Full Share (Shore House Book 1) (29 page)

He ran his hands up my bare back. He was gentle. My confession had turned this into something more than it had been ten minutes ago. For him.

It’d always been exactly what it was for me—perfect.

“Nora.” His voice was thick and low. He swallowed hard and ran his lips across my bare shoulder. “You have to be with me every minute.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Promise me something else.”

“What?”

“You have to talk to me. Tell me things.”

I stayed silent. I couldn’t speak.

“If you want me to stop, at any time. You have to tell me.”

“I’m not going to want you to stop. Make love to me, Jack.”

His lips crushed against mine, and he rolled me onto my back again. He kissed me until I couldn’t breathe without him, until I’d never let him leave. I tightened my legs around him to quiet the pounding between them.

He shifted and laid beside me like I was a porcelain doll that he’d shatter with his weight. He brushed the hair off my face and kissed my cheek, but I wasn’t going to have it. I didn’t want him to be careful with me. I wanted him to take me.

I rolled on top of him and pinned him down. I forced my tongue into his mouth, and he responded instantly. I rubbed myself against him. Back and forth until I thought I might come just from that. I stopped and breathed heavily in his ear.

“I hear you,” he said, and I knew he’d gotten the message.

He lifted me off him and stood next to the bed. I inhaled, and he yanked me to the edge. He placed each of my legs over his shoulders and dropped to his knees. His hungry stare caught me above my hip bones as both of his hands slipped under me and raised me to his mouth. He licked from the base of me to my clit, and my body convulsed into the air.

Jack stopped and waited for air to enter my chest, and for me to exhale. “You’re delicious.”

I couldn’t look away. He pressed my legs wider with small kisses on each of my inner thighs, and then his lips found my clit again. He sucked it until it throbbed harder than my heart. Tiny moans slipped from my lips, and he stayed still until I was able to breathe again.

He rested me on the bed and slipped one finger into me. My legs closed around him, but he nudged them wide. I forced myself to concentrate on his finger inside me, and he moved it in and out. His tongue on me sent a pulsing to my core, which responded with a wetness everywhere he was. I was tightening around him.

“Jack.” I could barely breathe. “I want to come with you inside me.”

His movements were swift. He took off his jeans, reached in the pocket, and tore open a condom. I was chilled without him. He climbed between my legs and paused, waiting for my permission. I inhaled, nodded slightly, and without a word he pressed inside me. Jack stole the air from my chest and replaced it with his fullness as his warmth invaded me. He waited there.

“Keep going,” I said.

He pulled out and thrust into me again.

My hands on his biceps, my hips writhing against him, Jack continued until the throbbing focused its pounding on my core. Every part of me was with Jack. I gasped for air and pulled him toward me as I came. I closed my eyes, unable to manage sight or sound, completely focused on whatever the fuck else was happening inside me.

I felt him come and pulled him to me. He rested on top of me, his heart beating against my chest.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Open your eyes.” He leaned up on his forearms behind my shoulders. “Look at me, Nora.” I opened my eyes to his chin and let my sight wander up his beautiful lips to his endless blue eyes. “Thank you.”

He kissed me, and I was ready to do it again. I let his tongue explore me without the urgency of before. I let him caress me with his fingertips over every inch of my body, and when he was hard again, we made love for the second time. It was different. I was no longer a virgin. There was nothing else to think about but the way Jack felt, hard in my hand, and in my mouth, and between my legs. He was mine.

My awareness came first, followed by my eyes flitting open. The rain from the night before had been replaced outside my window with bright sunshine. Jack’s chest rose beneath my head. My hand rested on his pec. He was still here. I’d really done it. He’d really done it.

We’d done it.

I smiled as the memories of the night before flooded my mind. My lips found his skin, and I kissed him without considering if I should or not.

I was heavy with my wholeness. Jack had given more to me last night than he’d ever be able to comprehend. I wouldn’t embarrass either of us by telling him I loved him, but I did. I didn’t care if he knew it. I didn’t care if everyone in our house knew it. Nothing seemed to be a secret anymore.

Jack stirred beneath me. He paused and kissed the top of my head. I was just about to roll on top of him when my phone rang. It was on the nightstand closest to Jack. He picked it up, looked at it, and handed it to me. Rob was calling, and the sight of his name terrified me. The last time a phone rang, Tank was dead.

“Hello?”

“Nora. Where are you?”

“I’m in my apartment. What’s wrong?” I moved to sit up, but Jack held me tight against him.

“Nothing. Everything.” Rob sounded a million miles away. “Blaire and I broke up.”

I relaxed. Everyone was exactly as I’d left them. “I’m sure you guys will work it out. Tank’s death has left us all in a strange place.”

“It’s not that, Nora.”

Jack stiffened beneath me hearing the words through my phone.

“She broke up with me because she thinks I’m in love with you.”

I stopped breathing. Rob was on the other end of the line, waiting to hear what I thought about him possibly loving me. Jack slid out from under me and walked around my room. He found his jeans and put them on. His anger flew from his eyes at me before he pulled his T-shirt over his head.

“Rob, I have to go.”

“I want to see you.”

“I’ll call you back.”

“Nora, I’m—”

I hung up on Rob and sat up in my bed.

Jack was completely dressed and staring at me.

