by Sam Mariano
Every word he says is like a new, sharper dagger lodged right in my chest cavity. Dutifully, my heart tries to beat around each blade, but damn, those memories hurt.
“That’s none of your business,” I tell him. “You give me your numbers and I’ll give you mine. You tell me how many women you’ve been inside, how many mouths your cock has been in. You get back to me with your score, and I’ll be happy to share mine.”
Grabbing me by the throat hard enough that I gasp, he pushes me harder against the wall. “It is my business, Laurel. You’re my property and he’s my employee. I want to know how many fucking bonuses he got.”
I glare at him, pushing against his chest. “Get off me.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” he says, pressing a finger to the pulse thundering in my neck. Smiling a slow smile, he leans in to kiss my neck.
“No,” I say, shoving uselessly against his chest. “We don’t go from ‘you’re my property’ to neck-kissing that fast. Plutonium. Plutonium, plutonium, plutonium.”
“You need to stop using that word when your clothes are still on. Maybe you don’t remember how safe words work, Laurel. Maybe it’s been too long since I last fucked you and you need a reminder.”
“I told you I wasn’t ready,” I say, shoving against his chest with more anger this time.
I certainly haven’t gained any strength in the last minute, but this time he eases back enough to look at me.
“You don’t listen to me. I told you I wasn’t ready, and you ignored me. I told you I didn’t want to see him, and you invited him to the club our first night out.”
His territorial anger seems to take a backseat as he recognizes real feelings bubbling out of me. “He works for me, Laurel. He’s going to be around. You’ve gotta get over it.”
“What if I can’t?”
I swear, he nearly rolls his eyes. He manages to stop himself, but I see how close he comes. Making a greater attempt at patience, he tells me, “You will. You just need a little more time. A few more days, maybe. It doesn’t help that we’ve had such a rocky start. By comparison, Sin doesn’t bring a whole hell of a lot of excitement with him.”
I hate his subtle putdowns. “Stop saying things like that. Stop being mean to him.”
“He isn’t yours to defend, Laurel.” Aggravation flickers across his handsome features. “If you don’t find a way to get over him, I’m gonna have to be a whole lot meaner.” Eyebrows rising, he demands, “You need incentive? You want me tell you the only alternative to you getting over it? The only way I can make it so you don’t have to see him anymore?”
Even before he answers his own questions, my blood runs cold. I can’t find the words to speak, so I stay quiet.
Rafe meets my gaze, eyebrows hiked up, knowing he’s struck gold. “There is one way. I won’t like it, but he’s not having my baby. You’re the one I have to make room for. If you need him out of the way, I can do that. I’m not sure you’ll like my method.”
“You wouldn’t hurt him. He does good work for you.”
“He does. But I can’t keep him around if the mother of my child can’t stop daydreaming about fucking him when we’re trying to have a nice night out, now, can I?”
I swallow, staring at his chest. It drifts closer and he hugs me. I don’t want to hug him, but I’m presently a little afraid not to, so I wrap an arm around him to hug him back.
His tone is low, almost serene, as he goes on. “I can’t have Sin around if I have to worry about him, can I? He’s my go-to guy. I need something, he’s the guy I call. What am I supposed to do if I can’t call him, Laurel?”
“I never said you couldn’t call him,” I murmur, but without much steam.
“Now, if that’s what you need, tell me. If you can’t handle being around Sin in social situations, you let me know, and I’ll start looking around for his replacement.” His big hand caresses my jaw. “But this isn’t the kind of work where you get fired and go find a job elsewhere, kitten. When I fire someone, it’s permanent.”
I meet his gaze warily, my mouth like a cotton field. “It won’t come to that.”
His tone is falsely attentive, but he knows he’s threatening me. Maybe he even likes it. “No?”
“No,” I mutter.
“You’ll be able to overcome the epic four day love affair you had?”
His mocking tone pisses me off, but I bite my tongue. “I’ll get over it.”
