Chapter 10
Jackson
The plane ride home was strained. James was his usual brooding self, but there was something else on his mind. His wife, I suspected, despite his denials any time I questioned him about her.
Like me, he’d taken a girl back to his hotel room. Jade—the friend of Marie—had managed to get further than Marie, taking all her clothes off before James had kicked her out of his room. When I’d asked him why he hadn’t fucked her, he muttered something about being tired and not in the mood.
It seemed he was using the same excuse I was sticking with.
We barely spoke for the entire journey, and every so often, I cast surreptitious glances at my best friend, finding him staring at his phone with a crease between his brow that grew deeper every time I looked his way.
Figuring the psycho had installed cameras in Willow’s bedroom so he could keep a close eye on whatever she was up to, I left him to his stalking.
It wasn’t as if I could criticize. My phone was burning a hole in my pocket, and the need to get it out and load up the app linked to the cameras around Kiera’s house was all-consuming.
But I resisted.
I’d spent most of the night awake with Kiera on my brain, and I fucking hated it. Especially when it reached the point that the only way I could get my boner to go away was to fuck my hand while remembering what her cunt tasted like.
I should never have started playing this game with her. It didn’t occur to me for one second that it would come back and bite me on the ass. I thought I could just toy with her and then forget about her, but she’d somehow wormed her way back into my head.
The answer was simple. Stop. Delete the number for the phone I’d given her. Ask Zayden and Brody to remove the cameras from the house and go back to pretending like she didn’t exist. I’d managed it so well for ten years, it would be easy to forget her before she sank her devious claws in too deep.
But I knew I wouldn’t do any of those things.
I hadn’t destroyed her yet.
Only then would I leave her alone. Broken. A shell of the person she was before.
The same way she’d treated me.
No. I was far from playing with her.
Before the plane landed, I’d promised myself that I’d give it another day or two before I surprised Kiera with my next visit. It was my way of proving that I wasn’t growing addicted to her, and that I could pick her up and drop her whenever I damn well chose.
Easier said than done when Dr. Andrews emailed me with Kiera’s examination results.
She was clean as a whistle. Plus, he’d confirmed that she was protected from pregnancy, and since reading that email, the Little General had grown a mind of his own, demanding we hunt Kiera down and finally get to feel what her pussy was like.
Unknowingly, James helped with my plan to keep my mind off his sister.
He’d discovered that two of his staff members had stolen an antique vase—an old family heirloom that held no monetary value, but was invaluable to the Carter legacy—from within his house, and was planning on stealing something else.
After a little chat with the two idiots, resulting in one of them paralyzed from the shoulders down, and the other in a coma that he’d unlikely wake from, James had asked me to track down his vase.
It was piss-easy work; all I had to do was retrace the steps of the morons who had only gone as far as the other side of the city to sell the vase, but it kept my attention from the person I was trying my hardest not to think about.
Two days later, I waited in James’ office, having been let in by his housemaid, Edith. He soon followed, storming into his office like a whirlwind and slamming the door behind him. Good to see his mood hadn’t improved.
“Well?” he barked, sitting behind his desk.
James had known me long enough to know that I didn’t appreciate being spoken to like a piece of shit. He was my friend, my business partner, and one day, we’d be Legion board members together.
But if he wanted to be an asshole, then I’d be one back.
“When are you going to introduce me properly to your wife?” I asked, grinning at him, knowing it would wind him the fuck up.
“I’m not.”
I relaxed into my chair, allowing my smirk to widen. “You can’t keep her locked up forever.”
He raised a brow, his tone turning dark. “Wanna bet?”
I snorted. I wouldn’t have put it past James to keep his poor wife locked up for the rest of her days.
James had a fucked up upbringing, there were no words to describe just how savage his father was.
While James wasn’t quite as cruel as his father, he certainly had some vicious tendencies that he’d picked up from his childhood.
“She really is a lucky girl,” I replied, unable to resist pushing him a little more.
His features contorted into a snarl. “Can we get on with business? Your incessant talk about my wife is beginning to piss me off.”
