The sound of the bedroom door locking was Jade’s Hail-Mary moment.

This was happening. This was actually happening.

Was it wrong to burst into church hymns when you were about to get laid properly for the first time in, well, forever?

Jade bit her bottom lip and attempted to rearrange her body on the bed so she looked remotely enticing. Knee bent? No, no, too obvious. On her back, knees splayed in invitation? Jade moved into position and bit back a curse.

Seriously, small-chested women always bemoaned their fate when, in reality, it was women like Jade that had all the problems. The girls were not perky, as evidenced by the fact that the minute she reclined back on the bed, they spread like two melted ice cream scoops to the sides of her chest.

She dropped her head against the fluffy pillows. No wonder she’d always had such a boring sex life—she was horrendous at it and they hadn’t even gotten to the good stuff.

Flopping onto her side, Jade spared a quick glance at Danvers, wholly thankful for the darkness in the room when she stuffed her hand into her camisole and shoved the girls into place.

There, she thought, as she carefully rearranged the rest of her body.

Now she just couldn’t move.

Sucking in a stabilizing breath, she watched his dark form move into what she assumed was the closet. At the sound of him rummaging around, she called out his name. “What are you doing in there?”

She heard the wooden floor creak under his footfalls before the bed dipped with his weight and he pulled her up to a sitting position.

“I’ve got something for you.” His husky drawl came closer than she realized, his breath a soft caress across the top of her head. “Give me your hands.”

Who was she to tell him no? She stuck out her hands, more than willing to go along with whatever games he had up his sleeve. Although they hadn’t known each for very long, Jade trusted him. Perhaps more than she’d even realized until this exact moment.

“Is it a present?”

“Sort of.” His voice sounded strangled, like he was struggling not to laugh. She liked his laugh, loved it, actually, and so took it upon herself to make it happen.

“How is it ‘sort of’ a present?” she asked, easing back into their natural banter. “Let me guess what it is.”

“I don’t think you’ll get it.” Now, he sounded more like he was choking.

“I might.” Jade smiled into the pitch-black room. “I thought you liked guessing games.” When he didn’t answer fast enough, she tacked on, “Or do you only like them when you’re in charge?”

He grunted, which was such a man-thing to do. “Are you going to guess?” was all he said.

Jade pretended to think on that, scooting closer to him on the bed. The short hairs on his legs scraped the bottom of her bare foot. She’d slipped her flip-flops off the moment he’d tossed her onto the bed. “No,” she finally said, knowing that her answer would drive him insane, “I don’t think so.”

He didn’t let her down. “Jesus, woman, you’re going to be the death of me.”

She hoped not. She rather liked having him in her life, more than she probably should for the sake of her own sanity. “Do you think death is a better alternative to losing the goods?”

His hands clamped down on her thighs, stilling her from inching closer to him. “What did I say about the eunuch thing?”

“Now, Danvers, I didn’t say the word just now . . . you did.”

Scandalized shock jolted through her when he hauled her body up the bed, until her head collided with the pillows and her hands were hog-tied to the headboard. It was done in a matter of seconds, and her brain took an extra few moments to catalogue exactly what had just happened.

She tugged against the restraints, the soft silk of a tie tight around her wrists. “This is a lousy gift,” she muttered, tugging again, to no avail.

Large, masculine hands slid up her calves to her inner thighs. “Why do I have a feeling you’re enjoying every moment of it though?”

Because I’m with you. “You manhandled me.”

He chuckled, a deep, throaty sound. “You liked it.”

She resisted his seductive pull with a snort. “Said just like a man. I thought you were a nice guy.”

“I am a nice guy.” Those hands of his slid inward, thumbs pointing like arrows toward the very center of her—the very part of her that was desperate for his touch, desperate for the relief he could give her. “Nice guys finish last, which is exactly what I plan to do.”

Her silly heart kicked up its pace. What did he mean by that? The better question was: what did she want him to mean by that?

His name came out on a hitched breath, as his thumbs inched closer to exactly where she wanted him. Then, with little warning, he stripped off her yoga pants, peeling them down her legs until she felt nothing but the cool breeze from the whirring ceiling fan above.

