“I’m sorry,” I finally said.
“For what?” Jasper pushed my hair back from my face as I looked up at him.
“For crying like this.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s not. You moved in and I want to be with you, but I came in here and started crying about Allen and kids and...”
“Hey.” He stopped my words with a gentle kiss. “It’s okay. Sometimes things catch me off-guard too. I’ll see or do something and think about how I wish I could tell Allen.” His smile was sad. “I sometimes think about how much I’d love to tell him about how amazing you are and all of the things we do together. About how excited I am to be living with you.”
“I don’t regret asking you to move in,” I said, needing him to know that wasn’t the problem. “Or us being together, but I can’t help feeling guilty. There was so much Allen and I had planned to do together. I sometimes feel like I should spend the rest of my life mourning every step we didn’t get to take together.”
Jasper kissed my forehead and his arms tightened around me. “You and I both know that Allen wouldn’t have wanted that. He would want you to be happy. To keep living. To do things.” He cupped the side of my face, his thumb running along my bottom lip. “He’d want you to fall in love again. To have a family.”
My stomach tightened.
“I love you, Shae.”
My head snapped up to look at him.
“You don’t have to say it back. It’s okay.” His eyes were clear, open. “I just need you to know that I love you and, one day, I want us to look at the future together, to see the family we can have.” He traced his fingers along my cheekbone and down my jaw. “I’m not saying this because I expect anything from you. I’m okay with being in the here and now with you. Just know that, when you’re ready, there is a future for you that isn’t dark and bleak. A future with me.”
I swallowed hard. I wished I could say it back to him. Tell him that I loved him. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I cared about him as more than a friend, but I couldn’t say the word. I could, however, show him how much he meant to me.
I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. Fierce, hot and wet, I put everything I was feeling into the way my lips moved with his, how my tongue explored his mouth, how my teeth scraped and nipped his lips. Everything I couldn’t say, I poured into my body.
I felt his surprise for a moment and then he was kissing me back, his hand sliding up my side to cup my breast through my shirt. I arched my back, needing him to touch me more. His hand tightened as he flipped us over, his body pressing mine to the floor. My legs wrapped around his waist and I ground against him.
“Shit,” Jasper growled. His eyes were squeezed shut and I could feel the tension radiating off of him.
I started to chuckle, but the sound was lost in a gasp as Jasper pulled open my shirt, sending buttons flying everywhere. I barely had time to care about the shirt because his mouth was on me, sucking and licking and biting every inch of my skin until I was writhing beneath him.
I dug my fingers into his hair, moaning as he worked one hand between us, undoing the button on my jeans with an ease that surprised me.
“Jas,” I gasped his name as he shoved his hand further into my jeans, shoving aside my panties even as I spread my legs to let him touch me right where I needed him. I swore as he slid his finger inside me.
“Come for me, baby.” He pressed the heel of his hand against my clit and a shudder ran through me. “I want you to come on my hand.” He ran his teeth over my ribs as his hand continued to work between my legs.
“I want you inside me.” I grabbed the shoulders of his shirt.
“Later.” He licked a path from my bellybutton, up between my breasts. “Come first.” He pulled down the front of my bra, making an appreciative sound as my breasts came free.
I squirmed, moaning as his tongue began to circle my nipple. How did he know how to do such wonderful things with his mouth? Who had taught him?
I pushed the thought aside. I didn’t want to know.
I’d seen his girlfriends, at least the ones who’d warranted introductions. I didn’t know how many other women there had been. If I had anything to say about it, there wouldn’t be any more.
He twisted his fingers, driving thoughts of Jasper’s previous women from my mind. Pleasure coursed through me. I pushed against his hand, desperate for release. Desperate for the oblivion that came with it, however brief.
My body tensed, arched, and as his hand rubbed against me, I came. I shook beneath him and his lips moved against my skin. Words I could feel but not hear, but feeling them was enough.
While I was limp, pliant, Jasper pulled off my clothes, stopping every few seconds to kiss a new spot. I watched him with hooded eyes as he caressed and worshipped my body. I’d never seen anyone look at me the way he did.
He loved me.
I’d already known it, I realized. Before he’d said it. I’d seen it on his face, in his eyes. I’d felt it in his touch, when he’d held me, soothed me, cared for me. No matter how impulsive or rough the sex had been between us, for him, he’d always been making love.
He shifted so that he was on his knees and pulled his shirt over his head. My stomach clenched as he started on his pants. He was so beautiful, his body hard and muscled. He was so different than Allen had been, and it surprised me how I could feel so strongly about two men who were polar opposites.
“You’re doing it again.” Jasper smiled down at me.
“Doing what?”
“Every once in a while, you seem to go somewhere else.” He stretched out next to me. He ran his fingers over my stomach and then down to just above the thin layer of curls between my legs. “I saw it before, when my fingers were inside you. For a few seconds, you weren’t here.” He hesitated, his eyes following the movements of his hands. “Were you thinking about Allen?” His gaze flicked up, then away. “It’s okay if you were. I mean, I’d understand. You were with him for eight years...”
