It Wasn't Me Page 11

  -Pace to Jonah

  Jonah

  I pushed open the door to my place and swept my hand out in a ‘come in’ gesture.

  She walked past me carefully, being sure not to brush her shoulder along my chest, and took a look around.

  I was soaked to the bone, so it was no wonder that she wouldn’t want to touch me.

  She hadn’t said a word since we’d made it into the airport after checking to make sure that I was okay.

  Her eyes were swollen and red from crying, and apparently while I’d been gone, she’d given the Hacker a piece of her mind when the woman had complained about the long wait to disembark the plane.

  Her face moved in all directions, taking everything in.

  I wasn’t sure if the last time she’d been in my house if she’d looked around or not, but this time, it felt completely different than the last.

  This time she was my wife, and she was looking at her new home.

  Last time she’d been a…friend?

  “I like the ceilings,” she said softly. “And your cat is on top of that beam right there.”

  I looked up and, sure enough, my cat was on the beam that stretched from one side of the room to the other.

  “Yeah, she likes to stay up there,” I admitted. “If you can’t find her, that’s generally where she’s at.”

  She set her bag down onto the counter, and I followed suit with the shit that was in my hand.

  I took a cursory look through the mail.

  When I saw nothing but bills and one letter that looked like it could be another offer to buy my house, I shoved it all to the side and turned to the woman that had followed me into the kitchen.

  Her eyes were on me as she waited.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What was that look on your face?” she questioned.

  I gestured to the mail.

  “I have a company that continually tries to buy my house. They send me a letter at least once a month requesting to purchase it and the surrounding acreage. I at first called them and told them no. Now I just throw the shit away. But it still pisses me off when I get them,” I admitted.

  She frowned. “Did you ask them why they wanted it?”

  I nodded. “I did. He said that they had a family member that owned the land before me that wanted it back. I told them I wasn’t interested. Now we play this stupid game once a month. Each time the price on the house goes higher and higher.”

  “What are they offering you?” she asked. “Is it a price that’s at least worthy of what you would sell it for?”

  I nodded. “They’re up to one and three-quarters of a million right now. It steadily goes up each month by about fifty grand.”

  She shook her head. “What’s it worth?”

  “About half that,” I admitted.

  “Do you think that they’ll ever stop offering?” she asked. “And is there a price that you are willing to sell it for?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I built this house with my own two hands. I’m not selling it to someone that’ll just tear it down. I looked up the company online. They’re land developers. They specialize in outdoor shopping malls. The area that I’m located, which is still within the city limits, is apparently where all the town’s growing toward. The people at the end of my road sold out to Walmart and got about eight times what their property is worth.”

  “You don’t mind having commercial property around you?” she asked.

  I gestured at the window.

  “On that side of me is the Valentine ranch. They’ve owned that property for years. They just acquired quite a bit more a few years ago. On this side of me” —I gestured with my thumb— “is Nico, a member of the KPD SWAT team. He owns about half of what the Valentines own. And on that side of me is an old man that I’ve already got a binding contract with. When he passes away, he’ll sell me his land. That makes about a thousand acres in this particular area that’ll never be commercially zoned. Nobody will ever sell theirs, either.”

  She smiled.

  “That’s good,” she said. “That you have neighbors like that.”

  I tilted my head and studied her.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked when I noticed her fidgeting hands.

  She licked her lips. “I don’t know what to do.”

  My heart melted.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “Make a snack,” she admitted.

  I gestured at the fridge.

  “Honey,” I said softly. “If you want a snack, eat it. If you want to remodel the kitchen, probably might need to hire a contractor first, but do it. If you want to take off your clothes and walk around naked…it’s your house. Just know that I can’t control myself when I see those pretty titties.”

  She burst out laughing.

  “I don’t usually walk around naked,” she admitted.

  “Shame,” I murmured, feeling parts of me come to life at the thought of her naked. Of the thought of walking in the door and seeing her puttering around the kitchen in nothing but skin.

  Her eyes went a little hot as she took me in, her eyes going from my head and traveling down the length of my body.

  Her eyes snagged on my growing erection that was now filling up the front of my jeans.

  “As your wife, you should’ve probably carried me over the threshold,” she teased.

  I levered myself off of my lean against the counter and walked toward her.

  She held her ground.

  “I made a mistake,” I said as I bent down and caught her up bridal style. “I can’t do it for the house, but I can definitely do it for the bedroom.”

  She shrieked when my wet clothes met her heated skin.

  “You’re cold!” she cried out.

  I was cold. The air conditioner was on in my house, and I’d been standing in damp clothes since I’d arrived.

  But Piper? She was deliciously warm, and she was squirming up against me, shoving those pretty tits of hers in my face.

  And that was when I decided that I should probably do other traditional things, too.

  Like make love to her in my bed.

  Walking until we were beside the bed, I slowly let her slip to her feet and reached for the hem of her shirt.