Seated on his haunches, he traced a single finger from her right knee to her belly button before tracing the same path on the other side of her body. Her thighs quivered under his touch, and she yanked hard against the silk restraints.

“Patience,” he murmured. “I’ve got one other surprise for you.”

“A pair of scissors?” she deadpanned.

“Not quite.”

Within the shadowed room, she watched as he grabbed something from the end of the bed. With slow, measured movements, he straddled her hips, removed her glasses from her face, and ordered, “Lift your head.”

“Why?”

“Do you trust me?” was his only response.

Yes.

Silently, she lifted her head as he’d asked, her breath catching as she felt him wrap a now familiar silk fabric around her head. Across her eyes. The already shadowed room blanketed into complete darkness, and her toes instinctively dug into the comforter.

“Danvers?” she whispered. “ . . . Nathan?”

His body jerked against hers at the sound of his first name. “When we were in the glass room, you could see everything.” The bed creaked under his shifting weight. With all the movement, her camisole had slipped up to just below her breasts, and now was pushed up to her armpits by big hands. “You liked that. You liked that we could see everything but that no one could see you.”

Her breathing came in heavier pants now, anticipation threading through her limbs. Had this been what she’d been missing with John Thomas the whole time? Had spontaneity and adventure been the only missing link?

Warm breath touched her breast, just before his lips closed on her nipple and his tongue flicked out. Her fingers tightened on the silk restraint as she arched her back. Díos mío, Díos mío, Díos mío.

“It got me thinking,” he said, one hand fanning out across her soft stomach. It trailed down, down, down to the thin barrier of her panties. They were tugged down Jade’s legs and then thrown God knows where. Or, at least, she assumed he’d thrown them.

But then she felt that soft fabric, balled up now in his fist, slip over her hipbone. Down across her pelvis. Up against her clit.

His thumb worked over the fabric, sometimes slipping between the material to actually make contact with her sensitive flesh, sometimes bundled up within the cotton itself.

Jade was dying.

He was making her pay for the eunuch commentary, of that she had no doubt.

With a churning of her hips against his hand, she demanded more. “Please,” she whispered, hands yanking on the silk cuffs, eyelashes fluttering against the silk blindfold, “Danvers, Nathan, please.”

His mouth stamped down on hers in a demanding kiss. “You know what I thought, honey?” His thumb made contact again, circling tight against her clit before disappearing, and Jade’s entire body convulsed in a pleasurable shudder. “I thought, if she likes to see everyone as I worked her body . . . I wonder how she’ll feel when she can see nothing at all.”

Her back arched, and maybe he was done with the games too, because this time she felt him throw her panties away. Felt the way he worked his mouth down her body, pausing at her breasts, making her pant, before landing his mouth where his fingers had been only moments before.

Jade lost all train of thought. There was nothing more important than his tongue flicking out against her clit, than his fingers thrusting into her, curling in the way he already knew she loved.

Nothing more important than the way he wrenched his hard body away from hers and growled, “I need to be inside you. Tell me you want the same thing.”

“Untie me,” she whispered, “untie me so I can touch you.”

He let loose a low curse, but his hands were on hers in a matter of seconds, loosening the silk until it fell away, a forgotten strip of cloth. When she went to remove the blindfold, he stayed her with a single hand. “It stays on.”

“Okay.”

That was all he apparently needed before launching back into action. The bed dipped to her right as she felt him leave momentarily, the sound of a condom foil tearing loud in her ears. Then he was back, grabbing onto her hands and pulling her until he had her exactly where he wanted her.

On all fours at the edge of the bed, his masculine body positioned behind her.

His wide chest pressed against her back. Jade felt consumed by him—she loved it.

“Is this okay?” His raspy voice came directly next to her ear. “Tell me if this isn’t what you want.”

She backed her butt against him. “I want it. I want you.”

“Thank God,” he grunted, and entered her in one swift thrust. They moaned simultaneously, and it would have been cliché and ridiculous if not for the fact that he felt so good.

With each thrust, Jade felt as though she were home. Which was a terrifying thought. Danvers wasn’t her home. New Orleans had only just begun to be her home.

