Addicted to Mr. Parks (The Park #2) (31 page)

Okay…that was weird. “Yep.” I smiled, giving them a quick glance. “Grew them all by myself.”

Nadia laughed and flicked her long hair behind her shoulder. “So you’re Wade’s new girlfriend? The media will have a ball when they know he’s finally attached.”

I couldn’t help my eye roll. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. I don’t think you realise how big he is, do you?” Her brow arched as did mine.

“Oh, I really do,” I hinted.

She chuckled, flopping a hand. “You know, I’ve been watching the two of you together. He looks at you the way we all want him to look at us.” She sighed but not maliciously. But it did make me backtrack for a second. Did he look at me in a way I didn’t see but others did? As usual, I didn’t entertain the complement.

“Why would
you
want him to look at you the way he looks at me?” The possessive streak came from nowhere, but I tamed it. A little.

“Are you serious?” Her sparkly, green eyes sprang wide. “We’ve all had dreams about Wade Parks becoming
the one
. My mother is Harriet’s best friend.” She peeked over her shoulder, so I followed her gaze and saw Harriet entertaining guests. “They tried to set us up for years, but he wasn’t interested.”

I became even more suspicious and didn’t cloak it. “Why are you telling me this?”

She laughed, the sound coming from the back of her throat. That could definitely get irritating. “Don’t worry. I’m not a woman scorned. Just saying.” She shrugged a bare shoulder. “You’re a lucky girl.”

Jasmine suddenly caught my eye as I glanced behind Nadia. She was chatting to a group of girls, showing off her brilliant white teeth as she laughed. Her long hair fell like black silk down her back, and her green eyes shone under the lights. She wore a stunning sleeveless, chiffon dress in canary yellow that had an incredible chapel train.

Nadia caught me starring and followed my gaze. “Good luck with the sister.” She jerked her thumb. “She’s a bitch.”

She was warning me? “Thanks for the warning, but I can handle bitches. I’m one myself.”

“High five to that.” She laughed, actually slapping my palm with hers.

“Princess, everything all right?” Parks came back into my space, slipping his arm around my waist and pulling me in tight.

“Yeah, just chatting.”

Parks spotted Nadia and nodded, stiff and disinterested. “Nadia.”

“Wade.” Her smile seemed to hide a thousand different meanings, and it made me uncomfortable.

“Sasha’s here. Have you seen her yet?” Her tone
was
definitely hiding a meaning, and it rubbed me up the wrong way. Who the hell was Sasha?

“No,” Parks shut her down. “Neither do I wish to. Good-bye, Nadia.”

“Who’s Sasha?” It came out of my mouth immediately when we walked away from Nadia.

“No one you should be concerned about. And stay away from Nadia,” he warned. “Come on. We need to make our way to the dining area.”

A live orchestra played soft classical music on the stage, and I listened blissfully as Parks pulled out a seat for me, then sat beside me. We were at a table with six strangers. Well, strangers to me. Of course Parks knew them and wasted no time in introducing me. My mind, though, wasn’t on the other guests or listening to what they were talking about. Neither was it on the delicious, out-of-this-world, five-course meal we were shortly served. It was on Sasha. I hated not knowing anything to do with Parks. I couldn’t be kept in the dark, not anymore.

“Mr. Parks, please do introduce me to your lady.”

I turned my head and saw a stunning woman who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere standing just behind Parks. She was a little older than him. Her highlighted hair was styled in a perfect up-do, and her red dress clung to her curves. She was pretty, except for one obvious feature ruining her face. Annoyingly, her hands came down onto his shoulders and remained there even when Parks tried to shrug her off.

“Evelyn. This is Saskia Maloof. A wife of a business partner of mine. Saskia, this is Evelyn Banks, my girlfriend.”

Parks’s introduction was all formal and well-practiced like everything was in his life. Especially at events like this one. But just because my body was draped in luxury items and I was expected to behave a certain way, it didn’t mean I was going to.

