Look After You (31 page)

Pressing my lips to his ear I whisper, “I’ll let you into a little secret. I don’t wear panties to bed.” I can’t help the whimpered cry that escapes my lips as he begins to circle his thumb against my protruding bud, a smirk lifting from his lips.

“So you just go to bed in these very see through, very sexy pajamas?”

“Not all the time, sometimes I go to bed naked.” I laugh, but my laugh is replaced with soft moans when he eases a finger inside me.

“God,
” he growls, “where have you been all my life?”

“Waiting for you in panty free pajamas.” I breathlessly sigh. My eyes roll to the back of my head as the intensity of his finger sliding in and out, tears through my body.

He chuckles again, placing a second finger inside me. “I love you. I love you so damn much,” he says, pushing his fingers deeper inside of me.

“I love you too…”

And for the next mind-blowing twenty minutes, I am unable to utter another word.

Chapter 22

Fingertips crawl down the side of my breast, along the ridge of my waist, over the curl of my hip and down the length of my thigh, reaching the apex of my knee. My body tingles in delicious shivers and Ashton repeats the process in reverse. I curl deeper into him, tangling my legs with his, pressing my delicate foot into the arch of his.

“This is my new favorite place,” I sigh, pressing a kiss against his incredibly warm chest, just below his nipple. “Here in your arms. I
could stay like this forever.” Suddenly I am being flipped onto my back, with Ashton on top of me, causing the breath to catch at the back of my throat at the sudden movement.

“
I have to disagree. My favorite place is being buried deep inside of you.” He gives a little thrust of his hips into mine, which causes me to giggle out loud. I playfully slap him on the shoulder. “You’re insatiable.”

“
Just the way you like me, baby.”

“
Definitely,” I say, pressing my lips onto his.

He slowly pulls away, looking down at me. He slides a piece of hair behind my ear, then gently strokes again
st my cheekbone with his thumb. “Are you going to tell me what happened earlier with Caleb?”

I feel myself stiffen at the sound of his name
and the reminder of our fight. “We had a fight, it was horrible,” I confess.

“About what?
” he inquires as he presses a lingering kiss on my shoulder.

“
You.”

He pulls aw
ay slightly, his eyes widening. “Me?”

I nod, while stroking my
fingers up and down his biceps. “Yeah, when you texted me earlier, I was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner, and he read it.”

He closes his eyes on inhale.
“Shit. I’m so sorry, baby.”

“
It isn’t your fault. I’m glad he knows. I just didn’t want him to know tonight. I wanted at least one night without any bullshit. It’s been such a long two days.”

“
I know.” He ponders for a moment, with a sympathetic glint in his eyes, then he presses a kiss on my lips. “So what happened?”

I
give him a running commentary of the fight, and Ashton listens quietly without interruption. “I have never seen him so angry with me before, and the disgusted way he was glaring at me, it was as though he had forgotten who I was. I have been friends with him for a decade, and it suddenly felt as though we were strangers.” I feel a tremble of my bottom lip and the early signs of tears begin to well in my eyes. Ashton captures my trembling chin within his fingers and strokes over my lips with his thumb. “Hey, it’s okay, don’t cry. God, I could kick his ass for talking to you like that.” I love how protective he is of me. His possessiveness kind of turns me on.

“
I get why he’s so pissed at me. I’ve lied to him for weeks, I told him there was nothing to worry about, I’ve been telling him over and over there was nothing going on between us, and even though technically there wasn’t anything going on, I knew deep down that I was falling for you. I was falling hard, and it scared me, so I kept it buried and pretended everything was okay, that my relationship with Sebastian wasn’t on the line. You were unexpected, and I didn’t know how to deal with these sudden new feelings.” Taking a small breather with a small caress of his cheek, I continue. “Can I be totally honest with you?”

He nod
s his head, smiling down at me. “Yeah of course, baby. All I want is honesty even if it kills me.” I caress up and down his back with my fingertips, wanting him to feel reassured and comfortable before I start discussing all things Sebastian.

