“What’s your middle name, baby? Tell me your middle name.”
“Diane.” A breath.
“Lara Diane. That’s pretty.” I tried not to shake with fear.
“You need to get her to a hospital, man?” The cab driver looked genuinely afraid.
For a moment, I considered it. But it would put her on the grid. “No. It’s not…a trip. She’s just had some bad news. The hotel.” When he nodded, I turned back to Lara again. “Sweetie, keep talking. What’s your birthday?”
“May 17th.”
“Good girl. Can you count backwards for me from 10?”
“Ten.” She managed the word, and her head swayed. She looked like she was going to be sick, and she only barely managed to keep it down. “Nine. Eight. Seven.” A sob was welling up in her chest. “Six. Five, four, three.” Her eyes squeezed shut, and I knew it was coming back to her.
“Lara—”
“Two, one,” she finished in a rush, and she laid her head on my chest and gave a little cry as the sob worked its way out of her chest.
“Lara, it’s okay. You just need to make it back to the room, okay?” I fumbled for my wallet as the cab came to a stock.
“Don’t worry about it, man.” The cab driver shook his head. “Just worry about her.”
“Thank you.” I nodded at him as I gathered her into my arms and lifted her out of the cab. The door man held the door open for us and I made myself walk across the lobby without running. I held her close in the elevator, and it was only at the door of the room that I let her down so I could unlock it; even then, I held her close to me with one arm.
She pushed herself away from me with feverish strength as the door opened.
“Lara?”
“Don’t—I don’t want to talk.”
“Why not?” Whatever Damien had told her, I thought—with a surprising calm—I was going to kill him for it.
She rounded on me. “The man I loved, the man who promised to marry me, tried to have me killed. And it wasn’t even about me! He didn’t even have the decency to kill me because of something I did!” She began to laugh, a wild sound. “It was just to get someone else out of the way! It was just because Damien knew too much!”
I bowed my head. I had known it would be something like this, and now I felt guilty. I hadn’t thought twice about it, beyond thinking that it was unfair to her. People dying for other people’s mistakes was a part of my life, a part of the way the world worked to me. I tried to minimize it, but I hadn’t ever thought how jarring it might be to her.
The thought made me feel oddly guilty.
“That’s how little I meant to him,” Lara whispered. Her voice began to quaver. “I was worth so little to him, after all that time, after everything I did, that the best use he could find for me was to be a dead body.”
“That’s Adrian.” I crossed the room in two strides to take her by the arms. “You have to know that. It’s him. It’s nothing to do with you. You were…”
“How much did he pay you?” She wrenched herself free.
My blood went cold. “What?”
“How much did he pay you?” She repeated the words. Her jaw had set, and she stared up at me. “Tell me. How much was I worth?”
“Please don’t ask this.”
“You took the money to kill me. Tell me how much.”
I looked away from her clenched hands and tried to find any way out of this. There wasn’t one.
“A hundred thousand dollars.”
“What?”
“It’s…a matter of secrecy. You can get a cheap hit man for—” I broke off. I was only making it worse, and… “Lara, I swear to you, I thought it was different.”
“What if you hadn’t taken the time to talk to me that night?” Her voice was rising. “What if I hadn’t gone to get my book? What if I’d just been asleep in the bedroom? Would you have stopped to check? Would you have?”
I froze. I liked to think that I would have, but…how could I be sure? If it had been dark in her bedroom, the unexpectedly young face turned away…
She saw the doubt in my eyes and she gave a sob.
And that, of all things, infuriated me.
“What do you want from me?”
She froze, her eyes widening. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. Tell me what the hell you want from me.” I looked away. “Do you know the type of people I usually get hired for? No. You don’t. You hear me say mafia and you think, ‘ oh, yes, they’re bad.’ But you don’t think about what it means. The people I’m hired for kill children to teach their parents a lesson. They traffic slaves, actual slaves. They torture people for fun. When I’m hired to kill someone, I do it because I know it takes someone off the street who would kill countless more if I let them live. Maybe it’s not a choice you’d make, maybe you still think it’s wrong. That’s fine. But I do it for a reason, because I am good at one damned thing, and this killing people.”
She was staring at me, her mouth hanging open.
“And you like that about me.” I spread my hands with a laugh. “Don’t you?”
“What?”
“It’s what protected you for the past few days, isn’t it?” I stared her down. “You could have run, but you would never have cleared that stairway. You were fighting at your sister’s, I’ll give you that, but you couldn’t have taken all of them out. You weren’t trained for it, and you know that. You didn’t want to go to Damien’s because he couldn’t protect you like I could.”
“So you decide what you want, Lara. Because this is what you asked me to do. You knew who I was when you asked for my help. You knew then that Adrian had wanted you dead. If you’re going to turn around and run now that you know why, if you can’t take this, then go. Run.”
She’d gone pale as death, but her chin jutted at that. “I’m not running.”
“Then what do you want from me?” My hands clenched.
“I want you to make me forget.”
I hesitated. The words had been automatic, and she looked as surprised as I did by them.
“What?”
