This he could do.
He pressed his lips to her damp cheek and tasted her tears. A soft whimper left her parted lips and curled around his sex, hardening him. She cried out again and gripped the front of his shirt. Her sharp nails sank into his skin, deep and agonizing, but Carter moved into the pain.
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything.”
“Yes,” she whispered and her breath was like perfume.
They fell into his bed. A California king with sheets that brushed soft as sin against his suddenly naked skin. Carter throbbed with want to protect her and to possess her. Both impulses burned through him and scorched away every piece of reluctance he might have had before.
Her bare skin was a balm to everything that hurt; her kisses tasted of the most sacred of elixirs. With each touch of his hands on her skin, poetic nonsense invaded Carter’s head. He couldn’t think, could only feel.
He should stop. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t what she needed.
But she writhed against him, the most sensual and passionate woman he’d ever been with. “Yes, Carter...” Her tight body welcomed him. “Yes. Love me. Make everything else go away.”
Yes. God, yes.
Jade panted into his open mouth. Her legs wrapped around his waist.
Her agonized sobs turned into cries of pleasure. She moaned his name. “You’re perfect...Carter. So perfect.” Her hand settled on his chest, over his heart, as they moved together. She threw her head back, baring her long throat. A smile curved her lips. “Yes!”
Yes, their pleasure was perfect.
His body moving firm and hot inside her, Carter reached for Jade’s face. But his hand passed through her cheek.
Her smile fell away. “Carter?”
Suddenly, he couldn’t feel her around his sex anymore. He could see her, but couldn’t touch. She kept disappearing, piece after piece. “No!” she sobbed out.
“Jade!”
As she disappeared around him, Carter’d never felt so helpless in his life.
He screamed out his frustration, grabbing desperately for her but his hand passed through her body again and again. He was losing everything.
Jade’s sobs got louder. She trembled like she was ready to fall apart, but Carter couldn’t touch her, couldn’t comfort her anymore.
“Jade! Stay!”
But she didn’t. Her body faded away until only her sobs lingered in the air, ripping into his ears like knives.
* * *
The jolt of the plane hitting the runway yanked Carter from the dream.
He hissed and jerked upright, opened his eyes in time to see the woman next to him give him a faintly worried glance. The pain faded. Sound drained away. But his body remained on edge and faintly aroused.
Just like always.
Ten years of having the dream and it was still as powerful as ever. The panic and regret that came with it were things he could happily live without. But he didn’t know how to get rid of the dream, or those feelings.
A deep breath in. A deep breath out.
Okay. Enough of this. His body still felt heavy and in need of sleep, but that was too bad. He had work to do.
Carter’s phone vibrated when he turned it on. A single message from Kingsley had come in during the five-hour flight.
Got in touch with the firm you suggested. We got lucky they took our call outside office hours. Their chief strategist will be in my office when you get here.
His brother didn’t waste any time...
Other than that, only one new business emergency had come up. Plus, an update from Kingsley’s fiancée about the engagement party the whole family was expected to attend. He sent his assistant the details so she could keep him on track.
As soon as the aircraft door opened and he was free to go, Carter nodded to his neighbor and left with his single piece of carry-on luggage. The patience to wait for bags to arrive at the luggage carousal just wasn’t in him. Not to mention, he wasn’t often anywhere long enough to need more than a change of clothes, his laptop and cell phone.
He wound his way through the airport to the curbside. A scant three minutes later, a black town car pulled up and the driver slid down the passenger-side window.
“Mr. Diallo?”
He nodded and barely moved toward the car before the driver leaped out, a woman in a crisp dark uniform, and opened the door for him.
“Thank you,” he said, but she was already back in the driver’s seat and pulling away from the curb.
During the drive, he checked his messages again. His assistant, who was worth her weight in gold and rubies, scheduled the meeting with Kingsley in the early afternoon. This gave Carter enough time to head home, shower, change and take care of some urgent business for his own firm. The situation with Jaxon was urgent but no one was about to keel over.
While he took care of these basic things, the chauffeur waited.
They made good time to the office and Carter offered the woman a tip, which she respectfully refused before driving away from the thirty-story Miami high-rise that housed the Diallo Corporation and a few other interests the family owned.
When he walked into the building, it felt like home. More so than the three-thousand-square-foot house he’d recently bought on Hibiscus Island.
He’d been coming to the building since he was a kid, always eager to see what magical things the lab came up with or find out firsthand what kept his parents away from home so much. Now that he knew the ins and outs of the business that kept five of the thirteen Diallo siblings employed, he half wished he hadn’t been so eager to throw his childhood away just to satisfy his curiosity.
His parents had taken that curiosity for interest in running the family business, and once it had been established that he had no interest in arm wrestling the title and pain in the butt of being CEO away from Kingsley, they’d slotted him into the next best or possibly worst job. Company fixer aka CSO, chief security officer. A title he was convinced they’d made up.
It didn’t matter to them that he already had his own security firm, his own employees. They were Jamaican. For them, it was perfectly normal, even expected, to have more than one job.
The elevator doors chimed and slid open.
Carter took it to the top floor and walked into his brother’s office after knocking once and waiting a few seconds past the “Come in.” He’d accidentally barged into enough sex-at-the-office scenarios by various members of his family with their significant others to last him a lifetime.
“You work fast, Kingsley.” He closed the door behind him with a click.
God,
