All of Me: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel

by Jackson, A. L.

  A motherfucking vision.

  “Ms. Dearborne,” he said, agitation lining his posture when he looked back at me as he held the door open for her, the guy sending me a clear and distinct warning.

  Don’t fuck this up.

  “Mr. Millstrom, it’s so nice to see you again,” she said as she moved into my office, standing on a pair of cream-colored heels.

  I tried to remain unaffected.

  To pretend like her standing there didn’t have me wanting to do crazy, crazy things.

  “I only wish I could say the same,” Kenneth muttered, not saying anything else as he stepped out and closed the door.

  Only thing that managed to do was shut me in with her presence. The feel of her a ripple through the room. She took a step forward, and then another, each one sending another shockwave through the air.

  Hammering into my chest.

  Blow after blow.

  She sat in one of the two chairs that were angled toward my desk, tucking her skirt under her legs as she crossed them at the knee. “Good morning, Mr. Jacobs.”

  I cleared the roughness from my throat.

  Everything raw and hard.

  Predominantly my dick.

  “Good morning, Ms. Dearborne.” Couldn’t keep the scorn out of my voice when I uttered that name.

  She let her teeth scrape over her plump bottom lip, the flesh slicked with something shiny and tinted the color of a plum.

  I was going to lose my head.

  “I trust you slept well.”

  Translation: I pictured you all night in your bed, touching yourself while you were thinking of me. Exactly like I did.

  “It was a little rough, honestly.”

  “I can only imagine.” There was an innuendo there. Something I couldn’t keep out of the words.

  “I’m . . . nervous,” she admitted.

  The anger returned. A vat of hostility poured into my already boiling blood. A chemical reaction.

  Possession and this protectiveness I couldn’t afford to feel. I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a white notepad.

  Grace smirked. “No pink today?’

  A soft chuckle rippled free when I thought of the whirlwind that was her child. The tornado that was her life.

  “Not today. I tend to go for a more . . . streamlined and organized look.”

  Maybe there was a warning there. That I couldn’t handle the chaos that was their lives. The noise and the love and the responsibility.

  My mind was already screaming that I’d taken on too much. But there was something about this girl that made me want to hold it all. Her world and her needs.

  God.

  I had to stop looking at her like she meant something to me.

  Not when she couldn’t mean anything.

  Not when there was so much at stake.

  I needed to put on armor. Put distance between us. Convince myself to treat this as just another case. If I didn’t, we were both going to lose, and that wasn’t a fate I would entertain.

  I cleared my throat. “Shall we get started, Ms. Dearborne?”

  “I think that would be a good idea.”

  “Why don’t you start by telling me how you first met Mr. Dearborne.”

  She hesitated for a moment, looking away, seeming to gather herself. “I was a freshman at The University of South Carolina. Reed was working on his masters. We met in the library of all places. He was older than me by six years. Good looking. Sweet. When he asked me for coffee that same night, I agreed. He was nice to me, and it was easy to fall into a relationship with him.”

  Every cell in my body tensed. On edge and unprepared.

  This was bad.

  So goddamned bad.

  I focused on taking notes rather than the urge to come unhinged.

  But the thought of her touching another man had something cutting me open wide.

  I’ve only been with two men.

  Her low laughter sounded of doubt. “I guessed I should have been wary when things started moving so quickly that I couldn’t keep up. One day, I was attending school, and the next, he was putting a ring on my finger and telling me he wanted to spend his life with me. It was only a couple of months after we’d met. I’d tried to convince myself that it was because he was older and more mature. That he was ready for things to progress faster than me.”

  Regret dimmed the light on her striking face. “I should have known I was nothing more than an easy target. A naïve girl who was blinded by his promises.”

  Her tongue darted out, glancing across the sticky sweetness on her lips. I couldn’t help but become fixated on the action. “It became clear pretty quickly that he had his life mapped out. He needed a wife. Someone to stand at his side and make him look like the perfect guy. The perfect husband and the perfect father. I think I was nothing but a diversion to cover who he really was. It kept people from digging deeper into his personal life.”

  Those eyes found mine over my desk. “I just wanted a regular family, and Reed wanted to rule the world. He was committed to doing absolutely anything he needed to do to achieve it.”

  I cringed, hating the idea that I could have one thing in common with that asshole.

  Her head minutely shook. “You asked me yesterday if I loved him, and I did. But it was never as deeply . . . as passionately . . . as it should have been. But that didn’t matter anyway because Reed had his own penchants.”

  My eyes tracked the way her delicate throat bobbed when she swallowed. “He’d be gone at all hours of the night . . .”

  A small hiccup climbed her throat, and tears blurred her eyes. “I’d been certain he was having an affair. I followed him once . . . and I . . . he was actually hooking up with a prostitute. I was shocked, but as time went on, I realized it went deeper than that. My gut screamed that he was crooked. Involved in things that he shouldn’t be. Our house full of whispers. All of his meetings carried out behind closed doors. Everything was a secret. He’d begun to threaten me. Trying to control my every move. Mold me into who he wanted me to be, and that was someone who kept her mouth shut and turned a blind eye.”

