“Like I said,” Sal is saying, “Sarah and I have been together now for a while, and it’s becoming more and more clear to me that she’s, well…” He trails off, turns to let his eyes meet mine. There’s warmth in them, which surprises me, but a second later I realize it’s just put on for the crowd. The corners of his mouth are still tight, no matter what kind of smile he’s managing, no matter how adoring he’s trying to make himself look. “Well,” he starts up again, “she’s the girl for me. So I’m very happy to announce tonight that Sarah and I have decided to tie the knot.”
He turns toward the others at the table and lifts his glass. “As of yesterday afternoon, we’re officially engaged.”
3
Sarah
My face goes hot, then icy cold. I just stand there staring. I have no idea what to do. I barely feel it when Sal reaches out to touch my arm, tracing his fingers down to my hand and lifting it. He kisses the back of my hand and then slides a ring over my finger. It’s got a big diamond in it, and the light flickers back from the facets—the only thing I really see right now. My hands are shaking, but I can’t feel the tips of my fingers.
He lifts my hand again to kiss it now that it’s properly bejeweled. The ring feels heavy, like I’ve got a brick attached to my finger. Then Sal pulls me against him and kisses me, right there in front of Phil Spada, Frank, Leo, Chris…all of them.
And Nick.
I barely dare try to look at Nick, but I do. I have no idea what kind of expression is on my face. It feels like a frozen smile, but for all I know I’m grimacing with the desperation squeezing tight in my chest. Nick meets my gaze. The soft smile is gone, his mouth thin and tight against his teeth. His green eyes spark. They shift to Sal, and it wouldn’t take much stretching of the imagination to see lasers shooting out of them, drilling holes in Sal’s head.
But of course it doesn’t happen, and I’m left standing there while Sal moves aside, letting the various dinner guests approach me.
“What a wonderful birthday present!” an older woman tells me, pressing my hand with hers. “You must be so happy!”
“Congratulations! You’ll make a beautiful bride.”
“Happy birthday! Have you two decided on a date yet?”
It goes on and on. My voice switches to automatic, and I thank everyone for their well wishes as they come to shake my hand, to shake Sal’s hand, to oooh and aaah over my ring. I’ve gone numb, which is good, because if I could actually feel anything I’d burst into tears.
Nick comes up to me, too. I suppose if he didn’t it would look strange, since everyone else in the room is congratulating Sal and me. He takes my hand and presses it between his own. Muttering, “Congratulations,” he looks deep into my eyes as if he’s trying to get me to read his mind. I nod and say thanks, not sure what he’s trying to get across to me. But he wants something from me, I can tell that much. The idea of it calms me a little.
There are a few more toasts to my health, to Sal’s, to our future life together. Finally the spotlight moves off us, and the guests start to mill around the room, breaking off into small conversational groups.
Sal is still next to me, though. I need to get away. I lean over and tell him I’m going to the ladies’, then I hightail it out of the room, tears choking me all the way out.
Going to the ladies’ room will be too obvious; if Sal realizes I’ve been gone too long, it’s the first place he’ll look. So I head the other direction and make my way to the back part of the restaurant. There’s a door that says EMPLOYEES ONLY; I glance around and see no one nearby, so I push it open and head into the big, dark room beyond it. It’s a storage room of some kind, with shelves covered with supplies—bags of flour, pots and pans, canned goods, bottles. Surely nobody will look for me here.
My breath is catching in my chest, trying to make sobs, but I won’t let it as I make my way as far back into the room as I can. Finally I reach the back wall. I let myself slide down to the floor, where I put my head in my hands and finally let it all out in wrenching, tearing, painful sobs that make my chest hurt.
It’s a full-on ugly cry, definitely not the kind of thing you want anybody witnessing. It’s so bad, in fact, I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to stop.
I’ve lost control of my emotions; I’ve lost control of my life. All I wanted was a little bakery to call my own, and now I’m stuck with an abusive boyfriend who won’t let me out from under his thumb.
