“Always you,” he groaned against me. “Perfection.”

He moved in and out of me for so long, prolonging his own peak over and over again until he couldn’t any longer. I delighted in his sounds, in his warmth, in the feel of him with me again. Finally, he stilled and tensed, biting softly at my shoulder as he grunted through his release. I felt his riotous heartbeats against my back and they lulled me into a half-conscious slumber. My energy levels were at a critical all-time low.

He moved off of me and I made a sound that resembled a tortured pup. I needed him. He lay at my side and trailed his hand up and down my back. I opened an eye and watched him. I could see his profile as he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling in deep contemplation.

“Are you okay?” I managed out.

He turned his head to me and smiled wistfully, dimples and all. “Yeah,” he softly replied. “I’m more than okay, Tiny.” I bloomed at his use of my nickname that only he has ever used.

“Did you mean what you said?” I bit my bottom lip and watched him in anticipation. People say shit when they have sex. Sometimes they don’t mean it after.

“What did I say?”

My cheeks heated. No way would I repeat it! If he didn’t even know what I was referring to then it was probably said in the heat of the moment. Damn.

His blue eyes, even radiant in the dark, eyed me mischievously. Then he smiled even wider. Bastard knew exactly what I was talking about…

He edged closer to me, turning onto his side. “You mean, do I want to marry you?” He rubbed his nose against my cheek. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

I sputtered out an unladylike grunt.

“Yeah,” he said, tracing circles along my spine. “I’m marrying you. No more of this crap between us. We need some stability after this. You won’t be able to run off when you have my name attached to you, and maybe everybody else will fuck off when you do. Til death do us part, right?”

I managed a nod. My throat felt tight. I would marry him right then and there. I even went all caveman-like thinking how amazing it would feel to be possessed by him. The feminist in me wanted to drown me in acid for such a thought.

“Almost six years apart from you and the second I’m with you it’s like I’ve never been away.” He finger combed my hair, splaying it out down my back. He watched me with this look of tenderness and something else entirely. He wasn’t like the others. I couldn’t read every part of him. Jaxon was a perpetually fascinating man; no matter how hard I might try to unfold every layer that is him, he would forever be unconquerable.

“Why do you love me?” I asked him, bewildered by my train of thought. “After everything I’ve done... After all I’ve put you through…”

“Because you’re my ultimate.”

“That’s not good enough.”

He chuckled. “What, do you want me to write you a love sonnet to express why I love you?”

“Go for it. I dare you.”

He cleared his throat and, with a deeper more baritone voice, spoke, “Her cunt-eth gleamed in the moonlight, her juices flowed therein, and I said unto her, ‘I would love… to eat you out.’”

I smacked him hard. “That’s not a love sonnet! Gross. You’re sick.”

His body shook in laughter. I bet he thought he was the funniest thing ever, and on that note, who the hell laughed at their own joke?

“Talking about my vagina is not a thing of love.”

“But I love you because it looks so good.”

I smacked him again. “You’re evil.”

“I’m a man with needs, you’re a woman with a tight little honey cave–”

“Mature, Jaxon, real mature.”

I waited a couple minutes until his laughter died down. It took everything in me not to smile. I had to pretend to be the mature one of us, so I continued to glower at him and then I raised my eyebrows up expectantly.

“Why do pigs roll around in shit?” His question confused me. I put more oomph in my glower now, but he looked solemnly at me. “Why do flowers need sunlight? Why do caterpillars turn into butterflies? These are all basic, living instincts; predispositions that aren’t in our control, but in our makeup. We don’t understand what propels us to certain things. Why does someone like this or that? I believe it’s wired in us. Just like I’m wired to you and you’re wired to me. It doesn’t make sense and we don’t understand it, but we’re propelled to each other. Be it a chemical reaction binding us, or a higher power that deems it so, we’re soul-mates. That’s why I love you. I can’t turn it off because I have no control over it, and I’d never want to anyway.”

His thumb stroked away the tear that fell from my eye. Then he gathered me and set me against him. I wrapped my arm around his waist, rested my head against his chest and listened to his heart beats. I listened and listened until the blackness took me away.

Twenty Two

“I don’t want to do this,” I whined coming to a halt. “I’ve got a cramp in my side and I’m tired.”

Jaxon turned around, one hand holding tight the backpack strap on his shoulder. He glared at me like I was a petulant child that was screaming for candy at the check-out aisle. The look alone had me moving my ass as if a herd of buffalo was after me.

We’d been trekking the woods for, like, an hour…

Maybe forty minutes, actually.

Okay, it was more like twenty minutes. Still. The physical exertion was new to me and it made my legs ache. It didn’t help my jeans were now whirling in the washer after last night’s adventurous bar rendezvous with the drunks. I’d found little jean shorts in one of the drawers and shot Jaxon a stink-eye. He simply shrugged, expressing he had no part in what clothes had been placed in them. The shorts comfortably fit, thank the heavens, but I had only baggy shirts to wear on top. I was currently swimming in a massive grey t-shirt that obviously belonged to an XXXX large person and getting the ever loving shit beat out of my legs wading through dense nature that harboured nasty branches and thorny bushes.

“We’re not far away, Tiny.”

Liar. He’d been saying that from the start.

“Do you know where you’re going? Or are we going to get lost out here?”

“I know where I’m going.”