Her Perfect Pleasure

Nothing was like Jade remembered. Her parents had basically torn out every trace of what the house was.

Dark. Oppressive. And old, but not in a cool way.

Now it felt like a completely different house.

Jade didn’t realize she’d been spinning in disoriented circles, trying to take it all in until she stumbled into one of the columns. She slammed into the textured wood hard enough to bruise. She gasped on a breath of pain.

“Are you okay?” Dee appeared at her side.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Nothing here was what she had expected. Yes, she’d felt the roll of familiar anxiety when she stood outside the door, but all that was gone now. She might as well have been standing in a stranger’s home.

In some ways, maybe that was what it was.

Jade took a breath, then swept her gaze around the entire top floor. Yes, she could easily sell this. With the way the real estate market was right now, if she listed the house at even a decent asking price, it would probably get an offer in less than a week. Then it would be out of her life for good. Just like her parents.

She took another breath. “You ready?”

Dee looked confused. “Sure. But that’s it? That’s all you wanted to do? Literally just look around?”

“Of course. And now I’m finished.” She rattled the keys in her hand. “Let’s go.”

For a moment, Dee looked like she was going to ask more questions, but she just huffed and stomped down the stairs while Jade followed her on more silent feet.

This was the house her parents left behind. Now gutted and rearranged and looking like something Jade had never seen before.

This was all that was left of them. This was all that was left of the life she’d lived with them. Just a giant empty space. She swallowed hard.

A sharp pain spasmed under her breastbone and Jade rubbed over the spot. No, she was not sad. It was all just finally over.

She got into the car and started the powerful engine while Dee huffed some more in the passenger seat. “That was so lame,” the girl said.

“Probably. I didn’t promise you any excitement on this outing.”

I don’t even recall inviting you along, Jade thought but kept that last bit to herself.

“So true.” Dee buckled herself in. “Fine.” Her phone beeped and she reached into her back pocket for it. Staring at the phone, she made a happy noise. Her eyes gleamed when she looked up at Jade. “You wanna go someplace I want now?”

What was the alternative? Head back to the hotel and work? Drive herself crazy wondering why her parents gutted the house they loved so much? Try not to think about Carter and all the ways he effortlessly destroyed her peace of mind?

Jade shrugged and gave Dee her most carefree smile. “Sure.”

Chapter 4

Jade was seriously pissed at Carter.

After trying to convince him she’d used him in college, she’d stormed out and left him shocked in her wake. Shocked not because she’d used him as a sex toy that one glorious afternoon in September, but shocked that she’d even attempt the lie.

He may not have been very experienced in college, but even a guy as oblivious as him knew a virgin when he slept with one. On his dorm bed with the two of them naked and face-to-face, she’d been trembling and nervous. When he touched her, she blushed. She’d been amazed at his body, the way it hardened for her and sought eagerly to plunge into her delicate, feminine flesh.

Then there was the blood.

All these years after, he still vividly remembered the details of that bright afternoon. Her wide eyes when she saw him naked. The trembling tips of her breasts under his tongue. Her soft, kittenish cries as he kissed between her thighs.

Jade had been so tight, he’d barely been able to get inside her. Still shivering in the wake of the orgasms he’d given her with his tongue and fingers, she whimpered from that first stroke. Then she couldn’t get enough of him.

The memory of that afternoon seeped into Carter like a drug.

Chill. You’re at work.

He stood in the middle of his office, staring at the closed door she’d disappeared through less than ten minutes before.

Jade Tremaine.

The woman who’d driven him crazy with lust and protectiveness in college.

The woman who still haunted his dreams.

The initial buzz of shock from her presence had worn off during the meeting with her and Kingsley. The whole time, Carter hadn’t been able to stop staring at her. She was even more beautiful than before. The hair she used to wear long and straight in college was now cut short and natural. That wild, sensual energy she had back then, all a teasing possibility in her lean and curvaceous frame, had grown to its full potential. More than even before, she looked like an angel. A sensual, unforgiving one. But an angel just the same.

The office phone chimed suddenly, pulling him from his obsessive thoughts about Jade.

“Yes, Caroline?”

“Your sister called,” his assistant said over the intercom. “She wants you to meet her at Liquid Crush.”

Was it that time again? A sigh gusted from Carter’s lips.

Apparently, Paxton had made it her mission of the year to get him to relax. At first, she invited him to different parties and functions all over Miami. Sending texts to let him know a ticket waited for him at the door. Sometimes it was just a note about his favorite artists being in town. Most of the time, he didn’t go. He had a lot on his plate.

Between keeping the more irresponsible members of his family from ending up in jail or worse, making sure the company was safe in more ways than one and trying various methods to get Jade out of his subconscious, he was a busy guy.

Paxton didn’t want to hear any of it. So she’d stopped sending the messages to his phone and instead sent them directly to his assistant, making the events seem like appointments. Caroline knew damn well what Paxton was doing. But she apparently thought he needed to relax too. Meddling women.

One of the youngest of them and one of the last set of twins, Paxton was a typical Diallo. But where her siblings were driven and very controlling, she was a genius and just a little bit crazy. A lot like her twin, Jaxon. Who was officially the reason Jade Tremaine was back in Carter’s life.

Carter wanted to wring Jaxon’s neck a little. But he also wanted to hug the kid.

“Caroline, you know I can’t do that. I have another meeting.” Technically, that wasn’t true.

“Technically, that’s not true.” Caroline parroted his thoughts in a creepy way he’d come to accept over the years.

Sighing, Carter dropped his head back in the chair.

Yes, what he had was an appointment for a massage. One that Caroline had quickly put together for him since he had to come back to work so early after Vegas instead of taking the little break he’d planned.

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