Separation Anxiety (23 page)

“
I know, baby,” he whispered. “It’s not your fault. You’re here now.”

We clutched each other a little closer before falling asleep.

The last few days of school passed quickly. Between grading final exams, posting grades, and cleaning out my classroom for the end of the year checkout, I was busy, and so was Jesse. He had his own set of worries, most notably contacting the parents of seniors who failed classes and weren’t going to graduate. I was glad I wasn’t the one who had to make those calls. By the time we both got home, we were too exhausted to do anything other than lay in bed wrapped around each other.

And then, finally, our summer was upon us.

Freedom for over two months before it was back to the grind.

Jesse had scheduled his trip to begin the day after school got out. He’d already made reservations and planned out a large part of his
itinerary before I was even in the equation, and, unfortunately, I couldn’t go with him to Mexico.

Fucking Richard once again was getting in t
he way of what I wanted – what I needed.

The court date
for our divorce was set for June 7, so I had about two weeks before I could join Jesse. We only needed a court date if we couldn’t agree on something, and I’d spoken to him three times about listing the house for sale. He hadn’t done it, and so I had to file for a court date for our division of property.

Jesse prepared for his month-long getaway and I watched
with a wineglass in hand. He went into the office to set up automatic payment on all of his bills, and I sat on the floor of the office and drank wine while he worked. I watched the way his eyes focused on his computer screen, the way his long fingers clicked the mouse, the way his lips pouted out as he concentrated. Everything about him was perfection, like I was watching a beautiful piece of artwork come to life.

When he stood, he pulled me up with him. He carried a bottle of beer in one hand and clutched my hand in the other.
“Want to help me pack my clothes?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said as he
led me into his bedroom and gestured to the bed. I looked at him in confusion.

“Sit,” he commanded.

“On your bed?” I asked.

I knew we’d shared plenty of intimacy, but I still considered his room off-limits. It reminded me of when I was a little kid and I wasn’t supposed to go in my parents’ room.

“Our room” was the guest room, the one where I’d slept since Jesse invited me to stay with him. The room we had shared since two nights after I started crashing with him.

But
the next time I was going to be with Jesse in this house, our relationship was going to be completely different. We weren’t just going to be in love; we were going to be lovers. And maybe that meant we were going to start sharing his bed instead of his guest bed.

He nodded.
“Yeah, on my bed,” he said, a hint of shyness mixed with trepidation. I knew what a huge step this was for him.

I perched gingerly on the edge of the bed, his eyes warm and full of lust as he gazed at me.

“You have no idea how much I want to fuck you right now,” he murmured, his words washing over me and causing my cheeks to redden.

“You have no idea how much I want to be fucked by you,” I whispered back.

In what seemed like less than a second, Jesse attacked. He was suddenly hovering over me, his body covering mine, and I was on my back on his bed. His heated eyes locked on mine, and I knew without a doubt that the next two weeks were going to be as difficult as the last two months. Time away from Jesse was agony, but the light at the end of the tunnel was that we would finally, finally be able to be together in every single way that we’d wanted to be together for five years.

He dragged his lips down my neck and then up behind my ear. He placed tiny kisses in his path as I shivered beneath him.

I was more aroused than I’d ever been in my life, and from the solid hardness that he was pushing into me, I could tell that I was doing the same thing to him that he was doing to me.

His lips found mine, and he held still, kissing me with his mouth closed for a moment
as his hips bucked into mine. It was somehow sweet and erotic at the same time. I laid there and took it, arching up into him as my hands wrapped tightly around his neck.

His m
outh opened to mine and I grasped his hair in my hand. He groaned into me, and it was one of those raspy, feral groans that caused a deep throbbing ache inside of me. I held his head to mine, and his kiss deepened. His tongue battled against mine aggressively, exploring every corner of my mouth as he continued his thrusts with his hips. I was dizzy with need for him.

He ended the kiss all too soon, driving into me one last time before pulling back and standing up.

“Sweet fuck,” he muttered, heading toward his closet as he not at all discreetly adjusted his pants.

I just lay back on his bed, woozy and dazed from that
extraordinary kiss. I couldn’t move; I was breathless and lightheaded and shamelessly turned on.

I heard him moving around in his closet, muttering under his breath. I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but in my own head all I could think about was just finally getting to the sex part.

I tried to focus on the task at hand. We were going to have to say goodbye for two weeks. Granted, this time things would be different; we could talk on the phone whenever we wanted. We could Skype. We could text and email all day long. But none of it was the same as actually being in his strong and loving arms.

Although I had to consider the one advantage: If we were spending the next two weeks together and didn’t have
our daily responsibilities since we were on our summer break, we’d never be able to keep our hands off of each other. It would mean entire days together, and it was only going to get harder to wait if we had all of that uninterrupted time. And I knew in my heart that I would never regret waiting until I was a free woman to give myself to Jesse.

The night before, we’d discussed his travel itinerary.
He’d be in California by June 7, so I was going to fly into San Francisco on the redeye. We made a plan for him to pick me up from the airport, and then we’d crash before we drove through wine country together and the next night would be just for us. It sounded like the perfect kind of romantic getaway that would do justice to “our night.”

I just wished I could go off the grid with him again, but this time in Mexico.

