Claimed By Her Best Friend's Dad Read online

  Our eyes meet and we begin to smile slowly, Yasmin finally giving me a playful nudge.

  “So that’s how it is, huh? You’re going to use my own lines against me?”

  I giggle and squeeze her shoulders, trying to put my feelings for Jamie at the back of my traitor’s mind.

  The only consolation I have is that nothing has really happened yet, but that doesn’t mean the thoughts aren’t plaguing me.

  And when I ask myself if I’m going to skip seeing him tomorrow – or today, technically – the answer roars out in my mind as a definitive no.

  “It was true when you said it to me,” I tell her. “And it’s true now.”

  “Yeah, fine, but having your dad die in a ski accident and having a bunch of basement-dwelling assholes comment on your photos are two very different things.”

  “It must be horrible,” I murmur, ignoring her self-deprecating comment. “Having all those people talking about you, criticizing you … I don’t know what the heck I’m going to do if I ever do get a book published. One bad review and I’ll probably move to an igloo in Antarctica and become a freaking nomad or something.”

  Yasmin giggles. “I can so see you in a white fur cape.”

  I grin, her laughter bolstering me, letting the writhing anxiety and guilt drop away for a few moments.

  “How about you? Are you nervous about going back to work?”

  I have two days off – today and tomorrow – and then it’s back on a six-day stint at the restaurant.

  “A little,” I admit.

  “Don’t be,” she says. “Dad’s people are the best. They won’t let anything happen to you. I should’ve insisted that you let them tail you when this first started. Have you noticed anything since last time?”

  “No,” I say. “But it’s like that sometimes. I’ll see him one day and then a few days will pass, and nothing. And then he’ll just pop up. You know, Yas … It doesn’t matter.”

  “What?” she says, giving my shoulder a supportive squeeze now.

  “It’s just that sometimes I wonder if I’m imagining him, you know? Maybe dad’s death and all that grief and all the anxiety that comes from trying to be a writer and—”

  And crushing on your dad, I almost blurt, but somehow shove it down deep.

  “And everything else,” I go on.

  “You’re not crazy, Jade,” Yasmin says firmly.

  Our gazes meet and we smile again, a mirrored movement with both us ending up beaming at the same moment.

  “Okay,” she laughs. “Maybe you’re a little crazy, but only as much as you need to be a writer. I’m here for you, okay?”

  She pulls me into a hug and I cling to her, this woman who has been so good to me for so many years. I find myself remembering when she read the first story I ever submitted when she was mentoring me for creative writing, the way her eyes lit up and widened in joy, and the way my heart sparkled in answering shades of love and belonging.

  I make a silent vow to myself as I cling to Yasmin.

  Whatever happens tomorrow, I won’t give in to my desire for Jamie Jensen.

  And yet even as I make this unspoken pledge, a voice whispers within me.

  Yeah, right, it says drily.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jamie

  I arrange for our next self-defense session to be in the heated enclosed rooftop area, a crystalline glass structure that houses a few plants, and a seating and socializing area.

  This high up, clouds seem to graze the glass.

  I’ve had all the seating and tables moved to make room for our session, and I’ve ordered the heating to be blasted so that we’re not exposed to the skyscraper cold of a rooftop in winter.

  Maybe being outside – with the city laid out before me, and the possibility of us being interrupted – will stop me from acting on my unstoppable desires.

  This rings hollow in my mind as I pace into the enclosure, the glass doors sliding closed behind me.

  I’ve given strict instructions to my staff that I’m not to be interrupted this time, and if they absolutely have to, they’re to call me on my cellphone and not come up here.

  So yeah, maybe I’m just giving myself an excuse.

  Maybe Jade has already stolen more than my desire.

  I shake my head as I walk over to the gloves and the pads, telling myself firmly that this time I’m not going to derail the session by lusting after her impossible-to-ignore curves.

  This morning I woke up with a pit in my stomach and a pulsing ache in my jaw when I remembered how I lost control last night, allowed myself to be pulled into carnality as I never have before.

