Fifty First Times

  “What? It what?” Aiden prompted when I didn’t continue.

  “Swear to God, it was like she was doing it on purpose, so I would get mad at her and leave.” When I lifted my head, Aiden was blurry, and I couldn’t even find it in me to care that he was seeing me cry. “I’m finally about to marry the only girl I’ve ever loved, and she was setting up a fight so I would be the one to break up with her.”

  Six years ago

  “YOU HAVE OUR sister home one minute past eleven, and we’ll come looking for your sorry ass.”

  I glanced to the empty hallway, then back to Kinlee’s older brothers. Fuck, these dudes were massive. “Your dad said midnight,” I said, somehow managing not to stutter.

  “Well, we say—”

  “Midnight,” Kinlee’s dad interrupted and shook his head. “And, boys, if my little girl comes home and tells me the two of you ruined her first date, I’m making you work in the orchards for the next two months’ worth of weekends.”

  Both brothers gave me one last hard look before turning and walking out the front door. The roar of their old, rebuilt Mustang filled the quiet street before peeling out.

  “Jace?”

  I turned in time to see Kinlee hug her dad good-bye before stepping up to me. God, she looked perfect.

  “You ready?” I asked, and a wide smile crossed my face as I reached for her hand. “You look beautiful.”

  “Midnight,” her dad interrupted us, and I looked up at him. “And I want her whole, well, and untouched.”

  Kinlee’s face went red. “Daddy!”

  With a knowing look, he went and stood by his wife, who had just walked into the room. After saying our good-byes, I walked Kinlee out to my car, and helped her into the passenger seat before jogging around to the driver’s side. Glancing up, I saw Mr. Atkins standing in a large window at the front of the house. With a nod and a smile, he let the drapes fall closed and I breathed out a sigh of relief.

  Didn’t matter that he’d known me my whole life. Didn’t matter that I’d been his daughter’s boyfriend for close to six years now. And it didn’t matter that she and I spent a lot of our nights at the other’s house. The minute I’d asked him if I could take Kinlee on a date, that guy looked like he’d wanted to kill me. So I was glad I was on track to getting back on his good side.

  Now I just needed to get his daughter home in five hours, whole, well, and mostly untouched.

  Kinlee

  Present day

  CALLING JACE’S PHONE for what had to be the thirtieth time in the last two hours, I walked toward the bedroom, and ended the call when his voice mail eventually picked up again. Tossing the phone on the bed, I stripped out of my clothes, down to my underwear, and went to his dresser to pull on one of his shirts.

  Jace was over a foot taller than me, and I loved the way his shirts engulfed me in his soft cologne. But right now, with his shirt swallowing me whole, and his scent making me dizzy, my heart was breaking even more. I was terrified that I’d just lost this, lost the comfort and security I’d always had in him . . . just lost him. I couldn’t lose him, not now. Please, God, not now. Not after everything you’ve taken from me.

  He was my rock, he was my everything. I didn’t know how to live without him, and I didn’t want to know what it would be like to live without him.

  The bed without him looked wrong, and I knew it would feel even worse.

  Not wanting to experience that feeling, I grabbed my phone and tried calling him again as I walked out to the couch and curled up in a ball.

  We’d had many friends—and sometimes, even family—during the years who would tell us that we didn’t know what we were missing by only ever dating each other. Saying we needed to experience other people, experience life without each other. But our parents had known, just as we had, that what Jace and I had was a love most people would never experience in their lives.

  So it wasn’t that I didn’t know how to live without our relationship, or having Jace as a constant . . . I just couldn’t live without him, period.

  Four years ago

  AS SOON AS the door shut behind us, Jace pressed me up against it, his mouth falling to mine in a hungry kiss. We’d graduated from high school a few hours earlier, and though we were supposed to be at an all-nighter with the rest of the senior class, Jace had gotten us a hotel room.

  Tonight was the night. A night I’d been waiting for, and at the same time, had been terrified for it to come. But we’d been planning this for a year now, even though I’m pretty sure the planning had made it harder for us to wait, the wait was finally over.