  She didn’t fight me, nor did she protest when I followed the removal of her shirt by the removal of her pants.

  “Step out of your shoes,” I ordered.

  She did as I asked and kicked them off, followed by her pants that were bunched around her ankles.

  When she was standing in her bra and panties next to the bed, I backed away slightly and took off my own damp clothes, not stopping until I was standing in front of her with my erection pointing at her belly.

  She licked her lips and took me in, and I waited while she warred with herself.

  When she finally reached out and curled her hand around my cock, I grinned and picked her up off the floor, tossing her lightly on the bed.

  She shrieked and started to laugh, bouncing slightly into the middle of the bed.

  “You only have one pillow,” she said as she looked around.

  “I only needed one pillow,” I admitted.

  “What am I supposed to do tonight?” she questioned, wiggling and squirming as she watched me watch her.

  I brought my hand up to my cock and slowly worked it with one fist, gripping it much tighter than she’d done moments before.

  Her breath started to come in pants as she watched me work myself.

  “You can lay your head on my chest,” I offered.

  She hooked her hands into her panties and shoved them down her legs, her eyes heated and watchful as she waited for me to move.

  “Bra,” I reminded her.

  She quickly snapped it off and tossed it onto the floor.

  Her breasts shook with the movement, and my balls drew up at the sight.

  I let my cock go and put one knee onto the b
ed, feeling it bounce and bob with my movements as I crawled up between Piper’s legs.

  I ran my hands up the length of her thighs, loving the way she widened them without my having to ask.

  Her pussy was already wet. I could see the moisture glistening at her entrance, already paving the way for me to enter her.

  Her nipples were pebbled into hard points, and goosebumps broke out all over her body when my warm hands met her skin.

  “Jonah,” she whispered, shifting slightly underneath my touch.

  I grinned and pushed her thighs out wide, then positioned myself solidly between her thighs until my heavy cock was resting against her wet pussy.

  The heat of her sex felt like it burned as I lazily started to stroke myself through her wetness.

  “God,” she breathed. “I’m close already.”

  My eyes skimmed up her body to meet her gaze, and I grinned.

  “Can’t have you going off without me inside of you,” I rumbled, pulling back farther than I’d been doing previously and feeling my hard dick notch at her entrance.

  My eyes stayed on hers as I slowly pushed inside, not stopping until I was fully lodged inside of her wet hole.

  Her breath caught and held as I slid home, and she didn’t stop to let that breath out until I leaned over her and caught one taut nipple in my mouth.

  Her breathing returned to its earlier choppiness, and her hands curled into my hair as she held on while I sucked and teased her nipple into an even harder peak.

  I didn’t move, though.

  Couldn’t.

  I knew that if I did, we’d both come, and I didn’t want it to end so fast.

  So instead, I lavished her body with kisses. Sucked her nipples, and placed playful love bites all along her neck and shoulders as her body adjusted around me.

  “Jonah, please,” she begged. “I just need you to move once.”

  I knew exactly what she needed me to do, which was why I was holding still.

  “If I move, we both come,” I growled. “And I want to feel this longer than a few short seconds. I want to remember this moment forever.”

  She keened and twisted underneath of me, clenching her internal muscles around me so hard that my breath caught.

  “Then go slow,” she whispered. “Pull out and push back in and go slow. I won’t come. I just need you to move.”

  I could hear the determination in her voice.

  So I did as she asked, pulling out so slowly that it felt almost worse.

  She growled low under her breath when I pulled not almost out, but completely out of her.

  “Put it back inside of me,” she whispered, her hands going to my forearms that were on either side of her head. “Jonah, God. Please.”

  I licked my lips and gave her exactly what she asked for, going just as slow back in as I was coming out.

  She bit her lip, watching me enter her, and I realized that it didn’t matter if I went slow or didn’t move at all.

  I was going to come regardless.

  Which was why I kept my movements slow and steady, filling her up and pulling back out at a snail’s pace.

  It was when I could hold on no longer that I said, “Come.”

  That must’ve been all that she was waiting for, the okay to do so, because she tilted her hips up when I entered her next, and then started to tighten all around me.

  When at last her orgasm left her breathless and spent on the bed, I pulled out of her still tight pussy and jacked myself off against her pussy.

  I couldn’t explain why I felt the need to do it, but seeing my release spurt out of my cock and decorate her pussy filled some void inside of me.

  I loved seeing my release there, claiming her.

  I loved even more that she rubbed it in as she kept her eyes locked on mine.

  “We need a shower,” she breathed.

  I picked up the covers that’d fallen to the floor and yanked them up and over us.

  When she went to slip from the bed, I caught her around the hips and pulled her into the cradle of my hips, snugging my still hard cock up against her ass and spooning her.

  She used my bicep as a pillow as I buried my face into her hair.

  “I’m gonna have to get some clothes on and wash off,” she whispered.

