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

by Jackson, A. L.

  She moaned a needy sound.

  My dick pressed painfully at my pants.

  It took everything I had not to rip off my belt and do exactly what I’d warned. Bend her over my desk and take her from behind. Take her lush cheeks in my hands as I drove into her.

  Hard and possessive.

  That was what I felt.

  Possessive.

  This girl mine.

  I wanted to own her.

  Take her.

  Keep her.

  Deeper.

  More.

  “More,” she whimpered like she was a partner to every single thing I was feeling, to every thought, and I was watching her face, tugging her back by the hair as I drove the girl wild.

  Her eyes were doing that mystical thing.

  Drugging me.

  Or maybe it was me who was drugging her.

  Because she was grinding on my hand, ass barely hanging from the edge of the chair, desperate to get closer. Her head started to shake back and forth as she tried to make sense of what I was doing.

  Energy flashed, and her entire body tightened. The woman rode the razor-sharp edge of pleasure. One I got the sense that she wanted to cling to forever.

  “You want me everywhere, don’t you, Angel Girl? Would you let me take you? Take every single thing that I want?”

  “Yes.”

  I flicked my thumb over her clit.

  It was instant. The way I felt her shatter.

  Spasms rocked through her body.

  Her pleasure in my hand.

  Pooling and throbbing and speeding.

  She curled her fingers into my hair, yanking hard, a scream locked in her throat. I ran my lips over it, across the vibration that blazed under the soft, delicate flesh, silently commanding her to keep it bottled and contained.

  She rode on that ecstasy, tiny whimpers slipping from her mouth while all the wicked things I wanted to do to her welled up to feel like something precious that I held in my hands.

  Like it would be okay to sink into her.

  Claim her as mine.

  And I knew I was losing it.

  The way I had the intense urge to kiss her. Hold her. Promise her it would all be okay.

  Instead, I slipped out of her body while I promised myself this could never happen again.

  I lifted my hand and sucked my fingers into my mouth.

  All fucking woman on the tip of my tongue.

  “One last taste.” It was a warning and a growl, and Grace was watching me as the shock of what I’d just done to her came crashing down.

  She tried to gather herself, drawing in a bunch of breaths as she quickly fumbled to readjust her clothes. “I . . . I . . .” She stuttered, looking everywhere, maybe for an escape. “I need—”

  I grabbed her by the chin, running the thumb I’d just had on her body across her lip.

  She emitted a tiny groan when I dipped it inside and pressed it to her tongue.

  “Shh,” I told her. “I won’t do that again. I just . . . needed to touch you one last time.”

  She could barely nod, but those eyes went soft in a sad sort of surrender, the words choked when they floated out in the inch of space that separated us. “You could wreck me, Ian Jacobs.”

  I brushed my fingers through her hair. “Too late, Angel Girl. I think it’s you who’s already wrecked me.”

  Twenty-Two

  Grace

  “Jammies!” Sophie grinned her sweet, sweet smile as I pulled her nightgown over her head, her snow-white hair sticking up with static electricity as I situated it over her tiny body. She pressed her hands to her chubby belly and jumped, giggling as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

  I poked her belly where she was holding it.

  “Are these Sophie’s favorite pajamas?” I asked her, voice twisted in close to a song.

  “Pink horsie!” She giggled again, the sweetness that rolled from her expanding my heart.

  So big it sometimes made it hard to breathe.

  Mallory shook her head from where she was on the floor dragging our storybook out from under her bed. “It’s not a pink horse, Silly Sophie. It’s a unicorn. Unicorns are magic and horses have no magic and you’ve got to know the difference because it’s a big one.”

  Sophie giggled again and galloped around the small room. “Horsie!”

  Mallory sighed and held her head in both of her hands, looking at me as if she were an adult and I would totally understand. “Hopeless.”

  I tried not to laugh, but there was no stopping it. Not after I’d carried around so many uncertainties throughout the day.

  My meeting with Ian had gone a direction I hadn’t anticipated.

  A direction we both knew it couldn’t.

  And still, it seemed as if there were no chance of stopping it. The overpowering connection that wrapped us in chains every time we were in the other’s space.

  The man felt so vitally important. As if my heart remembered how to fully beat when he was there, his touch safety and sanctuary and fire, the feelings he evoked in me too conflicted and at odds for my mind to make sense of it all.

  The only thing I knew was that we needed him.

  All of us.

  My children most.

  I knew he’d been put in my world for a reason. For a purpose. And that wasn’t for me to fall in love with him, even though I could feel pieces of myself continuing to slip, slivers carved away and given to him with every moment that passed.

  Thomas came into the room, dressed in sweat pants and his hair wet from his shower.

  “Did you brush your teeth?” I asked.

  He rolled his eyes.

  At least there was that.

  “I’m not a baby, Mom.”

  “I know you aren’t a baby. But you’re my child, so that means I’m going to ask you if you brushed your teeth.”

