What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen) (55 page)

Jake looked into her eyes directly as he penetrated her completely.

She looked up at him and her breath came deep from within her chest, almost as though she couldn’t control her own body anymore. “Oh, Jake,” she whispered.

“Raven,” he whispered back to her. “You feel amazing.”

He closed his eyes and dipped his head, as if he was also being overwhelmed by the sensation their bodies had created in him.

Raven felt his manhood sliding almost all the way out and then pressing insistently down, penetrating her flesh once more. As he dug into her, she cried out with pleasure.

It was all so new to her, and yet it all felt completely right, like something she’d experienced in another life and was now reliving it in the present.

Her eyelids fluttered and her eyes rolled back in her head, like she’d just been injected with the world’s strongest drug.

And maybe she had.

Jake slowly pulled himself out and then pushed in again, his hips slowly rocking back and forth as he began making love to her with more and more enthusiasm.

Raven wrapped her legs around his naked buttocks, her feet hooking at the ankles as she pulled him against her. She grabbed his ribcage with her hands as Jake kissed her, while he continued to thrust in and out, in and out.

He opened his eyes again and when his eyes locked on hers, Raven felt another shock of recognition.

This is what it feels like when two souls join together.

Emotion threatened to overwhelm her, as the feelings began to build and build inside her trembling, naked body.

The rain was still coming down, but it seemed as though the two of them were in an invisible, protective cocoon. Or, more likely, the heat and passion they’d created were burning the rain off as quickly as it hit their bodies.

Jake’s hands were pressed into the ground as he held himself above her, splitting her tightness apart with his large, stiff cock. Everything between them was wet, and hot, and juicy. His flesh stroked her flesh, igniting sensations Raven hadn’t even thought possible.

“I’m going to come,” she warned him.

“I want you to,” he told her, and then his lips were on hers again, and she felt the trembling within her build to a complete frenzy.

It was almost frightening.

What was happening to her body? It was as if she’d been taken over completely by the catharsis of it all, taken over by ecstasy.

She clutched Jake’s back and cried out into his mouth. And then her hips were moving with his, urging him to go faster, pain and pleasure combining as she took him in and in again and again, heating up her most sacred space with a fire that burned her inside and out.

When she came, there was nothing left to give, but she felt Jake giving himself, and he shuddered uncontrollably as everything in him emptied into her and she squeezed tightly, wanting it all.

She wanted everything he had to give, and for the first time, he was willing to trust her with it all.

T
hey dragged
their dirty wet clothes back to the cabin and the two of them rinsed their bodies off in the outdoor shower powered temporarily by the generator, shivering and laughing together as the cold spray of water covered them.

When they were done showering, Jake led Raven inside to the bed and covered both of them with the heavy blankets that smelled like mothballs. It didn’t matter how the blankets smelled, though, Raven thought as she shivered under them with Jake’s warm body encircling hers.

Her held her tightly, his lips nuzzling against the back of her neck. “I’m glad you didn’t run away,” he said, as her shivering subsided.

“I’m glad, too,” she murmured.

There was a comfortable silence, in which Raven could do nothing but smile.

Time seemed to spin out and they lay together, completely at ease. Raven found herself drifting, dozing almost, until he spoke.

“Afghanistan was hell,” Jake said, breaking the silence with this strange announcement.

Raven was startled, but then grabbed his hand and kissed it. “I can’t really imagine it,” she said, just happy he was talking about it, trusting her finally.

“I still can’t really make sense of it,” Jake told her. “You’d think I’d be able to. After all, they all tell me how I thrived there, in the fighting, in the sand and the desert and the madness. They put me in charge of the men because I wasn’t afraid—I was somehow able to think under immense pressure when other guys just pissed themselves. In the center of battle, I was the eye of the storm. That’s what my commanding officers told me, anyway.”

“Wasn’t it true?” she asked, afraid to upset him but wanting to know more. She couldn’t believe he was finally telling her this.

