Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
“Steroids?” Jamie snarls. “I’d never touch the shit. Didn’t exactly help you and your goons now did it?”
“Then how the fuck’d you move like that?”
Jamie grins like a crazy wolf, baring his teeth.
“You can’t touch another man’s woman and expect him to be anything less than primal, anything less than the monster he needs to be to make her safe. But I’m done talking with you. Get the fuck out before I paint the walls with your brains, Tyron.”
Tyron skulks out.
Outside, the police start to yell at them to put their hands up.
Jamie turns to me and falls to his knees, dropping the gun and pulling the tape and gag out of my mouth. I let out a panting breath as he quickly unties the rest of me, moving with the same frantic movements we used when undressing last night.
Finally, I collapse into his arms, shaking and crying, as though my emotions have waited until now to crash into me with the full force of this madness.
“Are you okay?” Jamie breathes huskily. “Are you hurt?”
“N-no,” I whimper, clutching onto him tightly, burying my face in his neck, and letting the tears flow.
“I’d never forgive myself if I let something happen to you,” he groans. “You’re mine. I’ll always protect you.”
“Forever?” I sob.
“Forever,” he growls.
Chapter Nineteen
Jamie
The three of us sit on the balcony of my apartment, the heated flooring doing nothing to melt the taut iciness that drapes over the moment.
Beyond the glass of the balcony – enclosing the heat and keeping out the swirling landscape of winter – the city sits as if frozen in a snapshot.
The late afternoon sun shafts down, lighting up the snow.
It’s been one day since the mayhem at the restaurant.
The police weren’t happy with the way I just charged in there, but one of the benefits of being a billionaire CEO is that, as long as things don’t end in disaster, I can work my way out of binds like that.
The bottom line is that I saved my woman.
The only sour point is that I forgot that the world was watching as I escorted her from the building, my arm wrapped around her shoulder, my face buried in her hair as I whispered soothing words and I held her close.
Hundreds of people took photographs of that moment.
We sit as though we’ve arranged it for this conversation.
Yasmin sits on one side of the table, wearing a baggy gray sweater pulled up around her hands, cradling her hot cocoa as the steam warps in the air. Jade sits beside me, looking downright angelic in her white, airy sweater, the open weave making me want to grab her and please her even now.
But Yasmin has seen the photographs of Jade and me together.
The whole world has.
We need to settle this.
“So what exactly is this?” Yasmin says, pale blue eyes, my eyes, flitting between us. “Because it’s a little confusing, you know. I go to Maine to cool off, and then I cheat and check social media because I always cheat and check social media. And what do I see plastered all over Instagram? What do I read in the hundreds of messages sent to me? You two, looking like the most perfect couple in the world, hugging each other after a … a war, it seemed like.”
She sighs and falls back in her chair, folding her arms.
“Yas, I’m so sorry,” Jade murmurs, a sob trying to rise in her throat and distort her words. “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”
“Just—just answer my question first,” Yasmin sighs. “What is this, a fling, a relationship, what?”
“It’s everything,” I say passionately, unable to hide the possessive tremor in my voice. “All those times you told me I could find somebody, Yasmin, all those times you said I’d be happier if I had somebody to share my life with, I never believed you. After what happened with your mother—”
“Oh, so now you want to talk about that?” she snaps.
I sigh, nodding.
“That’s fair. I deserve that. Your mother, she …”
“Dad, I know what Mom did,” Yasmin says quietly. “It took me about five minutes to find her online. She’s got a profile on that hippy whatever commune website. I mean, what sort of disconnect-from-the-world commune has a website? But there you go. I know she chose to leave me, leave us, because she wanted to live a life of drugs and sex and freedom.”
“We can talk about it,” I tell her firmly. “I want to be better. With Jade’s help, I really think I can be better.”
Emotion flits across her eyes and she nods briefly.
“I want that, Dad,” she says. “But I still don’t understand. Thank you—for the offer. I don’t even know if I want to talk about her, to be honest. I just needed to know that we could, you know?”