Damaged (Crystal Brook Billionaires)

by Blake, Jessica

  “Got backed up at the airport. Didn’t I say I wouldn’t be here till five?”

  She pouted. “Yeah, but sometimes you’re early.”

  I straightened up. “I have something I want to show you.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Is it a surprise?”

  “If you don’t know about it, then I guess so,” I teased.

  “Let me guess. It’s a puppy.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Yes!” Kieran answered for her. “Either a golden retriever or a lab.”

  Gwen walked around the edge of the counter to the customers’ side. The second she got to me, I swept her up in my arms, lifting her off the ground. We kissed again, the action slightly more passionate than our last.

  She pulled herself from my arms. “All right, all right. I’m still at work you know.” She grinned, looking at me like it was all my fault. “So what’s this surprise you have for me?”

  I grabbed her hand. “Take a walk with me and I’ll show you.”

  We looped our arms together to walk down the block. Gwen chatted on, telling me about everything that had happened at the shop that week, Danny’s audition for a theater arts school in Georgia, and the boat Harry was trying to convince Susan he needed.

  “He says it will be an investment,” she laughed. “Though I don’t quite get how that’s possible, and neither does Mom.”

  I wondered if it would be too out of place for me to go ahead and just buy Harry a boat for Christmas. Then again, very soon he would, hopefully, be my future father-in-law. Certainly that would make a gift like that not seem too exorbitant.

  “Where are we going?” Gwen asked when we turned onto Frank Street.

  “You’ll see. What I want to show you is right up here.”

  She frowned slightly as we got further down the block, looking left and right at the houses. “I don’t get it.”

  A bit of nervous energy rippled through me, and I smiled, hoping the simple action would be enough to keep the anxiety in check. “You’ll see.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “See what?”

  I pointedly looked away, letting my eyes fall on the white picket fence we’d found ourselves in front of.

  “Oh,” Gwen said. “I love this house. Who lives here?”

  I looked at her in surprise. “You know this house?”

  She shrugged like it was no big deal. “Yeah of course. I grew up here, remember?” She chuckled. “I think I have the whole town memorized better than the back of my hand.”

  “No one lives here right now,” I told her.

  She looked back at the house. “It’s on the market? How do you know? There’s no sign out.”

  She kept looking at the house, studying the different windows and the bushes planted up against the walls. When realization dawned on her face, I watched it creep steadily across her features like the rising sun.

  She turned to me. “Wait… why did you bring me here?”

  Swallowing hard, I pushed a hand into my jacket pocket. “Do you remember that dream I told you about last year? The one about the house?”

  “Of course. I freaked out.” She grimaced. “Which was stupid. We almost didn’t end up together because of it.”

  “It’s okay. It was understandable.”

  She smiled shyly and ran her hand down my arm. “You’re always letting me get away with things.”

  “Only because you’re ridiculously cute,” I joked.

  “Well, thank you,” she grinned. “So what about that dream?”

  “This was the house.”

  She froze and stared up at me. “Wait… hold on. What?”

  “This was the house from the dream,” I repeated.

  One corner of her mouth twitched up. Either she was going to smile or freak out. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “I saw inside of it. It’s the house.”

  She looked up at me, her chocolate eyes softening even more. “So you really think that wasn’t a normal dream.”

  “I never really did.”

  “Wow,” she breathed, shaking her head. “It’s crazy, but I guess it’s possible. When did you go inside?”

  “Today. Right before I got you at Freddy’s.”

  “But if it was already sold…” Her words dropped away, being replaced instead by widening eyes. “Oh my God. Jason, did you buy this house? Are you moving to Crystal Brook?” She smiled wide, the grin stretching from ear to ear. “Well? Come on, are you?”

  Deep in my pocket, my fingers curled around the jewelry box. “I’d like to, but there’s only one reason for me to do so.”

  I pulled the box from my pocket, keeping my eyes on Gwen the whole time. She gasped when she saw the box. When I got to my knee and opened the top, she froze.

  “I want you to be my wife,” I told her.

  Maybe it wasn’t an eloquent or poetic proposal, but it spoke the simple truth. All I wanted in life was standing right in front of me — the girl, the home, the community that had felt like mine for nearly a year.

  “Bu-but what about New York? What about the company? You can’t just sell it. Can you?”

  “Claire and I have been talking about this for weeks. If you say yes, she’s going to run the office there, and I’ll work remotely. I don’t need to be in New York every single week. I can go there a couple times a month.”

  She spoke slowly. “So Claire’s promotion is riding on me saying yes?”

  I laughed. “She’s already promoted, whether you say yes or not, since the company has been growing. Although I’m really hoping you say yes.”

  Gwen laughed and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Get up, Jason,” she giggled. “Of course I’m going to say yes!”

  Laughing myself, I stood up and took the sparkling diamond from its case. Gwen held her hand out, and I slipped it on her left ring finger. It was the perfect fit. Claire had been right when she’d guessed her sister’s ring size was the same as hers.

  “Oh my God,” Gwen gasped, sounding like she was choking on the words. “We’re engaged!”

  A loud hooting and clapping came from somewhere nearby. We turned to see an old man across the street standing next to a giant leaf pile, holding a rake. Presumably, our soon to be neighbor had just watched the whole scene unfold.

  Gwen and I both laughed. I waved to the man, then wrapped my arms around Gwen, pulling her close.

  “Do you want to see inside?” I asked.

  Her eyes shone. “Uh, I’ll have to think about that.”

  I tickled her, and she laughed. Grabbing her hand, I led the way through the little gate. Using our brand new key, I let us in and proceeded to give Gwen the full tour. We ended upstairs, in the master bedroom overlooking the back yard.

