SEVENTEEN
Corinne
I’d like to say that a night spent at home lounging in my pajamas brings with it some clarity, or at the very least, an epiphany on how to move forward with this.
All I know for sure is that, one, my brother will never accept Jordan or what he’s done, and two, I’m not prepared to accept this is the end of our journey either.
I didn’t spend years longing to know more about the man, yearning to understand how he fit into the picture, only to baulk at the first sign of trouble.
The tendrils of steam that rise from my coffee carry the delicious scent of a new day as I cradle the mug before me. I had my night to think things over, to process what I was told, and I feel more resolute now than ever to let Jordan have his three months.
I threw the rejection at him yesterday afternoon out of fear, not because I don’t want that time with him. I do. I was merely hurt at the truths he spoke. But is that his fault? Not necessarily. No, he shouldn’t have brought my uncle up in such a way, but those are my scars to bear, not his. I shouldn’t put my inability to resolve things that happened in the past between us. Good relationships are built on the couple’s ability to overcome hurdles together, and like he says, that’s what we can do over the next twelve weeks: work through the demons of our past as a team.
The plan forms in my mind as I eat breakfast, solidifying on my run through the shower, and cementing itself as I put the final details into place. I smooth the dress over my hips, checking myself in the mirror to make sure that not a hair lies out of place in preparation for the most defining moment of my life.
I coasted through my teenage years and into college on the safe path, doing what was expected of me and what would draw the least attention. I found myself a job in an industry that wasn’t going away anytime fast, hoping for a safe and stable career while I saved toward that fabled white picket fence. I even found myself a man I could envision in camel-colored slacks, driving our minivan, when I dated Aden.
But as the years passed the emptiness inside of me wouldn’t shrink, no matter how many uniform and cookie-cutter life choices I threw at it. The void only grew.
Meeting up with Jordan last week? I found the piece that fits. I found the antidote for the poison I fed myself.
I found the chaos I secretly craved.
I found everything I knew deep down I had been missing.
Fifteen minutes later, my ride pulls up outside Jordan’s property as my heart lodges in my throat. If there was ever a final moment to back out of this, to fall into old habits and aim to please my family, this is it.
Instead, I pay the cabbie and take my first, albeit shaky, step toward the giant home. My palms tingle with anticipation, a coil of excitement tight in my gut as I press and roll my lips a couple of times to make sure my deep red pout is as perfect as can be.
The security cameras give away my approach, much as I expected, and the door is open for me by the time I reach the front stoop. Strangely, though, he’s nowhere to be seen.
“Jordan?” My heels clack loudly as I step into the foyer.
The sound irritates me in the otherwise eerily quiet house, so I kick them off and push the pair aside with my toes. Fuck the outfit. The knot of worry in my stomach tells me how I look is the least of his worries.
I head further into the house, the lack of any indication on where he is disturbing me to the point of panic. What if the door wasn’t open for me? What if he’s been broken into?
Don’t be so silly, Corinne. A man with this much surveillance having the front door kicked in? Unlikely.
“Jordan? Where are you?”
A stack of paper spread messily over his coffee table pulls my focus to the middle of the room. I may have been here only twice, but one thing I can say without a shadow of doubt is that Jordan enjoys order. Papers left so haphazardly like this makes no sense.
I step closer and read the top of the first few sheets. Emails. I should look away and respect his privacy, yet something tells me they were left here for me. As I scan the pages, it grows increasingly clear what this is: an admission.
Laid out before me is every little thing he chose to withhold from me: conversations about credit card fraud, large monetary transactions, and evidence of where and how he got his empire.
The strangest part of it all? He did all of this for other people. What he spent on himself? It wasn’t much. His cars: gifted. His house: sold to him for an absolute steal.
He bartered his black market skills for what he has.
“Ask me anything.”
I suck a sharp breath as I spin to find him behind me, hesitant where he stands in the entryway to the hall.
“No more secrets, Corinne.”
I return my gaze to the paperwork on the table. “You laid this out so carefully, for me, right?”
