#Claimed by Crayson (To Marry a Madden #2) Read online

  I barely gave myself permission to breathe as I stood there while she inspected the injury. I didn’t want to ruin the moment since I was still surprised she was even touching me at all.

  Her touch feels good. She caressed my hand as if it were as delicate as a dainty flower, even though I had the calluses and rough patches as proof that it wasn’t.

  “You’ll live,” she said, dropping my hand. “Nothing’s broken.”

  “Thanks.” My hand missed her touch already, which was ridiculous since nothing about her touch had been intimate. But my mind didn’t work that way. One innocent touch from Jordyn and I was already having images of placing her on top of the counter and opening her legs to allow me to stand between them. I’d start kissing her first. Slowly, just like I did on New Year’s. Then, I’d move from her lips to her neck, lightly suckling the spot right behind her earlobe, relishing in the soft moans she’d make as my tongue got to work.

  Crayson, snap out of it, that voice said. You need to clear the air with Jordyn, not think about kissing her again. Clearing my throat, I placed my hands in the pocket of my jeans so that I wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and touch her.

  I sat down and motioned for her to sit in the chair opposite of me. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.” I cleared my throat again. “I want to apologize for how I’ve been treating you since we met, but especially this past week.”

  She squinted her eyes and crossed her hands over her chest like she didn’t believe me, so I continued. “Jordyn, you already know I’m attracted to you, and even if you didn’t feel it that night, I enjoyed our kiss more than I ever expected I would. Everything felt right about that moment. So after New Year’s, when you decided to ignore me and act like it didn’t happen, it hurt a little.”

  Her face softened. “Most men wouldn’t be able to admit that a woman had hurt their feelings.”

  My lips curled to the side in a smile. “I’m not most men.” And it would do her some damn good if she remembered that because although I was apologizing, that didn't mean I’d changed my mind about sleeping with her. Chemistry this strong was too rare to go to waste. Sometimes, two people just needed to hash it out between the sheets. I know some say that talking solves everything, but I tend to disagree. Talking may help, but great sex helped even more.

  She frowned. “Why are you still smiling like that?”

  “No reason,” I said. “Just hoping you realize that even though I apologized for being an asshole, that doesn’t mean I won’t fuck you into next week when you finally realize that we’d be damn good together.”

  “Ha!” she huffed. “I don’t know where your dick has been, but I know it’s not coming anywhere near me.”

  I was shaking my head before she’d even finished her statement. “Sooner or later, you’ll let me fuck you. It’s just a matter of when and where.”

  “And the asshole is back,” she muttered, standing from her chair. “Luckily for you, I came here to talk to you about something important, so I’ll chew your ass out later for not talking to me like a fucking lady.”

  I chuckled. Did she hear herself? “You came to see me for an important reason?” I sat back in my chair “Now I’m intrigued.” I expected her to have another snarky comment, but instead, she seemed nervous. That’s new. Jordyn rarely looked nervous about anything.

  She picked up the tray of desserts and placed it on the square table in between our two chairs. I reached out to grab one of the cookies, and she slapped my hand away.

  “What gives? I thought you brought these for me?”

  “I did, but you have to let me explain something first.” She sighed. “I can’t believe you’re the first person I’m telling this to who knows my real identity.”

  Real identity? I quirked an eyebrow. “What exactly do you have to tell me?”

  Instead of answering me, she handed me a sheet of paper and a pen. “I need you to sign this before we talk any further.”

  I opened the folded paper and read the first few lines before my eyes flew to hers. “A non-disclosure agreement? You want me to sign an NDA?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I need you to sign it. I need to be able to trust you.”

  Now I was even more confused. “According to you, you hate my guts. And I recall you telling me that you wouldn’t even trust me if your life depended on it.”

  She cringed. “Okay, so maybe I was being a little dramatic at the time.”

  “A little? You also turned to Avery one time and told her to have you admitted to a mental hospital the day you’d allow yourself to think I was a decent man worthy of laying an unwanted hand on you.”

  “I get your point,” she said, stretching out her hands. “But I’m asking you to sign this because I meant what I said. I really need to talk to you.”

  I wanted to know what she had to say, so I skimmed the NDA, signed it, and handed it back to her. She looked relieved that I’d signed it and put it away in her purse. I thought she’d jump right into what she wanted to talk about, but she studied me some more, so I let her observe me, hoping whatever she found indicated she could trust me.

  She kept me waiting a couple more minutes until finally, she took a deep breath and looked me square in the eyes. I found myself holding my breath in the process. “Crayson Madden,” she said, her voice firm. Precise. Very business-like. “You may know me as Jordyn Jameson, but there are quite a few folks in New York who know me as Shay Sinclair.”

  I scrunched my eyes together. “So your name isn’t Jordyn Jameson?”

  “It is,” she said. “Shay is a pseudonym.”

  “Why do you need a pseudonym?”

  She smiled, but it wasn’t one of those endearing smiles. Nor was it one of those cute, flirty smiles. This smile was stern, as if it held secrets that she wouldn’t dare tell even though she clearly had something she needed to tell me. “You’re looking at the brain behind the largest organic edible business in the state of New York,” she said.