  She sucked in a shaky breath, twisting her fingers so tightly that they were turning white. “But that’s not me, Mr. Jacobs. It’s not me, and there was no way I was going to raise my two small children in that kind of environment. The problem was that I had no proof. I’d never seen anything solid. Reed made sure of that. But still, I knew. I knew.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” I told her, unable to keep my mouth shut when I knew I should. “That I don’t feel that in you?”

  “I need you to. I need you to believe I’d never willingly put my children in this situation.” She touched her chest like she wanted to offer me part of it. “The first time I left him, Thomas was four and Mallory was only a few months old. I left in the middle of the night while he was gone on a business trip.”

  My hand was moving across the sheet, taking down every detail, teeth grinding the whole time.

  Trying to convince myself it was just another case.

  Just another case.

  Her voice was shaking as she continued, words barely scraping free of her throat. “I’d gone to California, thinking if I got far enough away, he wouldn’t be able to find me, or maybe I was just hoping that he’d forget. Take it as an easy out. It only took him two days to track us down. It was the first time he . . .”

  Her words trailed off, and I felt the last piece of sanity slip.

  “Grace,” I whispered.

  She squeezed her eyes closed, gave a sharp shake of her head, and opened those gorgeous blue eyes to me. So deep and good, and I knew right then and there that I was drowning.

  “Let’s just say he forced me to go back with him. He told me I’d never see my children again if I didn’t. I relented, not because I was weak, but because I had no idea what else to do. No way to fight a family as powerful as his. I was a twenty-three-year-old girl who had a cosmetology license, which was a miracle he’
d even permitted me to get, with two children, and his family owned half of South Carolina. And he wasn’t exactly painting me in a pretty light. But I knew one day, one day I would find a way.”

  “God, Grace.”

  Her lips pinched, and she exhaled. “After that, I fought him every inch of the way. Refused to let him touch me, and he’d force me, anyway. I just kept praying he’d get tired enough of it that he’d let us go. Or, that I’d find proof. Something to hold over his head.”

  Disbelief shook her head. “And I still don’t know that I did, I went on a hunch, but what I found has been enough to scare him. Enough that he’s kept his distance. But I know that his pride is taking hits, and he’s about to crack.”

  My hand stilled over the notepad, voice too eager. “What did you find?”

  “He was always neurotically secretive about his office.” She bit out a scornful laugh. “We weren’t allowed inside. I had a gut feeling that if I could just get in there, I would find something . . . something to use against him. He’d left to Washington, and I was able to sneak in. I went through everything, thinking I had nothing, until I found a safe hidden behind a big picture.”

  Disbelief flashed through her expression. “I’d thought there was no chance I’d get into it, but he’d actually used the kids’ birthdates. I found . . . I found a picture. A picture that I knew meant something, even though I wasn’t sure of what. So, I took it, Mr. Jacobs. I took it.”

  She fumbled in her bag and pulled out an enlarged picture.

  She slid it across the desk to me.

  I picked it up, guts twisted up in a thousand knots when I saw what she’d found.

  It was shadowy and grainy as fuck, but I was ninety-nine percent sure it was Reed Dearborne down on the docks in the middle of the night, standing with his back to the camera, surrounded by a few men who I couldn’t make out.

  Large metal containers were being unloaded from a cargo ship. But it was the men facing the camera holding machine guns across their chests that had the breath punching from my lungs.

  My body shot forward as I tried to make sense of what Grace had found. “You . . .” I was barely able to look up at her. “You found this in his safe?”

  It wasn’t like I wasn’t well aware of the shady shit that went down at the docks. The mess my brother and his wife had gotten themselves into was proof of that. The cases I’d represented. The things I knew. Almost touching, but always on the fringes.

  But this?

  This could be a bombshell.

  My spirit shook. What was this bastard involved in?

  Terror ripped through her body when she nodded. “Yes . . . it was in a secret compartment at the bottom.”

  She started to rush, leaning forward, “This was why I said that I didn’t want to use it unless absolutely necessary. I don’t want my children involved in this. Honestly, I don’t even know what it means. All I know is that my having it is the only reason my children and I are still at my grandmother’s. I went there because I didn’t want him to think I was cowering or hiding. That I would face him out in the open. I . . . I told him I made a bunch of copies and, if anything happened to me, they were going to be sent to every news media outlet that I knew of.”

  “And he backed down?”

  She exhaled heavily. “I think it was the only reason he didn’t find a way to stop the divorce. He was scared. But over time, I think he’s come to believe I’m bluffing.”

  “Are you?” I challenged, not sure how far she would be willing to go. The danger something like this might pose.

  Nausea swirled through my guts, my mind riddled with what Thomas had told me he overheard.

  Bitches who don’t obey need to bleed.

  Her chin lifted, and she shifted, switching the legs she had crossed. My eyes got locked there, snagged on the motion.

  On all that smooth, silky skin.

  I could still feel it burning under my needy hands.

  I was slammed with it—a convulsion of lust.

  “I think you know by now that I will do whatever it takes to keep my children safe.”

  She dug back into the same bag that she’d pulled the folder from, the same one she’d come in with the other day. She started pulling out a wad of that cash.

