Crossed by the Stars: A Second-chance, Slow-burn Romance

by LJ Evans

  “One can only hope,” she said.

  “You wouldn’t be upset?” I asked. While I’d never seen Jada and Dawson tangled skin to skin, lip to lip, it was obvious there was a bond between them. After seeing Dawson with Violet, it made me wonder if their mutual love of the purple-eyed genius was what had brought them together.

  Jada chuckled. “You want me to lose my dinner? No. Dawson and I are friends. That’s all.”

  We turned to watch the skyline of New York City twinkling brighter than the stars. A setting that some would think romantic. My hand was next to hers on the railing, and before I could stop myself, I’d moved my pinkie so that it rested atop hers, a tiny human connection that sent giant waves of desire through me. I felt her shiver in response.

  I dropped my head so that my lips almost caressed her temple and murmured, “So, Dawson isn’t your guy. What about Ken’Ichi Matsuda?”

  I hated the longing in my voice that all but begged for her to say there was nothing between them. To say she hated the man as much as I thought she did whenever he appeared in our lives.

  She stilled.

  “Jealous, Armaud? You made it pretty clear you want nothing to do with me, so the men in my life aren’t really any of your business.”

  My lips grazed skin. “He isn’t the one for you, mon amour.”

  She pulled herself away slightly. “Don’t call me that. Just because you hauled me into your bed and gave me one orgasm doesn’t give you a right to use that nickname or demand knowledge of my sex life.”

  The mention of how we’d used our mouths to bring each other up and over the edge of bliss made my entire body tighten, made my chest ache and my stomach curl with a craving I hadn’t been able to cure for years.

  “I didn’t bring you to my bed that night to seduce you. It was to keep you safe.”

  “I didn’t need you to keep me safe. I have Kaida for that,” she growled. So Jada. So defiant.

  “Three men were manhandling you, and Ito-san wasn’t anywhere to be found. You weren’t in any condition to give consent. I’ll never stand by and allow that to happen to anyone—especially not someone I care about.”

  She glared and said, “So, instead, you manhandled me into your bed.”

  “To sleep it off. Nothing happened,” I insisted. I was surprised she was bringing it up when we’d never once talked about it since that day. She’d left after Ito-san had burst into the room, searching for her, and we’d both acted as if it had never happened. Just like we’d pretended our teenage kiss had never happened.

  “You were naked,” she pushed.

  “I always sleep naked. I have since I was a little kid.”

  But I’d never woken with her perfectly shaped lips around me, egging my hardness into orgasm. It had been too much for my body and heart to handle. I’d flipped her on her back and returned the favor with my mouth on her beautiful slit. And when her body had writhed and her breathing had gotten desperate, it had driven me over the edge, forced me into a submission that I’d gladly given in to. No matter how many times I beat myself up over my lack of control that morning, I was still haunted with dreams and memories of her skin, her scent, and her taste. I was haunted by the look of hurt on her face when I’d pulled away even before Ito-san had come to find her.

  Dawson tapped on the window behind us, drawing our eyes to the room and the dark shape of Ken’Ichi Matsuda who’d shown up like a dragon in the mist. Cold. Hard. Determined to win his prize.

  That night, Jada had walked away. She’d walked away and went to Ken-Ichi, throwing anger and hatred in his direction. But when I’d tried to defend her, she’d recoiled, lashing out at me and sending me storming away. I’d returned to my parents’ apartment and gotten drunk in a way I rarely did.

  What I hadn’t known at the time was that she was protecting me—from Matsuda, the FBI, and the entire undercover op she and Dawson were knee-deep in to bring the Kyōdaina down. Just like pulling away from me now was her way of protecting me. An attempt to keep me far removed from the threats falling around her.

  I wanted to sweep her into my arms, carry her to the airport, and hide her away somewhere her father could never find. But if I did that, I would be tearing a hole in my father’s heart. And yet I still couldn’t help the way Jada’s entire being called to me. How right it felt when I was touching her. How it felt like I’d finally found my way back home whenever I was at her side.

