10. Jamison
CHAPTER TEN
JAMISON
Ishould have been looking for the Parkington board member who helped burn my hotel. That was the reason I had dragged myself into a benefit full of polished parasites while my city smoldered under my feet. Reeves fed names into my phone all awaiting bullets.
Instead, I was staring at Sienna Bellemere’s throat.
Her dress tied behind her neck in two thin champagne straps, leaving her shoulders and her back mostly bare. Every time she laughed politely at something some old man said, her neck moved in a way that made my hand flex around a glass I no longer remembered picking up.
I hated the dress.
I wanted to tear it off with my teeth.
That was the first clear sign I had a fucking problem. The second was that I had been standing in the same place for almost three minutes watching her instead of working.
Three minutes.
Men had died for wasting less of my time.
Across from me, Marcel was saying something about board seats, Whether the family tie Reeves had sent belonged to a nephew or a trust holder. I heard the words, even answered at the right places.
But my eyes kept going back to Sienna.
Hand, please.
I could hear it even though she hadn’t said it in weeks.
I had told myself I hated it.
The way she made me take her hand in front of people. She needed everyone to see I belonged to her in some small, ridiculous way.
Now, she had moved away from the older donors and was now speaking to Alistair Ashbourne by the glass wall. My vision narrowed.
He stood too fucking close.
His body angled toward her in a way men used when they wanted women to mistake restraint for safety.
I knew his type. A face that made mothers lean forward and daughters forget monsters existed until monsters had to remind them.
Sienna was looking at him, and… she was talking.
Her mouth moved longer than one sentence. Her free hand lifted slightly, gesturing toward something on the wall, and Alistair listened.
That hit something ugly in me.
I brought the whiskey to my mouth and didn’t drink.
“Jamison.” Marcel’s voice cut beside me.
I kept staring.
He followed my gaze and sighed under his breath. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Whatever you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking about the board.”
“No, you’re not.”
Marcel looked back calmly. “You’re staring at Sienna like you’re deciding whether to drag her out or kill Alistair.”
“I can multitask.”
“Try choosing neither.”
Harrison appeared on my other side with a glass of champagne and a grin that made me want to break his nose.
“Ah,” he said. “The beast has noticed sunshine found a patch of weather not actively trying to ruin her.”
“Walk away, Harris.”
“I would, but this is the most entertained I’ve been all night.”
“Not now.” Marcel muttered.
Harrison ignored him. “Careful, Jase. If you glower any harder, Ashbourne might start thinking you care.”
I turned my head slowly.
The fucker smiled.
“Say another word.”
“Another word.”
Marcel closed his eyes briefly.
I stepped toward Harrison, but Emmie came out of nowhere and put one hand on my chest.
“Do not start a fight at a medical benefit,” she said.
I looked down at her hand. Emmie did not move it. Harrison sipped champagne behind her.
My gaze shifted back to Sienna.
She laughed..
My hand tightened around the glass.
Something inside me went completely violent. I set the whiskey down before I crushed it and crossed the room.
People moved.
They always did when I started walking with purpose. Men pretended they had been meaning to step aside. Women noticed and stopped pretending not to.
Sienna saw me coming halfway across the floor. Her expression changed immediately.
Whatever smile Alistair had coaxed out of her vanished. Her hand lowered, mouth closed.
It made me angrier, because the fear was mine.
I had put it there. And still, when she looked at me in front of another man, some territorial part of me wanted to step between them and keep the room from seeing it.
Alistair saw. His eyes moved from Sienna’s face to mine. He had noticed more than he should and did not plan to pretend otherwise.
I hated him immediately.
“Sienna,” I said.
Her throat moved.
“Jamison.”
I stopped beside her, close enough that the edge of her dress brushed my trousers. She did not step away, but every muscle in her body considered it.
Alistair noticed that too.
I really wanted to remove his eyes.
“You’re supposed to be with me,” I said.
It came out rude.
