by Jessa Kane
Oh my God. I have fallen for him. How did this happen so fast?
Ezra’s hands snake around to my bottom and clutch my cheeks tightly, pulling me up on my toes, rocking our lower bodies together. “I need you bad, little girl.”
Heat presses to the backs of my eyelids. Do I have to push Ezra away in order to save him? Save my father?
“I’m sorry, but…” With a shaky breath, I shove away from Ezra. “It…well, it would be impossible for somebody with a prison record to give me this kind of life.” I try to give him a haughty look, but the unshed tears in my eyes probably make it unconvincing. “I’m happy right here where I am. And what we did was nice, but I’m not going to jeopardize my happiness. My future. Okay? S-so I think it’s best if you leave me alone.”
Skeptical eyes travel down the front of my body. “You’re going to stand there with a straight face and ask me to leave you alone? You’ve soaked clear through that tight, white thong since you saw me again in the kitchen.”
Red-hot heat suffuses my face. “I said what we did was nice. I didn’t deny it.”
“I found a virgin who gets a tickle in her belly when I’m railing her like a beast. A virgin whose legs spring open when I growl at her. That’s not nice, princess. That’s game over time. That’s marry her and get her pregnant time.”
“Your mother is going to hear you,” I whisper furiously. “You can’t just talk to me like that. It’s rude a-and—”
“And it makes you want to lie down and spread ’em all over again.”
“Stop it.” I press my thighs together to hide the fact that they’re growing slick with my arousal. How dare he? I’m trying to save the world here and he’s taunting me. “Anyway, you might have given me that tickle in my belly, but you, um…didn’t deliver the second time.”
When the smirk vanishes from his face, I immediately regret my words. “I hadn’t touched anything but my own hand in seven years, princess. It’s a wonder I lasted two seconds in that little coin slot pussy.” He catches my robe in a fist and yanks me up against him. “You want me to deliver, show me where you sleep. I will fuck you to high heaven.”
I’m about to say yes, please and point him in the direction of the stairs, because I want nothing more than to have this man in my bed. I want his rough, inked-up skin in my sheets. I want him to grunt and sweat and use me for his own satisfaction. And I might have let him take me upstairs if Leeza didn’t rush into the entryway with a wild look in her eyes.
“Your father is coming home, Ophelia. Five minutes away,” Leeza wheezes, looking pointedly at her son. “You can’t be here. No men in the house. Especially men who look like you. I’ll be fired so fast, my head will spin. Please, Ezra. Go.”
Sympathy fills my chest for Ezra. He can’t help being menacing. He’s probably used to using his size to his advantage in prison. Now he’s home and it’s a disadvantage. That has to be awful and confusing. I glance up to find him looking at me with a furrowed brow.
“You really want me gone, princess?”
No. “I think it’s for the best.”
His throat works. “Permanently?”
I take a deep breath and move away, belting my robe for the ninth time since coming downstairs. “Like I said,” I whisper, looking down. “You won’t be able to make me happy.”
He tilts my chin up until I’m forced to meet his gaze. “When I was twelve deep inside you, Ophelia, you told me I was booked solid. All yours. Remember that?” His breath tickles my mouth. “Did you mean it?”
“No,” I manage, the lie sitting like acid on my tongue.
“Bullshit,” he bites off. “I’m going to learn your secrets.”
“You’re going to wish you didn’t.”
Leeza wrestles her son away from me. “Please, Ez. I need this job.”
I watch a reluctant, pissed off Ezra leave with a yawning pit in my stomach.
Within seconds, I miss his touch. Will I ever see him again?
The look he sends me before walking out tells me yes.
I’m not getting away from him that easily.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ezra
There’s something Ophelia isn’t telling me.
When she walked into the kitchen and saw me standing there, her eyes lit up with joy before she hid it. Ever since she told me to leave, that I can’t make her happy, I replay that moment in the kitchen over and over just to stay sane. And it’s not easy keeping my head right when I need her this much. I’m not the kind of man who lets the arrival of another man make him run and hide like a pussy. If I didn’t think it would get my mother fired, I would have taken Ophelia upstairs to her bedroom, regardless of her father’s impending arrival.
