He faked an exaggerated, wounded expression as he held his hand to his chest and put buns on the table. I hated to admit it, but my salmon looked perfect with a teriyaki glaze that made my mouth water.
Somehow, I doubted he’d coincidentally made one of my favorites.
How the man knew so much about us was beyond me, but he knew I loved rock music judging by his arrogant smirk when he met my eyes.
I did not believe in violence.
“That’s Mommy’s favorite!” Axel said helpfully as he sat down at the table and grabbed a bun to squirt ketchup on.
“Well, at least she has good taste in one thing,” Ryker returned, ignoring the glare I settled on him. It was like he was immune to the very glare that had often sent Chad retreating from the room.
He used the spatula to place my salmon on my plate next to his, pulling out my chair like he was a gentleman and not a brute who’d come home with a questionable red stain on his dick.
Super classy.
Blood or lipstick, there was nothing gentlemanly about that.
“Tell me if it’s good, Tesoro. I’ve never made salmon before,” he said, patting my seat for me to drop into. I did as expected, perching my ass on the very edge of the chair as I considered the conspicuous lack of knives on the table. It was like he knew his days were numbered.
“I need a knife to cut Ines cheeseburger into bites,” I said through clenched teeth. He raised his eyebrows at me, handing Ines her own cheeseburger that she promptly picked up like her brother and devoured.
“You were saying?” Ryker said, making me turn back to him at the amused sound in his voice.
“Hm. I always thought meat was more satisfying when it was chopped to bits.” Where I might have expected him to squirm, like most men did when faced with the even casual prospect of meatball mutilation, he just grinned at me in that dark way of his.
Like my threats were adorable.
There was something wrong with the man.
He settled in to talk to my kids about their day, talking about all the things they’d done with Dante and asking if they would like a playdate with his kids.
It was just what I needed, to meet another mob wife.
The way he stared at me told me he knew that as soon as the kids were in bed, all bets would be off. It was just a shame that his eyes seemed to light in excitement, like the coming confrontation would be entertaining.
Heaven help me.
I didn’t believe in violence.
✽✽✽
Once we closed the door to Axel’s room behind us, Ryker gave me a manic grin and turned to stride toward the master bedroom. I had a feeling the soundproofing there hadn’t just been for sex, because he had to know that wasn’t on the table.
Ever.
He’d be lucky if I let him keep his meatballs.
The door was open when I stalked in behind him, and he reached behind his head to tug his shirt off his shoulders and toss it to the closet. Standing in the center of the room, he crossed his arms over that chest that made my mouth water. Even as I hated that the conversation needed to happen in such close proximity to a bed, I pushed the door closed behind me as I entered. I couldn’t stand the thought that when all was said and done, I’d be sleeping in the same bed as him.
Ryker did not seem the type to tolerate being kicked to the couch, and I knew he wouldn’t let me sleep there either. After a year of sleeping alone, I’d never thought I might miss the ability to sleep alone. But given the filthy feeling the thought of him having touched another woman left me with, I wanted that space.
“Well, Tesoro? I’m fairly certain that you have something to say?” Ryker asked, his lips tipping up into a smirk I wanted to beat off his face.
“You came home with some other woman’s lipstick all over your dick, and you touched my daughter with that all over you,” I hissed through gritted teeth. I hadn’t wanted to voice that, hadn’t wanted to hint at it being anything other than blood. But the anger that tore through my insides felt toxic, like if I didn’t shove it at him, I’d explode.
Because how fucking dare he?
I shoved him back with two hands on his chest, wincing when he didn’t fucking move. It felt like shoving a building, but his hands came up to trap mine against him. He stared down at me, as if daring me to try it again, and his eyes blazed with a mixture of heat and fury. “You think I let another woman touch my cock?”
