by Cecy Robson
Keon squares his swollen jaw, but doesn’t respond, clutching his side harder. I try not to react when Sal kicks him again, yet I can’t help but gasp.
Sal flips him over and presses his large foot against his chest. “I asked you a question, you little bitch.”
“Yeah,” Keon says, no longer appearing so tough. “I know who you are.”
“Then you know who I work for,” Sal adds, causing Keon to tighten his already rigid muscles. “These are my brothers you fucked with.”
“I didn’t know they were your brothers,” Keon says at the same moment a few from the surrounding group mumble a round of “oh, shits.”
“Now you do.” He motions to me. “Just like you know she’s also with me. This won’t happen again. Understand?” Sal’s tone is laced with so much venom, I involuntarily step back.
He lifts off Keon, dismissing him. Keon staggers to his feet only to crash to his knees, swearing in agony.
I almost go to him, but Sal’s voice keeps me in place. “Let’s go,” he tells his brothers.
All three back away and toward me, keeping Keon and his friends in their sights. They stand as a united front, waiting in silence until everyone disperses.
“Sal,” Apollo begins.
Salvatore holds his hand up, quieting him instantly. “Just get in the damn car.”
I follow them to where Sal parked across from me. “What were you thinking?”
Gianno squares his shoulders. “He challenged me when I stopped him from beating on a girl. I―”
“Not you,” Sal quips. “You, me, and Apollo are going to have a nice talk on the way back home.” His stare cuts my way. “I was talking to Aedry,” he says, stopping in front of my car.
I frown as he hits the key fob to his Range Rover and the boys edge away. “I couldn’t simply sit there and wait,” I snap, ramming my hands on my hips.
“Yeah, you could have. It’s what I told you to do. But you didn’t listen,” he says, shoving his face in mine. “You’re a woman and you were outnumbered. Do you have any idea what could have happened to you? What the hell were you thinking, charging in all defenseless?”
“I wasn’t defenseless. I had my stun gun,” I fire back, motioning to the holes seared into his shirt.
It’s as if the world stops spinning. Sal glowers at me as if I punched him in the nose. Today he’s in dark jeans, a white muscle T-shirt, and a dark suit jacket, likely clothes he yanked on in his rush to reach his brothers. On anyone else, these clothes would look ridiculous and comical. Yet the T-shirt grips the muscles of his chest like it refuses to let go and the rest resembles something a stylist at GQ would hand-pick for a photo shoot. But he doesn’t look hot. Absolutely not hot. Not even remotely sexy.
I’m such a terrible liar. Throw in his current brooding persona and I’m ready to peel my clothes off on the street.
“Get in your car,” he says, through his grinding teeth. “You’re following me back to my place.”
My emotions get the best of me and without thinking, I shove my face into his. “Don’t you think it will be a little crowded back at your place?”
His brows furrow deeper until understanding lights his stare. “You really gonna go there with me?”
I clamp my mouth shut, hating the way my blush lifts his full lips into a smirk. He steps closer, his broad chest brushing over mine. “It was Donnie and she’s already gone,” he says.
Donatella, his stunning friend, had spent the night. I shouldn’t be hurt. After all, I’m the one who rejected him and told him I didn’t want him touching me. Yet, here I am, devastated to learn how quickly he moved on without another glance back, and with whom he moved on.
I haven’t been able to rid him from my mind, but, apparently, he didn’t have that difficulty.
Sal leans in closer, his breath tickling my ear. I try to inch away, not wanting to smell another woman’s passion against his skin. But his clasp to my elbows holds me in place, forcing me to inhale his aroma.
I sigh as I exhale, then re-breathe his scent. There’s no hint of another woman. There’s only him, his deep male musk, traces of his fading cologne, and an underlying fragrance that screams of dominance.
“She doesn’t mean anything to me. Not like that,” he whispers, his lips trailing against my ear.
My heavy lids close as an army of goose bumps swarm my arms. This isn’t appropriate. We shouldn’t stand this close. I’m a guidance counselor, miles from my assigned post during school hours, with a man capable of extreme violence. I shouldn’t speak to him. I should keep quiet, climb in my car, and speed away. It’s what most intelligent women would do. Yet, I don’t, turning my head to face this man who’s ensnared me in his seductive web. “Did you tell her that before or after you bought her dinner?”
If I didn’t think his smirk would infuriate me more or grow any cockier, I’m dead wrong. “I didn’t buy her dinner,” he says, returning to speak low against my ear. “She’s a friend who needed a place to crash.”
I almost ask him if I was just a friend when he was pulling up my skirt in his car. But I’m not so brave and I’m too afraid to hear his response.
“Come back with us,” he says. “I want to try and make things right.”
My heart wants to believe and trust him, despite how my instincts warn me against either. But around Salvatore, I’m never really sure of anything except that he’s dangerous . . . and that I can no longer resist his touch.
