by LJ Evans
“Morning to you too, asshole,” Dawson grumbled back.
“Seriously. Aren’t you supposed to be lost in your wife’s skin at this time of the day? Or do I need to worry about you losing your touch now that there’s a ring on her finger?”
“Vi’s actually the reason I’m calling. I promised her I would,” he said with a hint of hesitation to his voice, and my stomach fell.
The few times Dawson had lost his confident swagger with me had never been good. Like the day I’d found out he’d been lying to me while working undercover for the FBI to try and bring down the entire Kyōdaina crime syndicate, using our yachts. Or when he spoke about a certain raven-haired beauty, knowing how it stabbed at me. It spoke volumes that I wasn’t sure which I would rather have at the moment: more lies or thoughts of Jada Mori to taunt me.
“Bordel de merde, just tell me what’s going on,” I groused when I couldn’t handle his silence any longer.
“Did I interrupt something this morning? Or are you in another dry spell? Because I swear, I haven’t heard you this grouchy since―”
“Dawson! Just tell me.”
He sighed. “We need you to go check on Jada.”
Just hearing her name out loud caused my body to stiffen. Chest. Lungs. Dick. Images of black silk haloed around my hips and large eyes full of lust filled my brain. Perfect, bow-shaped lips lilting upward in triumph haunted me. It was the hardest image of her to get out of my head this early in the morning when I had nothing on but a sheet.
There were other images of her I had burned into my brain. Black lace over blue so pale it was almost white. Purple leather and silver sequins. Red tulle. Eyes with liner tipped at the edges to enhance the gentle curves and lush lashes. Hair piled on top of her head, glimmering with highlights and showcasing her slender neck…skin I wanted to caress with fingers and tongue.
It was a daily battle to keep her at the recesses of my brain, and now Dawson had brought her to the forefront.
“Dax?” Dawson’s voice brought me back.
The knot in my chest eased only enough for me to speak in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. It was much deeper, more guttural, as if I were a phone sex operator. “I’m here.”
“You know I wouldn’t ask…” Dawson trailed off.
“Unless it was urgent,” I finished for him. “What happened?”
“We don’t know. She’s just gone all silent-but-strong on us, putting up that damn shield she hides behind. If we send Raisa or Jersey, she’ll fool them with her cool customer act.”
“What makes you think she won’t fool me?” I said, pretending for all of twenty seconds that it was true. That Jada Mori could get something past me when we both knew she couldn’t. I read every single emotion she tried to keep hidden behind her deep brown eyes that matched mine. We were similar in so many ways. Unfortunately, it was our differences that mattered most, and those kept an electric trip wire dragged down the space between us, ready to go off at any moment.
Dawson scoffed, “Come on. Give me some credit. We both know better.”
I didn’t reply.
“You’ll be in San Francisco for the boat show, right?” he asked.
The latest version of our yacht would be unveiled today and would stay on display during the five-day event. This new model was a thing of beauty. Art instead of mere transportation. I’d carefully chosen the platinum metallic paint accented with red, white, and blue stripes to represent the flags of the United States and France―our homelands. When we’d first seen the boat completed, it had almost brought me to tears, and Dawson had been equally choked up. He hated missing the reveal to the public, but his love for a certain purple-haired genius was stronger than his love of our yachts.
My chest tightened back up—this time with longing. I wanted that…to love someone so much that the world faded away. My parents had it. My best friend had it with Violet. I craved it like a tree craved water. The only problem was, I wanted it with someone I could never have.
“I arrived in San Francisco yesterday,” I told him.
“Jada just got back from her grandmother’s. You might be able to catch her at the penthouse this morning before she goes into the Violette offices.”
“She was in New York?” It was more shock than a question that rolled through my voice. She was rarely in the city these days, and going to her grandmother’s place on 5th Avenue had been forbidden. So, why had she broken the tenuous agreement?
I shook my head. I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t know.
