by Paige Tyler
Not that she would have complained.
Tonight had been the most amazing evening she’d ever spent with a man. Jayden was charming, funny, easy to talk to, easy to look at, and smelled like heaven in a pair of blue jeans. And that voice? Holy cheese and crackers, it didn’t even matter what he said. Merely listening to his deep, rumbling tones turned her into one big, gooey puddle of contentment. Seriously. She’d gotten aroused listening to him tell her about blowing out his knee in college. Was that whack or what?
Selena dated now and then, when her commitment to her students gave her time, but to say she’d never been this crazy for a guy was an understatement. If it wasn’t for the fact that she’d felt like this from the second Jayden had walked in the door, she would have thought it was the wine talking.
No way. There wasn’t enough wine in the whole world to make her feel this good. This was sexual chemistry like she’d never experienced in her life.
Jayden leaned over and filled her wineglass before doing the same to his. Okay, it was official. He was absolutely perfect. At this rate, she’d be marrying him before the end of the week.
Though he tried to be casual about it, Selena noticed he had to adjust his jeans a little to get more comfortable as he leaned back on the couch. She didn’t mean to stare, but her attention was naturally drawn to the bulge in his pants. The sight of it—and everything her overactive imagination did with it—made her breath hitch. She might have been exaggerating about that whole marriage by the weekend thing, but getting Jayden naked by then might be a very real possibility.
She didn’t normally jump into things with a guy that quickly, but in this man’s case, she’d make an exception. Then again, there was something about Jayden that made her think he was going to have her doing all kinds of things she normally wouldn’t.
Selena picked up one of the plates and held it out to him.
“Cheesecake?” she asked, trying to distract herself by thinking of something other than Jayden sitting on her couch with no clothes on.
He took the plate, then loaded some of the rich, creamy dessert on his fork and tasted it. A moment later, she was treated to a moan similar to the one he’d let out at the SWAT compound when he’d eaten the brownies.
“Did you make this?” he asked.
She smiled. “I did.”
“Wow.” He ate another forkful. “You’re an amazing cook. Did your mom teach you?”
Selena supposed her mother did have something to do with her learning to cook, just not in the way Jayden was implying.
“Not really.” She took a bite of cheesecake. “I’m pretty much self-taught.”
Jayden regarded her expectantly, like he was waiting for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, he frowned. “I hope this doesn’t come off like I’m trying to interrogate you or anything, but is there a reason you don’t like talking about yourself? I kind of noticed I’m the one doing most of the sharing here. Not that I don’t like talking about myself, but I’d like to learn a little about you, too.”
Selena ran her fork over the fluffy sides of the cheesecake, making ridges there. She didn’t know why she was being her normal cagey self. It wasn’t like he couldn’t learn anything about her past he wanted. He was a cop after all.
“I don’t mind sharing,” she murmured. “I just usually don’t talk about my family. There’s not a lot of good stuff to say, especially to someone in law enforcement.”
Jayden seemed to somehow understand what she was saying and didn’t take offense. But she hadn’t expected that he would.
“My dad was into all kinds of drugs and gang crap before I was even born.” She ate another forkful of cheesecake. “He was in and out of prison when I was little, and by the time I was eight, he took off. Or he got murdered. Or Mom threw him out. I never really knew for sure, and my mom never told me. Regardless, she hung around for a while after that, but her heart just wasn’t in it.” Selena shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. She wasn’t a horrible mother. She simply wasn’t worried about trivial stuff like cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, or taking care of a little kid. Then one day, she went out to the store for cigarettes and didn’t come back. My grandma was around, but she was too old to take care of a kid full time, so my older brother—Geraldo—kind of picked up the slack. He was only six years older than me, but he pretty much raised me. He kept me fed and out of trouble, made sure I washed behind my ears, and helped with my homework, even though he was lousy in school. Grandma made sure I went to church, and Geraldo took care of everything else.”
Jayden placed his empty plate on the coffee table. “Your brother sounds like a great guy.”
She smiled, feeling warm all over at the flood of memories. “Yeah, he was the best. Sort of a brother, best friend, mom, and dad, all rolled into one.”
“Was?” Jayden prodded gently.
Her smile faded as the good memories of Geraldo were replaced with ones that weren’t so good. “I loved my brother like crazy, but our parents were gone, and our grandma was older, and we needed money.”
“So he joined a gang,” Jayden surmised.
She nodded, taking another bite of cheesecake. It was creamy and sweet and her favorite thing to make. She’d made it for Geraldo all the time, even before she’d gotten the hang of baking, when she was never quite sure how it was going to turn out. He’d never complained, though.
“When I was younger, I didn’t think about where all the money was coming from,” she said, focusing on the texture of the cake and not the words coming out of her mouth. Even now, after all these years, thinking about it could make her cry. And she seriously didn’t want to cry in front of Jayden. “But as I got older, I realized what the tattoos meant and who the people he talked to outside the apartment on the curb in the middle of the night were.”