“Evelyn, it’s so nice to meet you.” She held out a hand, her long fingers decorated in expensive rings, offering a handshake. My hand was stiff, and I narrowed my eyes at her patronizing attitude. Well, I wasn’t going to let her look down her nose at me.

“You too.” I gaped. “And wow, your lips are huge.”

Parks almost choked on his watermelon, and Saskia’s face dropped in an instant. Her lips had humongous fillers inside them, and it made her look like Donald Duck. I couldn’t help it.

“Oh, um. I had a bit of trouble with my plastic surgeon.” She touched her lips gently with her fingertips. “Nothing more surgery can’t fix.” She tried to shrug it off calmly, but I persisted.

“Why would you want to look like that, though? I don’t under—”

Parks nudged my knee with his as a warning, and Saskia made out that someone had caught her eye from across the room and excused herself.

“Evelyn, you and that mouth of yours.”

My smirk was involuntary. “So you’re telling me they were nice?”

“No, but it’s not polite to point it out.”

Giving a slight, unapologetic shrug, I returned to my glass of water. “She was holding your shoulders quite comfortably.”

Parks narrowed his darkening green eyes my way, warning me not to ask what he damn well knew I was about to say. But I did.

“Have you slept with her?”

Before I’d even finished the question, his jaw clenched because I disregarded his warning.

“She is a married woman, Evelyn. Ruining a family is not my thing.”

Maybe he didn’t sleep with her, but there was something he wasn’t telling me.

“Then has she tried it on with you? Kissed you?”

He knew I would go on until he told me, so he spat it out, his voice low and hissing in my ear. “She sucked my cock. Happy now?”

No. I was not fucking happy. Swallowing hard on his words, I moved away from him, suddenly feeling sick and despising my inquisitive streak. The thought of any woman’s lips around that part of him, a part that was rightly mine, turned my stomach.

“You just let her suck your cock for fun?” Why on earth was I still lingering on the subject? Talk about being a punishment whore.

“No.” His expression was more than warning me to stop asking, and his eyes were clouding over. If he wasn’t in the presence of others, there was no doubt he would have punished me for going on.

“Then what?” I snapped. “Why don’t you tell me things?”

“You want me to tell you?” he snarled, making me blink at how angry he was becoming.

“Yes,” I hissed. My brain needed to know, but my heart was begging me to stop asking.

“Fine.” Swigging back his watermelon and slamming his glass onto the table, he discreetly pulled on my forearm and leaned into me.

“I was going to pull out of a business deal with her husband years ago. She begged me not to because they needed the deal. I was a cocky motherfucker back then, young, so much money I thought I was God. I told her to beg me and suck my cock while I was on the phone with her husband. Then I gave him the deal as she made me come. Now—” leaning over, he pulled my chin to face him, because I was full-on shocked and staring wide-eyed. He was a gentlemen outside the bedroom, so never did I think he would do something like that.

“Do you want to learn more of my past with women, or will you listen to my warning and let it go? Because I can also tell you that the woman standing over there in the red dress—” my head turned to see a stupidly gorgeous, curvaceous, raven-haired woman in a red ball gown, “—is Sasha. She was the woman I used to fuck when I’d come home.” He enhanced the word
fuck
and watched me wince, but he went on. “She let me dominate her, humiliate her. Completely subdue her. She was helpless. Never asked questions. Never wanted more. Never argued with my discipline or angry spanks. She loved everything I could give to her. Everything I fucked her with.”

“Enough.” I held up my palm to stop him talking. Image after image of him being with that woman tormented my brain, and I hated myself for pushing him into telling me. My heart and mind suddenly realised the full meaning of what Parks had said to me so many times. He said he wanted to protect me from his past because he didn’t want to hurt me. He was right.

“Now do you see why you don’t need to know all this shit?”

I glanced at him through my eyelashes, hating that I was looking at him slightly differently, if only for a second. He had a past. So did I. I couldn’t judge him for it even if it did cut me to the core.