  I turned away, returning to the table and the Chinese food. I piled the leftovers into the box.

  “You’re right. You’re not stupid,” I told her. “So, tell me why you’d even consider this.”

  I stopped what I was doing to take her in. The tension in her shoulders and lips. The dark circles that were only getting worse.

  “Otōsan called and asked me to go. Promised it would make things right.” The admission tore from her, and I could tell she instantly regretted it, because her back grew stiffer, daring me to challenge her.

  I laughed, darkly, hating her father for still having a hold on her. “And you believed him?”

  “I’m not sure what to make of it! You’re the one who stalked in and demanded I tell you what was going on. Why do you bother when you know it will always be things you don’t really want to hear?”

  “I want you to truly be free of him.” Even then, I wasn’t sure it would be enough to satisfy my father, to save my family if I brought her fully into my world…into my bed…into my heart.

  “I’m not even sure his death would free me,” she said with a sad resignation that ripped holes into my gut.

  “So, you’ll just walk to yours instead?” Fear and anger filled me. Losing her was something I wasn’t sure I could survive any more than making her mine was. The two halves of my heart and soul could never be fully joined.

  “Don’t be dramatic, Armaud. No one’s dying here, unless it’s you because you don’t leave me the hell alone to get some work done.”

  She dismissed me, and I went, the turmoil of my thoughts forcing me to yield, forcing me to retreat just like I had every single time her life got tough and mine beckoned.

  Jada

  NEVER LOOK BACK

  “The present, the past,

  Never forget me,

  Never look back.”

  Written & Performed by Imelda May

  “You’re hitting for shit,” Lía said as she held the punching bag for me. She was the third person in as many days to tell me something similar, and even though it was true, it still irked me.

  Another almost sleepless night had me low on energy and motivation. I didn’t really want to be in the gym at five in the morning, hitting a bag. I wanted to escape to Bora Bora, or maybe just down a bottle of tequila, or go into a tranquilizer-induced stupor like the ones I was good at in my old life. My old coping mechanisms were a constant ache that would never go away.

  I stepped back from the bag, undoing the gloves from my hands and throwing them on the floor. Boxing with Lía was a hobby I’d picked up a little over a year ago. Dawson had suggested I take up a physical activity that would make me feel stronger if someone did come after me. And for months now, I’d been proud of my right upper hook and the strength I’d built into my lean frame. But after the last few days, I knew it was futile to even consider striking back.

  If the Kyōdaina wanted me dead, I’d never see them coming.

  Lía sighed, pushing back her black braid, picking up the gloves, and heading toward the mat in the corner. “Come on, then. If you aren’t going to hit the bag, we can at least do some footwork.”

  I followed only because I needed a distraction—from the note, from my father’s world colliding with mine again, and from the lust in Dax’s eyes every time he looked at me. I’d been foolish to spend so much time with him right as my emotions were strung tight. Our time together never ended well for me.

  It was perhaps the one piece of advice from my father I should have listened to. B
ut like all those Romeo-and-Juliet, star-crossed-lovers sorts of situations, our parents warning us to stay apart had done exactly the opposite.

  Dax and I had spent two glorious teenage years, dancing around each other in public only to sneak away and spend hours talking about nothing and everything all at the same time. The air between us had slowly grown heavier each time we met, until the weekend of my fifteenth birthday, where it had become a crescendo of desires demanding a release.

  We’d stolen a bottle of champagne from my absent father’s table, ditched my bodyguard and his parents, and ended up in the Roman section of the museum. Dax had twirled me into him, dancing with me in the silence, our shoes on the marble floor the only sound.

  “You’re the most beautiful girl here tonight,” Dax said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m already going to let you kiss me, Dax. You don’t need to say something so lame to try and butter me up.”