  Leaning back a bit, his gray eyes searched my face. “If you’re not ready for this, then we won’t do it, babe. I promise you, we’ll order a movie and room service or something, and fall asleep in each other’s arms. Nothing more.”

  My throat felt tight, and I was afraid that if I tried to talk, he’d mistake my nervousness for fear. So instead of talking, I pressed my hands to his chest, and pushed him gently away. He stumbled back a few steps, and a confused, lopsided smirk met me, paired perfectly with one raised brow.

  Forcing my hands to stop their shaking, I grabbed for the bottom of my shirt, and slowly pulled it up and over my head before dropping it on the ground. Reaching for the zipper on the back of my knee-length, flowy skirt, I unzipped it before pushing it past my hips and stepping away from the material.

  Jace’s eyes were heated and his breathing had deepened as he watched me closely. The look on his face gave me the courage to unhook my bra, and drop it on the pile of my clothes.

  As soon as I’d released it, I immediately regretted it and wanted to cover my chest. I still had my underwear on, but this was the most undressed he’d ever seen me. He’d seen different parts at different times, but not all of this all at once.

  Before my hands could move to cover myself, Jace was stalking toward me. One arm hooked around my waist, hauling me toward his body, the other swept under my legs as he pulled me up into his arms.

  A surprised gasp burst from my chest seconds before his mouth was on mine. This kiss was different from the hungry one we’d just been sharing, but it was just as passionate and needy, and exactly what I’d needed to put my fears back to rest.

  Once he’d laid me down on the bed, I sat back up and grabbed for the button on his jeans at the same time he’d started pulling off his shirt; and within a minute, there was nothing covering him at all. Heat filled my cheeks, and I bit down on my bottom lip as I let my eyes fall over his long, sculpted body.

  Bending down, he grabbed one of the foil packets from the pocket of his jeans, and I let out a harsh breath. This is it. It’s about to happen. Oh God, oh God!

  “Kinlee, baby, we don’t have to do this.”

  I looked up into his eyes, filled with nothing but love for me and worry. And I knew Jace, he wasn’t worried this wouldn’t happen, he was worried he was pushing me.

  “I want this, I do. I’m just—I’m nervous, I’m scared it’s going to hurt, I’m worried I won’t do it right.”

  My favorite smirk crossed his face, and he kissed me softly before laying me back on the bed. His fingers grabbed the sides of my underwear, and gently pulled down. “Like everything, we’re going to figure out our way through this together.” Once my underwear was on the floor, he crawled onto the bed, resting on his side with his face directly next to mine, his hand making lazy circles on my stomach. “I’m scared too. I’m scared of hurting you. I’m scared that you’ll regret it after and be mad at me. And if you do it wrong . . . well, shit, that means I’m doing something wrong too. So we’ll just do it wrong together.”

  He smiled wide, and I laughed softly.

  “We’ll go slow, and if you ever decide it’s too much, we stop. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I whispered, and moaned into his mouth when his lips parted mine, and his tongue slowly stroked against mine in perfect rhythm with his finger where my body was craving him.

  IN THE EARLY hours of the
next morning, before the sun had risen, and less than an hour before we had to be back home so our parents wouldn’t suspect anything, Jace pulled my body back to his, and kissed me quickly as his arms wrapped tightly around me.

  My chest rose and fell rapidly as I tried to calm my breathing, and I dropped my head into the crook of his neck as I curled my small body into his large one. Our first time had been . . . difficult, and awkward. It had hurt, I’d said “ow” a handful of times, and while I hadn’t full-out cried, tears had been streaming down my face. Jace tried to stop us a dozen times when he saw my pain, but I hadn’t allowed him, and we’d somehow made it through our first time. He’d helped me clean up after, and had held me for hours, making sure I was okay. We had only slept for an hour, and sometime over the course of the next eight hours, we’d tried a second and third time. Both times hurting a little less than the previous, and both much less awkward—and more pleasurable—than the first.

