2. Jarvis
JARVIS
I watch her walk toward the stairs, and every instinct in my body screams at me to follow.
She moves like she's carrying something heavy, her shoulders drawn inward, her arms wrapped around that folder like it's the only thing holding her together. Her honey-blonde hair catches the light from the kitchen window, and I can see the tension in her neck, the rigid line of her spine.
She's small at five foot three, maybe one hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, and I could span her waist with both hands and have my fingers touch.
The thought shouldn't be in my head. She's my stepdaughter. Or she was. My wife is dead, and the girl I barely know is standing in my kitchen with milk soaking through her blouse, and I'm harder than I've been in years.
My hands are shaking. I don't shake. At forty-six, I've built a restaurant empire across the country and faced down investors, contractors, and men who want to see me fail.
I've stood in burning kitchens, negotiated with men who wanted to destroy me, and walked into rooms full of people who wished I would disappear.
But my hands are shaking now because Jolie Parker looks at me with hazel eyes full of shame and want, and I know nothing in my life will ever be the same.
I've spent decades building walls so high that no one could climb them.
I told myself it was strength, control, responsibility.
I told myself that protecting people meant keeping them at a distance, that the only way to survive was to never let anyone close enough to matter.
I built an empire on that belief. I built a life on it.
I built a marriage on it. And in five minutes, this girl has shattered it all.
Jett is silent behind me. I don't need to turn around to know what my brother is thinking. I can feel it in the air, thick and charged, the same hunger I'm trying to control.
"She's going upstairs," Jett says. His voice is low.
"Yes," I say.
"Are you going to let her go?"
I should. God knows I should. I should let her walk up those stairs, close the door, and spend the next thirty days being a polite landlord while she learns the business and decides to sell.
That's the responsible thing. That's the decent thing.
That's the thing a man with any sense of self-preservation would do.
But I've spent twenty years believing that responsibility is easier than emotional attachment. I've spent twenty years building walls so high that no one can climb them. And in five minutes, this girl has cracked the foundation.
"Jarvis," Jett says again. There's a warning in his voice. Not for me. For himself. "Did you see her?"
"I saw her," I say.
"Did you smell her?"
My jaw tightens. I don't answer. I don't need to. The scent is still in my nostrils, sweet and milky and intoxicating. It's the scent of something that's been hidden for too long, and now that I've found it, I know I'll never let it be hidden again.
I hear her footsteps on the stairs. Slow. Careful. Then they stop.
I turn.
She's sitting on the bottom step with her arms wrapped around her ribs, her face pale, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps.
The folder has fallen to the floor beside her, papers spilling across the hardwood.
She doesn't reach for them. She presses her forehead against her knees and makes a sound that's not quite a whimper, not quite a sob.
It's the sound of someone who has been carrying a weight for so long that they've forgotten what it feels like to be light.
I'm across the kitchen before I can stop myself. My boots echo against the tile, and I don't care about the noise or the fact that I'm moving too fast, too desperate. All I care about is the girl on the steps and the pain radiating off her in waves.
I kneel in front of her. The floor is cold against my knees, but I barely feel it.
All I feel is the heat coming off her skin, the tremor in her shoulders, the way she's holding herself like she's trying to keep her body from flying apart.
Her knuckles are white where she grips her own arms, her jaw clenched tight against the pain.
"Jolie," I say. My voice is rougher than I intend. "Look at me."
She lifts her head. Her eyes are wet, her lower lip trembling. Her hair is tangled, and there are dark circles under her eyes that I hadn't noticed before. She looks young. Younger than twenty-two. She looks like the child I never bothered to know, and the woman I'm desperate to understand.
"Tell me what's wrong," I say. I keep my voice calm and firm.
The same voice I use when a supplier is trying to cheat me, or when a chef is about to burn down my kitchen.
But underneath the calm, something is raging.
Something I don't have a name for yet. Something that feels a lot like fear, and a lot like hope, and a lot like the kind of desperation I haven't felt since I was a young man with nothing to lose.
