Jade (Rare Gems Series) (5 page)

“But I do. Very much so.”
He pulled her closer to him and felt her resistance. “Let me finish that kiss, Jade. I want to kiss you so desperately.”

His mouth settled over hers gently.
She didn’t fight him, but he noticed that she didn’t touch him either. Quentin had no idea why, but he would bet her last lover had told her she was a bad lover and that’s why she didn’t touch. He wanted her to touch him in the worst way.

Cupping the back of her head
, he tilted her head to give him better access to her mouth. When she opened for him, he moaned and deepened the kiss, tasting her with his tongue. Her answering moan made him want so much more. He lifted his head and looked down at her while he pulled her arms out from behind her and put them on his arms.

“Hold me, Jade.
I want to feel you holding me while I kiss you.” She shook her head and started to pull away. “I want you to mark me. How will you do that if you don’t touch me?”

“Roger will know.”
He nodded at her. “You don’t care? You don’t care that he’s sleeping with your girlfriend and he’ll tell her that I’ve marked you?”

“No.
I really don’t. It’s you I want.” The kiss this time was hungry. He wanted her to feel how much he wanted her and needed her. When her arms slid around his neck, he lifted her up by her ass and rocked into her. Sliding his hands along her thighs, he helped her wrap around him. Christ, nothing had ever felt this good. Moving to his chair, he sat down and pulled her as close to his cock and over him as he could get her.

Her hands worked at his shirt until she had it open. Quentin lifted her blouse up
with her bra and saw that not only were her nipples a pretty shade of pink, but they were thick and hard. He suckled the first one into his mouth even as he pulled her blouse over her head. He felt her fingers running through his chest hairs. Then she pinched his nipples.

“Christ
, I want you.” She nodded and leaned back for him so that her back was touching his desk. “I want to take you right here.”

“Please.
I want…. Can you hurry?” Picking her up, he laid her over the desk and tore at the zipper on her slacks. When he finally had them open, he pulled them off her so that she lay before him in her panties only. When she apologized, he paused.

“Why are you sorry? Is it because you think I don’t want this?”
She shook her head. “Then tell me now because once I’m inside of you, I’m not planning to ever stop.”

“I’ll disappoint you.” He looked down at the feast before him and then back at her face.
“I’m too…Kent said was I was too needy and that I touched him too much. I can try not to touch you but the need to…I just don’t want you to be disappointed in this. And you will be, I’m sure.”

Running his hands up her tights to her panties
, he tore them from her. She moaned as he continued up her waist to her breasts. Suckling on first one then the other, he nipped at her nipples before moving up to her throat, then to her earlobe. Biting down on it, he tasted her blood. And then he licked the shell of her ear before whispering to her.

“I’m going to find that prick and tear him
apart after I tell him how fucking fantastic you were.” He sat up and pulled his shirt off the rest of the way, never taking his eyes off hers. “You touch me as much as you need, because I need it as well. I want to feel your warm hands on my flesh.”

Quentin opened his
trousers and let them fall to the floor. He rubbed his cock through his boxers and then slowly lowered them until they were at his knees. She watched him, licking her lips as he revealed more and more of him. When he was free of them, he fisted his cock and stood over her.

When she sat up
, he let her. Her hands moved over his chest again, this time slowly like she was memorizing him. When she leaned in and took his nipple in her mouth and bit him, he rocked into her belly and knew that the moment she took him into her body he was going to come.

Jade
’s journey led her to his arms, where she kissed the tat he’d gotten in college, to his scar he didn’t even remember having. There was a knife wound near his navel that she licked. And when she wrapped her hand around his cock, he threw back his head and moaned.

“I want to taste you.” He wanted to beg her to taste him
, but only managed a nod at her request. “Could you sit down in the chair so I can?”

He moved back
, sitting blindly in his chair. If it hadn’t been there, he would have ended up on the floor and not cared. The moment she was on her knees in front of him, she looked up at him.

“I don’t know how to do this.” She licked his crown and then
suckled the pearl of cum on the tip. “Will you show me?”

“If you got any better you’d kill me.” He grinned at her when she smiled. “Do what you want baby. I’ll let you know when you hurt me.”

