Rose
I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror on that plane, let alone face Jackson or the flight crew.
Disgust sits heavy in me, not for what we did exactly, but for the fact that I let it happen at all.
That I let go. That for a handful of minutes I set the whole thing down, the control I've built my entire life around, and just took what I wanted.
This thing between us has been building for so long, and every time we slip it costs me a little more of the story I tell myself about who I am.
I didn't say a word to anyone when we deplaned.
The car ride into the city was made in complete silence, the two of us staring out opposite windows like strangers who'd been seated together by mistake.
At the front desk we didn't speak either, just slid our IDs across to the receptionist and let her check us in, close enough to touch and pretending otherwise, which is a skill we've both perfected.
And now there's an elephant the size of the entire hallway lumbering along beside us as we walk toward our rooms. Our connected rooms, because the universe has a sense of humor and it is, as ever, entirely at my expense.
"Rosalie."
I reach my door first and swipe the card against the reader. I don't turn around. I can't. I'm too busy being mortified in a way I haven't allowed myself to be since I was young enough for it to be normal.
"Rose. For fuck's sake. Look at me. Talk to me."
There's a whole ache buried in how he says my name, the real one, the soft one, and if I look at him now I'll cave. I've done enough caving to last me the rest of the trip.
"I'll see you at the meeting, Jackson," I say over my shoulder, pushing the door open and trying to disappear behind it, but he's right on my heels. He catches it before it can shut me safely inside, steps through after me and lets it fall closed at his back.
"If you don't want to talk, then don't. Just listen." His voice is low, even. "I'll leave the second you've heard what I have to say. But you're going to hear it."
I give a small nod and lower myself onto the edge of the couch because I don't trust my legs to keep arguing.
He drags a hand back through his hair, and the motion lifts the hem of his shirt an inch. Just like that I'm back on the plane, remembering his stomach contracting under my palm, the way his abs went tight as he came apart for me, and heat crawls straight up my neck.
Stop it. Stop it right now.
"Rose." He exhales my name and turns to face me. "I'm only married on paper."
My eyes snap up to his.
What?
I can feel the confusion sitting plainly on my face, but I don't have enough armor left today to do anything about it.
"I haven't talked much about my father. I've mentioned him in passing, and there's a reason I keep it there.
" Some kind of heaviness settles across his expression, some old sadness surfacing, and every instinct I have wants to cross the room and pull his head into my chest and hold him through it.
I make myself sit still and let him finish.
"He's not a man I'm proud of. I don't even carry his last name, I took my mother's.
We don't have a relationship, not really, not one worth the word.
But I've always felt indebted to him because he raised me when he didn't have to.
He's not my biological father, and he took me and my mom as his own. "
He looks somewhere past me for a few seconds, and I watch him decide whether he's really going to tell me the rest.
"Because of who he is, Frank has got something over my head. Something that would send my father to prison for a very long time."
He sits on the edge of the bed and drops his head between his shoulders, and I can already feel my anger starting to rise.
Frank?
My fucking Frank?
No. Absolutely not my Frank. Nobody owns that little troll voluntarily.
But Frank who has been sitting across from me in board meetings for years, ogling my tits and generally making himself useful enough that we tolerate the rest of him?
That Frank?
Jackson is still talking, so I do something remarkable and keep my mouth shut long enough to let him finish.
"Elyse is Emirati. She was born there. She started getting caught up in a lot of shit, pissed off some pretty well-connected people and did enough of it publicly that her mother finally put her on a plane here with a temporary visa.
Frank was terrified that if she got sent back, she'd go straight to prison. Or worse."
"Shit."
"Yeah. It gets more fun. Trust me."
He runs a hand through his hair again.
"So Frank started digging. Me, Bennet, people around us, whoever he thought he might be able to use. I don't even know how many people he looked into before he landed on me. I'm just the one who came with the bigger file."
My stomach turns.
"There's the basic shit. My dad embezzled school funds to cover gambling debts you wouldn't believe. Prostitutes. Plenty there to ruin him all by itself. But Frank also has proof Dad was drunk behind the wheel when a pretty horrific accident happened a few years ago. A teenager was paralyzed."
