by S. Ann Cole
A red tie-front blouse cropped just above my navel, a black leather flare skirt cropped mid-thigh, and studded black biker boots.
“Chad,” I hissed in warning, smile still in tack for the crowd. “You think this is going to make JK forgive you any sooner?”
“I’ve tried repeatedly to kiss and make up with him. Keep failing. He’s never going to forgive me, so, what do I got to lose?”
“You don’t think it’s because he knows you’re not sorry, fuckwit?”
The name-calling was an attempt to get him to move his hand from my bare skin, but he wasn’t budging. And his touch was too warm and familiar. I knew all too well what those fingers caressing my lower back were capable of. How loud they could make me scream, make my toes curl and my heart pound.
“I’m sorry for hiding us from him, Saskia. But I’m sure as fuck not sorry about us,” he whispered deep into my ear with a serious, no-apologies tone. “If you could guarantee me, right now, that you want me for me and not as substitute, and I could actually believe you…”
“You’d do it all over again,” I finished.
“Damn straight.”
A sigh of defeat was all I had left.
The guy wasn’t just frustratingly arrogant, but incorrigible to boot.
As we were about to mount a set of stairs Chad navigated us to, Lion materialized in front of us.
“You two mind tellin’ me what the fuck is goin’ on here?” Lion demanded, his face a picture of pissed-the-hell-off.
Chad pressed his lips together and looked down at me. “Nothing damning. Mommy and Daddy are just heading up to the courtroom to settle on who gets to keep the kids. Now that we’re divorced and all.”
“Don’t start with me, Chad,” Lion warned.
Chad chuckled in sheer amusement.
I was afraid to.
Lion looked dead at me. “Where’s JK?”
Aiming for nonchalance, I shrugged my shoulders. “No idea. Last time I checked, he was taking a break. From me. Why don’t you call him?”
Before Lion could say more, I moved quickly up the stairs, but I didn’t miss him grumbling, “Fuckin’ knew this shit would happen.”
As Chad and I got to the top of the stairs, I sought confirmation on what I’d just discovered, “You own this club?”
After taking a right turn, he stopped at one of two doors facing each other in a dead end, produced a key, turned it in the lock, and opened the door as the answer to my question.
“How else would I have known a birthday party was being thrown for my cousin, which I wasn’t invited to?”
“You weren’t here!” I returned in defense. “We weren’t expecting you to be here until next week.”
Chad smiled, a tight, humorless one, and moved across the spacious office over to a one-way glass wall that gave view of the entire club below.
The office didn’t hold much despite the space. A modern office desk, an office chair, two regular chairs in front of the desk, and a built-in bar stocked with the finest alcohol on the opposite end.
“I’m like Judgment Day,” Chad said, looking out the glass, his jaw hard. “No one ever knows the day or hour I’ll show up.”
Sidling up beside him, I ignored his dark mood and broached, “So, Alina…”
“I heard her.”
“And?”
With a lift of his chin, he indicated Alina and Davian on the dance floor, grooving a little too intimately. “You know she’s crushing on him. You know he’s too old for her. Yet you still let her go off with him.”
“She’s of dating age, Chad. Stop being an arse, yeah?”
“He’s too old for her.”
“You know Alina. She’s way too mature for guys her age,” I pointed out. “Hand her a sod under twenty-three, and she’ll eat him alive, I guarantee that. A sucker who knows not his arse from his elbow won’t be able to handle her, Chad.”
“What if—”
“You don’t have to worry about her getting knocked-up either. She’s too smart. Don’t underestimate her. This sod is arse-over-tit for her, and I bet he’s gonna have to work damn hard for it. I already feel sorry for the fella.”
“Listen,” Chad said, swiveling his head to look down at me, “I get that you both adore each other yada yada, but you live a very busy life, Saskia. You’re engaged to be married now, and I can’t see how you’re gonna fit her into your life. Her safety is more important to me than anything else right now, and I’m not sure I want her making contacts with outsiders just yet.”
