I nodded. I was going to tell her I would not let him go. That I would keep Roman for as long as he’d stick around. But then she opened her mouth again.

“I know I have Alzheimer’s.”

Her words rattled something inside me. Maybe I wanted to believe that there was no connection between the Mrs. Belfort I knew and loved and the woman who had lengthy conversations with her dead husband at an empty dining table.

I swallowed before I answered, “I’m so sorry, Juliette.”

“I also know that I’m dying. I’m not well, Jesse. Yet no one talks to me about it. They think I don’t understand, but I do.”

Tears filled my eyes, but I didn’t let them loose. It wasn’t fair to Mrs. B.

I remembered how much I hated it when people stole my tragedy thunder. After The Incident, I despised every single person I came across who cried for me. If I didn’t cry for myself, neither should they. I remembered Detective Madison Villegas at the police station, the night I got out of the hospital and was supposed to give my official statement.

She’d stood in the corner of the room with tears in her eyes, watching as I’d fed them laconic lies that didn’t match the mountain of evidence, as if it was her I was hurting.

“What can I do to make it easier for you?” I asked, plucking another stray hair and letting it fall on Mrs. B’s wooden porch. I put the tweezers aside and took both her cold hands in my warm ones.

“Call my children. Tell them to come here. Every time I call them, they think I’m crazy. When Imane calls them, they say she is overdramatic. I need to say goodbye.”

“You’re not going to die,” I said. I wasn’t sure of what I was saying. I just couldn’t bear the idea that she would. Especially with Shadow’s blood work still in the lab. There was so much potential of losing everything that had kept me alive the last two years.

“Nobody lives forever.” She smiled at me, her eyes glistening. The sun was shining above us fiercely, and she was shivering inside her coats. Her blue-veined hand patted my own. “Don’t worry. By the time you’re my age, you’re tired. I’m ready. I just want to see my children. Please.”

I knew right then and there that her kids were going to come to California, even if I had to drag them by their goddamn ears. “Of course. I will call them.”

I left shortly after, pretending like everything was okay but internally screaming at her kids. Stomping over to my house, I dialed Dr. Wiese’s clinic number again. If they didn’t pick up soon, I’d have to pay him a visit myself. I jammed my key into the keyhole, ready to open the door, when a hand snaked from a monstrous plant and jerked me into a big rough body.

Bane.

I mean, Roman. It was difficult to wrap my head around him asking me to refer to him by his real name. His real name. He’d given me the real him.

“Christ!” I was so surprised, I accidentally bit my tongue. The taste of warm copper filled my mouth. Every time I saw his face it felt like someone punched my heart from the inside. I wondered if it was a normal reaction when you loved someone, before realizing that, yes, I was in love with Roman ‘Bane’ Protsenko. All of him. The thief, the con, the whore. He was cracking my heart with every touch, shattering it with every smile, and it didn’t make any sense, because how could he break something that was already broken? Still. I felt his presence in my bones. His newly-shaven face, so promising, so misleading. His mouth was wide, sexy, and pouty. I wished it was hidden by the beard so I could think straight again.

I opened my mouth, and he clamped his hand over it, crowding me against the wall. My breath shook against his hot palm. A surge of adrenaline ran through my system.

“In the interest of full disclosure, I have no idea what the fuck I am doing here.”

All I could do was nod, slowly and sharply, telling him that I understand. He plastered his body to mine, his erection digging into my stomach. Every muscle in his body was tight, his skin hot with sun and lust.

“Kiss me.” My voice came out muffled under his hand.

Love freely, Juliette had said. I want to, Mrs. B. And that scares me. A lot.

“You kiss me,” he said, rolling his forehead against mine in frustration. He removed his hand from my lips.

I grinned. “Why?”

“Because I need you to be proactive about this shit, Jesse. I want the old Jesse, baby. The one who made decisions. The new one just won’t fucking cut it.”

Something ignited inside of me. I’d like to think that it was her. The old Jesse accepted the challenge, rose within me like a hurricane, and came out in a rush of need and determination.

Whether it was because I was a rape victim.

A woman who knew he was an escort.

Or just because he wasn’t sure whether I was going to regret it or not didn’t matter.

I swallowed hard and realized that I was looking at the man I was in love with. The man who was set to ruin me.

It was in that moment I realized that I’d survived many things, but Roman Protsenko was probably not going to be one of them.

SHE STARED.

I stared.