  I flew out of my seat and was around my desk in a flash, sitting down on the edge of the chair next to her and shoving her hand back into the bag, my voice lowered to a hiss. “For the love of God, woman, put that money away. You think I don’t know where it came from?”

  And if it did come from where I was betting, there was no chance that piece of shit was going to let it go.

  Taken aback, she blinked at me. “We already discussed that this is just another case for you, Mr. Jacobs, and I know your services don’t come cheap.”

  “I’m not taking your money.”

  There I went again with the crazy talk. Seemed that, when it came to her, I couldn’t stop it from flying from my mouth.

  Still, that mangled, black spec in the middle of my chest was making the decision for me.

  Grace blew out a surprised breath. “Yes, you are, Mr. Jacobs. You’re taking this money, and you’re going to pretend you don’t know where it came from. I can’t sit here in good conscience and let you do this.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “Everything changed when you took me on as a client.”

  “Everything changed when I saw you sitting at that bar.”

  More craziness.

  Unstoppable.

  But no one had ever made me feel the way Grace did.

  I tucked the money back into the bag, reaching over her so I could zip the satchel closed. It brought us too near, her spirit dancing out from her flesh, the girl’s presence so profound I could feel it shaking through me.

  Our eyes locked, and I got lost there. In that deep, teal-blue ocean. The depths of her gaze unfathomable.

  Entrancing.

  “I’m taking this case on, pro bono.” My words lowered with the command, my lips moving two inches from hers while she watched me with some kind of awe and shock and horror.

  Our bodies were so close, I could physically feel every erratic beat of her heart. Could almost hear the swoosh of the blood thumping through her veins. Could taste the desire that came off her skin.

  “Mr. Jacobs.”

  I grabbed her by the back of the neck, hauling her to the edge of the chair, our noses touching. “Call me that again, and I’ll have you bent over my desk,” I warned.

  I’d lived all of my adult life in control.

  Self-control, that was.

  And this woman had single-handedly made me lose it.

  Gone.

  Obliterated.

  Threatening the most reckless of things. But the only thing I could see right then was the image of doing exactly that, bending her over that wood and pushing her skirt up over her ass. Maybe making it mine.

  What it might cost really didn’t seem to matter that much.

  A tremble rolled through her. Her lips parted, and her eyes darted to mine, and I knew she was contemplating her own wicked things.

  Pushing past all my boundaries.

  Climbing over my walls.

  Getting under my skin.

  My teeth nipped at her chin. Never before had I wanted to eat a girl up more than I wanted to devour Grace right then.

  She gasped, and her hands found my shoulders where they curled into the fabric of my suit jacket. “Mr. Jacobs.”

  Need rumbled in my chest. “You are begging for trouble, aren’t you, Grace?”

  I set my hand on her knee and ran it up the inside of her thigh.

  Parting her legs as I went.

  My other hand twisted up in that mass of blonde hair.

  What the fuck did I think I was doing?

  “What are you doing to me, Grace? I have no control when it comes to you. You make me want things I can’t have. Make me want to risk things I can’t risk.”

  Her fingers
dug deeper into my shoulders, words nothing but wisps of need against my face. “What do you want?”

  “I want you. I want to explore every inch of your body. Taste and lick and fuck.”

  I want to keep you.

  “I thought you said that couldn’t happen?” The question was nothing but jutting rasps from her mouth as my hand continued to slip higher beneath the fabric of her skirt. I played my fingertips across the damp material of her satin underwear.

  “It can’t.”

  The girl was on the edge of her chair, the same as I was. Her legs were parted only enough to allow me to run my fingers over her panties, lightly, where I caressed the line of her slit with each pass.

  Her legs were shaking so bad I was sure she couldn’t decide if she wanted to clamp them shut or spread them wider.

  We were nose to nose.

  Breath to breath.

  This woman the only thing I could see.

  Long legs and high heels and lusty pants.

  “Ian.”

  It was a plea.

  A question.

  She was asking for the answer to everything I didn’t understand myself. My tongue darted out to wet my dried lips, and I was sucking down her every exhale as I nudged the silky fabric aside and pushed two fingers into her pussy.

  Slowly.

  Deeply.

  A low moan rolled up her throat.

  I pressed my mouth there, up under her chin, kissing along the flesh of her trembling neck. “Shh,” I murmured. “Spread for me, baby. Let me make you feel good.”

  Her grip cinched down tighter as she opened for me, and I began to drive my fingers in and out of her sweet body, my fingers fucking her slow and hard and greedily.

  Coaxing all these little mewling sounds from her.

  I just wanted to make her lose her mind one more time. Exactly the way she was making me lose mine. I wanted to feel her come on my fingers. To know I could draw out her pleasure.

  See to it that she was wanting me just as desperately as I wanted her.

  She was so soft.

  So wet.

  So right.

  So perfect, I couldn’t help but tell her.

  “You have the sweetest cunt, Grace. Did you know that? Did you know I haven’t stopped dreaming about it since I had you? Do you know how many times I’ve fantasized about it? All the ways I’d take you if you were mine?”