XX

"No, no, no, it can't be. He can't be here. He just can't be fucking here! At this fucking place! At this motherfucking time!" Ori shouted.

With her heart pounding in her chest, Emerald ran down the stairs in nothing but her towel when she had heard the glass-breaking shrill come from below. Reaching the last staircase, she walked into the hallway leading to the entrance of their house to see her friend, Oriana pacing around the space while gripping tightly at her red mane.

Her eyes were wide with terror as she kept pacing back and forth while mumbling incoherent words under her breath. Emerald kept calling her name but she received no reply from her.

"Ori? Ori, what's the matter? I heard a scream," she prodded but her friend still remained unresponsive.

Emerald was worried about her friend. She had never seen her look so disoriented. Yeah, Oriana wasn't the most organised person out there but right now, she was looking like she had completely lost her bearings. She was looking so pale and breathless and when Emerald saw her begin to experience difficulties in breathing, she shook her.

"Ori! What's wrong?" she called out, successfully snapping her out of whatever trance she had fallen into.

"M-mera, h-h-he's out there. H-he's here f-for me. H-he-he w-" she hyperventilated.

"Deep breaths, Ori. Deep breaths," Emerald tried to calm her. "Come on, breathe with me. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Now repeat the process. Focus only on your breathing," her voice was low and soft.

After a few seconds, Oriana was finally able to calm down. "There we go. Now would you like to tell me what the problem is?" Emerald asked again.

"Mera, he's out there for me," Emerald could hear the fear laced tightly around her every word and it pulled at the strings of her heart. She had never seen her friend like this before.

"Who, Ori? Who's out there?" Oriana gulped before opening her mouth to answer but before she could utter another word, the doorbell rang again, causing her eyes to return to their previously wide lengths as she clutched her chest.

"No, Mera! Don't open it. He'll kill me if you do," tears were running down her face now, making Emerald's worry escalate at her reaction but she couldn't help the curiosity that also bubbled within her. So, she walked towards the door to find out the mystery held at the other side of the closed door.

"Mr Kale?" she called out when the mystery behind the door finally became clear to her. She was sure her visage portrayed two emotions - confusion and surprise.

She took in his neat appearance. He looked absolutely prim yet rugged in his casual outfit which consisted of a white, almost transparent shirt which proudly displayed the indelible inks that adorned his arms coupled with a pair of black matte slacks.

Like the vibrant and conspicuous feathers of a peacock, his tattoos were so prominently flaunted across his skin that no one could ever ignore their beautiful existence. Emerald was drawn to them but she finally managed to get some control over her prying eyes as she toilsomely dragged her gaze back to his face, which still held no expression.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, finally recovering from her moment of surprise, however, she was still confused as to why Oriana had reacted that way on seeing him.

Before she could dwell too much on her thoughts or even think of untangling the cluttered knots of her higgledy-piggledy thoughts, she heard unbelievably explicit words leave the mouth of the man before her.

"I want to sleep with you," she heard him say. Those six words that had left his gob came as a shock to her and instinctively, her hands which held the door immediately moved to tightly hold on to the only piece of clothing preventing her from being absolutely bare before this man.

"Wha-what?" only when she heard him speak those words, did her mind finally register that she was practically naked before him, only being shielded by a flimsy towel.

For some reason, however, she didn't feel uncomfortable at his words. Instead, a strange, unfamiliar ache erupted in her lower belly and her heart heightened its blood pumping function as she could basically almost hear the vital organ of hers racing against her ribcage.

The fact that she actually found his mere words arousing left her dumbfounded and it only made it much worse when her eyes came back into focus just in time to see the bobbing of his Adam apple as he seemingly swallowed a lump stuck in his throat.

She watched his eyes rake hungrily and seductively up and down her body and consequently, the grip she had on her towel tightened even more when she felt the bubbling feeling in her lower abdomen elevate in intensity.

The feelings she was currently being exposed to were strange to her and she needed the time to adjust to it and make sense of it before anything else, so with that thought, she proceeded to close the door when Jordan finally snapped back to reality from the carnal confinements the enchantress had shoved him into.

"Wait!" he took a step forward instantaneously and placed a foot in the doorway, preventing the door from closing all the way. "Shit! I didn't mean it that way. That came out wrong, I promise. I meant- actually can we talk instead?" his mind was all over the place as he was still trying to recover from his earlier sensual thoughts.

He couldn't believe that he - the J.K was stuttering all because of a woman. These actions of his were new to him and the desperation that was slowly seeping through his actions and words narked him but he paid no heed to his thoughts. He had more pressing matters to deal with.

He watched her eyeing him skeptically with hints of distrust and doubts swirling around the verdant, lush and green hued vines of her smaragd eyes.