“Good,” he says, pulling me into his broad shoulder, then shifting my weight so he can kiss me. “Get over it fast, because I want to fuck you, and I don’t like waiting.”
10
Sin
Tonight had to fucking suck. There wasn’t even an outside shot it would go any other way.
My fist flexes, wanting to do what it does best—smash in the face of the person pissing me off. Problem is, the person pissing me off so much right now is Rafe. A common occurrence since Laurel came on the scene.
As if it wasn’t bad enough having to sit here and watch him paw at her all night, watching him pay attention to other women and embarrass her, now as I stand here in the shadows, I have to watch his hand sliding up under her dress. The panties she’s wearing must be a thong, because I see the bare curve of her ass right before he squeezes it.
Anger and arousal surge at the same time. I don’t want him touching her ass, but that’s a thing I knew I’d have to deal with. All the rest of this shit, not so much.
Well, okay, sure, I figured eventually it might come up. But after she already loved the asshole, not right when they first got together.
He lifts her thigh and guides it until she hooks it around his hip. Now I have to watch as he presses himself between her legs, pinning her arms to the wall, and kisses the fuck out of her. I’d rather watch a grown man cry and piss himself over the bloody stumps where his fingers used to be than watch this fucking shit—no contest.
I guess I don’t have to watch this. I could walk away now. Ordinarily I don’t get involved in Rafe’s love life, but Laurel is full of fire tonight and he’s not really used to that. I just had to follow and make sure everything cooled down between them.
I’m stuck here watching him paw at her and I can’t fucking walk away. It’s increasingly difficult not to walk over there and rip him away from her. To punch him in the fucking face, throw her ass over my shoulder, and haul her out to my car. I should take her feisty little ass back to my house and tie her to my bed, bury my face between her thighs until she remembers how to act.
Nah, what am I thinking? She wouldn’t act like that with me. She responded to me very differently than she responds to him.
I like it, but I shouldn’t.
Laurel Price isn’t for me, so I don’t know why it feels so much like she is.
This is going to be fucking hard.
Before I have to watch him fuck her here in the hallway, the bastard finally pulls back. They murmur a couple more things to each other, then she nods and he takes a step back. He has to adjust his pants, but then he gives her hand a squeeze and heads back toward the table.
I keep to the shadows and watch. Laurel sighs and looks down at her shoes, then tips her head back against the wall. Finally, she pushes off the wall and resumes her trek to the bathroom.
I know she’s all right so I should go back to the table, but instead I follow her.
The bathroom here is multiple stalls. Single stall, I could follow her inside, but not multiple stalls. Crossing the corridor, I make a snap decision and catch her by the arm.
She gasps and whirls around to see who is accosting her. Her face freezes when she sees it’s me. I drag her into the shadows with me, planting her back against the wall. There’s a huge potted tree on this corner, so even on the off chance Rafe comes to investigate when he realizes I’m not at the table, he won’t see us right away.
I’m not sure how to explain myself just now. Telling her the truth—that I just wanted to make sure she was okay—wouldn’t make much fuck
ing sense, but my mind is blanking for lies.
Turns out, I don’t have to concoct a reason. Laurel doesn’t demand to know what the hell I’m doing accosting her in the halls or pushing her against the wall and standing so close. Her big blue eyes look up at me, so vulnerable, so full of confusion and hurt, but there’s something else. It’s the something else that’s the problem. This girl should hate me, full stop, no exceptions. She should hate my guts. She should want to see me ripped open and disemboweled for using her the way I did.
The way she thinks I did, at least.
The way I meant to, I guess.
Joke’s on me this time. Got tangled up in my own damn web.
She doesn’t speak, and I don’t either. For all the fire and spunk she had toward Rafe back at the table, I still see obedience in her eyes for me. As if no time has passed, no lamps were thrown, no cruel words delivered, Laurel gazes up at me like she belongs to me. I’m half tempted to tell her to drop to her knees just to see if she’ll still do it.