He started to change his plans, but I didn’t want to be the reason he missed out on a vacation he’d already planned and paid for. I essentially forced him to go. Even though the time we had spent apart had been torturous, I knew that he’d be worth waiting two more weeks for. Besides, I had plenty to sort out while he was gone. For one, I needed to get back to the house I owned with Richard, get the rest of my belongings, and split up the rest of our stuff. While it would have been helpful to have Jesse there with me for that, I didn’t want to be the reason he changed his travel plans.

So while Jesse pa
cked for his month-long getaway and I spread out on his bed and thought about what was going to happen in two short weeks, I was full of lust, but I was also full of excitement.

I was done feeling sad that my marriage hadn’t worked out. I was ready to move on with Jesse.
I wasn’t sure where I’d come up with the idea that there needed to be some sort of waiting period between men, but I was over it. My marriage had been over for a long time, and I was ready to let go of the past, to be rid of the man who had held me back in so many ways, rid of the man who I knew had leaked that picture to the press that had nearly cost me both my Jesse and my career.

Two long weeks all by myself
in Jesse’s house and it would all be over.

Jesse put all of the clothes he was planning to take with him into his duffel bag, and then he lay down on the bed next to me. We just fit like two pieces in a puzzle; the moment he stretched out
on his back next to me, I turned into his side and he pulled me close. His arm laced underneath me and my head rested on his shoulder. I threw one arm across his waist. I could feel the muscles in that delightful washboard that he called a stomach under my arm. Good Lord, he was all kinds of sexy and I melted into another puddle of lust.

I was lying on Jesse Drake’s bed. With Jesse Drake. And he was holding me in his arms.

I was a little giddy at the thought.

“I’m going to miss you, V,” he said, leaning his head down to plant a kiss into my hair. I tightened my grip around his waist
as I felt a wave of emotion course through me.

“I’ll miss you, too, Jesse.”

“Two weeks?” he asked.

“Two weeks,” I confirmed, and he sighed. “What?” I asked.

“How am I supposed to concentrate on decompressing and enjoying Mexico when I know you’re here going through all of this shit with the asshole with two first names?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay. I’ll be worried about you driving all over another country aimlessly.”

“It’s not aimless. I do have a plan,” he mumbled.

“I know,” I said, leaning up on my elbow and
looking him in the eyes. I leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his neck, taking in his scent that I had memorized so long ago. “I was just teasing you.”

He shifted his arm and somehow m
anaged to pull me on top of him so I was straddling him. I giggled at his move and shook my head, pursing my lips and narrowing my eyes at him.

“What?” he asked innocently
, holding his hands up in mock confusion as his dark eyes stared up into mine.

I grabbed his hands and laced my fingers through his. He pushed his hips up and once again I felt h
is rock hard erection pulsing beneath me. I was hit with a need for him stronger than ever.

“Promise me something,” he said
softly, his eyes darkening with lust as we drank each other in.

“Anything,” I whispered, knowing it didn’t matter what he asked me because
of course I would do it for him.

“When we get back home at the end of June, we’ll move into this room.”

The flutters that were always in my belly were suddenly out of control as I realized the implications of his request. Not only did it mean that he wanted me to continue living with him, but it also meant that he wanted to share his bed with me. This trip was going to mark a huge transition in our relationship, and he wanted to start living together like a couple in love when we returned home. We would no longer be two people sharing a bed in the guest room for comfort. We’d be two people sharing a bed in the master bedroom because we were in a serious and committed relationship.

And for someone who was afraid to get close to people, I kne
w what an enormous step it was for him to ask me that.

“I would love that,” I said. “And I love you.”

It was the moment when I said it that I realized he hadn’t said it to me since before “The Scandal,” that one night when we lay in bed together when we knew that we would need to separate the next day. It was the one and only time he had ever said the words to me, and I realized that I hadn’t said it to him, either, since that night.

He just stared up at me for a moment, and then he sat up with me still on top of him and pulled my head to his, our lips meeting for another one of those ridiculously hot kisses.

He pulled back and leaned his forehead to mine. “I love you, too, V,” he whispered, and then he pressed his lips to mine twice in that sexy way he had, somehow making me even hotter for him than I already was.

The next morning, I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and watched as Jesse moved gracefully around the kitchen.
As refreshed as I felt after a good night’s sleep in Jesse’s arms, I was miserable. I didn’t want him to go, but I wasn’t going to stand in the way of the vacation he’d planned months earlier, so I masked my misery with a smile while he poured himself a bowl of cereal.

“Want some?” he asked
, shaking the cereal box in my direction.

I shook my head. I wasn’t hungry yet; I was still half asleep, and I was probably going to cr
awl back into bed after he left to get my sleep count up to ten or twelve hours, but I didn’t want to miss out on the few precious minutes I had with Jesse before he left.

He sat at the table next to me instead of across from me.

“So what are your plans for the next two weeks?” he asked, shoving a spoonful of Cheerios into his mouth as his knee came to a rest against mine.

I shrugged. “A lot of sleeping since I’ve been sleep deprived for
the past two months. Moving the rest of my shit out of the house I share with Richard. That kind of stuff.”

“You should probably d
o a lot of stretching,” he said with a smile.

“Why’s that?”

“Let’s just say that I’ve got some plans for you, and the more stretching you do now, the less sore you’ll be when I’m done with you.”

My jaw dropped
as the ever-present flutters morphed into full-on quivers, and he grinned wickedly.