by Diana Gardin
Tipping my head to one side and reaching for my own shrimp, I shake my head. “What?”
Arden’s triumphant. “I shared my food with you. So, best friend ever.”
Tipping my head back, my laughter probably touches the sky. “Truth. That was a really good best friend move.”
Fuck. This woman is going to make me fall for her.
17
Arden
I should be nervous.
No, I should be scared as hell.
I haven’t been with a man since Trenton, and I’ve been mourning the loss of that love—that first, pure love—since I lost it.
Instead of being nervous, although there’s definitely a butterfly or two dancing its way around my stomach, I feel ready.
Like every moment since literally running into Flash Jackson that day in the park has led to this.
This man.
Despite his challenges, he’s shown me nothing but strength and a soft and solid place to land. He’s been there for me in the most unlikely of times, and he’s listened and cared for me in a way that no one has in so long.
I never thought—not once—that moving on after the tragedy that struck me that day on the highway was an option. In fact, I rebelled against the very idea of it.
But Flash? He makes me want to grab hold of his hand so tight and let him lead me through the darkness.
Back into the light.
Back to the place where I can breathe again.
Splashing water on my face, I dry it with a towel from the rack in Flash’s bathroom and face my reflection in the large mirror overlooking one of the sinks in his master bathroom.
Staring, reflecting, judging myself based on the way that I look. And then, the corners of my mouth draw up in a secret smile.
Because, for once in my life, none of this matters. I’m with a man who wants me, regardless of the fact that he’s never laid eyes on me. And every single time Flash touches me, regards me with that assessing tilt of his head, holds me in his strong arms…he makes me feel wanted. Needed, even.
Glancing down at myself clad only in my simple black bra and panties, I hope that I’m enough for him.
Expelling a puff of air, I open the bathroom door and step over the threshold into his bedroom. Nitro lies in the doorway leading to the hallway. He looks up at me once, but then rests his head back on his paws, as if he knows I belong there.
Do I? Could I have possibly found a place I belong, after everything?
Closing my eyes, I place a hand on my chest and tell my heart to beat again.
Flash sits in the middle of his king-sized bed dressed in black boxer-briefs and a gray t-shirt. His knees are drawn up before him, arms wrapped around them. But his focus? That’s aimed right at me.
I know, in my head and in my heart, that he can’t see me. But it seems like his eyes—such a beautiful, dark, and stormy gray—are staring directly at me.
“Never,” he murmurs softly from the bed, without moving an inch, “have I wished I could see something more than I wish I could see you right now. C’mere.”
He holds out a hand, beckoning me, calling me, and I place one foot in front of the other. Even if I tried to resist him, I wouldn’t be able to. Something inside of me has called out to him before I really even knew it was happening.
The mattress dents below my knees as I crawl toward him. When I’m only a few feet away, he reaches out, grabs my arm, and tows me forward until my body is cradled against his. He inhales, sweeping my long hair away from my neck, and his eyes, rarely free of the sunglasses he usually wears, close in what looks like bliss.
“Everything I feel around you is magnified,” he whispers in my ear. “The smell of you, the feel of you in my arms.”
My breath hitches as he suddenly flips us so that my back is flat on the mattress and he’s above me, caging me with his arms on either side. His voice lowers, the gravelly rasp making me limp with want. “The taste of you.”
He bends, capturing my lips with his in the sweetest of kisses before he catches my bottom lip between his and sucks. I moan, my arms tracing a path along his muscular shoulders. Cords ripple beneath my fingers, and my fingers are greedy as I reach for the hem of his shirt. Sitting back, he pulls the garment over his head and tosses it, and then I take a moment to just feast my eyes on him. He lowers himself over me once again, this time, his palms cradling my face. His thumbs trace my cheeks, my brow bones, my nose.
His whisper is ragged as his eyes rove my face, staring at nothing but somehow seeing everything. “This is how,” he rasps, voice rough, “I have to see you. I need to touch you, feel you, commit you to memory. That okay with you?”
Turning my head slightly, I take his thumb into my mouth, sucking. He groans, his hips reflexively jerking to meet the hot center between my thighs, the ache there building in a way that makes me burn.
“So fucking perfect,” he murmurs, as his hands trace the line of my neck, and his index fingers draw a path along my collarbone. One big hand tangles in my hair while the other runs down the length of my side. I shiver as he palms my breast, his thumb tugging down the cup of my bra and running over the tip, until it pebbles beneath his touch.
I writhe beneath him, my body catching fire one inch at a time. It feels like if I don’t get more of him soon, I’ll burst into flames.
“Flash,” I plead. “Please.”
With a dark chuckle, he reaches behind me and unclasps my bra. He dips his head and captures that same nipple with his mouth, sucking, teasing, nibbling with his teeth until I cry out. His torture is steady, patient, as he offers the same attention to my other breast.
My nails dig into his skin, but it only seems to fuel him. His hands plant themselves on my hips, pulling him down my body.
This man. I shouldn’t be feeling this way, not now. Maybe not ever. But the sensations he creates in my body, the emotions crashing through the wall around my heart…I can’t fight it.