  He looked offended. “I’m just stating the truth. You glow like there’s a power inside you that no one else has. Like the moonlight casting a beam across a dark pond.”

  As always, his words thrilled me, sending rivers of emotions over my unprepared soul. I never knew how to respond when he said such charming things, so I said the thing I wanted most. “Shut up and kiss me.”

  And he did. He pressed his perfectly full and glorious lips against mine. Softer than I’d expected. Silky, luxurious. Heat and flame flickered to life deep inside me, growing as the satin smoothness of his tongue slid against the seam of my mouth, begging an entrance I easily gave and joining us together in the sweetest way. As if we were never supposed to be two beings, but one. His hand on my waist tightened, digging into my skin and making me ache for something I wasn’t even sure I understood.

  We stood tangled together, lips and tongues learning from each other, for so long that I thought I was no longer going to have any air left in my body. But then, he eased away, a cocky, sure smile lighting up his face with one single, perfectly shaped eyebrow lifted in a devilish French god sort of way that was all Dax.

  “Why’d you stop?” I asked, my voice breathy and unsteady.

  “A kiss, mon amour. No more than that tonight,” he said, but I knew what he was thinking. He thought I was too young to be kissed. Too young to be devoured. He was only two years older than me, but he acted like it was twenty years.

  “Don’t call me mon amour. It’s cliché. Besides, who would care if we took it further? It’s not like Otōsan is going to come storming in here and demand justice for you taking my virginity.”

  He paled, and I realized I’d said way too many words that were wrong. Not only the fact that I was a virgin but also the fact that my family and his were always on opposite sides of the ballroom. That nothing good could come from an Armaud and a Mori being seen together.

  He’d left me that night with promises to call, promises to take me out on a proper date, but instead, I didn’t hear from him or see him again for several years. My teenage heart had been shattered. The pain of having been not only seen but sought out, only to be left in solitude once more, had been almost impossible to bear.

  It was only weeks later that I’d had the brutal truth of what and who my father was thrust upon me. I’d gone down the rabbit hole of teenage rebellion using sex, drugs, and misbehavior as both a weapon against my father and a scream for help. By the time Dax reentered my world, parading around Europe with Dawson, Benita, and the rest of the vampires, I wasn’t even the same person he’d first met.

  I felt like that Jada―the one Dax had first kissed―was nothing but a fairy tale. She’d never really existed. She’d lived in a pretend world, surrounded by pretend people who treated her like she was a princess until she proved she was the enemy to everything they stood for. Shaming her family name. Living loud instead of staying quiet.

  The pain of those memories suddenly became a real, physical pain as Lía swept my leg and tossed me to the mat without me even reacting.

  “Holy hell, Jada, where are you?” Lía asked.

  I didn’t answer. I just lay there, looking at the gray cement ceiling of the gym in the basement of my apartment building. Lía always came to me, which was part of the reason she cost so much, but there was no way I was walking into a regular gym. I had no desire for my sweat-covered face to be on every tabloid cover from here to Tokyo, and that was exactly what would happen if the paparazzi found me working out in a gym.

  “Got a lot on my mind,” I finally told her.

  Lía sat on the mat next to me. “Want to talk about it?”

  I snorted. My world was so impossible that most people would think I was making it up. Plus, I knew better than to open up. Talking didn’t solve anything, and it never ended with me feeling better.

  “Nah, I just need to blow off some steam,” I told her.

  “Or get laid,” she teased, pushing a toe against my leg.

  She wasn’t wrong. It had been too long since I’d had sex. But thinking about sex right now only allowed visions of Dax to come slamming back into me. I sighed and pulled my weary body from the mat.

  “For now, I’ll just pound the boxing bag a few thousand times and hope that helps. Can we pick back up on Friday?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she replied. She picked up her gear and headed for the door. With her hand on the door handle, she looked back and said, “Try to get some rest. You look like shit.”