“How old was he when he joined the gang?” Jayden asked.
“Sixteen,” she said. “He was big enough that most people wouldn’t mess with him. It also helped that he and Ernesto were best friends. Gangs talk a lot about loyalty, but what they usually mean is loyalty to the gang, not to each other. Ernesto and my brother were different. Nobody ever came between them, and they always had each other’s backs. They were senior lieutenants by the time I was seventeen, and pretty much running things.” She looked at Jayden. “Please don’t think I approved of what he was doing. I didn’t. But I loved my brother. I begged him to walk away from the gang. He never got the chance.”
“How did he die?” Jayden murmured.
Selena opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. Thinking about the day Ernesto had come to the apartment to tell her Geraldo was dead always made her sad. But more than that, it made her mad. Angry enough that sometimes she wished she’d been there with Ernesto that day so she could have fought to protect her brother like he had. She’d found that over time, the edge on the sadness grew dull. But the anger was always there, as sharp and painful as ever, even after all these years.
“A rival gang,” she finally said. “Ernesto has always spared me the details, but it came down to jealousy and greed. My brother had everything, and other people wanted it. During a supposed truce talk, a rival gang member shot my brother in the back. Ernesto was shot, too. Geraldo’s death was the last straw for him. He ended up getting out of the life a little while later so he could take over the role my brother had played. That’s how much Geraldo meant to him.”
“I’m sorry about your brother,” Jayden said quietly.
It should have been odd to hear a cop talk about being sorry about a gangbanger killed by other gangbangers, but Jayden was different.
“Thanks.” She placed her dessert dish on the coffee table, though she couldn’t remember when she’d finished it. “But like you said, it was a long time ago. Geraldo has been gone now for over ten years.”
“Ten years is a long time,” Jayden agreed. “But I’m guessing
you’re a lot like me, and there’s probably not a day that goes by without you thinking about him.”
Damn, this guy was good.
“True.” She sighed. “But to be honest, I try to avoid thinking about my brother.”
Jayden regarded her curiously, like she’d caught him by surprise. “Why don’t you like thinking about him?”
She shrugged. “Because for whatever reason, when I think about my brother, I get really furious.”
Jayden studied her for a long time, his smoky blue eyes drinking her in like he was reading her mind. “When you get mad, it’s not your brother’s memory that makes you angry. It’s the gangs that took him away from you.”
She wondered if he’d minored in psychology in college. “Am I that obvious? I hope not. I’ve always heard that women are supposed to be mysterious.”
He chuckled. “Don’t worry. Your feminine mystery is firmly intact. But I saw you in that classroom yesterday standing up to Pablo. I saw the anger in your face. It was the same expression you had just now, when you were telling me about your brother. Trust me, I get it. I know what it’s like to hate gangs and everything about them. But take it from someone who knows, you can’t keep letting it get to you. You need to find a way to let the hate go.”
Selena stared at him. She knew she’d said this to herself at least three or four times already tonight, but without a doubt, Jayden Brooks had to be the most amazing person she’d ever met. He’d known her for a few hours and was already reading her like a book.
“But how do you let it go when every time you go to work, it’s right there in your face?” she asked. “When you’re doing everything you can, and it doesn’t seem to help?”
“You talking about me being a cop or you being a teacher?”
“Is there a difference?”
Jayden considered that. “When I first became a cop, I thought I could somehow fix everything, that I could make the world a better place all by myself. But I was wrong. The world is too big for any one person to have an effect on. So these days, I focus on helping the person right in front of me. I save the world one person at a time. It’s that simple. Keep helping the students right in front of you, the ones who are willing to accept your help, one kid at a time, one day at a time. Stop trying to save the world, and be satisfied saving the people in it.”
Selena sat there, gawking at him like he was some kind of heavily muscled Adonis who’d magically shown up on her couch. “Seriously, how the hell are you still single?”
He chuckled, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. “Guess I haven’t met that one-in-a-billion yet. Any idea where I might find her?”
His laugh washed over her, provoking wicked electrical sparks that raced back and forth over her skin before ultimately finding their way to that spot between her legs usually reserved for the tip of her right middle finger—or her vibrator. Then she caught the look in his eyes as he essentially asked her if she was a one-in-a-billion kind of girl. That question—and the heat that followed—had her fighting a crazy urge to yank off her LBD, crawl across the couch, and take a seat in his lap. Because right then, Selena wanted to be his one-in-a-billion girl.
Selena was still thinking about how insane climbing in his lap would be when she felt something thick and solid pressing against the insides of her thighs. She looked down in confusion only to discover she was straddling Jayden’s lap, his hard bulge dangerously close to her throbbing pussy.
Oh, thank God, she was still wearing her dress!
She had no idea how she’d gotten to his side of the couch, much less how she’d gotten onto Jayden’s lap. She wasn’t bold with men, not by a long shot. Even in her wildest dreams, she couldn’t imagine doing something this out of control.
