“Carver,” she murmured, parting her thighs wider. “I need—”
“Tell me.” He nuzzled her neck, and she felt the brush of teeth there, moaning when he bit down, all the while moving his hand back and forth in her wet cunt. Carver continued, “How much do you want my cock in you?”
Yasmin could only manage to drag out one word. “Please.”
It seemed enough, because he took a condom foil from his back pocket. Of course, a man like him would carry that around. She bet one snap of the kingpin’s fingers and women would be all over him. Yasmin pushed those unwarranted thoughts of jealousy aside. Right now, in this moment, only the two of them existed. She no longer cared how she got here or pondered over his alarming words.
Carver guided his cockhead to her entrance but didn’t push in yet. He smeared pre-cum over the swollen nub between her legs, between her seam, as if he wanted to mark her like some territorial beast. Her heart raced as she gripped his shoulders. He closed his hands over her hips. Unthinkingly, she mounted him, closing her legs over his ass as he pushed her further against the wall.
Carver easily clamped his hands over her waist, supporting her like she didn’t weigh a single thing. Excitement and adrenaline surged through her entire system. Every inch of her skin felt sensitive, ready for him to mark and claim and take advantage of.
“Fuck, I knew you’d be a little wildcat.” Carver finally began pushing himself inside her. He didn’t go in all the way, but went slow and easy, despite gritting his teeth, his control impressive.
“God,” she whispered, as he finally sheathed himself all the way to the hilt. Carver felt enormous inside her, his cock stretching her pussy walls completely. She left tiny half-crescent marks on his skin, but that didn’t seem to bother him. His gaze never left hers the entire time. Her nipples tightened to ultra-sensitive points.
“Not God, angel. Just you and me.”
He began to hammer in and out of her, starting with a slow rhythm before picking up speed. She ached a little, but he soon replaced the initial pain with ecstasy. Carver reduced them both to panting messes. Each time he buried himself inside her, deeper, faster, Yasmin couldn’t tell where she began and where he ended. Carver fucked her like he owned her, and she didn’t care if it was wrong that she loved every second of it.
She scored her nails against his back muscles, only for him to pull them above her head again. Instead of holding her wrists down, he spread his big and callused fingers over hers, the gesture almost special, intimate.
Carver shifted the angle of his hips, and she gasped as he found her G-spot. Carver went for it again, and she squirmed, wanting more. She felt like she’d come apart any second now.
“Carver.”
He seemed to know her inner turmoil because he planted another biting kiss on her lips. “Go ahead, angel. Come on my cock. Do it now.”
At his last entry, she orgasmed. Her mind blanked as she came all over his dick. Carver pistoned in and out of her a few times before climaxing. He groaned, holding her close to him. She didn’t know why, but it seemed natural, resting her head against his chest. Carver didn’t put her down. After recovering, he carried her right back to the bedroom and placed her on the bed. Carver disappeared inside the bathroom and returned with a towel. She didn’t trust herself to speak as he cleaned her between the legs.
Rough in the heat of passion, sweet the next. This man confused the hell out of her, but the true danger lay in spending more time with him, because Yasmin was beginning to open her heart to a man who the entire city claimed was a heartless monster.
Chapter Six
Yasmin’s phone buzzed under her pillow, warning her she needed to get up for her shift at the diner. She groaned and rolled to her side, only to encounter a wall of muscle. Then she remembered she’d gotten fired at her old job thanks to busting Larry out. Hell, she’d done plenty to save her dad, including giving herself up to the kingpin—except that hadn’t been such a bad thing.
She dared open her eyes, turning to find Carver’s icy blue eyes on her. Yasmin cleared her throat and grabbed her phone to turn off the alarm. Wow. She’d forgotten just how big he was. Even in bed, naked, he looked imposing, a force to be reckoned with, a guy few people could fuck with.
He reached out, twirling a strand of her hair in his fingers before brushing his hand down the curve of her shoulder, and then he gave her left breast a squeeze. Just the contact of his fingers against the sensitive skin made her nipples harden. She became aware of how close she lay to him and groaned when he pressed his curving cock against her belly.
