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“You wanted me to be the white knight you wrote about in your stories as Minnie Hess. For a time, I thought I could be. Now, I know better. I’ve fooled many people, but Mom always saw me for what I am, and now you see it too.”
Swollen eyelids lifted to take him in as he rose above her. Lights from Knightsbridge illuminated half of his face. When she would have turned away, he rested his forehead against hers, forcing her to acknowledge him. She was overwhelmed by him. The scent of his musk in her nostrils, his taste on her tongue, and his body claiming what he had no right to.
“It’s going to be different this time around. This time, I’m not holding back. You’re getting the real me, and you'll take what I give you.”
The way he fucked her nice and slow was completely at odds with his threats.
“I never relinquished my claim. If I found you in that year before you went to your father, I would've chained you to this bed and fucked you until you begged for forgiveness. You don’t run to anyone. This stays between me and you.”
“No.”
Her broken whisper made him pause.
“No? No what, princess?”
She bared her teeth as he planted himself to the hilt and ground his hips against her.
“You… you manipulated me,” she gasped and slapped his shoulders as he kissed the curve of her jaw.
“You were looking for an out and jumped when I gave you one. Your family never appreciated you. They tolerated you. They would have crushed you until there was nothing left. Was what I did so bad?”
“I thought you loved me,” she sobbed.
“Shh.” He lifted her leg, so he could go an inch deeper, and let out a guttural groan that made her pussy pulse. “I can't focus when you're around. All I can think about is this heat.” He pulled out and slid back in. “You distract me and I can't afford to make mistakes, but I'm willing to take the chance to have you with me.” He clasped her throat as he began to move again. “Any man who makes a play for you, I’ll destroy. Guy will ruin himself in time, but that isn’t enough for me. I’m going to speed up the process.”
“Roth—” Her breath cut off when he applied pressure to her clit.
“You call me Jamie when I’m inside you. That’s the only time I can be the man who gives you what you want. Outside our bed, I’m the man I have to be.”
Tears slipped out of the corner of her eyes. “I-I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to. Come for me.”
She shook her head as she tried to resist him, but his steady, unrelenting pace was as unstoppable as the sunrise. As her body took over, her legs wrapped around his waist. He bared his teeth in a wolfish smile as he nudged her into an orgasm that made her shudder like a junkie. He slumped on top of her as he gave himself up to his second orgasm and buried his face in her damp, tangled hair.
She was physically and emotionally destroyed, but she fought the tide. “Ro—” The hand still at her throat flexed. “Jamie, I can’t—"
“Sleep,” he said gruffly against her swollen lips.
“No,” she mumbled, even as she felt herself losing consciousness. Her hand blindly searched for an anchor and landed in his hair, which she gripped as she trembled with exhaustion. She mumbled incoherently as he ghosted kisses over her tear-streaked face, and everything faded to black.
CHAPTER6
SEVEN YEARS AGO
Jasmine scribbled feverishly in the back seat with her tiny notebook balanced on her knee and every overhead light on in the car. She was sure the driver wasn’t happy about waiting in front of her building or the fact that the bright interior was probably messing with his visibility, but he didn’t complain. She was over an hour late for the party Dad was hosting. She’d never been late to an event in her life. Usually, she arrived early and followed Colette and Ariana around, taking notes as her sisters double-checked every detail, but she was in the grip of a creative storm that made it hard to focus on anything but the words on the page. Part of her knew she should be worried about Dad’s wrath if he noticed her absence, but she was having too much fun to worry about the consequences. She felt as if she was high—not that she had any experience with illicit drugs—but she assumed this is what it felt like. The real world and all the problems that came with it disappeared. She didn’t need sleep or food or anything else to sustain her. She was deep in another world that seemed more real than everything around her.
Two days ago, a vivid dream overrode her recurring nightmare about failing her MBA or having Ford cancel their engagement. In the dream, she stood on a hilltop looking down on a kingdom she had never laid eyes on, but intuitively recognized because she created it. A majestic castle towered over a white city surrounded by purple mountains. In this land, magic thrived. She willed her feet to move, so she could explore, but her body wasn’t hers to command. She couldn’t even turn her head to examine her surroundings. All she could do was gaze upon the beautiful kingdom with the warmth of the sun on her face. She wasn’t aware of another’s presence until a man began to speak.
She couldn’t turn to see him, but she sensed him come up behind her as he warned her of a coming war and other things her cloudy mind wasn’t able to understand. She couldn’t see his face, but his rough tone that softened once he stood just behind her right shoulder made her heart race. He said he could help her and that it didn’t have to be this way. Bewhatway? She opened her mouth to ask questions, but apparently her voice wasn’t hers as well. She heard herself rebuff his offer to help and told him she would handle what was coming on her own. He said her stubbornness would get her and her people killed. When her body finally decided to move to get away from him, a hand gripped her arm and swung her around. She got a glimpse of a large figure in a cloak before she awoke.
She was reaching for her notebook before her eyes opened. She was so afraid she would forget the dream that she didn’t bother to turn to a fresh page. At the bottom of her notes on macroeconomics, she jotted down every detail of the dream she could remember.
Writing had been sporadic throughout college, but once she enrolled in grad school, those urges vanished completely. She assumed her bachelor’s degree in economics would suffice, since that’s what her sisters had. She was taken aback when Dad told her to continue her education and get her MBA. He said the extra education would do hergood. It was clear he didn’t think she was ready to work at Hennessy & Co, which stung, but she didn’t complain. She got into the graduate program at Wharton’s and vowed she would prove that she was just as capable as her sisters.
She dedicated every waking moment to her studies. Despite being raised in the business world, she didn’t have an advantage over her peers. Her family tended to treat her more like a secretary than an equal. The perplexed looks she received from her professors and classmates when she asked questions they assumed she should know the answers to were mortifying, but she would rather ask it in school than in a boardroom. Wharton’s was her family’s alma mater, but it was clear to everyone that she didn’t come from the same stock as her sisters. Even though she worked twice as hard as everyone else, she would never catch up to Colette, who was promoted to Executive Vice President of Development and Acquisitions at her age. Business came naturally to her sisters who grew up in their father’s shadow, did their homework in his offices, and regularly attended dinners with his colleagues. They lived and breathed it, while she had grown up in the country where her imagination ran rampant.
Dad predicted that daydreaming was a phase she would grow out of when she was an adult. She thought that day had finally come. Between grad school and her engagement to Ford, she thought writing was a thing of the past, until that dream kick-started her stagnant creativity. She didn’t quash it—she grabbed hold of the vision with both hands and ran with it. The moment she set pen to paper, that addicting thrill she experienced only when she was in a writing thrall made everything else fade away.
