by Hart, Callie
“So why are you acting like this? Why the fuck are you so damned pissed at me?” I hated that my eyes were stinging. My throat was aching, too. I did not want to be on the verge of tears. I’d been strong so far. I’d withstood so much over the past few weeks. Hell, I’d withstood so much over my entire fucking life, that raising my chin, looking trouble dead in the eye and facing it without balking had become second nature to me.
An ever-present exhaustion tugged at me, though. Relentless, it was constantly demanding that I just lay down and give up. How much easier would it be to simply crumble when things got tough? I knew women who burst into tears when their coffee makers quit working, or they broke a fucking nail. I was nothing like that, but today? Today was really taking the cake. And the guy I’d come to lean on, who I’d secretly allowed myself to believe would be a form of support for me, was now treating me like I’d fucked up his entire year.
Glacially slowly, Fix straightened, pivoting to face me. His expression was a mirror of the weather outside—thunderous, dark and ominous. “I’m not mad at you, Sera. I’m mad at myself.”
“Why? You dealt with that guy. You figured out a way to buy us some more time. Things are way better than they were this time yesterday.”
His pale silver irises seemed to glow as he stalked toward me. He looked like he was going to eat me alive.
Fuck.
“I brought him back here,” he whispered. “I let him inside the fucking building, Sera. I nearly got you killed. Things are not better than they were this time yesterday. Yesterday, I hadn’t dropped the ball so fucking unbelievably that I nearly cost us everything.” When he stopped in front of me, he lifted his hand, touching his fingertips to the waves of hair that fell about my face. His smile was a jagged, mirthless slash that marred his handsome features. “I’m furious with myself, not you, Sera. You have no idea… You have no idea what it would have done to me if he’d fucking killed you.”
His voice was thick with emotion. Fix was like a dark, glittering diamond; there were so many facets to him, a thousand different aspects, many of which I was still yet to learn. I could spend the rest of my life with him and I’d still discover something new about him every day, I was certain of this. But the very core of him, at the very center of that compounded, brilliantly impenetrable wall he’d formed around himself, there stood one solid, undeniably irrefutable truth that I already knew without a shadow of a doubt: he was a protector.
That might have seemed contradictory, given what he did for a living, but everything Fix did he did for a reason. Franz, back in Liberty Fields, had kidnapped and raped a girl so brutally she nearly died. The very first guy Fix killed in New York had attacked and murdered a defenseless little boy. Right now, he was furious with himself because he cared about me, he’d assumed the role of my protector, and he felt like he had failed me.
“Accountability’s a strange thing, Fix. We dread it more than anything else, but we’re all so eager to heap it upon ourselves for no fucking reason. Zeth isn’t your fault. None of this is really your fault. You don’t need to feel guilty.”
He gave me a lopsided, sad smile. “I know about guilt. This is not guilt.” He fastened a loop of my hair around his finger, his eyes shining brightly, beautifully, as he considered it. “This is fear, Angel. Bottomless, terrifying, soul-shaking fear. Without you…”
“You’d be just fine. Life would return to normal. You’d accept jobs. Complete them. Move on. You’d find a pretty girl to sleep with every once in a while. Things would be easier. They’d be simple.”
“Simple doesn’t always mean better.”
“For you it would.”
He watched me. I counted each of his breaths and the seconds between them. God, he was so fucking spectacular. Completely other. So strange, and exciting, and different. I was a firm believer in evolution. I’d never questioned the science of evolution before, but now I kept stumbling across holes in the theory. There was no way Fix had evolved alongside other men like Gareth. Yes, he was human. He was tall, but not abnormally so. He was in possession of the correct number of arms and legs. He was officially a member of the Homo Sapien family, but there was more to him than that. The unearthly feeling that settled over me whenever he studied me in that intense, penetrating manner of his, and the way his eyes seem to dance and spark with understanding and comprehension, even though I often hadn’t even opened my mouth—it all made him appear to be so much more than human. As if he lived on a higher plane of existence. One that ran parallel to the everyday reality I occupied, and he could see and feel everything I could see and feel, but he was privy to far more from his lofty vantage point over the world.