“How long have you been watching me?” she asked.
“Long enough. Asleep, you really look like an angel, not the spitfire you were yesterday.”
She blushed, recalling how easily she’d lost control, how she’d mounted him and begged for more as he fucked her against his kitchen wall. Until yesterday, she hadn’t known that side of her existed. It both scared and thrilled her a little. Screw those men who called her boring.
“Carver, I need to know. What am I to you? Am I, like, your mistress or something? What do you exactly expect from me?” Yasmin kept her promises and took responsibility for her actions. She wouldn’t run, and sex with Carver yesterday had been explosive, nothing like she ever experienced before, but she needed to know her place in the scheme of things.
“I’m not married, so you can’t be my mistress.”
She expelled a breath. “Come on, no teasing.”
“You only need to know one thing, angel. You’re mine, and that means you can do whatever you want. Forget your old life. You’ve slaved enough to save a man who doesn’t give a damn about you.”
Yasmin told him the truth. “This is all overwhelming, like having the ground ripped from under me, you understand?”
“If I tell you now what I want from you, I’ll only risk scaring you away. I can’t have that. I told myself I can give you space, let you leave if you chose, but after yesterday, that’s no longer possible.”
Carver pressed a kiss to her lips, and a sigh escaped her lips. Yasmin remembered how he easily made her body sing and yearned to feel him take control again, but she shook her head. She needed to have this conversation out.
“Why is it no longer possible?” she asked.
“I’ve been watching you for years, Yasmin. Kept tabs on your every movement, waiting for the time you’d come back to me.”
She blinked, wondering if she misheard him. Carver did what? He had the means of course, and the connections to do whatever the hell he wanted, but his obsession with her took her aback. Yasmin had no words. Why go to all that effort for someone like her? Yasmin was no one important. There were probably a million other women like her. What did he see in her, and why hadn’t she bolted away from him yet?
“There, now there are no secrets between us.”
“Carver,” she whispered. “You’re scaring me a little, but I need to know. Please answer my earlier question. What am I to you?”
“Fine. Ten years ago, you saved an up-and-coming ambitious monster. That’s your error, because I had two goals. To own this city and to possess you. You’re my woman, Yasmin, and I want my baby in you.”
Yasmin felt like she’d been sucker punched. Carver was crazy, but another part of her told her that wasn’t a bad deal at all. To have this sexy, possessive, and dangerous man be hers as much as she belonged to him—God. She shouldn’t be even considering it, and yet Carver wasn’t the only one. She’d always thought of him, been drawn to him, even ten years after that rainy and miserable day.
“I need to time to think,” she finally answered.
“You’ll stay?” He brushed a hand up her arm, his touch like a brand. He gave her shoulder a squeeze.
God forbid she wanted him to do so much more, to assert his dominance, except he merely rubbed her skin back and forth, stroking her the way one would do to a favorite pet. Own her. Those were his exact words. She shivered. A man like Carver didn’t
do romance, but her life wasn’t a fairy tale either.
Was Carver even capable of love? She guessed she’d find out soon enough.
“I’ll stay.”
****
After Carver had left, Yasmin sat on the edge of the bed and replayed the conversation they had in her head. She balled her hands into fists. How did Carver expect her to react? That she’d jump at the prospect of becoming his—his whatever after he flat-out told her he’d been obsessed with her for years? Sitting around his place wouldn’t help. She dragged herself out of bed and into the shower.
Shoving her head under the shower, she closed her eyes. The water drenched her hair and coursed down her body, cooling her. She still ached from last night, but it was a delicious kind of ache. Yasmin thought of Carver’s powerful hands, gripping her hips hard while he pounded her against the wall. He hadn’t come out of that encounter unscathed either. She’d left little nail marks on his skin, too.
She’d marked her man, just as he did her. An involuntary shiver of anticipation rode down her spine.