“Her grandmother had hip surgery,” Dawson offered, his tone conciliatory. “She might just be acting weird because she’s knee-deep in something she wants to surprise Violet with, but Vi won’t relax until we know for sure.”
“Fine,” I said, feeling anything but.
Dawson breathed out a heavy sigh of relief. “Thanks, Dax. I owe you…”
“You already owe me. I think our scales are pretty much tipped with you needing to give me your firstborn child in order to balance them out.”
“Good luck with that. Violet would poison you first.” His voice had a smile to it. “And if she didn’t succeed, I still have my Glock.”
“Get back to making your firstborn and leave the real world to us imbeciles stuck in it,” I teased back.
I was rewarded with a soft laugh.
I hung up after promising he’d hear back from me soon, and then I sat there, fighting waves of emotions.
“Putain,” I said softly and then dragged my ass into the shower.
Twenty minutes later, I was in the back of an unmarked SUV with my bodyguard and driver, Cillian, at the wheel. The Irish man was one of the largest men I’d ever met—even bigger than Dawson and his brother, Truck, who were both almost Hulk-like. But one look at Cillian’s face with scars barely hidden below his caramel-colored beard that matched the shaved inches on his head, and most people stayed away. He was pretty much the only security I needed these days, but we still had a full team standing by everywhere I went just in case.
Cillian pulled up outside the building where Jada lived across the hall from Dawson and Violet, and I was out on the curb before he could even turn the engine off.
“I’ll text you when I’m ready,” I leaned back in to tell him.
I straightened up, and the sights and sounds of the city hit me, horns and car engines muffled slightly by the hint of fog that still laid over the streets. The sun battling through made the day dreamlike. The wind was chilly, bringing in the salt and fish smells of the bay. I wasn’t a fan of San Francisco any more than I was a fan of Paris. As I got older, the quiet of my family’s villas in Italy and on St. Micah in the Caribbean appealed to me more.
I tugged at the cuffs of my light-blue suit jacket tailored to move with me like a second skin. I’d partnered it with a gray Merino-wool T-shirt and expensive suede sneakers. A careful mix of formal and casual that Papa would approve of as I would be showing his vision of day-casual to the world at the same time as I was unveiling Armaud Racing’s new boat. Two birds, one stone.
I left the street behind to enter the lobby where the man at the desk nodded to me with a smile. He knew me well. Knew me enough to just buzz open the doors of the private elevator leading to the top floor and the four suites that resided there. Jada’s was the largest of them, and it was the only one with two levels.
When the elevator opened, I was surprised to find two bodyguards at Jada’s front door—a man and a woman team I’d seen before, usually in passing as they picked Jada up or waited for her outside a restaurant. Normally, they looked serious but not unfriendly. Today, their glower was sour and surly, which raised the warning bells Dawson’s phone call had already started jangling.
“She’s not seeing anyone,” the man said.
The bells grew louder. Jada rarely turned down visitors. She was a social creature by nature, a being who shined fierce and bright when she had an audience. Usually, the more the
merrier. Even though she’d slowed down some since the debacle in New London―since being shot and almost dying―she was still a queen at heart. A queen who needed a court.
“I’m not leaving until I see her, so buzz her and let her know I’m here,” I said casually but firmly. Then, I leaned on the wall opposite them, took out my phone, and thumbed through a social media account I didn’t really care about—one I hadn’t been on in weeks, if not months. My personal assistant, Cara, kept it alive on my behalf.
The door opened, and from under my lashes, I saw the female bodyguard duck inside. She wasn’t gone long before she came back and held the door open, saying, “She’s in the office.”
“Thank you.” I slid past the duo and headed down the hall to the space Jada called an office but looked nothing like her. Even the bright colors strewn about couldn’t soften the cold and uninviting place. It was all ice while Jada was all fire.