He nods as he moves into my periphery. “If you hadn’t come, I would have brought you here anyway.” There’s no need to look at him to know the hunger in his eyes. “God, you’re downright sexy in that dress.”
“It was the look I was hoping for,” I tease.
His eyes hold mine when I finally dare myself to look at him again. “I gave you your night.” He frowns, hands slung in his pockets. “Do I take the dress as a good sign?” The formal shirt he wears sits partially unbuttoned, as though he’s pulled the tie off moments before and decided to kick back after a long day. It’s disheveled, yet dangerously suggestive.
“I was told to cut you loose.”
“I know.”
I tip my head. “Chase?”
“He thought he’d drive the nail into the coffin one more time with a visit last night.”
Damn him and his meddling. “He has good intentions,” I reason in an effort to defuse any possible war brewing between the two.
“As do I.” Jordan sighs, the action making his wide chest rise and fall against the restriction of his shirt. “You were eighteen when I finally found the courage to ask you out. I was twenty.” He rolls his lips between his teeth before continuing, the slightest drop to his head. He’s nervous, telling me this. “You laughed at me. Told me to stop being such an idiot, and then closed the door in my goddamn face.”
“I forgot about that.” The memory comes back, hazy yet true. I did laugh at him. “I thought you were playing a joke on me with Chase.”
Jordan shakes his head, hands seemingly twitching in his pockets. “My best memory of you was at that party, but I saw you before that, Corinne. I just didn’t know I loved you until Chase’s birthday.”
“Love?”
“Obsessively.”
The intensity should scare me, but instead I’m drawn like a moth to the flame: aware of the danger, yet unable to pull myself from the beauty of it all.
“You were at the bar the night I celebrated graduation,” I say.
He nods, one hand slipping free of his pocket. “I was always there, baby. Always watching.” His fingers brush the side of my jaw with such reverence I’m almost brought to my knees. “Every step.”
“And yet you waited until last week to make yourself known.”
“If I had made a move earlier …” He shakes his head, stepping away. “I wanted you to hurt for what you did turning me down that day. I would have accepted you saying no. I would have respected your choice. But you laughed at me. Fucking mocked me. You made me think you cared about me, and then you sniggered at my most vulnerable moment.”
“I’m sorry I did that.”
“No.” His jaw clenches. “Don’t apologize. You shouldn’t have to. My vendetta?” He laughs at the word. “It was so wrong. So… mad.”
“But?” I prompt sensing he leads somewhere with this.
“But what I am now—obsessed…” He closes the space between us, his scent a heady aroma as he captures me against his hard body, one hand punishing as it holds my chin steady. “God, Corinne. It’s so much worse.”
My head screams yes, it is. My heart says give him a chance. And my gut says, run.
“It’s not madness.” I whisper. “It’s how you love.”
I see it now. The way he works, the single-minded focus he applies to anything he does. It was there as a kid, it was there years later, evident in the hours I got before he vanished yet again only to turn up last week with the same intensity shining through.
Jordan is obsessive by nature. And I’m sick for desiring that kind of focus be put solely on me.
But I want it.
I crave it.
I ache to be the center of his world, and God save anyone who steps in the way of that.
“How I love?” He chuckles. “You have a funny concept of love if you think this fixation is healthy, baby.”
“I don’t.” I know it’s downright dangerous. But isn’t anything that gives you a thrill? How is this any less madness than skydiving, driving too fast on the freeway, throwing caution to the wind and living life without regrets? “But I also wouldn’t expect any less from you.”
“Corinne …” His breath ghosts my face, his lips so painfully close to brushing mine.
“Make me the queen of your empire, Jordan. Put me on a pedestal beside you.”
“It’s the only place you belong.”
He claims me with such conviction, such passion, that he lifts my feet from the floor. I’m crushed against him, his arm around my waist cinched tight as she moves us to the nearby sofa, and lays me down across the cushions.
The dress is yanked up my thighs, partially by him, mostly by me.
“I want you inside of me so badly,” I utter as he forces my breasts free of the dress. “One night was hell.”
