Reckless Love (Tucker Billionaires #4)

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Stephen

Six Years Ago

Ava Tucker is my weakness. Has been for eight years and counting. I’d give her anything, and right now, I’m giving her a fifth orgasm.

Fuck, I love it.

The way she trembles. The way her neck arches as pleasure shoots through her.

The way her hands clench in the sheets just before I get her to rocket off the edge of her desire.

The way she moans my name with such satisfaction, as though no one has ever made her feel this good before.

Her pulse, under the pad of my thumb, is still racing.

I’m in so deep, no barrier between us, that every squeeze from her urges me to seek my own release.

Her body, her sources of pleasure, are as familiar to me as my own.

“Again?” I rasp against her ear while I keep up a slow, consistent pace, savoring the way she clenches around me.

“No.” She’s breathless. “I can’t.”

“You can. You’re so good at coming for me, baby. I love it. Do you want to? One more?”

She shakes her head, and then I drive into her, seeking the same high I’ve just given her. Instinct takes over, and I can’t help falling into another rhythm that’ll make her body sing.

“Stephen, I said I didn’t… I couldn’t…” She gasps. “Oh, god. Oh, god.”

That’s the other thing about knowing her in this way for so long: My unconscious compulsion to please her is very, very high.

I have to consciously stop myself, and I was so lost in my own release that I didn’t worry about hers.

And then she’s clenching around me again, my name a curse, while I murmur how fucking perfect she is as I spill into her.

Her manicured nails dig into my biceps. A moan that’s part satisfaction and part annoyance comes from the back of her throat as she lifts her hips, forcing me deeper.

“Fuck you,” she slurs as she continues to pulse around me.

“You’re the only woman I know who’d complain about having six orgasms,” I mutter. Then her eyes open, and she glares at me.

“Maybe you should go fuck those other women then,” she says, pushing me off.

“Come on, Ava.” I roll to the side with a chuckle. “When are we going to stop doing this?”

“Doing what?” she asks. She turns away from me while she grabs her clothes from the floor around the bed.

“This stupid bullshit where I piss you off, you go fuck someone else for a while, and then you’re back to me, or sometimes me and somebody else at the same time. But you always come back to me.”

“Maybe I won’t anymore.”

I stare at the stubborn straightness of her spine for a beat, and I consider how far I want to push this.

We’ve been off and on since the night she graduated high school, when she turned up on my doorstep, telling me she was legal and off to college and tired of waiting for me to notice she wanted me.

I noticed—given what Ava is like, I think the entire male population of Bellerive probably noticed her behavior.

There was a difference between noting her beauty and acting on any attraction.

Legal or not, I figured Ava Tucker was off limits.

Her mother, Celia Tucker, isn’t someone you cross.

I didn’t want to be the favored Tucker family cop who ends up on trial for whatever’s been pinned on me because I dared to touch her youngest daughter.

But when I mentioned Ava’s behavior to her mother, Celia merely said that rebelling with me was probably better than whatever other unruly acts Ava could cook up, and so I gave in.

Gave in so hard that I’ll do anything for Ava now—tell every secret, break any rule, let her have me or anyone else she wants. Since that first night, “no” isn’t a word I use with her. She wrecked me, turned me reckless.

Whenever things are rocky between us—and they’re almost always rocky—I just keep thinking that when she’s older, things will change between us, stabilize.

We’re good together, and any time I’ve tried to have something with anyone else, Ava’s turned up on my doorstep, ruining whatever else that might have been.

And I didn’t used to mind all that much.

Sometimes, the toxicity was even fun when it wasn’t infuriating.

But she’s twenty-six now, and I’m thirty-four. At some point, we both have to grow up. Which is something I’ve been thinking about a lot: the life I want, how I want to grow old. Who I want to grow old with.

“I’m getting tired of this dance, Ava,” I say as she stands up to slide on her panties.

“What’s that mean?” She turns to face me with narrowed blue eyes, and then she flicks her long dark hair over her shoulder, hands on her curvy hips.

God help me, I love her fucking attitude.

Every time she gets icy and cold, I have this burning desire to drag her back to bed, melt that ice until she’s soaking, just for me.

Not exactly a grown-up feeling, but hell, I’m a work in progress too.

Never said I was perfect. But that’s what makes us good for each other—we accept all the parts we’ve uncovered.

“We should get married.”

“Get married?” Her eyes widen, and then she lets out a laugh of disbelief. “Stephen, there is no world in which I marry you.”

“Why not?” I ask, and my own defenses rise.

She searches my face, but I can’t read whatever she’s looking for in my expression. Her jaw tightens, and she snatches her dress off the floor, tugging it over her head and then zipping it up.

“Tuckers don’t marry police officers. You could never give me what I need.”

“I just gave it to you six times.”

“Orgasms are a dime a dozen,” she says with a scoff. “I can sit in a hot tub with a jet pointed in the right place and come. I can buy the world’s best vibrator, and I’ll come. You’re not a genius or some sort of sex god. You’re just a man.”

“You’re telling me,” I say, rising off the bed to face her, still naked, “that there’s nothing more than sex between us, and it’s something you could get just as well and just as easily as from a hot tub jet?

” Granted, we’ve never exchanged an “I love you,” but I’d bet money the feeling is there—for both of us.

“Yeah,” she says, crossing her arms. “I said what I said.”

“Ava, be so for real right now.”

“I am,” she says, her tone haughty. “When I get married, it’ll be to a man who can help me get my businesses off the ground, who can be a real financial partner.

