“Thanks.” He tipped his head her way.
He wasn’t like Kingsley, Jaxon or any of his brothers who had the kind of looks that made women stop in their tracks then offer up their life savings for a night or two between the sheets.
No, he wasn’t as handsome as his brothers. He was, however, big and intimidating. And he was smart. The one who put his native skill set and law degree to good use to keep the family successful and thriving.
Yes, if he’d been one of his brothers, the woman would’ve probably still kept trying to get into his pants, figuring that although there was no money, being close to beauty like theirs for even a short time was worth any effort. But he wasn’t one of the pretty ones, and that was okay.
With the woman suddenly intent on getting more champagne from the flight attendant, Carter settled down to enjoy the ride. He turned to face the window with its view of the clouds and, far away, another passenger plane flying at a lower altitude. His eyelids grew heavy. Then a familiar dream took him.
* * *
Birds chirped loud and cheerful outside his fifth-floor window and sunlight flooded into his single college room. The hard lines of a wooden chair pressed along his back, butt and thighs, and in front of him on the desk sat his half-finished homework.
Why hadn’t he finished his homework yet? Class was in just a few hours.
While vague thoughts of getting back to the homework floated through his mind, his room door burst open. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen rushed through it.
Jade Tremaine. She looked like the sweet girl next door. Permed hair down to the middle of her back, a gorgeous face completely free of makeup. Her body, slender yet curvy, had a thick booty that usually starred in his juicier fantasies.
“Carter!” She was crying.
“Jade, baby, what’s wrong?”
The sadness on her face carved a hole straight through Carter. If she let him, he would move the world to get rid of her tears. Her smiles made him happy. Her laughter made him laugh too. Everyone around them noticed Carter’s obsession and assumed they were more than friends. But Jade already had a boyfriend, and she wasn’t a cheater.
“Carter!” Jade fell into his arms, still sobbing.
This was a dream. After more than ten years of living with it, Carter knew every move he would make while trapped inside its illusion. And he knew how different it was from the real event that happened between them years ago.
Jade’s slender body heaved against his.
“He cheated on me...” Her voice had wounds in it, large enough for wailing sobs to break through. “I can’t believe it. I really trusted him.”
Anxiety turned him inside out at the sight of her obvious pain. He would do anything to make things right for her. “Tell me,” he practically begged. “Tell me what I can do.”
But Jade kept sobbing on him, the same words falling from her trembling lips again and again.
“Just hold me. Please.” She trembled like a leaf caught in a hurricane. “Carter...” Her body felt cool and delicate against his.
“Please, don’t cry.” His voice sounded hoarse and desperate to his own ears. He needed to make everything okay for her. Carter’s mind was in tatters, nothing like the logic and control that usually ruled his day-to-day life. “I’ll fix whatever you want.”
Slowly, the need to help her became tainted with lust and inconvenient desire. His hands wrapped around her slender arms and her skin felt like silk. “Jade, let me help you.”
“Yes, yes.” And she lifted her mouth toward his.
And with that, Carter knew how to help. His body and his love were what she needed.
Happiness surged in him.
Yes. This he could do.
He pressed his lips to her damp cheek and tasted her tears. A soft whimper left her parted lips and curled around his sex, hardening him. She cried out again and gripped the front of his shirt. Her sharp nails sank into his skin, deep and agonizing, but Carter moved into the pain.
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything.”
“Yes,” she whispered and her breath was like perfume.
They fell into his bed. A California king with sheets that brushed soft as sin against his suddenly naked skin. Carter throbbed with want to protect her and to possess her. Both impulses burned through him and scorched away every piece of reluctance he might have had before.
Her bare skin was a balm to everything that hurt; her kisses tasted of the most sacred of elixirs. With each touch of his hands on her skin, poetic nonsense invaded Carter’s head. He couldn’t think, could only feel.
He should stop. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t what she needed.
But she writhed against him, the most sensual and passionate woman he’d ever been with. “Yes, Carter...” Her tight body welcomed him. “Yes. Love me. Make everything else go away.”
Yes. God, yes.
Jade panted into his open mouth. Her legs wrapped around his waist.
Her agonized sobs turned into cries of pleasure. She moaned his name. “You’re perfect...Carter. So perfect.” Her hand settled on his chest, over his heart, as they moved together. She threw her head back, baring her long throat. A smile curved her lips. “Yes!”
Yes, their pleasure was perfect.
His body moving firm and hot inside her, Carter reached for Jade’s face. But his hand passed through her cheek.
Her smile fell away. “Carter?”
Suddenly, he couldn’t feel her around his sex anymore. He could see her, but couldn’t touch. She kept disappearing, piece after piece. “No!” she sobbed out.
“Jade!”
As she disappeared around him, Carter’d never felt so helpless in his life.
He screamed out his frustration, grabbing desperately for her but his hand passed through her body again and again. He was losing everything.
Jade’s sobs got louder. She trembled like she was ready to fall apart, but Carter couldn’t touch her, couldn’t comfort her anymore.
