“I’d love a ride sometime,” Carter said. “In the car that is.”
She looked him up and down. “What exactly are you saying?”
Good question. He wanted to get her back in his bed. That was as clear to him as glass. But even when Jade danced with him in the club, her “I’m not going back there with you” vibes were equally clear.
Carter cleared his throat. “I’m saying that I want in...” He dropped his eyes low, caressing her face, her throat, the slope of her shoulders without laying a hand on her. “I hope you want the same thing.”
This woman brought something out in him. Carter could sense it, and it rose in him as dark and hot and needy. Settled in his teeth and his body like an ache that could only be relieved by one thing. This was like nothing he had felt with her before.
It was strange enough to make him uncomfortable, and uncomfortably hard.
Silver moonlight fell over Jade’s face as she watched him, unsmiling. Her face was smooth, soft looking—and damn, did he want to touch—but she also looked tired.
“Carter, the last time I let you in—” she gave the last word the same significance he did “—things didn’t work out. You hurt me.” Then she bit her lip, like she’d said more than she wanted to.
Jade stepped closer to the car and it chirped as it unlocked. She opened the door, got in, leaving one elegant high-heeled foot on the pavement. Reaching across the car, she opened the glove compartment then took out her phone. After sending off a quick text, she more or less gave him her complete attention.
Her lashes fell low over her eyes, hiding her emotions from him. “It was nice to meet your brothers, Carter. That’s the only personal thing I can say. Right now, I’m here to work with you. That’s all.”
She moved to shut the car door and shut him out, and Carter panicked. His grabbed the edge of the door.
“An hour!” He felt like he shouted it, his heart beating much too fast. He couldn’t let her walk away again, not when this chance had come to him like some kind of miracle. “That’s all I ask. One hour of your time. Tonight.”
The refusal was on her face. He could see it as clearly as the flick of her tongue across her bottom lip.
“All right,” she said.
What? But his brain quickly caught up. “When? Where?”
“At my hotel.” She gave him the address. “Come in an hour, and don’t be late.”
Before he could respond, she started the car, tucked her high-heeled foot in the sleek machine and drove away. Literally leaving him in the dust.
Come in an hour, and don’t be late.
Her words rang like church bells in his head, impossible to ignore.
When he got back to the table, his brothers didn’t waste any time.
“So what’s up with you and Jade?” Leo asked, faking a predatory look. “Do I have a chance?”
Wolfe, fending off yet another waitress who wasn’t even supposed to be taking care of their section, laughed. “You know what’s up with him and Jade.” He leaned forward, eyes sparkling with wicked humor. “What I don’t know is, how did this happen so soon. You just met the woman today.”
Wolfe had married Nichelle, his friend and business partner, after years of flirting and dancing around each other. To him, a day was nothing, hell, he probably thought Kingsley’s fiancée of three months didn’t know his brother enough for marriage either.
“Wait...” Leo frowned over his whiskey. “Is she the girl you knew in college? The one you’ve been obsessed with for pretty much ten years now?”
“What? What are you talking about?” No way was he that transparent. And how could Leo know about any so-called obsession when Carter was just now aware of it himself?
“Seriously? That’s her?” Wolfe looked the way Jade had gone with a wry smile. “She’s nothing like I thought she’d be. From what you said, I expected somebody like Alice. Young-acting and all sunshine and butterflies. This woman will eat you alive.” He looked impressed.
“Let’s back up here.” Carter held up his hands in surrender, looking at his brothers like they were crazy. Because really, that was the only explanation. “What are you all talking about? I never told you about any ‘obsession’ with a woman.”
Leo almost fell out of the booth laughing. His teeth flashed and he honest to God grabbed his stomach. “Yeah, maybe when you’re not tired as hell from two or three days straight of work and not trying to keep up your big and bad reputation.”
“Yup,” his other brother, traitor that he was, chimed in. “When you’re tired or when we ask about some girl or other, all you basically say is She’s no Jade or something like that. Honestly, we were worried you’d never find this woman and find the closure or whatever you need to keep going with your life.”
Carter slumped in the chair, the music throbbing around him and his brothers going on with their conversation like they hadn’t just dropped a bombshell all over his life. All these years, he thought he’d been playing it cool.
Come in an hour, and don’t be late.
He glanced quickly down at his watch, glad the address she’d given him was less than ten minutes from the club. His breath rattled in his chest.
Yes, he dreamed about Jade, but he never compared other women to her. Did he?
No other woman affected him enough to even think of them in the same world as her.
He had his needs. And he took care of them as often as his work with the family would let him. But what they said just didn’t make sense.
“You guys are full of it,” he finally bit out after a gulp of whiskey.
Leo let out a bark of laughter. “Maybe so, but you’re the one in denial.”
Goddamn.
Ten years. And this was what he’d been waiting for? Like Wolfe had done before, he looked at the route Jade had taken out of the club and to her sexy little car. Next time he saw his troublemaking brother, he was going to buy Jaxon a meal or at least whatever flavor ice cream he was into at the moment. Jade Tremaine was back in his life, and his blinders were off. He wanted her, and maybe with the help of the IPO offering that he never really supported, he would get her right back where she belonged. With him.