I don’t want to.
All I want is this. This feeling between us; the electricity lining the air, just before lightning strikes.
“This body,” he murmurs, his lips whispering against my hipbones. “I’ve been dreaming about this tight little body, Arden…all wrapped around me. Like a goddamned present.”
I hold my breath as he pulls my underwear from me in one smooth motion. I gasp as the air hits me where I’m wet and needy, and he glances up at me with a knowing smirk on his full, full lips. One big hand on my chest pushes me back into the bed, and the sheets beneath me twist in my fists as he hooks first one leg, then the other, over his capable shoulders.
Strength. That’s what pours from Flash Jackson, eyesight or no. This man is strong enough to carry me through miles of rough water. He’s been my life raft without even realizing it.
He kisses me, so feather-light and gentle it’s almost reverent, on my inner thigh. Then he repeats the motion on the other side, and my soft sigh disappears into the darkness of his bedroom.
The first swipe of Flash’s tongue on my heated, soaked center makes me moan as my head rolls to the side. “God, oh God. Flash…”
Everything inside of me clenches tight as his mouth finds parts of me I thought were hidden forever. I suck in a breath and hold it, but I can’t control the slow, steady thrusting of my hips as I rise to meet his licks. When he inserts a finger inside me, like the only thing he’s ever wanted is to see me break, I clench my teeth around a scream.
He pauses, looking up. “Don’t hold back from me, baby. I want all of you tonight. You hear me, Arden?”
I almost sob with the effort it takes to heed his words, to let him have my body the way he’s stealthily stolen my heart. “I can’t…”
He plunges a second finger inside me and I quake. His voice is insistent. “Yes, you can. You can give me this. You can give me you, dammit.”
I quiver around his fingers, and when he sucks the tight bud of my clit into his mouth and growls, I splinter.
I break.
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I’ve broken before, but this split feels like a coming together rather than a tragic fracture.
Tears stream down my face as I bite my lip and clutch the sheets. My head whirls with too many thoughts to contain, and I register the barest hint of a moment where Flash is gone before he’s back again, kneeling above me. I hear the distant rustle of something being torn open and then he’s there, settling between my legs.
His fingers, gentle but sure, stroke my face and when he feels the wetness there, he whispers in my ear.
“You’re so damn beautiful, it hurts. You know that? Doesn’t matter that I can’t see you. I can feel you…and I know you feel me too.”
I reach down and grip his thick, strong length where it rests on my belly, and stroke him. He hisses, and I cup his face with my other hand.
“I can see you.” My whisper is fierce and potent. “And you’re the beautiful man lighting up a very dark world.”
He groans, his head dropping to my shoulder as I guide him to my entrance. His gruff whisper in my ear makes me smile.
“You ready?”
I nod.
He enters me with one swift thrust to the hilt, and I cry out as he goes completely still. He fills me, stretching me in a way that makes me squirm anxiously, wanting him to move.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “Perfect, baby.”
His thrusts are slow at first, steady, as he touches my face, my shoulders, my breasts, leaving nothing but tingling electricity in his wake. When I wrap my legs around his waist and start to tremble around him, a growl rumbles deep in his chest, and I feel the exact moment that he lets go. When he gives himself to me fully.
He’s no longer the put-together, in-control pilot who keeps things in order. No, when he releases himself from that role, he’s the Ace who took enemy planes down, the fighter who can’t be beat, the hero strong enough to make a comeback after losing his eyesight.
And that man? That man brings me to my knees.
I can feel myself falling, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop it; no branches to catch myself on the way down.
When the roar of his release overpowers my own cry of ecstasy, I realize the truth: I wouldn’t stop this free fall even if I could.
18
Flash
December 2, 2017
When I met her, everything inside me told me to keep my distance. To stay away because there was no way someone that broken could be anything but a lead weight on my already sinking ship. Then I got to know her. And I realized that no matter how fucked up my situation was, she might be going through something even darker, and that maybe I could help pull her into the light. Maybe if I taught her how to breathe again, she’d breathe some of that life back into me.
It was survival instinct. Arden Fontaine could help me survive, if only I could help her put one foot in front of the other in her own life.
But then I made the mistake of touching her. Of kissing her. Of owning her body, feeling it writhe beneath mine. My heart got all twisted up in her soul. And now?
I’m afraid there’s no turning back.
Correction: You’re not afraid. You’re fucking terrified.
That thought skitters across my mind as I walk into the tall, glass-covered building that houses the Fortune 500 company my parents built and cherished.
“Mr. Jackson!” I hear a chair roll back as a woman runs around her desk to greet me. “I wasn’t informed the board was expecting you today.” I can’t see her face, but I can feel the way she flutters around me, as if she’s not quite sure how to help me reach my final destination.
“Can I help you upstairs?” she asks with a note of fret in her high, thready voice.
I offer her a friendly smile. “That won’t be necessary, Melody.” I made it a point to memorize every single employee’s name currently working for my family’s software company, Sage Jackson, Inc., by name.
Sage was my mother’s maiden name.
