More Than Enough (Pelican Bay 4)

“It’s a situation I haven’t been in for a very long time,” Jett continued. His mouth skimmed my jawline and then teased the edge of my mouth, but he seemed to be going out of his way to not kiss me.

“What… what situation?” I managed to grind out.

“This one,” Jett whispered just as he ground his groin against mine. I gasped when his erection slid over mine.

“Oh God,” I breathed when he did the move again. “Jett, please,” I begged as I lifted my hips to meet his next long, firm thrust.

It wasn’t until Jett deliberately lifted his hips to put space between us that some level of sense returned to my ragged brain cells. Jett’s mouth was still close to mine.

“Sawyer, baby, don’t you get it? I’m not just vulnerable around you, I’m fucking terrified of you.”

That got my attention. As my heart sank, I automatically did what I did best. “Let me go.”

But he didn’t loosen his grip on me. And when I tugged to pull my hands free of his hold, he tightened his fingers just enough to keep me where I was.

“Jett—”

“I want you, Sawyer. I want you in ways I’ve never wanted anyone. Not before that fucking chair, not after it. You’ve given me back a part of my life that I thought had died when they took my legs.”

Jett ground his erection into me again, though gently, before he continued.

“I was glad I couldn’t have this anymore. It made it so much easier to keep blaming the entire world for all of my fucking problems. I didn’t want to have something to hope for. No legs, check. No family left, check. No chance of sex, check.” He paused and dropped his voice even more. “No possibility of ever falling in love with an amazing guy… check.”

Jett kissed me softly. It was a barely there kiss that shouldn’t have meant anything, but I felt it everywhere.

“Right now, I would like nothing more than to prove to you and me both that things are still working downstairs, but what I want to prove to you even more is that I’m not like that fucker. I know you glossed over what your relationship with him was really like…”

I tensed up because there was no way in hell I was telling him anything about the ugly shit that had gone on between me and Marcus. The shit I’d allowed to happen…

I began to shake my head, but Jett merely released one of my hands and gently clasped my chin. “I’ll be here whenever you’re ready to tell me and if that never happens, that’s your choice. No one else’s.”

My heart clanged painfully in my chest as I stared into Jett’s eyes. His beautiful, emotion-filled eyes. I tried to find any dishonesty in them and couldn’t. But as much as part of me wanted to just tell him everything, the place where all that ugly shit with Marcus lived was locked up tight.

In a desperate effort to take the focus off of me and my secrets, I said, “Why didn’t you come down to work with Apollo the last couple of days?” Since one of my hands was free, I used it to brush Jett’s temple where there remained only a hint of a line from the injury he’d gotten on the day we’d met.

Jett dropped his eyes and laughed, but it was this sad little laugh that made me want to wrap my arms around him.

“God, I cannot believe I’m telling you this,” he whispered.

I didn’t ask him what he was talking about or prod him in any way because whatever he needed to say was something he needed to be in control of. So I kept up my stroking of his temple, then his hair. Jett let out a breath and then let his weight settle into the cradle of my hips, putting our erections in direct contact with only a couple of layers of fabric separating them.

“After… after they took my legs, I wasn’t ever able to… to get hard,” Jett murmured. He was looking at my chest, though I doubted that he was actually focused on it. No doubt he was remembering the day he’d woken up only to find his life forever changed.

I moved my hand so I could tip his chin up, forcing him to look me in the eye. “How long has it been?”

I saw the instant Jett’s eyes truly held mine. “More than a year.”

I nodded. “Until me,” I urged. My heart hurt for Jett. Even though I hadn’t been with anyone since Marcus, I’d had my own hand to take care of business. The reality was that sex was a big part of most people’s lives, but how many took that for granted? While I’d loved the intimacy of sex in the early years with Marcus but had come to hate the things he’d done to me as time had gone on, the reality was I still enjoyed the sexual release my own hand could bring me. For someone like Jett who was already struggling to feel like a whole man, losing yet another piece of himself had to have been devastating.