“I don’t know what was true about that time in my life,” Jake sighed. “Maybe the guys who pissed themselves were the brave ones.”

She didn’t understand why he would say that. “There’s nothing wrong with being brave,” she told him. “You shouldn’t feel bad about that, Jake.”

“Maybe I just don’t feel the way normal people do,” he told her.

“I don’t believe that,” she replied.

“I know that ever since I came home from Afghanistan, I’ve been a different person. If I once was normal, the war fixed that,” he said, chuckling with some bitterness. “I saw my best friends killed. People I’d laughed with, cried with, read their parents’ and girlfriends’ letters, and seconds later they were just gone. Wiped off the face of the planet.”

She swallowed and clutched his hand tighter. “It’s normal to feel sad about that,” she said.

“And I spent the better part of my time there wiping the other guys off the face of the planet, the one’s we said were the bad guys.”

“Weren’t they bad guys?”

“Sure, some of them. It wasn’t my job to decide who lived and died. I followed orders like everyone else.”

Raven turned and looked at him. His eyes were dark and pained. “Nobody could ever be the same after something like that,” she said, stroking his chest.

“The only thing that kept me somewhat tied to the rest of the world was Peyton,” he said. “I thought of her like a candle in the darkness, and in the worst times, I thought of her smile, her eyes. I thought she would be there to love me when I came back, and it kept me going through all those black nights.”

Raven’s stomach twisted like he’d just buried a knife between her ribs, but she hid her feelings. Thinking about Jake’s strong emotions towards another woman, even a dead woman, was very painful. But Raven had been wanting Jake to tell her about himself for so long that she kept her own pain well disguised.

This is what you wanted, Raven. Don’t complain that it hurts now that he’s finally doing what you’ve been asking for.

“What was it like between you and Peyton when you came home?” Raven asked, picking up his hand and kissing his knuckles.

“It was different than I expected,” Jake said softly.

Raven hated that she felt a thrill of victory in his statement. This was a dead woman, and Raven still was competitive with her. It was disgusting in a way.

“Different how?” Raven asked.

“I might be remembering it this way because of what I found out about her later on.” Jake took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I was so fucked up from the war that she was probably spooked. I had all the classic symptoms—insomnia, bursts of anger from out of nowhere, paranoid, reacting to loud sounds as if I was under fire from the enemy, and of course I didn’t want to tell her about any of it.”

“Did she try to talk to you about what was wrong?”

“A little, but not much. Of course, I wasn’t very encouraging of her efforts, but I can’t say she tried all that hard either.”

Raven couldn’t help but once again feel glad at some level. She didn’t want Peyton to have tried, and she didn’t want Jake to have really loved this other woman. The truth was that Raven wanted him and his emotions all for herself.

“Were you two arguing a lot?”

“We were mostly just distant, like two people living on two different planets. Especially the first few months I was back. At the same time, we had a wedding to plan, and things were moving ahead on that front. By the time the worst of my symptoms had subsided and I was ready to try and work things out with Peyton, ready to try and fix whatever was wrong with us, I found out that she was sick.”

Raven looked up at him again. He made eye contact with her and gave her the ghost of a smile.

She reached out and stroked his cheek lightly. “You went through a lot in a very short time.”

“I still remember the day she came back from the doctors and told me that she had cancer. She’d known she was getting a biopsy result and didn’t even mention it to me.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t she tell you?”

His body tensed. “I don’t know. Maybe she was busy telling the guy she was fucking.”

Raven couldn’t even speak. Her entire body flooded with disgust at herself for thinking so selfishly about his relationship with Peyton. He’d been through horror after horror and disappointment and betrayal, and here she was only concerned with how it affected her.

“Jake, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

“I jumped ahead in the story,” he laughed. “I didn’t find that part out until the end, when Peyton was in the very last days of her life.”

“You took care of her until she passed, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “I did. Even after I found out that she’d been having an affair, I took care of her. By that point, I could see it was nearly over and she was very ill and fighting for every breath. I didn’t have the heart or the stomach to tell her what I knew. But I hated her for it, just the same.”