  “I don’t want to give this up yet,” I said, breaking the silence after.

  “I know, but your dad will kill me if he finds out where we’ve been.”

  Pulling out of his arms, I propped myself up on my elbow, and studied Jace’s face. Like I wanted to commit the way he looked at this exact moment to memory, so I would remember this for the rest of my life. “I want this. I want to spend mornings in bed with you, I want more time alone where I can have you just like this. I hate that I don’t know when we’ll have this again.”

  Jace cupped my cheek in his large hand, and moved down the bed until he could press his forehead to mine. His gray eyes still holding mine as his gruff voice filled the small space between us. “Kinlee Ann Atkins, I’ve told you a million times already, but I’ll tell you a million more . . . I’m gonna marry you someday. We’re going to have our whole lives to do this. I’ve waited for you for over ten years, we can make it for a couple more until this is our reality.” Kissing me soft, and yet still firm, he growled against my lips, “Screw it. I’m going to figure out a way for this to be our reality as soon as fucking possible.”

  I laughed loudly, and he pushed me onto my back as he settled his body over mine.

  Jace

  Present day

  “JACE, MAN, I think you need to at least try. I know talking to her earlier didn’t go well, but you’ve both had time to cool off, and I can’t watch you give up on you and Kinlee like this, regardless what she’s said. If you’re right, if she did do this on purpose so you would get mad and leave . . . show her it’s not going to be that easy. Show her you love her and you’re going to fight for the two of you as long as you can.”

  I knew he was right, but if Kinlee did want out, I didn’t know how I’d be able to handle that. Before I could respond, Aiden’s eyes snapped to the left, and a deep voice so much like my own came from next to me.

  “Do you want to tell me why Lee just called me sobbing, begging me to find you?”

  I looked at my older brother, shocked to see him out of his house and away from his wife. “Brody, what are you doing—how did you sneak out?”

  Brody looked away before sitting down beside me. “Liv went to the country club with her parents tonight, and came home trashed. She won’t know I’m gone. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  Groaning, I glanced at Aiden before dropping my head into my hands again. “I don’t want to go through this all again with you. I don’t want this to be happening.”

  “Well all I know is she called me, fucking hysterical, and you’re sitting in a bar. So tell me what you did.”

  “Jesus Christ! Why is it I had to have done something? She told me to leave! She went fucking crazy on me, accusing me of lying and cheating on her.”

  Brody just sat there staring at me, never once looking shocked or fazed by my outburst. “All right. Well, while that doesn’t sound like the Lee we grew up with, she’s panicking because you’re gone and she can’t get ahold of you, or you,” he said, gesturing toward Aiden.

  “I left my phone in my truck,” I whispered at the same time Aiden said, “I put my phone on silent. Didn’t think interruptions would be good when Jace was going through all this.”

  “Lee doesn’t sound like a woman who is worried about what her man may or may not be doing, she sounds like a woman who is worried that her man won’t be coming home. So, whatever happened, put your stubbornness aside, and go to your future wife. Fix this, Jace.” When I didn’t make a sound, or an attempt to move him out of the booth so I could leave, Brody shook his head. “Unless you don’t want this to be fixed, then at least call her and let her know so she isn’t going crazy worrying about you all night, and she can start to move on with her life without you.”

  Thinking about Kinlee having a life without me . . . with someone else, was enough to make me want to punch Brody for suggesting it. I’d been in love with that girl since I was five years old, I’d been doing everything to make sure my life consisted of us together. I wasn’t about to let seventeen years go out the window, and I wasn’t about to let Kinlee have the option of finding someone else. She was mine.

  Forcing my brother out of the booth, I glared at him and stepped close. “Kinlee’s life is, and will only ever be, with me.”

  “Then get your ass in the fucking truck, and go fix it.”

  I was already running out of the bar and fumbling for my keys before he could finish his demand.