  He huffed an irritated sound as he went to sit at the edge of his twin bed. “You’ll probably still be asking me when I’m thirteen.”

  “Thirteen,” I gasped, as if what he said was an atrocity. From where I’d been on the floor, I scrambled for him on my hands and knees. I started tickling his sides. “Thirteen? I’ll be asking you if you brushed your teeth when you’re thirty!”

  He tried not to laugh, but then he rolled onto his back on his bed, trying to fight me and cracking up at the same time. “Stop it, Mom. You’re crazy. I’m . . . I’m going to move away and change my name and my number, and you can never ask me if I brushed my teeth again.”

  I tickled him harder. “And I will find you. You can’t get away from me!”

  Sophie and Mallory jumped up and down.

  “Get him, Mommy!” Mallory shouted.

  “Get him, get him!” Sophie parroted, clapping her little hands and laughing more.

  “You’ll never catch me,” Thomas shouted, wiggling and laughing.

  “You’re the crazy one, Thomas! We got the magic and we will find you.” Mallory climbed onto his bed, shouting it at his face where she was on her knees looking down at him from over his head.

  It was almost too much.

  The way love and adoration and devotion poured free.

  Taking everything over.

  My voice softened to wistfulness, and I stopped tickling my son so I could run a hand over his damp hair. “I will always find you. No matter where you go. All of you.”

  It was a promise.

  A promise that we would all be together. No matter what that took.

  Thomas sobered, and Mallory climbed off his bed and opened our picture book, wanting to continue our story the way we did each night.

  “What’s this?” Mallory asked, waving a piece of paper in the air that she’d found pressed between the pages.

  The smile I was wearing slid off my face, horror taking its place.

  Heart crumbling.

  Spirit failing.

  Oh God.

  My trembling fingers ran over it.

  It was a crude image of the maz
e near the castle.

  But that was where the similarities of our story ended.

  Because the prince and princesses and the handmaiden had been slain, the king standing over them holding a knife that dripped with blood.

  A lump locked in my throat. I looked at my son who was now hunched over on the side of his bed, hanging his head in shame.

  “Thomas,” I whispered, touching his knee and urging him to look at me. “What is this?”

  Tears filled his eyes. “What if there isn’t really magic? What if this is the way our story ends?”

  “I won’t ever let anyone hurt you. Do you think—”

  He shook his head, and frustration bled out in his voice. “What if we don’t get to leave? What if we have to stay there forever?”

  And I realized this drawing was his own metaphor. The idea that Reed held the ultimate power.

  “Nuh-uh, no way, we got a hero now and we don’t have nothing to worry about because he’s going to save us and we’re going to get free and fly away on our unicorns. Ian-Zian the Great to the rescue!”

  Mallory was pointing at the picture she’d had me help her draw last night after Ian had left. When he’d walked out of our house and left it brimming with hope.

  I should have known it would be my worrying little man who would have all the questions. The one who’d toss in his sleep and contemplate the way everything could go bad.

  I took his hand and pulled him off his bed. I didn’t care that he was nine, and he thought he needed to be a man. I tucked him close to my chest, held him even harder. Sophie hopped over and climbed into my other arm, and Mallory threw herself onto my back, wrapping her thin arms around all of us.

  I drew them all as close as I could get them, the words emphatic as I let the promises permeate the room. “I won’t let you go. I won’t let any of you go. You are my babies. You are my life. You are the reason I live. The reason I breathe. And I will live every breath that I have for you.”

  It didn’t matter what the circumstances were or how powerful Reed might be.

  I had to have faith that everything would turn out right.

  We belonged together, and there was no power in this world that could change that.

  Especially when we had our hero fighting for us.

  Twenty-Three

  Ian

  “What the fuck is this?” Lawrence tossed the newspaper onto his desk.

  I wanted to tell him that no one still unwrapped a newspaper and read that shit, but the fact this was splashed all over the online news media and was getting special broadcast time on about every news channel in the state made the point moot.

  Flippantly, I flicked it back toward him. “Don’t tell me you had me come all the way over here because you wanted to ask me about my new client.”

  He pitched forward. “Drop it.”

  Incredulous laughter rocked out of me. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Drop the case. Give it to someone else. I don’t care. I don’t want you anywhere near it.”

  My head shook. “I’m not sure how you think you have any say in the clients I take.”

  “I do when they’re this high profile. You can’t be drawing attention to yourself. People look too deeply into you, and they will see more than I want them to. Do you really think I want you associated in any way with a man as powerful as Reed Dearborne? It’s suicide.”

  I didn’t know if he meant that in the literal or figurative sense. With the way he was looking at me, it was literal. But clearly, the only thing the asshole gave a shit about was how it might affect him.

  More laughter.

  This time scornful.

  All of it directed at myself. It was my fault I’d let this asshole exert so much control over me for all these years. Thinking I’d owed him something when he’d clearly only been using me.

