Tragedy and Desire: An Adult Romance

by Locker, Nicole R.

  “Sure, I’d love to speak with her,” I said.

  “What took you so long at the bar?” Jada asked. “Did you get sidetracked?”

  “You could say that,” I answered under my breath.

  I looked up at Jada, startled that her eyes were wide in surprise.

  What?

  It took me a moment to realize that someone had pulled out the empty chair beside me and sat down at our table.

  “Hi! I’m Jada,” she greeted. “And you are?”

  Oh God.

  “Jax Maddox. Pleasure to meet you,” he returned with a nod. He stood to shake hands with Uncle Dante from across the table.

  “Dante Orion,” Uncle Dante said with a ridiculously huge smile, also standing, and then holding his tie close to him as he sat back in his chair.

  We had already been given our plates, and a waiter came around to place a plate of food in front of Jax. The waiter offered us all champagne. Jax thanked the waiter before turning his attention back to our table.

  Jada was poking me in the ribs. I swatted her hand away, not sure of what she wanted. Not to mention, I felt incredibly awkward now that Jax was sitting beside me, right here in front of my family.

  Jada spoke. “And this is Perla. You’ll have to excuse her manners.” Sweet Jada, always so polite.

  I looked over at him sheepishly, and he waved off the notion. “Ah, yes. I’m afraid I have already had first-hand experience with Perla’s impeccable manners,” he stated as he nonchalantly rubbed his cheek.

  He was talking about me slapping him!

  I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

  Uncle Dante’s eyebrows raised in interest. “Oh? You two know each other?” He looked at Jax, then back to me.

  I looked down at my plate of food, my appetite having somehow vanished all of a sudden.

  “Yes. As it turns out, Perla and I work in the same building,” Jax explained. He made the whole thing sound so innocent, when I knew his intentions were far from it.

  We carried on polite conversation for the remainder of dinner. Once the wait staff cleared our tables, the emcee gave a speech about the charity, how the proceeds went toward helping children-in-need in our community, and then began announcing the winners of the items being auctioned.

  While Uncle Dante and Jada’s attention were fixed on the front of the room, I took the opportunity to speak to Jax.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered.

  “I came to support a good cause, Miss Fae,” he retorted sardonically as he gave me a reproachful glare.

  “No, I mean, why are you here, at my table?” I qualified.

  He looked intensely into my eyes, and suddenly, I felt about six inches tall. He hadn’t said a word, and yet I felt like a scorned child. A blush heated my face.

  “Trust me, Miss Fae. I do not typically go out of my way to befriend women I am attracted to.” My pulse quickened at his mention of being attracted to me, sending an involuntary thrill through me. “But it seems that your friend, Deputy Mitchell, continues to lurk behind the curtains and greenery, keeping an eye on you. I was trying to dissuade any further advances he might have been planning to make on you tonight, as it seems you were none too happy to be speaking with him earlier.”

  Oh.

  “I see. Well, thank you.” I tried not to let on that I was completely creeped out. I hadn’t felt like I was being watched until he’d mentioned that. I began feeling uneasy as I looked around the room. A shiver creeped down my spine as I turned my attention back to the emcee at the front.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the final announcement of the evening. We will be drawing a winner for tonight’s raffle, the Mountain Lodge Getaway for four to the beautiful Queenstown, New Zealand.” An assistant came up with a clear fishbowl full of names of those who entered the raffle. The emcee shoved a hand in, tossed them about, and finally grabbed a singular strip of paper.

  “The winner is…” Pause for dramatic effect. “Miss Jada Fae!”

  Jada looked over at me, both hands covering her gaping mouth in disbelief. “Oh my God, Perly-girl, I won! We’re going to New Zealand!” She stood, jumping up and down in excitement.

  I stood beside her, clapping, excited for my little sister. If anyone deserved that trip, it was Jada. In spite of all she had been through, she always kept such a positive, optimistic, and caring outlook. She had been the only thing that had gotten me through the death of our parents, and more recently, my breakup with Grayson.

