Her fingers moved restlessly, twisting the ring I’d watched her choose just this morning. She spun it around and around in hypnotic, soothing circles, the green stone catching the low lamplight every time it turned.
My mother’s ring.
The sight slammed into me like a freight train at full speed with no warning. I froze mid-step, my throat closing so tight I couldn’t swallow. For a heartbeat I just stood there, staring at that cheap little oval of colored glass on Chrissy Jones’s ring finger, and felt something inside my chest crack wide open.
Her scent reached me then, soft rose and warm skin, threaded with the faint, unmistakable note of arousal. It wrapped around me, pulled me closer, even as my pulse roared in my ears. The lamp on the nightstand painted everything in gold and shadows, and every time she shifted, the green stone flashed like it was alive... like it recognized me.
Her breathing changed, quickening at the sound of my soft footfalls on the Persian rug. She knew I was here, even if she couldn’t see me.
I paused and just... drank her in, letting the weight of it all settle on my scarred skin: the woman I’d watched for four years, blindfolded and waiting for me again, wearing the one piece of jewelry that had ever meant anything real in my family, and twisting it nervously. It was such an absurdly natural thing to do, like the ring already belonged to her, and she to it.
I paced toward her, my movements slow and deliberate. She sat perfectly still, but I could see the tension in the line of her shoulders, the way her breath caught when I invaded her personal space, and she could feel the body heat rolling off me.
I didn’t speak... not yet.
Instead, I reached out, trailing a fingertip over the cool silver band around her finger, brushing the edge of the green stone, stroking once, then twice, with just enough pressure for her to know exactly what I was touching.
Her lips parted on a soft inhale and her cheeks flushed pink.
“Tell me why you chose this one, little doll,” I said, keeping my voice low and controlled... my Ben voice... smoother and more cultured than the rough rasp I used when playing the role of Jacob. “Out of the hundreds of rings on that table, why this one?”
She swallowed and I watched her throat work, remembering how it felt to have my cock buried to the hilt in her mouth, that throat struggling to accommodate me.
“It... it reminded me of my grandmother’s jewelry,” she said quietly. “Old costume pieces she kept in a drawer... they were nothing expensive, but she loved them just the same. Each one had so many stories and good memories tied to it. She’d tell me all of them, every time she wore a piece of it. It wasn’t about what they cost or how they looked... it was about the love that was worn into each piece.”
Something inside my chest caved in, sharp and sudden, like a fist had punched straight through my sternum to squeeze my heart. I hadn’t expected that. I hadn’t expected her to see it, to see mymother’s love in a piece of jewelry even though she never met her.
My voice came out rougher than I meant it to when I cleared my throat and spoke.
“It belonged to a woman who grew up with nothing,” I said. “Her husband came from old money, but he bought that ring for her when she saw it in a store window and expressed how much she loved the look of it. She wore it every day, and said of all the diamonds and gems my father ever bought for her, that ring was the only one that ever felt real to her. She was my mother.”
She gasped, then silence stretched between us, thick and heavy.
“I didn’t know it was your mother’s ring, sir. I just chose it because it felt real and loved, and that matters to me.”
My mother’s voice echoed in the back of my mind, laughing and telling me the stone was ‘just glass, baby, but it’s our glass’. I had to turn away for a second to pull myself together, jaw locked as I stared at the shadows on the wall as I fought to pull myself together and lost.
As I turned back toward her, jealousy surged up hot and vicious in my chest, drowning out everything else.
“You chose wisely, little doll, I’ll grant you that. And yet,” I hissed, stepping close enough that my thighs brushed against her knees, “you wore it when you accepted another man’s proposal today.”
She went deathly still.
I leaned in, my voice dropping into a darker register as my lips brushed against the shell of her ear. “Tell me why you said yes to Jacob, Miss Jones. Tell me why you let the groundskeeper slidemy mother’s ring onto your finger and told him, with astounding sincerity, that you’d marry him in a heartbeat.”
I wrapped my fingers around her throat and squeezed as I waited for her to answer me. Her breath hitched, and she hesitated, so I squeezed a little tighter to remind her I was waiting for an explanation.
Finally, she licked her lips and whispered, “Because... he saw me, more than anyone has ever seen me in my life. He didn’t offer me the things you can offer me, like money or an escape from my circumstances, but... he offered to help me carry my burdens, to stand between me and the worst of what life has to offer, and it felt... real. It felt genuine, and that means more to me than I can explain.”
Every word out of her mouth was a blade buried inside my heart and twisting deeper with every syllable, because it was me she wanted, the me who was stripped down to scars and promises... without the considerations of my money and power and the things I could fix in her life. She wanted me, even when she thought it might cost her everything, and somehow, that made it a little harder for me to breathe. She chose the version of me who had nothing to offer her, and she fucking meant it.
I closed the space between us, my hand never leaving the delicate column of her throat, and leaned down so my lips were all but brushing hers when I spoke again.
“Are you falling in love with the wrong person, Miss Jones?”
She hesitated and sucked in a shuddering breath, then gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head, like she was in denial, and terrified... like she didn’t really trust her own answer.
That hesitation destroyed me completely.
