It took Han a few confused beats to realize what was happening. “You’ve never worn an underwire bra.”
She shook her head. “What’s the point when wearing a bikini means….”
“Yes, yes, you can always jump in the ocean,” he finished for her with a laugh.
The sound of that laughter after dealing with all of Victor’s misery shocked him. He’d felt so pessimistic when he first walked into his bedroom, but here he was laughing after just a few moments with her. Jasmine truly was sunshine, bottled in one sexy package.
“You okay?” she asked, tilting her head over the bra she was trying to deconstruct. “You’ve got a funny look on your face.”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Han decided at the same moment he said it. “Don’t unpack your bag….”
Jasmine’s scrunched her forehead and lowered the bra.
“But I thought…” she began to say.
At the same moment, he informed her, “Tomorrow, we are going to Delaware.”
“Oh, okay,” Jasmine answered, her eyes shifting to the side. Then she asked. “What’s in Delaware?”
The answer to her question was another change of plan. Han had decided on the plane ride over to leave her here, safe in their impenetrable Rhode Island fortress, while he did the meet and greet with the president of the Ruthless Reapers and the leader of the DE Reyes street gang.
But as they laughed together in the closet, he decided that he’d rather she be safe by his side than anywhere else.
“I believe I promised her some attention to make up for not feeding her for the last twelve hours,” Han said instead of answering her question about Delaware. “Is she still hungry?”
The way Jasmine’s eyes darkened told him she was just as ravenous for him as he was for her. And he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
The image of Victor curled up on the floor of his shower would stay with Han for a long time.
But that wasn’t him. Not yet. So he decided not to think about what he was falling into with his surfer girl as he carried her to his bed.
25
JAZZ
“Who the hell are you, and what have you done with Han?”
The joy I’d found at discovering a breakfast buffet in the formal dining room greatly diminished when Phantom came up behind me. I froze in the middle of ladling some congee that looked like a Chinese take on the rice porridge my mom made into a bowl.
Han was still asleep, but even the six-hour time difference hadn’t allowed me to sleep past nine am. However, I might have thought twice about coming downstairs if I knew the Ogre King would come in here and try to start something with me this early in the morning.
“Um, what did Han say?” I asked in careful response to his question.
He glared at me like I’d side-stepped some invisible trap. Then he started throwing piles of breakfast food onto his plate as he answered, “He said you were friends.”
“Then let’s go with that.” I placed a couple of bacon pieces on my own plate beside the bowl of congee—also some eggs that had ham mixed in, not Spam—nope, definitely not in Hawaii anymore.
“Han doesn’t have friends like you,” the Ogre King answered.
“You mean Black?” I asked with a cringe. Because I really didn’t know how to handle his potentially racist answer with a head full of fuzzy jet lag.
“I mean a woman,” Phantom answered like I was an idiot. “Bringing a woman home with him, letting them stay overnight in his room—he doesn’t do that shit.”
“Hmm, so he told me….” I set down my plate and took a seat at the nearby dining table. “I’m not sure whether to feel complimented or sorry for, like, every other woman Han slept with.”
Phantom sat down on the other side of the dining room table and glared at me over the pile of food on his plate. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I don’t know how to answer your question,” I admitted. “Believe me. I don’t want to be having this conversation with you. If I could say the right thing to make it stop, I would.”
His glare slit even narrower. “Are you always this honest?”
“Should I not be?” I asked. “Is honesty also something Han doesn’t do?”
Phantom looked at me for a hot, angry second, then, for some reason, said, “Okay.” As if it was the final answer to whatever questions he had.
“Okay,” I answered, my voice as confused as his was declarative.
Fortunately, more men filed in, effectively ending our one-on-one. It was the dead of summer, but they must have had the utmost faith in the higher power of air conditioning. All of them were dressed in suits, ties, and wingtips—not a sandal or open collar to be found like their Hawaii counterparts. However, the other STs all gave me side-eye as they headed to the buffet.
