No Regrets (Bomar Boys #1) (23 page)

“Oh… my… God…” Jemma panted as they both struggled to regain their breath. “We’ve gotten sooo much better at that.”

A smile curled at his lips as he kissed her softly, groaning as he rolled to the side before he crushed her, “Damn right we did.”

“You learned some new tricks.” She giggled and he pulled her into his side, pleased to note her ludicrously happy expression.

He’d made her happy. That was his new sole mission in life and he’d accomplished it tonight. On what had been one of their worst days. He was tired, exhausted, but sated and satisfied. He had Jemma in his arms and he’d managed to make her happy which put a smile on his face that nothing could erase.

“No, it’s just never like that with anyone else. Only between us. It’s never been that good with anyone else because it was always supposed to be us. We belong together.”

“Mmm…” She cuddled against him, “That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“I’ve been waiting five years for that, for you. Five years of expectations and you blew them completely out of the water. You’re better than any fantasy I could have dreamed up and trust me, I dreamed of this a lot in the years you’ve been gone.”

“Let’s not wait another five years to do it again.” She grinned as she rolled up onto his chest and he groaned as her legs spread wide around his hips.

Good lord, she was incredible. She sat upright, her red hair wild about her shoulders, one stray strand curling lewdly around the tip of her nipple. His palms immediately rose up to her chest, cupping her full breasts. She moaned, her head falling back as he toyed with her nipples.

“We’re going to have to wait at least five minutes, babe. I need some time to recover. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

She bit her lip, her smile bright as she met his gaze again, “I’m sure I can think of some way to spend the time.”

Jemma teased his body with kisses and touches. Caresses that made his every nerve ending sing. And his body responded just as it always did with her, coming to life. Minutes? With Jemma, it took moments.

Because their bodies were meant to come together, be together. Because she had been made for him and because he had been made for her. She wanted and so he would give. He’d give her everything. She already had his heart. She always had.

“Again, baby?”

“Always.”

Sunlight was filtering in through the cheap blinds on the window, casting golden shadows across the most beautiful chest she’d ever seen. Jemma had barely slept. They’d both barely slept. They’d been up all night, making up for lost time. They’d kissed and touched and made love until they fell asleep for a few hours and then they’d reached for each other and started all over again. They’d finished their last round of mind blowing, body numbing,
oh my God
sex an hour ago and Cash had finally succumbed to the mortal need for rest.

The man was… incredible. Strong and confident. Gentle and sensitive. He was the most difficult kind of complex, the kind that was hidden beneath a façade of simple. Because on the outside, that’s what he was, a simple man.

He’d scraped by in high school and never gone to college. He worked with his hands doing hard manual labor and lived paycheck to paycheck. He was a jeans and t-shirt guy and he didn’t need anything more than what he could earn honestly. He was a simple man that cared more for the people he loved than for himself and that was what made him so impossibly complex.

He would choose everyone else’s happiness over his own. He would willingly go without for the people he loved. He would hurt himself in order to protect her, would walk away from her, again. And she didn’t know how to get past something so deeply ingrained inside of him, not when she loved that part of him just as much as she feared it.

His anger issues didn’t scare her. She knew he would never raise his fists to her, not in a million years. Not after seeing the kind of damage Decker had done to Chrissy with his, not after being on the receiving end of those outbursts. His temper didn’t scare her. She would fight and argue with him until they were both blue in the face. She was a redhead. She had a temper too. What scared her was his ability to completely shut down and shut her out.

Last night, he’d been prepared to walk out of her life for good. She’d realized that somewhere between Houston and Old Settlers and spent a good portion of the drive watching him from beneath her lashes, trying to figure out what to do about it. Even still, actually seeing him turn and walk away without so much as a word had shocked her and chilled her to the bone.

So she’d done what she had to do. She’d gone after him. She’d gotten naked. She’d seduced him. She’d also tried to talk to him and make him see reason but she didn’t know if she’d truly gotten through to him or not. And even if she had, she didn’t have any guarantee that the next time he got upset about something that he wouldn’t try to shut her out all over again.

All she could do was try to be there for him and pray that he let her in. She hoped he would, that he could, because after last night, she knew she didn’t want to live without him. Maybe it was because of their history, or the fact that they both had issues to overcome, maybe it was simple chemistry or maybe it was something bigger than either of them but the fact was this: They were meant to be together.

