I should be in the office, doing my actual job of running a multibillion- dollar diamond conglomerate, something that I haven’t done enough of ever since Yasmin took center stage in my life.
We’re close to launching two new lines of jewelry, one for Christmas and one for Valentine’s Day, and since Ian isn’t at the office fielding the incessant questions and approving on my behalf things that I don’t have time to focus on, there are mounds of emails and meetings piling up while I ignore them to be with her instead.
Take right now, for instance, when it’s barely past five p.m. and I’m sitting in my family room, my body warmed by the crackling of the fireplace, as I watch her get drunk off my expensive whiskey.
“What are you looking at?” She squints at me, taking another sip.
I relax in the oversize chair, bringing my own glass up to my mouth. “You.”
“Yeah,” she sighs, throwing herself back into the couch. “You do that a lot.”
“What?” I ask. “Look at you?”
“Mm- hmm.” She closes her eyes, leaning her head against the cushions. “You never used to, not when I would have cared anyway. But now it’s like…I can feel you staring and all I want is for you to disappear.”
I frown, although I’m not sure why her words bother me.
Her gaze jolts open, her face turning toward me.
“So serious,” she mocks. “You know, Baba used to say if you frowned too much, your face would get stuck that way.”
“Fascinating,” I drawl, taking a drink of whiskey and reveling in the burn as it blazes down my throat and settles in my chest.
“I could see you being a grumpy kid, I won’t lie,” she muses. “Got any pictures to dispel my theory?”
“Enough,” I snap, not wanting to talk about my childhood.
She sticks out her bottom lip, scoffing and rolling her eyes. It’s an immature thing to do, and my hand tingles, imagining what it would feel like to spank her ass and make her sorry for the disrespect. I take another sip instead, trying to shake off the feeling.
It goes silent after that because I definitely ruined the moment, and I’m about to leave her to continue drinking on her own when she speaks, her voice quieter than before.
“How do you remember then?” she asks.
“Remember what?”
“You know…” She waves her arm around. “All the good stuff.”
I drain the rest of my glass and set it down on the end table beside me. “I’d rather forget.”
Her brows furrow and she tilts her head, a curious gleam coasting across her eyes. The depth of her stare makes me uncomfortable, like she’s peeling back layers that I didn’t mean to expose and trying to find the broken little boy that’s buried underneath.
She won’t find him there. He disappeared with my piece-of- shit father.
“I love taking photos, but I haven’t done it for real in years,” she says absentmindedly.
“I’ve seen you with your camera several times,” I note.
“Yeah, but it’s not the same.”
“A picture is a picture.”
Her hands smack the couch and she scoffs. “And a diamond is just a diamond, right?”
I tip my drink toward her. “Touché.”
She runs her fingertip along the bottom of her mouth, and my stomach jumps, wondering what her lips taste like with whiskey on her breath.
“You wanna know something?” she asks, a playful gleam in her eye.
I sigh, pretending to be annoyed although I’m anything but. “I assume you’ll tell me regardless.”
“I took photography courses in college.” She smacks her hands over her mouth like she didn’t mean to tell me.
“Wow,” I drawl. “You’re such a rebel.”
She runs a hand through her hair, reaching to the table and grabbing her drink before gulping down the rest and placing the glass back down. “Yeah, well, my father doesn’t know. But like… when I tell you I’ve never experienced true joy with anything the way I did when I was in a darkroom developing my own film?” She shakes her head. “I mean it. Now, everything is instant.” She snaps her fingers. “Digital. But when I was alone in a room with no light, watching memories I captured form in front of my eyes…” She shakes her head. “That’s the only time my mind would stop badgering me with uncontrollable thoughts.”
My chest tightens as I watch longing peek through her face. I hadn’t even known she was seriously into photography. I had always just assumed she was busy spending Ali’s money and frolicking around the city on a flash-in- the- pan hobby she didn’t really care about.
But that’s not this woman in front of me, and now I’m wondering if the version of her in my head ever really existed at all.
“That’s what you love about it? The silence?” I ask, suddenly desperate to know more about her.
She smiles softly. “I love capturing memories. Emotion that’s usually fleeting being frozen forever in time. The wisdom in the gaze of a person who’s lived a full life. The look in someone’s eyes when they realize they’re in love. The joy in their face when they’re laughing at a joke. Photographs help us remember things we’d otherwise forget.” Her grin fades. “I’ve been trying to take some of my father while I still can, but I have to sneak them in when he isn’t looking. If he knew, I don’t think he’d even let me take a snapshot to capture his last moments.”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and an unwanted pang of sympathy hits me in the chest.
She gives me a pointed look, her eyes glossy from the whiskey and her unshed tears. “I guess he’s like you and would rather just forget.”
Leaning forward, she grabs the bottle of liquor from the coffee table, refilling her glass and taking a large drink.
“Your father loves you,” I say. “He’s just a proud man. You two really aren’t that different. Both stubborn. Pigheaded. Overachievers.” I pause, not sure how she’ll take what I’m saying but wanting to rile her up anyway. Dealing with her ire is better than dealing with her realness, and I’m uncomfortable with how much I enjoyed hearing about her passion. “You’re more of a people pleaser than him though,” I add. “Must have gotten that from your mother.”
I expect her to shoot back with a smart-ass comment, one that will make me either want to murder her or bend her over and fuck the brat out of her, but she just nods, bringing the glass up to her lips again.
“Wouldn’t know. Never met her.”
