Keeping Jahleel (Loving All Wrong #1.5) (20 page)

He forgot how determined she could be.

Her blonde hair glowed in rippled curls, exactly how he remembered it being the first time he saw her. The golden color made her eyes appear wider and brighter, the gray more striking. She was so…

Light
. It was the only word he could find best to describe her.

She was light.

There was nothing he could miss about her because she was so fucking bright.

He was aware of her eyebrow piercing. The nude lipstick. The dust of freckles over her nose. The faint dimple on her chin. The tightness of the black Metallica T-shirt she wore. The shortness of her ragged jeans shorts. The longness of her smooth, unblemished legs. The newness of her…hmm…Timberlands. The apology in her big gray eyes as they gazed unblinkingly up at him.

He saw everything. Every detail. Even though he was pretending not to as he opened his office door.

Her voice, soft, but rich, “Don’t run from me.”

His voice, detached, but oh so fucking attached, “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He flung his door open and went in.

Tossing his keys on the desk with a racing heart, he walked over to his mini fridge to grab a bottle of water. He wished he had some stronger liquid. But he didn’t keep alcohol there. Maybe he should rethink that “no alcohol” rule and store a bottle of Jack there. Precisely for moments like these.

“Can I come in?” Her thick, sexy accent slid over him like silk against lace, and that was all it took for him to…stir.

Unbeknownst to her, her accent was a major turn on for him.

“Will you leave if I say no?”

“No.”

“Why fuckin’ ask, then?” He waved his free hand at the chair in front of his desk. “Go on. Sit. Kick your feet up. Make yourself comfortable. You’ve been pissin’ all over me for the past three months like you own me. So why be fuckin’ polite now?”

With a sigh, she walked into the room and closed the door behind her. “JK, I didn’t come here to argue, okay? I think we’ve done enough of that already.”

“Would’ve preferred it, Sassy, if you hadn’t come here
at all
.”

“I want us to do a threesome.”

What?
“What?”

“Crap. That didn’t come out right,” she said, laughing a little. “I mean, not a threesome, threesome. But…like I get to watch…while you…you…you know…”

What the fuck was she proposing? “No, I
don’t
know, Sassy. Spit out whatever’s in your mouth—Tex’s cock, maybe?—’cause I can’t hear you very well.”

Shoulders squaring, she pinned him a hateful glare, took in a huff of breath, then almost immediately sighed in defeat, her shoulders slumping forward. “I guess I deserved that, yeah?”

She looked down at the floor, cleared her throat, and then looked back at him with renewed purpose. “For the past three months, I’ve struggled not to contact you in any way, nor try to find excuses or justification for what I did. Even though I was drugged, I take all the blame. First of all, I disrespected you by going into Tex’s booth to party with him.

“We were
both
supposed to make an appearance at that club, as a couple, so out of respect for you, I should have never even thought about conversing with my ex at that event. I knew he loved me. I knew he was spurned and bitter from what I did to him, and I still, against all warnings, went ahead and trusted him. So, I think I pretty much deserve what I got. I took my punishment from him and the public like a big girl. I’ve dealt with it.”

Inhaling deeply, she took a step deeper into the room. “But there’s one thing I can’t deal with, and that’s losing you. The only reason I stayed away for so long, was to give you time to heal. I knew if I kept pushing, I would push too hard to a point of no return, and I’d lose you altogether. I hope this is still not too soon, because I want you back, JK, and I can’t stay away from you any longer. The bit of strength I’d build up to sustain the blow from the media is slowly draining, leaving me wizened. I
need
you.”

Blowing out a long, steady breath, she shook her hands, then wiped them down her jeans shorts before moving to sit in the chair.

This was Nervous Sassy.

Her feet bounced up and down. “I tried to think up a million ways of how to salvage this. Everything seems ‘not enough.’ But this…” Her eyes met his. “I…there’s this girl. She’s your type, I’m sure. She’s clean and everything. I could show you her medical records if you like. Um, she’s agreed to let you…shag her…while I watch.” Eye contact broken. “Maybe, it will make you feel better if the roles are reversed and I have to sit and watch you…enjoy someone who isn’t me?”

Jahleel leaned back against the wall behind him and stared at her. Just stared.

This girl. She didn’t get it. She thought this was about sex. So she thought sex could solve this fuck of a mess she created.

Didn’t she know that whenever he had sex with her he didn’t come just because it was sex? He came, and came hard inside every time, because
he was in love with her
. He enjoyed it thoroughly, solely because it was
her
. Just knowing it was her, so intimately connected with him, sweating and panting and moving together. Just knowing she was his forever.

That was what made sex with Saskia not sex, but love.

“You don’t get it, do you?”

Her expression grew somber. “JK, please, tell me what I need to do to make things right. Anything you say I’ll do it.
Please
.”

“That’s the fuckin’ point!” he snapped at her. “There’s nothing you can do to fuckin’ ‘fix’ this, Sassy. It’s over!
You
ended us. I’ll never be able to trust you again and I’ll never be able to make love to you and feel like you’re mine.”

Fingers twisting, she stared down at them. “This might work, JK. Could you at least think about it?”

“Could you at least, ah,
leave
?”

Nodding, she slowly stood up. “I love you, JK. So much. I’ll never—”

Saskia stopped speaking when Jahleel started searching all around. Pulling out the desk drawers and closing them. Looking under the desk. Emptying his sweats pockets, pulling them inside out.