Sienna’s face colored faintly. “I was only speaking with Alistair.”
Alistair.
My teeth locked.
Ashbourne inclined his head with the calm of a man who had never had his jaw broken and therefore had too much faith in the world.
“Crow.”
“Ashbourne.”
“I was telling him about the restoration wing,” she said softly. “The old art collection from Harlan Mercy House.”
“I didn’t ask what you were doing.”
The second I said it, her face closed. She went back into herself.
Something twisted sharply beneath my ribs.
Alistair’s eyes cooled. The challenge sharpened, stepped closer by half an inch.
He did not step back.
Interesting.
“Your fiancée was explaining the difference between restoration and replication,” he said.
“My fiancée does enjoy explaining things.”
Sienna flinched.
Fuck.
“Jamison,” Sienna said quickly, “this is my cousin, Celeste Bellemere.”
I had not even looked at the woman beside her. Beautiful in the polished Bellemere way, with hair like spun gold and a fitted ivory dress that had been chosen by someone who understood exactly how dynasty men looked. She stood on Sienna’s opposite side.
“Mr. Crow,” she said, extending her hand. “We’ve met once or twice, though briefly.”
I didn’t take it.
“Have we?”
Her smile flickered.
“Celeste is Elodie’s sister,” Sienna said softly.
“I gathered.”
Celeste lowered her hand slowly, but she did not step back. Interesting. A Bellemere woman with enough nerve to be rejected publicly and still hover within reach.
That did not feel like coincidence.
Celeste’s gaze moved briefly to Sienna, then back to me. “Sienna was just telling us she’s back in rehearsal. Good to see her moving well again.”
Something about the phrase pissed me off beyond reason. Or maybe because Celeste had placed herself close enough to me that anyone watching could imagine a different arrangement.
“She’s not a horse,” I said.
Celeste blinked. Sienna’s face went crimson. Alistair’s mouth tightened.
I looked back at Sienna. “We’re leaving this conversation.”
Again, she nodded.
I had wanted obedience from her for years. Now she gave it to me, and I hated how it looked.
I started walking again before I did something generous like ruin the benefit.
Sienna followed me to the edge of the ballroom, near one of the black marble columns where the light turned lower and the crowd thinned. I stopped there because I needed the room to stop touching her with its eyes.
She stood beside me. Hands clasped in front of her. I looked down at her.
The champagne dress was worse up close.
The halter tied behind her neck with a delicate knot I wanted to undo slowly. My fingers itched with the image. Tugging one ribbon loose. Watching the fabric shift. Watching her breath catch. Pulling the zipper down slow.
My mouth went dry.
Christ.
The thoughts accelerated.
Sienna bent over my desk, champagne silk pushed up over her thighs, my hand spread over the small of her back to hold her still.
Sienna on the edge of my bed, looking up at me.
Sienna’s thighs over my shoulders. My mouth between them, licking, and sucking her clit. Until the only word she remembered was my name.
My hand tightened around the marble column.
I had to look away from her.
Immediately.
It did not help.
My cock thickened.
At a benefit.
With my brother ten meters away. Syndicate issue active in my phone. Sienna standing beside me terrified to breathe wrong.
I was a fucking disaster.
She saw it. Her body tightened because my hand moved. That was the reality. My breath left in a rough, silent exhale.
Fuck. I had a problem.
I had been sexually frustrated before. I could handle want. Want could be drunk, fucked, fought, or buried under work until it learned to stay quiet.
This wasn’t that.
I wanted her, yes.
Badly enough that every inch of champagne silk felt like a personal attack. But beneath that was something worse.
I wanted her to ask for my hand again.
The realization was so absurd I almost laughed.
I wanted the thing I had mocked. Turned it into a threat so ugly she had stopped reaching for me altogether.
Hand, please.
I missed it.
God help me, I missed it. How she held my hand, and traced my fingers while she talked too much. The next thought came very unfucking welcome.
Did I…
Did I like her?