face that she’d given me a minute ago. The one that said she shouldn’t have.