smiling at Jada, and his finger was trailing over her hand resting near his on the railing.
“I’m confused by all of you,” Violet said.
“Theirs is a Romeo and Juliet thing,” I said.
She looked at me, frown burrowing. “Their families are feuding?”
I chuckled. “No and yes. Let’s just say that Dax’s family doesn’t approve of the Mori family business.”
“Which one? And why?” Violet asked.
It always amazed me when I realized people didn’t understand that Jada’s family wasn’t about shipping or finance—at least, not in a Wall Street kind of sense. I’d been dug so deep into it for the last few years that I thought it was clear to everyone. Jada’s family wasn’t just part of the Kyōdaina. They were the Kyōdaina. They made every other mob and mafia organization look like saints.
Jada was sitting at the top of it all. The princess in the kingdom.
To distract Vi from the direction our conversation had headed, I gave in to the stupidity and the pounding need coursing through me. I put my arms around her again, pulling the cue back into her hand and aiming it at the table. I used every ounce of math terminology I could remember to speak almost prodigy-like to my little genius.
“Imagine a line from the cue ball to the rail, intersecting at right angles. Now imagine the cue ball traveling to the rail along the angle. See the cue ball bouncing off and hitting the ball going along another right angle going in the opposite direction. Because the balls are fairly equally spread apart, aim for the midpoint.”
I bent both our bodies, leaning toward the table once more. Goddamn, I wanted to flip her around and lay her out on the green velvet. I wanted to see every inch of her uncovered if only to prove that every dream I’d ever had of her was right. To let her be mine for a moment in time.
I had to pull my hips away from her ass just so I wouldn’t embarrass myself.
She took the shot, and it went in the pocket.
She dropped the cue and jumped back with a, “Yes!” It caused her head to slam into my nose, and my eyes instantly watered.
We righted ourselves but didn’t step away from each other. My hand went to my face, and her smile slipped slightly as she realized what she’d done. “Oh shit, sorry!”
Her laughter died away as we stared at each other, our bodies a breath away. My hands landed on her hips, and hers landed on my shoulders as we stared, trying to read the other as we’d once been able to do. The air around us filled like a vibration on glass, mounting to a point that it would break if we didn’t stop it. If we didn’t halt it with a touch.
Violet stood on her tiptoes, placing a gentle kiss on the tip of my nose. A feathery light touch meant as a simple act of apology and healing. A tender move, but it loosened something inside my chest. I needed her lips on mine. Not on my nose or my cheek or my fingers, but on my mouth so I could devour her.
My head bent to finally take what should have always been mine when a cool voice halted me.
“Isn’t this cozy,” Ken’Ichi said dryly.
I pulled away, reflexively pushing Violet behind me, trying desperately to school my expression so he wouldn’t know she meant more to me than any of the other women he’d seen me with.
“This is a surprise,” I said, my voice an echo of his. Calm, careless, serene.
“We have business to discuss, and I needed to check in with my fiancée. Looks like I’m just in time,” he said with a glance out the windows.
Dax and Jada still looked cozy. Not quite together, but more than friends. They were turned out toward the city skyline and clearly didn’t know he was there.
I shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s just Dax.”
I left Violet, hating every step I took away from her but needing to warn Jada. I knocked on the glass. Both bodies on the balcony shifted toward us. I saw Jada stiffen and pull away. Dax straightened and guided her back into the room with a gentlemanly hand on the small of her back.
The air had changed from the thick sexual tension that had surrounded Violet and me into tension filled with warning. An electrical storm ready to combust.