I tried to go back to Queens and regroup. I did. But I found myself back on the Upper West Side, standing in the shadows across from Ophelia’s sprawling townhouse. The need to see her is all encompassing. Invisible hands strangle me around the neck. I won’t get a decent breath until I’m looking at her. Or more likely, until I’m drilling her sweet little cunt and I give her that second orgasm she was deprived of two days ago.
My lips peel back in a snarl just thinking of her unsatisfied. It’s eating me alive.
Her father left hours ago in a limousine and now that she’s home alone, it’s taking everything inside me not to kick the door down and kidnap her. To take her somewhere we can be alone and uninterrupted, so I can find out what she isn’t telling me. I don’t know why my instinct that she’s keeping something to herself is so strong, but I have to believe in it.
Otherwise she’s telling the truth and she doesn’t want me around.
Needing to get closer to her, I wait for a wave of taxis to zoom past, then cross the street. There’s a stone staircase leading to the entrance, but the steps are bathed in light and I don’t want to be seen, so I move along the right side of bottom of the staircase—and that’s when I see her through the sliver of glass along the front door.
The glass is slightly beveled, but I would recognize her face in a sandstorm. What I don’t expect is to find her scrubbing the entryway floor on her hands and knees.
What the fuck?
Not that I don’t hate the idea of my mother performing manual labor, but I’m pretty sure scrubbing the floor falls to the maid, not the resident millionaire.
Hell. If she left with me, she’d have to scrub her own floors, wouldn’t she?
At first.
I would bust my ass to give her a better life. I would do whatever it took so she could sleep in silk sheets, eat at the finest restaurants and sun her beautiful ass on international beaches. I wasn’t always a fucking criminal. Once upon a time, I had aspirations of being more. A lot more. I was working my way up through the ranks of one the biggest car parts manufacturers in the United States. I might not know much, but I damn well know how to make a car purr like a kitten and that earned me a spot in the boardroom, a place I never thought I’d be.
A couple of good calls and smart decisions later, I was poised to become a partner.
That’s when I found out the company was importing a lot more than car parts.
And I did something about it.
Something I would do all over again, even though it earned me seven years in hell.
I wasn’t the only man at the company who was blindsided and I’ve been in contact with my former colleagues. We have a plan to build a bigger operation—a more honorable one—this time around. It might take years to see that vision through and I know it’s goddamn selfish asking Ophelia to leave her ivory tower for me, to be patient for a man with a prison record and a mouth like a sailor, but I can’t imagine walking away and living the rest of my life without her.
I’m supposed to be in Michigan by next week to convene with my former colleagues. We have meetings lined up and rental spaces to tour, but I’m not budging until I figure this thing out with the girl on the other side of the glass.
Drawn to her like a sailor toward a siren, my feet climb the st
eps without permission and I watch her little butt twitch around inside a tiny pair of red spandex shorts as she scrubs the marble. My dick fills with hot pressure, stretching the fly of my jeans. My hurried breath fogs up the glass and she turns, popping out her earbud and staring at me with wide eyes. “Open the door, little girl,” I say.
A few seconds tick by and she shakes her head.
I raise an eyebrow. “No?”
“It’s a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“I know why you want to come in here.”
“Oh yeah? Why?”
She tugs down the hem of her crop top, but it flies back up. “To do bad things to me.”
“Ah, no, princess. I want to do good things to you. Really good things.” With her shifting around on her bare feet, I can see I’m getting nowhere, so I take the dark chocolate candy bars out of my back pocket and press them against the glass. “Let me in and I promise we’ll just talk.”
Oh, she wants that chocolate. Badly. She’s licking her lips looking at it and I vow to have that pretty mouth wrapped around my cock someday real soon. This one would take me deep enough to choke out of pure pride and I’d really love to test that theory about now, but she’s wary of me and I do not like that. I want to be her safety zone. The person she can let down her guard around because she knows I’ll slaughter any trouble that comes her way.
