Pulse - Part Two (6 page)

"Jess." She sits upright on the bed now, her hands on her knees. "You listen to me and you listen good."

I stare at her. She's rarely this impassioned about anything that doesn’t include designer fashion or men. "He was old. He had a heart attack. You did what you could and he died. End of story."

"Josh blames me." I pull my teeth over my bottom lip. "He'll never stop blaming me."

"Josh is fucked up." There are tears in her eyes. "You gave up everything because his grandfather died. No one could have saved him. He was too..."

"Josh could have saved him." I cut her off. "He's stronger than me. He could have done CPR longer. I tried." I had tried. I had done CPR until the moment the EMTs arrived. I'd done everything I was trained to do. I just didn’t do it well enough.

"People die, Jess. He was visiting you two. He would have died at your place, or back at his place. It wasn't anything you did." She grabs my hand. "Please let this go. Please."

"I wish I could do it again," I whimper into my pillow. "I wish I could have that day back."

She curls up next to me on the bed. "You can't. It's over."

***

"I
was wrong." The words float through the air behind me as I walk the four blocks back to my apartment from work.  "Jessica, I was wrong."

I stop at the sound of my name.
Jessica
. Only one person calls me that.

"I can't believe what an ass I was." He's behind me now, his hand resting on my shoulder. "You had every right to be pissed off at me. Hell, you had every right to fucking leave me."

"You were such an ass." I volley the words into the air. "You are an ass."

"You're going to forgive me." He traces a path across my exposed neck with his finger. "This is the first step."

A flourish of pink roses appears in front of me. I feel his other hand wrap around my waist. "I told you I don't do romantic but this isn't romantic so don't get your panties in a knot and expect this all the time."

"My panties in a knot?" I whip around and face him.

"I can't tell you how badly I feel." He pulls a finger across my nose. "I haven't slept since you railed on me. I listened to the messages."

"You should have listened to them when you were in Boston." I tap my foot on the sidewalk. I hate when I'm wearing flats. I'm so small compared to him. He feels even more empowering to me like this.

"I don't look at my phone when I'm there. I need to explain that to you."

I nod slowly. "You do and I need to explain some things to you too."

"I know a good lawyer." He points a finger at himself. "For that small issue you've got going on back in Connecticut, Jessica. If that's your real name."

"We'll get to that one day." I reach to take the flowers from his hand. "I'm going home. Thank you for these."

"You're not coming home with me?" He pushes his hands in the pockets of his pants. "I thought you'd come home with me."

"Never assume anything, Nathan." I turn to walk down the street. "A good attorney never does that."

"I
shouldn't have to beg you to read text messages I send you." I glance at the roses that are now sitting next to my bed, slowly wilting.

"I shouldn't have to wait almost a week after giving you flowers to hear from you." He sits on a chair next to the bed, his legs crossed, his suit jacket hanging open.

"I needed time to think and to deal with things."

"What things?" he pushes the question back at me so quickly. What happens if I open up to him and we end up back in the same spot we're always in? In bed with no connection to one another beyond that?

"I think we should cut out the exclusive part of our relationship." I don’t see any reason to beat around the bush. I don’t want to keep having false expectations when I know he can't possibly emotionally deliver on them.

"Why would we do that?" He moves to the edge of the bed. "There's someone you want to fuck?"

"How do you get through your workday when all you think about is fucking?" I ask half-teasingly. It's a question I've long wanted an answer to. I've never met anyone who talks about sex or thinks about sex as much as Nathan.

"You're diverting." He traces a finger over the pattern on the cotton blanket. "Who do you want to fuck? I need to know."

"Right now, absolutely no one, present company included." I don't show any emotion with the statement. I don't want to. I can't fall back into this knowing that he only sees me as someone who can get him off whenever he wants.

"You didn't call me over here to fuck you?"

I stop before I answer. I exhale sharply thinking carefully about how I should respond. "You like fucking me, don’t you?"

"I love fucking you." The smile that crashes over his lips makes him devastatingly handsome. Only he can say the word
fuck
so effortlessly and yet with so much raw desire.

