AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Me? Me…I’m like a teddy bear,” he said, leaning down and pecking her forehead.
“Sure,” she laughed, walking toward the kitchen. “Would you like a glass of wine before we head out?” She didn’t mention that this was her second glass, buttalking,especially with how readily open Jake was, and expected others to be, made her jittery.
“Yep, that would be great.” He sat on the couch.
She handed him a glass of white wine and sat in the chair facing him. “Soo…here we are again…talking.” Her tone didn’t hide her weariness.
He narrowed his eyes on her, trying to squelch the exasperation bubbling to the surface. “Relationship alert…that’s what it takes, so this won’t be the last time we ‘talk.’” He made quotation marks in the air. “So guess you just have to decide if you’re up for it, 'cause I think the relationship part is more workthan the chase.” He took a long sip of his wine, peering at her over his glass.
Taking a deep breath in, then a quick sip, she wondered if she should tell him she’d never had a boyfriend, not really. She didn’t count her high school boyfriend of three months. The only men she’d been with for longer periods of time had paid for it, so she didn’t know how to be herself in a relationship. “Yeah, I know. It’s just been…”
“You’ve had boyfriends, right? I mean not just the guys that…” He stopped himself, catching her furtive expression as if her brain was looking through a Rolodex for the right answer. “Rakell?” His tone edged toward gentle as he sensed her anxiousness. “It’s a pretty straightforward answer; I’m not trying to…”
“I, well, I’ve been on dates but haven’t really had a boyfriend since high school, and I don’t really count a three-month stint with a seventeen-year-old boy, who just wanted to get in my pants, as a relationship. I mean, I’ve gone on dates. Um, well, never more than a few times with the same guy. It was just too difficult, school was intense and trying to hide my other life from a boyfriend just seemed too complicated. Look how it blew up with you, so no, I don’t really have any real boyfriend-girlfriend type experience.” Her jutted speech made it clear to him that she was embarrassed.
He took another sip, trying to process her words. After college, he’d made it a point to steer away from inexperienced women, but this was different—she simultaneously was highly experienced sexually and yet had no real relationship history. He realized then that this likely explained her almost shocked reaction to her own pleasure. Knowing he was, as she termed him,Neanderthal-like,he still took some kind of male pride, musing that he might have been the only one to give her that pleasure.What had she said at the Driskill? “You’re the onlyman that has made me come with your mouth.”He altered his smug grin into a small smile, hoping to assuage her trepidation. “I guess I could be your guide to what it takes to be the ideal girlfriend. Do you trust me?” He tilted his head, smirking.
“Bah, seriously?” she laughed. “Not sure you’d steer me right.”
He sat forward. “Sure I will, darlin’. The ideal girlfriend is naked a lot, actually, most of the time. She only dresses for the occasional outing, when I want to show her off,” he drawled out, stifling the chuckle right behind his words.
“Really, that sounds like…” She halted her tongue from saying ‘an escort.’
“Like…?” he prompted.
“Your version of perfect.”
“Yep, definitely,” he said, “but the truth is you already are my version of perfect. I love being with you, and I think about you all the time. I just have to feel the same from you”—his voice took on a serious edge—“and I want to know the real you, all of you.”
“Okay,the real me.” She trailed off, staring at the windows. “I just started feeling like everything I did or said…that you viewed everything through a new lens filtered by the information about my past, and honestly, that’s not fair. If I started dating someone else, I wouldn’t have to share all that…”
“Rakell, look at me.”
“Okay.”
“The escort thing is actually second to the lying and the lack of communication that went with it, so I’m always left wondering…What’s she doing? Who’s she seeing? and…”
“Jake.” She sucked in air through her nose. “I’m not doing anything, and I’m not seeing anyone. I’m going nuts just hanging out, waiting…waiting for you to figure out what this all means for you. I mean, I like you, so if we’re going to be…” She waved her hand between them. “I guess I’ll just be blunt…”
Arching his eyebrows, he looked at her, smiling. “Wow, that will be a first.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughed. “Really need to work on that direct approach.”
She squinted her eyes. “Guess I’m fairly direct, but mostly with you. What I’m saying is I want to do the girlfriend-boyfriend thing, but I’m tired and way too horny to…we’ve already crossed the physical line…the waiting to fuck thing that we’ve been doing isn’t working for me. I want it to be right between us, but if you can’t trust me or you can’t see past…”
He shot his hand up. “Whoa, I don’t want to hold up thefunpart either. Okay, I know, or at least I think I know we are on the same page. On the girlfriend note…let’s start with communication. I need you to communicate with me: I send a text, you send one back, I call, you call back, and it shouldn’t always be me reaching out. Honestly, that’s not what I’m used to—unless someone is looking for a way out—but not from someone who really wants to be with me.”
“I do, I mean, I really want to be with you.” She looked at him across the room, black jeans hugging his long, powerful legs, a bright blue button-down shirt left untucked, his black hair cut in long layers, falling forward…his strong jaw highlighted by dark stubble. “Really want that.” She waved her hand in a circle, making it clear she wanted all of him.
“Mm…hmmm.” He smiled, his eyes darting to her. “The reason I wanted to wait this time is because before, every time I got to be in you, it felt like it would be the last time, that we were touching for the final time. Even the night we celebrated the Super Bowl, there was this sense that I may not get this again. I couldn’t define it but…all I can tell you is that…that feeling…”she saw the muscle in his jaw twitch as his Adam's apple bobbed up and down“…well, that made me feel desperate. So this time, I wanted to touch you, knowing you were all in and there would bemore to come, that this is going somewhere. Damn, I just need it to feel like it would happen over and over again.” Lowering his eyes, he added, “Forever, or as much as anyone can predict forever.”
She stood, moving toward him on the couch.This guy is so emotionally available. “Jake, I want that too. I just need to figure out how to be more…”
“Open…that’s what you have to do if this is going to work…”
“Okay, so what’s the timeline on return texts and phone calls?” There was a raspy tone to her voice, stirring his groin.