“You can break down this door in one kick, anyway, can’t you?” Ophelia says, more to herself than me. “If I open the door, I’m avoiding having to explain a broken door to my father and I get dark chocolate, so it’s really no choice at all…”
Finally, she turns two locks and opens the door.
I step inside and damn near strain a muscle stopping myself from grabbing her. “What are you doing cleaning the goddamn floor?”
She gives a jerky shrug. “I like cleaning the floor.”
“Try again.”
A gust of a sigh leaves her. “Your mother’s nap ran a little long today and she didn’t get around to finishing up. If the floor is dirty, my father docks her pay, so…”
Fuck, I’m in love with her. She’s never getting rid of me now. “You’re a secret sweetheart, aren’t you, Ophelia?”
Her nose wrinkles. “No.”
“Yes, you are. You thought I’d buy it earlier when you stomped into the kitchen and demanded my mother draw you a bath. But I’d say you’re more likely to do that for her.”
She sniffs and removes her AirPods. “Can I have my chocolate?”
“Nuts or no nuts?”
“No nuts. The presence of nuts means less chocolate.”
My lips jump. “Now I know.”
I kick the front door closed behind me and hold up the candy bar, forcing her to come take it from me. When she reaches for it, I hold it just out of her reach. I use my teeth to open the package and break off a chocolate square, rubbing it against her lips. “Open up for me.”
Her little nipples turn to points under her shirt and I exult in the fact that she can’t hide her attraction. She parts her lips and I slide the chocolate onto her tongue, growling as she chews. “Thank you,” she whispers. “It’s the good stuff.”
“Only the best,” I murmur, breaking her off another piece. Goddamn, I would kiss her mouth until those lips were sore if I hadn’t promised we’d talk. And truthfully, I want to talk to Ophelia. I want to know everything about her. How she thinks, what scares her, what she wants out of life. Most importantly, I want to know why she’s pushing me away when I can damn well feel the gravity between us and know it’s something real. After pocketing the chocolate, I cradle the side of her face in my hand. “Why were you at my mother’s house the other day? The truth, princess.”
“She forgot her heart medication,” she grumbles.
My pulse pounds harder. “Ophelia?”
“What?”
“You’re mine.”
“I can’t be yours, Ezra.”
“Too fucking late.”
Just like the first time we met, I see excitement dance in her eyes and I know there’s so much inside of her. So many hidden truths and quirks. She’s a little Pandora’s box and I’m going to pry her open and let everything out if it kills me. Hell, it’s killing me to stand still and let her study me when I want my hands all over her body, but I like that she seems to be growing less nervous the longer I refrain from mauling her.
“Do you want something to drink?” she asks, turning on her bare heel and sauntering in the direction of the kitchen. I follow in her wake, watching her butt twitch in those little red bun huggers and observe her chug from a bottle of water in the fridge.
When she’s done, she nods at the fridge with a questioningly look and I shake my head. “Nothing for me, thanks,” I say, leaning forward across the granite island. “So, tell me, Ophelia—”
“Uh uh. You already grilled me. It’s my turn.” She leans back against the fridge and seems to brace herself. “Why were you in prison?”
“Arson,” I say without hesitation. “Is that better or worse than you were thinking?”
A beat passes. “I don’t know. Did anyone die?”
“No.”
Her shoulders relax. “Will you tell me what happened?”
I nod, suddenly on shaky ground. I’ve told no one about the incident in a damn long while. Seven long years. And I’ve never given a fuck about anyone’s opinion about what I did until now. “Long story short, I worked for a car parts manufacturer. We exported those parts internationally.” Anger rises up inside me like dough in the oven. “Found out the scumbag owner was shipping women, too. Sending them off to be sold and—” I stop with a ground out curse. “He made me a part of something without my knowledge. Something sick. My temper didn’t stop to ask questions, princess. I set fire to the whole goddamn facility. After hours, so no one got hurt. It was the fastest way to put him out of business. He was arrested and charged. The two dozen women being held were freed. But apparently calling the authorities would have been a better move for me. Law enforcement tends to frown on a fifty-thousand-square-foot-structure fire.”