“Jade! Stay!”
But she didn’t. Her body faded away until only her sobs lingered in the air, ripping into his ears like knives.
* * *
The jolt of the plane hitting the runway yanked Carter from the dream.
He hissed and jerked upright, opened his eyes in time to see the woman next to him give him a faintly worried glance. The pain faded. Sound drained away. But his body remained on edge and faintly aroused.
Just like always.
Ten years of having the dream and it was still as powerful as ever. The panic and regret that came with it were things he could happily live without. But he didn’t know how to get rid of the dream, or those feelings.
A deep breath in. A deep breath out.
Okay. Enough of this. His body still felt heavy and in need of sleep, but that was too bad. He had work to do.
Carter’s phone vibrated when he turned it on. A single message from Kingsley had come in during the five-hour flight.
Got in touch with the firm you suggested. We got lucky they took our call outside office hours. Their chief strategist will be in my office when you get here.
His brother didn’t waste any time...
Other than that, only one new business emergency had come up. Plus, an update from Kingsley’s fiancée about the engagement party the whole family was expected to attend. He sent his assistant the details so she could keep him on track.
As soon as the aircraft door opened and he was free to go, Carter nodded to his neighbor and left with his single piece of carry-on luggage. The patience to wait for bags to arrive at the luggage carousal just wasn’t in him. Not to mention, he wasn’t often anywhere long enough to need more than a change of clothes, his laptop and cell phone.
He wound his way through the airport to the curbside. A scant t
hree minutes later, a black town car pulled up and the driver slid down the passenger-side window.
“Mr. Diallo?”
He nodded and barely moved toward the car before the driver leaped out, a woman in a crisp dark uniform, and opened the door for him.
“Thank you,” he said, but she was already back in the driver’s seat and pulling away from the curb.
During the drive, he checked his messages again. His assistant, who was worth her weight in gold and rubies, scheduled the meeting with Kingsley in the early afternoon. This gave Carter enough time to head home, shower, change and take care of some urgent business for his own firm. The situation with Jaxon was urgent but no one was about to keel over.
While he took care of these basic things, the chauffeur waited.
They made good time to the office and Carter offered the woman a tip, which she respectfully refused before driving away from the thirty-story Miami high-rise that housed the Diallo Corporation and a few other interests the family owned.
When he walked into the building, it felt like home. More so than the three-thousand-square-foot house he’d recently bought on Hibiscus Island.
He’d been coming to the building since he was a kid, always eager to see what magical things the lab came up with or find out firsthand what kept his parents away from home so much. Now that he knew the ins and outs of the business that kept five of the thirteen Diallo siblings employed, he half wished he hadn’t been so eager to throw his childhood away just to satisfy his curiosity.
His parents had taken that curiosity for interest in running the family business, and once it had been established that he had no interest in arm wrestling the title and pain in the butt of being CEO away from Kingsley, they’d slotted him into the next best or possibly worst job. Company fixer aka CSO, chief security officer. A title he was convinced they’d made up.
It didn’t matter to them that he already had his own security firm, his own employees. They were Jamaican. For them, it was perfectly normal, even expected, to have more than one job.
The elevator doors chimed and slid open.
Carter took it to the top floor and walked into his brother’s office after knocking once and waiting a few seconds past the “Come in.” He’d accidentally barged into enough sex-at-the-office scenarios by various members of his family with their significant others to last him a lifetime.
“You work fast, Kingsley.” He closed the door behind him with a click.
God, he was tired. But sleep would have to wait.
“We don’t have time to waste.” Kingsley greeted Carter with a grin despite the seriousness of what they needed to discuss. After a few quick keystrokes, Kingsley stood up and hugged Carter, gave him the manly slap on the back.
“Trust me. I understand,” Carter said.
He was so focused on his brother that he didn’t notice the other figure in the large office until he caught movement from the corner of his eye.
Right. The head of the California-based PR firm. Damn, he must have been more tired than he thought.
Carter turned with his hand held out to shake. “Carter Diallo,” he said automatically, expecting a middle-aged white man. But he froze as a slender hand clasped his.
“We’ve already met,” the PR chief said in a particularly expressionless voice. The corners of a familiar pair of lips curved up in a humorless smile. “Jade Tremaine, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Chapter 2
Carter Diallo was huge.
His shoulders easily filled the doorway of his brother’s office, and his presence was immense and intimidating. The impression of overwhelming strength was only made even more so by his expressionless face. He looked more like an enforcer than the CSO Jade knew he was. Thick muscles were apparent even under the sleek Tom Ford suit; his hair was perfectly and precisely cut—he was the very embodiment of class and power.
His face was still the same, though. At least his eyes were: that peculiar mix of hyperconfidence and authority that hadn’t seemed to match the slender boy Jade knew in college but now seemed perfect for the giant who just walked through Kingsley Diallo’s door.
No, this wasn’t the man she knew in college. His effect on her equilibrium was worse. She swallowed and barreled ahead on the course she’d chosen when she first found out they would be doing business together.