I’m haunted enough by that mental image though, so I don’t.
Being this close makes me want to get closer. I want to feel her body fitted snugly against mine. It’s the last thing I should do, but since I have her pressed against this wall here, I go ahead and push my luck. I take a step forward until I can feel her tits smashed against my chest. Laurel inhales sharply, but instead of telling me to get off her, she touches my sides, then snakes her arms around my back and pulls me even closer.
She hugs me.
His fucking cologne still hangs on her from just a moment ago and my jaw locks. I want to chain her little ass up in my shower and clean every last bit of him off her. Definitely can’t do that. I shouldn’t even be touching her, but the way she clings to me, she seems to be the one who needs it most. Wordlessly, she buries her face in my chest and holds me close. I don’t hug her back because I can’t. Because I can hear the sounds of her crying into my shirt, and that alone is turning me to stone.
Maybe I made a fucking mistake. The thought flashes across my mind—not for the first time, but this is the first time I’ve felt the weight of it. Before this, I felt like I made a mistake because I missed her. Because I could still smell her on the pillow next to mine, because I woke up after she haunted my dreams all night with a hard cock and no pretty little mouth to put it in.
But now she’s crying into my chest, and I don’t know why. All I want to do is obliterate everything that makes her sad, but I can’t because it’s probably me.
I can’t hug her back because my hands are tied right now. I gave her back to him. I can’t tell Rafe I changed my mind. He thinks he won. He took her public. Even if the embarrassment pisses him off more than losing Laurel would, he’s not going to let me take her back now. I crossed the line when I took her the first time. I held that fucking line and didn’t back down from it, but I can’t just take her back and say, “Sorry, I thought I was done with her but I’m not. I’ll find you another one.”
Laurel pulls herself together after a minute. She pulls back, sniffling and wiping her eyes. “Sorry,” she murmurs.
“Why are you crying?” I ask her.
Her bottom lip quivers and her big blue eyes fill up with tears again. “I wanna go home.”
“This is your home now,” I tell her.
“No, it’s not,” she says, shaking her head. “I hate it here.”
“Did Rafe do something?”
He better fucking not have. I don’t care if he’s the king of this fucking city—kings have been toppled before. I helped him take his power, and I could help take it away from him, too. Wouldn’t earn me a whole hell of a lot of loyalty points, depending on who I push, but I can’t say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind a time or two since Laurel happened.
Much to my relief, she shakes her head, not looking at me. “It’s not him.”
“Then what is it?”
She’s quiet for the longest stretch, then she meets my gaze and holds it. “I miss you.”
I damn sure shouldn’t take her small, soft hand in mine, but I do anyway. “I’m standing right here, aren’t I?”
“You know what I mean,” she says, glancing down at her hand in mine. “I don’t want to avoid your gaze and… I don’t want it to be like this. You still owe me Chinese food.”
I crack a smile. “Always thinking about your next meal, aren’t you?”
“I know I should hate you,” she says, looking up at me again. “I should. But I can’t.”
Selfishly, I’m glad as hell to hear that. “You don’t have to hate me.”
“I should, though,” she insists. “I hated him when he was an asshole, and you were every bit as bad.”
My fingers itch to tuck her hair behind her ear. I resist the urge, but just barely. Attempting to lighten the mood a bit, I tell her, “I guess I’m just special.”
Laurel cracks a smile, but it’s a smile bursting with sadness. “I kinda thought so.”
I watch her for a moment, then I lean back and check the hall beyond the potted plant to make sure Rafe isn’t around the corner. I was torn on whether or not he would come back here once he saw I wasn’t at the table. I might have been escorting the redhead out of the club and laying into the incompetent motherfucker who let her into the VIP section in the first place. That’s what I should have done, but I told Gio to do it instead. I’m not the one who should be issuing orders and he knows it, too. The disgruntled look he shot me got the point across just in case I had the intelligence of a brick, but I didn’t care.