Ophelia is quiet a moment. “You saved those women.”
“Not enough of them.”
She pushes off the fridge and starts to come toward me. “Do you still feel guilty?”
I grunt out a yes.
“I’m sorry. It’s not fair.” Having reached me, she slides a cautious hand up my chest. “It’s not right for an honorable man to be labeled dishonorable.”
It feels so good to have her hand on me, my eyes close on their own. “Right now, I’m only concerned what you think.”
Her tone is pure innocence when she confesses in a whisper, “I think I’d have burned that motherfucker down, too.”
In the wake of my shock, my dick gets good and hard. This girl. She’s a firecracker. I want to lay her down and revel in her. Stoke that fire. Watch it burn. “My turn for a question,” I rasp. “Keep your hands on me while I ask it.”
She adds her second hand and her palms stroke up and over my pecs in tandem. She’s killing me and has no clue. “What do you want to know?”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were? When we met.” Ophelia visibly clams up. Her hands drop away from my chest and I have to wrap an arm around the small of her back to keep her close. “Princess.”
“God. You’re supposed to start with softball questions. Favorite band, favorite food…”
“I raw dogged you on my mother’s couch before I knew your name, little girl. We’ve been playing hardball since the start.”
Her mouth falls open. “Raw dogged? What is that?”
“I took you without a rubber.”
“Oh my God.” Face turning pink, she stares off into space. “Am I pregnant?”
“Lord, I hope so.”
She stares up at me dumbfounded. “I’m supposed to go to Princeton in the fall.”
It’s a slug to the gut. New Jersey is a long way from Michigan, where I’m headed soon. �
�That’s a dream of yours, I suppose?”
Ophelia is quiet so long, I’m not sure she’s going to answer me. “No, not at all,” she finally whispers. “I didn’t even get in on my own merit. I never do anything on my own. I’m just an overindulged brat. Why didn’t you realize that right away and leave me alone?”
Now we’re getting somewhere. “First of all, I’ve got no plans to leave you alone, so get used to it. Second, there aren’t many overindulged brats who do their housekeeper’s chores and drive to Queens to pick up medicine.”
She scoffs. “Those are only little things.”
“No, princess. They’re not. They tell me exactly who you are.” I pluck her up by the waist and settle her on the kitchen island. “Did you really think if you pretended to be a snotty rich girl earlier that I’d turn tail and drop you like a bad habit?”
“Yes.” Her eyes are troubled. “That’s exactly what you should do.”
“Why?”
She presses her lips together and doesn’t answer.
“You want to go to Princeton, we’ll make it work. I’ll make any situation work as long as you’re mine.” I run my hands up her thighs, teasing the hem of her shorts with my thumbs. “I’m not a man without a plan. If you just put your trust in me, I’ll give you everything in time.”
“I can’t,” she whispers.
Something occurs to me and it’s such a jarring possibility, my blood rolls into a quick boil. “Is there another man?” If I hadn’t been paying extremely close attention, I might have missed the spark of panic in her eyes. But I don’t miss it. And the already boiling temperature of my blood turns to an inferno. “Who the fuck is he?”
“No.” She shakes her head rapidly. “There’s no one. I swear.”
“Ophelia,” I grit out, feeling like my chest is caving in. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not!” she cries. “There’s no one that has ever made me feel like you. No one ever could. I scrubbed the floor way longer than necessary because I was trying to exhaust myself.” Tears spring to her eyes. “I was scared I’d never see you again. And scared I would. I don’t know how to feel about anything, but I…” She swipes at her damp eyes and my possessiveness wars with denial. She should never cry. “I know I need you to touch me so bad it hurts.”