Chapter Three: His Uncle's Name

Jennifer pinched the card between her fingers and spun around, hiding it behind her back. Her heart slammed against her ribs, and from the way he was watching her, she was almost certain he could hear it.

Carter's mouth curved into a flat smile that never reached his eyes. "That's not how you hide the evidence, Jennifer. You're like a kid caught with chocolate smeared across her mouth, insisting she never touched the bar."

He clicked his tongue and took a step closer, watching her scramble to make sense of what she'd just seen.

"What did you find?" he asked quietly.

That she'd done the single most reckless thing of her entire life. That the one night she'd finally let herself be careless, it turned out to be with exactly the wrong person. She didn't know how to say it, or if she should say anything at all.

"My card?" he continued, something gleaming briefly in his eyes, smug and knowing in a way that made her stomach twist. "You might as well say it out loud, Jennifer Reyes."

The card slipped from her fingers and hit the floor. She didn't notice.

He knew her name.

"How—" Her voice climbed an octave. She never remembered telling him anything last night beyond the first syllable.

"It was short enough to remember," he said, unbothered. "And you never managed a fake one fast enough to sound convincing."

He slid a hand into the pocket of his sweatpants, low on his hips, and she dragged her eyes back up to his face, refusing to let them wander anywhere else.

"Did you go through my things?" she demanded. "My pockets?"

She kept her hospital ID in her scrub pants out of habit, whenever she wasn't at the clinic.

"Northgate Memorial?" He said the name like it was casual conversation. "No. But it just so happened I picked up your phone in time to see a text from my nephew, asking if you'd made it home last night." He said it like small talk, watching her face carefully as he did. "Gerald."

He'd texted her while she was in this man's bed, passed out after being thoroughly ruined by his uncle.

"So." Carter drawled the word out, savoring it. "When exactly were you going to tell me that I fucked my sweet nephew's little fiancée? After I did it again this morning, on the kitchen counter? Or maybe against the bathroom sink?"

Her breath staggered as he closed the distance between them, his steps slow and measured, like he was testing exactly how far she could be pushed before she bolted.

"You know," he said, voice dipping low, "I never got the chance to bury my head between your legs. Slip my tongue inside you and watch you writhe, struggling not to scream as I make you come with my tongue."

Jennifer couldn't breathe. Her body shook in tiny, involuntary tremors, her lips parting uselessly around words that refused to form.

"I have some time on my hands," he continued. "I'm sure we could squeeze in another hour before you go back to playing the dutiful fiancée. I doubt he'll suspect a thing while you're sunbathing on whatever romantic trip he finally got around to booking." He shrugged loosely. "Or maybe you'll spend that whole trip thinking about how your legs shook while I had you bent over."

"Tell me." He was standing directly in front of her now, the smile gone, replaced with something harder. "Which do you prefer? Lying there while my nephew makes love to you, or feeling me stretch you open?"

Jennifer found her voice as a wave of fury cut clean through the haze. "You" She stuttered, but the words that followed came out clear enough "I had no idea who you were until I found your card. Why would I ever sleep with my fiancé's uncle? And if I wanted to do something that reckless, even if I was that stupid, why would it be with the black sheep of this entire family?"

His gaze went dark. "What?"

She stepped back, putting distance between them, breathing air that no longer smelled like him. "What I do is my own business. It was a one-night stand. A mutual decision. Now unless you're offering coffee, I should go."

"What," Carter said, voice dropping cold, "do you think my dear nephew would say if he found out I was inside his fiancée while he was busy booking some romantic getaway?"

His voice stopped her mid-step.

She glanced over her shoulder, but he'd already crossed the space between them. His hand closed around her arm, fingers digging in, eyes gone hard. "I almost believed it last night. That this was one reckless decision. But I was wrong, wasn't I? You like this. Even if it means hurting a man who actually cares about you."

Care.

She could have ripped her own eardrums out rather than listen to another word out of his mouth.

She wrenched her arm, but he held on, yanking her flush against his chest instead, thumb and forefinger tipping her chin up. "Did I do a good job? Compared to him?" His thumb dragged slowly across her bottom lip. "Does sweet Gerald make you come the way I did?"

Jennifer hated it. Hated every syllable out of his mouth, knowing exactly what he was doing, taunting her, mocking her, and hating her own body even more for the way it betrayed her anyway. A soft, involuntary gasp slipped free, and her nipples pulled tight beneath her shirt.

He heard it. His brows furrowed for half a second before he let her go entirely, leaving her to stumble and nearly lose her footing.

"Get out," he said, turning away from her like she'd already stopped being worth looking at.

Get out? He was the one throwing insults, backing her into a wall with his hands and his mouth, and now he wanted her gone?

She opened her mouth to give him exactly the piece of her mind he deserved, when her phone buzzed in her pocket.

Jennifer dug it out, and the name lighting up the screen made her stomach drop straight through the floor.

Marion — Dad's office.

Marion had never called her. Not once, in all these years. So for her to be calling

now meant it was something important.