“Jamie, what is it?” I whisper, raising my hand and then lowering it.
He glances at me with a smirk. “What was that, a wave?”
I mock glare, finding it amazingly easy to slip back into our banter.
“Well, no,” I say. “I was going to put my hand on your arm but then I sort of thought better of it.”
“After what we just did, you thought better of it?” he teases.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I giggle. “Does that make me completely crazy?”
“Maybe a little,” he banters. “Here. Let me make it easy for you.”
I giggle and gasp when he grabs me by the hips and pulls me roughly over to him, wrapping his arms around me and moving so that he’s behind me, his always hard cock pushing insistently against my back. I wriggle against him, savoring the closeness, and then he rests his chin on my head and it’s like we’re a couple, not just …
Whatever the heck we are right now.
“What I’m about to tell you is going to seem insane, Jade, but it’s the truth.”
“Okay,” I murmur, waiting.
He lowers his lips to my ear, so that each word makes hot breath purr over my skin, the same way his breath tickled over my sex and my skin when his head was buried between my thighs.
“When I saw you the other night, I knew you were mine,” he growls. “I know how that sounds, but when I saw you sitting there in that beanie and those sweatpants and … Jesus, I started having these feelings that would’ve made no sense to me just a week ago.
“I knew that I had to have you, sexually, emotionally, everything. And I knew something else, Jade.”
“What?” I whisper, my heart pounding like it’s trying to keep time with a frenetically paced song.
The world seems to be spinning faster.
“I knew I had to put a child inside of you,” he snarls. “I never dreamed of having more children, but when I saw those childbearing hips of yours when I saw those perfect-for-milking tits, I just knew it. Don’t ask me to explain how I knew, because I didn’t, I don’t. But it’s as certain to me as the color of the sky. You belong to me, Jade. Your body, your soul, your heart, your womb … Everything you are, it’s mine.”
I turn in his embrace, wondering if this is it, the moment I jolt awake and find that I’ve fallen asleep at my laptop and this is all part of some crazy half-dream half-story.
I look up into his steely blue eyes, my lips twitching into a smile I can’t repress, despite the complications, despite the potential cataclysm that this could cause.
“Jamie, I feel the same,” I gasp. “I’ve always had a crush on you and…”
“You’ve always had a crush on me?” he smirks. “I had no idea.”
“Ever since I met Yasmin, I’ve had a crush on you,” I tell him. “I just thought it was a silly little girl thing, but now it’s all coming true and I’m getting the same thoughts, too. I’ve got this feeling deep inside of me, telling me that I need to have your baby. It’s so crazy. It makes no sense.”
“It does to me,” he growls passionately.
I’m not even sure who leans in first, only that one second we’re gazing into each other’s eyes and the next his lips are consuming me all over again.
I shift and grind against him, his heart pounding so hard I can feel it through the muscled stoniness of his chest.
His body is burning like a fire just for me, protecting me against the winter cold. I grip onto the taut muscles of his back as our tongues flare together like whips that just want to crack, again and again, their sharp pleasure traveling through me at hyper speed.
And yet, unfairly, anxiety starts to niggle at the edges of the moment.
How are you going to get pregnant by Jamie when you don’t even know what to do? an acerbic voice taunts, and then another voice roars out in my mind, as though I’ve got an angel and devil on my shoulder.
Only these are both devils.
The other voice tells me that if Yasmin were here right now, she’d scratch her fingernails down my face, she’d scream and she’d hate me.
Jamie must sense something.
He stops the kiss and leans back to regard me.
“Something’s wrong,” he says.
I nod shortly. “It’s just … What if she finds out?”
I can’t bear to mention the other thing, not yet.
The idea of blurting that I’m scared I’m not going to be able to physically take his massive manhood and that even if I can I’m terrified I won’t be able to satisfy him, makes me want to run away from this conversation.
“Yasmin? Well, she is going to find out,” Jamie says. “She has to. We have to tell her.”
I recoil from him without even meaning to, leaping away as though I’ve just been slapped.
“What, just like that?” I say, uncertainty quivering in my voice.
“Well, yes,” Jamie says as if this should’ve been obvious to me from the start. “Did you think we were going to have children in secret somehow? We can’t keep her in the dark about this. Fuck, Jade, you belong to me. You’re mine. Even if we tried to keep it from her, she’d find out eventually just from the way I look at you.”
I see the evidence of that clearly now in the glinting fieriness of his eyes, as though he’s always fighting off the urge to pounce on me like the animal he is.
I bite my lip, shifting from foot to foot, glad for the iciness of the weather now so that my body doesn’t scorch up with the terror lacing my every heartbeat.
“I just think she’s going to freak,” I say quietly. “I don’t want to hurt her. Oh, God, this is just so hard. How can we tell her without hurting her?”
He takes my hands in his, moving his fingers over my knuckles just like he did when he wrapped and then unwrapped my hands.
“We’ll just have to explain that this isn’t some fling,” he says. “We’ll have to explain that we’re going to have children together. We’ll have to explain that I own you – you belong to me – and you want to be owned by me.”