  Venom screamed through my veins. So harsh and hard that I’d put down bets he could feel it spurting from my pores.

  I set my palms on his desk and leaned toward him, voice dipping in menace. “Let’s make one thing clear, old man. You don’t own me. I will take on whatever case I choose, and you don’t have a say in it. Do you understand me?”

  Especially when it came to Grace.

  Grace.

  Bastard laughed and shook his head. “You really are clueless, aren’t you, Ian?”

  One of those old-school intercoms squeaked on his desk, and he pushed the button to answer it. “Yes, Mimi?”

  “Sir, you have a delivery you need to sign for.”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  He pushed to standing, his glare clearly ordering me to stay put as he moved out his door.

  The second he did, I was around his desk and punching the code into his computer.

  Needing . . . something. I didn’t fucking know what. I just wanted more. More than what I was involved in because without a doubt that shady shit went deep.

  Something big and ugly.

  If the asshole thought he was going to push me? Guess-fucking-what? I was going to push right back.

  Hard.

  My fingers quickly clicked over the keyboard.

  The guy had a system and was meticulous.

  Luckily, I’d spent my life being privy to it. The eight-digit password wasn’t that hard to decode.

  I hacked into his computer in a flash. I started clicking and moving. Eyes darting and gathering anything I possibly could. There was nothing that really stood out that I didn’t already know about.

  Then my heart rate spiked when I popped open a minimized file.

  It was code. Not quite making sense. Which told me I’d stumbled upon exactly what I’d been looking for. It wasn’t like the dirtbag was going to have “Illegal activities” stamped on the top of the file.

  The document was a list of addresses, and there was another file with names.

  All female.

  I blinked at it, mind whirring as I struggled to add up when it meant.

  I could hear Lawrence’s low voice echoing from out front, and I fumbled to pull my phone out of my pocket and snapped a couple pics.

  Footsteps came closer and closer, his voice drawing nearer as he shouted something at his secretary like the asshole he was.

  Shit.

  I was running out of time.

  Breaths turning hard, I clicked through the documents, minimizing them both and putting his computer back into sleep mode, all but jumping over his desk and onto the other side by the time Lawrence pushed back through his door, carrying a flat overnight envelope.

  My pulse raced like a bitch, the close call a little too close for my taste.

  He moved back around to his executive chair, sighing out a contented sound as he rocked back in it. He tossed the envelope carelessly onto his desk.

  “You want to make things clear, Ian? Fine. Know this. I could take you down with a snap of my fingers. I own you. I’ve owned you since the second you started working for me. I have always owned you. You just didn’t know it.”

  My head cocked. “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  I planted my hands back on his desk, leaning over far enough that I could get in his face. “Then you can take this as my resignation.”

  * * *

  The address stared back at me.

  It was in the middle of the others. Nothing special about it except for the fact that it was so goddamned important to me.

  One I’d never forget.

  One that I couldn’t help but move toward, drawn back to a memory that I wanted to slay.

  A stone sank to the pit of my stomach as I got deeper into the city, buildings becoming shoddier and the characters walking the sidewalks and loitering at the end of the alleys growing shadier.

  Could almost taste the despair and despondency in the air.

  Memories slammed me.

  Heavy and vile.

  I’d sworn to myself I’d never come down here again. That I’d outrun the poverty and depravity. That never again w
ould I be looked at like I was trash.

  Worthless.

  Scum.

  Hungry and begging.

  Emotion raced my throat as I made a left and then a right.

  My last memories as a boy sped up to meet me.

  Rushing.

  Hitting me head on.

  I slowed as I approached the old building, and part of me wanted to ram on the accelerator and get the fuck out of there before I was taken back to that time.

  A hostage.

  A prisoner.

  Instead, I forced myself to slow, and I cracked the window of my car, which was so out of place that people kept turning their heads, distrust in their postures as they stopped in their tracks to watch me drive by.

  The sounds of the inner city came at me in waves. A baby crying and a woman shouting. Music thumping and a fight down the street.

  Maybe it was shock I felt when I came to a stop at the address in front of the rundown building where everything had changed.

  Where my life as I had known it had come to an end.

  This was where I’d become someone else.

  This was where I’d become a man.

  A man who had chosen to take what he wanted for his life rather than a boy who had scrounged for any scraps he could find.

  A fire burned in my eyes and raced my throat.

  I fought the sensation because it made me fucking weak.

  My hands clamped down on the steering wheel and sweat poured from my brow when I saw the three women stumble out of the building. It was early, but I guess some jobs were never done.

  Men always breathed. Ready to degrade and take and overpower.

  Didn’t matter the time of the day.

  I squeezed my eyes closed. Like it could stop it. Staunch it. But it would never matter how far I went or how calloused I became or how many years had passed.

  She was always right there.

  My greatest sin.

  Treason and betrayal.

  Twenty-Four

  Grace

  “You have a walk-in haircut.”

  Melissa was smirking at me as she walked into the salon area from the front waiting room.