  No woman, ever, has made me feel like that.

  Yasmin’s mother didn’t even come close.

  And yet there’s something about Jade …

  I turn at a knock to find Jade standing outside the glass enclosure, her breath making dragon fire fog in the winter air. She’s wearing a hoodie and sweatpants again, the light fabric falling like a caressing shadow over the gradations of her majestic body.

  I bite down as my manhood swells.

  “Door—open,” I say.

  The glass door slides away and Jade hurries in, shivering as the door closes with a buzzing noise behind her.

  “Wow, that’s impressive,” she says.

  I shrug. “Perks of the job.”

  She giggles and tilts her head up at me, her brown ponytail bobbing. I clench my fists to fight the urge to grab that ponytail, fist it hard and use it as a handle to guide her to all the places she belongs.

  Focus, I roar at myself. This is a job. Nothing more.

  I don’t know if I’m glad or disappointed that she hasn’t mentioned the closeness from yesterday, but in the end, it’s probably for the best, I decide. We can start afresh. We can pretend I didn’t shove her up against the wall and almost roared out that she’s mine and mine alone, forever.

  “Do you always play it so cool, Jamie?” she says.

  I can’t help but smirk as she walks across the room, her eyes darting here and there like she can sass me but making eye contact is a major effort.

  “Maybe I’m not playing,” I growl.

  “Oh, so you’re just this cool naturally? That’s what you’re saying?”

  My smirk widens and I find myself turning away, mostly so I don’t dive at her and grab her again. The memory of how she shivered against me is making my muscles throb and pulse, and my manhood does the same, only worse, with my seed surging up and down my length as though trying to direct me to get my hands on her a second time.

  “Shall we get started?” I say.

  “I thought you were the boss,” she quips.

  I glance at her, reading that ever-present war in her eyes, between nervousness and sassiness. It seems sassiness is winning out today.

  I find myself wondering if it’s a defense mechanism, a front to hide just how anxious she is to be here, with me, as though I can’t read the woman who is going to give me a family one day.

  No, I remind myself.

  She’s not going to do that.

  Because I’m just here to teach her some basic self-defense.

  Yeah, right.

  “First let me show you how to wrap your hands,” I say.

  I pick up the hand wraps and walk over to her, immediately being washed in her just-Jade scent, her shampoo, and her womb throwing its signals out to me.

  “Give me your hands,” I growl, unable to keep the quiver from my voice.

  Her emerald greens widen for a moment and she bites her lip, the gesture that just downright kills me and makes me want to see all the different ways I can make her do that again and again.

  She raises her hands slowly and I unfurl the hand wraps, blood red, and then take her hand in mine.

  Electricity buzzes between us.

  Lightning hammers into me and courses all over my skin, sizzling every goddamn inch of me. Her hand is soft and warm and all I can think about as I hold it is how good it’d fe
el wrapped around my shaft, squeezing hard and then stroking my precome up and down, making me good and slick for her begging slit.

  I stare at her, hard, for a few long moments.

  “Well?” she whispers, swallowing so that her throat shifts visibly.

  I start wrapping her hands, savoring her touch and feeling her shiver each time I move the wraps around her wrist and then the middle of her hands.

  Soon I’ve got one hand wrapped and I take the other, but then I just hold it like that, my thumb moving over her knuckles, my eyes pinned on her as pleasure dances across her features.

  She looks at me and then glances at the city skyline, making a soft whimpering noise that just about has my manhood ready to take off like a goddamn rocket ship.

  “This place really is amazing,” she whispers.

  “Yeah,” I say, but we could be standing atop a mountain with the whole world laid out before us and I’d only have eyes for her.

  I wrap her other hand, my manhood throbbing the longer I maintain the contact with her skin, the base of my length aching as though her tight center is already clutching me.

  I step back once I’ve finished the wraps because otherwise, I won’t be able to fight the deafening chorus inside of me, a million voices roaring at me to take her and take her right now.

