Why am I here? I can’t believe she’s asking me that question when the answer is so fucking obvious and standing right in front of me. I’m not here because I wanted to spend my night listening to her curious roommate’s questions or learn from Wendy’s boyfriend that Flick’s ex is interested in getting back together. I’m here because I’ve missed Felicity. Because I’ve tried to give her space and enough time to clear her head before I marched back into her life to take what’s mine. No other man—not her ex or some lovesick motherfucker she meets at York’s—will claim her. Not while I’m still breathing.

“Why are you here, Jackson?” she repeats.

“You weren’t there. With me. You belong with me, Felicity, and nowhere else.” I extend my hand to her and hold out the phone she’d returned to me. Receiving it this morning had pissed me off, and my plan to give her time had immediately changed. Instead of space, now she gets me. Unfiltered and telling her the truth. She creeps over to me, her brow furrowing when she recognizes the phone. “This is yours,” I say roughly.

She shakes her head. “It’s—”

“Where’s the painting?” I nod to the empty spot on the wall where the watercolor I bought her had hung. 

“I wanted to give it back too.” Felicity squares her slim shoulders and lifts her chin. She’s so goddamn proud and stubborn. I don’t know whether I want to spank her perfect ass or fall to her feet, but I know she affects me. That not being around her has been fucking hell. “I sent the painting back this morning on the way to work, so you should have it sometime this week.”

“Did you?” I demand in a low voice, slamming the phone on her coffee table. She can throw it off her balcony for all I care, but I’m not taking it back with me. “They were gifts, Flick, not loaners,” I growl.

She crosses her arms over her chest and avoids my gaze. “I’d feel bad accepting anything from you.” Her response, though innocent, comes out a little too sarcastic for my taste. Before she can get out another word, I’m out of my seat and hauling her into my arms. I’d missed this—the scent of innocence and goodness, the feel of her soft curves molding against my hands—and I draw her in like she’s my last meal. She opens her mouth to protest. 

I cover her lips and give her a warning glare because I’m not in the mood for her arguments tonight. 

“Shut up and listen, Felicity,” I order, dropping her on the couch. Just like that first night when I claimed her cunt with my tongue and made her come until she was hoarse, I trap her in place, placing one hand on either side of her body. She swallows hard, then holds her breath. Being this close to me is torture for her—I can tell it in her pinched expression—but I’m about to make things right. 

“I don’t like not having you in my life.” Her nostrils flare when I move so close our noses touch. “I could remind you that you agreed to spend thirty days with me, but that doesn’t even matter anymore. What matters is that you thought I was such a shitty person you hit me and ran away before you gave me a chance to explain.”

“I’m sorry for hitting you, Jackson—”

“I’m not finished, sweet.” At my command, she presses her lips into a thin line and hollows in her cheeks. “Does it look like I give a shit that you hit me? Yes, it bruised my ego, but I deserved a chance to speak. So, I’m doing it now.” 

I reach behind me on the coffee table for the large envelope I brought with me tonight and drop it on her lap. Hesitantly, her small fingers close around the yellow edges. “What is this?” she asks.

“It’s yours.” 

“I don’t—”

“If you opened it, sweet, you’d understand.” 

Her hands tremble as she opens the envelope to slide out the documents. Biting the inside of her cheek, she reads over the top page and makes a confused noise in the back of her throat. “It’s a letter to my attorney, Felicity. Requesting that ownership of the building housing York’s be transferred to your name. Only your name.”  

She looks up at me. “But the date on this…”

I move my head up and down, and she touches a fisted hand to her mouth, breathing heavily against her palm. The document is dated a day before my vice-CFO’s retirement party. Realizing I’d never intended on fucking her over, she hangs her head low. I cup her chin, raising it to force her to meet my expression. 

“I was going to tell you. I’d started to tell you but then my father and Jessica showed up, so I figured I’d let your father explain what he had done. I knew from the second he stepped foot in my office that I wasn’t going to take that restaurant away from you. You worked too hard and cared too much for me to do that.”

A dozen emotions cross her features, but she settles on a look that borders on shame and anger. “I’m a hypocrite,” she whispers, her shoulders slumping forward. “A big fucking hypocrite. I’m so sorry.”

“I didn’t come for your apologies, Flick. I came for you.” She’s crying now, so I skim my thumbs over her cheeks, massaging her tears into her soft skin. Stuffing the paperwork back into the envelope, she pushes it toward me and I cock an eyebrow. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I can’t take this from you, Jax.” She wipes the backs of her hands across her cheeks. “I can’t…”

“It’s yours. You earned it. I want you to have it.”

“I can’t,” she says, fisting her hands.

I kneel in front of her and bring her face to mine, kissing her hungrily. I still remember how adamant she was about not taking the painting, but I don’t mind convincing her. This time, I’ll convince her so good she won’t dream of returning anything to me again. 

“It’s yours. I’m fucking yours, Flick. And you’re mine.”

“I don’t understand. I was an asshole to you. Why would you want to do this for me? Why would you want to do anything for me?”

“You’re my asshole,” I correct with a smirk. And then, I say four words that make her face flush the sexiest shade of pink. “I love you, Felicity.”

When things ended with Jessica, I’d watched her leave with zero emotion other than irritation at her dramatic meltdown that ruined half my suits. I was ready for my ex-wife to fuck off months before it actually happened. Watching Felicity go, however, had torn me apart. It had been my plan all along to give her that building, but not telling her about my deal with her father nearly cost me everything. Little Flick belongs to me—she’s mine and no other man’s. 