“I don’t know what I think!” I snarled, jerking my arms back from him and trying to get free, but he held me steady. His grip only tightened with every second I struggled, pulling me tight until his face was directly over mine and not a spare inch remained between us. “It was blood or lipstick, and all that matters to me is that you let my daughter hug you after you were out doing fuck knows what! I can’t stop you from doing anything. That’s obvious. But the least you could do is shower and change before you come home instead of exposing my kids to whatever fucking diseases—”
“Enough!” he growled, and my nails dug into his chest with my answering rage. “I was not with another woman.”
I swallowed, because even if I felt relief that he hadn’t been out getting laid, that meant he’d made someone bleed. I pushed away, trying to put some space between us as I processed that information. Ryker had always been honest that he wasn’t a good man, but somehow it felt completely different to be confronted with direct evidence of it.
My face went cold as I looked up at him, and his eyes softened momentarily, until I tried to pull away. “You hurt someone,” I whispered, the sound seeming too loud in the room that had gone silent but for the quiet feedback from the audio monitor.
“No, Sunshine. I killed him.”
Twenty
Calla
The words echoed in my head repeatedly like one of my dad’s old, scratched records.
Killed.
He’d killed someone.
I staggered back a step when he released my hands, staring at him as my chest heaved. “What is wrong with you? Why?”
“Because I’m good at it. Because I enjoy it. Because sometimes the scum of the Earth need to be put down like the filthy dogs they are,” he growled, prowling closer to me as I backed away.
“You killed someone,” I whispered, “and you enjoyed it?”
His hand touched my cheek, his thumb dragging over the skin there like he so often did. As he stared at the contact, his face filled with awe. “He was far from the first, and he won’t be the last, Sunshine. Not everything can be black and white. Sometimes, people deserve to die.”
My chest rattled with a sob as his breath ruffled my hair and he pulled me against his chest and tugged me tight. “I can’t do this.” My voice was a broken rasp, trembling with the shivers that consumed me.
“You will. I only kill men who deserve it. Never women or children. I know that probably doesn’t matter to you right now, but I promise you that once you understand, it will.”
“Please, Ryker,” I begged. “Just let us go. Don’t make me part of this. I can’t be a part of this.” I shook my head, trying to push off his chest and free myself desperately from his grip.
My kids lived in the same house as a serial killer.
“You have no choice,” he said, that deep voice going stern once more as his patience wore out. I had no illusions that he would tolerate my disobedience continuously. No matter his words, it was almost certain that if I became a bigger liability than I was worth, he’d get rid of me.
One of his hands lifted from my waist to cup my face, and I flinched away from him, staring at his hands in horror. His hands were covered in blood, no matter how much he scrubbed them clean.
“You are mine,” he grunted, shifting my hands so that my nails released some pressure from the skin of his chest. The angry red indents drew my eyes in, and I momentarily regretted that I’d hurt him, but I found that I liked seeing my marks on his skin. I hated that he’d turned me into such a bloodthirsty woman that I wanted him to bleed.
But he didn’t seem bothered by it either.
“I am not!” I yelled in his face.
“You are, just like I’m yours. No other woman will ever get near my cock, Sunshine. Only you.”
“You think I give the first shit about other women now?! You’re a murderer! The only thing I want to do with your cock is cut it off,” I growled at him, and his face twisted into a triumphant smirk for a moment.
Then his lips crashed down on mine, thrusting his tongue into my mouth to cut off my protest. I hesitated only a second before I bit it sharply, and he drew back with a grin as he reached up to touch his mouth. “Do not fucking touch me,” I warned him, wincing when the hand on my cheek moved to slide into my hair and grab a fistful.
Yanking my head back, he ran his teeth over the column of my throat. “I am done waiting. I’m going to take it all, Tesoro. And you’re going to give it to me,” he warned as he nipped at the delicate skin there. When his eyes met mine as his lips touched mine gently, they blazed like blue flames that I knew I would never escape.
He’d set me on fire and burn me alive.