He was hurting now but wouldn’t have stopped her for any amount of money. When she took him into her mouth, it was all he could do not to beg her to finish him. He wasn’t kidding either. If she’d had even one more ounce of practice, he would have died a very happy man.

Quentin
wanted her. He wanted to come so deep inside of her that she’d scream for him. Pulling her head up off his cock, she looked as dazed as he felt.

“I need you.” She kissed his balls
, and he felt his cock jerk hard. “Christ, please, I need to be inside of you now. I want to come inside of you.” She nodded, standing. He was so close to the edge that he lifted her up and nearly threw her over the desk. Slamming into her almost before she settled, he stilled. It was that or he was coming right now.

“How do I mark you?”
She shook her head, and he felt something deep inside of him snarl. “Tell me. I want to mark you as mine.”

“Bite me. You have to bite me while you come.”
He nodded and asked her where. “My throat.”

He started moving in her
, trying to calm himself. Every time her sheath rippled around him, he knew he wasn’t going to last. Licking where she’d told him, he nipped at the pounding pulse and felt his climax race along his cock. He clamped his teeth into her, tasting hot blood just as his body exploded within her. Her scream made him come harder. And when he felt her bite him, too, his world pinpointed, and then he was out.

Chapter
5

Blair looked at Sapphire when Quentin sort of drifted off again. They’d been having this meeting for over an hour and all they’d been able to get finished was a grocery list for the house and plans for a pack meeting. This had all been done between the two of them while Quentin was who knew where.

“Do you think he’s thinking he made a mistake in mating with Jade? I’ll murder him if he hurts her in any way.”
Blair glanced at Quentin before answering Sapphire.

“No, what I think he’s doing
is trying to figure out what the hell he does now. The man looks like he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
Blair looked up when Thad started pacing again.
“Did you know that he asked Jade to watch his daughter while we had this meeting?”

“Yes. Did you see the look on her face
, too? She looked terrified out of her mind. And I think Angie knew it. That little girl is a lot smarter than I think anyone knows. She’s been asking my grandmother how to measure things so she has her fractions right in school. Do they teach fractions in first grade?”
Blair told her he didn’t know.
“Blair, he’s not going to hurt her, is he?”

“I have to buy a house.”
They both looked at Quentin when he spoke for the first time since they’d come in. “Do either of you know of a good realtor? I have this list in my head. That’s what I’ve been working on instead of paying attention to our meeting. I’m sorry.”

“No worries.
A realtor? I know of a couple. But if you’re thinking of building, I know where there is some land for sale. Close to your business.” Quentin nodded and seemed to go back into himself for a few seconds. When he came back, Blair nodded. He laughed as he spoke. “You are very organized mentally, aren’t you?”

“Yes.
It’s the way…when I was younger, I used to write things out. My dad…he used to take my notes and modify them. Mostly to suit himself, but more and more towards the end he’d move meeting times around and cancel them without my knowing. It’s why I don’t have anything to do with him anymore.” Quentin sat down. “Do either of you know the man that Jade was dating before me?”

“So, you’re dating her?”
Blair had to laugh when Quentin flushed. “I think you should know that when a wolf takes a mate, as her alphas we’re aware of it, too. We can’t hear your conversations with her, but we can now communicate with you mentally if you need us.”

“Good to know.”
Quentin leaned back in his chair before he continued. He looked only slightly more relaxed. “I’m going to put her in charge of the greenhouse and shop. I know she can do it. Her ideas about changes were dead on, and she had quite a few that I hadn’t thought of. But she…I want to find out what you know about this Kent person.”

Blair reached into his top drawer and pulled out a file. He and Sapphire had already talked about giving the file to him
, about things that Blair had been able to have a detective find out. They had decided to give the file to Thad, but only if he asked about it; otherwise they were going to do this on their own.

“
Kent Ballard. He was her boyfriend/lover for about a year before Sapphire and the rest moved here. He never came with them, but I guess he’d been a tad upset about her leaving him. He didn’t have a job to speak of, and Jade was paying for his apartment as well as giving him gas money to go ‘job hunting.’ You should also know that he’s a vampire, which Sapphire told me she didn’t know before this.” Quentin took the file and opened it as Blair continued. “Annabelle said he was hurting her, but Jade never said anything to the others. And she made her promise that she wouldn’t tell anyone either. Otherwise, I would have taken care of him before this.”

