Authors: Adrianne Byrd
Jett discovered that his wife was not only fast but she was incredibly strong. Yet, the fear of losing the best thing in his life kept him in the game. Somehow he had to get her to hear him out.
After another five minutes of wrestling, he managed to lock her hands above her head. By that time, they were exhausted. The anger in Sydney’s glare scared Jett like nothing had ever before.
She doesn’t love me anymore.
Instead of explaining, Jett kissed her again. He had to do something to erase the hate glimmering in her eyes. He had to get things back to how they were when they left the casino.
Back to when she said she loved him.
His kiss turned hard. He ignored her attempts to twist away. He even ignored the few times she managed to bite and draw blood.
She loved him-she said so.
Jett released her hands but then ripped open her shirt and broke the straps of her bra so that he could fill his greedy hands with her breasts. Sydney’s hands flailed at him, but he knew she loved things rough.
Hadn’t she said so?
He abandoned her lips and shoved a hard nipple into his mouth. He feasted like a starved man and took her writhing and trembling body as a sign she was just as turned on as he was.
He loved her. He had to make her see it; he had to make her
feel
it.
Jett tore at his own clothes and ripped them off in record time. He dodged a few more blows to press his lips back against hers. Their tears blended and he swallowed her gasp as he pushed inside of her.
“I hate you. I hate you,” she rasped against his lips while he moved inside of her.
“No. You love me,” he corrected as he deepened his thrust. “Say it,” he ordered. “Say you love me.”
Sydney thrashed her head, but her pounding fists flattened into gentle caresses against his back and shoulders.
“You love me,” he insisted. “You love me.”
“No.” Her hips no longer resisted his rhythm but eagerly met his thrust for thrust. “No.”
She was lying; he knew and decided to teach her a lesson. By some miracle, he stopped his wild thrusting and held back. However, the feel of her vaginal muscles pulsing around his shaft was enough to dangle him over the of pool insanity.
Sydney groaned and wrapped her legs around his hips-desperate for him to finish what he started.
“Say it,” he half ordered and half begged.
Tears splashed down her eyes as she shook her head but she continued to thrust her hips in contradiction. Her head and her body raged a war and Jett, stiff and ready to explode, was caught in the crossfire.
“Say it,” he commanded in a voice he didn’t recognize. “Say it.” No longer able to control his body, his hips moved again. He watched in glorious ecstasy as Sydney’s eyes rolled to the heavens.
Sydney wanted to say the words-needed to; but at the feel of her husband hammering away robbed her of the ability to talk. All she could do was feel and what she was feeling scared the hell out of her.
Pleasure rippled across her body, then the sensation intensified until it became large tidal waves crashing all around her. She gasped and dug her nails into the tender flesh of Jett’s back.
“Say it. Say it,” Jett urged.
The tide had made it to her eyes and caused tears to stream down her face. An explosion erupted in her core and her body shook with violent tremors that caused her to hold onto Jett for dear life. Her mouth moved and formed the words ‘I love you’, but her voice was still M.I.A. so Jett never heard what he needed to hear.
Shortly after her mind-bending orgasm, Jett trembled and his breathing became erratic. Sydney knew his explosion was at hand. She discovered some reserved energy and kept meeting his hips to drive him over the edge. Through the mesh of her lowered lashes she watched his face contort and his jaw tense and relax.
She wanted to believe she was giving him something that no other woman could. She needed to believe their time together had not been a lie.
But he’d admitted to participating in that damn pool--a pool to get her into bed. Had the stakes been double or nothing to get her to walk down the aisle? Hell, it hadn’t been like a
real
wedding. An Elvis impersonator had performed the ceremony for Pete’s sake.
Now that she had regained her ability to think...she wished she hadn’t. Sydney Garrett was not used to feeling out of control, yet, ever since Jett Colton entered her life, it was a constant state of being.
Jett delivered a final thrust with a loud growl and trembled inside of her. He held her as if he was afraid to let go, but as his weight grew increasingly heavy, she finally pushed for him to get off.
Reluctantly, he rolled onto his side and attempted to pull her close, but she moved out of his reach. Sydney sat up and glanced around, suddenly ashamed of how they’d behaved liked wild animals.
“Syd-”
“This isn’t a problem that you can just screw away,” she said.
He sighed and sat up as well. “I know that.”
“This isn’t going to work, you know.” She refused to meet his gaze. “We don’t know each other.”
“You’re wrong about that.” He reached over and glided a finger down the valley of her breasts. “I think we know each other very well.”
She coiled away from him as if disgusted by his touch. “Sex isn’t a marriage. And I can’t stay married to someone I don’t even like.” She glanced up in time to catch him flinch. Had she successfully hurt him as much as he did her?
She hoped so.
Sydney forced herself off the floor and walked nude over to the door. “I want you to leave. I’ll start the annulment or divorce proceedings after the graduation ceremony.”
“Syd-”
“End of discussion,” she snapped and lifted her chin. She was back in control.
Jett locked gazes with her and tried to read her. After a long stalemate, he snatched on most of his clothes and marched toward the door with his shoes in his hands.
Sydney opened it for him and when he’d cleared the threshold, she slammed it close.
Chapter 24
Once she slammed the door behind Jett, Sydney crumpled to the floor with her heart shattered into a million pieces.
Soldiers don’t cry.
Her head repeated her personal decreed, but soon her wrenching sobs drowned out its stringent order. At this moment, she wasn’t a soldier. She was a woman.
And a wife.
“I hate him. I hate him,” she croaked, mopping her face. Yet, as she said the words, she knew it wasn’t true. But maybe if she said it long enough it would become true.
Maybe.