But then Selena looked down and saw Jayden gazing up at her, an expression on his face like she was some kind of angel from above, and she stopped caring about how she’d gotten here.
“I have no idea where you might find this one-in-a-billion woman you’re looking for, but maybe I can help you search,” she whispered, leaning closer.
Jayden gently cupped her face in his big hand. Then he smiled, and from this close up, she swore it was brighter than the sun. Even his eyes seemed to glint gold. But that was probably only a reflection of the colorful lights of the Christmas tree beside the couch.
“I’d appreciate the help,” he said softly. “If you’re not too busy.”
“I’m not busy at all,” she murmured as their lips came together with a zap.
Okay, there wasn’t really a zap. But she definitely felt the most delicious electric sensation that started right where their lips met and drifted out from there, warming her whole body. The feeling was so amazing, she moaned.
The sound was like a dam breaking, and suddenly they were both kissing each other like crazy. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, and his was right there to greet it. Tangling, teasing, exploring. The taste of his mouth was impossible to describe, but she found herself wanting more of it.
She felt his strong fingers in her hair, felt them tugging and tipping her head to the side, making it easier for Jayden to devour her. Selena couldn’t remember anybody ever tugging her hair before. Not since grade school anyway, and that situation had been completely different. Then, she’d hated it. Now, she absolutely loved it.
Jayden kept kissing her even as his free hand began to roam slowly down her back and across her hip until it reached her upper thigh. Her bare upper thigh. That’s when Selena realized that in her zeal to climb aboard the Jayden Brooks love train, the hem of her already short dress had gotten shoved up nearly to her waist. And when that big, warm hand of his made contact with the hypersensitive skin at the top of her leg just inches from the tiny pair of panties she wore, her heart began to beat like a drum, and she decided there was a very good chance she’d be getting him naked tonight.
Selena broke the kiss and sat back a little, needing to breathe. But more importantly, needing to get her mouth on other parts of this gorgeous man. The move pressed her panty-covered crotch firmly against the hard-on in his jeans, yanking something that sounded suspiciously like a hungry growl from her throat. Had she really growled? Who the hell did that while making out…besides her apparently? She was absolutely sure she’d never growled in her life.
She felt Jayden’s hand slip out of her hair, settling on her other bare thigh, his firm grip gently rocking her back and forth against him. Her whole body was pulsing like mad, but the throb between her legs was at a completely different level. She thought she might come simply from sitting on his lap. That shouldn’t be possible. But then again, she’d never gotten this crazy hot before.
“You are one beautiful woman,” Jayden breathed.
His eyes reflected the lights from the tree like nothing she’d ever seen, and the adoring expression on his face made her catch her breath. She couldn’t remember a man ever making her feel so sexy before.
She leaned forward slowly, her lips coming down for a moment on his before skirting to the side and tracing little kisses along his jawline to his ear. She buried her face there, nipping and biting his earlobe before doing the same along his neck. She was almost overwhelmed at how good he smelled…and tasted. She couldn’t get enough of him. It was like she wanted to eat him up.
As she nibbled, her fingers found the buttons of his shirt, undoing them from the top down until she’d exposed a good expanse of smooth muscular chest and broad shoulders. She couldn’t believe how aggressive she was, but she didn’t want to stop.
She wanted more…a lot more.
Selena pulled back again to look at him, swearing the dim living room had brightened around her as she gazed down at all that manly yumminess. But she ignored that impossibility, instead focusing on the feel of his thick pecs and traps under her fingertips as they skimmed here, there, and everywhere.
She nestled against the junction of his
neck and shoulder again, inhaling his scent as his fingers slid farther under her dress, encircling her waist and moving her against him. She licked and nipped at his neck, excited beyond belief.
Jayden groaned, a sound of such pure pleasure, Selena was nearly undone. All she was doing was sitting on his lap, but she knew without a doubt that it was enough to make him so aroused, he was practically losing his mind.
She had no idea why she did it, but right then, she wanted Jayden more than she’d ever wanted another man before in her life, in a way that was so completely different, she couldn’t come close to explaining, so she trailed kisses down to his big muscular shoulder…and bit him.
The sensation was…orgasmic. Her entire body lit on fire, and she swore she was experiencing some kind of climax, just not the one she was used to. It was amazing nonetheless, and she didn’t want it to stop.
Then sensations began to filter through her addled mind, distracting her from the pleasure of the moment. She felt Jayden tense, like he was having a climax of his own. She was thrilled at the idea until a metallic taste hit her tongue. The excitement she’d been feeling disappeared in a fuzzy poof.
Blood.
Selena pulled back and looked down in horror, her eyes going wide at the sight of four small puncture wounds on his shoulder, right where his trap muscles met his thick neck. While they were bad enough, it was the blood that really freaked her out.
“Oh, God! I bit you!” she cried. “You’re bleeding!”
She tried to climb off his lap, but Jayden’s hands tightened around her waist, keeping her right where she was. “Relax,” he said softly, his sensuous mouth curving into a smile. “It’s not a big deal.”