by Amelia Wilde
“That’s how it starts.” His mouth curls at the corner into a sneer. “That’s how it starts, and before you know it, she’s got everything and you’ve got nothing.”
“Is this about Mom?”
“No, Jasper, this is about you. Why didn’t you come to me about selling this building?”
“I made an executive decision.”
He presses his mouth into a hard line. “You worked your ass off for those properties. For God’s sake, Jasper, we had people planning for that one the moment you completed the sale. And now you’re going to offload it to some woman?”
“She’s not some woman.”
“Oh, so it’s worse than that.” My father laughs bitterly. “Now my son, heir apparent of the entire company, is giving out properties as gifts to whoever he’s sleeping with that week.”
I take a deep breath, anger boiling in my chest, and then another, exhaling in a steady stream. I’m sure as hell not going to give my father the satisfaction of driving me over the edge, even if he’s already lost it.
“First of all, you need to get your facts straight.”
He waves his hand sarcastically in the air. “Enlighten me.”
“I have not yet sold the building to Isabella Gabriel, who approached me with a certain interest in the property. I intend to do so, and I will, but I am not giving her any property as a gift.”
My father nods slowly. “But you are sleeping with her.”
The way he says it, it sounds so cheap. It sounds like a one-night stand. It sounds like I’m not in love with her, and it sends a stab of pain through my heart.
Holy shit.
I put a hand to my chest, dropping it the moment I realize what I’m doing. I might have thought it before. The idea of loving Isabella might have been blooming in my mind for the past couple of weeks, since the moment I first saw her. And it’s been growing every day since. She’s so alive with independence, with determination, with wit—and all of it combines to give her a fiery beauty that I’m never going to want to be without.
I have to do something about this.
On instinct, I reach for my phone to tell Christine that I’ll be out for the rest of the afternoon.
“What are you doing?” My father’s voice stops me mid-reach.
“No need to concern yourself with the company’s assets.” I meet my father’s gaze, but an intense energy is rocketing through every inch of me, and I have to move. Now. I’m done screwing around when it comes to Isabella Gabriel, and I want her to know it. “I’m giving Isabella a personal loan.”
“So she can buy a building from the company?” My father laughs out loud. “You don’t see a bit of a conflict there? You see absolutely no problem with paying a woman to buy one of the assets we own?”
“I’ll sell it to a third party first. Is there anything else you wanted to yell at me about, or do you want to go back to your own office and calm the hell down?”
“Don’t do this.” My dad stabs his finger into the air at me with every word. “Don’t do this. I don’t know who she is, and I don’t know what she is to you, but it’s not going to last. It’s not going to last, and she’ll have played you for the idiot you are, and you’ll be left with nothing. You won’t have her, and you sure as hell won’t have everything you worked for.” He shoves his hands in his pocket and shrugs. “There’ll be nothing left.”
Then he turns on his heel and walks out.
29
Isabella
“There has to be a way.”
Bernadette sighs on the other end of the line. I can see her, pressing her lips together in a little frown, her face lit by the glow of her computer. Never mind that it’s mid-afternoon, and Bernadette has an office on the other corner of the building with huge windows and plenty of light. “Isa, I’m not seeing—”
“Look again, Bernadette. Go through everything. Go through personal assets. I don’t need enough to purchase the building outright. I think, if I play my cards right, I should be able to skate by with the down payment at this point.”
“Your investors—”
“Will love it. They’ll love it, okay? Call me back when you find something.”
She takes in a breath.
“Even if I don’t want to hear it, Bernadette. I need you to try one more time.”
“Okay.”
“Isabella.”
The voice at my door startles me so much that I drop the handset. “What are you doing here?”
“Isabella?” Bernadette’s voice is small and soft, coming from the handset, and I scoop it back up.
“I’ll talk to you later, Bernadette.” Then I put it back into the base and look back up into Jasper’s eyes. He’s standing in the doorway, breathing hard, like he ran here from his own office. I know that’s not what he did, but if he didn’t run here at his absolute top speed, why the hell is he breathing like that? I stand up from behind my desk, searching his face for a clue. “Is everything okay? You look—”
“Isabella, I love you.”
My heart soars as my gut drops to my toes. “Are you having a stroke?”
“No.” He steps into the office, not bothering to close the door behind him. I’d bet everything I own—not any of my money, since I might not currently have enough of that to do anything without him—but anything else that Angelique is frozen at her desk, listening to every word. “I’m not. I love you.”
“You can’t—”
He comes to my desk, and everything in me aches to touch him, aches to leap across the desk into his arms. But I’m frozen on the other side. I can’t do anything but watch this play out. “I can.” His voice is sure, firm, uncompromising. “Listen—I don’t understand it. I don’t understand a thing, but I know I’ve fallen for you, and I had to tell you. There was no question in my mind when I left my office that I had to tell you, and there’s no question now. It doesn’t make any sense.” His grin illuminates his face, and everything in me goes hot. “It doesn’t make any sense, but nothing about the way you make me feel makes sense, and I don’t care.”