She traced her fingers over the dark lines of the ink that branded his chest for the twentieth time since she woke in his arms. He’d tattooed her name on his body when she’d already been long gone, when he couldn’t have known she would ever come back. He’d marked his body, permanently, with her name and the symbolism of what he had done, the magnitude of that kind of commitment, touched the very depths of her soul.

“Mmm…” Cash groaned, shifting as he woke so that his arms wrapped around her and tugged her closer, “Is this a dream or are you really here?”

She smiled against his shoulder, “I’m really here.”

“Thank God.” His voice was gruff from sleep, gravel and steel, “I’ve had these dreams about you for so long, if I woke up to find out last night was another one I’m not sure I would have survived.”

“Yeah? What kind of dreams?”

“Keep touching me like that and you’re gonna find out.” He caught her fingers and pressed her hand firmly against his chest, stopping her teasing motion.

“Promise?” She grinned when he chuckled and then, when they fell into silence she sighed and broached the far more serious topic at hand, “I was worried you’d try to kick me out when you woke up.”

His eyes finally opened, those intense blue orbs searching her face out instantly. His brows furrowed and his lips thinned. Something dark clouded his face and she squealed when he flipped them easily, putting her back to the mattress as he came up on an elbow to loom over her.

“Why would I do that when I’ve finally got you exactly where I want you?”

“The same reason you let me go last time, to protect me.”

He only shook his head, “Baby, I told you last night. You’re mine.”

“But…”

“I let you go once. I gave you a chance to go and find someone else, find someone better, and you failed. You came back to me. Now you’re mine and I’m not letting you go again. You’re stuck with me Jemma.”

Her heart thumped hard in her chest. She thought she’d seen all of the many faces of Cash Bomar but this one was new. Sweetly possessive. She’d seen him cocky before sure, but this was tinged in something softer. He wasn’t convinced he was the best thing for her but his words told her he didn’t intend to push her away again.

Sweet, complicated man.

“There’s nowhere else I want to be Cash.”

“Good, because this is where you belong.” He brushed a light kiss across her lips and her heart melted.

She traced the edges of the tattoo again, still marveling that her name was imprinted on his skin. She didn’t have any tattoos. She’d always thought they were a beautiful way of expressing oneself but she’d never found anything she liked enough to want it on her body for the rest of her life. Despite his brother’s profession, Cash had only the one, just that one word in simple black ink, which somehow made it even more important.

“You can ask you know.” He sighed, rolling back to the bed and pulling her against him again.

“What?”

“Anything. Everything. Whatever you want to know, just ask.”

Somehow, she doubted it would be that easy. Cash was an intensely private person. He wasn’t a big talker, about anything, particularly not his emotions. He kept his feelings tied up inside of him but if he was offering to let her wade around on the other side of his wall, then she was fully prepared to go marching through laying siege and claiming her territory.

“When’d you get it?” Her hand rose to the tattoo again and his much larger palm met hers, wrapping their fingers together and resting their joined hands over his heart.

“The day you left town…” He frowned, “Or a few days after. I don’t really remember.”

“You don’t remember the exact date or you don’t remember getting the tattoo?”

“Both.”

She groaned when he went quiet, as if she would ever be satisfied with that answer, “Explain?”

“Okay…” He took a deep breath, blew it out and then began slowly, “I knew you were leaving but the day you actually packed up and drove out of Old Settlers, it really hit me that I’d probably never see you again. I knew I’d lost you for good that day so I did what you’d expect any man to do when the love of his life left him… I got drunk.”

Jemma shifted closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder and pretending to ignore the fact that he’d just called her the love of his life, “You were eighteen. Where’d you get the alcohol?”

“I’m a Bomar. We’ve got anything even half illegal stockpiled. I stole a case of whiskey out of Decker’s stash and drank until it stopped hurting so damn much.” He sighed, “Or I didn’t… I don’t know because I blacked out. I don’t remember much about those first few days you were gone. I got drunk and I stayed that way until Colt finally managed to get the bottles away from me and sober me up.”

The hurt in his voice as he told her about the days after she left town made her ache. She’d been hurting too. She’d packed up her things and driven out of Old Settlers knowing full well that she would be on her own in the big, bad world. It hadn’t been easy to leave everything she knew behind and if she hadn’t been reeling from Cash’s breakup she might have faltered. But she’d needed to get as far away from him as possible after what he’d done and from the sound of it, he’d wanted to forget just as badly.