“I wasn’t thinking about Allen.” I put my hand over his, bringing it up to my mouth.
Jasper’s breath caught as I took his fingers into my mouth. I ran my tongue around and over his skin, tasting myself as I cleaned his fingers. When I looked up, his gaze was heated, but I could still see the concern on his face. This time, however, I knew the concern was only partially for me. He wanted to make sure I was okay, but I could also see the insecurity there. He’d been so understanding of all the times I’d mourned Allen, never once making me feel like I should focus on him. He deserved to know the truth, even if it embarrassed me.
“I wasn’t thinking about Allen,” I said again as I put his hand on my breast.
“Then what?” he asked, rubbing his thumb across my nipple. Little ripples of electricity coursed across my skin. “Or who?”
“You,” I said. I traced his lips with my finger as heat rose to my cheeks. “I was actually wondering who taught you all that.”
“All that?” He made a face like he didn’t understand.
“Dammit. You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” I shook my head. “What you do,” I said. “With your fingers. With your mouth. I was wondering who taught you how to do that.”
He tilted his head as he caught my hand, pressed his lips against my palm. “You’re telling me that you were thinking about the women in my past?”
When I nodded, he chuckled, that same low sound that always made things deep in my stomach flip and twist.
“Glad I could amuse you,” I said wryly.
He leaned over me, giving me a slow and thorough kiss, rekindling the flame that had faded to a smolder as we’d talked. His fingers teased and played with my nipple as his tongue twisted inside my mouth, not stopping until I was panting.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked, kissing my cheek and then my jaw.
“Know?” I could barely remember what we were talking ab
out.
“About the women I’ve slept with before.” The hand on my breast slid down my stomach. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but I’d rather be inside you, making you come again.”
I wrapped my arm around his neck and pulled him on top of me. “I like that better.”
His mouth covered mine as I wrapped my legs around his waist. I moaned as he slid inside me with one long, slow movement. He rested his forehead on mine as he stilled for a moment, letting both of our bodies adjust to being together. I rocked against him, reveling in the feel of him inside me, filling me.
He didn’t say anything as he began to move, his thrusts deep and unhurried. The carpet was rough against my back, my ass, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was the hot pleasure that every stroke sent through me, the desire in his eyes as he looked at me.
“Stay with me,” he whispered. “Stay with me this time.”
I nodded. “I’m staying.”
“Just us,” he said. “No one else. Please.” There was a note of longing in the last word.
I reached up and put my hand on his face. “I’m here, Jas. It’s just me and you.”
His eyes darkened and my heart twisted. How many times had we been together and he’d worried that I’d been thinking of Allen? Had he wondered, every time my eyes closed, that I was thinking of someone else?
“I can’t say I love you,” I said.
“I know. It’s—”
“But I care about you, Jasper.” I kissed his chin. “I want you. And you’re the only one I’m thinking about.”
“That’s more than enough.” He surged forward and I gasped as he hit a spot deep inside me.
Our bodies moved together, with each other, against each other. I lost all sense of time. It was as if we’d been like this forever, our bodies joined as intimately as two people could be joined. We were in our own world and nothing else mattered. Only him and me and what we were to each other.
When I came, it wasn’t the explosive climax I’d experienced before, but something quieter, and yet somehow more intense. And when he followed just moments later, the sensation of him emptying into me sent another wave of pleasure through me. I held him to me, running my fingers through his hair and telling him how grateful I was that he was there.
This wasn’t the life I’d pictured for myself, but I was starting to realize that it might be possible that something just as good might still exist for me. Something that I never would have imagined before. With someone I’d never expected.
Chapter 13
I didn’t look for Allen’s things the rest of that night. After Jasper and I finally managed to get up, we showered and ate, then spent the rest of the night just holding each other on the couch. The next morning, he told me to wait until he came home and we’d start looking for something of Allen’s together. I didn’t think there was much point of searching anymore, but I agreed. The court date wasn’t until the beginning of December so we had more than a month before a judge would hear it, but we needed to find DNA for a paternity test or things were going to get complicated.
By the middle of the week, I was forced to admit that complicated was going to be my new life.
There was nothing. Nothing of Allen’s left in the house aside from a couple books and other things we’d shared. While getting a fingerprint from a lot of those things would’ve been possible, none of them had what I needed.
Finally, at dinner Thursday night, I said what I’d been thinking all day.
“I have to go talk to the Lockwoods.”
Jasper swore under his breath and set down the beer he’d been drinking. “There has to be another option.”
I sighed and took another drink of my own beer. I rarely indulged during the week, but this hadn’t exactly been a normal week.
“I can’t think of anything. Can you?”
Jasper scowled. “No. Dammit.”
“I already talked to Sanders and booked a flight to Texas. I leave first thing in the morning. I figure if I just show up, they’ll be more likely to at least listen.”