“You’re already having her home schooled! The bloody hell are you trying to do, suffocate her?”
“You don’t understand, Saskia. She needs to be safe right now, and she’s safer with me.”
“Safer with you?” Okay, time to play dirty. “You’re more dangerous for her than I am,” I hissed.
Squeezing myself between the wall glass and his body, so that my back was against the glass and my chest almost pressing up against his, I spoke in an uber-quiet voice, “When we were dating, you left your safe open one night, and let’s just say I was…curious. I took a peek. And the things I found told me you’re dangerous, Chad. Very dangerous. You had fifteen different passports with fifteen different names for fifteen different countries. I never asked you what you do with your life, because I was smart enough to know I was safer not knowing. But now I’m sure as shite gonna use it to argue that I’m the better guardian for, Alina.”
Chad watched me with complete impassivity for a moment before breaking out a smile as though he’d been waiting for this.
He was such a bloody mindfucker.
“This is why I—” He stopped and cleared his throat, shook his head. “I knew you saw the contents of that safe. I set it up. Deliberately left it open for you to see, only what I wanted you to see. To test you. Because I felt like I could trust you, but I needed to be sure.
“And you passed. You saw the contents and you kept your mouth shut. Never asked me a single question. Never went behind my back and tried snooping. You just accepted me for what you didn’t know I was. Do you know how fucking hard it is to find a woman like that? You won my hard-earned trust right there and then, Saskia. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have entrusted you with my little cousin who’s worth twelve billion dollars.”
“Whoa!!” I exclaimed. “Twelve. Billion. Dollars?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, our words quieter than a whisper as though we were discussing top secret. Which it probably was, for all I knew. “But she can’t know that yet. I can’t divulge the gory details to you, but I’ve been busy trying to distort her identity and ensure her safety all around so she’ll be able to live a normal life. And right now, I’m far from successful. So if she’s going to live with you, what happened the other day—her being left home alone without security—can’t ever happen again, or I’m taking her. Got that?”
Score! I was getting Alina. “How do you kn—”
“I’ve got my own securities tailing your securities, Saskia. I know everything.” Then an arrogant smirk popped on his face as he added, “I’m also co-owner of the company you hired them from.”
“Seriously? You’re co-owner of every goddamn thing here,” I said in disgust. “With who?”
“Silent partners are precisely that, silent.”
I switched to prying elsewhere. “So, are you going to tell me about your other life? Why you’re fifteen different persons?”
Placing his right hand palm-flat next to my head on the glass, he leaned in further so I could smell his oh-so-fucking-awesome scent, and moved his lips to my ear, whispering, “I wish… But that’s for the woman who whispers my name in her sleep every night.”
Crap.
Right then, the office door opened and slammed shut so hard the liquor bottles in the built-in bar rattled.
Chad looked over his shoulder. I looked under his arm. And standing there in the room, was my fiancé, Jahleel Kingston.
More crap.
�
��Heard I’d find you here,” he said, voice cold, glower like fire. “I take it you need an extended break?”
Ducking under Chad’s arm to get free from our very uncompromising position, I took a step towards the love of my life, my arms held out in desperation like a pathetic idiot. “JK, this isn’t what it looks like…”
How many buggers have used that same line when things were exactly what they looked like? Plenty. Except this wasn’t. It wasn’t, goddammit! And he needed to know that.
He moved so fast. In two strides he was at the office desk, overturning it with such force, it split down the middle and broke in two solid halves.
Okay. He wasn’t angry. He was fucking furious.
Chad stood there watching with his hands in his pockets. Watching unfazed like he was at the goddamn cinema.
“It’s like you’re tryin’ to fuckin’ repay me for everything I’ve ever done to you!!” Jahleel barked at me. “First you drive me crazy everyfuckingday with your nagging to push me away. And now you do this? Again? With my fuckin’ ring on your finger?!”
Keeping his hands to himself, Chad approached Jahleel cautiously as one would a cornered animal, then leaned forward and whispered something very lengthy and inaudible to him.