“What are you doing?” I didn’t hide the desperation in my voice. I wouldn’t ever hide from him again.

“I’m leaving.”

“Why?” He was hurting me, and I’d let him. He could do whatever he wanted.

“Because I’ve had to watch you love him the entire summer. Because he’s nowhere near good enough for you, but for some insane reason you want him.” His voice was raising; the blood was rushing to his head and turning his cheeks a deep red. “Because even after last night, I could feel your heart race when he just told you that.”

“Jack—”

“Did you ever think you only want him because you’ve never been able to have him? He’s the safest choice.”

“Jack. It’s not like—”

“Then why did you tell him you’d call him back?”

I didn’t know why. It was what I’d always done.

Jack walked out of my bedroom and took a piece of me with him. The last physical piece of my soul and it walked out the door with him.

I raced from the bed and found the dress I’d worn last night. It was still wet. I threw on my robe and followed him out the door of my apartment.

“Wait!”

He stopped and turned to me on my front walk.

“Don’t go.” I was shaking my head, pleading with him to stay, and he was as hard as stone standing in front of me. “Not like this.”

“Nora, I—”

Rob beeped his horn and pulled into a space on the street in front of my house and jumped from the car. He was halted by the vision of Jack at my house and me in my robe.

“What the fuck?” He turned to Jack. “What are you doing here?”

“Nothing,” Jack said, breaking my heart.

My head shook and my eyes never left him as he climbed on his motorcycle and rode away.

“I need to talk to you.” Rob didn’t care if he’d interrupted something. He didn’t care where Jack was going. Rob only cared about himself. I was exhausted just by the sight of him. He stood in the center of my front walk, waving his arms high above his head. I exasperated him. “Nora, please.”

“What?”

He was back at the center of attention. He smiled at me the way he did with everyone else he’d ever met. I wasn’t special to Rob, I was part of his entourage, and I was fine with him leaving me there. “Calm down. I need to talk to you.” He pulled me into my apartment and onto my corduroy couch. Rob sat down next to me. “Blaire and I broke up.”

“I know,” I said without an ounce of care.

He was annoyed I wasn’t giving him the proper response to his opening act. “I’m in love with you.” He was willing to jump right to the climax to get this show moving.

I no longer resisted the urge to talk to him like the child he was. I would dummy this down as far as I had to to get it over with. “I don’t think you are, but let’s just say that’s true. That you’re even capable of loving someone else. Why now? We’ve known each other for five years. Why, all of a sudden, do you love me?”

“It’s not all of a sudden.” I raised my eyebrows at his lie. “I mean, it’s different now. I always loved you, but now I want to be with you.”

“Why . . . now . . .”

“You’re different this summer.” He stood up and took two steps from me before turning around. “You’re open. You’re alive. Something’s changed in you. I can’t resist it.”

I shook my head. “This is stupid. You’re not in love with me.”

“Is this because of Jack?”

I inhaled sharply and tried to hide the pain his name inflicted from my face. “No.”

“Why the hell was he even here?”

“Because I wanted him here.”

“So it is about Jack?”

“No! You’re not hearing me, Rob. You don’t love me. You don’t love Blaire. You can’t love anyone else. There’s not enough room for another person because you only love yourself.” I stung him with my words. Rob was expecting me to fling myself into his arms. “And that’s okay. Really. It’s only a problem if you continue to date these girls who think they have a chance of being the center of your world. There’s only one center, and you’re occupying it.” I stood up and walked into my bedroom.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to go to work and then I need to find Jack.”

Rob wasn’t defeated. He was planning what was next. Who was next.

LISTEN UP

“I
love him.”

“You love him?” Ricky repeated in disbelief.

“Completely and totally.”

“Did you tell him?”

I shook my head and lowered my eyes in shame.

“How come you can tell me, but not him?”

I faced Ricky with the sad truth of all my relationships. “Because you can’t hurt me with it.”

Ricky put his arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into him, facing the windows of the cafeteria. “Oh, Nora. You’re so stupid.” He laughed a little and turned to me. “I saw the way he looked at you. He’s incapable of hurting you.”

“Then why did he leave?”

“Because you hurt him.”

I shook my head in denial. “You don’t understand.”

“Don’t I?” he challenged. “You’re the only one who thinks love is hard to understand. It’s the purest of emotions. It’ll fill your soul and rip your heart out, but it’s not hard to figure out.” He sounded like Tank. He had the same sensibility.

I sighed and stared at the soggy pizza on my tray. Visiting my mother had opened up old wounds that now festered next to the one Tank had left me with. Why had he died? I still didn’t even know how he’d died. It was looking like I’d never know. Our entire relationship had been designed to haunt me. The lump rose up in my throat, and I swallowed hard to bury it.

I sniffed. “I think I’ll be fine living the rest of my life like this.”

Ricky stared at me. The discomfort of his glare made me squirm in my seat, and then my eyes filled with tears because I knew this wasn’t the way I was supposed to live. It wasn’t the way Tank would want me to live.

“Don’t cry. Don’t cry. What do I do? Hug you?” He reached for my hand, but it made me cry harder. “Seriously, what will make this stop, Nora?” Ricky stood up from his chair in the cafeteria. He loudly cleared his throat and fell over, mimicking a tree falling in the woods. The one-hundred-plus people around us all froze and stared at us. I stopped crying.