You saved me.
I know you don’t understand that, but you did, little sis. Finding out you were kidnapped and left naked in your bed destroys me. I would never let someone hurt you like that. Never. I want you to feel like I protect you. I will protect you, but I guess considering all that I have confessed, it’s important to add that I won’t disappoint you in the process. I made mistakes. I know this. I’m writing to beg for your forgiveness. I’m writing because I miss my sister. Because we’re family like mom and dad never understood family. I need you. I fear who I’ll become without you.
Love your big brother,
Chance
Tears are streaming down my face as I set the card down and dig my borrowed phone from my pocket. There is no hesitation in me as I dial Chance’s number, only hope. “Chance Knight,” he answers. Thank God, he answers.
“It’s me. I never found my phone and MacBook, which I guess I should be worried about for work reasons, but—”
“Work is not important right now,” he says. “You got the card?”
“Yes,” I whisper, the thrum of emotions playing on my heart. “It made me cry.”
“See, the last thing I want is to make you cry, sis.”
“Good cry. Don’t make me bad cry. I’m still mad at you. In fact, I’m furious.”
“I know. I deserve that. I handled all of this like a prick.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “You really did.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice a low, rough timbre. “I’m sorry.”
“I know. That matters. Do I accept your apology? Yes. Can I deal with needing another one like this ever again? No, Chance. I can’t.”
“You won’t have to. Can we have dinner? Tonight? Or tomorrow night? Whatever you feel up to. I can come to the hotel. Or we can have coffee and then dinner with Jax. You love him. I need to work this out with him.”
“I’ll talk to Jax. Let me call you back.”
“Okay. Yeah. Call me back.”
I disconnect and walk back to the dining room, where Jax and Savage now have papers all over the shiny walnut surface of the table. “How’s it going?” I ask.
Jax’s gaze jerks to mine, his pale blue eyes scanning my face, concern etched in their depths. “How’s it going for you?”
“Better than expected,” I say. “Can we talk?”
“She means without me,” Savage chimes in. “Good thing I’m not one of those little bitch sensitive guys.” He glances back at me. “I even have a new phone and MacBook headed your way, and you still oust me. No love, no love.”
“Thank you for the phone and MacBook,” I say, as Jax stands up and heads in my direction, all long-legged swagger and intensity. I love it. I love him.
“Where do you want me?” he asks when he steps in front of me.
I bite my bottom lip and consider that truly loaded question. I want him back on the bed and naked. But alas, now is not that time. Thank you, Savage and Chance. Jax’s hands, those perfect hands that I want all over my body, press to my waist and he leans in close. “If you keep looking at me like that, you’ll get Savage kicked out.”
I laugh and catch his hand. “This way.” I turn and lead him into the living room and set him on the couch. I then sit down on the coffee table in front of him.
He catches my hands and plants them on his muscular thighs, his hands on mine, and the scorching look I’m now prisoner to says that he wants me to climb on his lap, right here, right now. And, oh, how I want to climb on his lap right here, right now. “I can send him away.”
“Not yet,” I whisper. “I need you to read the card.”
He arches a brow. “You want me to read the card?”
“I need you and him in my life, Jax. So yes. Please read the card.” I untangle my hands from his and grab it from the table next to me, offering it to him for his taking.
He glances at it and then me. “Are you sure about this?”
“Very.” I press it into his hand. “Read.” I then stand up and walk to the chair Savage sat in earlier, where I can watch his face and read his reaction.
He opens the card and pulls out the letter, spreading it to full size. His gaze finds mine. “You’re sure?”
“Read, Jax.”
He shifts his attention back to the letter, his chiseled jaw set hard, a muscle-flexing back and forth. Gripping the chair, I wait for the softening effect, but it doesn’t come. He is hard. He is unemotional. He inhales sharply and then folds the letter back up and stuffs it in the envelope before he sets it on the table. And when his eyes meet mine, they are filled with judgment intended for Chance.
“He’s going to have to prove every word of that to me.”
That’s not full rejection, and I grab onto that. “He wants to have coffee with me and dinner with us. What do you think?”
He taps the fingers of both of his hands together, and I swear he’s going to break his jaw bone if he clenches it any tighter. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I ask tentatively.
“Yes, baby. I need to make peace with your brother but prepare him that I may have questions after going through these files. I’m not going to sit across from him and bite them back.”
Fighting a smile at his tough act, I scrape my bottom lip with my teeth and push out of the chair, stepping in front of him. My hands settle on his shoulders, and this time, I climb right on his lap. Still, he remains all steely hard man, and I do like a steely hard man.
“Have I told you,” I say, wrapping my arms around his neck and remembering something he said to me just last week, “how much I like your ass?”
He gives me a serious look, or at least he tries. A deep rumble of laughter escapes his throat, and he catches my hair and pulls my mouth to his.
“Hey there!” Savage yells out. “You’re in mixed company right now.”
“I think you should leave, Savage,” Jax says and then drags my mouth to his, a deep swipe of his tongue drawing a moan from my lips that I cannot contain.