  I grunted something unintelligible into her hair.

  “Later. Right now, I just want to hold you for a few seconds in my bed,” I mumbled, exhaustion starting to make my limbs heavy.

  She turned her face and pressed a kiss on my bicep, causing my heart to skip a beat.

  “Today started out pretty sucky, got even suckier, but now I feel pretty confident that we ended it right.” Piper’s whispered words met my ears.

  I pressed a kiss to her hair and said, “It did, didn’t it?”

  Chapter 11

  Going crazy. Wanna come?

  -Text from Jonah to Piper

  Jonah

  We were looking for the keys, which I’d left at some point on some horizontal surface somewhere when there was a knock on the door.

  I got up, disentangling myself from the woman at my side, who was looking in the couch cushions beside me.

  “Hello,” the UPS woman smiled. “I have a one-day air package mailed to you. Sign here.”

  Rolling my eyes at the woman’s familiar greeting, I signed for the package and took the box before jerking my chin up. “Have a good one.”

  She winked at me. Her eyes went to Piper who’d come out of the room at my back, and her face fell.

  “You, too,” she whispered.

  Ignoring the weird way that she’d turned from hot to cold, I closed the door as I read the label on the box.

  Piper sighed and threw up her hands. “I give up. Let’s walk.”

  I chuckled and wiggled the box at Piper.

  “The hotel sent us something,” I said. “What do you think it is?”

  Her frown was fierce as she said, “I’ve got no idea. I’m guessing it’s the panties I couldn’t find before we left because someone was a little exuberant that morning.”

  I grinned and tossed her the box as I continued looking for the keys.

  It was at that point that I almost gave up and went to the safe for my spares, but Piper’s gasp had me turning to survey her.

  “What?”

  She held up the box that was open and dumped it on the counter.

  Her face flamed when the missing pair of panties fell free of the package.

  They were in a clear Ziplock bag, along with a few other items.

  One of those items being the NuvaRing that she’d pulled out of her body and hadn’t put back.

  “Oh, shit,” she breathed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  I stared at the birth control ring and…grinned.

  “Huh,” I said through a smile. “That’s gonna be fun.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “Fun?” she squeaked. “You think it’s ‘fun’ that we didn’t put this back in? Jonah, I could be pregnant!”

  The worry in her voice had a damper falling onto my otherwise happy contentment, but not for long.

  “Piper,” I said softly. “We’re married. If we weren’t married, I’d say that we should be worried. But we are.”

  And I kind of liked the idea of having another reason for her to stay exactly where she was.

  We’d known each other a very, very short amount of time. We got married within days of knowing each other. The only real proof that we had of our marriage since we couldn’t remember the affair were the tattooed rings on our fingers, the certificate of marriage, and our photo. One photo of the two of us kissing in front of the crappiest looking chapel in Vegas.

  “We’ve been married for all of four days. The tattooed ring on my finger isn’t even healed enough yet for me to put my real ring on. We’ve known each other for less than two weeks, and a week and a half of that we were apart. You don’t think that there’
s any cause to worry seeing as we might be adding a child into this?”

  Well, when she put it like that…

  I shrugged. “I’m a firm believer in live and let live. I also think that things happen for a reason. Did you know that I was supposed to leave Germany the day before?”

  She swallowed, then shook her head.

  “I had a meeting at the police department. I was set to leave the day before, but something happened to the plane. I fixed what I could, and they overnighted the parts. That was why there was even a plane sitting there waiting for you to get on,” I said.

  She licked her lips, her eyes nervous.

  “If that plane hadn’t broken, you’d have been on your regular flight with no other options, and I’d have left without seeing you,” I continued. “But instead, I got to ride with you the entire way and hold your hand.”

  She looked down at her hands.

  “And I got that ticket to the car auction from a buddy that fell down a flight of stairs and broke his leg. I was on standby to get onto that flight. I knew that it was a possibility that it wouldn’t happen. But it did happen,” I pushed.

  Her eyes went wide as she once again brought her gaze back up to me.

  “So if there’s a baby because I was a dumbass and asked you to take it out, then it was meant to be.”

  At least it was from my point of view.

  From hers, I wasn’t so sure.

  But then she smiled sweetly at me and flushed.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked softly.

  She licked her lips quickly before saying, “The idea of carrying your baby doesn’t scare me. It excites the hell out of me. The idea that I have to tell my parents that I’m carrying the child of a man I just met scares me.”

  My lips twitched.

  “Do you want to go see him at the hospital today? I have time before my shift,” I offered.

  She shook her head. “I told them we’d stop by tomorrow. He’s getting out today and sees no reason for me to come all the way up there. Plus, my mom said he’s in a really bad mood.”

  I grinned. “Men don’t like feeling helpless. Even worse, they’re not very good patients to begin with. I’m sure your father is doing the best that he can given the situation.”