I laugh shortly, shaking my head.
“And you think she’s just going to accept that?” I say.
“I don’t know,” Jamie says. “But we have to try.”
I sit in the passenger seat of Jamie’s sleek black sedan, the tinted windows giving the CEO billionaire the privacy he needs when traveling to and from business meetings. I stare out of the window and watch the city drift by, trying to fight the urge to open the door and run away like a madwoman every time we stop at a red light.
Jamie reaches across and places his hand on my leg, and when I look over at him I see that he’s doing his version of a smile, a shadowed smirk that tells me everything’s going to be okay.
I wish I could believe him, but all I can imagine is Yasmin’s face when we tell her, her features dropping and then twisting when the full force of the betrayal slams into her.
“My dad?” she’ll snap, all the love and devotion draining from her eyes. “My fucking dad?”
All the way up the private elevator to the penthouse, even with Jamie’s hand on the small of my back sending reassuring warmth through my body, I picture her face in my mind, my best friend’s face twisting and turning sour the moment we utter the words.
We walk together down the hallway, past the abstract art, and into the large loft style living room. It’s like I can sense the purpose wafting off of Jamie in waves, but the same purpose doesn’t blaze within me.
Part of me wants to run.
And yet I know if I do that, I’ll be abandoning Jamie and the sweet belonging that’s already working its way through my soul like a heavenly balm, and whatever happens, I can’t let him go.
My womb rails and screams at the idea that I could let this man go.
So it’s time to tell Yasmin, even if the very notion is sending my heart into a manic overdrive and my mind into a writer’s spinning nosedive of paranoia and doom.
“You were like a little sister to me,” I imagine
her snapping, hate flooding her eyes. “How could you do this?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jamie
“Yasmin?” I call, knocking on her bedroom door and listening for any sign of my daughter inside.
I walk to the end of the hallway and knock on the door to her recording studio, where she makes her YouTube and Instagram videos. I don’t know much about the online world my daughter inhabits, but I know it makes her happy and that’s what matters to me.
I bite back a frown when part of me wonders if I’m feeling guilty for what we’re about to tell her, and that’s why I’m trying to mentally highlight what a supportive father I am.
Look, Yasmin, I know I’ve taken your best friend from you … but here’s a fancy new camera.
I shake my head as I turn back down the hall, acid tension rising in my stomach.
It’s true, I wish I could make it so that Jade wasn’t Yasmin’s best friend, but there’s no way I can ignore this inferno blazing inside of me, spitting hot fire every time I so much as think about Jade, let alone look at her, touch her, taste her.
“Jamie?” Jade calls from the living room. “I think you should see this.”
Her voice is pitched high and a thread of anxiety runs through it. It makes me think of the man in black who’s been following her around the city, and liquid fire rushes into my body when I imagine him trying to get his hands on my woman.
I stalk into the room and find her at the sleek obsidian kitchen counter with a pink piece of paper clutched in her hand. My mind is soon flooded with thoughts of her sexy-as-fuck body as she stands there the pink of the paper reminding me of the sweet color of her pussy.
I grit my teeth and push the thought down, telling myself that if I’m going to turn feral every time I so much as glance at her, I’m going to spend the rest of my life as her beast and nothing else.
So, a voice laughs grimly within. What’s the problem with that?
“What is it?” I ask.
“Come look,” she says.
I walk across the room and reach out for the piece of paper. Our hand’s brush and that electric spark buzzes between us again, the mere feel of her hot, soft hand sending my mind to beastly places.
I have to focus hard on my daughter’s handwriting as I scan the page, because even now every instinct in me is roaring that all that matters is Jade and the bounty of her plus size perfect body.
I needed some space away from it all, the message reads.
I’ve gone to the cabin in Maine. I’m sorry for not telling you beforehand, Jade. Please don’t be mad. I’m going to meditate, do some yoga, and do a complete technology detox. I’ll be back in a week at the most. You can call me if you like, but I’d prefer to take this time just to disconnect. I love you. Always xx
“She does this sometimes,” Jade says. “Every now and then she’ll go down there and just relax and take her mind off the internet and her social media presence. She always comes back in a great mood and ready to work for another six months.”
I nod and place the paper on the counter, and then move over to my queen and take her shoulders in my hands. I could live for a hundred years and never get tired of the way my virgin princess shivers for me when I touch her like this, the way she bites her lip and those glinting green eyes widen with lust.
I swear to God, I can sense a change in her scent, too, as though her lust is rising above her usual smell as an invisible sign of how perfect we are together.
“We have a choice, then,” I say. “Either we interrupt her trip or we wait for her to come back to tell her. I think you should decide, Jade.”
“Well, what do you think?”
I smirk and slide my fingers up the back of her neck, through her hair, watching her shiver magnetically for me.
“I think that you should decide,” I laugh. “I’ll let you think about it while I check with my security detail. I want to make sure that whatever freak is following you didn’t follow her down to Maine.”
I step away from her reluctantly and take out my cellphone. Walking into the living room, I call my security ream leader, Jones.