I moaned when his teeth sank into my bottom lip, feeling like every nip of his teeth on me chipped away further at my defenses until he could meld his soul with mine. Like there would be no stopping him once he got what he wanted, like he really would take it all until I had nothing left. “Stop,” I hissed, the sound muffled without being able to move my bottom lip with the way his teeth held it like the beast he was.
“No,” he answered as he finally released my lip that felt swollen and bruised from his onslaught. “You don’t want me to stop. You don’t have to be ashamed of wanting me, of wanting all the things I’m going to do to you.”
I moaned again when his tongue stroked inside my mouth teasingly. The moment his pillow lips sealed over mine, I was done for. My arms abandoned the flesh of his chest, reaching up to wrap around his neck as his hand slid down to my ass and he lifted me into his arms. I squeaked into his mouth, making him groan into mine. The hand in my hair abandoned it, sliding down to my thighs and jerking my dress up as he pressed me into the wall.
I didn’t care about the way the bricks bit into the flesh of my back or the way my hair snagged on the ragged grooves. Not when his hand grabbed the strap of my panties and tore the fabric away from my pussy. His hand slid between my thighs, dragging a finger through my slit and sliding it inside me. At that first contact, the first touch of him against the most sensitive part of me, I didn’t know if he groaned louder than I moaned, but I could hear the glide of him through me. I was too wet and shame crept in.
It disappeared when he pulled his finger free from me, and his hand went to jerking down his sweatpants. The blunt head of his cock touched me, the cool bite of metal tickled my skin as he lined himself up and slid himself against me. Through me. His mouth never left mine, kissing me mindlessly in a tangle of his tongue that I knew he would mimic with his cock if I didn’t stop him.
I should have stopped him. Should have thought with my head and not the ridiculous need that he built in my center with every glide.
If I’d known how much it would hurt when he notched his head at my entrance and drove forward, I probably would have stopped him.
He split me open, taking me with hard pumps as he forced me to stretch around him. I cried into his mouth, and he pulled back to look down at me. “Too much,” I whimpered, and I shoved a hand between us to touch his stomach and get him to wait.
He just needed to wait. It had been too long.
With the way our bodies pressed together and the way he used his own to support my body weight, I couldn’t see him. Couldn’t see the blunt instrument he tried to shove inside me. He waited just a minute before his forehead pinched and he shoved forward in a hard drive that made me see stars. “Fuck!” I screamed.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured as he stilled. His hands kneaded the flesh of my ass while he waited for me to adjust. It was too full, too much. I both wanted him out and never wanted him to leave. Kissing the side of my throat, he rebuilt the heat inside of me until my hips moved against him of their own volition.
Only then did he move, drawing his hips away from me in a glide that felt like it lasted forever. When he slid back inside me, the metal of his piercing rubbed against the rear wall of my pussy and made me toss my head back on a gasp. His cock nudged the end of me, and then he withdrew again. I clung to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding on for my dear life. Being impaled on him felt too vulnerable, felt like I might fall to the floor and split myself in two. He seemed to sense my nervousness, so he hauled me away from the wall with a growl and made for the bed on the other side of the room. He kept me suspended in his arms, never sliding out of me as he crawled on his hands and knees to the center of the bed. As soon as he’d laid me out gently, he covered my body with his, shoved one of my knees up high and fucked me. Hard.
“Oh God,” I cried, and he silenced my pleas with his mouth on mine and his teeth sinking into my bottom lip.
I stretched an arm around him, digging my nails into the globe of his ass, and tugging him tighter to me. He growled, driving deeper and harder so that every thrust shoved him to the end of me with a sharp strike of pain that somehow felt addictive.
“Fucking shit,” he growled, his voice both menacing and somehow addictive. To watch him lose control, to know that I had that power over him, that was something I’d never had before.
It drove me higher and higher. Closer to the first orgasm I’d have since he trapped me in his house. Those massive hands of his tore my dress down the center, exposing my heaving breasts to his gaze. I’d never been more grateful for front clasp bras until the moment when he twisted the snap free and his finger grabbed onto my nipple. His eyes never left my face, never so much as glanced down at my breasts, as they blazed into mine.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he growled, and his fingertips glided down my stomach to touch my clit. His eyes followed the motion finally, abandoning my face to watch where he slid in and out of me with fierce snaps of his hips.
