Always Hers

  Always Hers

  Jagger Cole

  Contents

  A Special Present

  Synopsis

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Always Hers

  By Jagger Cole

  www.jaggercolewrites.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Jagger Cole

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by Plan 9 Book Design

  Editing by MJ Edits

  This is a literary work of fiction. Any names, places, or incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. And similarities or resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events or establishments, are solely coincidental.

  All characters in this work are eighteen years of age or older, and all relations of a physical nature are completely consensual.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The unauthorized reproduction, transmission, or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal and a violation of US copyright law.

  Created with Vellum

  A Special Present

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  Synopsis

  Aurora

  I’ve been saving myself for a man I can’t have.

  Carter Holloway was always out of bounds—too old for me, and definitely too gorgeous. He was the crush that crushed me, and then he was gone; presumed killed in action in Afghanistan.

  Now with my mother’s illness kicking our butts emotionally and financially, I’m out of options and out of money. The one thing I’ve got left to trade is the v-card I never lost, and apparently, a girl can make a hefty bundle selling it online.

  But suddenly, the man I thought I lost is back—hotter, harder, and he’s after what he never took before.

  Carter

  She was always mine to claim. And I was always hers.

  There’s never been anyone for me but Aurora Dawes—never has been, never will be. In fact, I’ve never even touched another woman. But she was always off limits and out of bounds, and so I waited until the day she could me mine.

  But war and a roadside IED almost put me in the ground. I survived to find myself a captive—a hostage forced to work for my captors to protect the girl I left behind.

  Years later, I’m back and twice as driven to have what was denied me before. I’ve saved myself for her, and now she’s going to get all of me. Now, and always.

  1

  Aurora

  “Okay, this is it,” I tell myself in the mirror. “You can do this.”

  I do look hot; I’ll say that much. The too tight, a little too short black cocktail dress hovers just on this side of scandalous. My long red hair is down with a slight wave to it, and my makeup is on point; smoky eyes and all. The outfit is perfect, but it’s the inside of me that’s all messed up.

  This isn’t how this is supposed to happen. No girl lays in her bed daydreaming about her first time being the result of a financial transition. Of course they don’t, and neither did I. My daydreams were always about him—the utterly untouchable, completely out of my league Carter Holloway. I doubt I could even count how many times I fantasized about him. It’s incalculable to know how many daydreams and fantasies I had involving him.

  He’s the one who I should be seeing tonight. It shouldn’t be a stranger, who’s paying me. I feel the sick feeling in my stomach at that thought. Tonight, I’m being paid to give something that can only be given once. I know “purity” or whatever is a stupid concept. I mean it’s just sex. The whole world has it, a lot. Some of it is that it’s not Carter, and some of it is that I’ve simply hung onto it for so long. I’m twenty-one, and I’ve never once done a thing with a guy. Pathetic, I know.

  I take one more look at myself in the mirror. Then I grab my phone and my clutch and leave my tiny Lower East Side apartment. I glance at my phone in the cramped elevator that smells like pee to see if my Uber is here yet. He’s close, but I also have a text from Sienna. It just says that she hopes I’m feeling better and to call tomorrow if I’m up for it.

  I feel awful having just lied to my best friend. I lied to her mom, too, who’s basically my second mom. I told them all I wasn’t feeling well, and that’s why I had to leave. A few hours ago, I was at dinner at Sienna and Luke’s house out in the Hamptons. House isn’t the right word, more like palace. But I wasn’t sick. The truth is, I got the message from “ParkAvePlayboyX” that he wanted it to be tonight. We’d planned for a few days from now, but his schedule cleared, and he messaged that he couldn’t wait any longer.

  Most girls would be thrilled to hear that a rich guy they’d been texting with was dropping everything on his busy plate to see them tonight. But ParkAvePlayboyX isn’t my boyfriend or anything. He’s not a friend. My God, I don’t even know his damn name. It makes this even grosser, to be honest, and more tawdry. No, ParkAvePlayboyX isn’t anyone romantic with me. He’s the man who’s paying me two-hundred-thousand dollars for my first time.

  It started a few months ago. My mom’s cancer came back hard, and everything started to go downhill fast. I left school to come home and help her out, since it’s just the two of us. But it wasn’t long before any savings we had started to dwindle to nothing. It was some late night after hours on the internet trying to find ways to make money when I found it: an exclusive, audition-only forum. It was a place where very rich people buy and bid on things that you just can’t buy out in the open in the real world. And in one part of it were girls selling their first times to men who would pay for it.

  I wanted to throw up the first time I saw it, and I immediately closed my laptop. But the idea kept coming to me over the next week. The bills kept stacking up, my mom was getting worse, and I knew there was only one thing to do.