  Jax offered to walk me out while Uncle Dante escorted Jada to collect the information for her winnings. Still feeling shaky from the thought that Grayson might still be watching me, I allowed it.

  In true gentlemanly fashion, he held out an arm, bent at the elbow, and I put a hand through as he escorted me out the doors. He was certainly full of surprises this evening. Once outside, we stood in the humid, July evening, waiting for Uncle Dante’s town car.

  I was confused by Jax’s heroic display that night, which I wasn’t convinced had been solely for my benefit. At this juncture, I didn’t know what to think about him anymore. He was still ridiculously wealthy, and that was not about to change. I knew that was a deal-breaker for me, because it would always make me uncomfortable in the grand scheme of things.

  But in the smaller scheme of things, seeing him tonight go head-to-head with Grayson without batting an eye, all to save me from an uncomfortable and unwanted situation, shifted something inside me, ever so slightly. It allowed me to see him in a different light, and if I was being completely honest, I wasn’t entirely averse to what I was seeing now.

  He stood close beside me, and I could feel the heat radiating from his firm, muscular body.

  “You look remarkable tonight,” he commented. “This dress really does something for the green in your eyes.”

  He stood facing me. Then he ran a sensuous hand down from my side to midway down my hip where his palm lingered. I thought it must be a show that we were putting on for Grayson’s benefit, but there he went again, setting all my nerve-endings on fire. A dull ache began building between my legs.

  I wanted to protest, but I was suddenly under some kind of trance as I continued looking into his eyes. His left hand still at my hip, his right hand cupped the side of my face, and he leaned in mere centimeters away from my lips.

  My tongue darted out to moisten, and I could feel the sexual tension building exponentially in the remaining space between us. My eyes closed, and I felt myself leaning into him, needing to feel the divine connection.

  His kiss was even better than I had remembered. It was the kind of kiss I could feel through my entire body, like an overpowering emotion was growing inside me and taking over. It was possible this time was different for me because he had offered it to me and had waited for me to accept. Last time, it had caught me off guard, and I hadn’t known what to think.

  He broke the kiss just as the town car pulled up to the curb beside us.

  “Let me help you in,” he said as he led me to the door of the car. I went to reach for the door handle, but he grabbed it before I could and held the car door open for me.

  I climbed in and turned to look back out at him. Still dazed by the kiss, I managed to choke out, “Thank you… You really pulled me out of a jam tonight.”

  “So it would seem,” he replied with a slight grin that made his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Good evening, Perla.” He nodded and closed the door before turning to go back inside the hotel.

  Shit, was I in trouble.

  SIX

  First Name Basis

  Once we arrived home, it was late. I was ready for bed, but Jada wasn’t about to let me off that easy.

  “All right, Perly-Girl. Dish,” she demanded with a mischievous smile.

  “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I feigned ignorance.

  “Oh, yes, you do! Jax Maddox?” She followed me into my bedroom, sitting on the edge of my bed as I began stripping out of my heels
and evening gown.

  I gave an exaggerated sigh. “All right, all right. So, you know the handsome stranger from the other day, who I ran into, who spilled my soup all over me?”

  “Uh-huh. The one who gave you that gorgeous new outfit you came home wearing?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes, that one.” I began pillaging through my dresser for pajamas.

  “I remember. Proceed,” she urged impatiently.

  “Well, he happens to own the building I work in, and that wasn’t exactly the first time we had run into each other,” I admitted.

  “Wait a minute. He owns the building you work in? I thought you just worked in the same building!”

  “Yes, he owns the building that he and I both work in.” I went on to explain what had happened as I was leaving on my first day, and mentioned the rose he had someone leave on my desk the day after the soup incident.

  I wasn’t about to tell her about his proposition. I knew my sister, and if there was one thing Jada wanted, it was for me to find someone to be happy with because she knew how much I wanted it. Knowing her, she would have gone along with the crazy scheme and told me to take him up on it.