“Nothing will ever be simple after you, Sera.” Unraveling my hair from around his finger, he reached down and took my hand. Thoughtfully, he turned it over and began to trace the lines of my palm. “I’m unwilling to even think about what my life would look like if you decided to turn around and walk away from me.”
“You don’t need to think about it. It’s not going to happen. But if it did,” I said, arching an eyebrow at him. “Then you’re supposed to tell me you’d never want anyone else. That you wouldn’t even consider sleeping with another woman.”
“My, my. Are you getting a little possessive over my dick, Sera Lafferty?”
“Of course not. It just…belongs to me.” I tried valiantly to keep a straight face.
Fix lit me up with those devastating silvery eyes of his. I was locked onto his mouth, watching his full lips form the words, when he said, “My dick’s like a Porsche, Sera. You just bought it. Paid an insane amount for it. But you’ve been sitting in the passenger’s seat, afraid to get behind the wheel. You’ve been letting me drive it ever since we met. I think it’s about time you took control, don’t you? See what this thing can really do.”
Flushed with heat, heart somersaulting, my pulse galloping, I opened my mouth…and realized I had no clue what to say to that.
Fix hummed. He placed his hands either side of me, trapping me between his arms. “You’re blushing.”
“Thanks for the notification.”
“You’re throwing off enough heat to give me sunburn.”
“Heat doesn’t give people sunburn.”
“Touché. I suppose my flawless complexion is safe, then.” He rocked his head back and ran his tongue over his teeth, considering me. “You’re fucking beautiful, Sera.”
“Even when I’m beet red?”
“Yes. Especially then.”
He leaned forward, pressing his hips against mine, and I stifled a knowing laugh. “Wow. Really? I cannot believe you’re turned on right now.”
“What can I say? Tying guys up and dumping them in my bathtub really gets my dick hard.” His mood had very plainly shifted from angry to teasing—and teasing me was one of his favorite things to do. It wasn’t the fact that we were holding someone captive in his bathroom that was turning him on. It was the fact that I’d just told him I owned his dick. And he wasn’t going to let me get away with not proving it.
I moved my hand down and placed my palm against him through his jeans. Fix’s nostrils flared, the muscles in his jaw popped as he clenched his jaw. I almost crowed with victory as I tightened my grip around his cock and his eyes almost rolled back into his head.
“Should I be making some sort of joke about your stick shift?” I whispered.
“Only if you want me to make one about my engines revving.”
“Yeah, let’s skip the jokes. How about I just do this…” I unfastened his fly, slowly unzipping his pants. I placed my palm against the washboard, taut flatness of his stomach, trying not to hold my breath like a lovestruck teenager as I began to slide my hand down the front of his boxers. I grasped him firmly, and Fix’s head dropped, hanging down, his shoulders tensing as I worked my hand up and down his shaft.
He’d tormented me so many times. Propelled me to the point of insanity with his featherlight touch. It was time for some motherfucking payback
. Swiftly, I moved, spinning us around, so that his back was pressed up against the kitchen counter.
“I don’t want to hear a peep out of you,” I whispered into his ear. “For the next thirty minutes, you’re my plaything. You do what you’re told, or I’m going to punish you.”
His body seemed to be vibrating with anticipation as he leaned back against the wall, raising his hands in the air. His eyes were burning white fire. “Have the thirty minutes started yet? Beca—”
I pushed myself up onto my tiptoes and I fastened his lower lip—his split lip—into my mouth, biting down and pulling hard.
“Argh! Fuck!”
I released him. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, and when he drew it away, his skin was marked with his blood. The dark look he shot me said a thousand words. Most of them were expletives, but the others were something along the lines of, ‘I’m impressed. You’re really not fucking around.’’
I fired back a look of my own. ‘I know. Now don’t let that smart mouth of yours get you in trouble again.’
Fix shuddered as I tightened my hold around his cock, and a shot of adrenalin fizzed in my blood. This was going to be interesting. His skin was like velvet, the rigid muscle underneath smooth and hard. Working my hand up and down the length of him, I used one hand to reach around my back and undo my bra strap. I only had to release him for quick second as I stripped out of both my shirt and my bra at the same time, but by the look on Fix’s face made it seem as though the lack of contact had been far, far too long.