  Edible business? Call me slow, but it was taking my brain a little while to catch up. “By edibles, do you mean …”

  “Marijuana.” she clarified. “For seven years, I’ve been baking, creating, and selling delicious edibles in New York. My ingredients are all organic, and according to some of my top customers, the taste is outstanding. What started off small is now an entire empire.” Her voice got lower as she leaned toward me. “And you, my dear asshole, got in the way of expanding my business exactly five weeks ago.”

  She sat back in her chair, crossed her legs, and clasped her hands in her lap. I didn’t see a hint of the nervousness I’d previously seen when she said, “You may want to fuck me, but in a way, you already have.” She held my gaze, and although I wanted to say something, I was speechless. “You should know that I don’t fuck with my money,” she said. “So it seems to me like you and I have an issue, and I hate having issues when it comes to business.”

  I swallowed a few times, sure that my Adam’s apple looked like a damn bobble head. But I wasn’t swallowing because I was nervous. True, the way she was speaking made me feel like two muscled security guards were going to approach at any moment and give me a good ass whooping if I said something wrong, but I wasn’t worried about that. I was more shocked than anything.

  In that moment, gone was my soon-to-be-sister-in-law’s best friend who was hesitant to trust me and avoided my advances. She’d been replaced by this sexy siren who was much more of a boss bitch than I’d ever given her credit for.

  I was the one in my family who’d been in more trouble than I cared to recount. I was the one everyone deemed the fuck-up. The one who’d made something of himself despite having all of the cards stacked against him. I was the one who’d gone to county jail more than a few times, until I’d had a heart-to-heart with my dad about getting my shit together before I ended up being a statistic and in prison like so many other young black men.

  Yet, here I was, staring at a beautiful, feisty woman who’d starred in all my naughty fantasies lately, and she was telling me that she was more dangerous than I’d ever been. I was no damn angel and would never claim to be. But Jordyn? Jordyn was making me feel like a fucking saint. A goddamn Mother Theresa compared to whatever the hell she was into. She was running a weed operation, and whether she’d call it that or not, that’s exactly how I saw it.

  I ran my fingers down my face as I tried to make sense of everything she’d told me. I wasn’t a virgin to the law, so I was pretty damn sure her business wasn’t legal.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked after several minutes of silence.

  What am I thinking? I was thinking a whole lot of shit, but I didn’t even know how to verbalize everything going on in my mind right now. So, I said the first thought I could formulate. The first thought that kept placing itself at the forefront of my brain.

  “This shit sounds unreal.” I watched her shift in her chair, but her face didn’t give away any sign that she was uncomfortable. “You’ll have to elaborate on how I’m messing with your money, but I will warn you, that if you thought telling me you’re an organic drug dealer would make me back off, you’re mistaken.” I leaned closer to her, glad to see her breath catch, breaking a little bit of her cool. “I’ve always known you were a bad bitch, so if anything, I want to fuck you even more now.” And that was real talk.

  Seven

  Jordyn

  An organic drug dealer? I’d never thought of it that way, but clearly, Crayson did. Based off the way he was eye fucking me, I’d even dare to say he liked what he’d heard.

  I’d imagined this moment a lot over the past few weeks, but never would I have thought our chemistry would be even more potent than usual after telling him a secret I vowed to never tell any of our friends.

  There were only two things that I often thought that people needed to know about me. One, I was nobody’s bitch and if you screwed me over, eventually, you’d get yours. My ex had his coming and the verdict was still out on Crayson since we had a lot more to discuss.

  Two, the shit that all those horoscopes said about Geminis was true. I definitely had two personalities. In the case of this conversation I’d started with Crayson, I’d walked into his cigar lounge as Jordyn, but now, he was meeting Shay. Granted, Jordyn and Shay were the same person, but Shay operated differently than Jordyn.

  Jordyn was the bar owner who baked tasty desserts that paired nicely with the wine, beer, and spirits she carried in her bar. Shay, on the other hand, had built an edibles empire by creating delicious treats laced in weed, guaranteed to tease your pallet and get you high in a different way than liquor did.

  I was proud of both businesses, but there was no way I could run both and keep my sanity if I didn’t compartmentalize. Doing so had made me more successful in both industries than I’d ever imagined. However, I also wasn’t naïve enough to think what I was doing wasn’t dangerous. I’d already learned that it was, but I’d been through my fair share of shit in life, so there wasn’t much that I wasn’t prepared for.

  “Is what you’re doing legal?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Medical marijuana became legal a few years ago, but recreational use in the state of New York isn’t legalized yet. It’s getting there, though, and I’m sure you know other states like Maine, California, and Colorado have legalized recreational use.”

  I could see the questions beginning to formulate in Crayson’s mind, and although I wanted him to understand why I’d gone into this business, I didn’t want to dive into everything. Getting too deep into the when did I get into this and how did I get into this would force me to have to try and explain why did I get into this. I wasn’t ready to explain why I’d started this business just yet.

  “I know you have a lot of questions, but I need to tell you what your business has in common with mine.”

