Sweetest Obsession (Possessive Porters #1)

Prologue

LUCAS PORTER

I walked through the hallway without bumping into anyone, moving to the front door then working the key as if I lived there. When the door opened, a trickle of something tantalizing I couldn’t exactly name sparked inside me. I stepped into the darkness of her place and let the door shut behind me.

Excitement prickled at my nerve endings as I stepped further into her home.

Past the small foyer behind the front door and straight into the living room.

The pads of my fingers skimmed over the plush oversized couch in the shocking color of teal.

The material was cool and soft under my touch.

I quickly took in the TV and a couple of pieces of wall art carefully hung up on the wall yet didn’t soak in every detail of her home.

It might be my first time inside her place, but I’m here for a reason.

I have a mission to accomplish. Once that’s done, it will give me the freedom to soak in every detail whenever I want. All at a click of a button.

But I have one place in mind where I am going to start.

I walk straight into the hallway that leads to the two bedrooms. Even though I’d never been here, I knew my way around. How couldn’t I when my own condo had the same floorplan a floor below hers?

Literally.

I glanced down at the hardwood floors and smiled.

How many times had I paced my own hall thinking about this moment?

Wondering what her place would be like? I noted the couple of photos hung up in the hall, stopping at one.

The Grand Canyon. Interesting. My feet moved, and I passed the bathroom and the second bedroom, which I glanced at.

It wasn’t a guest room like my own but a home office.

Intriguing. A desk, a couple of plants, and a pole right in the middle.

But what wasn’t alluring about the woman who had all but captivated and tossed me for a loop I could have never seen coming?

I stopped a step away from her bedroom door, a door she’d left slightly open. I breathed in slowly. Deep inhales that soaked in every little bit of the scent that lingered in the air. A scent I knew was hers. Jade’s room. I was finally in her space.

Jade Whitlock.

A wolfish smile grew on my face as her name danced through my mind.

My girl’s name was pretty as hell. My hand pressed against the cool wood of her bedroom door, and I pushed it open slowly before taking a step inside.

When I peeked into the dark master bedroom, something inside of me started to relax, like a weight slowly being lifted off my shoulders.

All by simply being in her space.

It was evident Jade liked her sleep. Her work schedule, even if I didn’t like it, made her need to sleep through the day, and her space was more than the proof of it.

Heavy Venetian blinds with blackout curtains made sure no sunshine would disrupt her much-needed rest. Not that she gets enough of it.

I shook the thought away and tried to steady my breathing, but fuck, it was close to impossible.

The space was clearly hers.

Bright and messy. A unique kind of chaos. She was like my very own hurricane. One consisting of nothing but bold colors and frenzied jubilant energy. My girl wasn’t just bubbly. She was effervescent.

And mine. All mine. Only mine, the thing that had awakened a month ago when I’d first laid eyes on her growled.

It was possessive and obsessed to a level I never knew could exist. The only thing that eased my mind was the fact that by pure coincidence, we’d actually lived in the same building for the last year.

A whole year of living a floor below an angel that roamed among mere mortals, controlled by some invisible string that told me we were fated regardless of my brain chemistry seeming to have been irrevocably changed the night I’d stepped into my foster brother Jonas’ strip club.

My cock started to come to life, the half-stiff fucker growing behind the denim of my pants at the memory.

It had been like any other fucking day. Nothing had stood out to me.

There wasn’t a clue in sight that my life would never be the same.

I’d been sitting in a booth, sipping the aged scotch my brothers and I had ordered to celebrate Jonas’ new business venture.

A strip club of all things. Not that it surprised any of the five of us.

Why would it? Shit, up until that moment, I would have sworn there was nothing that could have ever made me blink.

Until her.

Jade.

One look, and I was a goner. Not that I approached her or even spoke to her.

All I could do that first night was watch her.

I couldn’t tear my eyes off her curvy figure and those eyes that made my heart stall inside my chest and change its beat.

Even my brothers, who knew better than to mention the change in me, had noticed it immediately.

All but Jonas, but I soon found out he’d been more than distracted by his own little dancer.

I didn’t leave the Velvet Leopard until I knew she was safe and sound in her car. I hadn’t planned on following her, but when her car just so happened to go the same way, I thought it was destiny that we happened to live in the same high-rise condominium. Meant to be.

We would have met eventually, the thing inside me whispered, snapping me out of my thoughts as I stepped further into her space.

Everything inside me instantly warmed. My blood thickened in my veins, and my lungs ached to breathe her in once again.

