However, he frowned and tilted his head when he heard a soft, hitched hiccuping. It was coming from the other side of the glass. And it definitely wasn’t a bird. Crying… someone was crying on the lanai.
He slid the glass door open and found the source of the sound immediately.
Jasmine lay half reclined in the lounge chair she’d pulled from the pool and placed just outside her room. And her shoulders were shaking. Was she…?
Alarm bells filled his head, and he walked over before he could think twice about it to demand, “Jasmine, why are you crying?”
She froze like a doe, who had suddenly heard a sound. Then without turning to face him, she said, “I’m fine.”
Her claim told Han that she’d come to no physical harm. Whatever she was crying about, it was an emotional matter.
That meant he could leave her to it without any guilt.
Yet…
He found himself unable to turn around and re-enter the condo.
She was hurting. On the inside.
Han rubbed his fingers into the pads of his hands, feeling more ill at ease as the seconds ticked by.
Coordinating international drug deals with several lethal and temperamental parties? No problem.
Figuring out how to help an emotional woman? A plane might as well have spat him into the middle of the ocean. He was so far out of his element.
Nonetheless, he walked toward her lounge chair and took a seat at the bottom of it near her bare feet. He tilted his head and scanned the face she’d refused to show him, and something stitched in his chest when he saw her red-rimmed eyes and her puffy face.
“Why are you crying?” he asked again, his voice tight with an emotion he refused to name.
“I’m fine,” she said again, even as fresh tears formed in her eyes. “I’m sorry for waking you or disturbing you or whatever I did. I’m fine. This is not me. Trust, this is just a phase or something. Like an allergic reaction. Just give me a few minutes.”
Han considered her words and nodded.
“Okay, I will give you your few minutes,” he said, rising to his feet.
She let out an audible breath of relief—only to eep when he reached down and scooped an arm under her legs to bodily pick her up.
“What are you doing?” she demanded when he sat back down in the lounge chair with her settled into his lap.
“You asked for five minutes. You will take them here with me. Like this,” Han answered.
Then using some long-forgotten instinct, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her to his chest.
JAZZ
My mind reeled when Han gathered me in his arms. Was he…? Was the cold Fae King offering me comfort?
It was so crazy. And you know what was even crazier than that? In the next moment, I buried my face in his chest and sobbed. I sobbed for the perfect July ended too soon and so terribly. I sobbed because Mika had left again. I sobbed and sobbed like a crazy person who couldn’t stop.
“What happened,” he asked when I was finally down. His voice was quiet but hard as if he was planning to hurt whoever had made me cry like this.
And I’m not that girl. I’m not. When I’m upset, I don’t cry. I don’t talk about feelings with my sister—no, I figure out how to solve my problems, and I get to doing whatever it takes not to feel that way.
But there were some problems I couldn’t attack like I wanted. Like debts owed to Chinese mafia. And rare forms of muscular dystrophy. And a sister who showed up out of the blue at your summer camp and snatched your nephew away because she was terrified of what would happen if she didn’t leave Hawaii.
No, I wasn’t that girl, but I found myself telling him everything. About my sister’s awful in-laws, the Lacerdas…dirty cops who’d been harassing her for over a decade. How they’d escalated and basically threatened to kill her and hurt the people she loved if she didn’t leave Hawaii. How she’d refused to fight, even though both Albie and me begged her to stay.
“Albie was sobbing as he left. I’ve never seen him so sad, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. And now they’re gone, so it’s just mom and me to take care of Dad. And I know my dad’s the one with the real battle on his hands, and mom’s the one doing most of the caretaking now that I’m here. But I feel so alone. And I’m so angry that Mika had to abandon us again. And I’m even angrier at myself because these stupid tears won’t stop.”
I viciously wiped the moisture brimming in my eyes away. Why wouldn’t it stop? I wasn’t this girl. I wasn’t—
Han curled a hand around mine, forcing me to stop.
“If you’re upset, your tears aren’t stupid,” he told me, his voice firm but somehow more gentle than I’d ever heard it before.
And for some reason, that sent me into a whole new fit of crying.
He simply laid my head back down on his chest and let me cry some more. Eventually, I calmed down again, but neither of us made a move toward me getting up.
We sat there with me curled up in his lap for I don’t know how long. Watching Hawaii play out yet another picture-perfect day while I tried to get over the heartbreak of my sister’s and nephew’s abrupt departure.
Han shifted underneath me, and I thought maybe he’d ask me to get up. But then he said, “The other night when I took you so forcefully, I was angry. Angry for the opposite reason of you. Because my brother by blood showed up to the island without warning.”
HAN
If you were to ask him about it years later, Han still wouldn’t have been able to say why he did it. Why he suddenly felt so compelled to explain his behavior, explain himself to the surfer girl, to tell her this thing he’d never told another woman.
Jasmine stilled in his lap. “You have a brother?”