“So you don’t remember getting the tattoo?”

“No, but Colt filled me in after.”

“He did it?”

“Yeah.” He huffed out a breath, a hint of amusement in his voice, “I think it’s the first one he ever did. He’d managed to get his hands on some outdated equipment but he hadn’t found anyone willing to let him try it out. He says I insisted, begged and pleaded with him to put your name on me so that no matter how drunk I got I’d never forget what you meant to me.”

“That’s kind of… sweet. Sad but sweet.”

He chuckled, “Hell if I know whether it’s true or not. It’s just as likely I passed out and he wanted to try out his new skill on me. Probably figured I wouldn’t complain too much when I woke up if he did your name and luckily, he was right.”

She smiled softly, “You really believe that?”

“No.” His grip on her tightened, “I believe his story sounds much more plausible. I was a mess without you and I hated the thought of forgetting you even as I tried to drink you away. Having your name inked into my skin is probably the most rational thing I did in those first few weeks after you left.”

“Do you regret it?”

“The tattoo? No. Not for a second.” Cash stiffened, his fingers digging into her skin he was holding her so tight, “But I do have regrets.”

Her heart stuttered in her chest, knowing what was coming and that there was no way to brace for the pain of what he was going to say, “Okay.”

“Jemma, there’s something I have to tell you, something important that I should have told you before I took you to bed. I should have told you the second you walked back into my life but everything was such a mess and you were already hurting and I didn’t want to make it worse, didn’t know if you’d even give me a chance to explain but I have to, so I need you to hear me out, okay?”

She nodded because words failed her. Her throat felt tight and she didn’t trust herself to talk. She didn’t want to give too much away, not yet. He needed to do this his way and so she simply clung to him and waited for the words that would rewrite their history.

“I lied to you. When we were kids, everything I said to you was a lie. No that’s not right, not everything. All of it was true up until that last day, after we had sex, every word out of my mouth after that was a lie.”

“I…”

“No. Let me get this out.” Cash tensed beneath her, “I fell for you back then, so damn hard and so damn fast. I was in love with you Jemma. I know I told you that day that I didn’t, that it was all some stupid game to me, that you were just a conquest or something, but you weren’t. I loved you more than I’d ever known I could love anything or anyone and I’ve regretted lying to you about that since the moment the words left my mouth.”

His admission made her chest hurt and she clung to him to keep her in the present. The memories of that day were awful and she could feel the darkness of it threaten to rise up. She’d never been able to forget the way he’d recoiled from her in the moments after she’d given him her virginity. One second she’d been warm and hazy, full of dreams and ideas for their future and the next she’d been staring up at the boy she loved as he cursed and yelled and broke her heart to pieces. Hearing that it had hurt him to do it helped some, but it didn’t erase the memories.

“I know.”

“What?” He shifted, “What’d you say?”

“I said I know. I know you lied.”

She slid from his chest as he sat up and their eyes met. He scanned her face, his brows furrowing as confusion overtook his features. He started to reach for her then seemed to think better of it and stopped himself. She took his hand in hers and squeezed reassuringly.

“I know, Cash.”

“I… you do? When? How?” He blinked at her and she sighed as she sat up next to him.

She couldn’t tell him the entire truth. She’d made Colt a promise and she wouldn’t break it. Not when he had been so supportive, so helpful yesterday and really, every day since she’d come back. And the more she thought about it, the more she’d realized that Colt was right and she’d always had her doubts about Cash’s sincerity that day.

She gave him that truth, “Part of me never really believed you I don’t think. The part of me that was madly in love with you and wanted you to be the boy I thought you were, hoped it was all a lie, and it was easy for that part of me to understand why you would have done what you did. I realized you’d lied after I came back. That first night in this apartment, you could have taken advantage but you didn’t. You take care of people Cash, it’s one of the things I loved about you most, so if you thought you were sending me away to save me then I understand that.”

He groaned, “It nearly killed me but I had to do it. It was the only way. You’d started talking about staying and God, I wanted that and I hated myself for wanting it all at the same time. You would have had hated me if you’d stayed.”

“No.” She shook her head immediately even though his words rang true, the denial too instantaneous not to be more than a platitude.