Fiancé, I correct myself. Apparently he’s your fiancé. I look down at the diamond on my hand. It’s huge, reflecting the faint light in the room, trying to twinkle. I can’t be happy about it. I can’t be happy about any of this. All I can do is cry.
There’s a faint sound suddenly, and I freeze. Is somebody in here with me? I picture rats, and the idea makes me even more nauseated than I was. I try to drag back the sob that’s in the process of escaping from my mouth. There’s another sound, and the light in the room shifts. Somebody’s opened the door where I came in.
Dammit. Did they follow me? Did Sal send somebody after me? My hands start to shake. I won’t go back to that room where everybody can see what Sal’s announcement has done to me. Won’t let them see that I’ve been crying. I shrink back against the wall as far as I can.
“Sarah?” The voice is quiet. I can tell it’s a man, but I can’t tell who. I press my hand against my mouth, biting my finger to keep my sobs under control. Then a dark shadow approaches and fills the space between the shelves in front of me. “Sarah?” he says again.
It’s Nick.
“Oh my God.” I leap up from the floor and throw myself at him. I’ve got no pride left; I can’t afford it. “Nick.” The sobbing starts again, and I’m not even embarrassed, not really. But my heartbeat has sped up, and suddenly my breath is rasping in my throat. I feel like I might be about to explode. “Nick, please.”
He returns my embrace, his arms gentle around me. How is he part of this mess, where all these men do nothing but exert control whatever way they can? How is it that he and Sal have the same job, the same boss? I can’t get my head around it.
His voice is still gentle, and he cups the back of my head with one hand. “Shhh, Sarah. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not. It’s not okay. It’ll never be okay.” I struggle to breathe. “I can’t marry him, Nick. I never said I would. He never even asked me—he just…” I stop, trying to catch my breath.
“Slow down,” he says quietly. “You’re hyperventilating. I think you’re having a panic attack.”
I nod and try to get myself back under control. “Deep breath,” he says. “Deep breath.”
Finally my breathing eases back to a more normal rate. I clench my fists against Nick’s chest and look up into his face. His eyes are glittering in the dim light. “I can’t marry Sal. I just can’t. I don’t want to. He’s… He hits me, Nick. I can’t live with that. Help me. Can you help me?”
His hands tighten on my arms, and I see his mouth press into a hard line. “Come with me. Right now. We’ll get the hell out of here. I’ll take you to my place. You can stay there. Sal won’t know where you are, and he won’t be able to force you to do anything. I promise.”
I nod, scrubbing my hands over my cheeks to wipe away the tears. I have to look horrible, my nose running, eyes red and swollen. But Nick’s looking down at me like there’s nothing wrong at all, and what I can see of his expression is gentle, almost caring.
Still, I have to remember who he is and who he works for. “What’s in it for you?” I ask him. Because there’s no way he’s offering to help me just out of the kindness of his heart.
He chuckles. “Nothing for now.” Then he hesitates, and his hands stroke over my shoulders. “Okay, not necessarily nothing. For now, I just want you to come with me. Stay at my house. And then maybe we’ll talk about finishing what we started back at the bakery.”
Of course. There’s always some bargain to be made. With Sal I traded myself for my bakery. Nick w
ants me in exchange for protection. It’s wrong, and I know it, but at the same time something about Nick feels different than Sal. I don’t feel dirty when Nick touches me. Even after what he just said, I don’t feel like he wants to use me. Maybe I’m kidding myself.
But then he lowers his head, and his lips brush against mine. I lean toward him with a soft moan that I can’t help.
“You deserve better than him,” Nick murmurs against my mouth. “So much better.”
I press my mouth against his, wanting to be closer. The panic is starting to leave me. “I probably deserve better than you, too,” I mutter.
He chuckles. “No doubt.” But then he drags me close up against him and kisses me hard, his mouth pressing hard into mine. His tongue moves between my lips, touches my tongue, dances with it. I open wider, letting him in.