Twenty minutes later, she gave up and cursed herself for being so damn weak and gullible. How long had she pride herself for not being another fairy tale chasing, husband obsessing single woman? Sure, she had her share of heartbreaks in the past, but it was never anything that could break her.
Nothing like this.
Did James Colton truly love her?
As if on cue, Sydney’s body throbbed and tingled with the all too recent memory of how he’d just made love to her. Didn’t she taste his desperation? How many times did he tell her that he loved her?
Why would he say that now after she knew about the pool? The gig was up. He could’ve just walked away.
Then again, maybe the desperation was her own? She wanted Jett and she went after him. So maybe she got exactly what she deserved.
That thought was followed by another wave of tears. Pain radiated from where her heart used to be. Sometime later, she managed to peel herself off the floor and carried her solo pity party to the shower. There she hoped to wash away her husband’s scent and touch from her body. However, it was an impossible task. Somehow, someway Jett Colton branded her. And as Sydney curled into the bed for the night, she wished fervidly she’d done the same to him.
There would be no annulment—no divorce.
Sydney Garrett still wanted and loved her husband. Somehow, someway, they would work things out.
At least she hoped so.
Jett cursed a blue streak all the way back to his dormitory. He cursed Weasel, nosey Niecy, and all the men in his squadron for coming up with such a childish pool in the first place.
Then at last, he cursed himself.
After so many years, he’d found love and somehow screwed it up. His thoughts roamed to his impossible father, his elusive brother, and his mysterious mother. None of them were able to give what he desperately needed.
It took a lifetime to create and become the cocky, hotshot fighter pilot with the love ‘em and leave ‘em attitude. Walking around with your heart on your sleeve was like walking around with a target painted on your forehead.
Family taught him to keep people at arm’s length and the one time he ignored his own rule, he was back to square one.
“Damn!” He entered his apartment and threw his keys and shoes across the room. Neither action abated his anger or frustration so he looked around and found more things to throw. After a few minutes of this behavior, the walls and door pounded around him from his neighbors.
“Yo! Keep it down in there,” a chorus of men demanded. “People are trying to get some sleep!”
“Go to hell,” Jett roared unconcerned about pissing people off. In fact, a good fistfight was probably what he needed. He could bare pain anywhere on his body...except in his heart.
Heartbreak left damage to the soul. Being honest with himself, he didn’t know how he would recover from this. If he ever could.
Giving up his tyrant, Jett collapsed on the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands. For the first time in a long while, he felt like crying, but he fought the tears as vigorously as an enemy combatant. It was a fight he wasn’t confident he’d win.
At long last when he calmed his pounding heart, his thoughts obsessed how he could fix this situation. However, every plan he came up with screeched to a halt when he remembered the pain and hurt in his wife’s eyes.
Eyes-that could never forgive.
He stood from the bed and headed toward the shower like a man’s last walk toward lethal injection. Even a long shower failed to make him feel any cleaner. Returning to bed, Jett slipped beneath the covers with only one thought looping in his head.
Tomorrow Sydney will dissolve the marriage.
Sleep eluded him.
Shutting off the alarm clock before it had the chance to go off, Jett was not excited to face a new day—especially one that was the beginning to an end. “I have to talk to her again,” he mumbled under his breath. Yet, he was clueless of what to say.
He had two hours before the graduation ceremony. Should he talk to her before or after? Jett warred with that decision for thirty minutes and then cursed himself for wasting time.
He pulled out his uniform blues and dressed. When he was finished he still didn’t have a prepared speech. Jett could only think of one request. “Can you ever forgive me?” he asked his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He held his own gaze and wavered with his own answer.
After a long while, he lowered his eyes and leaned his weight against the counter. What did it mean if he couldn’t even forgive himself?
Jett’s shoulders deflated as he came to a decision. “To hell with it.” He clenched his jaw and hardened his resolve. Even as he did so, the pain in his heart intensified.
He lifted his chin, met his gaze, and took a deep breath. He would
not
beg for love again.
A knock hammered at the front door.
It’s her.
Hope surged through his veins like a jolt of adrenaline through the heart. In four quick, long strides he made it from the bathroom to the front door. Jett didn’t know what he was doing or that he was holding his breath until he snatched open the door. Surprise and disappointment hit him like a ton of bricks.
“Xavier?”
Jett’s tall and handsome brother, dressed in a pristine naval uniform nodded and waited.
Jett tensed. Something had to be wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. He didn’t tell his brother about his training at Nellis. He couldn’t have—he didn’t know where the hell he was so the chances of his brother showing up for graduation were odds a mathematician would have trouble calculating.
He did, however, mail checks to his father from Nellis. Had Xavier finally return home and reclaim his rightful place as the golden child?
Xavier drew a deep breath and glanced around. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
Jett kept his gaze leveled as he stepped back and allowed his brother entry. The moment he did so the temperature in the room spiked.
“Sorry to drop in on you like this,” Xavier began in a thick voice. “I’m sure my visit is sort of a shock.”
Jett closed the door and turned toward the spitting image of his father. “You could say that.”
The brothers stared at one another in an awkward checkmate for what seemed like an eternity.
“It’s good to see you again, Little Bro.” Xavier flashed his first smile but it soon cracked under pressure.
“What are you doing here?” Jett asked, wanting him to get to the point. This sort of surprise made him nervous. “How did you find me?”
“The checks to the old man,” Xavier replied, sliding his large hands into his pockets. “There were like four of them stuffed in his mailbox.”
Jett flinched at the painful squeeze to his already bruised heart while dread seeped into his bones. “He didn’t cash them?”
Xavier shook his head and then dropped his gaze to stare at his feet. “I finally go home...only it’s too late.”
Jett reached for a chair, trying to prepare himself for what he knew was coming, but Xavier said the words before he got chance to sit down.