Her man. Yasmin kind of liked the sound of that. She finished her shower and found some of her clothes in the closet, hanging next to Carver’s. Yasmin bit her bottom lip. The cocky bastard really saw them living together, like some kind of normal vanilla couple, didn’t he? Except nothing about this situation felt normal.
Her chest tightened. Suddenly, it felt hard to breathe. Yasmin didn’t like the strange furniture that all screamed of Carver. It hit her that she’d no longer be able to wake up in her shitty little room in the apartment she shared with her father. Her clothes might be in Carver’s closet, but nothing about this apartment screamed her.
Needing a hint of the familiar, she put on her favorite black skinny jeans, ripped at the left knee, and her well-used salmon-colored tee. Yasmin slipped her feet into her battered, dirty white Converse.
Grabbing her phone and purse, she took one step out of the front door only to bump into a muscle in a suit. She didn’t recognize this particular bodyguard, but like the other men Carver surrounded himself with, one look at his frowning scarred face told her she wouldn’t be able to slip out easily. Yasmin refused to be intimidated. If she planned on agreeing to Carver’s crazy plan, to become part of the kingpin’s life, she had to show Carver’s men she wasn’t some fragile flower, but a force to be reckoned with.
“I’m heading out,” she announced, glad her voice came out firm, confident.
“Mr. Edwards—” The guy began.
“Never mentioned I’m a prisoner,” she interrupted.
The bodyguard regarded her for a few seconds. She crossed her arms. Yasmin had no idea where she wanted to go, but one thing was certain. She needed fresh air. To breathe easy.
“I never implied you were,” the man answered slowly.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Jake, ma’am.”
“Then, Jake, nothing’s going to get in my way. I’m not running, but I need to get out of the apartment, you understand?”
“I won’t get in your way, but it’s also my job to keep you safe. I’ll tail you.”
She began to protest. This was crazy. Yasmin didn’t need a bodyguard, but Jake wasn’t done.
“You should know by now, but Mr. Edwards has plenty of enemies in the city. You can leave the premises under two conditions.”
She glared at Jake but no give. The bodyguard continued blocking the way to the lift. She couldn’t muscle her way past him either. Knowing defeat when she saw it, she said, “Let’s hear it.”
“I’ll drive you to wherever you need to go. Number two, once you get off and continue on foot, I’ll tail you at a discreet distance. You won’t even notice I’m there.”
She let out a frustrated sigh. Goosebumps appeared across her arms though. Jake’s words about Carver having plenty of powerful people pissed off at him spooked her a little, but she knew them to be true. “Fine.”
“I’ll just inform Mr. Edwards and we can be on our way.”
Chapter Seven
“Ms. McDowell? We’ve arrived,” Jake announced from the driver’s seat.
“Can you, like, not call me that? Yasmin,” she corrected.
Jake inclined his head. “Yasmin then. I’ll be out here waiting.”
She got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk facing for a few moments the apartment she’d shared with Larry. Dread filled her belly. Why did she come here? Because she’d been worried about him? No, that wasn’t it. She breathed in and out and entered the building. Yasmin went inside the elevator, and in moments, stood in front of her old unit.
Yasmin still had her key. She took it out from her purse, halted, and pressed her ear to the door. The TV, at max volume, didn’t surprise her.
“Fuck that!” Larry’s drunken shout didn’t either. He didn’t even notice when she opened the door. Yasmin stood by the doorway, not putting another foot in. She glimpsed him, slouched in his favorite armchair, beer in one hand. More empty bottles lay scattered on the dirty carpeting. Looking at the peeling wallpaper, the second-hand furniture, felt worse than being in Carver’s apartment.
This place had never been home. Neither was the apartment she rented back at the city she tried to put roots in. In both places, she worked her ass off, at two jobs to support herself, then her sad excuse of a father, too, so that she had little time for herself. Larry barked out a few more drunken ramblings as his favorite football team scored another goal. He didn’t even notice her standing there. No surprise. When she’d lived here, she felt invisible most of the time unless he hollered at her to get more beer.