“Jade Tremaine, in case you’ve forgotten,” she said, carefully shielding her emotions from him.
His eyebrow, dark and perfectly sculpted, rose as he clasped her hand in a perfectly respectable handshake.
For such a muscled, hypermacho-looking man, he was incredibly well-groomed. His brows manicured, skin smooth and exfoliated. She couldn’t remember if that was all natural or if he took as much care with his looks as she did with hers.
Looking at him, her nerves jangled all over the place. Although she’d prepared herself for Carter Diallo, just seeing him in the flesh after ten years obliterated everything from her memory except the taste of his lips.
She’d seen Carter’s last name on everything, from the first email contact to the massive sign and logo on top of the building his family owned, even the transfer of her agency’s fee in their account. But somehow she’d thought—hoped!—it was all a coincidence.
Until Carter walked in the door, older and even more gorgeous than ever.
She hated herself for noticing.
Kingsley had a large glassed-in office. Anyone inside could see out but no one could see in. So she saw Carter coming in from the elevator, watched him exchange a few words with Kingsley’s assistant before striding with a confident, bow-legged stride toward the door. Though she’d been in the middle of a conversation with the older Diallo, Jade had turned away, flustered, to root around in her briefcase on some pretense or other. When Carter came in, he didn’t see her face right away. She made sure of it.
And now...
“Not at all,” he said in response to her ridiculous statement, and she immediately saw his brother take note, a shifting of the expression on his face.
But, ever the professional that Jade had known him to be in the few hours they’d known each other, Kingsley said nothing.
Carter unbuttoned his suit jacket and took a seat at the oval conference table at the far end of the spacious office like he was the one who’d called the meeting. In a way, he had, she supposed.
“Did Kingsley tell you what this is about?” He glanced briefly at his brother which was Kingsley’s cue to join him at the table, apparently.
Kingsley gestured toward a seat at the table and waited for Jade to sit down before sinking into one of the sinfully comfortable leather chairs.
“Yes, he gave me the details.” She put the folder she’d pulled from her briefcase on the table and tapped it with a long mocha-lacquered fingernail. “Your little brother hasn’t been acting in the best interests of the company lately. His behavior will negatively impact the IPO offering.” Jade pulled a few key sheets of paper from the folder and passed them to the two men. “Here’s all the information I put together on him.”
When Corrie, her assistant and the one handling the day-to-day workings of the firm while she was in Miami, called her and said Diallo Corporation was looking for a professional fixer, she’d been shocked. But jumped on it right away. Diallo was big business and it was only luck—bad or good, she wasn’t sure yet—that had her in Miami this week.
Her parents’ sudden deaths in a car accident yanked her from the safety and distance of her San Diego home back to Miami where she’d been mostly miserable. Or too ignorant to realize she’d been miserable. She hadn’t talked to her parents in years and although her first impulse was to hand everything over to a professional to deal with, Corrie had cornered her the afternoon after she found out about the accident and basically guilted her into jumping on a plane.
Jade arrived in Miami in time
for the meticulously planned funeral—her parents had been so thorough with their own arrangements, she’d hardly had to do anything—and hadn’t been at all surprised by the service’s sparse attendance. The ten or so people gathered around the caskets seemed more intent on avoiding each other’s eyes than mourning Isaac and Abigail Tremaine.
Jade included.
Resentment was too strong a word for what she felt for her parents. It had mostly been apathy, especially after the way they’d treated her when she was in college. Even with Corrie bullying her, Jade didn’t want to deal with her parents’ funeral, their estate, the murky pool of unsorted emotion in her chest. She didn’t want to deal with any of it.
So, it had been a blessing, she thought, when she got the call about the Diallo Corporation’s interest. Sitting in front of the lawyer and painfully discussing her parents’ last wishes, she’d practically jumped for joy when her cell phone rang. Now she wasn’t so sure if any of this could be called a blessing.
With her escape from the lawyer’s office at the forefront of her mind, she’d done the quick research on the problem—boy genius Jaxon Diallo’s general tactlessness and extremely bad taste in women—printed the information she thought she would need for the quickly arranged meeting and just shown up.
Now she wasn’t sure what was worse. Dealing with the lawyer telling her that her parents had always wished for her to forgive them and return home, or facing the man who’d shattered her heart into a million pieces ten years ago.
A tough choice.
“Damn, I wish Jaxon would learn a little more discretion,” Kingsley said, dragging Jade’s mind back from the past. “Pillow talk doesn’t have to include your idea for a million-dollar app your casual screw can later blackmail you about.”
“This isn’t exactly blackmail,” she pointed out. “This girl just wants to ruin him, no compensation necessary.”
Across the table, Carter flipped through the papers Jade had passed to him, frown lines creasing his brow.
“This is blatant bull,” Carter said drily. “Jaxon is a lot of things, but he’s not a thief. The first app he created made millions. It’s doing better than the one this girl claims to have had the idea for.”
Her Perfect Pleasure Page 2