It’s like the kiss from before, at the bakery, but different. He’s a bit more reserved, like he’s trying to be gentler, or persuasive, rather than just doing his best to slake a thirst. I don’t mind either way. He tastes good to me. Like something I need.
“God, you’re beautiful.”
He reaches up and strokes my hair away from my face. I can’t be beautiful—not at the moment, anyway. I’ve been crying my heart out for, God—fifteen minutes? Thirty? There’s no way I’m not streaky and swollen. Yet he seems to mean what he said.
His mouth moves away from mine, his lips walking up the side of my face to my ear, where he nibbles a moment, nipping the curve of my ear all around the row of earrings. Then he draws the lobe between his lips, lets it go. One of his hands lowers, cupping my breast, teasing my nipple through my dress. I let out another involuntary gasp. He’s pressing closer to me, pinning me against the back wall of the storeroom. I let him. Right now I don’t want to be anywhere else. God knows I don’t want to be with Sal. And while I’ve still got some doubts about Nick’s motives, I figure anything is better than going back home.
God, I hope I’m right.
I push the thoughts out of my head—all of them, leaving just a blank space behind. Right now I only want to feel.
Nick is giving me every opportunity to do just that. While one hand continues to tease my breast, the other moves down, cupping me between my legs. After a moment his fingers start to walk against my thigh, inching my skirt up until he can move his hand under it. Then his fingers are right up against my panties.
“You’re so hot,” he mutters, fingers questing. He kisses me again while he explores between my legs, testing me through the cotton of my panties then sliding one finger under the edge and into the hot wetness beneath. A finger slides inside, and I jerk with the shock of it.
Two fingers inside, then he’s pressing the heel of his hand against my mound, and I start grinding against it.
Yeah, I’m humping his hand, and I don’t even care. It feels good. It’s something I’m doing on my own, just because I want to. No matter what Nick’s ulterior motives might be, he has yet to do anything I didn’t want him to do. In my world, that goes a long way, and how sad is that, really?
At the moment it doesn’t matter. I keep rocking on his hand, his fingers driving inside me, the heel of his hand rubbing against my clit with each wavelike movement of my hips. Heat builds between my legs. He kisses me, taking my mouth hard, and then bites down the side of my neck. His teeth dig into my shoulder, and suddenly I tense, shudder, and I can feel wetness sliding along his fingers. He laughs against my skin, his teeth still tight. Some perverse part of me hopes he’s left a mark.
“Nick,” I breathe when I start to slide down from the climax. I reach down between his legs, feeling the hard length of his erection, but he tips his hips back.
“No,” he says. “It’s okay. Later.”
I look into his face, barely able to catch the glitter of his eyes. “Later?”
“Yeah.” Reaching down, he lifts the hand I’ve got curled around him. It’s my left hand. He kisses my palm, then he takes my ring finger into his mouth. His teeth nip down the full length, until they close right behind Sal’s engagement ring. Then he slides back, and I realize he’s keeping the ring behind his teeth.
It comes off my finger. I feel a strangely euphoric sense of relief seeing my hand bare. And then Nick grins. He’s holding the ring between his teeth, the diamond in front, catching the faint light and tossing it back.
He pulls it back and spits it across the room. There’s a faint “ting” as it hits the floor.
“Let’s go,” says Nick, and we go.
4
Nick
Honest to God, I can’t believe what I’ve just done. Sal De Luca’s girlfriend—no, his fiancée—in my house. She’s gorgeous, even with her face tear streaked and her dress still a little askew from having my hands inside it. My fingers still smell like her cunt. I want to taste her there, drive my tongue into her. I want to fuck her every which way to Sunday.
Then she’ll be mine. I’ll fuck every trace of Sal off her, and neither of us will ever have to think about him again.
It’s a heady feeling, like being a little too drunk. Sal won’t ever recover from this. There’ll be no question, then, of who should take over as Spada’s right-hand man. It’ll be me, and they’ll run Sal out of town on a rail.