  “Now it’s time to put on the gloves,” I tell her.

  “I feel so silly,” she murmurs her sassy shield dropping. “What am I going to do, really, if a bunch of goons jump out at me? Punch them to death?”

  “No, you’re going to close your eyes and pray that your protector comes to save you,” I joke, puffing myself up like a superhero.

  Her mouth falls open and she gaps at me for what feels like a long time, and then she lets out an endearing giggle that goes straight to my soul if I even still have one after so many years spent being hard and unfeeling in the business world.

  “Wait a second, did you just make a joke, Jamie?” she laughs.

  “Maybe I did,” I say, a note of wonder in my voice. “It looks like you bring it out in me, Jade.”

  Our eyes meet and I swear to God, she says so much with that look, so many unspoken things dancing in those glinting eyes.

  I lean down and pick up the boxing gloves, and then make to hand them to her.

  She tilts her head and mock glares at me, opening and closing her wrapped hands for effect.

  “And how exactly am I supposed to get these crab claws in there, huh?”

  I smirk and then bring the first glove to her hand, helping her to shimmy into it.

  I do it with the other and then lace her up.

  “Now I feel even more stupid,” she says, shaking her head slowly.

  “You don’t look stupid,” I smirk.

  “No, then how do I look?”

  “Dangerous,” I say.

  She aims the mother of all pouts at me, pursing her lips in a way that has my mind doing a hundred sweetly sinful things at once.

  “So now you’re just a nonstop joke machine, huh?”

  In all the self-defense classes I’ve run for charity, even the one on one sessions, I’ve never experienced this level of intimacy and closeness. It pulses and stampedes through me, a nonstop presence that’s impossible to ignore or repress.

  All I want to do is grab her and kiss her, and if it wasn’t for the specter of Yasmin whispering at the edge of my mind, perhaps I would.

  But my choice of location might be working against me, because up here with nothing but the wind and the light snow and the clouds – the glass so clear it’s like it’s not even there like we’re floating isolated on top of the world – I feel myself slipping deeper and deeper into the closeness with Jade.

  It’s not just the lust, which thrums like an engine.

  It’s her smile.

  It’s her laugh.

  It’s her sass and it’s …

  Dammit, it’s everything about her.

  “Come on,” I say, picking up the pads and holding them at shoulder height. “Let me see a basic one-two.”

  “Okay, I have no idea what a one-two is,” she says. “I’m a complete beginner, remember?”

  I jab at the air with my left hand.

  “That’s a one,” I say.

  And then I throw a right straight down the middle.

  “That’s a two.”

  “Okay,” she says, her features hardening and becoming determined. “I can do this.”

  “I know you can,” I tell her firmly. “You can do anything, Jade.”

  She flinches and her gaze flits to mine.

  Then she’s biting her lip again and I have to look away before she unleashes the beast inside of me.

  “I’m ready,” she says.

  I turn back to her and she’s once again Miss Determined, which just makes me think of her standing with a brood of children all around her. She’ll raise them with the same determination she brings to everything, and they’ll be the luckiest kids in the world to have a mother like her.

  “One-two,” I say.

  She throws the punches, wincing as they hit the pads.

  “I feel so silly,” she says.

  “Turn into them,” I tell her. “Use your whole body.”

  “Like this?” she grunts, spinning into the punch.

  I move the pad to meet her, and a grin lights up her face.

  “Hey, that actually felt like a punch,” she cries.

  “That’s it,” I encourage. “Keep going, Jade. You’re doing it. You’re really fucking doing it.”

  Her laughter rises like a song as she keeps throwing punches at the pads, even letting out little tsks of air like a proper boxer.

  We move around the enclosure and I find my gaze moving to her breasts, captivated by the way they bounce with each punch.

