CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AUBREY
MY LIFE for the past couple of years had been stationary, stagnant, filled with general content but no amazement.
And monotonous. So awfully dull.
I loved my friends, I loved volunteering, but I was bored.
Bored was better than scared though. After all the publicity my family stirred up over the years, attention made me jumpy, cautious, and gave me those panic attacks.
I had hidden the abuse of my childhood for so long, I didn’t know what to do when the blinding light had shined down on all my father’s wrongdoings. I was clueless on how to react because the person who did know what to do had been taken by him.
Or rather, she’d let him take her.
I struggled with that idea every day, that she’d chosen to give her life for the man who had been willing to take it.
I was standing in front of the man who had been willing to risk his own life all those years ago to save mine.
The irony of it all was that he also chose to make my life hell and not share the reason why with me.
Was I willing to give up my comfortable lifestyle to get someone out of my system? To get my life back? Or to ruin my life all over again? I couldn’t decide which question made the most sense.
This glorious specimen of a man stood in front of me, knowing he wreaked havoc on my body and attracted the whole female population, asking for two minutes.
Could I hold out for two minutes?
I honestly took time to think about it as I stared at him.
I took him in again, looking him up and down.
His shirt stretched over his muscles as he towered over me. I knew he felt my stare because his body shifted with my perusal, as if my gaze affected him. That was our chemistry though. The one thing I couldn’t deny. He and I were connected in a way I didn’t want to be anymore. I wanted to cleanse myself of him but didn’t know how.
Maybe he had a point. Maybe he needed to get me out of his system but I needed him as well if I was going to overcome what I’d turned into.
I could use him as my closure and he could use me in whatever way he needed.
Did I even really want to hold out for two minutes?
I thought of my room and of my mother as I gazed into his blue, determined stare again.
“Two minutes …”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence because he lunged to devour my lips, like he’d been coiled and waiting, like he’d prepared years for the moment.
The second his tongue touched mine and I tasted that familiar mint, I moaned.
His hands dove under my waistband and he groaned when he squeezed my butt. “Goddamn. Tell me you wear these shorts every night.”
I started to pull away to come up for air and to let him know my nightwear wouldn’t matter in the future.
He leaned forward into me immediately and grumbled, “My two minutes, Whitfield.”
My heart beat as fast as a bomb that was about to go off while his determined blue gaze stole the breath out of my lungs. “Jax, maybe this isn’t such a good …”
He murmured into my neck, “I’ve got a minute thirty, then you can finish that sentence.”
He bit into my neck, and I clenched my thighs as he sucked on one of my most sensitive spots. His hands slid to my hips, rubbing his thumb up and down, dipping in and out of my panty line to the same rhythm of his tongue on my neck.