She looked away for a moment. Then she looked up again, and her eyes met mine. “I want you to make me forget,” she said again. The words were almost desperate. “You make me forget when you touch me. I want…I need to forget it. I can’t deal with this right now.”
I forced myself to step away from her.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not going to fuck you because you don’t want to think about your life.” My voice grated. “If that’s what you want from me…” How could I put into words the way that twisted a knife in my chest.
She gave a little sob. “That’s not why.”
I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.
“Jack.” She was in front of me, and she placed her hand on my chest. I could feel her touch burn through my shirt, and I struggled to breathe. “Jack, I want you.”
I couldn’t remember how to breathe.
“Jack?”
I closed my eyes. “Yes?”
“I’ve wanted you since that first night. I don’t know—maybe it’s crazy.”
I began to laugh. “It is.”
“Yeah.”
She would have moved away, but I caught her to me.
“It’s crazy,” I said again. My head dropped, lips hovering a scant inch from hers.
Her eyes went wide.
My kiss was light; I couldn’t have borne more than that right now. I could barely think.
“I’ll help you forget,” I told her.
Book 5: Destroyed
Chapter 26
Lara
“I’ll help you forget.” His voice was rough, but his eyes were tender. His lips brushed against mine.
In the restaurant, when he had kissed me hard and left me gasping, I would have given him anything he’d asked for; I’d been on the edge of begging for him to take me then and there. But this, this little whisper of contact, was more than lust—
and it nearly undid me completely. I couldn’t think any longer.
“Jack.” I had no other words. It was a question and a plea.
He understood. He dropped a kiss on my mouth, another on my neck, on the tender skin below my ear. His breath was warm on my skin, and his hand splayed across my back to hold me close; the solid heat of him held me up. His chest was hard under my hands.
“I don’t know how to do this.” The words were out of my mouth before I thought about them, and then there was no way to call them back.
He only gave a low laugh that went through me with a thrill. “I’ll show you,” he promised, and his mouth came down on mine again.
His arms were rock solid around me, but his lips were soft. He kissed me deeply, slowly, taking his time. He didn’t just want me—he wanted my desire. When I moaned, his fingers would tighten on my back, and his breath would catch; my pleasure seemed to goad him on.
I was uncertain. I hadn’t been lying, I truly knew nothing, and I feared that he would laugh at me. What if I couldn’t kiss the way he wanted? But he didn’t laugh. When my lips parted for him, he took what I offered without hesitation. When I stood on tiptoe to press my lips harder against his, his arm tightened around me.
He kissed me until I couldn’t feel my feet on the floor any longer. I didn’t know which was up, I only knew that I wanted him, all of him—and I wanted to give him everything of me.
“Jack, please.” I was desperate for it. I wanted—
I flushed and felt heat drench me. I wanted him inside me. All those years, I had thought it was easy to resist temptation, but I hadn’t understood desire in the slightest. Jack, at last, showed me what it meant.
“Jack?” I was shaking.
He laughed again. “We’re just getting started.” His eyes said that was a promise.
I whimpered in disappointment, and his eyes darkened with pleasure.
“I’m going to enjoy teasing you,” he murmured, and his lips came down on mine once more.
I melted against him, but now that it was a battle of wits, some small shred of thought remained. So he was going to tease me, was he?
Two could play at that game.
My fingers found his tie and hooked into it to drag it loose. He crushed me to him with a warning growl but I managed to get my arms free with a laugh. One by one, I opened the buttons of his shirt, and dragged my lips from his to kiss the hollow of his throat and trace down.
“God…” His voice was unsteady, and his arms loosened around me.
Triumph had never felt so sweet. I unhooked the button at the front of his suit jacket and pushed it off his shoulders before he could recover and get his revenge.
But he didn’t move to stop me. His chest was heaving, and he watched me, holding himself still as my fingers explored. He took a shuddering breath when I undid his belt. I pulled his shirt open and over his arms, and bit my lip at the sight of the tattoos across one bicep and trailing over his back. They shifted as he moved, one arm coming out to catch me at last. He pulled me close, almost roughly.
“I wasn’t done,” I protested, but I was smiling.
“Neither was I.” He kissed me hard and released me, turning me so he could drag the zipper down.
The silk pooled at my feet.
“Don’t move.”
I stood, trembling, as he dropped a line of kisses along my spine. He knelt to hook his fingers under my thong and drag it away, and his touch skimmed down the outside of my legs. I hesitated before I stepped out of the heels—the last vestige of clothing—but it felt right. No makeup, no fancy clothes. Just me, naked and trembling with desire, feeling the heat of his body. I watched as he stood and stripped off the rest of his clothes.
“You can look, you know.” His voice was very warm.
I realized I’d been looking away, trying to preserve his modesty—as if I’d completely forgotten why we were here. I swallowed, and looked.
He was perfect. I’d known how broad his shoulders were, and God knew, I’d felt the strength of his arms when he carried me, kissed me, held me—but it was different to see him naked. I could see every muscle, rippling under skin and tattoos. The lines of his chest traced down to narrow hips, and…
I blushed.
“Lara.” He came to top my head up.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I said again, stupidly.