I take a deep breath and let it out. “You’re babbling. You’re not making sense.”
Then he’s around the desk, both hands around my face, and his blue eyes are so intense in the golden afternoon light that the image of them, that silvery ribbon around his pupils, the blue that’s like the ocean one moment and the sky the next, is burned into my mind. I’m never going to forget the look on his face right now. “We’ve been playing with each other since the first minute we met.” Jasper’s voice is a low hum reverberating in my core. “I’m done. I want to be with you. I love you. I don’t know what that means for—for the long-term, or for you. But I love you, and I want you to be mine. What do you say to that?”
I’m struggling to catch my breath. My skin is warming under his hands. I want to slam my office door shut and get out of these clothes, strip him out of his, and straddle him while he sits in my office chair. “Is this another game? Is this—is this your next move?”
A serious expression flashes across his face, and I realize it’s the first time either of us has acknowledged that we are playing with each other. That this didn’t start out as anything real, and it’s become something more. “It’s not a game.” A grin spreads across his face. “Unless you want it to be.”
“What does that even mean?” I let out a breathless giggle and clap my hand across my mouth. I’m not going to transform into the kind of woman who is always breathlessly giggling because the sexiest man she’s ever seen is inches from her face, looking like he wants to start kissing her right now and never stop.
“I want to be with you.” He’s clear with every single word. “Do you want the same thing? Do you want to be with me?”
I don’t have a strategy for this. I don’t have a plan in mind. In fact, telling him the truth in this moment will set fire to everything I’ve been planning for Jasper Pace. It will mean the end of my revenge plans. It will mean trusting him to do the right
thing with my mother’s building. But my thoughts are whirling in my head and I can’t come up with a lie. I can’t even come up with a witty response.
“Yes.”
He leans in, and I wrap my arms around his neck. “But it—oh my god, Jasper, it’s so foolish. This isn’t what I planned—”
He laughs, low and gentle. “When have we ever done anything according to plan?”
Then his lips are on mine, soft and possessive and sweet, and I melt into his arms. My entire body glows with it, with the way he’s holding me, and for once I don’t second-guess anything at all. For once I don’t make any devious plans. I let him kiss me, giving myself over to him, totally and completely. I thought I’d been doing that all afternoon at his penthouse, when he fucked me to a level of satisfaction I’ve never experienced before and will only experience again if I can be with him.
A slow clap comes from the doorway, but it takes several heartbeats for it to register. Even then, I can’t wrench myself away from Jasper, so I let the kiss come to an end naturally, slowly, while the applause continues.
Angelique is standing in the doorway, a folder in her hand, beaming at me. “That was quite the show. Is there going to be an encore?”
Jasper kisses me on the cheek and gently disentangles himself from me. Then he strolls out the door, smiling at Angelique. “You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?”
30
Jasper
Isabella lifts her wine glass in the air. “To ending the game.”
“To ending the game.” We clink our glasses together, and then she dissolves into laughter for the thirtieth time since I spirited her away from her office in my town car. I never would have taken her for the kind of woman to skip out on work on a random Wednesday to spend the afternoon at a restaurant and the evening—that’s to be determined—with me. “What’s so funny?”
“I bet...” She takes a sip of the wine, a white that’s so sweet it could be dessert by itself. “I bet you have no intention of ending the game.”
“What game are you talking about? The game of romance?” I wiggle my eyebrows at her. “The game of life?”
She purses her lips, trying to look serious. “We did make an arrangement, of sorts.”
“Oh, that.” I take a second sip of the wine and feel the buzz travel down into my gut, mixing with the warm happiness already settling there. “No, I have no intention of ending that. You’re absolutely right.”
“How much time do we have left?”
“What makes you think that agreeing to be with me doesn’t extend it into infinity?”
Isabella shrugs, her white teeth flashing with her smile. “All of life can’t be at your discretion and under your control.” She lowers her voice for those phrases, drawing a laugh out of me. “I’d never stand for that.”
“Maybe you would.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“We’ll see.”
I called her from the town car and told her to cancel all her afternoon appointments. I expected a back and forth, a delay, something tantalizing and infuriating, but she’d waited only a single moment before she answered. “I’ll be right down.”
Isabella sets her wine glass on the linen table cloth and breathes in deep, glancing out the windows at the sunny day. We’re on the ninth floor, and from here you can see the hum of the city. It looks alive, glowing in the afternoon light. It doesn’t hold a candle to Isabella. “So,” she says, looking back at me with her green eyes dancing. “Let’s talk details.”
“Wow.” I lean back in faux shock. “You do not waste any time getting down to business.”
“I could say the same about you.” She arches an eyebrow at me. “Details.”
“What details are you fishing for?”
She rolls her eyes and laughs. “What is this going to look like, Jasper? Are we supposed to launch ourselves headfirst into a serious relationship?”
