Page 79 of Devoured By You
I pulled her down for a kiss, sliding my tongue between her lips. Hot damn. I’d forgotten what it was like to kiss her, to taste her. My cock stirred, as desperate for intimacy as I was. A groan rumbled through my chest, and I shifted her until her ass was right on top of my dick.
“Grind on me. Let me feel you.” I kissed down the column of her neck, returning to her lips once more. She made this sound in the back of her throat, half moan, half sob.
“I’ve missed you.” Her breath hitched on the words, as if she expected a harsh rebuke.
I hated myself.
“I’ve missed you. And I’m so sorry, Tilly. So fucking sorry. It’s just—”
She placed two fingers over my lips. “No apologies. If I were in your position—”
“You’d have behaved with a lot more decorum and a lot less attitude.”
She smiled. “None of us know how we’re going to behave in a given situation.” She kissed me this time, slipping both hands around the back of my neck, playing with my hair that desperately needed a cut.
“We should go.” I reluctantly let her get up. “Traffic in Miami is murder this time of day.”
“Are you excited?”
I grimaced. “Nervous.”
“It’ll be fine.”
It was a saying, I knew that, but the flippancy of it—a flippancy Jill would not mean—irked me, and I scowled, the words spilling before I could check myself.
“How the fuck would you know?”
Her happiness melted faster than an ice cream in July. She moved behind me, pushing me through the door without saying a word. You fuckwit. If I could kick myself in the ass, I would.
“Jill.”
“Don’t. Let’s just get there without taking chunks out of one another, okay?”
I fell into silence, hoisting myself into the car with the help of my nurse and my driver. Jill stood off to one side, staring into the distance. I despised how weak I was, how helpless. Loathed how the selfish part of me clung to a woman that a better man than me would let go. My thoughts on me and Jill swung from one extreme to the other on an hourly basis. Sometimes, the thought of being without her physically pained me. At other times, I suffocated under her attention, doubting the longevity of our relationship under such trying circumstances.
Maybe once I got this damn leg fitted and rediscovered a sliver of independence, I might settle on one side of the argument. At this point, it was anyone’s guess, including mine, which side I’d fall on.
Jill was such a free spirit, a creative wonder whose immense skills would dull tied to a belligerent cripple like me. It was kinder to let her go. I had such a long road ahead of me, not only for my recovery but also for the work involved in trying to save a company my father had built from nothing that I’d single-handedly wounded, if not damaged irreparably. It would take months of PR work to get customers to trust in the brand again. Cruising was a competitive industry with infinite choices for passengers, and a story like this one took a long time to fade from people’s memories.
Dad had purposely kept the truth of our employee’s involvement out of the media, heaping all the focus on Jeremy and the shooter, both now incarcerated and awaiting trial. I appreciated why he’d done it, and it had certainly helped the narrative of what had occurred not being the fault of Kingcaid Cruises, but I knew. And a need so entrenched in every cell in my body urged me to be the one to fix the mess I’d caused.
That, and the physio to recover my mobility, would take all of my attention for the next several months. Was it fair to expect Jill to put her life on hold for mine?
I wasn’t sure yet. But when I found the answer, then I’d know what to do.
Flanked by Jill and Mara, I arrived at the doctor’s office five minutes before my appointment time. A nurse took me straight through, and after the niceties were over, the doctor and the prosthetist got to work.
Two hours later, I hobbled out of the doctor’s office, on crutches but upright. I could barely keep the smile off my face. Just to look down at Jill instead of craning my neck to look up at her from that goddamn wheelchair gave an enormous boost to my mood. The journey home could not have had a more different atmosphere than the one coming here. Sometimes, my mood changes gave me whiplash, so Christ only knew what they did to Jill. She probably needed months of treatment from an osteopath to fix the problems with her neck.
As I got home, however, my stump throbbed from where they’d messed about with it, fitting, adjusting, removing, and refitting the prosthetic. I swallowed a couple of painkillers and excused myself, retiring to my bedroom on the first floor. I flopped onto the bed, dropping the crutches on the floor with a thud. The prosthetist had warned me of some pain, but this was fucking agony.
My mood dipped so low from such a high that I questioned whether I was bipolar. It would certainly explain a lot. Surely it wasn’t normal to flip-flop to this extent?
I sent a message to Dad, updating him and informing him of my decision to return to work tomorrow. I didn’t want to wait a second longer to restart my life. The leg was step one. Getting back into the swing of things was step two. I followed that up with a message to my assistant, who replied with a row of thumbs up and a heart emoji, which etched a smile on my face.
A tap came on the door and Jill entered, her steps tentative. “I thought you might want a drink.”
“Whiskey?” I gave her a lopsided grin.