Carver had asked her a question about happiness, and she couldn’t look him in the eye and give him a straight answer. No, she hadn’t been happy in a long time.
“Sweetheart? That you?” Larry’s voice took her aback.
He hadn’t called her that, not since her mother’s death. Larry even grabbed the remote to turn the TV off. He never did that either. Most of the time, he kept the TV on, as if he wanted to drown out any other noise. Despite her misgivings, she shut the door behind her and entered the living room. For a moment, hope flared in her heart. Maybe she was seeing the side of him that he’d buried along with her mother. Perhaps he could be the man she remembered in her childhood before her mother died—except this could be a ruse, too. This wasn’t the first time he tried milking sympathy from her.
Hardening her heart, Yasmin entered his line of sight but didn’t elect to sit down. She nearly stepped on more bottles. She pushed them aside with her foot with a grimace and finally looked at her old man, at the stranger she no longer recognized.
“What do you want, Larry?”
Her words sounded harsher than she intended, but she couldn’t keep the anger from seeping out. Yasmin crossed her arms.
“You have every right to be pissed off at me,” he began.
“Pissed? You were ready to sell me out to a scumbag like Anatoli to pay off your debts.” She practically shouted out the words, but she didn’t care. It felt like the weight in her chest lessened a little. Yasmin anticipated some form of backlash from him, his usual slur of abusive words, but she never expected him to flinch.
“Oh God,” he whispered, burying his face into his hands.
“Jesus. Are those tears? Give me a break.”
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t what? You wanted me to come with you for a reason, didn’t you?”
He sobbed harder now. “I—I did. I heard Anatoli liked curvy women and you—”
“Then that’s all I wanted to hear from you. I can’t believe I wasted so many years, trying to keep my promise to Mom, but I can’t do it anymore, Dad. Better get that ass off that chair and find a job so you can start paying off what you owe to Anatoli and don’t bother contacting me again.”
“Yasmin, please. If you can talk to Carver—”
Not wanting to hear anymore, she turned her heel and slammed the door on her way out. It hurt, she real
izing, clutching at her chest on her way down the elevator. Yasmin had stuck around Larry, desperately hoping he’d change and prove her wrong, but she couldn’t be around him any longer. Larry was toxic, and it was about time she finally cut him off from her life.
Yasmin had no parents. They’d both died when her mom lost her battle to cancer, taking her real father with her. As she emerged from the building, she thought she’d feel shitty for leaving things like that, but she didn’t. It felt like a final resolution. Jake saw her and finished his smoke, opening the car door for her.
He didn’t say anything as he got behind the wheel. By confronting her father for the last time, Yasmin had slammed that chapter of her life close. Maybe the next part, she could write with Carver.
****
“These shipments will arrive in four weeks…” Benny was saying, but Carver barely processed his words.
He glanced at his phone and opened the text update from Jake. When Jake informed him Yasmin wanted to get out of the apartment, it stirred up all of his protective feelings. Carver had been tempted to order Jake to keep her inside his place, but she wasn’t a secret he wanted to hide or a fragile bird whose wings he wanted to clip so he could keep her forever.
So, despite his misgivings, he let it be. Carver trusted Jake, an ex-Marine who’d been loyal to him and his organization for years, but he’d been tempted to send out a small army to watch his woman. Carver knew his enemies would start circling like sharks who scented blood in the water once they found out he finally cared about someone. He didn’t see her as his weak link though, because he’d built an entire empire from the dirt to make sure she’d get taken care of. Yasmin would be untouchable, because she was his.
“Boss?” Benny prodded.
He waved at Benny to continue. Carver didn’t miss the looks that passed between Sal and Rio, two of his most trusted who were more like brothers to him and who’d been with him since the start of his ascension to become the most wanted and powerful man of the city. No doubt they’d heard the rumors, so he let Benny finish his projections for the next month and dismissed him.
Taken by the Kingpin Page 4