But as she listened to her name fall off his tongue, as his hands gripped her hips to keep steady, as her fingers clutched the bedsheets, there was nowhere else she would rather be.

She rocked her hips back in tandem with his thrusts, whimpering each time he pulled out, and biting her lip at the fullness of him each time he slid back in.

In a guttural voice she barely recognized, he ordered, “Touch yourself, honey. Right now.”

She did as he bade, slipping one hand down her belly and onto her clit, rubbing in swift, erratic motions. Her body jerked as he pistoned his cock into her, and oh God, oh—

“Nathan!” she cried, her orgasm shattering over her. She dug her heels into his rock-hard thighs, eyes slammed shut.

“Fuck, Jade, you’re everything . . . I can’t . . . ” And then with a hoarse groan that sounded like it was ripped straight from his soul, he gave two more powerful thrusts before spilling inside her, dropping to the mattress next to her, and yanking her close.

“You’re not a nice guy.”

Jade propped her chin on Danvers’ finely carved chest, staring up at him and tucking an arm across his middle. Her legs were thrown over his, but he didn’t seem to mind. His head rested against one bent arm and his free hand played with the strands of her hair.

He looked smug.

“I am,” he replied easily, his gray eyes dancing in the now lamp-lit room. “I said that nice guys finished last—which, if you remember correctly, I did.”

Her mouth dropped open. “That’s what you were talking about?”

He continued playing with her hair, slipping the strands across his chest. “What else would I be talking about?”

About us dating. Or not dating, as the case may be. Sure, they’d jumped each other’s bones, but Jade had no idea what that meant for the long haul. Tapping her fingers against his chest, she opted for a safe topic change, one that didn’t require her to dig too deeply into her own emotions.

“You never told me about the house. Do we have to worry about getting caught by your landlord?” She thought of the way he’d locked the door. “Or a roommate?”

“I’m the landlord.”

She blinked behind her glasses. “You said that you knew the landlord.”

His only response was a half-shrug that succeeded in catching her long hair beneath his shoulder blade. She left it as is because it didn’t hurt.

“Like I said, I’m the landlord. I own the house.”

“I’m not following. Why would you pretend that it wasn’t yours then?”

Sighing, Danvers shifted his big body on the bed. A heavy arm wrapped around her shoulder to keep her close. “This house belonged to my dad—my biological dad.” He went back to playing with her hair, as though in need of a distraction. “I inherited it in high school when he died.”

Jade held still, save for her hand, which she laid directly over his heart. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “The world is a better place without him.”

The words settled off-kilter in her chest. Although she’d always felt like the lone wolf in her family, the Harpers knew love and they knew love well. It was in the way her dad brought home flowers to her mother at least once a week, not because he had to but because he could. It was in the way that, while growing up, her mom had sat each daughter down after dinner for homework time. It hadn’t mattered that Lucia knew Shakespeare about as well as Shakespeare knew Lucia Margarita Tomás Harper—homework time had always led to snacks and warm hot chocolate, even during the hottest months of the year.

It was in the way that Rita, the eldest, never failed to call her two sisters at least three times a week, even though the conversations were often stilted and awkward, and even though talk almost always circled back around to Hollywood gossip.

Jade might often feel less successful but she’d never once felt less loved.

She pushed herself up onto her elbows and met Danvers’ turbulent gray gaze. “How did your mom meet Mr. Cartwell?”

His hand shifted to the back of her head, curving down until it settled on the nape of her neck. “Mom worked at the restaurant Josh frequently ate at during his lunch breaks. I guess you could say one thing led to another.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen.” His hand slid from her nape down to the crux between her shoulder blades. She wondered if the soothing glide of his hand was more for his own benefit than for hers—a lulling motion guaranteed to calm the nerves. “Lizzie loved the idea of having a stepdad. Loved the idea of any dad, really, that didn’t use his fists as a method of communication.”

Although her gut clenched at the nauseating visual image, Jade did her best to appear unaffected. “Did you love the idea of a stepdad?”

His gaze turned inscrutable. “I operated under the mindset that I’d already had a dad and we were better off without him.” Ill humor tugged at his mouth. “I was a total shit back then. I’m surprised Josh didn’t throw me out on my ass and tell me to fend for myself.”