Jasper raised an eyebrow. “You really think they’re going to just give you something of their precious baby boy’s because you flew all the way down there to see them.”
I winced and he immediately looked guilty.
“I’m sorry. The Lockwoods just get to me.”
“Me too.” I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine, squeezing to let him know I wasn’t angry. “But if I had another option...”
“I’m going with you.”
The expression on his face said he was steeling himself for an argument. When I smiled, it shifted to confusion.
“I was hoping you’d say that. I booked two tickets.” I let my relief show on my face. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come to the house with me, but I don’t want to be down there alone.”
I could tell he wanted to argue about me going to the house by myself, but he didn’t. We had a plane ride for him to do that, and there, I’d be a captive audience. Sure enough, the moment we settled in our seats, he started in, explaining all of the reasons why he should come with me. Halfway into the trip, I dragged him back into the bathroom and ‘convinced’ him to let me do things my way. The flight attendant on our way back gave us a knowing look as we walked the narrow aisle back to our seats, a slightly smug smile on Jasper’s face.
We landed in Texas just after noon and I took a rental car straight to the Lockwood house. The longer I waited, the more anxious I’d become. Our flight home wasn’t until Sunday because I didn’t believe the Lockwoods would give me what I needed. I figured I’d need most of the weekend to work on them. Jasper was going to the hotel to check in and I planned to meet him there when I was done.
The drive was forty of the longest minutes of my life. I almost wished I’d let Jasper come with me. It would’ve been nice to have someone to hold my hand while I thought about what to say, how to approach them. How do you tell the family of your late husband that he might’ve fathered a child with an ex-girlfriend almost a decade ago? Especially when said family despised you and had already made it clear that they’d be looking for any possible children just to contest their dead son’s will.
I felt like my life was a daytime soap. All that was missing was some amnesia and a dead twin.
I pulled up the driveway and sat there for a minute, remembering the last time I’d been here. I hadn’t come very often, but there had been a couple of times where I’d decided to go rather than wait at home alone. The last time had been about six months before Allen’s death. His father had gone into the hospital for tests and the whole family had gone with him. Nothing had come from the tests, but I’d spent hours listening to Allen’s mother and siblings sniping about me.
The house was absolutely gorgeous, just like the vineyard, but unlike my home, this one had no warmth. I’d never felt welcome here and Allen being gone just made it worse.
I was hoping that the timing would mean I’d only need to talk to May and Gregory. While Allen’s older brother and his family lived in the family home, Marcus would most likely be out working with Alice’s husband and the Lockwood business partner. The kids would be in school and Celeste would probably be out doing one of her charity things. She wasn’t too bad to deal with though, so if she was home, it wouldn’t make too much of a difference.
I knocked on the door and, a minute later, the door was opened by an older gentleman in a full suit despite the fact that it was in the eighties. November in Texas was much warmer than it had been back home.
“I need to speak with May or Gregory.” I gave him the most pleasant smile I could muster. “I’m Shae.”
Based on the way the man’s mouth tightened, I didn’t need to explain any further who I was. He nodded briefly and stepped aside, indicating that I should come inside. He showed me to the front sitting room and then left to go get May. The fact that he’d put me in there spoke volumes about how the Lockwoods viewed me. I wasn’t
family. I was a guest.
“Shae.” May’s voice was cold. “What are you doing here?”
I gave her a small smile, just as icy as hers. “You may want to sit down for this.”
She scowled, but did as I suggested. Her posture was stiff and straight, lips pursed and knees primly crossed, every inch of her telling me that my presence wasn’t welcome.
“Do you remember a young woman named Aime Vargas?” I began. “She dated Allen before I met him.”
“Yes, I remember.” May gave me a smug look. “I liked her.”
I ignored the insult.
“She came to my house earlier this week.” I tried not to let May see me twisting my fingers together. “And she had a little girl with her. Eight-and-a-half years-old, named Jenny. Aime’s claiming that Allen is Jenny’s father.”
Predictably, May’s lips curved up into a smile. “That must’ve been quite a shock, to know that Allen had loved someone enough to have a child with her.”
A pang went through me, but I pushed it aside. “She’s filing a lawsuit and wants a portion of Allen’s estate.” I figured the money part of it might get her attention.
Apparently, I was wrong. She cared more about hating me than she did about the money.
“She should have it. As Allen’s daughter, she’s entitled to far more than you are.” She sneered at me. “Thank you so much for bringing her to our attention. We’ll make sure we provide Jenny with the best lawyers available so she can get everything she deserves.”
I could feel my temper starting to rise and again wished that Jasper was here with me, if only to help keep me calm. I could manage it myself, but it wasn’t easy, especially when I was dealing with the Lockwoods.
“We don’t know for sure that Jenny is even Allen’s. That’s why I’m here.” I took a slow breath. “I need someone in the family to donate blood for a paternity test.”