Savage grumbles something and then stomps across the room. Jax and I both laugh now. “You were determined to get him kicked out.” The door opens and shuts. Jax picks me up and starts walking to the bedroom where I plan to do what I’d wanted to do before I slept: rip his clothes off and have my way with him.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Jax
We don’t even make it to the bed. That’s how much I crave this woman; how much I hunger for a taste of her. That’s how she ends up against the bedroom wall, my cock thick and hard pressed against her belly, my hands all over her body. My tongue stroking deep and long; a lick, a stroke, a caress, repeat, all right here, right now. Her raspy breathing in between those things, nothing but a fire in my veins that has me stripping her naked with rough, impatient hands. My teeth and lips finding soft skin with a nip and a soothe, here and there. My fingers dragging along her nipple, my hand covering her breast.
She’s just as impatient as I am, tugging at my T-shirt, and when it’s gone, my waistband.
Fuck yes, is all I can say.
I’m back to kissing her as senseless as the taste of her makes me, and I don’t even care. Possessiveness swells inside me, and I cup her perfect little ass, that is now naked, thanks to a few quick moves, and mold her to me. “Mine,” I say, my cheek to her cheek, my lips to her ear. “You’re mine now. Say it.”
“Are you mine, Jax?”
The question burns with insecurity that I reject from her, jerking back to catch her face in my hand and tilt her gaze to mine. “Yes, Emma. I am yours. You are mine. Say it.”
“What happened to the man who didn’t even stay the night? He fucked and ran?”
“You happened, Emma. Just like the song, you hit me like a hurricane. Say it. I am yours and you are—”
“Yours, Jax. And the most amazing thing about you and me is that I’m more afraid of being without you than I am being with you.” Those words and the emotion trembling in her voice when she says them, speak of the hell t
hat York Waters and her father made her life.
If her father was alive, I’d kill him. York should be glad he’s in jail. “Emma—”
She pushes to her toes and brings her lips to mine. “Don’t you dare turn this into anything but us right now. And don’t you dare make me some damsel in distress. I did just fine without you. I just don’t want to be without you. Now, how about you kiss me again already?”
“There’s my hurricane,” I murmur, and then I do just what she asked. I kiss her again, and I kiss her with the force of the heavens above, kiss her with the force of a man who’d dive into the deepest of shark-infested seas for her, and come back alive just because she was waiting for me. Even though she’s right, she could handle those sharks just fine all by herself.
I pick her up and carry her to the bed, folding her close. “I’m going to kiss every part of you until you beg me to stop, Emma. And then I’m going to do it again.”
“We have a dinner date,” she says, curling her fingers on my chin. “Maybe you should just fuck me and then kiss me later?”
“Oh no, baby. That’s not how this happens.” I roll her to her back and nestle down low between her legs, my shoulders spreading her thighs wide. My lips caressing her belly, her body trembling with the kiss I place there. My fingers slide into the wet heat of her sex; she pants out a breath, and I lick her clit pinning her with a stare. “What were you saying about dinner?”
“I’m pretty sure I said we can be late.”
I laugh, a low, deep rumble, lowering my mouth as I do, the vibration sliding along her sex. A soft little purr of a sound escapes her lips, and I close my mouth down on her, suckling her deep. She rewards me with a low moan, and when I press two fingers inside her, she squirms beneath my mouth and grips the sheet, her sex dripping around my fingers. Yeah, baby, I think. This is where I want you. This is what you deserve. To be lost in pleasure. I want her to forget all of the damage that made her fear trusting and needing anyone before me.
I lick, tease, and stroke her sex, fingers pumping with her hips. My other hand caresses her belly, her breast, her leg. Soon, too soon, considering how much I want to keep her right here, just like this, she quakes beneath my tongue. Her sex spasming around my fingers, her body jerking with the force of her release. When I’m naked and holding her, pressing inside her, I do so with a vow I don’t keep to myself. “Taste you on my lips, baby, because I’m going fuck you so many right ways, every day of your life, Emma, that you forget everything but me.”
“I already have,” she whispers, but we both know that’s not true, which is why my answer is my lips on her lips, the salty-sweet taste of her release exploding between us, our bodies arching together. Her sweet floral scent teasing my nostrils, her silky hair twined in my fingers. Our dance is slow then fast. The burn in our bodies a simmer that becomes fire until we collapse together and Emma falls asleep in my arms.
Still feeling the effects of the drugs.
A flash of that mask and syringe Savage showed me in the photo flashes in my mind. It’s all I can do not to launch myself out of the bed in fight mode. Emma doesn’t need me to punch someone, though the fighter in me would really like to do just that. She needs me to go to this damn dinner with her brother.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Jax
Emma snuggles closer to me, only to have her stomach growl, a deep, loud rumble. “Well, I can’t sleep through that,” she laughs and rises up on her elbow to kiss me. “I’m going to call my brother.” She rolls off the bed and walks naked and sexy as hell to hunt down her clothes. “Eight for my coffee with him and nine for dinner?”
“That works,” I say, standing up and scooping up her bra to hand it to her, my gaze raking over her puckered nipples. “Put that on before we forget dinner.”
