by Cindy Skaggs
“What could possibly be wrong?” she asked. Trenton, the Feds, Manny, the cat, the house, her business.
“Anything you can’t handle?” Eddie rephrased.
“Great question.” She met his gaze. His dim eyes were narrowed in concern, and two long wrinkles creased his forehead. The man had been a bodyguard in the family for as long as she could remember. He was tall, not bulky, with sandy gray hair, and for the first time, his shoulders stooped over his chest. It aged him. Being a stooge would bend a man like Eddie, but he sure as shooting didn’t deserve to spend the rest of his life in prison.
She’d failed him. One more failure in a line of many.
The silence between them stretched awkwardly, but he didn’t look away. Eddie was old-school. It would take a forklift to move him if he didn’t want to move. Blake stepped away to give them some privacy, but she didn’t know what to say.
Thank you for saving Sofia.
Why didn’t you run when you had the chance?
What the hell are you thinking, working for the Feds?
No, what she really wanted to say was don’t die, which brought a sting to her eyes. To the world, Eddie was a cog in the Calvetti family machine. Except he wasn’t just a pawn in a monstrous organization. He was the man who called her Little Miss. The one who had taken her to school and picked her up after. He had made her tea when she was sick, bandaged scraped knees, and taught her to inflict injury at the same time he showed her how to avoid conflict. If her mother tried to keep her normal, Eddie tried to keep her safe. They’d both failed.
“I’m fine,” she said finally. She added a smile to ease the worry he carried on his aging shoulders. “You know me. Raised by wolves. Give me a bottle of aspirin and a good night’s sleep, and I’ll rule the world by morning.”
“Sure.” He squeezed her shoulder, but instead of leaving, he leaned down and pressed a light kiss to her forehead, something no one had done since her mother died. It was stress clogging her throat, nothing more. Eddie was at the door before she could blink back the moisture that was definitely not tears.
“I’ll text with a time in the morning,” Blake said.
Eddie cleared his throat. “Sure thing, boss.”
After Eddie left, Blake slid a dead bolt on the door. “This only operates from the inside. The keypad won’t unlock it, so if you’re alone, make sure you use it.”
Another safety precaution. Because she needed a man to defend her?
“Does it help you sleep better at night? The lock? Because you’re playing a perilous game here.” She didn’t know why she’d gone on the attack. Blake was a big boy, and she’d already accepted his job. The tightness in her chest eased, though, as she went on the offensive.
“Sleep hasn’t been a problem.” He dug a hand through the wavy brown strands of his hair. “Up to now.”
He threw her a line, and she picked it up. “Am I getting to you, Slick?”
No answer. Instead, he walked to the room on the right. “Bedrooms on either side.” She followed, silent. Reflective. This particular bedroom was ugly as sin, with olive-green carpet, a motel-like bed with requisite ugly bedspread, a TV armoire, and a glowing window—blue from the Déjà Vu neon sign outside. In the light, she could see the bars covering it from the outside. Felt a little like prison.
“It’s not much, but the mattresses are new.”
The Feds had splurged on new mattresses. How nice.
He set her bag on the floor. “Bathroom’s to the right, next to the closet. Should be enough room. Dez moved her things out earlier.”
Dez. The memory had Vicki seeing red, and not just from the slinky dress the other woman had worn. If she were honest, she was looking for a reason to be angry. Made it easier to deal with the load of adrenaline clogging her pores. “This Dez. Is she an agent?”
“No.”
Which changed the dynamics. An agent meant a platonic relationship. Anything else meant they were together. As in sleeping together. Or had been until her universe crashed into his. She had no right to feel the claws of jealousy digging into her chest. It wasn’t like she’d been a nun, but the thought of the woman in stilettos sharing an apartment with Blake made her want to take a blade to the linens and shred them. She straightened her shoulders. “I don’t sleep in another woman’s bed.”
She retrieved her bag and moved to the room across the apartment. The carpet in this room was orange shag. It was funky retro in style, except she had a feeling most of it was vintage ’70s. Old, threadbare in places, but clean. For a safe house, it could be worse.
