Come to Me Softly (Closer to You #2)(24)
Author: A.L. Jackson

Wanted.

Needed her so badly I thought I would lose my mind.

But this time I wasn’t searching for numbness. Wasn’t begging for the blackness to invade. Wasn’t looking to block it out.

Feeling lit through my entire body and overtook my senses. Every nerve fired, every inch of me alive.

I cried out, “Aleena,” my arms hugging her tight as I crushed her to me.

Motherfucking trigger.

Aly had become my drug.

I buried my face in her neck, my grip like a vise at her waist as I buried myself in her.

Completely.

Wholly.

Aly threw her head back and cried out my name. Her nails burrowed deep into my skin, just like she’d burrowed somewhere deep in my soul.

Ragged breaths palpitated from my lungs, and I just held her, Aly’s body limp when she collapsed against me.

I lifted my head, kissed her softly.

Aly stuttered a sigh.

Gently, I pulled out. I shifted, laying her across the bed. “I’ll be right back.”

I pulled on my underwear and slipped out her door. I made my way into the bathroom and flipped on the switch. Bright lights burned my eyes, and I blinked as I shuffled inside.

Turning the faucet high, I waited for it to warm.

I caught my reflection in the mirror. Colors dripped and bled across my skin, the sins I’d committed glaring in the glow. Green eyes glinted out from them, striking like a flare.

Aleena.

Shaking, I ran my fingertips over them, like I was searching for some kind of answer, like maybe I could discern if any of this was really right.

Because how would I ever really know?

I stared at my eyes. They seemed much too bright. Too alive.

Flames of fear licked through my body, kindling the madness Aly created in me, and my gut twisted into the tightest knot.

What happened when I lost it all?

I slammed my eyes shut and shook my head.

Stupid shit.

Couldn’t go there.

I grabbed a washcloth from the cabinet under the sink.

Just as I was wetting it under hot water, Christopher appeared in the doorway.

He lifted a sarcastic brow. “Looks like you two made up.”

“Fuck you, dude.”

God, he was such a smartass.

Chuckling, he leaned against the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. In thought, he pursed his lips. His voice was softer than I expected. “You know my sister isn’t one of those girls who holds grudges, Jared.”

I lowered my face and shook my head. I wrung out the washcloth. “You think I don’t know that? That’s the only reason I’m here.”

Didn’t deserve to be. He and I both knew that.

Sighing, he roughed his hand through the mess of black on his head. Somehow he managed to make it stick up even worse than it already was. “You’ve gotta be honest with her, man. Let her in. Tell her about whatever shit your past has gotten you into because you can’t leave her unprepared for it. She loves you enough to forgive you for it, whatever it is.”

I nodded, swallowed hard as I straightened. I looked at him seriously. Honestly. “I just wish I could erase the mess of it.”

Guess I was more scared of repeating it.

Humorless laughter seeped from him. “Don’t we all.”

I rubbed my palm over my face and blew a breath from my lungs.

He inclined his head toward Aly’s door. “Go on . . . take care of my sister . . . you know she’s waiting for you.”

SIX

Aleena

A soft sigh hit the back of my throat as I watched him go. Or maybe it was a whimper. My bedroom door slowly closed behind him. Loosely it came to rest on the jamb. I turned and faced the ceiling. Lying there, I tried to catch my breath, to slow my thundering heart. Tried to make sense of what had just happened between us.

It had been uncontrollable. Turbulent. Explosive.

Exhaustion sagged my entire body into a useless puddle curled in the middle of my bed, but his touch still fired along the surface of my skin, burned beneath it. Below me, the sheets felt both hot and cold, glowed with the remnants of heat from the impassioned fury that had taken us over. I flattened my palm out over them, over the place where he had had me. Where he had found me.

Deep satisfaction penetrated into the marrow of my bones. Above that satisfaction, my nerves skittered with unease.

Only one other time had I witnessed Jared like he was tonight, control slipping and something wild flaming in his eyes. It was the morning that had begun so intensely, when Jared had locked us away behind my bathroom door, the same day my mother had discovered him in our apartment.

It was the day fear and shame and self-contempt had driven him away.

Every time Jared touched me, there was something powerful in it, something overwhelming. Something stunning.

Breathtaking.

Lost in the deepest reaches of that connection, I’d felt the disturbance. Like I was so close to him I could feel his anguish as his body became one with mine.

Like I was partner to it.

I’d felt it again tonight.

But there was something distinctly different.

That day, three months ago, I knew Jared was trying to push me away.

Not tonight.

No, tonight he’d sought, hunted, like he would do anything, give up anything, to be closer to me.

And it was almost frightening, how close we were.

Maybe it was my reaction that scared me most, the one at the bar and then here in my room.

When I saw him with that girl at the Vine, I’d been shocked by my reaction. It was violent. Vicious. One glance and the deepest ache had seized me, left me gutted, splaying me wide open.

Left me questioning.

Worries I had tried to suppress had pushed their way to the forefront. Those months I’d spent alone in this room, missing him, mourning him, crying out for him, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining what he was doing and who he was with. Every time my mind would go there, it would break me a little more.

But when he’d returned yesterday, I’d made the decision that it was in the past. He’d left, without obligation to me, and he had made no promises other than the one that he would forget about me and I would forget about him.

He’d broken that promise because forgetting each other was an impossibility. I think we both knew it, even though I’d struggled and prayed that one day I would accept he was gone and move on instead of pretending he would find his way back to me.

But he had. He came back to me, and I wanted to believe nothing else mattered.

Until I’d seen that girl rubbing all over him. A swell of possessive envy had collided with my love of him, and all of those worries had come flooding back.