“Boss,” he answers, just as terse as usual.
“Just wanted to make sure you’ve got eyes on my daughter.”
“Yeah, she’s down at the cabin. All good. Should I have told you?”
“No,” I say. “She’s her own person. I just want to make sure she’s safe.”
“Of course, sir,” he says. “Anything else?”
“No,” I say, and then hang up and turn back to find Jade staring at me with her hands intertwined, twisting them as though she’s wringing an imaginary cloth.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s just …”
She sighs and wanders over to me, dropping onto the couch and folding her arms.
I sit down next to her and raise my arm.
When she falls into the embrace, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. I can’t resist leaning over and inhaling the scent of her hair, so intricate and comforting.
“Did you just smell my hair?” she giggles.
“Yeah,” I smirk, not ashamed in the slightest. “You’re my woman and I’ll smell any damn part of you I want. In fact, I might hire you to follow me to business meetings so that I can have a good smell beforehand, to calm me down.”
She laughs again and nudges me playfully, and then looks up at me.
“Jamie, I don’t think I want to tell her until she gets back,” she says. “Telling her when she’s here is one thing, but she really sees the Maine cabin as a place to disconnect from the world and relax. I think if we interrupted her now to tell her it’d be like setting a bomb off in her most peaceful place. Or maybe I’m just making excuses.”
“No,” I say, brushing an unruly spiral of her auburn hair behind her ear. “You’re right. And anyway, it’s your choice. We are going to tell her. But giving her a week to relax and detox isn’t going to change the world.”
“I just can’t stop thinking about her hating me for it,” she whispers.
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “Ever since I split up with her mother, she’s been hounding me to find somebody else and—”
“Yeah, but I doubt she meant her best friend,” Jade snaps, scowling for a moment. She deflates with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“It’s fine,” I say, and then slide my hand down her body, over those juicy-as-fuck breasts, down to her thighs. I squeeze hard enough to make her whimper in lust. “I’m sure you can find a way to repay me.”
“Oh, God, I want to, Jamie … but not here. Not before we’ve told her.”
I remove my hand with a herculean effort.
“Okay, then maybe we should play chess?” I tease.
She giggles and gives me that pout of hers, the pout that makes me want to take her pretty little mouth until her emerald eyes are wide and teary.
“Jamie, why did you and Yasmin’s mom split up?”
“Whoah,” I laugh grimly. “That came out of nowhere.”
Somehow, her pout gets even fiercer.
“That’s not really an answer, is it?” she says. “I think I have a right to know if we’re going to be … whatever we are.”
“Everything,” I growl passionately. “We’re going to be fucking everything, Jade. And you’re right. You do deserve to know. I guess I’m just surprised Yasmin has never talked about it.”
“Oh, she has,” Jade says, wriggling against me, her body shifting in ways that has my mind teetering on the edge of becoming a feral beast again and consuming every part of her. “But always vaguely. She was really young when it happened. And I guess you’re not the most talkative man in the world.”
“She never asked,” I say quietly.
“Newsflash, Jamie,” Jade laughs. “You’re one of the most intimidating men in the world. Of course, she has trouble talking about this stuff with you.”
I nod, though a sharp spiking lance of re
gret grinds into me when I think about my daughter being too nervous to bring up the separation. But then Jade’s right. I’m always so busy with my work. It makes sense that Yasmin wouldn’t be able to fit in a heart-to-heart with me.
“Maybe I need to rectify that,” I say.
“Maybe,” she says, “you need to answer my question.”
I sign and stand up, finding the idea of talking about my ex with this woman – this queen – almost surreal.
I wish I could turn back time and make it so I’d never touched another woman, that I’d waited my whole life for Jade. The only downside to that is that Yasmin never would’ve been born, so it seems that I’m stuck.
I stand at the window and stare out at the late afternoon hazy sunlight of the city, a weight crushing down on my shoulders when I try to think of how to explain how little Yasmin’s mother meant to me without sounding like a complete asshole.
The last thing I want is Jade thinking that that’s who I am—somebody who picks up and tosses away women.
The truth is I’ve steered clear from women for years and planned to do so the rest of my life before this dark haired angel came into my life.
“Jamie?” she says. “Please? Can we talk?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jade
I stare at his back, the taut muscles getting even tighter as though any moment he could tear out of his T-shirt. He puts his hands behind his back and lets out a growling sigh, the same way I imagine him doing at business meetings when he wants to let his adversaries know that the shit is about to hit the fan.
I wonder if he’s angry about us not being able to tell Yasmin yet.
I know I took the coward’s way out on that one, but it’s also true that Yasmin hates being interrupted when she’s in Maine and she’d double freak if we intruded for this.
A small voice inside whispers, Yeah, keep giving yourself excuses, Jade.
I push it down and then stand up, walking across the room and standing at the window with Jamie.
He stares down at the city like he owns, it like each building is a piece on the board, and he’s mentally configuring them in the best way he knows how.
Claimed By Her Best Friend's Dad Page 7