Knowing I’d achieved what I wanted, I opted to change the subject. There was a line with James. Push him too far, and it wouldn’t be long before the two of us were scrapping. It had happened many times before, and would no doubt happen in the future.
But I wasn’t in the mood for a fight today. With the mood he was in, he probably wouldn’t stop until he was standing over my cold corpse with his cock in hand as he pissed over my lifeless body.
Leaning forward, I pulled the envelope I had stashed away in my pocket. “Keep your panties on. I’ve located your vase. It’s on the other side of the city with an antiques dealer who has a little habit of dealing in stolen goods.”
He took the envelope from me, ripping it open to read the information I’d gathered, when a shrill voice echoed from outside his office. “Uncle James!”
James’ features fell. “Fuck. I forgot Billie was home from school. Not a word about Willow,” he growled in warning, shoving the paperwork he was holding into his drawer seconds before the door burst open, and a small figure rushed in.
I’d never met Billie before, not properly at least. I could recall maybe once or twice when she’d been with Kiera in the few times our paths had crossed briefly in the last ten years, but Billie had only been a baby then.
Now, she’d grown into a little girl, and despite her battle with leukemia, you’d never have known it with the strength with which she threw herself at James.
I couldn’t help but smile. Despite Billie being the result of Kiera cheating on me, I had no ill will toward her. How could I? She was just a kid, a cute one at that, and she hadn’t asked to be born. It wasn’t her fault her mom was a lying, cheating whore.
At the thought of Kiera, a wicked grin pulled at my lips. If Billie was here, that meant Kiera would be too, and hell, I couldn’t wait to see her squirm when she realized I was with her brother.
For the first time in days, James cracked a smile. “You got taller,” he said, releasing Billie from his embrace.
“Don’t I know it.” The unmistakable voice of Kiera floated into the office. “The rate she’s growing out of her clothes is going to leave me bankrupt.”
I held my snort in. It wouldn’t make her bankrupt, not when Alec funded the lifestyle she and Billie had grown used to.
Kiera’s gaze dropped to me, her grin instantly faltering, and amusement coursed through me as an idea formed in my head. “Good to see you too, Kiki,” I laughed, jumping out of my seat, intent on putting my plan into motion while I had the chance.
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, flashing daggers in my direction and adding to my amusement.
I brushed past her, and with my back to James so he couldn’t see, I winked at her, biting my cheek to stop the laugh from breaking free at her snarl.
Quickly heading out of James’ house, I rummaged in my pocket for my keys and unlocked the trunk of my car, noting Kiera’s SUV was parked several feet away from mine.
I rolled my eyes. Perhaps if she wasn’t so wrapped up in her own little world, she would have realized my car was there and figured out I was inside instead of getting a nasty surprise.
Too bad.
She would be getting another surprise, too. Not yet, but when the time was right, and I couldn’t fucking wait.
Grabbing the equipment I needed from the variety of supplies I kept in the trunk for any Legion job that might come our way, I checked that the coast was clear before approaching Kiera’s car and bending down so I could slide underneath it.
Carolina grabbed my knee as she threw her head back, laughing at the joke I’d just told. Her friend, Abigail, was sitting on the other side of me, drinking her fifth glass of wine and fluttering her long lashes.
I’d been planning on having a little fun with Kiera tonight, but my plans were scuppered when James called me in the afternoon and dropped into conversation that he was taking Willow for dinner to meet Kiera and Billie.
I could have been a total bastard and demanded that Kiera met me, regardless of the family dinner, but I refrained.
Not for her sake, though, but for James’. I was good like that.
So, when Carolina texted to see if I was busy, the answer was a big fat no.
A few hours later, she turned up at my apartment, clutching the hand of Abigail, the pair of them wearing very skimpy dresses, and matching salacious smiles that told me all I needed to know about how my night was going to go.
They wanted me to be the meat in their sandwich. And after my failed attempt in New York, I was more than ready to get some pussy.
As the wine flowed, the two of them grew flirtier with me and each other, and before long, soft touches turned to lingering ones. Like Abigail’s hand on my thigh that was resting way too close to my cock for it to be anything but intentional.