When Chad drew back and shook his head apologetically, Jahleel replied in an angry whisper, then Chad whispered back.
They were whisper warring.
What’s with the damn whispering?
“She’s not lying, brother.” I caught only that much the last time Chad whispered to Jahleel. But knowing Chad, he probably meant for me to hear that.
Jahleel glanced over Chad’s shoulder to a trembling, heart-thudding me, and made a disappointed shake of his head. “Get out.”
Chad stepped back. “You can’t kick me out of my own office.”
Jahleel arched a brow. “It’s mine, too.”
“Now you give a shit about our clubs?”
“Get. the fuck. out, Chad.”
With a shrug, Chad started towards the door. “Okay. But now that you do give a shit, you’ll be replacing that desk you broke.”
Chad left, closing the door behind him, shutting me in with a seriously cheesed-off Jahleel.
“This gonna be a habit of yours?” he asked. “Every time we have a disagreement you gonna run to my best friend? Are you setting me up to fuckin’ murder him or something? Because I will, Sassy. Irrespective of our friendship and business relationship, I will kill him. To keep you.”
Tears burned my eyeballs. He was hurting. And his hurt was hurting me. “We didn’t do anything. I swear to you, JK. We were just talking about Alina and—”
“I love you, Saskia,” he confessed, moving towards me, his expression a twisted combination of agony, disheartenment, and plea. “If you need me to say it more often, I will. I’ll say it, okay? But this”—he waved a hand around the room, indicating what he just walked in on—”I can’t handle it. I owned a heart, but you have it now, take care of it. Please.”
“I’m sorry—”
He shut me up.
His tongue was in my mouth shutting me the hell up.
Palms pressed up against his chest, I kissed him back with equal fervor, giving back as he gave it.
I’ve missed this man. It had been ten days since our reluctantly agreed upon break, and I’d been well prepared to go banging on his door at the break of dawn. Because it was arduous keeping away from the man I love more than anything else in this world for two whole weeks. Hard as shite. And I had to fight myself from calling him.
But no worries. He was here. He came. Wish it was under better circumstances, but that was irrelevant. Fact was, he was here. And he still loved me in spite of my cock-up just now.
Jahleel smoothed his palms over my abs, moving up to tug the knot of my tie-front blouse. It fell open. Unceremoniously yanking down my bra, he sucked a nipple into his hot, eager mouth.
He was ravishing me with a need I had no problem meeting. I understood. He missed me, like I missed him. So he needed me, just as I needed him. Right now.
Sliding my hands from his chest right down to his pelvis, I fumbled with his belt buckle, quickly undoing the button and zipper of his jeans.
Shoving his pants and boxers down his hips to free him, I grasped him and trailed my index finger through the little slit on his head. Collecting the pre-cum it sprouted, I brought my finger to my mouth and sucked it off. Jahleel growled at this.
Cock hard and ready. Wanting in.
As I wrapped my fingers around him and began stroking gently, he flexed forward into my fist, letting out a throaty, “Only your touch, Sassy…” before moving his mouth to my neck, sucking on my skin while I pumped him.
I could flood the whole room with how wet I was. I’ve longed for this, this beautiful thing in my hand, that proposed to be mine and mine alone.
Slapping my hand away, Jahleel reached under my skirt, hooked his thumb in the crotch of my knickers and ripped it clean off.
Impatient. Starving. Rabid.
Sliding his fingers over my sopping folds, he groaned something unintelligible before thrusting two inside, forcing me to swallow a deep moan.
But just as soon as his fingers went in, they were sliding out as Jahleel gripped the back of my thighs and lifted me up against the glass. My legs reflexively locked around him, hands gripping his shoulders.
Letting go with one hand, he positioned his dick at my entrance, his golden gaze burning through me. That look on his face, I knew it well now. That look meant this fuck was going to be fast, hard, and quick.
Yeah, his wide head was tearing me open with a force, going deep, bucking.
A cry tore up my throat. “Argghhhhhgod, JK!”