“He took out several credit cards in her name.”
Quentin looked up from the file as he held up one of the sheets of paper. “He’s charged nearly two hundred thousand in her name. How the hell is that even possible?”

“Jade had great credit before this.
She had a nice savings account, which has been wiped out by the credit card companies, and that’s not even counting what the bank had. The only reason they’re not suing her is because she had to hire a lawyer. We didn’t know anything about it until recently when things started to fall apart for her.” Sapphire handed Quentin a sheet of paper that she’d had Jade write out for her as she explained what it was. “This is what she is being sued for. Nearly all of it things like hotels rooms, car rentals, and meals that shows he simply partied on her money with women. More than likely they were his meals. When she sold her car, I knew something was wrong and I asked her. By then, she’d been dealing with it for nearly three months. It’s only gotten worse.”

Quentin looked over the papers in the file
, then got up with them and went to the table in the room. He was spreading them out in some order when he turned to them. Blair would not want to be in Ballard’s shoes right now.

“Do you know where this bastard is
?” Blair told him that they were looking until they figured out he was Jade’s mate and stopped.

“It’s a male thing
, and we didn’t want to piss you off.” Blair laughed when Quentin nodded. “Are you going to take care of this? If not, I will. She’s not just my pack member but my sister. Not necessarily in blood, but just as close.”

“I’m calling in a friend of mine to look him up.
And so you know, this isn’t all he’s done to her. She was hurt physically by him but also mentally. He told her…Christ, he made her think she was less than a woman in the bed.” Quentin pulled out his cell phone as he continued. “And hell yeah, I’m taking care of this.”

Blair was impressed more with the man an hour later. While he waited for his agent to call him back
, he made decisions on the advertising he wanted in place, okayed a flyer that Sapphire’s company had made for him, as well as put in place a hiring team so that he could focus his energies elsewhere in the business. Blair was just calling in the final version when the agent, a man by the name of Sloan Crane, called back.

“I have a hit on him,” he’d said with a great deal of humor in his voice.
Quentin had put the man on speaker phone so that in the event he or Sapphire had a question, they could ask him directly. “The man is a real slime ball. He’s currently out of my range at the moment, but believe me, I’ll find him. What should I do when I locate the IFC? Kill or let you do the honors?”

Blair looked at Quentin
when the man seemed to be serious. “Sloan and I have been friends for a long while. I used to…help him on projects when they were out of his daylight scope. And most of the time we came up with our own set of codes to call people. IFC is an Insecure Fuck Clown.”

“Yeah, like that time we found that man plowing it to his mistress while he was talking to his wife and kids.
Man was a real piece of work. You should have seen old Quentin here when he caught the man—”

“What did you find out
about Ballard?” Quentin cut him off. “And no more stories about what we did. Some of it still gives me nightmares.” Blair decided he wanted to know some of these stories, and made a mental note to find out Sloan’s number. It might turn out to be fun later to tease the billionaire about his younger days.

“He’s got himself a new squeeze
, and he’s been living off her, too. She’s currently changing the locks on her house as well as having his things removed. She never gave him access to her accounts, but then neither had this other girl you had me try and find out about. Erickson had done all the right things, too, so I’m guessing this Ballard has some computer skills that got him in. Or more than likely, he raped her mind as well as her body.” Blair heard some papers being moved around before Sloan started talking again. “Here it is. He’s already been kicked out of his last digs and then the one after that. He’s being sued by a bank that he took out a car loan in that had Erickson’s name on it. She did the right thing there too. Smart girl, this one. You think she’s seeing anyone right now?”

“Stay away from her or else.” The threat
from Quentin hung in the air for several seconds, but after a little while longer, Sloan laughed.

“No poaching. Got it.
But as I was saying, this Erickson girl did the right thing. Showed how the signatures weren’t the same and even went so far as to get her a shark of a lawyer. He got that cleared right up for her. Then when he wanted more money to fix the rest, she had to stop him. Apparently Ballard and the lawyer fees have sucked her dry.”