Fuck.
Jackson rubs both hands over his face.
"That's the one I can't get around, Rose. I've spent years going back and forth between thinking he deserves whatever happens to him and remembering he's still the man who raised me. Some days I think I should let him rot in prison. Other days I can't make myself be the person who sends him there."
That shuts down every legal argument already trying to form in my head.
Temporarily.
"Anyway, take your pick. It's all real, it's all documented, and Frank has all of it." His jaw tightens. "He keeps it quiet if I marry his daughter, stay married for five years, serve as her conservator, keep her out of the tabloids and out of jail. And my father stays a free man."
Five years.
They've been married for three.
My brain does the math automatically because that's the piece of this entire horror show it has decided requires immediate attention.
Two years.
Stop doing math, Rosalie.
He shakes his head slowly. "I never told a soul. Not because I'm ashamed of it. Well, not just that. It's because I didn't want anyone I care about anywhere near this mess. Especially you. The last thing I wanted was you deciding to fix it and making yourself a target for a man like Frank."
I almost laugh, which would be wildly inappropriate given the circumstances, but the idiot knows me very well.
Damn right, I'd try to fix it.
I'm already halfway through three possible legal strategies and I don't even know what evidence Frank has yet.
Damn it.
Jackson finally looks right at me, and there's nothing guarded left in his face.
"But I can't sit here and let you walk around thinking you're the other woman.
That you're wrecking some happy marriage.
There is no marriage, Rose. There's a contract with an expiration date and a woman I have never once loved, and there's you, the only person I ever have.
I couldn't let you believe otherwise for one more second.
Not when this is the first time I feel like you're willing to give us a chance.
" He takes a breath. "Please tell me there's a chance, Rose. "
I stare at him.
Mine.
The word detonates in my head before anything decent or rational can get there first.
Not poor Jackson.
Not I'm going to murder Frank.
Not even how the fuck do I get him out of this?
Just mine.
And that's all it takes. My restraint snaps clean in half, and I launch myself at him.
We crash into each other with enough force to knock the air from both our lungs.
I'm off my feet in a split second, legs locking around his waist, his hands gripping my thighs as our mouths collide.
Tongues lash, teeth clash, neither of us bothering with anything resembling finesse because this amount of restraint doesn't come apart gracefully.
He drops me onto my back on the bed and follows me down, caging me in beneath him.
And I let him.
That realization should probably scare me more than it does.
Jackson is the only man I've ever allowed to command my body like this.
I'm never willing to be on the bottom, pinned beneath someone else's weight with my choices narrowed down by strength that isn't mine.
I have spent too many years making sure I decide exactly what happens to my body and when.
Even on our first night together, I felt safe beneath him.
He rips the neck of my camisole down and takes my nipple into his mouth, and when his teeth pull, it sends a sharp rush of pain through me that bows my back off the mattress.
"I need you." It comes out barely above a whisper as I fist my hand in his hair. "Please."
"You've got me, Rose. All of me."
"Kiss me."
His blue eyes glint with something wicked. "With fucking pleasure."
And then he slides down, pushing my thighs apart with those big hands, settling my legs over his shoulders.
I smile because he knew what I meant.
The anticipation alone has my body responding before he's even done anything. Every nerve feels exposed and tuned directly to him.
His breath ghosts over me as he presses a small kiss to my lips. My hips lift on their own. "Your pussy is fucking perfect, Rosalie."
He drags his tongue over my entrance, eyes fixed on mine, rolling from my slit to my clit so agonizingly slowly that I could scream. “Dripping for me. Fuck, I love this piercing.” He growls.
Then he devours me. Licking, sucking, tugging the barbell, moaning against me like I'm his favorite dessert and he's been starved for a decade. I reach for his hair, fingers sinking into the cropped blond mass, needing something to hold onto.
His hands catch my wrists and press them into the mattress.
I struggle against his grip, testing his resolve, and it's utterly futile. He doesn't even pause, doesn't lift his mouth from me, just tightens his hold and keeps working me over while fire dances in his eyes, daring me to try again.
God.