“Okay,” he said. And even to his own ears, he sounded dazed.
Wolfe cursed out a laugh. “Damn, brother! It’s about time you actually knew what was going on in your own heart.”
Yeah. It was about time.
But how could Carter know his own heart when it had only belonged to his family this whole time?
* * *
Carter knocked on Jade’s hotel room door, not sure of what he would say. On the ride over, he’d rehearsed a thousand different things, but not one of them seemed right in the end. Before he was ready, the door opened in front of him.
Jade’s eyes widened when they saw him. “Nice flowers.”
“Nice room.” Nice room? Really? That’s all you got? But he refused to backpedal. “Can I come in?”
“Of course, since you came all this way. And with flowers too.” She stepped aside and waved him into the generic but classically luxurious hotel suite. “Unless that bouquet isn’t for me.” Amusement threaded her voice.
“Who else would it be for?” He looked around, noting the open door of the bedroom and the rolling suitcase sitting on top of the bed.
“I don’t know,” Jade said from behind him. “Maybe you like to walk around with accessories to tease all the women you pass.”
She’d changed from what she’d been wearing at the bar. Now a simple white dress flowed over her subtle curves. She’d showered too. The scent of a mouthwatering combination of spices emanated from her skin. Jade literally smelled like something he wanted to eat.
Carter shifted the flowers, a colorful explosion of red, white and yellow roses already in a clear vase, from one hand to the other. “While I do
look good carrying these around, is there anyplace in here I can rest them for a little while?”
A spark of humor caught in her eyes before she turned away to point at a table near the shuttered window. “You can put them here. They can get some light in the morning.”
“Thanks.” He put the flowers where she wanted, but once his hands were empty, he stood in the middle of the hotel suite, everything he’d rehearsed stripped from his brain. But at least he wasn’t stuttering out empty words.
A sound of impatience fluttered through the room. Hers.
“What did you want to talk to me about, Carter?”
Talk?
Oh, yeah. Right. He cleared his throat and, unbuttoning his suit jacket, claimed one of the armchairs in the little sitting area. He nearly breathed a sigh of relief when she followed him.
“I want to clear the air between us,” he said. That sounded like a good enough start.
All around the room were small signs of her having been there for a good little while, a day or three. A handbag in the middle of the small coffee table. Papers neatly stacked next to it. A light jacket thrown across the back of one of the chairs.
“I think you said enough in your office earlier.” She sank into the chair opposite him and crossed her long legs. Unable to help it, his eyes flickered down to follow the movement. Miles of smooth brown skin. Legs he’d once felt wrapped around him. Did she have any underwear on?
He winced, disappointed by his wandering thoughts. No, this wasn’t what this visit was about.
“No. I didn’t say nearly enough. The...situation caught me off guard. We didn’t get to talk, not really. We just threw words at each other before you walked out.”
“And you know this time will be different?”
“Yes.” It had to be. Carter drew a deep breath and braced his elbows on his spread thighs. “I want you to know what happened to me ten years ago.”
“Oh, I know what happened.” Her eyes narrowed, like she was staring into some murky pit. “You got what you wanted from a stupid college girl and then you left.” She shrugged like it was no big deal. Just another virginity plucked in a college dorm room.
Carter clenched his jaw until it hurt. Of course, she wouldn’t make this easy for him. There was nothing for him to do but spit it out. “When you and I were having sex for the first time, my father had a heart attack.”
She stiffened across from him, her red-painted mouth hanging slightly open. “Oh my God, Carter...”
“When you left to go back to your dorm, I checked my phone and got the news from my mother.” Guilt had torn him apart. There he’d been, buried deeply in the woman he’d wanted his whole college life while his father was barely holding on to his actual life. Listening to his mother’s voice-mail message, Carter thought he was going to be sick. But he’d only spared a moment to shower the smell of sex from his skin before jumping on a plane back to Miami.
“My father was in intensive care when I got back home. The rest of the family was there. My mother, my brothers, my sisters. None of us left his side until we were sure he’d make it. For a while, we just didn’t know how it would go.” Even now, it made him nauseous to think how close he’d come to losing his father. Carter linked his fingers together and pressed them against his chin. “I was in a daze for a while. I know you called. I know you left messages, but I could barely answer to my own name much less have a phone conversation. I didn’t want to see a phone. All I wanted to do was give all of my energies and prayers to my father and my family.” He lifted his eyes to Jade. “And although I don’t regret the choices I made then, I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Leaning toward him, she looked shell-shocked. “I... I had no idea.”
“I know. And you should have. At least if I’d made the time to call and let you know what was going on, you would know that I...valued what happened between us. Not just the sex, but all of it. All those years we spent getting to know each other, every movie night, every confidence we shared.” He paused. “And it means something to me that you chose to give me your virginity.”