“Yes, a half-brother. My father’s legitimate son,” Han answered, giving her more truths she hadn’t asked him for, and he watched her reaction closely as he added, “He grew up with everything I did not have. A big house in Shanghai. A father who claimed him, and a mother who did not have to do terrible things to provide for her son. I imagine he was upset when I took that life away from him.”
Her eyes shifted to the side. And Han could tell she remembered the scene on the beach when Kuang Jr. had purposefully used English to accuse Han of trying to murder him like he murdered his own father. “So it’s true. You killed your father?”
“Yes, I did,” Han answered, his voice as harsh as the act. “When I was seven.”
“When you were seven…” she repeated, her mouth dropping open.
He waited for her judgment, for her to push out of his lap with the realization of what he was.
But then she shifted her eyes back to him. “If you were that young. You must have had a good reason.”
Han let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding until his chest suddenly caved with its expulsion.
However, that breath froze in his chest again when she asked, “Will you tell me why you did it?”
She pressed her left hand into his, intertwined their fingers. “I want to understand. I want to understand you.”
She wanted to understand him? Something new and unfamiliar twisted in Han’s chest. Women wanted him. They enjoyed the game of getting caught in his seduction traps. In his experience, they wanted him to call them back. To invite them into his bed again. In some cases, to entrap him in a relationship he did not want.
But Jasmine said she wanted to understand him. And when he looked into her eyes, they glowed with tender sincerity.
He never talked about what happened. Not even with Victor. But what would it feel like to do so with Jasmine? To have this surfer girl, of all people, understand him?
The need to answer those questions drove the next words out of his mouth. “One of my father’s men brought these two prisoners to the house he’d bought for my mother and me—the wife and son of his greatest rival. He had the boy’s tongue cut out and sent to his father. Then instead of further negotiating for their release, my father came
to the house himself and killed the mother. And he was about to kill her little boy too—an innocent three-year-old. I couldn’t let him. So I grabbed the gun he set down, and I shot my father with it. I don’t remember much about the incident beyond that. Just that I couldn’t let him...”
Jasmine’s eyes widened, so clearly horrified. But that horror was not directed at him, he soon discovered.
“Then what happened?” she demanded. “What happened to the little boy you saved?”
He thought about telling her about his mother…but no, that was too much for him, even after having come this far.
So he continued to the part of the story that wasn’t as terrible. “The little boy’s name was Victor, and Victor’s father showed up to pick us up a couple of hours later—perhaps one of my father’s men tipped him off in exchange for sparing his life. Victor’s father was…grateful. He took me in and told me for the rest of my life, I should be Victor’s protector, his older brother. We’re all grown up now, and we are as his father wished, brothers, by covenant. Not blood. Victor wants me to return to Rhode Island—something happened today with the 24K Dragon—something he believes will escalate the animosity between our two triads. But I cannot return home. Not yet.”
“Why not?” she asked.
Han had given one reason to Victor, and it was true, but the one he gave Jasmine was much truer. “I might have…before my brother showed up with Kuang Jr. in tow. He insulted me, just as he was allowed to when we were children. So now there’s something inside me that won’t settle for anything less than taking everything Kuang Jr. holds dear. Destroying him just as he wishes he could destroy me—that’s my ultimate plan.”
“And that ultimate plan includes me somehow?” Jasmine asked, shaking her head.
“Yes,” he answered, his voice as clear as hers was confused. “There’s a thing about eldest Dragon sons. They grow up with the expectation that anything they want, they can have. I’ve watched Victor obsess over the same woman for fifteen years now—simply because she taught him the same lesson about loyalty that Brad Kaminski taught you when he ran. Kuang Jr. wanted you, but because of me, he cannot have you.”
I looked down at our entwined hands, trying to process everything he just said—not about what happened with his father. Those actions were clear and easy for me to understand. However, his ultimate plan? Not so much.
“So this isn’t about protection,” I translated. “You’re just using me to piss off K Diamond?”
He glanced away, his sharp jaw setting to granite. “I wish this was only about pissing off K Diamond.”
“So it’s about fucking me then?” I said. “About playing twisted mind games with me, just because you can?”
The words sickened me, and I tugged to take back my hand. Wanting to get up.
But he grabbed on to it and refused to let go. “That’s what my father did when he decided to keep my mother. He played games with her, made her feel worthless and crazy. I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want you to think of me like that. That’s why I tried to stay away. But then I found you crying, I saw you in pain, and despite myself, all I want to do is make it better.”
All I want to do is make it better.
The words tsunamied around my chest, flip-flopping my heart as I tried to decide how to interpret what he was telling me:
He was still haunted by things that had happened in his childhood.
He was using me to piss off a spoiled Dragon’s son.
But he didn’t want to be like his father.
He tried to stay away, but…
He saw me in pain, and all he wanted to do is make it better. Better how?
As if hearing my silent question, he pulled our entwined hands to his chest and pushed a curl behind my ear. “You’re hurting. Let me help you.”
And I shook my head. “I don’t need help.”
He stared at me for a few beats, and it felt like he was reading my soul. Calling me a liar without uttering a word.
And I found myself asking, my voice little more than a whisper. “What kind of help are you talking about?”