Relaxing, he pulled me onto his lap, ignoring the glances he got. “Princess, they are my past. You are my now. Let me live in the moments we have together, not the moments that haunt me.”

Having to look up at the spotlights on the ceiling of the marquee, I pushed back tears. “I want that too.”

“Good.” He inhaled deeply into my hair as he caressed my cheek. “I think I need to teach you a lesson.” The whisper was dark but seducing. His face remained expressionless because of the company we were in, but I saw the salacious heat in his eyes.

“For what?” Obviously, I knew.

“For being curious.” He covered his hand with mine. “Why is it that when a man shows a woman one side to him, she immediately has an urge to see all the other sides? Isn’t one side of me enough for you?”

I glanced into his eyes, softening to his response. Even though his words were heart-warming, it was his way of deterring me. I wasn’t stupid and didn’t need to contemplate it before answering. It was evident. I craved to know all sides of Wade Parks, not just the ones he showed me. I craved to see his dark sides, light sides, family sides, ex sides. Actually, scrap the ex sides.

“I am yours, Princess.” He kissed me again, telling me that was the end of the discussion and let me get back into my own seat. “Now stop meddling.”

I didn’t see it as meddling. It was curiosity. And neither was it the end of the conversation for me. Stupidly.

“I just don’t understand how you get to know
all
about me, yet all I get to know about you is how your dick works.”

Ouch. The lashing of my cruel tongue sent Parks recoiling back a touch, wincing. “Carry on speaking to me that way, Evelyn, and I will spank you right over this fucking table.” The twitch of his eye was the only indication he was angry, but I knew he’d never want to cause a scene. Glutton for punishment or not, I wasn’t going to test out that theory, though. He was back to being the Hulk, and I loved it. And hated it. It made him fiercely sexual and dangerous. And I loved fierce, sexual, and dangerous.

“What was so special about Sasha?” I spat her name childishly.

“Leave it, Princess. Like I said, she was a bit on the side. But not now.” Swallowing down his building rage, he gulped at another glass of watermelon juice the waiter had topped up. He was probably wishing it was something stronger.

“Why not now? Because I am?”

“Don’t you dare compare yourself to a woman I have no feelings for!” Parks growled, warning me. However, visualizing that very thought sent a deep ache to my chest. I ached every time I unleashed that part of me that kept me strong. Ached when the weaker side of me allowed me to feel and think of all those women Parks had before me, even though it was the past and as a believer of keeping things there, I knew I should never have judged him on it. The feelings I was building for him, though, outshone my drive to keep that thought afloat. In that moment, he was mine, he belonged to me. He was my support. My calm in the storm and my solidarity. No one was ever going to take that away from me.

With that in mind, I pushed away my rebellious thoughts. “I see as you mine, Wade. And I don’t want anyone to take you away from me. Not her. Not no one. Ever.”

The sudden change in my behaviour made Parks blink, whiplashed by my moods. “No one will ever come between us, Princess.” He firmly grasped my hand and pulled me up and out of my seat, pressing me into his chest. “Now, we’re going to enjoy the rest of the night like a happy couple. And tonight, I will fuck you so hard, you’ll forget that this conversation ever happened.”

I gulped as my pulse leaped and my clit pounded.

“Now, let’s dance.”

Dance? Suddenly, it was
him
giving
me
whiplash.

As he playfully led me to the dance floor, I got ready to kick my dancing shoes into action but was stopped halfway there by
the twin
.

“Jasmine. How are you?” He reluctantly let go of my hand and pulled his sister in for a hug when she purposely walked in front of us. It was the only loving gesture I’d ever seen from him with someone other than me.

“I’ve missed you.” Her full, pink lips pouted as she acted the devoted sister. “Why do you stay away so long?”

Taking my hand back in his, he became stiff all of a sudden. “You know why.” I didn’t quite catch the expression Parks made, but Jasmine did, and she retreated.