I hear a soft sniffing noise, and it pulls me out of my thoughts. Sarah’s still standing near the front door, looking almost lost. Forlorn. My triumph fades a little.
“Can I get you a drink?” I ask her.
She drags her attention to me and looks at me for a minute like she’s not quite sure who I am. Then she nods. “Sure. Something hot.”
“I can do that.”
I get her situated on a nice, comfortable chair in the living room, then go back into the kitchen to mix her up a hot toddy. Rum and butter, a little hot water. Cinnamon? Sure. Why not? I make one for myself, too, and bring them back into the living room.
In the archway between the kitchen and the living room, though, I stop. She’s sitting there quietly on the couch, and she’s started crying again. Not a lot—just a few tears streaking down her face, like they’re left over from the crying jag she had at the restaurant. She shoves her hand across her cheeks, shoving them away like she’s angry at them. She’s not facing in my direction; her focus is on the bookshelf against the opposite wall. I know what she’s doing—when you’re uncomfortable in somebody’s house, you distract yourself checking out their library. I hope she’s finding mine fascinating.
Strangely I find myself not able to move right away. I just want to stand there and take her in. She’s beautiful, yes, but it’s more than that. She’s so vulnerable right now, and I know damn well I’m taking advantage of that, but I think she knows it, too. And something about her just…
I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just a sort of warm feeling in my chest. Something about looking at her makes me happy.
At least I think that’s what it is. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually been happy. Not like some other guys I know who’ve settled down with good women and are raising families. I always thought Dad was happy, at least in the last couple of decades or so. Maybe he fought, too. Maybe he had issues with the Spadas and everything that was expected of us. But with me and my brother, with my mom, he was good.
I swallow hard as I’m hit with a sudden vision of Sarah, still in my house, still in my living room, but with her body heavy and beautiful with a child. My child. I want that. I want that quiet kind of security that having a woman at home, having a family, gives a man. And I can’t put it off much longer. Life is short.
I must make a noise or something, or maybe Sarah just feels me looking at her, because she turns abruptly, looking almost startled. I give her a reassuring smile and move toward her with her drink.
“Hot toddy,” I tell her as she takes it out of my hand. “Good choice?”
She smiles, hesitant, or maybe still sad. “Good choice.”
Carefully she sips at the drink and then makes a face, but I can tell the
grimace is because the toddy is hot and not because she doesn’t like it. “Cinnamon,” she says. “Nice touch.”
“I’m glad you like it.” Without asking permission, I sit down next to her on the couch and stretch an arm out along the back of it, my fingers only a couple of inches from her shoulder. I sample the drink; it’s hot but tasty, and the heat and the liquor feel good sliding down.
For a few minutes we just sit quietly, sipping our drinks and not quite looking at each other. It’s awkward, but that’s all right. It’s a start.
Finally I set my drink down on the end table and ask her the question that’s been bugging the hell out of me since even before we met at that party. “How did you end up with Sal, anyway?”
She tenses, and I regret breaking the quiet mood, awkward or not. With a small shake of her head, she says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I nod. I get that. “Okay. But if I know what he’s holding over your head, it might be easier for me to help you.”
Her head swivels, her eyes meeting mine directly. I can tell she hasn’t thought of that angle before. As she mulls what I just said, I can damn near see the thoughts rolling over and over each other in her brain. After a few long seconds she says, “The bakery.”
That makes sense. It’s usually something like that. Something that can be taken away without much effort. “What happened?”
Sarah takes another sip of her drink, this time as if she’s fortifying herself. “I’ve always wanted a bakery. Or a little restaurant. A coffee shop—you know, something little and intimate that adds character to a neighborhood.” With a shrug, she sets the drink aside, and from that small gesture I know she’s going to spill the whole story. “Mom and Dad wanted me to do something more useful with my life, but I just wanted that little restaurant. So I scrimped and saved and still I didn’t quite have enough. So…I took out a loan.”
Hot as Sin (Contemporary Romance Box Set) Page 61