“I know.” His mouth leaves a hot trail across my flesh as he kisses a line from my throat, between my breasts, and then skips the covered expanse of my body directly to the warm flesh between my thighs.
I cry out, my head pressed hard into the cushions as his rough hand palms my breast, his warm breath teasing my willing pussy through the thin barrier of my panties.
“Every day,” he growls, easing the satin aside. “I’m going to feast on this every goddamn day.”
And damn it, I’ll let him if he continues to do it just like that. Long, firm sweeps of his tongue. The gentle flick of the tip across my clit before he pushes the muscle inside on the next sweep, coaxing my juices free.
Not that they need any help.
This man… the way he turns me on. I’ve never been so easily aroused in my life. But then again, I’ve never had a man with such sexual intensity as Jordan between my legs before, either.
Everything about him leaves me buzzing for more: his mess of dark hair that has him looking on edge, his piercing brown eyes, and that deliciously sculpted body.
The way he loves me.
The passion and purpose of everything he does. Everything he does for me.
Perhaps it’s ego that makes me crave his touch, his adoration? I’m not entirely sure. But when his fingers push inside of me as they do now, when he grins at me from between my legs, the way he licks those lips before feasting on my arousal again?
I couldn’t care less about being the most selfish woman in the world. Not when I’d gladly give up everything else to keep this one, most precious gift.
Him.
“Enough,” I pant, fisting my hands in his hair. “I need you.”
“How badly?” His words feather my pussy, his breath a cool gust against my heat.
“Like oxygen to live.” I can’t breathe properly until I feel complete again.
He stalks over me, powerful arms holding his weight as he slowly makes his way up the length of my body. My arousal glistens on his lips, his smile wide and wicked as sin as he ducks his head for a kiss.
I taste myself on him: my desperation, my need, and my desire.
“I realized something last night, Corinne.” He pushes the head of his cock against my entrance, teasing, causing the muscles to twitch. “That three months?” I cry out with his fullness, with the savagery of his thrust. “It’s off. The deal is no longer on the table.”
What? He doesn’t want me to stay here? “You want me to leave after this?” I battle with the need to push him away, and the desire to pull him deeper.
I mean it wouldn’t be the first time he’s kicked me out right after sex.
“I don’t want you to ever leave,” he explains as my eyes close with the bliss that wracks my body.
He feels so damn good. So damn thick. So damn… everything.
“Make no mistake,” he utters as he leans down to place a kiss to my lips.
All while pumping that glorious cock deep inside of me.
“You bring a single case here.” His hands slide under my ass, lifting my hips. “Even one tiny personal item. And that’s it—you live here now. No going back.”
“I can’t change my mind if things don’t work out?” I tease, well aware I could never walk away.
“Why would you?” His thumb finds my clit, rubbing in tight little circles as he thrusts deep and hard. “Besides, I wouldn’t let you.” His eyes close briefly, his brow furrowed as he sighs. “There’s nothing that can compare to your pussy, baby. Nothing.”
The first wave of my climax hits me hard and unexpectedly. Seeing that look of contention on his face? Knowing I put it there?
He pays me compliments in ways I never thought I’d yearn for.
“That’s it.” His hips slam the inside of my thighs, his assault bruising as he grips my ass with insistent fingers. “Come for me, Corinne. Cover my cock with it.”
I reach for him; hands grappling for something to solidify this is real as he pushes my body over the edge. My climax fades, only to be replaced with a toe-curling orgasm. My entire body tenses as he jerks his release into me, every muscle rigid.
Jordan’s chest heaves as he watches me intently, slowing his hips to a languishing pace as our highs fade.
The lust remains.
“I’m glad you came back to me, Corinne.”
“I am too.” My palm skims his thigh.
“You could never be anyone else’s.” He runs his bottom lip between his teeth before adding. “Ever.”
The look in his eye, the power his body exudes as he kneels before me… I don’t doubt that.
I also get the feeling he’s the kind of man who’d go to some pretty extreme lengths to keep it that way, too.
I’ve never felt safer.