  In my fantasies, I’ve been saving myself for him; for Carter. That was a silly idea before, but now it’s impossible: Carter died a few years ago in a roadside bombing in the Middle East. I don’t know why, but even after he was gone, I couldn’t bring myself to try dating, or see anyone. He’d been my crush since before I knew what a crush was. He was the only man I ever wanted, and he’s gone.

  But now it’s time to let that silly idea go. My mom needs the treatment, and we need the money. I’ve got nothing left to trade but this, and it’s going to be the answer to our problems. ParkAvePlayboyX has seen the pictures of me that I submitted to the forum, along with my polygraph test asserting that I haven’t in fact ever done it before. He’s put the money in an escrow account run by the forum, and I’ll get it after both of us confirm the transaction tonight.

  Outside of my building, the Uber pulls up, and I get inside. Then I’m on my way uptown to his penthouse. I blanche at the word “transaction” for what I’m doing tonight. But that’s what it is. I force myself to not think about it though. All I have to do is show up and get it over with it. I just hope to God that “ParkAvePlayboyX” isn’t in his seventies or an asshole or anything like that.

  I didn’t just lie to my best friend tonight, either. I was jealous of her in secret. When we were younger, we both had crushes: me on her older brother Carter, and her on his friend Luke. Both Luke and Carter went off with the Marines to Afghanistan, and both were lost in that roadside IED. But somehow, Luke came back.

  Back from the dead, Luke swooped in to be my friend’s Prince Charming. He�
�s a billionaire now, too. The house where we were having dinner tonight is their dream house he just built on a cliff over the ocean near where we all used to go swim. I am happy for both of them, honestly. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. The man I loved never came home, after all.

  Thirty blocks later, the Uber stops outside of a gorgeous building. Sure enough, ParkAvePlayboyX does actually live on Park Avenue. I say I’m a guest of Penthouse A at the door, and the doorman just nods and lets me inside. I wonder how often my mystery man tonight does this sort of thing. But that thought makes me sick, so I shake it from my head.

  It was supposed to be Carter. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And if I’m going to, I might as well make some money losing it, right? All I have to do is get through this, and our problems are solved. And it’s just sex, right? The elevator doors open, and I gasp a little. The hallway looks like the entrance to a palace. There’s even only one door, too—the door that leads to Penthouse A, where I’ll be losing it tonight.

  I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this, but I square my jaw and walk to the apartment door. I remind myself that I look great with the dress, hair, makeup, and the sheer matching bra and panties I’m wearing under it all that ParkAvePlayboyX bought and sent to me to wear tonight. But it still doesn’t make me feel any better about all of this.

  With a heavy heart, I fill my lungs with a breath and knock on the door. I can hear footsteps, and I close my eyes and count to five to steady my nerves. It’s just sex. It’s just a transaction. Actually, it’s the oldest transaction in human history, says the internet research I did. The footsteps draw closer, and finally, I hear the door unlocking. The knob turns, and I ready myself for what’s to come.

  But when the door swings open, nothing can prepare me for who—who—is on the other side.

  For a second, I think I’m dreaming, or having an episode or something. Maybe the stress of this situation has broken my mind, and I’m seeing things. Because there’s no freaking way I’m actually standing here face to face with Carter Holloway.

  “Aurora,” he growls. My head swims, and my legs falter. I start to fall, but he suddenly catches me in big, muscled, and very real arms.

  “You…” I whisper. I look up into his face. My pulse races. “How... how?”

  “For you, Aurora,” he grunts quietly. His blue eyes hold mine intensely, never blinking as he looks into my very soul. “I came back for you.”

  2

  Carter

  She falls, but I’m there to catch her. She drops into my arms, and I want to roar out loud, like an animal who’s found its mate. Holding her feels like home. And for the first time since I came back, I feel whole.

  I know there would have been easier and less dramatic ways to do this. But it’s not all just for the effect. It was to keep her safe. All of what I’ve done for so long is to keep her safe. Working with the enemy and smiling at my captors for all of this time was to keep Aurora safe from them. The Jihad Brotherhood, who are the fuckers who’ve had me in captivity since the day everyone thought I died, are everywhere. They’re based out of Afghanistan, but they have cells and agents all over. I had to be sure. I had to keep her safe.

  I groan when she twists in my arms. The feel of her body against mine, and the heat of her through my dress shirt and pants is like gasoline on a fire. I’ve wanted her for years. I’ve craved her for longer than I ought to have. Now, finally, she’s in my arms; exactly where she belongs.

  Aurora looks up at me through the gorgeous red hair tumbled across her sharp green eyes. Goddamn did I fall hard for her all those years ago. She was so damn beautiful, and so good. But she was also so untouchable, and nothing I could even get close to. She was Sienna’s best friend, for fuck’s sake. She was off limits.

  But that didn’t stop me from wanting her. It never stopped me from craving her above anything else. And it did nothing to slow me from falling in love with her. Years later, none of that has changed. In fact, it’s only gotten stronger.