  “Perla, he likes you. It was obvious seeing him with you tonight.” Her demeanor had turned serious as she called me Perla and not my cutesy nickname. Thank goodness she hadn’t seen him kiss me when he walked me out to the car.

  “It was just a show, Jada. I ran into Grayson when I went back to the bar for another drink, and he wasn’t letting me go. Jax happened to see it and stepped in to help me. Any decent guy would have done that.” I sat on my bed beside her and she turned to face me.

  She didn’t look convinced. “Any decent guy? He spent the entire evening at our table. You weren’t in any danger sitting there with me and Uncle Dante. There’s no way Grayson would have bothered you with us around.”

  I was losing my side of the argument.

  “Jax isn’t the kind of guy who has serious relationships,” I reasoned. “And besides, he’s just really not my type.”

  “Oh, you mean tall, dark, and deliciously handsome isn’t your type? Or were you talking about his saint-like manners not being your preference?”

  It was all I could do to stifle a laugh. Saint-like? She had no idea, and I wasn’t about to offer up the truth at that moment.

  The sarcasm was evident in her tone as she continued. “No, wait. Let me guess. It was that pesky generosity he showed as he wrote out a fat check to Prosperity for Kids.”

  “That’s exactly what it is. You already know this about me, Jada. I shouldn’t have to spell it out for you, of all people. The guy has more money than he’ll ever know what to do with.”

  There was no quick comeback for that one. Jada sat there, wide-eyed and speechless. Finally, she spoke. “Okay, I get it. Jax Maddox is off-limits.”

  I looked down at my hands. After a few moments had passed, I looked back up at her. “I can’t believe you won a trip to New Zealand.” A huge smile spread across my face.

  Jada smiled back. “I know.”

  “What are the chances? You’re taking me with you, right?” I nudged her in the arm.

  She beamed before replying, “Uh, yeah! You don’t actually think I’d go without you, do you?”

  “I’m tired. Let’s get some sleep,” I said, and at that, Jada hugged me and left to her own room.

  “Goodnight, Jada-Lou,” I called to her from across the hall.

  “Goodnight, Perly-Girly,” she answered before I closed my bedroom door.

  Crawling into bed, my mind raced with replays of that night’s events. I pulled out my romance book to try to keep my mind off of everything so that I could fall asleep. It worked for a while, until a sexy love scene had me turned on all over again.

  I closed the book and put it away. I lay there in the dark, listening to the soft rhythm of my breathing. The dull ache between my legs would not subside, and soon I was fantasizing about Jax’s sultry, blue-green eyes staring into mine as his lips hovered dangerously close to my mouth.

  My thoughts wandered to earlier that night, and I could still feel his hands trailing down my body, cupping my face, and his lips pressed to mine. It felt good. Too good, I thought, but I still had no intentions of just being a sex toy, not even for a gorgeous, sexy man like him.

  God, that man was infuriating. The sexual frustration was compounding by the day, and he was not helping matters at all.

  Recalling the feel of his hand caressing up my thigh that day in his office, and his lips as they pressed so softly to mine, I let my right hand wander down the skin of my stomach beneath my silky shirt and into my lacy, Victoria’s Secret panties, imagining Jax’s hands pressing down on the sensitive peak of flesh at my apex. It felt so good, I didn’t want to stop, and my pussy throbbed, aching to be stroked and filled.

  I writhed beneath my own right hand as my left came up to my breast and squeezed salaciously, sending a spike of pleasure through to my core.

  I began to rock my hips in a quickening rhythm, imagining it was Jax circling my clit with the faintest of pressure, his tongue lavishing my hard nipples, and my left hand trailed back down to cover my right hand over my wet pussy. I rocked my hands back and forth there for a while, building up the pleasure as high as I could get it without coming, then slowing to prolong the sensation of ecstasy, only to build it back up again even faster the next time.