  “Wow,” Gwen breathed, walking straight across the room to the wide double windows. She pressed her palm against the glass and gazed out.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked.

  She made a phony sour face at me. “Oh, it’s a dump. I don’t know what you were thinking, Jason Adler.”

  I laughed and pulled her close. “I was thinking of you, Gwen Adler.”

  I felt her shiver in my arms. “Wow,” she whispered. “I like that.”

  “Me too,” I murmured, nuzzling my nose against hers. “So you didn’t even notice that I already started moving things in.”

  She drew back slightly to stare at me. “Huh?”

  “I never got you the second half of last Christmas’ present.”

  She burst into laughter. “That’s true. You never did.”

  “Look right over there.”

  I moved to the side and let her see the video player. She laughed even harder.

  “I thought that might be a good spot,” I explained. “So now you can watch The Shining in bed.”

  She pushed herself closer to me. “It’ll probably freak me out, you know. I’m going to need someone there to comfort me.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that will be a problem.”

&nbs
p; I ran my palms down her back, relishing the dip right above her waist. She pressed closer, settling against the spot where I was tense and hard.

  “It’s a shame there’s no furniture in here yet,” she said.

  I played with the ends of her hair. “Who needs furniture?”

  She grinned at me mischievously, and I lowered my head for a kiss. She sighed into my mouth, filling me with her exhale and her sweetness.

  As we kissed, I took off my coat, dropping it on the smooth wood floor. Wrapping my arms around my new fiancée, I lowered her onto the fabric and settled myself right on top of her.

  “This is pretty dangerous,” she whispered.

  “Not as dangerous as the linen closet,” I pointed out between kisses on her throat.

  She laughed. “I almost forgot about that.”

  I silenced her with another kiss, pushing her lips open to run my tongue across her teeth. My dress shirt bunched in her hands and I shifted my weight forward, pressing down on the mound between her legs.

  Gwen sighed again. I felt her muscles relax underneath mine as I trailed my fingers over her hips and across her chest.

  I’d touched her body so many times I had come to know it better than my own, yet I never tired of having it beneath me; never went a day without craving the feel of her skin against mine.

  I slipped her jeans off, working them down her legs and ankles. Her core was soaking wet, throbbing with the need to be touched. Pushing her panties to the side, I slipped in first one finger, then another. She groaned, and I thrust deeper, feeling for the spot that would send her over the edge.

  Her fast and hot kisses covered my face, her lips landing first on my mouth, then my cheeks and jaw. I frantically kissed back, each movement of my mouth becoming a new way to worship her.

  She undid my belt and pulled out my dick, closing her hand around it. I groaned against her neck, then stretched up to nip at her earlobe. Her grip tightened around my length, sending a pulse of pleasure down it.

  Pulling my fingers out of her, I took both hands and spread her legs, pushing them as wide as they’d go. My tip found her easily, sliding in all the way.

  Gwen called out my name, her fingernails clenching into my back. I thrust balls deep, and her grip tightened, scratching my skin even through the shirt.

  I pulled back and thrust harder into her, making her yell my name again.

  “The neighbors will hear you,” I whispered into her ear, in between my own waves of pleasure. “What will they think?”

  “Let them hear,” she gasped.

  I picked up the pace, my breath coming out more ragged with each second. Gwen panted, arching her back as she came close. When she burst, she wrapped her legs around me, drawing me further into her.

  The stars spun in front of my eyes, tiny phosphenes growing and popping.

  Spent, I relaxed my weight against hers and licked a path up her throat and around her ear.

  We lay there for a few minutes until the warmth between our bodies dissipated and the chill of the autumn evening crept into the room. I grabbed Gwen’s pants and slid them back on her, zipping and buttoning them as she laid there and gazed up at me.

  “You know what?” she murmured.

  “What?” I asked, rubbing my hands up and down her legs.

  “I think I like the house just as it is.”

  “You’ll like it even more when there’s furniture in it,” I chuckled. “At least a bed.”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “It’s hard to imagine how things can get any better than they are right now.”

  My hands stilled. Outside a bird sang, one of the last songs of the day. The sun was going down, setting on what truly was one of the best moments of my life.

  “Things will get better,” I murmured. “They’ll just keep getting better and better. Remember what I told you last year?”

  She looked at me, a question in her eyes.

  “I said that the one thing we can count on in life is surprises; new things.”

  She half smiled. “I do remember that, yeah.”

  “The world will keep bringing us new things, Gwen. Amazing things. And the best part is you and I will be there to welcome those experiences together.”

  She sat up, leaning forward so that her face was only inches away from mine. “I want you to know you changed me,” she whispered, her eyes glistening with tears. “Before you, I’d lost hope. I didn’t know if I would ever be happy with another person again.”

  “Oh, Gwen,” I whispered, reaching up to brush some hair behind her ear. “Whatever I did for you, you did for me twice fold.”

  She smiled, and it was like the sun itself dropped down into the backyard to shine through the windows and illuminate the whole room. Illuminate the moment between us. Illuminate the future years we would live together.

  I placed my mouth against hers, making the kiss one to set the tone for the rest of our lives. Closing my eyes, the stars spun and jumped, lighting up the darkness.

  The End

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jessica Blake is the author of the hot alpha billionaire romance series, “The Billionaire Prisoner,” along with her friend Alice Ward. Since she was a young college girl reading and writing romance was what she loved the most and she enjoys entertaining her fans through her books. Living in Miami, she likes to sit by the pool with her laptop and write her next hot romance. However, when she is not reading or writing romance, she also enjoys being with her beautiful family.

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  COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Jessica Blake

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

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