by Jane Henry
“Donnie,” she said pleadingly, trying to get his attention. “You can’t keep me locked in a tower like this. I can’t just… stay in this little apartment.”
He glowered at her. “For now, you can,” he said. “Until I figure out what’s going on, and can get a man on you at all times, you stay here. No going home. You do not leave this apartment without my permission.”
Permission?
She pulled back and crossed her arms on her chest. “Since when did I say you had the right to demand I ask permission for anything?”
His eyes narrowed further and to her shock, he leaned in, pulling her hair back, not too harshly, but enough that her breath caught in her throat.
“Since I pulled you out of Joe’s fucking house to save you from being on auction, Grace. And you want to see a demonstration? You want to see what I’m like as a dom? You disobey me, and you’ll get every bit of demonstration your ass can handle.”
Chapter 3
She was in his shower.
Donnie was valiantly trying to focus on all the paperwork he needed to get done for his business meeting with Blake and the guys tomorrow, while waiting for phone calls from Joe and Pedro, and steeling himself to deal with the deep, deep pile of shit he’d swan-dived into last night, but all he could think of was Grace. How he’d gone back to his apartment to grab clothes after his early-morning workout, bringing her a pack of her favorite cinnamon gum and a bagel he’d grabbed for her at Dunkies, and had heard the water running in his bathroom.
How she was right now, standing behind his shower curtain, rivulets of water running over her satin skin, slicking his body wash over her curves and between her thighs. She’d carry his scent for the rest of the day. Would she think about him? Imagine him coming to join her? How easily he could throw back the curtain, and…
“Donnie! Yo, earth to Don!”
Villi, the head contractor on the reconstruction project was standing in front of Donnie’s desk, waving a giant hand in front of Donnie’s face to get his attention, while Villi’s skinny, redheaded assistant, who looked and acted about twelve, raised a clipboard over his face to hide his snicker.
Buncha assholes.
Donnie raised one eyebrow and glared pointedly at Villi’s hand, wordlessly inviting him to wave it just one more fucking time… so Donnie could rip it off and stick it somewhere more appropriate.
Villi’s face broke into a broad grin, totally unperturbed by Donnie’s glare, possibly since he was built like a fucking Viking—tall, blond, and ready to bench-press a pickup truck.
Donnie sighed. “You think it’s a good idea to come into my office without knocking?” he demanded.
“Door was open and I did knock. Called your name a bunch too,” Villi said cheerfully, his blue eyes twinkling. “Not to mention, I texted you an hour ago and told you I’d be by to review the bids for the exterior work and the security system upgrade. You said, and I quote, Okay.” He smirked at Donnie, then elbowed his assistant. “Looks like somebody had a hell of a night last night, eh, Gib?”
“Oh, yeah. A hell of a night, all right,” Donnie agreed drily, shaking his head. And it had been, just not at all in the fun way they were thinking… unless somehow huddling on the too-small couch in his living room, unable to sleep because he was hard as a boulder, but steadfastly refusing to jerk off to images of the pissed-off virgin he’d locked in his bedroom, was their idea of a good time. It definitely wasn’t Donnie’s.
“I think Donnie musta tied some girl up and gotten the business!” the kid snickered, as though this were the most deviant and outlandish thing he could accuse Donnie of. If he only knew.
Donnie rolled his eyes. Gib hadn’t stopped snickering since the moment he’d heard The Club was actually a BDSM club where (gasp!) people had sex. Donnie couldn’t remember ever being that young or that innocent.
“Leave the bids,” Donnie told Villi, nodding towards the mostly-tidy surface of his desk. “I’ll review ‘em with Blake tomorrow. We’re gonna need to add some serious exterior lighting for the back entrance.”
Villi nodded, pushing his thick, blond hair off his forehead. “Already noted.”
Donnie grunted, not surprised that Villi had anticipated this need. He trusted Villi and his team to be professional and discreet, even skinny, freckle-faced Gib.