"Hear me out?" he whispered almost pleadingly. The softness of his voice had him and the redhead - who was still standing frozen solid in fear behind her friend and far away from the door - stunned.

Emerald thought about his words for a bit. It wouldn't hurt to maybe hear him out, would it? She looked back at her friend, who was still standing absolutely still, completely dazed from all the paws of actuality before breathing out a defeated sigh.

Looking back at him, she stiffly nodded her head as she carefully stepped to the side and opened the door a little wider, granting his large frame access to their newfangled furnished home.

She could only hope that she had done the right thing by letting him in.

"Here, you can take a seat on the couch," she led him into the living room, watching him as he took his seat while letting his chocolate chip coloured orbs travel around the lebensraum before landing on her.

"I need to - uh - get dressed up?" she squirmed under his stare as she asked, rather than stated. She couldn't help feeling nervous under his acute gaze, so without looking back at him, she darted for the stairs not forgetting to drag her still frozen friend with her.

▬▬▬▬▬

"Ori? I've been trying to get you to speak since we got here but you have still refused to utter a sound," Emerald spoke to her suddenly mute friend as she walked out of the closet, fully dressed up in matching white silk pyjama shorts and a shirt outlined by a black design.

"Why did you freak out the way you did when you saw him?" she prodded again but was still met with silence.

"Oriana Mendel!" Emerald shouted in suppressed annoyance as she shook her friend to snap her out of the immurement of her thoughts.

"Who is he to you?" Oriana finally spoke as she turned to look at Emerald with a serious expression that freaked her out because she had never in her entire lifetime of knowing Oriana, seen her this sober.

"Uhm, Mr. Kale?" she confirmed, earning a stiff nod from Oriana who was watching her every move and expression.

"He's Carol's brother and also a new client of mine. Why? What does that have to do with this?" she had no idea what his relationship with her had to do with Oriana's panic earlier.

"Do you know anything about him at all? His identity? What he does? Anything?" Oriana continued her questionnaire.

"Other than his name - Jordan Kale and the fact that he's Carol's brother. . . No, I know nothing else about him as I am required to know little personal information about my clients. That's what professionalism entails," she explained, her eyebrows furrowing more every second.

"Mhmm. . .ok," Oriana hummed before stretching her hand out to Emerald. "Your phone," she mumbled.

Emerald's confusion could only grow alongside her curiosity as she watched her friend open the Google search engine before typing in something in the search bar. To her, it felt like centuries before their question was finally provided answers to.

When Oriana returned the mobile device to her, she looked at the screen filled with different information but let her eyes stay glued to the word that shone so brightly in the search bar.

'J.K,' it read.

She looked up at her friend who was also staring at her, trying to gauge her reaction. "Ori, I don't think this is right. It's completely against my work ethics to carry out background checks on any of my clients. I don't th-"

"It's not against your work ethics if you're not carrying out any background checks in the first place. Think of it as you're only taking precautionary measures," she countered.

"But-"

"Read it, Mera. You wanted to know why I was a wheezing mess when I saw him earlier, right? Now you have the opportunity to and you're just going to let it slip through your fingers?"

To Emerald, Oriana was speaking like one of the two creatures perched on her shoulders. She sounded so convincing and it was the truth, Emerald was dying to know but something else was preventing her from prying. Something else was questioning if she would be able to handle the truth and she didn't think that thing was her work ethics or professionalism.

"I know your curiosity is eating deeply into you, Mera. Just yield into it. Trust me," Emerald looked up to see her friend's pleading eyes and just then, she knew that the other creature that was opposing Oriana's words couldn't win against her.

Her words and the look in her grey eyes were just too compelling and Emerald succumbed to it. She looked down at the phone screen.

▬▬▬▬▬

Jordan had been sitting alone in the living room for a few minutes now and he couldn't help but wonder how long it took the female gender to get dressed - for bed, for that matter.

Feeling bored out of his mind, he decided to explore for a bit, so he stood to his feet and slowly walked around the living space, taking in its exquisite yet simple decor.

The previous night when he had been here, he had been unconscious to take in what her house looked like. Thinking about it now, he could only wonder how she - a small yet pneumatic woman had managed to carry him - a refrigerator of muscles up the stairs and into a bedroom.

Shaking his head with a really faint, almost invisible smile on his face, he could only come to a conclusion that she really was full of surprises.

Just like her office, her living room was dominated by the unflashy and conservative colours of black, grey and white, having their vintage patterned floor rug - which was placed at the centre of the room amongst others - to brighten and act as a contrasting colour of bright red to the whole arrangement.