My family has billions, and that’s the legacy I want to continue, to further.

Great sex does not equal great compatibility.

We don’t make sense outside the bedroom.

This,” she waves her hand around the bed and then my bedroom, “was never going to lead to marriage.”

My heart sinks, and goose bumps rise across my arms because she really believes that.

All those times I’ve been the one to pick her up when shit’s gone wrong, all those times I’ve lain in bed, listening to her tell me all her plans, all the hours she’s whiled away in my apartment, mean nothing to her.

I could have been anyone. Deep down, my gut said she kept coming back to me because I was the endgame, and she just wasn’t ready to admit it yet.

Turns out, I’m just the court jester she likes to play with.

“Right,” I say, turning away to get my boxers off the floor, sliding them on. Weariness descends across my shoulders like a weighted blanket. “I guess that’s it then.”

“Stephen,” she says, and even her tone is condescending. “You didn’t really think…”

There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’m telling her what I really thought for so long, what I was counting on until this moment. It takes everything in me to swallow my disappointment, to harden my heart.

“You should go, Ava.” I let my cop mask descend into place when I meet her gaze. It’s the same expression I use at particularly brutal traffic accidents, the ones with the bodies of people I once knew. “We’re done.”

She lets out a huff, and she snatches her Ember Whitten purse off the worn chair near the door of my apartment.

The slam follows shortly after, and there’s no doubt she’s pissed.

Of all the times we’ve called it off, I don’t think it’s ever been me that’s done it.

Eight years ago, she pursued me, and I’ve spent every minute since then, chasing her, begging her for scraps, seeing a future that turned out to be a mirage.

Once she’s gone, I let myself really look at where I live, how I live. Most of my furniture is secondhand, and I have a smattering of family photos—my much younger sister and my parents—scattered around the rental apartment.

It’s not much, and with Ava gone, it doesn’t really feel like anything important. The only thing I couldn’t stand to lose just walked out the door—never really mine.

From the closet, I grab a fresh T-shirt and some shorts. On the edge of my bed, I put my head in my hands and consider my options. If I stay here, Ava will lure me back, and I’m sure that’s what she thought as she left. This is how the game is played.

But I’ve grown weary, discontent. She’ll string me along forever if I let her. Telling herself, now that she’s been honest with me, told me the truth of where we stand, that I’m with her because I’m happy with these scraps of her affection.

But I never was. I’ve always wanted more, and idiot that I am, I’ve only now realized that “more” never existed. My whole body aches with the awareness of what I have to do.

So I get off the bed and head to my car, and I drive to the one place that’ll ensure this pattern is broken between us forever.

Owen Tucker opens the door after I ring the bell of his coastal mansion.

If I wasn’t so tall and broad, he’d probably be intimidating.

A benefit for both of us in our line of business.

People accuse me of using my size as an unspoken threat, but who wouldn’t in my position?

Police officers aren’t often well liked by the people they’re arresting.

I’ve always tried to be fair, even if I won’t take any shit.

Owen is a year or two younger than me and still looks ex-military with his short-cropped dark-blond hair and light brown eyes. He scans my features. “This is a surprise.”

“Is it?” I ask. Owen’s been persistent in his offers, and I’ve rejected every one since he returned to the island to start his private protection agency.

Although he has this estate in Bellerive, his office is international and based somewhere in the Middle East. His clients are all over the world.

A rich man doling out favors for other rich people. Never appealed to me.

“You’re finally ready to get off this island? Do something meaningful?”

He’s way overselling the meaningful part, but I’m beyond caring. I’m numb. So fucking numb. I need an escape hatch, and this is the closest door.

“If any of the offers still stand,” I say, “I’ll go wherever you want. Do whatever you need.”

It’s not lost on me that I’m bending to the will of another Tucker.

Where I’d been putting my career on the line with Celia and my heart on the line with Ava, this time, it’ll be my life I’m risking.

When I thought I had something to look forward to, a future I wanted, Owen’s offers weren’t appealing.

Too much risk for an unwanted reward. Tonight’s realization that Ava won’t change, has no interest in changing, propelled me here.

If I can’t have her, I might as well have the other thing I’ve always craved.

“And the money?” I prod.

“You’ll be swimming in it,” Owen assures me with a pat on my shoulder. “Just like I promised. Lots of work out there for someone like you. Come on in. We’ll hammer out the details.”

“Contracts are six years?”

“That’s one option, yeah. Level of risk?”

“Any level. I don’t care. Danger doesn’t bother me.” As long as I’m sending money home, my parents and my sister will be well taken care of, which is all I care about now.

“You’ll need a will in place—next of kin, all that.

It’s a condition of employment if you’re in the highest risk profile.

If you don’t mind burning a bridge with the national police force, I can have you off island and in elite training by tomorrow night.

Do well enough in training, and we’ve got contract signing bonuses in place too. Tougher the job, bigger the money.”

I nod, and the numbness I’ve felt since I left my apartment only spreads.

“Our international private security company works similar to a witness protection program or high-level military. Secrecy is paramount,” Owen says, clearly gauging how far I’ll go as he leads me into what must be his home office.

Neat. Sparsely decorated but modern. Sterile almost. “Your family will be looked after if anything should happen to you, but no one will know where you’ve gone.

Top secret. Always. You’re good with that? ”

A chill runs through me, and I don’t know if it’s anticipation or regret. But at least I can still feel something. “Sounds perfect.”