“This is my room,” he said, following her into the room.
“So I see.” It wasn’t quite as tidy as the rest of the apartment, but it was larger than the other room, with a desk in the corner covered in stacks of paper. Enough of a mess to make the OCD part of her brain want to spend twenty minutes organizing. A winter jacket was draped over the chair. The orange-and-green bedspread was pulled haphazardly over the pillows.
Don’t ask. “Has she slept in here?”
“No. We, uh.” He cupped the back of his neck. “No.”
The green claw of jealousy retracted. The other woman had gotten the boot. As an added bonus, the topic made Blake uncomfortable. She liked making him uncomfortable. Keeping a man on his toes took skill, especially one like Blake who wasn’t easily manipulated. As worried and wary as she’d been when she watched him attack the man downstairs, she needed to remember that the undercover world was as gray as her life in the mob.
It wasn’t easy to live in a world of criminals and not become one. It took an agile mind to adjust plans as the situation warranted, moral flexibility to accept the decisions without judgment, and strength to hold it together for the long term, all of which they both had in spades. They were made for each other, more now than when they’d been young. Add to it, he was the sexiest man she’d ever met. No one got her engine revving like he did. As long as they were stuck together in this tiny retro apartment, they might as well enjoy the ride.
She opened her luggage and hung her things next to his in the small closet.
“You planning to sleep here?” His voice lowered to a scratchy depth that hit her where desire pooled.
She didn’t turn. “I’m planning to spend the night in that bed.” The snarky devil on her shoulder gave her a fist pump, because Blake didn’t know how to respond. When she finished in the closet, she removed her boots and socks before wiggling her feet in the funky carpeting. In the silence, she realized the music from below bled through the concrete floors. It was a low hum, nothing to keep her awake, but the bass vibrated the floor under her bare feet.
When she finished with the clothes, she added toiletries next to his razor and aftershave. Commingling bathroom supplies felt more intimate than what she planned to do with his body tonight. She’d never lived with a man. Sure, Vince had left a few things at her place, but his job was sticking like glue to Sofia, so they never had more than a few hours at a time. The limitation kept everything uncomplicated. Blake was as complicated as a Ponzi scheme.
“Is she coming back?” The question popped unbidden from her mouth. The devil on her shoulder hissed in displeasure.
He was where she’d left him, shuffling his feet in the doorway. “Not enough room for two women.”
“Damn straight.” She removed her jacket, hung it up. “I don’t share.” Not her bed or her closet or her man.
“And I need to know this why?”
“Don’t play stupid.” She stalked him, let her hips roll. A thrilling jolt shot through her as his gorgeous pale eyes tracked her every move. When he braced for impact, stiffening like he was ready to absorb her in his arms, she altered course. Closed the bedroom door and returned to stand behind him. Her hands moved on their own to ease the leather jacket from his shoulders, and if fingers shook, it was the stress of her day, her week, her migraine. To give herself time to stabilize, she laid the jacket over the chair. “Am I making you nervous, Blake?”<
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Chapter Ten
“Yes. No.”
Vicki laughed low. “Which is it?” Did he share her uncertainty? Were his hands shaky? Did desire mix with fear in his muscular frame? “As I recall, you said we’d end up in your bed. Should I play coy?”
He turned to face her, rolled his tongue over his lips. “When a woman bites, she means no.”
“Not afraid of a little pain, are you?”
“No.” He grabbed her wrists when she tried to draw him closer. “What had you so mad you were pulling my hair out by the roots downstairs?”
How to explain the demoralizing reality of her world? “My mother was traded to the Calvetti family for an alliance. For the power it would bring men. And you ask why your behavior angered me?” After all these years, she still couldn’t forgive her father and grandfather. “Women were chattel. I won’t be used in the same way.”
“I’m not using you, Victoria, and I don’t consider you property, but know this. I don’t like games. Don’t start something you won’t finish.”
“Oh, I plan to finish.” She winked up at him. “Several times, sweetheart.”