  “How?” She whispers. “How are you… how are you alive?” She says it with disbelief in her voice. It’s as if even in my arms, looking right at me, she still can’t trust that I’m real. I can’t really blame her, but she better believe I’m real. I’m real, she’s really in my arms, and I’m really never letting go this time.

  “You,” I hiss. My hands grip her tightly. My muscles clench, and my very skin burns with the need for her. I’ve been hard all damn night imagining this moment, and now that it’s here, I’m even harder. “I’m alive because of you, Aurora,” I growl.

  She stares at me in disbelief. Her face is flushed pink, and those beautiful green eyes shine bright. “Me?”

  I nod, and my grip tightens on her. “You.”

  It’s a little bit bigger of a story than that, obviously. But she’s the heart of it. She’s the rock that I clung to all this time. A little over a year ago, my buddy Luke and I were in a convoy driving through warlord territory in Turkmenistan near the Iran border. We were working for a private security group at the time when we got hit with an ambush; roadside IEDs, rockets, all of it.

  The whole squad was killed but me, or so I thought at the time. I woke up hours later in the burning wreckage of a Humvee with a gun in my face. The Jihad Brotherhood, run by a real piece of work named Hasaan Bin Hadim, found me. They put me in chains and hauled me back to their hideout. I think the plan was to kill me on camera for some dumbass death to America bullshit. But when they figured out I spoke some decent Arabic and some passable Kurdish, they held off.

  “Carter, I… I don’t understand,” she gasps.

  “Luke isn’t the only one who made it out of that ambush,” I grunt. “Though I thought he was dead too until a month ago. A terror group called the Jihad Brotherhood found me after the attack and took me prisoner. I could speak Arabic, which kept me alive at first. I was also carrying our squad’s communication equipment when we got hit, so they thought I was the tech brains of the group.” I smile grimly. “I wasn’t about to tell them otherwise if it was going to keep me alive.”

  But language skills and computers ain’t the only thing they found. I’m not telling her this part, because I don’t want to scare her. But when they put me to work as their new tech guy, the threat was the picture they found in my flak jacket. I carried Aurora’s picture around with me everywhere over there. Not even Luke knew, but she was always there, right next to my heart. The fuckers found it and figured out who she was.

  They used that knowledge to bind me. The threat was always that she’d be hurt somehow if I ran or disobeyed. So for the last year, I’ve been playing tech support for one of the world’s most deadly terror groups. But not a day went by when I wasn’t thinking of Aurora.

  “How did you get out?” she gasps. Her hands grip my arms, like she’s finally wrapping her head around me actually being real and holding her. “Did they let you go?”

  I smile grimly. “Not willingly.” I could explain that I used my position as technology guru to follow her online. How I watched her from across the world, and how I used the hacking tools at my disposal to see that she’s joined a goddamn forum where girls sold their first times for money. I didn’t judge. I knew how desperate she and her mom were. But I also knew I had to get the fuck out and get to her. Or I’d lose her entirely.

  I could also tell Aurora about shooting my way out and killing them all. But I also wonder if maybe I never will, because I don’t know if she needs to know about shit like that. “What matters is, I’m out, and I’m back.” I look into her beautiful eyes and take a slow breath. “And now, I’ve got you.”

  Aurora blushes shyly. It only gets me harder and makes my pulse thump faster. She looks away with a frown. “Carter, what are you doing here? At this address? I have to tell you something…” She closes her eyes tightly. “I’m here—”

  “I’m ParkAvePlayboyX, Aurora,” I say gently. I reach up to cup her face with both of my hands, and I look into her eyes. “I
’ve watched you for so damn long, angel,” I whisper. “And no one else was going to get their goddamn hands on you. No one.” I grind my teeth. Aurora gasps when my hand drops to her waist to pull her tight against my body.

  “I’ve waited years for you, Aurora,” I growl. “And you’re finally, finally mine.” I kiss her lips for the very first time, and I finally know I’m home.

  3

  Aurora

  It’s like a daydream come to life. Kissing Carter Holloway is something I’ve literally fantasized about for years, and it’s actually really happening. His mouth burns hotly to mine, and I open my lips for him. I moan and push into him on autopilot. It’s like the fantasy is playing out around me, and I’m reacting like I have in my dreams a million times.

  He slams the door shut behind me and then pushes me against it. I gasp and tremble when his big hands grip my waist tightly. I’ve dreamed of kissing Carter since before I should have been. And now that it’s real and actually happening? It’s better than the fantasy. It blows the fantasy out of the water. His kiss is hard and demanding, and his hands hold me like I belong to him. My brain is still rushing to catch up with what the hell is happening right now. But my heart is already there, and that’s what matters.

  Carter pulls away with a groan, and I gasp for air. My pulse is running wild as I look into his gorgeous blue eyes. “How?” I gasp. “If they didn’t let you go, were you rescued?”