She jerked like she’d been electrocuted. “I didn’t—”
Carter felt an unexpected spike of amusement and he raised an eyebrow in her direction.
Her gaze dropped and he practically felt the scald of embarrassment rising from her cheeks. “I didn’t realize you knew I was a virgin.”
“I knew,” he rumbled back at her.
Carter had heard the rumors Jade’s college boyfriend spread around campus, that she was frigid and couldn’t stand to be touched, that she didn’t even want to be close to any guy. But that wasn’t the warm and vibrant girl he knew. When she’d come to him, that irresistible mixture of temptation and vulnerability, his schoolboy willpower was no match to her allure and soft cries of Please, Carter. Please... as she kissed his throat and clawed away the buttons of his shirt.
The spots of blood she left behind on his sheets had been small, but they had been very much there.
Still looking embarrassed, Jade jumped up from her chair. The dress fluttered around her legs from her frantic movement. “I didn’t know about your father. I...” She shook her head and raked trembling fingers over her sleek, low-cut hair. “I would’ve understood if only I’d known.”
“I know,” Carter said.
And that stark fact haunted him every night when he closed his eyes to sleep. By the time he woke up from the fog his father’s heart attack and thankful recovery had left him in and returned to campus, it had been too late. Jade was gone. No one would tell him where she went, and by that time she was the one not returning any phone calls.
There had been something else too. Something that shamed him now.
After all those years of wanting Jade—of imagining what it would be like to have the girl who lit up all his days with her smiles and all his nights with fantasies that left him weak and shouting out her name in the aftermath of his sexual release—he’d been simply and terrifyingly afraid.
While waiting and praying with the rest of the family, he found out the secret that most of his siblings apparently already knew. That their mother had cheated on their father, and left him, left all the children. She came back to them eventually. But if a couple he thought would never break apart was so fragile in reality, then what did that mean for any relationship he got in?
Afterward, he realized how stupid he’d been.
Framed against the pale curtains, Jade stood watching him. Light flowed over her face but her expression was closed and unreadable.
What are you thinking now? he wanted to ask her. But she’d probably sooner jab him in the kidneys than give him a straight answer. Instead, he stood up and went to her.
“It might be too late for anything, even forgiveness, between us but that’s what I wanted to tell you. I don’t want to keep any more secrets between us.” Unease flicked at the back of his brain. A memory of his fear. A deeper reason why he hadn’t tried harder to reach her that long week they’d waited to see if his father would pull through. “Jade.” Carter stepped closer, his hands down at his sides. “Is it too late for you to forgive me?”
She clasped her arms tightly over her chest. “After all this time, it probably doesn’t really matter. I...”
Of course, he couldn’t forget how she came at him earlier in Kingsley’s office. The blatant lie she told about her virginity. She wanted to push him even farther away. Wanted to punish him. Those were the feelings she’d had for him for years now. He couldn’t expect them to change in a lightning’s flash.
But he could hope.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Jade. The only thing I ever wanted was to make you happy. After what you said about Hudson and how he cheated on you, all I could think of was how much better I’d treat you. I wanted to show you it was okay to be a virgin and to want to be careful—”
She made a sharp no
ise, one of self-mockery. “All that care I took with my virginity went up in smoke the second you touched me. I guess I wasn’t waiting for anything after all.”
“Or you were waiting for it to mean something to the person you shared it with.”
“But did it, though?” she asked. “Did it mean anything to you?”
God, how could she doubt it?
Before he’d given his body permission, Carter was stepping forward to claim Jade’s hand in his. Her fingers were freezing.
He pulled her close and shuddered in relief when she let him. “I would’ve given anything for you to be mine and mine alone back in college.”
“But we’re not in college now, Carter.” Jade grabbed his other arm and held tight. They stood there, facing off like two gladiators in the arena. “We’re not kids anymore.”
“But we don’t have to be kids to know what desire is, do we?” His thumb stroked her knuckles.
He heard her breath catch, that sound he’d only heard one other time in his life, when he’d had her in his arms and in his bed.
“Carter, don’t.” She licked her lips, pupils flaring wide open. Jade tugged her hand from his. Both her palms landed flat on his chest. Her fingernails dug into him through the thin silk shirt.
“Don’t what?” He tugged her closer until her heat radiated to him, sinking into his chest and his belly. “Don’t tell you how much I still want you? Don’t tell you I’ve been dreaming about you every night for the past ten years—” Her eyes widened and she made that startled sound again. “Don’t confess how much I ache to just kiss you right now?”
And that wasn’t even half of what he was feeling. He hoped for now, though, what he’d said to her was enough.
“You don’t play fair,” Jade gasped a moment before she kissed him. Her soft mouth pressed into his and that was all the permission Carter needed. He parted his lips and took what she offered.
She tasted like longing. And, oh, the sound she made. A deep and soft moan that made him realize he was not alone in this. She may have hated him. She may not have wanted to see his face ever again. But she still wanted him. She still ached for him like the afternoon she’d come begging for him to make love to her.
Her Perfect Pleasure Page 7