"We need to get back to that." I slide the words over my lips, thinking about how amazing it would be right now to just let go and let him claim me again.

"I'm all for that." He eases his suit jacket from his shoulders, letting it fall to the bed behind him.

"Sit here." I pat the area where my pillows are. "Rest your back against the headboard."

He stands and quickly starts unbuttoning his shirt.

"Clothes on, Nathan." I command. He really only has a one track mind. It's becoming clearer to me each time we spend a moment together.

He kicks off his shoes before he sets himself at the head of the bed. I crawl into his lap, pulling the skirt of my sundress around my thighs.

"I really like you." I lightly graze my lips across his. "I've never met any man like you before."

His heavy lashes close slightly as he breathes in the scent of my skin. "I've never met anyone like you before, Jessica." He pulls me closer, the stubble on his skin, grazing my cheek.

"Sex with you is so good." I kiss him lightly. "I love it. I really love it."

"Me too." His hands inch up my thighs and I don’t stop him. I don't want to stop him.

I pull my panties across his pants, feeling his swollen cock straining against the fabric. "You and I just need to fuck and nothing else."

"I want to fuck you so much." His hands skirt the edges of my panties, playfully pulling at them.

"You think about fucking me all the time." I whisper into his cheek. "That's what you picture when you think about me."

"It's all I think about." He groans as his finger slides over my cleft. "You're just so ripe and ready for me. You always are."

"If I let you fuck me now, you'd like that," I tease.

"I'd love that." He pushes a finger across my moist folds and I have to bite back a moan.

"Don't you wonder..." I let the words trail as he circles my clit with his finger.

"Wonder how good you're going to taste when I eat you?" He deftly pushes a finger inside of me.

"Wonder what happened to me in Connecticut." I pull back and stare at his face.

His eyelids close briefly before he pulls his gaze to mine. "You would tell me if you wanted me to know."

I shift my body to try and move from his grasp, put he slides another finger into me.

"You don't want to know." I bite back all the emotions that are racing through me. I want to hate him for not caring. I want him to push me back and lick my wetness until I'm screaming his name. I want him to react. I want him to feel something besides unadulterated lust for me.

"Don't play games with me, Jessica." He pushes his fingers farther into me until I can't help but release a small moan.

"I'm not." I push back on his legs, trying to disengage myself from his body but he's unrelenting. "Don't act like you don’t want me as much as I want you." He twists his fingers within me as his thumb settles on my clit.

"I don't want you," I lie through clenched teeth. I don’t want him just like this. I want to mean more to him than a fuck. I have to mean more than that.

"Stop lying." He leans back and pulls on my thigh with his free hand. "I'm going to make you come with my fingers, just like that first night. You're going to scream my name by the end of tonight because your body craves mine."

"No," I push back against him. "I won't scream your name."

"When you're in this bed at night, you touch this," he nods to his fingers. "You pull your fingers over your clit while you think about my tongue."

"Don't say that." I feel so shameless. I wanted to seduce him into admitting he only wanted me for sex. I wanted to make him see that there was more to me.

"You're getting close. You're so swollen and ready." He pushes another finger into me, stretching my pleasure. "I should fuck you right now."

"I'm..." my voice trails as I feel an orgasm wash through me. I pant, biting my lip to hold back the quiver that is rushing over me. "Nathan," I say his name in a breathless whisper. "Nathan."

He pulls me into his chest, resting my head against his cheek. "I wanted..." I don't know what I wanted but he knew what I needed.

"Jessica." He cradles the side of my head as he whispers softly in my ear. "You grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut. You're a registered EMT. You were living with a jackass named Josh Redmond who fucked you over so badly because he made you believe you were responsible for his grandfather's death. You ran away from all of that and you fell into me. I've got you. I'm not letting you go."

I pull my head up and stare at his face. I can't form one word in response. I can't process everything that just came out of his mouth.

"You didn't really think I just spent the last week of my life jerking off to memories of you, did you? I had to fill in my time somehow."