Then it was on.
Jahleel style.
He fucked me upside the one-way glass. People below oblivious to what was taking place above their heads. Two people in love racing each other to a planet with no air supply, which was bound to suck away our sanity and energy and fucking souls.
I loved this man. With every part of me. Every inch. Every meter. Every fiber.
And that’s why I came.
Not because he was oh so good at fucking, but because I loved him. Loved him hard. So I came hard. Digging my fingernails into his shoulders, whispering how much I loved him to the ends of the earth.
He grunted and groaned, protracting my orgasm, sucking me dry. Then he plunged into me harder, and even harder, until he came with a violent force, exploding inside me. Head tossed back, veins bulging in his neck, glistening with sweat.
We remained like that for a while, catching our breaths, waiting for our heartbeats to settle down from that great rush, the glass vibrating against my back with the baseline of Jhene Aiko’s Stay Ready.
Releasing me, Jahleel allowed me to slide down the glass, back to my now weakened, wobbly feet.
I fixed my clothes, wishing we were somewhere else where we could just roll over and cuddle each other to sleep.
Once Jahleel was done doing up his jeans, he moved in to me, pressing me up against the glass. His face was scruffy again. He rebelliously refused to shave whenever we were at war. Too bad he didn’t know that being unshaved didn’t make him any less desirable. So he wasn’t punishing anyone. There was no getting out of being as hot as he was—unless he took a bath in a tub of acid, of course.
Dropping his forehead to mine, he whispered, “Promise me something.”
“Anything,” I said in a rush, eager to make up for both earlier and our nonsense break.
“Don’t ever leave me again,” he said. “Not even if I ask you to. Not even if I’m a complete asshole, sayin’ mean things or shouting at you. Don’t leave. At all. Don’t ever let me push you out of my life, assuming that’s what I want. That’ll never be what I want. Always stay, no matter what, because that’s what I need.”
“Okay,” I whispered back, nodding. “I promise.”
“Can you leave here now?”
“Yeah. I’ll
just have to talk with Ben and John about Alina—”
“Do it. Then come home with me.”
“Okay.”
Chapter Five
After letting all the important people know I was leaving early, I met up with Jahleel. He was leaning against a wall, one leg propped up, arms crossed, watching with something akin to pride as the hot pack, his dancers, clashed with another crew on the floor, crowd divided into two halves, cheering on.
Granted, his dancers had more cheerleaders than the other crew. I mean, not only were they extremely talented, they were all smoking hot. Hence my nicknaming them the hot pack. Any single, horny girl would choose that crew.
“Ready?” he asked, uncrossing his arms.
When I nodded and grinned like a goon, he wrapped his arm around my waist and started for the exit.
Once again, Lion interrupted. “You two might wanna hang on a minute longer.”
“What, why?” Jahleel asked with zero patience.
“Word got out you were throwin’ a party here, and outside the club right now is mayhem.”
“Fans,” I muttered.
Jahleel sighed.
“Know you’re not gonna like this, JK, but at this rate, you need your own security. I sent for one from your—from Chad’s company.” Lion checked his watch. “Should be here in ‘bout ten minutes. Since you, Kia, has set John & Ben on Alina, Thomas alone can’t cut it for both of you.”
Jahleel was surprisingly acceptable of the circumstances. “That bad?”
Lion crooked a finger at us and walked off. We followed him to the exit where one of the club guards opened the door just a crack for us to see outside. The thick stream of fans got a mere glimpse of us and immediately began screaming their faces off. It was like frigging LA out there.
Almost all the women wore red ball-caps which had JK’s Babe emblazoned on the front.
The bloody hell?
We popped our heads back inside and the guards shut the door.
“Hang on,” I said, vibrating with irritation. “A few weeks ago they were all for JK and Saskia. Now they’re wearing JK’s Babe ball caps? Where’s the respect for me?”
Jahleel chuckled, but I wasn’t amused in the least. No one was JK’s babe but me. The fact that these people even knew to make the caps in his favorite color, red…