"The bindings," she manages. Her voice is thin, strained. "They're too tight."
I look at her chest. The light blue blouse is pulled taut across her breasts, and now that I know what to look for, I can see the cruel lines beneath the fabric.
The bindings are digging into her soft skin, cutting off circulation, compressing something that should never be compressed.
She's been torturing herself for years, and the knowledge makes my stomach clench with a fury so pure it borders on violence.
I want to find every person who ever made her feel like she needed to hide, every doctor who looked at her like a specimen, every lover who pulled away in disgust. I want to destroy them.
I want to make them pay for every single second she's spent suffering alone.
"Can you take them off yourself?" I ask.
She shakes her head. Her hair falls across her face, and she doesn't push it away. She looks defeated. She looks like she's been defeated for a very long time. Like she gave up fighting a long time ago and just learned to endure.
"Do you want me to help?" I ask.
She stares at me, her eyes searching my face for judgment or disgust, but she won't find either of those things with me, and I don't know how I know that, but I do, and it's as certain as gravity.
I hold her gaze, letting her see that there's nothing she could show me that would make me turn away.
There's no part of her that could disgust me.
There's no secret she could reveal that would make me leave.
"Please," she whispers. The word breaks on the way out. "Please help me."
My jaw tightens until I feel it in my teeth.
She has already given me her answer, but I hold her gaze, waiting for that final confirmation.
She gives me a small nod, barely there, and somehow, that tiny gesture feels like the most trust anyone has given me in years.
It feels like a gift. It feels like the beginning of something I don't have words for yet.
I move behind her. The stairwell is narrow, and my shoulders brush both walls.
I'm too big for this space. I'm too big for her.
But she doesn't flinch when I settle onto the step behind her, my knees on either side of her hips, caging her in.
She leans back against my chest, and the contact sends electricity through my spine.
I can feel every tremor in her body, every shallow breath, every beat of her heart.
"Lift your arms," I say.
She lifts her arms slowly, her hands shaking as I reach around her, my forearms brushing the sides of her breasts while I find the edge of the binding beneath her blouse, and it's wrapped tight with layer after layer of soft cotton that has become a prison as I start to unwind it.
My fingers are large and rough from years of kitchen work and military service, but her skin is soft, softer than anything I've ever touched, and I can feel the heat radiating from her along with the dampness that has soaked through the fabric as her scent fills my lungs, sweet and milky, the scent of something that's been hidden for too long, but now that I've found it, I know I'll never let it be hidden again.
The first layer comes loose, and she gasps. The sound is sharp, relieved, and I feel it in my groin. I bite back a groan, my fingers trembling as I work the next layer free. I'm a man who has controlled his impulses for decades, but right now, I'm barely holding on.
"Easy," I murmur against her hair. "I've got you."
I keep unwinding. My knuckles brush against the stiff peak of her nipple through the damp cotton, and she cries out.
It's not a small sound. It's a sound of pure, unfiltered relief, and it makes me so hard I have to bite back a groan.
The binding falls away, and her breasts spill free, heavy and swollen, the skin red and indented from the pressure.
I toss the soaked cotton aside. It lands on the step with a wet sound.
"Jarvis," she breathes.
"Shh," I say, my hands moving to cover her not to hide her but to hold her and relieve the ache that's been building for hours, for days, for years, as I cup her breasts from behind with my palms warm and heavy against her tender flesh while she overflows with milk beading at her nipples and spilling over my fingers, warm and sweet and impossibly erotic.
She arches into my touch. Her back presses against my chest, and her hips shift, grinding against the hard length of me through my jeans.
I'm thick and aching, pressed against the small of her back, and the friction makes us both groan.
I can feel how wet she is, how desperate, and the knowledge that she wants this too makes my control slip even further.
"Oh God," she whimpers. "I shouldn't... this is wrong..."
"Nothing about you is wrong," I say against her ear. My voice is a growl. I can't soften it. I don't want to. "You're perfect. You've always been perfect. You just needed someone to see you."