“Your mom never would have allowed that,” Jade said vehemently, content with the knowledge that Beth Cartwell loved her son. “I’m guessing Mr. Cartwell thought you were worth the trouble, even with your attitude.”

He laughed loudly at that, and, like always, the sound of his joy lit her up from the inside. “I don’t think so, honey, but you’re nice to say that.”

“I’m not just saying it,” she argued, “I really do think—”

“I know you do.”

“Danvers—”

He shook his head, his arm straightening out from behind his head to push himself up against the headboard. The new position put his crotch at eye level with her face and she felt the tips of her ears grow warm with embarrassment.

“I prefer when you call me by my first name.”

Her gaze shot to his. He looked . . . vulnerable, like he was taking a chance on something he never had before. “Nathan, then,” she murmured, grabbing the sheet to her chest as she sat up and crossed her legs beneath her. Calmly she fisted her hands in her lap, determined not to show how absurdly pleased she was that he wanted her to use his given name. “I know you don’t think that you’re worth it, but—”

“It’s not a matter of thinking, it’s a matter of knowing.” Brows furrowing into a deep V, he fixed his focus on something across the room. “My father was an ass. Volatile. Angry. From a young age, I knew that something wasn’t right. Other kids had dads who played football with them on the front lawns. I had a dad who made sure the fridge was loaded with beer, and that we all knew what would happen if we didn’t get him one when he asked.”

With one hand, Jade pulled down her camisole, then tucked the sheet around her hips. This didn’t seem like a conversation to have while naked, though Danvers made no moves to cover his chiseled chest. She wanted to touch him, to offer comfort, but he seemed . . . impenetrable.

She kept her hands locked together in her lap.

“Mom never left him. This isn’t one of those cases where the wife has a come-to-Jesus moment. He’d beat her to within an inch of her life, then do the same to me, and she’d still be there waiting for him when he got back from whatever bar he went to that night or whatever woman he decided to screw.”

Jade held back her wince.

“When he left, it wasn’t some big, crazy event. He just never came back.” With a roll of his shoulders, he slid from the bed and yanked on his drawstring shorts. Pacing the bedroom, he turned his gaze on Jade. “My dad had inherited this house from his dad. We kept living here because it wasn’t as though we had anywhere else to go, and it wasn’t as though Mom wanted to risk leaving and missing his return.”

Softly, so softly she wasn’t even sure he’d hear her, she asked, “Did he ever come back?”

He laughed, a hollow sound that rattled her heart. “Once. I was fourteen. No one else was home. Mom was at work and Lizzie at school.”

“And you?”

“Skipping,” he answered bluntly with a flash of his usual grin that now seemed misplaced on his somber face. “Like I said, I was a little shit back then.” He moved to the foot of the bed. Sat down in a heavy way that made it seem like his knees had taken a hike and gone on vacation.

“He found me in his old study. That was the thing about my dad. He was an accountant—real smooth businessman. Always dressed in suits and a tie, even on the weekends. Used to post himself up in the study for hours, demanding drink after drink from the fridge.” Danvers planted his elbows on his knees, head dropping briefly before he looked back up.

Not at Jade, though. He hadn’t glanced her way in what felt like years.

“He kept his good stash in the study. Bourbon, gin, high-class shit that he only broke out for special occasions.”

Jade wrapped a hand in the sheets and edged closer to him. “What happened?”

His stone-gray gaze flicked up to hers and she was struck immobile by the hardness she saw there. “He fucked me up. I woke up on the floor with medics all around me, my mom wrapped up in my dad’s arms and the word ‘suicide’ being thrown around like it was goddamn Christmas and they were telling everyone ‘happy holidays.’”

This time Jade couldn’t hide her shock. She’d tried, but this . . . Her hand went to her mouth and she released her hold on the sheet. This was not . . . This wasn’t what—

“Don’t look so horrified, honey.”

She stared at him, her gaze running over his face. “He lied and said you tried to kill yourself,” she whispered. “How could I not be horrified?”