“Hire him back in my name, give him whatever he needs
, everything you’ve found, and have him take care of the rest. I’m sending you what I have now.” Sapphire cleared her throat before Blair could stop Quentin. Before he turned to her, he hung up. “I’m going to help her.”

“She’ll be more than a little pissed off if you do this your way.”
Sapphire leaned back in her chair as she regarded the man. “What would you do if someone, say your father, moved over you to take charge of something? You said yourself that he’s pretty much done that to you. How did it make you feel?” Quentin told her it wasn’t the same. “Why not?”

“She needs my help
, and I didn’t need my father’s.” He looked down at the file that they’d given him. “How is this any different than what you’re trying to get me not to do?”

“We didn’t act on it yet. And wouldn’t have without telling her what we had planned to do before we started.”
Sapphire glanced at him as she continued to talk to Thad. “I would kick your ass all over the place. Then I’d stop seeing you. It’ll be hard on her, but she will do it. You think you’re stubborn? Then you’ve not been paying attention if you think you’re any more so than Jade is. She’s very private, too.”

“So you’re saying that I should talk this over with her before I act?
Put things on hold until she says it’s okay?” Sapphire nodded, but Blair had a feeling it wasn’t going to do any good. Quentin’s mind was set. “I’ll tell her about it. But the faster we move on this before he finds another woman to hurt the better. Even you can see that.”

“I can and I’m sure she will as well
, but I doubt it will make much of a difference to her in the long run. You’re still moving in on things that have nothing at all do to with you.” Quentin shook his head, but Sapphire didn’t let him speak. “You’ll see when she finds out. And you can bet that she will. I won’t tell her and I’m sure Blair won’t either, but she will. Mark my words.”

Blair had a feeling that
Quentin had no idea what he was going to be up against. Blair knew these women, all of them, and if there were a more independent group of them, he’d never want to meet them. But Jade was the most stubborn, even more so than his own mate.

“I’ll make sure she’s kept in the loop.
But I’m going to have to move on this. The sooner we get him taken care of, the sooner she’ll be happy. And I want her happy.” Blair nodded. She might be happy when she found out, but he doubted that very much.

~~~

Jade watched Angie as she ran from one group of children to the next. She was having a good time, it was obvious. But Angie watched the teacher that sat on the bench like she expected him to attack at any moment. When Emerald sat down beside her, she smiled but still watched Quentin’s little girl.

“You should see if he’ll enroll her in this school. She’s fitting right in.”
Jade nodded at her sister. “I wonder what she sees with Ben. She’s watching him like she knows him, but when I asked he said he’d never seen her before.”

“I don’t know. I was thinking the same thing. It’s almost like she expects him to attack her.”
Jade stood up when Ben did and waited for him to call the other kids in. “What do you know about him?”

“Nothing much as yet. He had four cubs of his own
. Two of them are in the higher grades, one is still at home, and the other child is in the group over where Angie is.” When he went toward the group of kids, Angie pushed one of the children behind her, seemingly protecting her. “I wonder what’s going on.”

The
y both walked to the group in time to hear Angie tell him to stay away. The little girl behind her was crying. And when Ben tried to reach for her, Angie screamed. Jade took off running. Emerald was right behind her.

“She’s not letting her pass.”
Jade looked at Ben, then to Angie as he continued talking. “I have to take the other children in after recess, and this little girl is keeping her from joining the group.”

Angie lifted her chin up and glared at her when she knelt down to speak to her.
She looked so much like her dad in that moment that Jade wanted to laugh. Instead, she cleared her throat and asked Ben to give her a minute.

“Angie, they have to go in. You promised me when I brought you here you’d be a good girl.” She
was nodding even before Jade finished speaking. “Then let her pass. She’s holding up the class.”

“He’s hurting her and the other little girls.”
Jade’s skin prickled, and her body felt frozen. “Alexis said he was hurting them in the closet. She said that he hurts them all.”

Emerald moved to stand up.
She had no idea what her sister was going to do, but Jade reached for Sapphire. She had to know just what was going on even if it turned out to be nothing.