“Wha-what are you doing?” she asked with a tinge of hope to her voice.

“Looking for a fuck to give.”

Without another word, she turned and left.

Gone
.

With that one word echoing in his head, his knees weakened and he eased down into his chair. Leaning forward, he banged his head on the desk until it hurt.

He could be an asshole as much as he wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that he was an asshole stuck in love.

“D
addy, can we watch the bitten video again?”

Retreating from the brink of sleep, Jahleel lifted his arm from over his eyes and peeped down at Claire. She was drawing on his chest with a Sharpie marker: a stick figure woman with what looked like long curly hair, oddly shaped eyes with one bigger than the other, and two triangles sticking out of her mouth—he supposed them to be her version of fangs.

Awful drawing. Just awful.

Jahleel couldn’t help laughing as he propped up on his elbows a bit to peer down at his chest covered in her horrendous drawings. “What you drawing, baby?”

“Vampire lady,” she answered absently as she tipped her head to the side and began coloring in the triangular fangs, humming the Bitten song as she did.

Something the size of a fist clogged his throat. He swallowed. Hard.

No getting away from her, was there?

There he was, chilling with his daughter in her room to take his mind off life for a while, off how much of a wretched bitch it was. Claire’s room. His safe haven. The place he came to whenever he wanted to forget…everything. It was a quiet and innocent place to be. Just be.

Claire. The person he came to whenever he wanted to forget…everyone. And just
not
think.

Now she, his own daughter, had ruined that. By drawing
her
all over him. On his skin. That fucking stick hand right over his heart.

Her love, her light, was so fucking powerful, it had broken into his safe haven, through his daughter, using her to get her mark on him.

The woman was still pissing on him.

Still marking, tagging, staking, claiming, owning.

An annoyed sigh flowed through his nostrils as his forearms gave way and he flopped back onto the bed.

There was no escaping her. There was nowhere to hide. Love had screwed him.
She
had ruined him. He had a hollow space where his heart once resided. Because she still held his heart tightly in her grasp and refused to give it back. He was stuck.

Stuck in love.

A sweet, pure, virginal voice, “I can’t wait to grow up and get bitten like you, Daddy.”

Oh God, kill me now, won’t you?!

Jahleel covered his eyes with his arm again and grunted.

Oblivious to his agony, Claire went on as she drew. “Does it hurt to get bitten, Daddy?”

He didn’t answer. And if she wasn’t his own flesh and blood, he’d tell her to fuck right off and leave.

“Daddy, are you asleep?”

The mattress moved as she crawled her way up to him then struggled to move his arm from over his eyes. When she found he was wide awake, she grinned at him, leaned forward, and began drawing who the fuck knows what on his chin as she asked again, “Does it, Daddy? Does it hurt to get bitten?”

She wasn’t giving up. She was obsessed with this “bitten” shit. He’d watched the Bitten music video with her too many times, and now she was hooked on it. Plus the song wasn’t getting any less popular. In fact, it had shot right back to number one during the cheating/broken engagement fiasco.

Realizing he wasn’t going to be left alone without answering or fake sleeping, Jahleel reached a hand up and cupped the side of Claire’s face. “Yes, baby. It hurts. So bad. Sometimes I like being bitten. Other times I wish I wasn’t bitten. Because I don’t like the pain that comes with it. But to be bitten means you’ve been claimed. Marked.
Forever
marked. So even though it hurts sometimes, you gotta embrace the pain and hope that one day, being bitten will start to feel good again. Because when it’s good, it’s great, Claire. It’s
great
. You want it to end, never.”

Remembering that he was talking to a four-year-old, who’d merely asked him a simple yes-or-no question, he stopped his blabbing.

Claire just blinked at him. Of course, she didn’t understand.

Popping the cover back on her Sharpie marker, she threw it across the room like a rebel, then snuggled up next to him. “Can we watch the vampire lady video? When are we gonna see vampire lady again, Daddy? Mommy says never. But I miss vampire lady. She talks different. Can we have pizza for breakfast? Will you sleep in my room tonight…?”

As Claire fired off a string of discombobulated questions, Jahleel eased his cell out of his pocket and pulled up the YouTube app, tapped in Bitten by Saskia Day (Official Music Video), and hit play.

As soon as the video ended, Claire demanded he played it again. And again. Until she started drifting.

Marsha waltzed into the room with a cup of tea. Looking fresh from a shower, she was wrapped in a short silk robe. Marsha had the kind of body men pictured in their minds when jacking off. She was hot, she was sexy, she was fresh, and she was pretty as fuck.

He should have been fucking her to bruises and soreness in a million different ways. He was single, after all.

But as much as she paraded around the house in her usual silky, lacy, skimpy, come-fuck-me garments, his cock never even tried to peek between her thighs. And to believe there was once a time when he couldn’t so much as glimpse Marsha and not want to fuck the shit out of her, she was so hot.

Now? Nothing.

Stopping at the bedside, she smiled and shook her head at the markings all over him, then held out the cup to him. “Earl Grey.”

Jahleel mumbled out a thanks and told her to put it on the nightstand before bringing his attention back to the video playing on his phone.

Marsha fidgeted about the bedside, but Jahleel made it a point not to inquire what was wrong. Of course, she could hear the song and knew what he and Claire were watching, though Claire was nodding off to sleep by then, sucking on her thumb.