“I want you to have the building because I love you,” I say. “Because it makes you happy.” 

Her breath quickens and she blinks rapidly. “What? You barely even know me.”

“And like I told you that first day in my office, I don’t give a fuck. I love the way you taste. The way you smell like peaches and vanilla. The way you laugh. The way you claw my back when I’m inside of you.” I stroke the pad of my thumb over her glossy lips, causing her to exhale onto my skin.

“I love how pure and innocent you are, even when you’re hitting me. I love you. I don’t care how long I’ve known you—I knew Jessica for five years before I asked her to marry me, and look how that turned out. I want to wake up next to you every morning and put my babies in your belly. I want you and I won’t give up until I have you.”

Felicity’s eyes are wide with shock as she processes everything I’ve told her. That I adore her—the beautiful girl I would’ve given anything to taste first. That I want a life with her beyond the virginity contract that brought us together. That I want her knocked up, carrying my babies and protecting them just as fiercely as she does everyone else. Fuck, I want her. 

“Oh god, Jackson,” she whispers, and the deluge starts. Tears trickle down her cheeks, and it scares the shit out of me. I’ve never been afraid of a woman’s reaction to my words, but Felicity’s always been different. She makes me feel things I didn’t know exist, and for the first time in my life, I hold my breath and wait to hear someone else’s terms. “I love you too,” she struggles out at last.

My shoulders sag in relief, but my voice takes on a taunting tone when I turn her own words against her. “You barely even know me, Little Flick.”

“Fuck you, Jackson,” she laughs, showering my face with kisses and telling me again that she loves me. It’s a turn on—fuck, everything Flick does is a turn on. These past few days without her have wreaked havoc on everything from my sleep pattern to my cock, and I’m anxious to show her just how much I’ve missed her. I hook my fingers beneath the waistband of her jeans and drag her to the edge of the couch. 

“Ohhh! What are you doing?” she gasps.

“Fucking you.”

“I can’t.” She shakes her head rapidly and glances down worriedly at the clothes she wore to work. “I mean, we can’t. I need to shower so I won’t be all sweaty and—”

I growl at her excuse. I don’t think there’s anything she could do to herself to make me want her any less, but I also want her to be comfortable. I open the button of her jeans, cocking one eyebrow when she grasps my wrist. “If we do this in the shower, will you be quiet and just … enjoy?” 

When she grins and promises me that she will, I pick her up. She squeals in my ear, but I ignore her protests, taking her into the bathroom just down the hall. When I came in here earlier to escape her talkative roommate’s nosy boyfriend, I’d noticed that the room was small. Now, with both of us standing inside of it and clothes flying everywhere, it seems twice as tiny. The shower isn’t meant for two people, but I don’t care. 

We could be in a fucking swamp right now, and the only thing I’d be able to focus on is the big green eyes staring up at me and the tight little cunt I’m seconds away from devouring. I tease her mouth with mine, using my teeth and tongue to make her moan and wiggle against me. “You’re actually obeying me and keeping that mouth of yours closed,” I rasp between kisses. Using my fingertip, I draw a wet circle around her nipple. “Fuck, I love it when you obey.”  

A sexy grin starts on her face and she parts her lips to defy me, but I slide my knee between her thighs, nudging her legs as far apart as the shower will allow. I push her up against the tiled wall and cover her mouth with my hand so she can’t even whimper. 

“I know when you’re going to do it, Little Flick. Don’t you even dare.” 

Gripping her slick thigh with my free hand, I plunge my cock deep inside her cunt. She nips at my fingers covering her mouth, but I only laugh and shake my head. I thrust in and out of her tightness and give her a warning look as I drop my hand from her lips to stroke her throbbing clit. 

“We made a deal, sweet. I fuck you here and you don’t talk.” When we hear a loud voice from the living room—her roommate announcing that she can’t find her license so she came back to look for it—Flick’s eyes widen at the devilish grin I give her. “Since you don’t want to hold up your end of the bargain, though, I can always haul your tight little ass back to the other room and give Wendy a show.” 

She shakes her head furiously and I smack her ass. She shudders at the sharp warmth, so I do it again and again, telling her to touch her clit. “Put your hand over mine, sweet.” She does, her small fingers linking with mine to circle over her pulsing flesh. “That’s it, Felicity. Just like that.”

Panting wildly, she bucks her hips and arches her back. She’s going to make us both tumble out of this shower with the way she’s grinding and moving. I won’t stop, though. We could be pounding away on the floor, and I won’t quit her until her pussy’s soaked and clenching around me and her body is completely satisfied. “I’m going to need you to come for me, sweet,” I groan. “Come for me so I can take you back to my place and fuck you like this the right way.” 

“The right way?” she whispers, ending her silence. I pinch her clit between my thumb and middle finger, and her forehead falls forward to the shower wall. “Oh god, I can’t—”

Get the words out—that’s what she can’t do. She shudders all around me as I slide in and out of her, and her cunt grips my dick so tightly I can’t stop myself from praising her. “You’re so good,” I murmur in her ear, slapping her ass again as her orgasm powers through her. “So perfect. I told you I’d make you come on command, my sweet Little Flick.” 

A moment later, though, I follow behind her, pinning her to the shower wall as I release into her body. When I let her go and turn her around to face me, I cup her face in my hands and she melts against me. “I love you, Flick. Goddamn, I love you so much.” 

“I love you too, Jackson.”