“
It isn’t anything bad, I swear.” I smile. “I just want you to understand my life before I met you, understand why I’ve been so resistant to you. A couple of years after I moved to Seattle, before I met Sebastian, I had begun to date for the very first time. It was a huge step for me to get out there. Everybody around me was going on dates, or had boyfriends and girlfriends, and I wanted that. I didn’t want my past to continue to haunt my future, so I pushed myself to try dating. I was sick of being alone, I was sick of still being a twenty-year-old virgin, or so to speak. I wanted to be loved.

“
The guys I had previously declined to go on dates with, I decided to give them a shot, but I hated it. I hated the way they all looked at me, I hated the way they would literally undress me with their eyes. They all just reminded me of my brother and the way he used to look at me, so after a while I just stopped dating. They only wanted one thing, and after everything I’d gone through, I couldn’t let just any man have that part of me. To those guys I was just another notch on their bedpost; to me...it meant so much more. I had sworn to myself that the next time, it wouldn’t be forced, but instead it would be gentle and full of love.

“
So when Sebastian came along, I thought he was the one. He was so different to the other guys. I think, maybe because I knew him, or knew of him back in Florida I felt immediately at ease with him. It felt natural. It took a while, what with the insecurities of my past but slowly I began to trust him and I fell in love with him. It was perfect. We moved into together, then I got pregnant, and I was ecstatic. I mean, looking at a pregnancy test that said ‘pregnant’ scared the shit out of me. We hadn’t spoken about having a family or even marriage, but we were in a committed relationship, it seemed perfect to have a baby, but then a month after I told him I was pregnant, he got deployed to Afghanistan.

“
Obviously I knew when we got together that the chances of him getting deployed were pretty high and that when the time came, I would be okay. I was at first. It sucked knowing he wouldn’t be here for Lily’s birth, but I had Caleb, and with that I just got on with it. I had my work and that kept me busy for the majority of the time. Then unexpectedly I went into labor, and that’s the moment when I realized how out of my depth I really was. My entire world was just crashing around me and then, just to make everything that little more complicated, you came into my life.” I can’t keep the smile from my face remembering the first time I laid eyes on Ashton.

“
You literally blew me away. At first I put it down to attraction, but I knew deep down it was more than that, I’ve always known it was more than that. Only I wouldn’t admit it to myself. I thought I had everything set, but suddenly you appeared out of nowhere, and I started to question everything, and I mean
everything
. We became closer, and everything I felt with Sebastian, was nothing compared to what I was feeling for you. I panicked. It was confusing. A touch from Sebastian would make my heart flutter, but a touch from you, I swear it feels as if my heart is going explode right from my chest. Feel.” I grasp on to his right hand gently and place it directly over my chest, where he can feel the erratic thumping of my heart.

“
Where he just sees me, you see straight through me, deep within me.” I clutch my own hand delicately over his keeping him close to my chest. “You understand me like nobody else, not even Caleb. I love Sebastian and I think I always will. He was my first love, the person who helped break through my barriers, but there has always been something missing, something I could never put my finger on, until now. Last night you told me that I hadn’t opened up to Sebastian, like I’ve opened up to you and you’re right, I haven’t. He doesn’t know about my past and my demons and I never had any intentions of telling him. I kept it buried, and I could never fathom why. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, yet I couldn’t even tell him my secret. I spent a long time loathing myself for keeping something so big from him. I hated that I was lying to him, but I just couldn’t part with it. There was always a nagging voice at the back of my mind, of my brother’s voice saying
, ‘He wouldn’t believe you,’
and I didn’t want to chance it.

“
After everything I had been through, I told myself that I had finally found happiness, and I wasn’t going to jeopardize my relationship with words that could easily turn Sebastian against me, but it was more than that and you finally made me realize it. You made me realize that maybe the reason I didn’t want to tell him, that the reason I physically couldn’t tell him, was because he wasn’t the person I was supposed to tell. It was you I was supposed to tell. I know it sounds like some make believe crap, but it’s true. I have spent four years of my life with him, unable to let go of my secret but from the moment I met you, the words just wanted to spill from me. I obviously didn’t love him as much as I thought I did because if I did, then I would have told him.” I take a small breather, smiling sadly as Ashton watches me as though he is seeing me from the inside out.