He only kissed me, and I kissed back as if I were drowning, as if only he could save me. When he broke away, his breathing was ragged.
“Are you sure? You seem pretty good at it.” His control was hanging by a thread, I could see it in his eyes.
I wanted to break that. I knelt, my fingers drifting over his stomach, and leaned forward to take him in my mouth.
I didn’t need to know what to do—his reactions told me everything. He groaned at the first touch of my lips, and when I flicked my tongue over the tip of him, I felt him sway.
“Oh, God. Lara, you don’t have to—”
I took him as deep as I could, and was pleased to hear his voice break. I couldn’t take all of him in my mouth, I wasn’t even close, but he didn’t seem to mind; his hand came to rest on the top of my head and he shuddered as my head moved. I kissed, licked up the length of him, wrapped my fingers around him, and he whispered my name helplessly. His hips began to move, thrusts meeting mine. Faster, harder, and then—
He wrenched himself away, breathing hard.
“Jack?”
“Give me a second.” His chest was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. He ran his hands through his hair, dropped his head back, and gave a breathless laugh. “My God.” He smiled down at me and held out a hand. “Come here.”
“Didn’t you want—”
“Not like that. I want…” His voice trailed off. “Come here. Lie down.”
“What are you going to do?”
He crawled over me to kiss me deeply. “Something very good. I promise.” He slid down and guided my knees apart. “Don’t look so worried. In fact—close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Close your eyes.” He was smiling. “Don’t think. Just feel.”
I obeyed hesitantly, letting my head drop back onto the coverlet. The air swirled over my skin, cool against the burning heat. I bit my lip when I felt Jack’s lips on my inner thigh. He took his time, kissing slowly up.
I drew in my breath sharply as his fingers parted me and slid inside. My back arched. There had been fumbles, the press of awkward teenage bodies, but nothing like this. The fingers withdrew, and I whimpered, but he slid them deep inside me again, and again. A moment later, I felt the warmth of his breath and the press of his lips.
“Jack.” I pressed a hand over my mouth to stifle the sounds I couldn’t keep from making. “Jack.”
“I want to hear you.” His voice ached with need. “Take your hand away, baby—I want to hear your.”
“Jack.” I arched as his tongue found the most sensitive place and flicked against it. “Oh, my God. This is—”
“What?” His fingers were moving faster now. His lips were urgent on my skin. “What is it, baby?”
“I can’t—I need you. Jack, I need you inside me.”
His fingers, resting on one hip, clenched into a fist. He was up on the bed a second later, kissing me hard, lowering himself between my legs. I jerked my hips toward him and he managed a chuckle.
“Not so fast, baby. We need to go slow with this.”
“Why?”
But a moment later, as I felt the press of him against me, I understood. I caught my breath as he began to slide into me. He braced himself above me and dipped his head to kiss me, moving so slowly that I hardly noticed the rising pain until it broke, a sharp moment that made me catch my breath. His hips moved back, and he thrust into me again, again, again…
I didn’t noticed when it changed from pain to pleasure, just that it had. His hips pressed against mine, the comforting weight of his body above me, his lips moving against mine urgently. I could f
eel the tension radiating through him as he tried to move slowly. He wanted more, and so did I.
My hips started to move as well, meeting his thrusts. There was the remnant of pain still there, but it was fading—or I couldn’t bring myself to care. I was helpless against the tide of pleasure in my blood. I had wanted this since the first night, curled into his arms on the floor of his apartment, and it was everything I had wanted and more.
Pleasure began to rise. I could hear my own little cries, and any embarrassment at my lack of inhibition was lost in desire. His breathing matched mine and he pulled my legs up to wrap around his waist. I locked my ankles to drag him closer and smiled when he groaned with pleasure.
“Baby…”
“Yes?”
“Tell me you’re close. Tell me you want to—” He rested his head on my shoulder and his hands clenched. “Ah, God.”
“I’m—”
That was as far as I got before pleasure claimed my. My back arched. The force of it rippled through me and I heard myself gasp his name—and a moment later, I felt him come. He poured into me, hips still moving, crying out my name,
When it was over, he would have pulled away from me, but I held him close.
“Stay.”
“I’ll crush you.” He nuzzled me and rolled onto his back, but pulled me close so my head could rest in the pocket of his shoulder. “I hope…” His voice trailed off.
“What?” I craned to look up at him.
“I hope you don’t regret this being…well…”
“I don’t.” I laid my hand on his chest to feel his heart beating. “I don’t.”
I wanted to say something more eloquent, but sleep was already tugging at me, and a few moments later, deliciously sore and warmed by the feel of his arm around me, I let myself drift away into unconsciousness.
Chapter 27
Jack
Somewhere, a phone would not stop buzzing. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to turn over and bury my head under the pillow.
There was a sleepy murmur of protest from the region of my shoulder and I went rigid. I looked down cautiously. What I expected to see, I didn’t know—but then again, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent the night with a woman. Oh, there had been one night stands, but those had been business-like, everyone gone long before daybreak. Now…
HUNTED: A Bad Boy Romance (Books 1-5) Page 12