“Because that was the last time I saw him. Drunk driving accident a few months later did him in, apparently. I’m just surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”

“Danvers—Nathan,” she corrected herself, “this isn’t okay.” She threw a wild glance about the bedroom, a sickening feeling sending her reeling to her feet, yoga pants and panties be damned. “All of that, and you still live here? No wonder Lizzie—”

Jade cut off that line of thought, briskly turning away. Mindlessly she searched for her underwear on the floor.

His big body stepped in front of her, her cotton panties dangling from his fingertips. She snatched them from his grasp and hastily pulled them up her legs.

“What did Lizzie say?” he asked in a deceptively soft voice. “That she doesn’t understand why I live here?”

Jade made a grab for her yoga pants, which she found haphazardly thrown across the laptop on his desk. “If you know what she said, then why bother to ask?”

He jerked his hand through his messy hair; hair that she’d taken all the pleasure mussing up while he’d pleasured her. “She acts like I’m doing this on purpose. As though I live here just to punish myself for not being able to stop my dad from what he did when we were younger.”

“Are you?” The words escaped before she could stop them. But she wanted to know the answer as much as she dreaded hearing it. Because now Lizzie’s unease on the phone earlier made so much sense.

“Of course I’m not punishing myself,” he bit out defensively, like maybe he didn’t want to believe the words to be true.

“Have they asked you to move out?” Jade asked. “Your sister and mom, I mean.”

“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

“But have they?”

His mouth flattened into a thin line. “Yes. But it’s not because of my asshole father. It’s a big house for one person. I barely use a fourth of it regularly. They want me living somewhere else more manageable. Hell, my mom wants me on the West Bank with her.”

As Jade watched him, she realized that she’d been wrong to assume his family didn’t know him. That they didn’t know what he hid beneath the charm and the easy laughter. They did. It was the only reason she could think of that connected Lizzie’s disapproval of him living here and their joint pushing to get him to move.

To step out of the shadows.

She pressed her palm to her aching heart. If she hardly knew him and she hurt for him so strongly, she could only imagine how Beth and Lizzie had felt all these years, watching their son and brother continue to live in the place he’d been terrorized and accused of attempting to commit suicide in.

The sucky part of all was that Jade didn’t even think he realized any of this.

Large hands landed on her biceps and turned her around. The sight of his towering form, cut and masculine, made her mouth water.

“Not everything was bad at this house,” he told her succinctly, as though saying so could wipe away all the negativity. “There are good memories, too. And it’s just a house, Jade. It doesn’t impact my life in any way.”

She bit her lip. “When was the last time you went in there, into the study?”

He lowered his gaze. “Fifteen years.”

Shaking her head, Jade pulled away from his grasp. She had to go—she couldn’t do this. Maybe his family had no problem watching him silently self-sabotage himself over the years, but Jade couldn’t. She’d just left a relationship with John Thomas, the king of pretending everything was fine. Four years with a man who never opened up. Four years with a man who spent the night in her bed but who was a virtual stranger in the bedroom and out of it. Coming to New Orleans was meant to be a fresh start, a way to strip the complications from her life and pursue her dream.

Every moment she spent with Nathan Danvers, her once-precise plans blurred. She wanted him. But she wasn’t willing to give her heart to a man who couldn’t be honest with himself, even when his own family pressed him to open his eyes and see that he clung to the shadows, the hurt, by continuing to live in this house. It was better to go now, before she was in too deep and could never imagine her life without him again.

Her heart squeezed with a startling thought. What if she was already in too deep?

In her right hand, she continued to clutch her yoga pants. “I don’t think that’s why you’ve stayed.”

His expression cooled. “You don’t know everything, Jade.”

Right, she thought with a pang, because he obviously did. Jade stuffed one leg and then the other into her pants, pulling the waistband into proper place over her butt. “You asked me to trust you.”

Slowly, he drawled out, “I did.”

“Then trust me when I say that I happen to agree with your sister and your mom. I think staying here provides you with something else to hide behind. You hide behind being Mr. Tall, Dark, Flirtatious because it fits the mold you want people to see. But beneath all of that . . .” She took a deep breath. “Don’t you see? You don’t give people the real you—the shadows and the light. You give quarter measures. I don’t get it. Are you worried that they’ll think less of you?” Jade shoved her feet into her flip-flops. “Is that why you won’t ask for help with the Zeker case? Because you think you’re better off struggling alone? I have all of these theories”—she swallowed, then met his gaze—“but you don’t want to hear them. The other night in the glass room, you shut me down so quickly. You’d rather go at it alone than accept that someone else might have the answer.”