Her voice glows at the recognition in her response. “Yes, sir. Please let me know if you need anything at all.”
The flirtatious tint to her tone doesn’t go unnoticed, but after having Arden in my bed, it falls on deaf ears. There’s only one woman that belongs under my skin.
Nitro and I head for the elevator. When the doors close behind us, I ride to the top floor of the building. Exiting, I move like I’ve memorized the layout of the building, because I have. Nitro helps to guide me, but the hallways in this building were my playground as a boy. If anything has changed, I certainly can’t tell.
“Can I help you, sir?” The receptionist at the top-level executive’s desk greets me. “I’m sorry, but all of the executives are about to begin a meeting. Who were you here to see?”
I offer a wry smile, tightening my hold on Nitro’s harness. “My name is Flash Jackson. And I think I have a seat in that meeting you spoke of.”
Her audible gasp shouldn’t gratify me, but it does. Everyone involved at Sage Jackson assumed my brother and I would be taking a backset in the interest of the company my parents founded and built from the ground up.
And maybe at one point, that was true for me. Being a pilot fulfilled me in ways I wouldn’t have willingly traded.
That’s no longer the case. Things have changed in my life, and I have a future to ensure, to look out for. That future is going to begin with making sure the company my parents started remains on the path they laid out for it.
The gray suit and black tie I put on for this meeting suddenly feels a little tight around my throat. I fight the urge to adjust it as I hear the assistant’s audible intake of breath.
“Oh, Mr. Jackson. I’m so sorry—I didn’t recognize you. I don’t think they were expecting you. Please, let me show you into the boardroom.”
I dip my chin, even though I know exactly where the boardroom is located on this floor. Instead, I follow the woman to a door near the end of the hall and stand in the doorway as she announces me.
Silence falls on the room, before someone clears their throat and speaks.
“Mr. Jackson…we weren’t expecting you at today’s meeting.”
Reese Manheim, President of Sage Jackson, Inc., is a competent leader for the company, but the reading I’ve been doing to update myself on the company’s growth and business practices in the last two years leads me to believe that the company needs to be rejuvenated, maybe even rebranded. I have a feeling Manheim is going to be less than thrilled with my assessment.
That’s just too damn bad. The man, only a few years older than me, is good at what he does, ambitious and single-minded, but it was my parents who started the company. And I think it’s time I stepped up to help run it.
I offer a wry smile. “That much was clear from everyone’s reactions to seeing me today. My name, along with my brother’s is listed, however, on the top seat of the board. Am I correct, ladies and gentlemen? Should we get started with today’s agenda? I’ll be serving as my brother’s proxy today.”
There are rustling noises as people shift in their chairs or take their seats, and the tiny alerts as laptops open and the board members around me log onto their devices in order to ready themselves for the meeting.
“Let’s begin by discussing the first order of business on the agenda today.” Manheim’s voice is clear and confident as he addresses a group of people he’s most likely used to leading each and every day. From what I could tell in the paperwork I obtained, the executives bend to his will; he’s the very clear leader here. Exactly the way his title denotes.
After listening to him recap the previous quarter’s earnings—which are pretty much the same as the three before that—I decide I’ve had enough, and stand. The wheels of my plush leather chair squeak against the wooden floor and Manheim’s voice comes to an abrupt halt.
I can feel the attention of every executive in this boardroom, and I let it wash over me, testing the feel of it on my skin. When I was an Ace, I never had an audience. I had a job to do and I did it to the best of
my ability. It just so happened that it was something I could be the best at.
But this? This is new territory for me. Being here in this building after so long, in the place where my parents started a legacy I never thought I wanted, something clicks inside of me. The same way things clicked into place when I started getting closer to Arden.
It feels…right.
Taking a deep breath, I summon the kind of confidence I depended on in the cabin of my jet, and address the room. Despite the fact that I can’t make eye contact with these people, and that they aren’t my own hires, I know each and every person here. I’ve read each employee dossier, taking note of the accomplishments and the skills that need improvement. Manheim is the president, and I’m not trying to rob him of his position or take anything way from him. But this company? It belongs to Axel and I. So, he’s going to need to get used to seeing my face here.
“Actually, I have some ideas on how we can not only streamline our revenue by department, but also increase our earning potential by fifty-five percent over the next three quarters.”
“Oh, do you? I wasn’t aware of your business acumen, Mr. Jackson. Isn’t your background in aviation?” I don’t miss the doubt or the challenge in Manheim’s tone.
Turning my head in his direction, I offer a ruthless smile that I usually save for adversaries. He doesn’t know it yet, but he doesn’t want to slide into that role with me. He’s testing me, and he doesn’t want to lose the full attention of the executives in the room.
Well, that’s just too damn bad.
“My business background is none of your concern, Manheim, since I’m the one signing your generous paycheck each month. If I recall correctly, my name is the one on the building outside. You’re going to listen to what I have to say, and when I’m finished, I’ll show you the reason why the plan I have will work for our company. Is that understood?”
Silence blankets the room, the tension heavy enough to make me sweat. Finally, Manheim relents. “Yes…sir. I’m all ears.”