“Fuck you,” I whispered in defiance.
“I believe we’ve got that covered.” He shoved forward harshly, touching his finger to my clit as the head of him slammed into me. “Say it and you can come.”
“Ryker!” I cried, inching away from the relentless assault of him as he pounded through my sensitive flesh. His fingers at my clit tormented me, built me higher and higher until I felt frantic with the need to come. I hated him for his control, for the calm way he worked me over until I’d have promised him my soul for an orgasm. “Please,” I begged.
“Say it, Tesoro. Say the fucking words.”
“I’m yours,” I whimpered, and I hated myself for the weakness.
“Damn right you are, Sunshine." Those fingers circled my clit in the perfect motion, a perfect replica of what I would have done when I touched myself, and it only took two strokes before I shattered around him. My orgasm was so strong I could feel the way I pulsed around him, and he roared out my name as he flooded me with heat.
We stayed like that for a moment, catching our breaths while reality sank in and I felt my bottom lip quiver.
What the fuck had I done?
He kissed my temple, and when he pulled out of me, it seemed to take forever. The way his flesh glided against every part of me went on and on and felt too sensitive, and when he finally popped free a gush of fluid followed.
He stared down at my pussy as if fascinated as I got my first good look at where the length of him hung down his thigh, and I wanted to wince at the way it glistened.
He hadn’t worn a condom.
Twenty-One
Calla
I blinked up at him, feeling disoriented and confused. He’d overwhelmed me, consumed me. There’d been nothing but him, no second thoughts about doing something I knew I’d regret.
I’d fucked a serial killer only moments after finding out he killed someone that day.
He hovered over me, crowded me even though he’d gotten what he wanted. And I’d given it up to him like an idiot.
My legs had to spread obscenely wide to accommodate his hips between them, and I suddenly wanted them closed. I wanted his eyes off me, wanted him to never see me again. He stared at me so intently it felt like he examined every piece of my flesh. So when he touched his hand to my overheated skin, rubbing his release into it with a growl, I jolted and used my legs to propel myself away from him.
I bolted from the bed, making for the bathroom where I could lock myself in until morning. I couldn’t trust myself, couldn’t be around him.
“Calla!” he yelled, and the thunder of his footfalls sounded behind me as he chased me. I spun, pushing the door closed, but his foot stopped it from latching and his hand curled around the edge of the door as he shoved it back open and prowled into the space. “Calla,” he said calmly, and he stepped toward me slowly. There was something in his face, something so gentle it hurt as he made his way to me. The shower door rattled when my back hit it, and I stumbled forward in a moment of panic.
It brought me right into his arms, and I shoved him back. When my head twisted, I glimpsed myself in the mirror, eyes wild and panicked with the worst sex hair I’d ever seen in my life. The skin of my chest was flushed from the sex, but my face had already paled.
“Sunshine, it’s okay,” Ryker murmured, wrapping his arms around me. He tugged me tight to his chest, and the moment his soft cock touched me, I squeaked in the most pathetic voice I’d ever made.
“It’s not okay!” I yelled as the first sob wracked my body. “What did I do? I have a husband. I can’t—”
“Tesoro, he’s dead.” Ryker’s voice stayed gentle, an agonized tremble to it as he clutched me to him against my struggles. “You’re not his wife anymore.”
My heart dropped into my stomach as I realized I’d always still considered myself Chad’s wife. Even with him gone. “I will always be his wife,” I spat, twisting my face to glare up at him when he wouldn’t release me. I knew the words weren’t true, but they gave me a place to hide. I couldn’t remarry or date or move on with someone else I could lose. Not if I already had a husband. I needed the protection that offered me.
Grieved Loss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 3) Page 15