She smiles and presses her naked body against mine and actually wraps her palm around my cock that is now rock hard again. “None of this until we do that.” She releases me and twists away, taking her clothes and her perfect ass to the living room to dress.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m dressed and back at the dinner table with Savage across from me. I’ve just finished a hot points list to share with Emma and Savage when she enters the room and claims a seat. “Dinner’s set, and my coffee date is in an hour.”
I slide my list to the center of the table. “These are the questions we want answered from this paperwork before we start randomly hunting for what we don’t know is there but might want to know.”
Emma grabs the list and reads, “The will and the inheritance stipulations.”
“Got that,” Savage says, holding it up. “Chance’s story checks out. There’s a stupid clause about Emma and her mother inheriting only with the castle ownership in place.”
“Because my father’s an asshole.”
“That problem can be solved,” I say.
“No, Jax,” she says, and I grab her hand and kiss it. “He can sign the castle back to me sixty seconds after I sign it over to him. If I feel good about it over dinner, we’ll make it happen.”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s your money. I’m getting you your damn money.”
“It’s a shit ton of money, Emma,” Savage says. “Do you know how much?”
“I don’t want to know.” She goes to the next item on the list. “The DNA test.”
“Got that, too,” Savage says, and he holds up a folder. “There’s also proof that Hunter was being blackmailed and there are torn out journal entries that give details on the negotiations between Emma’s father and Hunter. It’s all tabbed out in this folder I have right here, all nice and organized with a labeled index.” He slides it across the table, and I open the folder, my heart thundering in my ears as I flip to the DNA test. And there the fuck it is. I glance up at Savage. “Can you confirm this is real?”
“I already shot a photo of it to my team. They’re hacking the records.” His cell phone buzzes with a text, and he glances at it and then me. “It’s real.”
The truth now exposed and confirmed seems to hang above the table and then lands like a bomb, that shakes me to the core.
“It’s all true,” I say, my eyes finding Emma’s. “Hunter wasn’t my full brother. He was being blackmailed by your father. And a small part of me dares, for the first time ever, to wonder if that might have been enough to make him jump.”
“No,” Emma says. “Hunter didn’t jump. We both know that and he deserves full closure. You deserve closure. And we’re going to get it.” She grabs one of the journals. “My father killed him. My mother isn’t smart enough to pull that off. My father’s dead, so we’ve acted like it couldn’t have been him. He did it. We’re going to prove it.”
I don’t tell her that Hunter served her father better dead than alive. I don’t know what to think anymore. I grab one of the journals and start reading. And it’s not a gentle read. I end up stuck on passages about my mother: She lied and said he wasn’t mine. He breathes because I breathe. What’s his is mine. The end. It’s clear that he means the whiskey operation. He means our brand. Her father was evil. She’s right about one thing. Her father could have killed a man and never blinked an eye. Perhaps even his own son. He gave him breath. Did he also take it away?
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Emma
The minute I step into the bar where Chance and I agreed to meet for coffee, we spot each other, and he’s on his feet. He stands there, watching me, gauging my mood, I think, looking Ken doll gorgeous, minus the blond hair, of course, in his khaki pants and a sweater. But the look on his handsome face is one of torment. I take a step toward him, and it’s like I’ve pulled his lever, given him a “go” sign perhaps.
He doesn’t wait for me to come to him, leaving the table behind where he’d been sitting to meet me halfway, he pulls me into a bear hug. “I love you, Bird Dog.” He pulls back to settle his hands on my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to say that again. Just don’t act like dad. You
’re better than that.”
“You’re right. I am. I want to talk about that.”
“What does that mean?”
“Let’s get you a coffee, and I’ll explain.”
A few minutes later, I have an Irish Coffee, the North brand of course, with whipped cream piled on top. Chance skips the coffee for straight whiskey. I guess we really are meeting for drinks, not coffee. “You sure you should be drinking?” Chance worries. “Weren’t you drugged?”
“Yes. It was—it is—scary. We don’t know who did it.” I lean closer. “If it was Randall, tell me. It will give me peace of mind to know no one is coming for me again.”
“I don’t know, sis. I confronted him. He denies it. I want the same peace of mind. You need protection.”
“Jax hired a bodyguard, but I can’t walk around with a bodyguard all my life.”
“Glad as fuck he did. For now, you have to have protection.”
“I know,” I agree. “I know.” I scoop up some whip cream and take a big bite.
Chance laughs and scoops a blotch of it from my nose. “Still my silly, wonderful sister. I hope Jax appreciates how wonderful you are.”
“He’s good to me. Please find a way to be family with him.”
“You really are going to move in with him?”
“I am. I’m not sure how we make that work for my career, but I’m doing this. I’m moving to Maine.”
“Work from home. Or don’t. Be happy. I think that’s what we should all get out of this story. That’s our ending.”
“And are you happy?”
He roughs up his brown hair and then takes a drink before he says, “I’m considering a merger with Bennett Enterprises.”
“I heard,” I say. “Why?”
“They’re ethical. They’re good people. I feel like there’s dirty water that dad left behind blasting out of the damn ocean and washing over me, and I can’t get clean. We need shelter from those things.”
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