This was bad. Six million bucks kind of bad. So bad it ought to be really fucking good for me to stand there like an idiot and let Jesse rise on her tiptoes, her lashes, thick and long, fanning across her cheeks. I wanted to kiss the curve of her lips and dip my tongue between them and conquer her inch by inch, like a hidden continent. Mine to explore and reign. Mine to rule. Mine to hold. She tipped her chin up, her lips a breath from mine. I liked Jesse a lot, but watching her make the first move was killing my fucking balls, and I wasn’t too keen on kids, but I liked having the option, you know?

Finally—Jesus, fucking finally—her lips locked on mine, and the urge to grab her face and kiss her the way I knew, the way I was used to, the way I wanted to, burned every cell in my body. I itched. I burned. Yet I stood there, still as a brick, giving her the power as her mouth shyly explored mine.

“Is this…am I doing it okay?”

I nodded slowly. Moses on a cracker, yeah. It was more than okay. More than okay for her to fuck up my deal with her stepdaddy. It was more than okay for her to fuck up my plans. And my dreams. And my life. It was more than okay because it was me who’d come to her. Who’d crawled to her, really, sporting zero self-control.

I inched down, closing the space between us. My blood pounded between my ears, and I wanted to punch my own face for feeling the way I’d felt about a closed-mouth kiss. I needed to get laid. Soon. Shit, right now. We kissed like kids. One peck. Two pecks. Three pecks. Again and again and again, the world around us vanishing into a thick cloud of nothing, until the kisses became one long kiss.

And then she opened her mouth. Gently. Timidly. A baby’s first step in the world. Her tongue swept my lips, silently asking for permission, which I granted. She tasted warm and coconut-y, and we stroked for a while, just kissing, just fucking kissing, before I realized I’d wrapped her hair in my fist like the savage that I was and yanked her into me. Her body responded, wrapping around me like ivy. She bobbed her head into our kiss, as if giving me the permission to go ahead, and that’s all I needed to open my mouth all the way and demolish her. I ate her face, and I might be talking literally here. I licked the corners of her lips, biting and tugging at her lips until they became puffy and sensitive. Our foreheads crashed as I sucked her tongue into my mouth, until it stopped being a kiss and ventured deep into tongue-fucking territory. She whimpered into my mouth, and I nearly let go of her, worried that it was too much, but then her little fists balled around my neckline, and I grabbed her by the back of her thigh and curled it against my waist, grinding against her in a mixture of agony and need I’d never felt before.

As I boxed her in with my arms against the wall, I realized that I didn’t have anyone to blame but myself. I’d sprinted past every single red line and broken every rule on my way to so-called healing her, all while creating the biggest junkie to walk on earth.

Yeah, that would be me.

My hard-on was aligned with her pussy, and I bent my knees a little, fucking her through her clothes. She clawed into my shoulders as I ground against her like I was trying to drill her into the wall. Her pussy against my cock felt like dark magic.

I was fucking her through our clothes. Literally fucking her without a condom. My dick was halfway inside her pussy, the only things separating us were her yoga pants and my trunks. I was going to remove my lips from hers for the first time in forty minutes when her little hand slipped into my waistband and grabbed my shaft. My dick jerked in her fist and sprang out of my trunks, and even though this was the definition of stupid—fucking the girl you signed a six-million-dollar contract not to fuck mere feet from the front door of the man who’d made you sign it—Jesse inspired the idiot in me. I was about to protest and mumble something about needing to calm down a little before my dick exploded, when she slipped my cock between her clothed thighs and rubbed them together.

Dumb Bane: fuck our dick. Let’s do it.

It was delicious and dirty and the kind of thing to make the new Jesse heave, which prompted me to believe I was getting the old one. The pre-Emery one.

“Snowflake…” I said. That was it. I didn’t really think beyond that. I wasn’t even sure what I was asking. Maybe for her to take mercy on my balls.

“Let’s come,” she moaned into our kiss. “Finger me.” She moved her hand back to my cock and began to stroke it, thumbing my PA and sending shivers up my spine.

Since I knew Darren’s security cameras didn’t point at the oversized plants decorating his entrance from each side—I’d checked—I knew we were in the clear. I shoved my hand into her yoga pants and found her silky and warm and so fucking tight I wanted to die right then and there, knowing no moment in my life was going to top this one. I slipped two fingers between her thighs and played with her a little. With any other woman, I’d get straight to the punch line, rub her clit and make her come so we could move on to the important part—me. With Jesse, she was the important part, and while a few months ago I’d have found this idea unnerving, I couldn’t give two shits about me when it came to her.