I’m here. Finally. That sweet, fruity scent I’d noticed clung to not only her but the air that surrounded her and was stronger in her space.

Notes I recognized from the times we’d been in the elevator at the same time or when I followed her through an aisle of the grocery store without her noticing me.

My eyes shifted from her floor and fixated on her bed.

The place where my beauty slept. My lips twitched upward at the sight.

Unmade bed. Sheets strewn about. Pillows tossed all over the place, some even on the floor.

Fuck, even her messiness was adorable to me.

I could picture her waking up and moving around the mess, not worried about having to pick it up.

With me, she would never have to worry about that. I’d pick it up for her or hire someone.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, the silent alarm reminding me I didn’t have time to waste.

Not yet.

I had snuck into her condo for a reason.

Finding out she lived a floor above mine, literally directly above my own, had given me a little peace of mind at the beginning.

Not that it stopped me from following her around like a goddamn shadow she seemed oblivious to.

But after her shifts or shopping or time at the gym, it was nice knowing she was close. Safe.

But as I watched her go through life, move around without really paying attention, the overprotective and possessive beast inside me started to go feral. Simply going to the club every night she worked at or following her around wasn’t cutting it anymore.

It simply wasn’t enough.

It would never be enough.

You should just talk to her! The soft voice of the sane part of me that was left whispered. But I couldn’t do that. Not yet.

Day after day, I’d sat in my apartment looking up at the ceiling wondering what the hell she was doing whenever I heard a slight sound or pondered what her space looked like. It had driven me mad.

So much so, I ordered a couple of things to help keep an eye on her.

Jonas suspected what I was up to but knew better to say a word.

He knew I wasn’t the kind of man who frequented strip clubs, but he also didn’t bat an eye when I asked for her schedule the last four weeks.

Trager, the oldest of us, who was damn good with computers, was the one who helped me get information on her.

He didn’t say a word, either. Not to mention the fact our youngest foster brother, Victor, had been the one to get me a copy of a key to her place.

But a key wasn’t enough.

I needed more.

I needed eyes on her for more than when she was at the club and the routine errands I followed her around.

I ached to watch her skip around her place, carefree and relaxed as she lived her life a floor above me.

That need ate at me day after day, until it had become too much and I had given in to the dark, almost monstrous thing inside me that had come to life the moment I’d laid eyes on her at the Velvet Leopard on stage where anyone could watch her.

My hands clenched at my sides at the reminder of that first day.

I needed to figure out a way to get her off the stage.

It would have been so fucking easy to make Jonas fire her, but at least the Velvet Leopard was now, thanks to him, an upscale gentleman’s club instead of some sleazy strip club where women were taken advantage of.

Jonas was my brother, blood or not, and was a good guy at the core.

He’d kill someone before he’d let them get away with putting their hands on one of his dancers.

I forced my hands to relax their white-knuckled grip.

My phone vibrated a second time, the second alarm I’d set a godsend. I have time, I reminded myself as I glanced at the screen.

She was at the gym Hollis, my other foster brother, owned.

He had political aspirations, but his gym was the way he started getting involved with the community.

There hadn’t been a moment since I’d seen her that she’d been at work without me being there to protect her.

Or a foster brother who could somehow keep an eye on her.

After all, our little makeshift family had five of us.

What did she do before me? I wondered and I shook the thought that set my teeth on edge anytime it bounced around my head.

The shit she must have put up with. The mountain of things I hadn’t been able to protect her from.

But that was then. This is now. The voice in my head reminds me as I breathe out slowly.

Digging into my pockets I take out what I’d originally snuck into her place for.

Peace of mind, that voice said as I stared at the little cameras I held in the palm of my hand. Peace of mind. I nodded. I had eyes on her almost everywhere. This would take that almost out of the equation.

The last month had turned my life upside down and inside out in the best way possible.

In a way I had never seen coming. And that was saying something considering the kind of man I was.

Fuck, I was more than aware that shell of man, who hadn’t seen true beauty, who hadn’t known just how much life could be breathed into a human being, had come alive because of her. That’s what I’d been before her.

A shell.

A husk.

A person breathing and moving around the world but without purpose or reason, like some kind of NPC in a video game.

Now I had a reason. Jade was my reason. My purpose.

And with that thought in my head and a smile on my face, I got to work on giving myself peace of mind that would come from making sure I had eyes on her twenty-four/seven.

Peace of mind that would finally let me breathe knowing that no matter what, she was safe and sound.