  I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped me as she left. At least I knew I wasn’t paying the people in my life to blow steam up my ass.

  Even though it was already past the time I should have been in the shower, getting ready for my day at Violette, I picked up the gloves I’d dropped and lost myself to hitting the bag dangling from the gym ceiling. With every hit I landed, I wished I could forget, for just one day, who I really was. A Mori. The Oyabun’s daughter.

  I was covered in sweat by the time I stopped. The exhaustion in my soul echoed through every inch of my muscles. I grabbed the towel I’d brought, wiped my face, drank almost an entire bottle of water, and then headed for the exit.

  Bobby spoke into his mic and opened the door, checking the hallway before letting me out. Same thing at the elevator, where he kept me off to the side until he could confirm the elevator was empty. In the lobby, we switched to the private lift leading to the four penthouse suites at the top of the building.

  Nyra was at the door of the apartment, and as we approached, she said, “You’re running late. Rana wants to know if you still plan on going to Force de la Violette before your meeting at the women’s shelter.”

  I nodded. “I think I can still swing it.”

  Bobby went into the apartment to clear it, and I was two steps behind him. I waited in the living room while he searched the first floor even though it felt pointless when Nyra had been at the door the entire time we’d been gone. He jogged up the stairs to the bedroom, and I slowly followed. My foot had just hit the bottom step when the entire apartment rattled with an explosion that tore through the second level and threw me backward. I crashed through the coffee table as smoke and fire broke out above me.

  My ears rang, and my body throbbed with pain. The fire sprinklers kicked in, tossing water from the ceilings and coating me in a thick mist. Alarms wailed, but they were muffled through the ringing in my ears. My heart slammed against my rib cage as I stared at the pile of rubble and flames that had been the second floor of my apartment. The walls were hanging at odd angles, and pieces of wood and Sheetrock and metal were scattered around me.

  “Bobby!” I screamed.

  There was no response.

  My eyes stung with tears and smoke, and an anguished cry erupted from me as I tried to remove myself from the cracked wood and glass tearing into my skin. The front door burst open, Nyra’s face a mash of mixed emotions as she took in the mess of steel and concrete. Her eyes found me in the debris, and she sprinted to my side.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked as sh
e began pulling pieces of the coffee table from around me.

  My entire being hurt. My chest ached from the harsh beat of my heart, and my stomach hurt from the thought of the man who’d gone upstairs to protect me. My legs and limbs were crying out from the force of my collision with a table, but I was alive.

  “Bobby! Go get Bobby!” I demanded, struggling to get up. Nyra lifted me onto my feet, and my body cried out at the simple physical requirement of standing. My heart twisted. Tears hit my cheeks that had nothing to do with my injuries and everything to do with the life I’d cost. Another soul that fate would hold me accountable for.

  Nyra ignored my command, pulling me instead toward the front door. I yanked my arm from her, the jostling all but making me black out as pain coursed through every part of me.

  “God…Bobby…I…” My voice was echoing in my own head. I looked back at the nothingness that was my bedroom, flames and smoke growing. It would be a miracle if he lived. He had a family. A mother and a sister. I hadn’t asked about them in ages. Guilt ate at my insides, turning my stomach to a pit of acid and bile.

  “My first priority is to get you out,” Nyra said. Her muffled voice was automatic, almost robotic, shock hitting us both.

  We headed into the hallway and toward the stairs. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it down the twenty floors to the ground, but the elevators would be locked out. Nyra was on her mic, talking to Rana, but I couldn’t make out the words over the buzzing and underwater feeling in my head.

  We’d barely gone down a flight when black dots started spreading their way across my vision. I fought against it. I would not faint. At the next landing, I leaned up against the cement stairwell, trying to catch my breath. Sharp pains stabbed through me, and my chest felt heavy and tight. Nyra was down another half a flight before she realized I wasn’t following. I struggled to breathe, struggled to keep myself upright, but I was already slipping to the ground before she started back up.