“And what about the fucking fire alarm?” Donnie demanded. “Damn thing went off twice this week for no apparent reason. Blaring alarm and a buncha fire trucks rolling down the street at three in the morning isn’t the best way to get to know the new neighbors.”
Villi frowned. “Oh, yeah, I got your message on that. I’ll take a peek this week, but it’s not uncommon for a new system to be a little glitchy. Settings need to be adjusted and that sort of thing, especially if there’s a heat source near any of the sensors.”
Donnie nodded, and the men took off, leaving a folder of bids on the desk as they walked away. Donnie grabbed it, absently rifling through the papers inside without seeing them.
Donnie musta tied some girl up.
He snorted to himself. Sorry to disappoint you, Gib, but in this case, the girl’s got me tied up. And wasn’t that a kick in the balls?
His Gracie, the sweet little girl with the big eyes that had seen clear down to his soul, the ghost who had haunted his memories for the last decade, was all grown up. And in her place was a gorgeous spitfire of a woman with a sinfully lush body who seemed hell-bent on pushing every fucking one of his buttons.
God. He threw the folder down on his desk, grabbed his empty coffee cup, and stalked to the mini kitchen near the desk where his receptionist would sit… once he hired one. He was not caffeinated enough to deal with thoughts of Grace yet. He grabbed the high-octane blend he preferred from the little whirly thing next to the coffee maker and set it to brew.
Donnie didn’t smoke, hadn’t had a joint since high school, and hadn’t been drunk in years—not since he’d found The Club and Blake had taken him under his wing. Donnie had learned from Blake’s example that real men didn’t go around bragging about the booze they drank, the ass they tapped, and the money in their accounts. It was a lesson his hotheaded younger self had learned slowly and painfully, but permanently.
So he worked out religiously and ate clean when he wasn’t road-tripping. He avoided fights and messy entanglements. He didn’t gamble. He kept his checkbook balanced. He’d restored his bike himself, and kept it meticulously tuned up. He had friends, but he relied on himself. Caffeine, and lots of it, was his one true vice. (Well, if you didn’t count the whips, the clamps, the ropes, and the way he got off on inflicting just the right amount of pain and humiliation in a scene. But around here, that pretty much passed for normal, which was one of the things he loved about it.)
So it was all the more stunning when he looked back at his behavior the previous night. When was the last time he’d been goaded into losing control like he had last night?
I like to tie girls up and spank their asses.
Jesus. It was the truth, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. But that area of his life, the kink he enjoyed, had not one fucking thing to do with Grace Diaz, no matter how well she’d filled out, no matter how her beautiful eyes still seemed to see things inside him that no one else saw, and no matter how much she fired his blood. If Pedro was right, she was still a fucking virgin, for Christ’s sake.
He’d told himself in the moment that he was warning her off, scaring her away. Shut the fuck up with your stupid taunts and your innocent questions. I’m not the man you think I am. I never was.
But Grace was the one person he’d always communicated with almost instinctively, and as he’d lain awake on his living room sofa in the darkness, he’d admitted to himself that the words hadn’t been a warning, but a challenge.
You wanted her to offer herself to you.
Wrong as it was, selfish as it was, maybe he had.
He’d been off his game from the moment he’d found her on that shitty little bed in Joe’
s spare room, or… hell, even before that. He hadn’t been himself since the moment her brother had spoken her name last night. All Donnie’s control had evaporated, and the easygoing facade he usually employed effortlessly had disappeared. Instead he’d been a creature driven by instinct. Find her. Protect her. Keep her safe.
Because the truth was, there were other places he could take Grace besides The Club. One call to Lucas, and Grace could be sharing a room at a safehouse with her brother. One call to Slay, and Grace could be whisked out of the state, out of Mikey’s reach. And if he were truly a man who was in control and thinking logically, he’d make those calls.
The way his gut pulsed at the very idea confirmed that logic played no part in his thinking right now. He couldn’t bear to have her where he couldn’t protect her. Not now. Not again.
His phone started to chime from somewhere on his desk, and he grabbed his coffee as he made his way back and accepted the call, with the sinking feeling that his day was about to get exponentially worse.