  They bounce the same way they would if I was buried to the hilt inside of her, thrusting like the animal I am, pounding her with each beastly thrust until she’s moaning and singing and fucking begging for more and—

  “Oh, shoot, I’m sorry,” Jade cries when her fist sails past the pad and connects with my jaw.

  I take the soft blow and shake my head.

  “No, it’s my fault. I was distracted.”

  “I hit you,” she murmurs in disbelief.

  “Jade, I’m fine. I’ve taken worse.”

  She lets her hands fall to her sides and that’s when I surge toward her, as though some external force is guiding me to her, impossible to resist.

  I press my body against hers and she sucks in a gasp, her eyes widening in that cute-as-fuck way that has my manhood throbbing along with my pulse.

  And then I reach down and grab her boxing gloves, yanking them off her hands quickly. I grab the wraps and unfurl them, giving me access to the heat of her palms, heat that belongs wrapped about my engorged manhood.

  “But if you feel that bad,” I snarl, “I’m sure there’s a way you could make it up to me.”

  I wriggle my hands and then grab those childbearing hips and tug hard on her so that she’s pressed right up against me now.

  She makes a whimpering noise and stares up at me.

  She feels so perfect in my hands, her hips curvaceous, and as majestically full as the rest of her.

  “I thought … You really want me, Jamie?” she whispers.

  “Yes,” I growl. “No—I fucking need you.”

  “We shouldn’t.”

  “I know,” I say, my voice growly and husky. “But I can’t resist you. I was an idiot for ever thinking I could.”

  I lean down and bring my lips to hers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jade

  I sink into him, his hands so firm on my hips I couldn’t move away even if I wanted to.

  And despite everything, despite what I should do, I don’t want to.

  I can’t.

  His lips are somehow rough and soft at the same time, or maybe it’s the way he kisses me, a soft touch and then a rough parting so that our tongues fl
are together and dance and sizzle with a thousand nerve endings.

  I lift my arms and wrap them around the firmness of his shoulders as though we’ve done this a thousand times, which in a way is true.

  I’ve imagined this a thousand times, ever since I was a girl and first laid eyes on my best friend’s dad.

  But now it’s happening and he tastes so much better than I ever could’ve dreamed.

  His body is so much firmer and the growling noises he makes are so much more possessive.

  His manhood presses firmly against my belly, a huge length of meat barely contained in his gym shorts.

  Every inch of him is fire-hot, and even as a voice screams within me to stop this, stop it now before it’s too late, I can’t.

  I don’t freaking want to.

  I hear a muffled moan rising and realize it’s me, my voice filled with pleasure in a way it has never been before.

  I keep expecting to wake up, but then he slides his hands from my hips to my ass and squeezes like he owns me.

  He squeezes so hard I let out a whimper and shiver against him.

  “Fuck,” he growls, breaking off the kiss to stare firmly at me. “Do you have any idea how sexy you sound when you do that?”

  “Really?” I murmur, unable to mask the quiver in my voice.

  “Why do you sound so surprised?” he growls, palming my ass less roughly now, sending tingles dancing up between my thighs to kiss my lips and my clit.

  “Nobody has ever called me sexy before,” I admit shakily.

  “Well, get used to it,” he growls. “Because I’ll never stop calling you sexy.”

  His words barrel into me and two warring urges rise up inside of me, one of them screaming at me to get the heck away from him as quickly as I can – for Yasmin – and the other roaring at me to never leave him, to stay with him as long as he’ll have me …

  For me.

  I grip onto his hard muscled shoulders and look into his eyes for a long time, gazing at him, pinned in this in-between place. But there are worse places I can imagine being trapped than in Jamie’s embrace, his pale blue eyes sizzling into me.

  “I just can’t believe this,” I go on. “I’ve had a crush on you for years …”

  I trail off, cursing myself for oversharing.

  The moment is whisking me up in its fiery embrace and it seems part of that is words just spilling out that I don’t mean to say. My cheeks blush a fierce red and I turn away, Jamie making a soft growling noise as though he’s not happy about me escaping his predator’s grasp.