CHAPTER 34

I pour myself some vodka and add a few ice cubes to the glass. As I sip at it, I flip through my playlist, choosing some Fiona Apple. She filters through my apartment on Bluetooth speakers.

My mind is all kinds of fucked up over what happened tonight.

I wasn’t lying to Jas. Best sex ever.

Most wrong sex ever.

I don’t want to even think about the fact I sent her brother a fucking picture of her.

Picking up my glass, I pad through my living room with its floor-to-ceiling glass walls that look out over Las Vegas, then into my bedroom. I should take a shower but sick bastard that I am, I don’t want to wash the smell of Jas off me just yet. I’ve lusted after her for as long as I knew what true lust was, and when that first happened, she was way too young for me to be thinking those things. The differences in our age assured that.

Jas had been a constant in my life for a very long time, right along with her brother Noel. Even though there’s an eight-year age difference between Jas and me, there’s just a two-year gap between Noel and me. We were neighbors and because Jas mom died having her, Noel had a lot of babysitting duty as he got older. It was unfair to put that burden on a kid, but Jas father, Noah, was practically absent from their lives.

He was an attorney who had met and married Noel’s mom, who was a Las Vegas showgirl. She left the life to move to the suburbs of Nevada, bringing her five-year-old son with her. Noah never did really take to Noel even though he adopted him and gave him his last name. He was more interested in the beautiful wife he got in Cheska Quinn, and I’m guessing he adopted her son to make her happy. Noel and I talked about that a lot as we were growing up because he spent most of his time at my house next door. His biological dad had been a one-night stand, so he never knew who he was. Noel’s mom died so young that my parents naturally took him under their wing. That was just their way.

I have no clue if Noah ever really wanted Cheska to get pregnant, but she did, and Jas came into this world looking just like her mom and brother. In fairness to Noah, he may have ignored Noel most of the time, but he doted on Jas whenever the nanny was off duty.

And Noel never held that against his little sister. On the contrary, he was and still is very close to her, despite their age difference. Because Noel was often left in charge of Jas whenever Noah was too busy to be bothered, I was right there alongside him, helping to watch the little black-haired, green-eyed terror who grew into an immense beauty. She may have been a pain in our asses on most occasions, but I adored her the same as Noel.

Noel and Jas’s bond is tight, made even more so when Jas dad died just as she entered her senior year in high school. Noel left his job in Pennsylvania to move back to Nevada as her guardian so she could finish school where all her friends were. After she went off to UCLA, he went on to San Francisco, where he’s been ever since.

Setting my glass on the nightstand, I take my clothes off and just let them drop to the floor. I crawl naked into bed, giving a brief glance to my well satisfied dick before I flip the sheet over my lap.

Seeing those goddamn scars on Jas’s breast threw me over hard tonight. I was in mid-orgasm when I saw them, overwhelmed with rage over what had caused those scars, and having my climax fire up for a second time as I realized it was Jas on my cock.

Talk about a mind fuck, but then again, I’d always wanted her.

She was only fifteen when I first masturbated to dirty thoughts about her. I was fucking twenty-three and jerking off because I’d come home to visit my parents and saw Jas in the backyard in her bathing suit. She’s always been pale—can’t tan to save her life—and she was utterly fucking delectable. She’d developed early, and her breasts were practically spilling out of her top. I fucking craved a taste of her… wanted to put my mouth between her legs, and that’s what I imagined as I jacked myself off in the shower.

Goddamn perverted is what it was.

Of course, I shut that shit firmly down after what happened to her just a year later when she was sixteen. My stomach churns as I remember her call to me.

“Jas?” I’d answered hesitantly. She never called me, not because I didn’t care about her or vice-versa, but we weren’t friends. She was just the little toddler who would chase Noel and me around the yard. She was the middle-school kid who needed help with her science project, and Noel and I did the whole thing for her. And yeah, she was the teenage girl I fantasized about a few times because she was hot as hell and totally off-limits, which made her even hotter for some reason.

I didn’t hear anything at first, but then her voice came across so frail. “I need help, Alex.”

She was in a hotel suite not too far from my office. I’d gotten into real-estate development and worked for a major firm in Las Vegas trying to soak up all the knowledge I could with the goal one day to own my own business. I was working super late, which was par for the course for me.