“How did you find out about the affair?”

Jake smiled, but once again the smile was bitter and pained. “My good friend and yours, Kurt.”

“Jake, are you certain he didn’t mislead you? Kurt’s a liar.”

Jake shook his head. “He didn’t lie about it. I checked out the story, got the phone records, read her texts and emails with the other guy.”

“How did Kurt even know about it?”

Jake sat up in bed and moved away from her. “He told me he overheard her on the phone having a suspicious conversation one day when he came to visit me. Who knows if that part was true? Kurt was probably snooping and looking through her cell or something.”

“Probably,” Raven agreed. She wanted to move closer to Jake again, but he seemed to not want to touch her anymore.

“It doesn’t matter how I found out, anyway. I found out and the rest is history. She’d been having a serious affair with a guy she met at the gym, a guy who taught her spin class. They’d started talking more and more while I was away fighting and things just…progressed,” Jake laughed loudly. “It’s pathetic, really, how completely cliché the whole thing was.”

“It’s not a cliché,” Raven said. “It’s awful and painful and it was wrong of her to do that to you.”

Jake’s back was to her now, as he spoke. “The rage inside of me was so intense those last couple of days before she died. Watching Peyton fight for her life, knowing she couldn’t survive it, knowing that I was losing her and losing any chance I had to understand what had happened between us. I wanted to scream at her, I wanted to kick her out of my home, tell her parents and friends to all go fuck themselves.”

Raven was shaking a little as she scooted up in bed and watched Jake’s back expanding and contracting as he breathed, his head bowed.

“You were stronger than her,” Raven said.

“In the end, it broke me completely,” he whispered. “She took her last breath and said she loved me, and I just stared at her. I just did nothing, let her die alone. I couldn’t say it back, and I swear—there was a look of horror in her eyes in those last moments. I think she saw in my face that I knew about the affair. She saw it and it made her last seconds on earth a terrible awful comprehension of the truth. I robbed her of that final peace, Raven. Maybe I even did it intentionally. I don’t know.”

Raven moved closer and put her hands on his shoulders, but he flinched, his muscles shuddering as if she had burned him. Raven pulled back, wishing she knew what to do, what he needed from her.

“You might be wrong,” Raven said. “You might have imagined that look in her eyes, and it could’ve been something else. She was dying, Jake.”

“I’ve seen plenty of people die up close, Raven.” He turned his head and glanced at her. “I know what I saw that day.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Maybe you do. But you’ve carried this around with you for years, this burden. You didn’t do anything wrong. You tried your best, you took care of her after she’d hurt you so deeply. That’s strength, Jake.”

“Maybe not. Maybe it’s just more of the same.” He stood up, still naked, turned and faced her. “You need to see me for who I really am, Raven. I’m not that guy everyone thinks I am. I’m not some amazing superhero. Inside, I’m dead. There’s nothing but darkness, and hate and rage and bitterness.”

“That’s not true.”

His eyes blazed. “You don’t know what’s inside me. Do you?”

“I see kindness in your eyes.”

His eyes widened and he looked away. “Don’t say that.”

She got out of bed and crossed to him, grabbing his hands. “Why do you have to hate yourself, Jake?”

When he looked at her again, his eyes were wet. “Because I’ve done so many things I wish I could take back. And I can’t take back any of it.”

“You aren’t your past, Jake,” she said, meaning it, as she looked directly into his brown eyes.

“Don’t give me that pop psychology crap,” he replied, but his voice shook with emotion.

“It’s not just pop psychology,” she said, feeling calmer somehow. “It’s the truth and you know it.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You might have done some horrible things, and you might’ve experienced some horrible things, but right now you have a chance to be different. Every moment is a chance to be brand new.”

The wetness in Jake’s eyes formed tear drops that suddenly spilled down his cheeks. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, “you know that?”