  Tearing out of the parking lot, I raced all the way home. My phone went off when I was less than a minute away, and already knowing who it would be, I answered it without looking. “Kinlee—”

  “Jace! Oh my God, please—”

  “Kinlee”—I spoke over her—“a year and a half ago, I took you out to one of your dad’s orchards, and walked you to the exact same spot where we’d spent part of our first date. The same spot where I’d touched you for the first time months before. The same spot where you’d first told me you loved me a year before that.” She’d stopped talking, but I could still hear her muffled sobs. “I told you how much you meant to me, how much I loved you, and how I knew I couldn’t live my life without you by my side. I promised to take care of you for the rest of our lives, and I promised to spend the next seventy years beside you.”

  By that time, I was standing in front of our apartment door. Pausing to push the key into the lock, I heard her breathing hitch, and pulled the door open. Kinlee was scrambling off the couch, dressed in nothing but one of my shirts, and when she paused a dozen feet away from me, I took slow steps toward her as I continued talking.

  “I can’t keep those promises if you push me away. And I sure as shit can’t keep them if you suddenly stop trusting me.” Grabbing the phone from her hand, I ended our call and dropped our phones, not bothering to make sure they hadn’t broken when they’d hit the hardwood. Cupping her cheeks in my hands, I pressed my body close to hers, and lowered my head at the same time I tilted her face back so I could look in her water-filled eyes. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No.”

  “Do you honestly think I would ever cheat on you?”

  Her body tried to hunch in on itself, but I kept her straight. “No,” she sobbed. “Never, I’m so, so sorry.”

  Bending down until my lips were hovering over hers, I kept my eyes locked on hers as I asked, “Do you still want to marry me?”

  “Yes! Ja—”

  I slammed my mouth down onto hers, and walked us back until we hit a wall. Running my hands up her bare legs, I grunted my aggravation when I hit the cotton of her underwear, and ripped them down her legs, waiting for her to step out of them before I ran my fingers over her clit.

  “Jace,” she whimpered, and her hands went to the button on my pants.

  Pressing two fingers into her, I realized, in some part of my mind, that this was probably the wrong reaction. To claim her after our fight. We should be talking it out, but I didn’t have the patience for that yet. I needed her, I needed to make her mine again, and that couldn’t wait. Circling her clit with
my thumb, I growled against her mouth when I felt her already tightening against me; and the second she had my pants and boxer briefs down, I was lifting her against the wall and slamming into her.

  She screamed as her body instantly exploded into an orgasm, and to my embarrassment, I didn’t know how long I could last. The adrenaline from fighting earlier, the need to show both of us that she belonged to me, the way she clenched around me as her body shook with the aftershocks of her orgasm was enough to make this like our first time all over again. But as I pushed into her again and again, my body tightening to the point of pain before I followed her with my own release, I knew I was now a fan of makeup sex.

  And I was ready to go again. But now that my head was somewhat clear, I knew we had to talk.

  Without releasing her, I walked us into our bedroom, and laid us down on our bed.

  Fear exploded through my body when I realized she was shaking and crying silently. “Kinlee—oh God. Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry,” I whispered and ran my hands over her wet cheeks.

  Shaking her head, she grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands from her face as she sat up on the bed. “I can’t—I can’t do this. I can’t do this to you.”

  “What? Kinlee, no! Don’t say that, whatever happened earlier, we’ll talk it out, we’re going to be fine.” She just said she still wanted to marry me! What the hell?

  “No, no we won’t! You don’t understand, Jace! I-I can’t—” she cut off quickly, bursting into loud, strained sobs and she curled over her naked body. Her head pressed against the bed, her back really the only part of her I could see.

  “Baby, please, you’re scaring the shit out of me. Whatever it is, I swear to you we’ll work through it.”

  I sat there, watching helplessly as she cried, and minutes later, all I heard was “I can’t give you children.”

  My body froze. How many times had we talked about kids? We’d had our whole family planned out for years. Was she saying she didn’t want that now?