"I don't know what to say." I feel my lips tremble.

"Don't say anything." He pulls my head back into his chest. "This isn't romantic. Don’t take it that way. You can't tell a lawyer you killed a man and expect him not to want to know more. "

I smile softly as I pull my arms around him.

"A
re you going to tell me about Boston?" I offer him a bite of my baked pretzel and he pulls off a large piece.

"What about Boston?" He chews on it before reaching to take the plastic cup filled with lemonade from my grasp.

My eyes follow a nanny with her two young charges as they race towards the entrance of the Central Park Zoo. "You said you'd explain why you don't look at your messages when you're in Boston."

He pulls the remaining pretzel from my grasp. "I'm starving. We should have gone for a sandwich."

"Don't divert." I push at him. "Meeting in the park at noon was your idea, not mine."

"I wanted to see your face." He taps me on the nose. "Work is a bitch right now."

I nod. "Boston." I push again.

"Boston." A slight grin pulls at the corner of his mouth. "This is why I ignore everything when I'm in Boston."

I watch in silence as he pulls his wallet from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He carefully opens one of the flaps to reveal two small pictures. He holds them up for me to gaze at. "This is Madison and this is Mackenzie."

I smile at the glowing faces of two children. "Your niece and nephew." I recognize their images from the picture that was in his apartment when Cassandra took me there. "I saw a picture of them on your mantel."

"The day Cassie took you in?" He drops his gaze to his pants, pulling softly on a loose thread.

"Yes." I wish I hadn't brought it up. I don't want to talk about her anymore. I don't want to talk about anything but the two of us.

"I don't miss her at all." His voice is quiet and raspy. "If you left me, I'd miss you so much."

I turn sharply to look at his face but he's staring into the distance. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm serious, Jessica." He pulls his eyes shut for a brief moment before he turns to look at me. "I'd miss you too much. You get that, don't you?"

"I get that," I reply quickly. "I do."

"Come over tonight." He pulls his lips across the bare skin of my shoulder. "I need you."

He's never said that. He needs me? "What's wrong?" I need to ask. I have to know. He doesn't open up like this. There aren't any small cracks in Nathan Moore's demeanor.

"Be there at eight. I'll be waiting for you." He reaches to pull my palm across his lips.

***

"N
athan," I gasp as he plunges his tongue inside of me. "Please. It's too much."

"Never." He cradles my ass off the bed, his mouth deftly close to coaxing yet another orgasm from deep within me.

My body is trembling, I'm covered in sweat, my hands gripping his bed sheets. "You have to stop."

"I can't stop." He angles my body higher so his tongue can probe me deeper. "I love the taste of you."

"I can't breathe." My hands dart to his hair, pulling on the soft strands. "Let me suck you off. Please."

"You're going to suck my cock." His breath tickles across my overly sensitive folds. "You're going to suck me until I come all over your body."

The raspy sound of his voice pushes me closer to the edge. I almost whimper from the sensation. I can't keep up. I can't do this. It's so much.

"You’re the sweetest little thing." He laps lazily at my clit, pulling it softly between his teeth. "I can't wait until my cock is buried inside you and you're clawing at my back."

I race over the edge at the thought of him inside of me. He hasn't fucked me in so long. It feels like so long.

I feel the bed heave beneath me as he moves his body from it. I close my eyes knowing he's getting a condom. He's going to fuck me when I've already come so many times.

"Nathan," I whisper his name through heavy lips. I feel so spent. I feel as though his mouth pulled every ounce of strength from within me. How can he make me feel so much?

"Jessica." He breathes into me as his lips skirt softly over mine. "Spread your legs. I have to fuck you now."

"I can't." I lift my hand and rest it against his chest. I feel the fine mist of sweat that is glistening over his skin. He worked so hard to make me come so many times.

"Feel it." He pulls the heavy weight of his cock over my cleft and I moan loudly at the sensation. My hips buck in reflex. My body wants him even if I can't handle the idea of any more pleasure.