“You like to flirt, twist a man up, but you’re hiding behind the flirtation. When we hit the sheets, it’s just you and me, darlin’, and you’re not going to push all the right buttons to get straight to the end zone.” His grip tightened, just this side of painful as he pulled her into him.
She nearly purred at being chest to thigh with all his delicious muscles. This was not the boy who’d worshipped her all those years ago. The differences intrigued her. The unknown terrified her. She rolled her hips into his heat. “Am I hitting your buttons?”
His eyes blazed. “Ask a question you don’t know the answer to.” But when she opened her mouth, he captured her lips, slid his tongue inside, and explored. Not fast, but in a torturous slow brush of lips and skin and hot breath. Patience. The man had nuclear-powered patience. When she settled into his rhythm, he changed, moved to nibble down her jaw to her neck, her collarbone, the shell of her ear. The slowness, the heat, the precision with which he played her body built an ache inside.
The sound of her shallow breath fed the desperation. She wanted him, but the whole time, he held her hands captive. She struggled to get free so she could get her hands on him. Her fingers itched to feel his skin, to explore, to make him as crazy as he made her—and he’d only used his lips—but his grip was immutable.
This wasn’t a kiss. It was an incendiary device.
“Blake.” Even she heard the begging in her voice. And she was too wound up to regret it.
“Mmm.” He nipped and kissed his way up her neck. “What, darlin’?” His tone lowered on the second syllable, and the roughness was the tinder lighting her whole body on fire. She was hot, achy, and angry.
“Let me use my hands.”
He chuckled against her throat. “Not a chance.” He pulled her hands behind her back, manacled them together. The move arched her back, exposing her to his touch. There was no rushing like they’d done the first time a million years ago. The heat was there, the alchemical reaction of skin to skin, but he took the time to explore. He was relearning her, telling her with each stroke, each kiss, each nibble, that he had missed her.
He caressed up her side, the underside of her breast, teasing her nipples into hard pebbles. Anticipation radiated from his touch. When she arched her breast into his hand, he released a hot breath on the spot behind her ear. Delicious tingles shimmered on her skin.
Nostalgia blurred her vision, destroyed her thoughts, and sent flutters to her chest. She didn’t want to feel. “Why?” she asked, pulling her hands against his grip.
“Because you want to rush it, and if you lay your hands on me, I’ll let you win.”
“Problem with that?”
“I warned you.” With his free hand, he rubbed his thumb under her jaw, nudged her face up to meet his gaze. “I like the chase.”
Her brain was numbed by the ache he built inside her. “Are you talking foreplay?”
He ran his tongue over her lower lip, then sucked it into his mouth before releasing it on a bite.
A spark of electricity shot through her chest. She took his response as a yes. “Baby, I excel at foreplay. Let my hands go.”
“You excel at making a man wild, stirring him so he’ll do anything you want.” He went back to the spot behind her ear and nipped. Another flash of desire zapped straight to her core.
“Seriously? Why is that a problem?” She wanted her hands on him so she could turn the slow smolder into a blaze.
As if he knew, he moved a hand between them, rubbed over her clit through the jeans while his mouth bit down on the tendon joining her neck to her shoulder. Her traitorous body bowed back. She was so aroused she could come by the friction of his hand on her jeans.
“I’m not a boy anymore. And I won’t be controlled.”
“I don’t want to control you.”
Another gritty laugh. “Liar.”
The deep rumble nearly sent her over the edge. She laughed, but it turned to a moan when he removed his hand. “Blake, please?”
“Please what?”
She didn’t even know. Her brain took a leave of absence and left her with an aching emptiness only he could fill. “I need you naked.”
“That can be arranged.” He backed her toward the bed. When her knees hit the edge of the mattress he stopped, released her hands. “Undress.”
The spit in her mouth dried at the command in his voice. Competing emotions warred inside her. Anger. His high-handedness pissed her off. Excitement. It turned her on. Thrilling heat rushed through her veins. “No one orders me around.”