“Yeah, well, consider yourself lucky,” I reply. “Moms aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”
She tilts her head. “I can’t imagine your mom. Tell me about her.”
I smirk. “You can meet her if you like.”
“Okay.”
Chuckling, I stand up, my head spinning from the alcohol.
Shit. I guess it’s gotten to me more than I originally thought, and if I’m feeling the effects, she must be hammered. Moving over to the couch, I sit down next to her, my fingers brushing against hers as I pull the glass of whiskey from her hand and set it on the table.
The energy in the room shifts, heat buzzing between us, firing against the side of my thigh as it rests inches away from hers.
My stomach tightens and I swallow as I stare at her face.
Goddamn, she’s beautiful.
Slowly, I reach out and drag my fingers down her cheek until I’m cupping her chin. “How many times do I have to tell you to be careful what you wish for?”
Her tongue peeks out, swiping across her bottom lip, so close to where my thumb rests just beneath the pout of her mouth. I swallow hard, my stomach twisting into knots as I hold her stare, this weird tension spreading thin like a string about to snap.
Mentally, I go over every single reason why I should let go and walk away.
She’s too young.
I’m planning to kill her.
She’s not really mine.
I don’t even want her to be.
But there’s something stronger taking over, and that’s what I listen to instead. Maybe later, I’ll blame it on the liquor, but for now, I’m reveling in the moment.
Her perfect mouth parts and my thumb traces along its edges, my gaze dropping to the swell of her breasts as her breathing grows heavy.
“You’re playing a dangerous game letting me touch you like this.”
Her eyes flash and she leans in, resting the weight of her face against my hand. “Maybe I like a bit of danger.”
Those words are my undoing and I unravel, leaning forward and brushing my lips against hers. She moans against my mouth, and our tongues meet, tangling and sucking and biting. It’s messy and feverish, and I feel like I can’t get close enough.
My hands reach out and wrap around her waist, dragging her into me until she’s straddling my lap, the heat of her cunt settling on top of my cock and making it throb with the need to be inside her. My hand is still cupping her cheek and I press harder, cradling her face as I kiss the fuck out of her, lost in whatever this thing is that she’s making me feel.
Her palms slide up my shoulders and around my neck until she’s threading her fingers through the hair on the nape of my neck, and goose bumps sprout down the length of my arms. It’s exhilarating, having someone touch me and not hate the way it feels.
I’ve never experienced it before. Never let it happen.
Suddenly, I’m desperate to feel her come. It’s not a want, it’s a need to know what it feels like to have her face flush with pleasure because of me, and not just because I’m watching.
My free hand glides down her torso, bunching up her shirt and slipping beneath the hem before moving back up, caressing her soft skin while I grip her hip and start to move her back and forth over me. She moans again, and I suck it down like water, savoring the unrestrained noises she makes as she grinds her pussy along the length of my dick.
I break my lips away, my hold moving from her cheek until it skates back into the curls of her hair, pulling until she bows backward, her neck exposed.
She inhales sharply, and my fingers flex in her hair, tilting her head to the side and leaning in to drag my lips across her throat. “Fuck, you’re driving me wild.” She’s moving on her own now, rotating her hips in a slow and steady rhythm, and I push my hips into hers, letting her feel every inch of my cock as it strains against my zipper. “Do you feel what you do to me?”
Her mouth parts, and she leans more of her body weight into my hand.
“Answer me,” I demand, my grip on her hip tightening.
“Yes,” she breathes.
“You make me so fucking hard.”
My tongue slips out at the juncture between her neck and her collarbone, and I groan at the taste of her.
“You like that, don’t you? Knowing you drive me to the point of madness,” I continue, moving the hand that’s on her hip until it skims the top of her sweats, dipping my fingers beneath the fabric. “I can’t work. I can’t eat. I can’t think of anything except spreading you wide open and slipping between your perfect thighs so I can fill you up.”
Precum leaks from my cock at the image I’m painting, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep it together. To not tear her clothes off and throw her on the floor, sinking inside her until she screams.
“You should tell me to stop,” I rasp, my fingers dipping farther beneath the fabric of her pants.
“Stop,” she whispers back. But her hands grip my hair tighter, twisting the strands until it stings.
I move my face up and my hand from out of her hair until I’m once again cupping her jaw. “If I don’t stop, will you still hate me in the morning?”
Her movements halt completely, and she pulls back until we’re locked in a heavy gaze. My cock pulses against her, so fucking close to coming just from her rubbing her sweet little cunt on my lap, and my hands—one on her face and one halfway down her pants— twitch with the urge to make her finish the job.
Her gaze shutters and she licks her bottom lip. “Probably.”
I nod, resting my forehead against hers for one second.
Two.
Three.
And then I grit my teeth and pull away, dropping her and rushing out of the room.
I go straight to Isabella’s enclosure, checking to make sure she’s okay. Yasmin’s presence has kept me from attending to her as much, and I want to make sure she isn’t lonely. I don’t see her in the enclosure, so she must be asleep or hiding, so I head to my room instead and then farther back into the en suite, throwing the shower on cold and jumping beneath the harsh spray, hoping the water will temper the fire that’s blazing through my body, begging me to go back and claim what’s mine.
It’s my ring she’s wearing.
It’s my last name she has.
I close my fist and smash it into the tile, the pain grounding me enough to remind myself of what I really want.
And it’s not her.
No matter how much it feels like it is.