“
It’s obvious because the comparisons of my love for you and my love to Sebastian, is so far off the chart that it couldn’t be any more different.”

He gives me
a gentle smile as his thumb strokes against my bottom lip. “He doesn’t know you ran away from Miami?”

I shake my head at Ashton’s question and
his eyes widen with surprise. “He knows I left, obviously, but he doesn’t know that I ran away.”

“
How though?”

“
I just lied. I told him that we had a big family falling out and that we didn’t speak anymore. He didn’t question it.”

“
And you never worried that your brother would bump into Sebastian’s family, or if he would get into contact with Sebastian, through Facebook or some school reunion?”

“
Yeah, of course, but fortunately for me Sebastian’s family moved to Charlotte nine years ago, and have never been back to Miami, so I never had the worry of them crossing paths. Sebastian doesn’t have a Facebook account, and they were never what you would call ‘close’ or anything. I think my brother just used him for his connections, and as for school reunions; he would never have attended. High school isn’t something he would like to relive. It was a dark time for him back then.” Ashton gives an understanding nod but doesn’t question it further. I get the distinct impression that the little he knows about Sebastian the better. I feel as if I’ve gotten myself off track, so I continue.

“
I had kept my demons under wraps for a long time, in fact, my past was so far at the back of my mind that I barely even thought about it, but eventually the stress of Sebastian being in Afghanistan, then the birth of Lily, it just became too much for me. I pretty much had a mental breakdown and the day you told me Lily had gotten pneumonia, I just lost it. Then suddenly I was in the warmth of your arms, inhaling your perfect smell, wanting to pour my heart out to you and that scared me. It scared me because I had never felt that way before, ever. I had never felt so comfortable where I actually wanted to open myself up in such a raw state before. I had spent so long keeping everything buried that it had become a natural instinct to keep it inside, so when I met you and the walls I so carefully built were quickly beginning to tumble down after just one glance in your direction, I knew that I was in deep trouble.

“
I wouldn’t admit it though. I just kept telling myself I was in love with Sebastian, that I wanted him, that I needed him. I also kept telling myself that I couldn’t be with you because of my commitment to him, but there was always this little voice at the back of my head, taunting me, laughing at me, that knew better. I was confused. I didn’t want to love you, because loving you meant hurting him and I wasn’t okay with that. I’m not a cheat. That isn’t me. I hate what I’ve done to him, but the moment I met you, I never stood a chance.”

I pull Ashton closer to me by the neck, my fingertips caressing the ends of his hair, my legs wrapp
ing around his muscular thighs. “I might have been battling with my feelings, but it was never a contest, Sebastian didn’t even come close. I knew it the moment I laid my eyes on you. I was just trying to do the right thing, for Sebastian and Lily. You get that, right? I was never trying to hurt you. Ever.” My eyes flutter as he presses his lips to mine, taking my breath away.

“I know, baby…I get that. It was the same reason I tried to stay away from you, but like you said, I didn’t stand a chance. I have been waiting a damn lifetime for you. I feel bad for the guy, I really do, but like I said the other night, he doesn’t deserve you. Hell, I don’t deserve you. I don’t think there
’s a man on the entire planet that is even close to being good enough for you.” He presses a kiss to my temple, then slowly along the bridge of my nose, before tracing his lips with mine, each kiss as unique as the next.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do though. How do you tell somebody that
you’ve fallen in love with somebody else? What’s the right way to break a person’s heart?”

He gives me a
pained smile, before answering. “I don’t know, baby, I guess there isn’t a right way. You’re going to have to be honest. That’s all you can be.”

“I know, but I can’t tell him yet. It’s too dangerous. He’d get himself killed, but that isn’t to say I’m not going to tell him. I will, just when he’s back on US soil. Do you understand? He needs to hear this face
to face. I owe him that much.”

Ashton looks down to me on a sigh. “I don’t like it, but I understand.”

I kiss him briefly on the lips. “Thank you. I do think maybe we shouldn’t be doing this though,” I say looking down at our naked bodies and entwined limbs. “Having sex behind his back like this…it feels kind of wrong, don’t you think?” My heart does a double somersault at his sudden devilish grin.