“Give me your decisions for a few hours,” he suggested. “Not because you’re angry with me or because I command it. Give me your decisions because you don’t want to think.”
Give me your decisions.
The suggestion was…
Like slipping into a warm Epsom salt bath after a day of wiping out on rocks. You don’t understand just how much your body was hurting until you feel that relief.
Give me your decisions
His words caressed over my bones, tempting me, telling me that was exactly what I wanted. But…
“How…” I asked. “I don’t know how.”
“Kiss me,” he instructed. “Give me your mouth.”
In a daze, I did as he said, pressing my lips tentatively to his.
I shouldn’t have bothered to take care. He slanted his mouth across mine and immediately invaded, taking a gulp to my sip, consuming me whole though I’d only offered him a crumb.
He kissed me like this, and eventually, his hands found their way down to my surf shorts. I moaned, and he pulled away to let me know, “She’s soaking, hungry. But, don’t worry, I’m going to give her what she needs. Nod yes, as you did on the Fourth of July.”
I wanted to hesitate. I wanted to take a moment of pause to think about this, to really think about what I was getting myself into.
But I didn’t. I just nodded, quick and helpless.
He stood up with me in a burst, claiming my mouth again as he walked with me….
Not to my bedroom but toward the sliding glass door on the other side of the lanai.
I dimly registered that he was taking me into the bedroom I’d only caught glimpses of while begging on my knees. Then, placing me gently on the bed I never thought I’d see.
But before I could fully take this all in, he gave me another sight to devour. All the moisture from our wet kiss left my mouth when he started to undress.
I gobble up the sight of that half torso of tattoos layered over lean muscle, and below that…his erection long, rigid, and already dripping pre-cum.
He looked down at it and fisted a hand over it like a promise. Then he looked back up at me. “You like how hard you make me? That I haven’t been with anyone else since I laid eyes on you. Nod.”
My mouth dropped open. Was he serious about not having slept with anyone else since that first night in the VIP Champagne Room? I mean, I haven’t been with anyone else either, but I was me, and he was…the memory of his Valentine’s date floated back to me. The way she said, “Han Zhiwei,” like he really was a Fae King—one known throughout the land.
“I said nod, Jasmine,” he repeated, cutting into the memory.
I realized belatedly that he wanted me—no, he was commanding me to nod in agreement.
So I did, though I was still finding it hard to believe.
“I kept myself clean for you. And you did the same thing for me, even though neither of us knew we were doing it. So that we could be together like this, but this is the one decision you have to make. The one you can’t give me.”
It took a few dazed moments for me to get what he was saying. He was telling me that we were clean, asking if we could do this without a condom.
I licked my lips. They were so dry. But I nodded. Oh God…I nodded.
He came over and ran a thumb over the bottom lip I’d just wetted. I could smell me. I could smell me on his hand.
“I like the way you licked your lips before your nod,” he decreed. “When you take my cock, you’ll do that again.”
He didn’t tell me to nod this time, and his words felt like a dark promise.
But he kept his word after that. The condom was the last decision I had to make.
He stripped me out of my clothes, his intense almost-black eyes eating me alive as he did. Then he covered me like a storm cloud, heavy and crackling with energy.
For a moment, he j
ust lay there, smoothing back the curls that had fallen out of my ponytail and holding my gaze.
It was such an intense moment. I didn’t know what to do with myself. What to do with him.
But no decisions.
“She’s ready for me. I’m going to feed her. Nod.”
I did as he commanded, even though I wasn’t sure. I mean, how could I be—
He fed me his entire cock in one deliberate push, ending all of my thoughts. And I discovered he was right.
My head fell back, and my neck arched on a moan. It felt so good….it felt so good to have him inside of me. I squeezed around him, welcoming him home.
His almost-black eyes continued to burn into mine as he began to move on top of me. “Tell me when I find it,” he said before finally releasing my gaze and burying his nose in my neck.
Find what? I began to wonder—only to cut off when his mouth pressed into that place on my neck, right underneath my ear. And licked. A lightning bolt of pleasure zapped from that spot all the way to my pussy. I cried out, wondering if this was the “it” he’d been talking about.
No, it wasn’t. I found that out when he withdrew from me and pushed in again at a new angle. Deep, so deep, he found it…the spot I’d never been able to reach with my fingers. The spot I’d begun to think was a myth after two years of not finding it with Brad.
I choked, then cried out, then clawed at Han’s shoulders.
“I found it. Nod,” he said somewhere beyond the pleasure.
I nodded, thrashing my head against my pillow. I couldn’t take it. I wanted more. I couldn’t take it. I wanted…I needed…
I came unhinged, slapping at his shoulders, even as my legs crossed around his waist, locking him in because I never wanted him to leave.
No decisions.
He fucked me through all of it, not seeming to care about the violence I was unleashing upon him. And he somehow knew what would happen next even before I did.
HAN: Her Ruthless Mistake: 50 Loving States, Delaware (Ruthless Triad Book 4) Page 16