He glanced down at my chest, the hunger in his eyes a living, breathing thing. Instead of pushing my hand back down beneath his boxers, I slowly lowered myself to my knees and pulled his jeans down in one swift movement.
“Put your palms flat against the wall,” I ordered.
He did as he was told.
“You’re going to want to bury your hands in my hair. You’re gonna want to hold my head. You’re going to want to touch my breasts. But if you so much as even lift one finger, Mr. Marcosa, you’re going to regret it.” From my vantage point, kneeling in front of him, Felix looked like some kind of monolith, made out of muscle and smooth, perfectly tanned skin. He was magnificent, and right now, he was my fucking slave.
My pulse racing, I finally looked down at his erect cock, and my own lust threatened to overcome me. I nearly begged him to take back the reins, to spread me out on the kitchen floor and fuck me right here and now. I pinched the end of my tongue between my teeth and held it there until the moment passed. When I knew I was in complete control of myself, I licked my lips and pressed them against the very tip of him.
He was sweet, and salt, and smooth, and hard, and addicting. As I wrapped my mouth around him, I could tell how badly he wanted to use his hands on me. His legs were twitching like crazy. The man with the silver eyes also had a silver tongue; the fact that I’d forbidden him from speaking was probably killing him. He’d have a thousand sarcastic or witty digs, ready and begging to be used, but not being able to open his mouth, not being able to touch me…
He’d made a big deal of giving me control, but how long could he realistically keep this up? How far could I push him before he snatched back the reins and taught me a lesson for torturing him so mercilessly?
I had to make the most of the situation while I could.
I steadied myself, my right hand resting on his tensed thigh, and then I put my other hand to good use. Fix flexed, his body locking up as I cupped his balls. He responded to my touch immediately, and in a way I wasn’t expecting. He made fists out of his hands and slammed them into the wall behind him, releasing a strained, jagged groan that echoed around the kitchen.
“Fuuuuuuu—” He didn’t complete the curse word. He cut himself off when I dug my fingernails into his leg.
“Careful, now. That came pretty close to an actual word,” I purred.
He blew a hard stream of air down his nose, his eyes glimmering with a dangerous level of frustration. He’d challenged me to assume this role, though. He was going to have to deal with it for a little while longer at least.
I placed my mouth over him again, moaning at the back of my throat when I felt him swell and harden even further. Holy fuck, he hadn’t been kidding. He really did have a Porsche for a dick. Performing blow jobs on past boyfriends had been uninspiring and underwhelming. Much like going for a joyride in a nineteen ninety Chrysler Lebaron. But having Fix’s dick in my mouth for want of a better word, exhilarating.
He grew tenser by the second. If his shoulders and his legs and his stomach muscles continued to tighten like this every time I swept my tongue over the tip of his cock, or I pushed my mouth all the way down his shaft, he was going to fucking pull something.
He couldn’t take much more of this.
I couldn’t take much more of it, either.
If I continued, I was going to make him come. That would turn me on to the point of distraction, but I was being greedy tonight. I wanted him. I wanted to feel him pulse and throb as he fucking came inside me.
I stopped, getting to my feet, and Fix nearly lost his mind. He was more than frustrated now; he was exasperated, and he wanted to claim me. It was tough fucking luck.
He’d already been shirtless before we’d started out on this little adventure. I took a step back so I could kick out of my jeans, daring him to break my rules as I then shimmied out of my panties and tossed them to one side. “On your back,” I told him. “I want you laid out, bare and ready for me.”
There was nothing like watching Felix Marcosa simmer as he obeyed a command. It would have been the stuff of legends, but I doubted anybody else had actually ever witnessed it before. He laid down, his dark hair falling about his head in a halo, and I stood back and inspected him—the ripped cut of his abs, the defined line of his pecs, his collar bone, and his traps. Then, further down, the cut vee of his groin that lead down between his legs. He was still hard, rock solid, his erection resting heavily on his belly.