  I then pressed my index and middle fingers tightly on either side of my clit with my left hand as I dipped the same fingers of my right hand into my slick folds and vibrated both sets of fingers furiously until my climax overtook me, rolling through me as I rode out the wave of pleasure. I stifled a drawn out moan as I came.

  I could feel my pussy throbbing from the inside as my own fingers could feel it pulsing and constricting around them, and I milked my climax for all it was worth.

  I thought about getting up to wash my hands, but decided against it now that I was nice and relaxed. So instead, I hugged my pillow tightly to my body and drifted to sleep with a smile on my face.

  * * *

  Jada and I spent the weekend cleaning, doing our laundry, and grocery shopping for the week. We binge-watched some new shows on Netflix, and Jada met up with some friends from school on Saturday evening, leaving me home to my own devices.

  I took the opportunity to work out in the apartment gym on the first floor and follow along to some Blogilates workouts that had come out in the past couple of weeks.

  By Monday, I was refreshed and ready to start my second week at Fitzgerald, Vandergild, and Morrison. I made an exerted effort to lie low on Monday, avoiding Lisette as best I could, and especially avoiding any locations I might run into Jax Maddox.

  At around two o’clock in the afternoon, I heard a woman come in to the office asking for me. Lisette sent her my direction. I looked up, curious to see who the woman was, but didn’t recognize her.

  “Perla? I’m Aurora Sullivan. I’m a friend of Dante Orion. It’s a pleasure to meet you, dear.” She extended an arm heavily decorated with expensive-looking bracelets to match the other jewelry she wore. I stood to greet her.

  “Mrs. Sullivan, hi. You know, I don’t believe we’ve ever met, but your name sounds familiar.” I tried to recall where I had heard of her before, but it wasn’t coming to me.

  “I’m the senior director of Prosperity for Kids. I believe you were at our charity event this past Friday evening? Perhaps that might be it.”

  “Yes! Now I remember. I think Uncle Dante had wanted to introduce us before we left, but I somehow got away before we could meet. I’m sorry about that,” I explained. I remembered Uncle Dante mentioning that she had wanted to talk to me about possible representation. “How can we help you, Mrs. Sullivan?”

  “I’m looking for a new attorney to file for divorce,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “Don’t be sorry, dear. The man is incorrigible. It’s long ove
rdue. It was a marriage of convenience that hasn’t been convenient in quite some time now. I should have filed years ago, but as they say, there’s no time like the present.” She smiled and flourished her hands about as she spoke, causing the bracelets to jingle. “My soon-to-be ex-husband and I have always used the same attorneys, but circumstances being what they are, I’ll need my own representation from here on out. This firm came highly recommended.”

  “Please have a seat while I see if Mr. Vandergild is available to meet with you right now, since you’re already here. He’s in his office. Can I get you something to drink while you wait?”

  “Not unless you’ve got a malt whiskey,” she said, straight-faced.

  “Um, I’d have to check on that,” I lied, knowing we didn’t have liquor stocked in the lounge. At least, not that I had ever noticed.

  Mrs. Sullivan declined the drink, and I poked my head in Vandergild’s door to see if he had a moment to meet with a new client. He cleared some papers off his desk and asked me to send her in.

  Once I ushered Mrs. Sullivan into Vandergild’s office and closed the door behind them, I moved back to my desk and began opening a new file for her case. When they finished their impromptu meeting, Mrs. Sullivan waved and thanked me on her way out, saying she would see me again soon. I scheduled a tentative meeting for Friday for both she and her husband, along with his attorney, to come in and begin preliminary negotiations.

  After I drew up the paperwork to have Mr. Sullivan’s divorce papers served, I spent the remainder of the afternoon reviewing a trial transcript of a previous case that Vandergild had a returning client for, and taking notes for what I thought would be relevant to the current trial.

  Amelie walked over at five o’clock and offered to walk out with me once I had a chance to shut things down for the day. The following evening was the play we had planned on attending, and as we stood waiting for the elevator, we began working out the details.