Chapter Twelve
Salvatore
Aedry shocks the hell out of me by following us back. As I stretch out against my white leather couch, the same couch I slept on after giving Donnie my bed, I watch her zip around my apartment, tending to my brothers.
Donnie was a hot mess last night, worse than I’ve ever seen her, and crying over Vin cancelling their plans to go see a play with his wife. Whatever she’d taken before she arrived hit her hard. I spent an hour talking to her in my room and away from my brothers until she passed out. They know her and like her, but this isn’t a side of Donnie I want them to see. I’d rather they know her for the good person hidden beneath all that pain than the one who stumbled in at three in the morning.
Except I don’t want to focus on Donnie now. Not with Aedry here taking care of my family.
Gianno and Apollo . . . damn. They barely flinched on the ride back, acting hard like nothing could hurt them. Now that we’re home, they’re acting like a bunch of wounded vets. Can’t say I blame them. Every grimace, every groan, earns them more attention from Aedry.
“I don’t like peas,” Apollo says when he sees Aedry smashing the stuffed frozen bag against the counter.
She wraps a dishtowel around them as she nears. “They’re not to eat. They’re for your face.” She places the bag on his head, stroking his hair when he holds the bag in place. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says quietly. “But you shouldn’t have been there.”
“I had to have my brother’s back,” he says.
“You should have told me, instead,” she insists, stepping away. “I would have handled it. Now, you’re risking suspension.” She shoots her reprimanding look at Gianno. “And so are you.”
“Sorry, Miss Aedry,” they mumble.
“Does the school have to know what went down?” I ask.
Hell, and doesn’t that earn me the glare of death. “I’m not lying to my employer.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m just saying you don’t have to come clean about everything.”
“Actually, I do,” she answers with smile that’s none too friendly. “Gianno,” she says, hurrying back to him. “Don’t scratch your face.” She lifts the bottle of Witch Hazel, or whatever that shit she found is called, and dabs another cotton ball.
“Is that going to sting? —Ouch.”
“A little,” she tells him quietly. “But for a tough guy like you who took on an entire gang, this should be nothing.”
Gianno grins at her. “Yeah, I did kick some ass, didn’t I
? That bitch Keon went down like a pussy.”
“Language,” she reprimands, dabbing his skin a little harder.
He and Apollo start going off on how hard they fought. I won’t tell them I’m proud of them. At least not in front of Aedry. But I am. Gianno stood up for a girl getting beaten, and he and Apollo watched out for each other.
They even watched out for Aedry. Christ. When I saw that guy dragging her off, it took all I had not to pull my piece out. Somehow, I kept my head.
Not an easy task around this woman.
“When are you making us dinner?” Apollo asks her.
Aedry straightens, her cheeks turning pink when she’s realizes I’m watching her. “You’re making us dinner?” I ask.
“No. I’m making them dinner. You’re welcome to have some if there’s any left over.” Her voice is shaky like it always gets when she’s nervous. She fumbles with the bottle of Witch Hazel, as if she can’t close the tiny plastic lid tight enough.
A smile eases across my face. “Why are you making us dinner?” I ask, ignoring the fact that she said it was for my brothers, and that I was only welcome to their scraps.
Apollo speaks up when Aedry takes too long to answer. “I aced my algebra midterm and Gianno aced history.” His grin locks on Aedry. “Ms. Aedry promised us homemade fried chicken and biscuits if we both got A’s.”
“No, shit,” I say. “When are you coming over to cook?”
“I never said I’d come and cook here,” she says, her voice continuing to tremble. She hurries to clean up the cotton balls and Band-Aid supplies she used on my brothers. “I’ll go home first and bring it by later, if it’s okay with you.”
“If I didn’t want you here, I wouldn’t have asked you to come,” I tell her. Something in my gravelly voice slows her movements. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Gianno levelling his gaze on Apollo.
He motions to their rooms down the hall. They rise as one, Gianno pulling Aedry into a hug, something that bothers me way more than it should, considering how motherly Aedry returns his affection.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” she tells him. She releases him and strokes the side of his face. “But nothing like this can happen again. Do you hear me? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Had it been me talking to Gianno like that, he would have reacted with anger, annoyance, or maybe both. With Aedry, his reaction is thick with guilt. He knows he disappointed her, and he probably senses her fear. “Okay,” he tells her.
She keeps her hand on his face and lifts up on her toes to kiss his cheek. When she releases him, he skulks away. I rise from the couch and move toward her when she gathers Apollo in her arms. My youngest brother isn’t a big guy. He’s getting taller, but he has a good twenty pounds of muscle to put on. Even still, Aedry seems so fragile against him. It’s not her height or her small frame that makes her appear so delicate. It’s her gentle nature. How could someone so soft have survived a world this hard . . .