  He gave me a confused look. “I guess I can see what cigars and weed have in common since you smoke both, but I’m confused on the business thing.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t go on street corners selling weed.”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “But you were thinking it.” He didn’t deny it, so I continued by telling him, “Being in the edibles business means just what it sounds like. I lace all of the tasty treats I bake with marijuana, and my clientele are not the type who are on street corners trying to find the next dealer to give them a hit. That’s not what I do. That’s not who they are.”

  “Okay, I believe you.” His eyes studied mine. “So, what do you have to discuss with me that has to do with my cigar lounge?”

  I sighed, mentally giving myself a pep talk to dive into the rest of this conversation by asking, “Did you know the owner of Blackberry Restaurant before he passed? Mr. Briggs?”

  He shook his head. “I knew him a little. Why?”

  “I knew he wanted to retire by the end of last year, so he and I had talked business. He was going to sell me his restaurant. But before I could do that, he passed away suddenly. I’d just gone to his funeral a couple weeks before I went to Colorado, the same trip in which you told me you brought the place. Which didn’t make sense because it wasn’t for sale.”

  “I know his grandson, Stephen,” Crayson said. “We played ball together in some pick-up games a few years back and we kept in touch. He and his wife live in Florida now and he contacted me when Mr. Briggs passed away. Said he needed to sell the place quickly and I mentioned that I was researching properties to open my third cigar lounge, Undefined Sanctum. The rest fell into place.”

  So he wasn’t buying the place as some messed up way to get close to me. “Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t actively seek to get close to me?”

  He cleared his throat. “Honestly?”

  “Honestly,” I repeated.

  “Before Stephen had contacted me, I’d been looking at the property one block over. A part of me wanted to open my first Brooklyn lounge, and you’re in a great location. Another part of me felt like finding a place closer to your bar wouldn’t hurt since that meant I’d get to see you more.”

  His words should have annoyed me, but they didn’t. I appreciated his honesty, but I still had a problem. “Come on, I have to show you something.” Rising from the chair, I motioned for him to follow me as I walked to the stairs that led to the basement. I cut on the light and began walking down.

  “Hold up,” he said at the top of the stairs. “This isn’t where you trap me downstairs, cut my dick off, and bury me alive where no one will ever find me, is it?”

  I frowned. “If I was trying to kill you, why would I cut your dick off first? Why not just kill you and get it over with?”

  Crayson glanced at where we were just sitting. “I’m sorry, but did you not just sit me down for what I thought was going to be simple conversation, but instead, you tell me you’re the biggest organic drug dealer in New York? If you ever kill a guy, no doubt you’re cutting off his dick.” His face grew serious. “Wait! Have you ever killed anyone?”

  “What?” I yelled. “Of course not! How could you even think that?” I hit him on his shoulder and was met with solid muscle.

  “Just asking,” he said with a shrug. “So you’re not a murderer. Just an organic drug dealer then.”

  “Ugh,” I groaned. “Stop calling me a drug dealer.”

  “Okay, female drug lord.”

  “Eww. No! I hate that.”

  “Drug kingpin.”

  “Would you stop saying the word drug! Marijuana isn’t a drug.”

  He laughed. “Why don’t you ask the police force of New York if they’d agree with you on that.”

  I placed my hands on my hips. “Please stop with the crappy nicknames. You’re not good at it.”

  Ignoring what I said, he placed his hand on his chin as if he was giving this a lot of thought. “Would Marijuana Queenpin work better?”

  I shook my head. “You’re an idiot. Just follow me and I promise it will make sense soon.” I had to hold in my nervous laugh because, quite frankly, there was nothing to laugh about. All his nicknames painted me out to be a drug dealer. “I should slap you across the back of your head for disrespecting me with those obnoxious nicknames.”

  I briefly turned to look up at him as we descended the stairs. His cocky smile was still in place, so I should have known he was going to say something like, “The only way I’m letting you slap me is if you give me the honor of bending you over this railing to slap that juicy ass of yours.”

  And just like that, the heat flowing between us was reignited, even though I wasn’t sure it had ever been put out in the first place. “We’re here,” I said, approaching in the back of the basement, farthest to the left.

  “Nice,” Crayson remarked. “I can totally see why you wanted to bring me to this nice white wall.”

  Ignoring his sarcasm, I dove into my explanation. “Mr. Briggs was actually a friend of my grandfather’s,” I said. “That’s how I’d found out about the property next door being for sale. I grew up in Maine and my family still lives there, but originally, my grandfather is from New York. He and Mr. Briggs kept in touch, so I reached out to him when I moved here over seven years ago. Two years after that, I purchased my bar.”

  Crayson nodded his head. “You said you’d been in the edibles business for seven years, so you did that first.”

  “Yes, I did,” I stated, surprised he’d remember how long I’d been in business given everything else we’d discussed.

  “It’s a small world. I didn’t know Steven’s dad well, but I also wasn’t aware we both knew the Briggs family.”

  “Mr. Briggs was a great business neighbor,” I said. “But I realized after five years, my bar and business were expanding and I was running out of space. I thought I would have to move into a bigger location, but then he told me he was selling. However, that wasn’t what sold me.”