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“It’s okay.”
My voice shivers with a moan, betraying the desire grabbing hold of me, my clit sore and needy and my nipples so sensitive I think I might collapse into a shuddering mess every time they graze against my bra.
He turns away from me quickly, as though he doesn’t trust himself not to kiss me again.
Striding across the office, he picks up the phone. “Hello?”
His face darkens. His body tightens, bulging like he’s going to break out of his suit.
“You’ve got some balls, calling me,” he snarls.
Chapter Fourteen
Jaxon
“Can’t an old friend call to catch up?” Tyrone says, my ex-business partner sounding so smug I wish I could reach down the phone and wring his neck.
I have to focus hard to unclench my fist, knowing I’m damn close to breaking the phone, crushing it into a thousand tiny pieces. “You were never my friend. We worked together for a year and you almost burnt the business to the ground.”
“I paid for half that business,” he snaps, which almost causes me to grab the desk and flip it.
Maybe I would – the rage is rising, rumbling, trying to seize hold of me – if it wasn’t for Jessie walking across the office and standing next to me. She places her hand on my shoulder, doing more with one touch than a thousand hours of anger management therapy ever could… not that I’d go to that sort of thing.
Apart from Tyrone, I generally keep a level head.
But this prick drives me insane.
“What do you want?” I snap.
“What I’ve wanted ever since you left me in the dirt. My half.”
I chuckle. “You should’ve moved on with your life. You got off lucky, not going to prison. You could’ve made something of yourself. But instead, you’ve spent the years drinking and gambling and doing God knows what else, pining after something you have no goddamn right to.”
My voice is rising again, in a feral roar, and my woman gives me another squeeze. I reach up and press my hand against hers, trying to focus on the sensation of her touch and not my need to find Tyrone and beat him to a bloody pulp.
“I paid for half—”
“You paid a few hundred bucks. If you check, you’ll find that my company – my company, the one I barely managed to save from that shit you pulled – is worth a lot more than that these days. Do you really expect me to give you half the stake in my business? Do you really think anybody – the board, the investors – would go along with that? You’re delusional.”
For a second I think I might’ve gotten through to him. He pauses and makes a hmm noise, as though he’s giving it some thought.
But then he laughs bitterly. “No, I’m not letting you twist this. Fair’s fair. I paid half. I should get half.”
“Never going to happen,” I say flatly.
“Then we’ll see how your little pet project goes, won’t we?”
My laughter comes out sounding deranged. He’s pushing me way too close to the fucking edge. He knows how much this physical storefront initiative means to me, knows the connection it has to my old man’s failed electronics store.
“So it was you. The vandalism.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday. There’s no way I’d admit to that down the phone, is there?”
He doesn’t have to. The arrogance in his voice tells me everything I need to know.
“There are cameras outside every location now,” I growl. “If you try to pull any more shit, you’re going to prison. Where you fucking belong.”
“I just think—”
I slam the phone onto the receiver, somehow resisting the urge to pummel it into the table over and over again.
My hands are shaking, my large office suddenly feeling too small.
“Jax?” Jessie says softly, her hand still on my arm. “Are you okay?”
“Come to the roof with me,” I say, voice gravelly.
“The roof?”
“It’s easier to think up there.”
I take Jessie’s hand and stalk toward the elevator in the corner, pulling her inside as we ride it up toward the roof. She said I make her feel safe, but she makes me feel whole, as I hold onto her. If she wasn’t here I know I’d be spinning myself into a frenzy right now.
The doors open onto the early morning sun, the cityscape foggy beneath us as the clouds part and let in clashing shafts of light. I walk right to the edge, gripping the railing, enjoying the feeling of the cold metal biting into my palm.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Jessie asks softly, her hand stroking from my hand to my shoulder. “We don’t have to.”
“He just won’t fucking quit,” I growl.
“Who?”
“Tyrone, my old business partner. We met on a business course in my early twenties. He was a good guy. Kind to his mother. Seemed friendly enough. We got close, or close-ish… shit, I never really knew him, Jessie.”