He stepped back, and she missed his solid body against hers. “Your choice, darlin’.” The sound of her panting filled the space between them. Pride and anger warred against desire. He would make her choose. Let him maintain control or skip the main event.
Gaze holding steady, he unbuttoned the gray silk shirt, revealing a solid chest with ripped muscle. The movements were unhurried as his hands worked their way down until he was unbuttoned and un-tucked. He released the cuffs before pulling the shirt off, dropping it on the floor.
A light mat of dark hair covered his muscled chest, with a thin trail leading south into the waist of his slacks. Scars marked what was once smooth skin. Long, thin lines from a knife; larger, longer scars where he’d been cut deep; and two puckered scars an inch apart on his right shoulder. His biceps were cut in a way that made her mouth water, one inked with a tattoo.
She stepped closer and let her fingers touch his bare skin. Hot to the touch, he held her gaze as she ran a hand along the outline of the tattoo. An infinity angel surrounded by wings and covered with a halo. Sweet and sad, the simple design tugged at her heart. And then her hands followed the line of his arms, traced the bulge of his biceps, and followed the line of a tendon to his elbow.
“Touch me,” she said, her voice breathless.
He shook his head. His hands knotted at his sides, but he stood still for her exploration, steady, as unyielding as the forces chasing her.
She closed her eyes. She knew what he wanted. Capitulation. Compliance. Traits so outside her norm, she needed a passport to get there. But she wanted this. Wanted him. And getting naked didn’t seem like such a high price to pay to meet him skin to skin. What did it matter who took the clothes off? One way or another, the job would get done. She grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head. The knit sleeve caught in the bracelets encircling her right wrist. She yanked to pull it free, then tried to remove everything, bangles and all.
“Leave them,” he said, the rough tone setting off a low burn.
She clenched against the desire in his voice, in the way it amped up her tension. How had she gone so long without him? He stepped closer, helped untangle the shirt, his fingers brushing the inside of her wrist and feeding the blaze in her bones.
She wanted his touch. The devil on her shoulder
wanted to bring him to his knees. If she were going to do as he asked, she’d own every movement.
This time, she unsnapped the button at her waist without waiting for his command. She slid the jeans down her legs, thankful she’d taken the time to shave her legs in the shower, because she didn’t want anything to intimidate her. Shame her. If they were going to do this—and they were—then she wasn’t going to let the nonsense in her head get in the way.
She stripped down to bra and panties, ones she’d borrowed from Sofia. The prudish white cotton wasn’t her speed, but the lingerie didn’t make the woman. The woman made the lingerie. His gaze followed her movements, so she smoothed her hands down her thighs as she slid the jeans off. She folded them, set them on the adjacent chair with her shirt.
Blake stripped, and he didn’t hide behind briefs. They landed on the pile with the rest of his clothes. No wonder he wasn’t shy. The man was built. Lean by nature, his lanky frame boasted narrow hips and long, muscled thighs, and an erection that put her tidy white panties in a twist. Why he hid behind slacks and suit jackets was beyond her. If the roles were reversed, she’d showcase that shit with tight-ass jeans and skin-hugging cotton.
She circled like a predator, appreciating the tight musculature of his back. More scars, another tat, held together with a will of steel, but when she reached his front, his control snapped. He grabbed her and walked her back to the bed, pushed her onto the mattress. “My turn.”
He started his exploration at her feet, fingered the silver toe rings. The sandpapery brush sent sparks shooting up her legs. “The toe rings are sexy as fuck.” He continued the journey up her legs, slow and measured. Light touches. Kisses. Nips sizzled, bringing her blood to the surface. The extra time he spent on the back of her knee, her elbow, the crook of her neck, had her arching into him, and she still had her panties on.
“Blake,” she moaned. “Kiss me.”
“Now who’s giving orders?”
“Does it matter?”
The gleam in his eye said it did matter. He leaned in until she was breathing his air, so slow his biceps shook with the slow downward push of his body until he hovered over her. She arched into him, and when he resisted, she wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him down with her.