Just as I went to grab the doorknob, Jada’s primary bodyguard came out. Rana was a striking Indian woman who, according to Cillian, wasn’t to be underestimated. He’d seen her take down a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound weightlifter while barely breaking a sweat.
“Rana,” I acknowledged her.
She was frowning and as grim as the two at the door. “Dax.”
She swayed down the hall, tapping a pen against a notebook. Nervous energy for someone who was normally calm and unruffled.
The bells kept getting louder.
When I stepped into the room, all thought and breath left me. I’d tried to prepare myself to see her, but Jada knocked me for a loop like she had every single time we’d ever been in a room together. Today, she looked exactly the high-powered businesswoman she’d turned herself into. A slim, gray A-line skirt nestled across her hips, and a bright blue silk top outlined her breasts. Her legs were amplified by stilettos―her signature item―that brought her slight frame almost to my shoulder.
The outfit accentuated every small, firm curve and tempted me to bite them. To taste the fruit I’d barely nibbled at. To crush those bright-pink lips against my mouth and make her mine in a way she hadn’t really ever been, regardless of the handful of kisses we’d shared or the one and only time we’d found ourselves naked in a bed together.
Like me, she was flawlessly put together. It was required of us when cameras turned in our direction the moment we left our homes. The paparazzi giddily watched, waiting to catch us at our worst instead of our best.
But the longer I stared at Jada, the more I also saw the truth. Beyond the perfectly pressed outfit and carefully done makeup, she was exhausted. Her lush, dark lashes were unable to hide the tired that screamed from her soul.
I hadn’t seen her this worn out in several years. Since she’d given up the all-night parties, alcohol, and drugs the members of our social circle were known for. Since she’d become Violet and Dawson’s business partner and had an actual cause to plow her energy into. If her security team hadn’t been wound up, I might have thought she’d gone on a bender, but it was clear there was more going on than just a relapse into old ways.
“Armaud, what did I do to bring you to my doorstep?” she asked, voice light, all tease. It called to me, sinking into my veins. But behind the mocking, I could hear what she wasn’t saying: I was there at a bad time.
“You have plans today?” I asked.
She snorted. “I have plans every day. I was due at the Violette offices two hours ago.”
She leaned so that her butt was against the desk. She neatly crossed one leg over the other, drawing my eyes up the length of them to where the skirt ended. What I wouldn’t give to drag my hands under it. To tuck her up against me. To take her on that desk.
It was ridiculous the thoughts that flew through me whenever I saw her. I enjoyed making love to women. Slow and sensual, fierce and strong, but rarely fast. I relished taking my time, turning minutes into hours, and prolonging the pleasure for both of us. Sex was a euphoric release to be controlled and savored. Except, my body didn’t agree when it came to Jada Mori. Never had one woman consumed me the way she always had. Never.
Jada
PAPER LOVE
“Oh, I know that boy's gonna rip me up.
'Cause he ain't that nice, he won't do right,
He'll leave a nasty cut.”
Performed by Allie X
Written by Mclaughlin / Hughes / Pimental
Dax Armaud was sin personified standing in front of me. He looked like he’d stepped out of an ad for Éclair, his father’s company, which was probably the point if I knew Dax at all. His dark hair was done up, looking slightly mussed, and a thin, barely-there beard coated his chin and cheeks. Just enough bristle to know it would be rough between my thighs, which sent silent thrills through my body. When I met his eyes, they glimmered at me―a message of desire blended with a warning to stay away.
He was at least a foot taller than me when I was barefoot, and even in my heels, he was still a tower of lean strength. He had muscles, deeply cut ones, but they didn’t add bulk to his frame the way it did some men. Instead, it added to the cover-model feel that his apparel usually screamed, like the blue-and-gray suit he had on today did.
“Why are you running late?” Dax asked. The deep timbre of his voice washed over me, raising goosebumps different from the ones that had littered my body ever since finding the note on my bed the night before.