“I get the impression we’ve already...launched.”
Isabella considers this. “You did interrupt my entire workday to declare your love for me.”
I lean forward and wait.
She leans back a little, looking at me from the corner of her eye.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I let the word fall nonchalantly from my mouth.
I can wait all day.
Isabella’s face goes red, and then a slow grin spreads across her face. “Don’t hold your breath, Jasper. I’ll do this on my schedule.”
I reach across the table for her hand. “I’d expect nothing less.”
She tugs at my hand, giving me a wicked grin. “I can’t stay here with you forever, you know. There’s more stop I need to make at the office.”
I’m on my feet immediately. “Let’s go.”
I wait only as long as it takes to shut her office door behind us.
“Hands on the wall.”
She raises her hands immediately, pressing her palms to the inner wall of her office and bracing herself.
“Spread.”
Isabella doesn’t hesitate, stepping her legs apart.
As soon as she does, I slide my hand under her skirt until my fingertips meet her panties. I let out a growl of frustration. This is going to require two hands. The lace comes apart in my fists and I shove the shredded remnants into my pocket.
Isabella’s breathing hard, her hands still firmly on the wall.
I step closer, leaning down, my lips an inch from her ear. With one hand, I trace a path over the pulse beating underneath the pale skin of her neck, and I slide the other back up under her skirt. She’s wet, and the moment I make contact with her slit she arches her back, pressing into my hand. “I think you like this.”
She turns her head, her lips an inch from mine. “I do.”
“I think you like it when I have you up against the wall...” I push two fingers inside of her and she gasps. “Or pin you down on my bed...” I pulse them in and out, then curl them to the front of her channel. Isabella’s legs tremble. “Or even tie you so you can’t move that gorgeous body of yours.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
I’m fucking her with my fingers, and her eyes flash with desperation. She already wants to come so badly she can taste it, and we’ve been back at her office for five minutes. She wanted to pick up some paperwork, check her messages—at least, that’s what she said to the few people who were still at their desks when we arrived.
“Because—” She grits her teeth, taking one of her hands off the wall for a split second before she remembers what she’s supposed to be doing. “Because I love being yours.”
This is as close as she’s gotten to saying that she loves me, too. Not that I expected her to make a grand confession the moment I showed up today. If there’s anything I’ve learned about Isabella, it’s that she’s always going to confound my expectations.
I nip at her earlobe with my teeth, the gentlest bite, and she sucks in a big breath. “I can tell.”
Then I’m behind her, unzipping my pants and lining up the head of my cock with her opening. She bucks her hips back against me, working the tip inside, and that’s all it takes.
I thrust inside of her with all the pent-up heat that’s been building all day, taking her in one stroke. “Oh...” Isabella lets go of the wall to stifle her moans, blocking the sound with one of her knuckles. “Yes,” she whispers as I pick up the pace, my hands on her hips, rocking her with this rhythm. And when I reach around her waist and seek out her clit with my fingertips, she says it again: “Yes, yes.”
Yes, yes, yes.
31
Isabella
One car trundles by, and then another, and then the road is clear. I run across and settle back into my rhythm, the morning air humid on my skin. Already humid, and it’s only the middle of May. Everyone complains about the heat in the city, but I like it. It’s the cold I can’t stand. When I retire, I’m going to go somewhere tropical and never look back. Especially if I can get Jasper to ret
ire along with me. Although—
I laugh, letting the music from my earbuds wash over me. Retiring with Jasper. It’s far too early to be thinking about details like that, but I can’t help myself.
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
That much has become clear in the last few days.
At first, I could make all my decisions based on how likely they were to surprise him, to throw him off-balance. I got caught in my own trap, clearly, because I feel like I’m floating three feet off the ground, ready to crash back to Earth at any moment.
Hence the early morning run in Central Park.
I nod to a guy going the opposite direction and keep going. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Jasper wants to be with me.
That’s the first fact to start with.
He wants to be with me, and in spite of everything that I loathe about men like him, I want to be with him, too. Am I ready to admit, out loud, in words, that I love him? I don’t know. It feels a hell of a lot like love. My heart beats hard with it. My chest aches with it. I think of him the moment I wake up, and his grin is on my mind while I drift off to sleep. Even the prospect of toying with him beyond our usual banter is starting to repulse me, and that’s why I got into this in the first place.
I don’t want this to be about money.
That’s another fact that weighs on my mind.
I don’t want all of this to hinge on my mother’s building, or even the fact that Jasper’s wealth far outstrips my own, no matter how many buildings I intend to open across the state this year. I don’t want to need that kind of assistance from him. I’ve never needed it from anyone else.
My phone rings in my pocket, the ringtone coming clearly through my headphones, and I reach for the button below my ear and press to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Are you all right, Isa?” My mother’s voice is tinged with worry. “You sound like you’re in a wind tunnel. You sound like you’re gasping. Should I call someone?”