He knocked on the door to his apartment and waited for a moment before putting his key in the lock and pushing it open, bracing himself for a confrontation with the angry woman he’d left behind the night before.
Instead, after a quick glance at the kitchen and sitting area, he found Grace sitting cross-legged in the center of his bed, his headphones in her ears, as she strummed her thighs in time to the music on the shitty, old iPod he sometimes used while working out. She was wearing her jeans from last night, and a shirt she must have taken from his dresser. It was five sizes too big, and though she’d knotted it at her waist, it still hung off one bare shoulder, exposing the smooth golden skin of her arm and the upper slope of her breast.
He swallowed.
She was reading a magazine, an old issue of Cycle World he had kicking around, like it was fascinating literature. Her long hair was up in a turban made from one of his towels, and her face was scrubbed clean, both of makeup and of the pissy, defensive expression she’d been wearing the night before. This was his Grace. This, right here, was the girl he knew. And he leaned against the doorframe for a minute to watch her.
A moment later, her brow furrowed at whatever she was reading and she tapped her lip thoughtfully. He stifled a laugh.
“What’s so interesting?” he asked, moving further into the room and closing the door behind him. The woman was like a magnet, and everything about her called to him.
She startled and blushed like he’d caught her reading Playboy instead of Cycle World, and grabbed the earbuds out of her ears.
“Donnie! I… we have to talk about…”
He stalked towards her, watching her put her defensive mask back in place, and not liking it one bit.
“What article were you reading?” he demanded again, pausing beside the bed and peering down. She was flustered, her cheeks blushing a deep rose as he leaned closer.
“It’s, uh, about an Indian Roadmaster Classic,” she read from the title. “It looks kinda retro and… uh!”
The last word came out more like a squeak as he put a knee down on the bed behind her, levering himself close enough to read over her shoulder.
He was entirely too close right now, and alarm bells went off in his head, warning him that he was playing a risky fucking game, but he ignored them. From the moment he’d seen her sitting on his bed, he’d wanted to get closer, to see if she smelled like his Gracie—all cinnamon bubblegum innocence—or like the sexy woman he’d imagined this morning, using his shower and smelling like his soap.
“Retro and...” he prompted, his nose just a millimeter above her bare shoulder. She shuddered delicately, maybe at his breath on her skin, or maybe just his nearness, but either way, as he watched her nipple pebble beneath the thin cotton of his t-shirt, for the second time in as many days, he felt his control snap.
“Hot,” she finished in a whisper, at the exact moment that his open mouth landed on her skin.
If forbidden fruit always tasted this sweet, Donnie understood what had happened with Adam and Eve. Because as he moved his tongue along the column of her throat, tasting the frantic beat of her pulse, her high-pitched moan of encouragement, and the trusting way she tilted her head to the side, yielding herself to him utterly, he couldn’t conjure any concept of right and wrong, good and evil. There was simply Grace, and the pure, perfect connection that had always existed between them.
He trailed open-mouthed kisses up over her jaw, the day-old growth of his beard rough against her cheek. She lifted her hand to grab a handful of his hair, holding him more tightly against her and he growled. Without conscious thought, he moved his arm around her waist, and reached his hand up to palm her breast, gently abrading the stiff peak. She caught her lip between her teeth and threw back her head, knocking the towel loose. Fragrant, damp hair spilled down her back, and her breathing hitched.
“Christ,” he breathed, inhaling sharply. “Jesus Christ.”
Lost to the moment, lost to her, he moved his mouth to her ear, sucking on her lobe. His fingers pinched her nipple tightly and her back bowed, thrusting her breast more firmly into his hand. He needed to claim her, mark her, own her. He grasped her earlobe between his teeth and bit down firmly.
“Ow!”
That one word, that single, shocked sound of pain, had him jumping off the bed and scowling in an instant.
What the fuck was he doing?
He stared at the door, willing his heartbeat to slow and his erection to disappear. Fucking unlikely. He clenched his hands into fists and stalked from the room.