Rana and her team had taken it as a personal affront that someone had sneaked in on their watch and gone unseen on the security cameras. I’d taken it as a personal affront to the money I’d been spending for them to keep me safe. But I also knew the truth. If my father and the Kyōdaina were coming after me, nothing would stand in their way—especially not three or four bodyguards. Otōsan’s minions would simply kill them and leave a bloody trail behind as a message to others.
“I had some things come up. Again, what are you doing here?” I asked.
He closed the distance between us until his sneakers were mere inches from my stilettos—a mix of apparel that shouldn’t have worked and yet seemed oddly to fit in a way Dax and I would never be able to. Before I could react, his finger hit my chin, drawing my eyes up to his. He searched them, looking for something. Answers or the truth―I wasn’t sure which. Either way, he wouldn’t get them from me, even though the physical contact was almost enough to break me. I wanted desperately to lean into someone, to be held while words were murmured in my ear about how it was all going to be okay.
But that was not my life. Hadn’t been my life in a very long time. Even Obaasan hadn’t been able to help me shoulder my world since the day I’d opened the study in her 5th Avenue apartment to find a man screaming over his lost pinkie, blood dripping onto the desk and the floor.
“I thought you could accompany me to the boat show,” Dax said, but he was really saying something else. There was worry in his eyes. I closed mine, pushed his hand away, and slid away from him, putting the desk between us.
“Violet and Dawson called you,” I said. It wasn’t a question. It was the only reason he’d be here. He would never come willingly. He’d come because they’d asked him to check in on me. I shouldn’t have called Violet this morning. I’d known my fear would leach into the conversation, but I’d, selfishly, needed to hear something good. And Vi’s voice, full of happiness and love, was just that. A salve to my soul.
“Yes,” he said. Dax was almost always honest, even if he tried to soften the blows the truth usually dealt. He slid his hands into his pockets and rocked slightly, as if he was willing himself to stand still. I wasn’t sure if he was fighting the urge to run away or lunge toward me. The sexual tension that always dangled between us was thick this morning, forbidden yearning amplified by not having seen each other since our friends’ wedding.
“I’m fine. I told Violet I was tired from helping Obaasan.” I kept my voice smooth. Casual. Nothing to see here. Go away.
“Did you see anyone else in New York?” he
asked.
“Yuriko, who is thrilled to be working for your father now. I’m really happy he picked up her clothing line.” I sat down, reached for my phone, and spun it around. Dax’s eyes on my hand made it still. The phone was an old tell—one he’d read many times before.
“You didn’t see your father, then?” he asked.
I scoffed, “Please.”
“Jada, you might as well come clean. What’s going on?” he asked.
I bristled. I was tired of men telling me what to do, telling me how to run my life. Dawson may have been an equal financial partner in Force de la Violette with Violet and me, but he never inserted himself into it. We ran it the way we wanted. No one told me where to go, or where to stand, or when to speak anymore. No one.
I picked up my laptop, a notebook, and several papers from my desk and shoved them fiercely into the beautiful bag Yuriko had designed just for me. It was leather, satin, and brocade mixed in a way fabric wasn’t supposed to be blended. As I pushed the stack of items inside it, several papers went flying across the desk.
Dax caught them, shuffling them together and then stilling.
As I realized what he held, my heart pounded loudly before stopping completely.
Dax couldn’t read Japanese. He was smart―brilliant in many ways―but the Japanese he knew was all oral. The problem was, the image on the parchment spoke volumes even if he didn’t understand the words. His eyes squinted as he took in the drawing of a kaiken stabbing into a slim wrist with blood oozing out from the cut.
“What’s this?” he asked, thick brows furrowing. In a sea of handsome features, Dax’s eyes were near the top. They were naturally lined, as if he’d been tattooed with permanent liner. It was sexy and beautiful all at the same time, but when he turned to meet my gaze, there was anger in those dark depths and not the lust that normally resided there when looking at me.