He started forward. “That’s a low blow, Jade.”

“Is it?” She crossed to the door and flicked the lock open, only pausing to turn back once the door was pushed wide and she was standing in the threshold. “Nathan, the fact that you choose to go by your surname—the same surname as the man you clearly hate—is yet another form of self-induced punishment. Nobody calls you Nathan, not even your family. It’s ‘Danvers’ or ‘Danny.’ Isn’t that weird to you?”

He threw his arms up in the air in frustration. “So, what? I’m just a walking, flagellant billboard?”

“No,” she answered firmly, softly, “I think you keep everyone at arm’s length with the happy-go-lucky attitude. You’re funny Danvers, don’t-take-me-seriously Danvers. But that’s not the truth, is it?”

Jade’s fingers tightened on the doorknob at the sight of the wounded look on his face. When he demanded, “Then what is the truth?” in a ragged voice, he damned near killed her.

Her eyes squeezed shut. She didn’t want to say this. But something told her that it had to be said. If he didn’t want to listen to advice from his family, maybe he’d hear and digest the words when they came from practically a stranger.

He doesn’t feel like a stranger, though.

“What’s the truth, then, honey?” His voice was closer now. She opened her eyes, not at all shocked to find him standing within her personal bubble, a tick pulsing in his jaw and his hands planted on either side of the doorframe. “Go ahead. Tell me if you think you know me so well.”

Jade glanced past him to the bed that they’d successfully mussed up just thirty minutes earlier. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

She cleared her throat, choking down the guilt of ruining whatever they had. Or could have had, as the case may be.

“The truth is,” she said, “you don’t trust anyone not to hurt you. You expect it from them. You’ve asked me to trust you on multiple occasions. In the glass room when anyone could have walked in. Here”—she pressed a hand to her throat—“when you tied me to your bed. You stripped me of my defenses and made me think that you trusted me, too. But that’s not the truth, either.”

The flash of raw vulnerability on his face cued her in that everything she said rang accurate for him. Perhaps, more than anything, that hurt most of all. Jade didn’t trust people easily, and she’d certainly never given herself as openly as she had with Nathan.

When he rasped, “Anything else you want to add?” Jade knew that it was over. Them. Sleeping together. A potential relationship. She’d been at his mercy tonight, if he’d wanted to do something, and what had she gotten in return?

Nothing, really.

Just sex.

Maybe she hadn’t gotten rid of her predictable nature fully, because for the first time, Jade didn’t think that sex was enough. She could easily get it from someone else. Not Nathan Danvers, though. With him, she wanted more. And that didn’t seem to be something he was willing to give to her.

She tipped her head back to stare up at his face, her words faltering when she noted the closed-off expression on his face. “Let me just ask you this,” she said haltingly, “Why open yourself up to the possibility of hurt, of being Nathan, when you can stay just Danvers for the rest of your life?”

A rush of air blew from his nose, and he stepped back. “I think you should go.”

“I know.”

He didn’t stop her on her way out the door, not that she’d expected him to do so. That would have been too much of a risk. And Danvers, though he was more than equipped to play the role of adventurous lover, wasn’t up to that task.

For the entire ride home, Jade ignored the stinging in her heart.

She was independent. She was making it. She was setting up her future.

Unlike a month earlier, the words didn’t bring nearly as much comfort, and she had no idea what to make of that. And as she pulled into the parking lot at her apartment complex, she realized that she was crying.

She’d never cried over John Thomas, not once.

Her shoulders hunched and she fought the lump growing in her throat. Jade didn’t believe in fate, but maybe it was true after all. Maybe she’d had to have a major meltdown with Danvers to remember why she’d come to New Orleans in the first place.

Nowhere on her list had there been a bullet point about falling in love with a man who was emotionally unavailable outside of the bedroom.

“I like you too.”

Her eyes squeezed shut. Apparently he just didn’t like her enough.