When I arrived, I noted the suite had been cleared of the thirty-plus high schoolers who had been partying there that night to celebrate the end of their junior year. I found Jas covered in blood in the bathroom, holding a towel to her breast. The long, twelve-inch piece of glass that had broken from a vase in the shape of a dagger lay on the floor beside her.

It never once occurred to me that Jas had tried to harm herself. I knew her well enough to know that wasn’t what happened.

I didn’t think someone tried to stab her, either.

By the torn panties wrapped around one of her ankles and the shattered vase, I got what happened. She’d been attacked and hurt in the struggle.

“Oh, Jesus fuck,” I’d groaned when I saw her sitting against the vanity, clutching the bloody towel to her chest. I went down to my knees beside her, shards of glass cutting through my dress pants and into my skin. “What happened, Jas?”

Her teeth were chattering so badly she couldn’t talk at first, but then she managed to say, “There were two of them, but I fought them off. They got scared when they saw the blood and took off.”

Relief flooded through me. She’d not been raped, but those white panties around her ankle told me she’d come damn close.

“Let me see,” I said as I gently pulled her hands away from the towel. She winced as I did so, and I took in the two wounds, surmising that when the vase broke, that long piece went through her breast like a damned sword. But it clearly wasn’t life threatening as the bleeding seemed to be contained.

I pressed the towel back and assured her, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

She never cried. Only her teeth chattered as I lifted her up and carried her through the broken glass. I laid her on a couch in the main living area and called an ambulance.

I never left her side. She didn’t call Noel because he was working in Pennsylvania at the time for an engineering firm there. Jas’s dad was on a business trip. She was sixteen and perfectly capable of staying by herself for a few days.

Or so everyone thought.

I held her hand while they stitched her up, and I contained my rage when she refused to involve the police. She convinced me to keep my mouth shut, and then explained to the doctor that she slipped in the bathroom, causing a freak accident when the vase shattered and stabbed through her breast.

When we were waiting to get discharged, I pushed her to tell me why she wouldn’t report it.

“I was drunk, Alex,” she said softly. “Maybe I was asking for it.”

“Don’t ever let me hear you talk that way again,” I’d chastised her, but there was a hard edge to my voice that made her eyes go round.

“Don’t tell Noel or my dad,” she pleaded. “They’ll be so mad.”

I warred with myself over what to do, but by the time I had her in my car to drive the forty-five minutes to Nevada, I agreed not to tell them on one condition.

Though it was with great reluctance, she gave me the names of the boys who tried to take something that didn’t belong to them and left her a bloody mess on the bathroom floor.

They bled more than she did when I was done with them, and it was mine and Jas secret forever.

I grab my glass, taking a long swallow of the vodka. Pulling my photos up on my phone, I flip to the two I’d snapped of Jas tonight and grit my teeth to stave off the regret.

Fuck, she’s gorgeous.

Guilt overwhelms me as I realize I’m totally turned on by a photo of her sitting on that contraption built by her older brother. Disgust practically curdles my blood as I think about Noel seeing that picture.

Christ, what a mess.

I flip to my texts and see a lengthy line of messages from the man himself.

Dude… I’ve been waiting for details.

How did it work? Any problems? Any adjustments to the design?

Is there video? Please tell me you took video?

So… did it get her pussy warmed up for you?

I wince. It sure had.

I fucked your little sister, Noel, because I was so turned on by that fucking machine you built and the way she came all over your goddamned dildo, I think to myself.

“Fuck,” I yell out to the emptiness of my bedroom and hurl my glass to the side where it crashes against the wall. I let my head fall back against the headboard and close my eyes.

Images of Jas working herself down onto that latex cock.

Images of Jas coming on mine.

I open my eyes with a growl, confident I’m never going to be able to sleep again because I can’t close my eyes.

The ringing of my phone startles me, and it’s a welcomed interruption. When I glance down to see Noel calling, I groan in complete misery over this mess.

Taking a deep breath, I let it out and answer, “It’s three in the morning. Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Don’t you ever answer your texts?” he returns with a laugh, and I can tell he’s drunk by the slight slur to his voice. Noel always parties hard and it’s a Saturday night, so there’s no surprise he’s inebriated. “What the fuck, buddy? You send me a picture of a fine ass riding my cock machine and you can’t spare more details?”