He fidgeted, his fingers curving, digging into the tile beneath him. He was fighting with himself, battling to stay in command of himself…and it looked like he was losing. I threw back my shoulders, lifting my chin, and I stepped over his body, so I was straddling him.
“I’m going to fuck you,” I informed him. “And if you’re a very good boy, I might just let you come when I’m done with you.”
A languorous, downright immoral smile spread across his face. I didn’t need his words to tell me what that meant. He was going to make me pay for this. He would let me have my fun, but when it was his turn to take back control, he was going to keep me panting and moaning until I fucking wept. And it would all be so worth it.
I took him in my hand, guiding him to where I needed him to be. The moment I slid down onto him, Fix’s wicked smile disappeared. He locked his jaw, the tendons in his neck bulging as he groaned, his hands curling into fists all over again.
He might not have touched me once yet, but I was more than ready for him. I stretched to take him, his size still enough to make my breath catch in my throat. Fuck, he felt so fucking good. Sitting back, I started to rock, angling my hips, and Fix snarled. I shot him a warning look, then sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, cupping my breasts in my own hands.
My nipples were so sensitive. Peaked and swollen. It felt so fucking good to roll them between my finge—
Fuck!
I was moving. Being hurled through the air.
I let out a scream, and strong, powerful hands caught me just before I hit the ground.
Fix was on top of me, out of nowhere, his mouth crashing down on mine. He shoved my legs apart and settled himself between them, thrusting himself inside me. I couldn’t tell which was more savage—his searing, demanding kiss, or the way he sank himself inside me with such desperate need.
““You ask too much, Angel,” he growled in a ragged voice. “I can take a lot of things, but…you can’t fucking touch yourself while you fuck me. I can’t take that.”
I could have stopped him. He’d earned himself some serious punishment for this kind of insolence, but I was too stunned by the feeling of his skin on mine, and the way his lips had scorched at my mouth.
“Fuck,” he groaned. “The moment you slid your pussy down onto my dick, I was a fucking goner. Now I’m going to have to make you scream or I’m going to fucking snap.”
His hands were all over me, his fingers gouging into my skin to the point of being painful, but I’d already given myself over to him. He was truly an evil mastermind. He knew there would be no recourse for his actions, because I needed him so fucking badly.
He rocked his hips forward, and I gasped.
“You can take me. Don’t worry, Angel. I’m not going to ruin that tight little pussy.”
When I’d realized he wasn’t going to hold up his end of the bargain, I’d counted on him taking a little longer to cave. But, honestly, I wasn’t all that upset that I’d had the keys to the Porsche taken away from me. He sweetened the blow; using a combination of his fingers, and his tongue and his dick, Fix coaxed two mind-bending orgasms out of me.
The third and final time, he came right along with me, and I found myself marveling at the sight of him as he threw his head back and cursed like the sun and the moon had just collided.
SIX
ZETH
I’d killed people for less than this.
I’d stabbed a guy in the armpit for giving me side-eye in a gas station once. I had been nicer than I should have. Could have shoved the shank into his groin and let him bleed out that way. Would have been pretty fucking quick. Messy, though. Nasty. Wouldn’t have been a clean getaway for me. But you know what? You gave me attitude, you reaped the rewards. It was that simple. Fix had given me nothing but attitude. Most guys laid eyes on me and they knew what was good for them; they laid down and died, or they walked the fuck away.
This Fix guy had slapped restraints on me and shoved me into a copper bathtub. Did I care that he’d thrown a clean towel at me, and that I’d been using it to cushion my neck? Fuck no. Did I care that I knew I was getting out of here within the next twenty-four hours, give or take a minute or two? Uhhh, that would be a hard no. Felix Marcosa had taken some epic goddamn liberties, and my patience was nowhere near as long as my dick. By the time I unfolded myself out of this bath, there was going to be fucking hell to pay. And guess what? The Prince of the Damned didn’t accept Visa or a Diners fucking Club Card, and a Mastercard wasn’t gonna get the ex-priest anywhere, either. Fix was screwed.