Get it together, asshole.
“Donnie!” Grace said, trailing after him into the living area, her voice pleading, confused, and aroused. “I-I’m sorry, I…You just startled me.”
“You got nothin’ to be sorry for, Gracie.” His voice was rough and unsteady. “That was…” He scrubbed his hand through his hair, trying to find a word, but for maybe the first time with Grace, his mind stuttered and blanked, and he said the first thing that came to his mind. “A mistake. A stupid mistake.”
She inhaled sharply and he turned around to see her jaw harden and her eyes flare.
“No, it wasn’t.”
He blinked. She spoke with an absolute confidence that shocked him. She was a virgin, for God’s sake, and he’d manhandled her. Him. A guy she hadn’t seen in years, a man who was nearly a perfect stranger to her. He’d felt her up, used his tongue and his teeth on her flesh. He’d expected more outrage, or at the very least, hesitation. She showed neither.
Had someone kissed her like that before?
It shouldn’t have mattered, but he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it. Was she really the virgin that Mikey believed her to be?
His cock was extremely invested in this line of thought, and he forced himself to turn away from her again, to pace to the tiny kitchen area and contemplate brewing another cup of coffee. Virgin or not, she’s not interested in the kind of shit you like.
He changed the subject. “So, I talked to Pedro this morning,” he said over his shoulder, as though nothing had happened.
“Yeah? Lucky you.” Her voice was sullen in a way he’d never heard from her before, and he wondered whether it was from their kiss—their mistake—or the mention of her brother. Either way it pissed him off. Made him want to spank that bitchy attitude right out of her.
He clutched the handle of his coffee mug until his knuckles turned white, but couldn’t resist scolding. “Hey. He’s worried about you. Told him you were safe.”
She snorted. “Safe. ‘Cause that’s all that really matters, right?”
Surprise made him turn to look at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She threw herself down on the sofa in the living area, and stared at the ceiling. “Nothing. Never mind.”
Christ. He wanted to hold her down and tan her ass so badly that his palm was literally tingling. “Enough of this shitty attitude, angel. I asked you a fucking question.”
She
glared across the room at him. “Oh, now you want an answer? Now I’m your angel? Is now finally a convenient time for you to hear what I have to say? I’ve been locked in this apartment for eighteen hours. Prisoners of war get better treatment.”
His head went back in shock. Who was this bad-tempered, defensive woman?
“Jesus! You’re pissed that I’ve been a bad host? Was the fuckin’ bed not comfortable enough, your highness? Not enough reading material at your disposal? Apologies that I was busy keeping you alive.”
She laughed bitterly and he fought another flare of surprise. The Grace he’d known didn’t know how to be bitter. “Alive and safe,” she repeated. “Is that all that’s supposed to matter? Safe and alive and alone isn’t much of a life. And newsflash, Donnie. I haven’t been safe since the day you walked out of the neighborhood.”
A cold feeling gripped his stomach. “Explain.”
She set her jaw and glared at him for a long moment, before letting out a deep sigh and relenting.
“Pedro’s not the same guy he used to be,” she admitted. “Back when you were still at home, Mikey had you guys running errands and taking bets for Joe, helping him make book. But after the stuff that happened…” She glanced at him, at the scar above his eyebrow, significantly, and Donnie nodded. After Mikey tried to promote them from head-crackers to assassins. He wasn’t likely to forget. “Nothing was the same.”
Donnie took his coffee and headed into the tiny living area. He would not sit next to her on the couch. Instead, he straddled the weight bench on the other side of the room and gave her a tiny nod, asking her to continue.
“P was so full of himself. Mikey made a big deal out of celebrating his loyalty, you know? And P just ate it up. I think… I think he’d been jealous of you,” she told him, meeting his eyes cautiously. “You were Mikey’s cousin, his blood, and Pedro knew he was only there because you’d made it a package deal. He was always just gonna be that Hispanic kid who hangs with Donnie Nolan. But suddenly now he was Mikey’s guy. He woulda done anything Mikey asked after that… and he did.”