I wince, thinking he’d straight out slit my throat if he knew who that fine ass belonged to. “It worked like a charm,” I tell him, my tongue thickened with the deception that’s rolling off.

“Did the remote-control work okay?” he asks, his words still slurred but the question indicating he’s not so drunk that he left his engineering degree behind.

“Yeah,” I say, then give a cough to clear my throat. “I didn’t test the full depth and had it at medium speed. Ford’s going to let some other people test it out and said he’ll pass notes on to you.”

“How many times did she come?” he asks lecherously.

“Once,” I tell him honestly.

“And let me guess… once again on your cock?”

Twice, actually.

“She wasn’t all that great,” I find myself lying to him so he’ll quit asking so many fucking questions.

“Probably because you couldn’t jack hammer her the way my machine did.” He breaks off into peals of laughter, but I remain quiet.

“Dude… what’s wrong with you?” Noel asks because he’s my best friend—like my brother—and I never hesitate to share the nitty-gritty details of my sex life if he asks. We’ve been swapping personal porn stories for years.

“Nothing man,” I say in a tired voice, but I’m more fatigued from the stress of tonight than anything.

“Alright,” he says, his voice clearly unsure if he accepts what I’m saying. But thankfully, he lets it go. “I’ll get up with you in a few days. I’m thinking about taking a trip down there.”

“Why?” I ask a little too defensively. “I mean… didn’t you just take a week off to go to Cabo last month?”

“Yeah, but I got more vacation time and I want to check on Jas,” he tells me. “Hey… I told you she left Peter, didn’t I? I guess things weren’t working out between them, and she’s back in Nevada. Staying at Alma’s.”

This is fucking great. I know more about the fall of Jas’s marriage than her brother does. He thinks it was a mutual split, and I happen to know that prick told Jas she sucked in bed and then kicked her out.

I want to kill him.

“Yeah, I think you mentioned that,” I say evasively before wrapping things up. “Listen, man… I’m beat. Going to call it a night, but let me know if you’re headed down this way. You can stay with me, of course.”

“Of course,” he says in agreement. “No way am I crashing at Alma’s little apartment. Besides, I want to try out The Sinful Night Club. You’ve talked about it so much that I’ve got to give it a go. Got to see my machine in practical action.”

“You’ll love it,” I say without any enthusiasm.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks again. This time, his words are sober with concern.

“I’m fine, Noel. Just a long day and longer night. I’ll talk to you soon, buddy.”

“Okay. Take care.”

I disconnect the phone and tap it against my chin for a moment before I pull the photos up again. I take in every detail of her that I can see, but I mostly concentrate on the close up of the dildo sliding into her. I tear my eyes away only for a moment so I can bend over the side of my bed to snatch my jeans. I pull the pair of panties I’d stowed there earlier tonight, bringing them to my nose as I settle back against the headboard. I inhale her scent deeply, and I’m consumed with lust.

My hand reaches below the sheet and palms my cock with the silk of her panties in between. My dick goes harder as I focus on Jas ass. It’s phenomenal, and I’d love to fuck it while she’s riding that dildo.

A bolt of pleasure over the thought slams through me, and I squeeze my shaft hard. I have to back it down and quit thinking like that.

That is never going to happen.

Jas and I are never going to happen again.

I have not beaten off to the thought of Jas once since I found her in the bathroom that night, bleeding from fending off her attackers. That night made it clear she was too innocent to be dominating my dirty thoughts. When she turned eighteen and moved away to go to school at UCLA, we lost touch because the only contact I ever really had with her was as a neighbor and Noel’s little sister. I kept up to speed on her through Noel and accepted what he chose to share. I never asked.

I didn’t go to her wedding because I didn’t want to see how gorgeous she’d be in a snowy-white gown, looking with adoration at her soon-to-be husband.

I had put Jas firmly out of my mind as the years went by.

Staring at the photo as I stroke myself, I remember how good she felt in my arms. I think about those green eyes locking to mine as I drove into her over and over again.

I vow to myself I’ll have this one last happy with Jasmine Poarch in mind, and then I’m going to let her go just the way I did before.