Jordan once again, couldn't help but commend her magnificent taste until he stopped abruptly when he saw a bright orange bean bag whose colour held a dissimilitude against the aesthetics of the room. He knew right away that that couldn't be his gemstone's handiwork. He scoffed.

Walking further around their medium sized yet cozy living space, he stopped again at an elevated pavement which was blazoned with different picture frames proudly displayed for the eyes of the beholders.

Jordan picked up a frame and examined its contents. His gemstone was together with the redhead that had slammed the door in his face earlier and a blonde guy that looked oddly familiar. The redhead was in the middle and the guy and his gemstone were at her opposite sides with their lips pressed against her cheeks.

Even though the redhead was in the middle and the camera was obviously directed at her face, his gemstone was still the centre of his attention.

He moved on to the next picture. It was similar to the previous one, only that the familiar looking guy had taken the position of the redhead in the middle. The grip he had on the frame tightened when he saw his gemstone's luscious lips on the guy's cheek. He was irritated and peeved for some reason.

Uninterested in staring at the guy's projected face, he moved on to another picture. Here, his gemstone was at the middle with the blonde and the redhead on either of her sides with their lips on her cheeks.

It spited him to see the Blondie's lips on his own gem's cheek but he couldn't deny that this particular picture was his favourite out of all he had seen.

She looked diaphanously angelic with her eyes closed and a wide grin unashamedly projected on her face. She looked so calm and blissful. At that moment, she was the epitome of the term, celestial radiance and he wanted so direly to have a taste of her.

He was a devil that was so parched that he yearned for the taste of heaven. But, they were from two completely different worlds. Was it even heard of for someone as baleful and as minatory as he was, to ever feel something such as attraction for someone as angelic and heavenly as her?

He was vile, he was nefarious, he was an embodiment of sin while she was innocent and impeccable; an embodiment of purity, she was.

Did he really want to stain her with his sinful ways?

As his thoughts ran haywire, he heard footsteps coming down the stairs and he looked up from the photograph that had held him enthralled. His stormy and glazed over chocolate eyes immediately cleared when they crashed with her green ones.

They stared at each other for what felt like hours, neither one of them agreeing to tear their gazes away. And slowly, his jewel began walking towards him.

She stopped right in front of him with her carafe like neck craned upwards to behold his face due to his towering height. She held his gaze for a bit before looking down at his hands which still held the picture frame.

Gently, he watched her pry it out of his hold before placing it back in its original place. He continued watching her as she held his hand before bringing it up close to her face for proper examination.

A smile of adoration threatened to subjugate his inexpressive face at the sight of the cute grimace that graced her face when she took in the state of his swollen and now purple knuckles.

Wordlessly, she dragged him into their kitchen and he willingly followed her like a tamed puppy. Pushing him to sit on a stool, she began looking around for something.

His eyes followed her every move like a magnet drawn to metal and when she bent down to check the bottom cupboards, he hurriedly swallowed and looked away from the clear view of her round ass.

He made sure to not look up until she stood erect again but the millisecond worth of view he had seen was already taking effect on him as he could feel the strain in his pants. Not wanting her to think of him as a pervert or libertine, he hurriedly closed his legs, attempting to hide the tent in his pants.

Her pyjamas wasn't really provocative, howbeit, it exaltedly emphasized her voluptuous features. Yet, it still did unimaginable things to him.

She turned back to him with a first aid box and pulled out a stool close to him before sitting down. Quietly, she opened the box and brought out all the essentials before beginning the treatment.

As the silence continued to echo around the kitchen, Jordan let his eyes take in every of her features, as though he were memorising her very being.

He very much, loved how her cute pink tongue hung slightly out of her mouth when she was fully concentrated on a task at hand. He also loved the change in her facial expressions as she tilted her head in different directions. For some reason, it made her look more innocent than she already did.

When his gaze travelled lower and passed by her knee, his eyes did a double take when he saw the injuries on both her knees. Her now bluish purple flesh housed dried blood clots around them in parallel and horizontal lines. He frowned.

"What happened to your knee?" Emerald's eyes and eyebrows immediately shot up her forehead when she heard his deep and husky voice break the silence.

She kept staring at him until he cleared his throat to level out the hoarseness of his voice and her eyes fell to her knees to see what he was talking about.

She frowned when she took in the state of her knees. She had felt it sting and throb earlier but she had been too busy and out of her element - we all know the reason behind that - to pay attention to it until now.

"Must have been when I panicked yesterday," she replied vaguely earning a nod from him before they returned to silence again.

"Why are you really here?" she asked when she had finished cleaning and wrapping up his fingers; her face was now one of seriousness.

He looked up into her inexpressive green eyes, all forms of playfulness had now evaporated. It was time to get down to business.

"I want to live here."