Rafe made it through Cassandra Carmichael without murdering her, so chances are he can survive Laurel Price. I wasn’t taking any chances though.
He’s not in the hallway storming toward me though, so we still have a minute. If Gio was back at the table by the time he got there, there’s little chance Rafe will come check on us unless we linger way too long. He’s not a man prone to emotional outbursts to begin with, and he won’t want to give off the impression he doesn’t trust me or Laurel. Not even if it’s true. Makes him look foolish to keep around people he doesn’t trust, and he has to present a strong front for Gio. I’m less concerned about what Gio thinks about me, but if I lose Rafe’s trust, I’m more or less fucked. Didn’t think I’d be putting my own ass so far over the line when I hatched this idea, but I wasn’t prepared for Laurel Price. Didn’t think a week or so would be long enough for even a fraction of the feelings shining in her eyes at me right now to develop.
I could kiss her right now and she wouldn’t stop me. Hell, I could do more than that. I can visualize dragging her body close, pushing the flimsy straps of her dress down over her shoulders. I can see that pretty head falling back as I bend to take one of her rosy nipples into my mouth. Hear the sharp intake of breath, followed by one of her little moans as she drags her fingers through my hair, keeping me close.
Laurel’s voice draws me out of that ill-considered visualization, but not before my cock starts to respond to it. “I have a question. Purely academic in nature, mind you.”
That draws a little smile out of me. “All right.”
“I know this isn’t the kind of job you can quit or retire from, but are you able to transfer? Like, between branches of the family? You obviously work in Vegas, but say you didn’t want to work in Vegas anymore. Could you transfer to Chicago and work for Mateo instead?”
The little wheels in her head are clearly turning, alerting me that the hug was as bad an idea as I originally thought it might be. “It’s been done before, sure. I am not transferring to Chicago, Laurel.”
“Why not?” she asks, wide-eyed at my immediate refusal. “Chicago is great. The family there is… well, different. A little twisted, but they have a nice set-up. Mateo clearly has more money than God, so I imagine he pays well.”
I’m already shaking my head. “Based on what I’ve heard, I can’t work for Mateo. I wouldn’t be able to do it. Guy’s an asshole.”
“But you’re only hearing what Ve
gas people say, and guess what? I think the Vegas Morellis are assholes. I’m friends with Mateo’s wife and she assures me she’s a very good person to have on my side. I bet you if I asked her, she would talk to Mateo about it. I bet you could work for him. This guy Adrian does, and he even lives at the house with his wife and kids. I say house, but it’s… I mean, it’s basically a castle. They have these traditional Sunday night dinners where the guys have drinks in the study while the ladies commiserate and make dinner. It’s old-fashioned, but somehow kind of cool and fun. And then the women serve their men. We could make that sexy. I’m not saying you would have to live there, but Mia already invited me to and I bet you could, too, at least until you were used to the city. She said the bedroom she would give me is basically its own apartment, just without the kitchen.”
Since she’s about to ask me to run away with her, I grasp her shoulders to steady her. “Laurel. No.”
Her shoulders sag and she appears to be exasperated with me. “But why?”
“I don’t run from my problems, for one thing. You’re also having Rafe’s baby, so even if I went to Chicago, it’s not like you can go.”
“Yes, I can,” she insists. “I’m considering it anyway. Whether you stay here and deal with Rafe or you make a super smart decision to relocate, I’m not sure I want to deal with his shit. I told myself I would give Rafe a chance, but if this is what life with him is like, I don’t want it. And I don’t have to take it. Mia is my anchor. She told me I don’t have to stay in Vegas if I don’t want to. She gave me a very appealing back-up plan, and… well, to be honest, it’s more my plan A than my plan B right now. If you transferred… things would be different.”
I sigh, looking at the wall behind her so I don’t have to look at the hope in her eyes. “Laurel…”
“I know you started out using me, but don’t try to tell me all of it was fake. You wouldn’t be standing here in this hallway if you didn’t like me at least a little bit.”