I don’t ask her directly. I simply watch how this delicate woman attempts to shield my brother from harm within her embrace, and how easily he welcomes her. She whispers in his ear. I don’t hear everything, catching only bits and pieces. “You really scared me” and “Don’t ever be afraid to come to me.” But it’s the last thing she says that’s like a sledgehammer to my chest. “I love you.”
I don’t think I could feel anything harder than the blow that comes with those words until Apollo says, “I love you, too,” and I have to turn away.
Aedry has a major effect on my brothers, except I didn’t understand how much until that moment. She loves them, for real. And they love her right back. She’s a good woman. I should leave her alone and let her find her peace. But I can’t.
The moment she releases Apollo, I close in. I don’t wait for him to disappear down the hall and into his room before I touch her.
My hand trails down the length of her back as she tries to gather her things. “Hey,” I say, working to keep my voice tender.
Her grip tightens around her purse strap and she clutches her coat against her. “What are you doing?” she asks. Her voice is shaking, but in a different way than before.
I angle my hips and bow my head so my lips skim over her ear. “You said I couldn’t kiss you, again. You never said I had to keep my hands to myself.”
Her body shudders, causing her hip to lightly brush against my groin. I’m getting to her like I was when we were talking in front of her car. The way she reacts when I stroke her is like power firing through my veins, pumping liquid sex through me. I like having this effect on her. It gets me hard―no, she gets me hard.
Whether she knows it or not, she’s the one in control, the one calling the shots. If she tells me to stop, I will, no matter how much the rejection will rip me in half. For now, she hasn’t said anything, so I keep going, my caress of her body slow and thick with lust.
“So, when are you bringing me dinner?” I ask.
Whether she wants to smile or not, she does. She knows I’m messing with her and she wants to mess with me back. “I never said I’d cook for you.”
“Even though I want you to?”
“You’d like that wouldn’t you? Having some half-naked female in your kitchen slaving over the stove to make your manly self a hot meal.”
“Never said you had to be naked.” My lips skim over her ear, hitching her breath. “If you want to, though, I’ll let you. Just don’t plan on my brothers being here for the show.” I circle her waist. “My manly self wants you all to himself.”
I pull her back against my front, trailing my tongue over the curve of her ear. “I’m not sleeping with you,” she whispers, her voice tight.
“I’m not asking you to,” I say. “We’ll take things as slow as you want or not at all.” I step back enough to grip her waist and turn her.
Her face is pink with enough sizzle in her eyes to deepen my voice. “I don’t date women,” I tell her truthfully. “I sleep with them once or twice and don’t look back.”
She smiles then, but it’s not all that friendly. “That’s sounds like an awesome proposition. Where do I sign up?”
I chuckle, because she is that fucking cute. “Ask me when was the last time I took a woman to dinner.”
She stiffens, but that’s her only response. “I’m not sure if I ever had,” I confess. “It’s not my thing.”
“But sleeping with women is?” She’s not being bitchy. If anything, she sounds disappointed, and maybe sad, too.
My first instinct is to lie and protect her, exactly how I’ve been doing. But lying isn’t something I like doing, especially with her. So today, I spare her and tell her the truth. “Yeah.”
“Then what are you doing with me? Touching me like you are . . .” She shakes her head. “Salvatore, this isn’t a game. I won’t pretend that I don’t like you, because it’s clear that I do. But just because I’m attracted to you doesn’t mean I’ll allow myself to be used or mistreated.”
My thumbs skim over her hips. I’m trying to behave and not be so bold. But when she’s near me, I like her close and it’s where I want to keep her. “I’m not trying to do either,” I respond.
“Maybe not. But your actions warn me to keep my distance.”
“My mother was a virgin,” I say, cutting her off before I realize where I’m headed. “Until she married my father. She saved herself for someone good, except he was never good enough for her.”
I sometimes forget what Aedry does for a living, and this is one of those moments. Her stare softens so I know she’s listening and picking up on more than I’m telling her. “Why?”
Both my brothers have talked to her about our past. She knows a lot. But right then, she wants to hear it from me. Maybe I should keep my yap shut. It’s something I’m good at. But I don’t. Not this time.
“He ran around on her, made her cry, and then beat us to get back at her for rejecting him. But in his own sick way, he was committed to her and promised to lov
e her forever.”
What I’m saying should have her running out of here. Instead, she moves her hands from where they’re clasped between her breasts and skims them over my chest. “How could he claim to love her when he’d leave her to be with other women?”
She’s not judging me. Her careful tone tells me she’s trying to understand the old man. I do my best to explain, although I’ve never understood him myself. At least not in a way that made sense or excused what he put us through. “In his mind, he remained faithful by loving only her. Those other women meant nothing, or so he’d tell her.”
“I see,” she says quietly.
“When she filed for divorce and left with me and my brothers, it made him do a one-eighty, or so we thought. He started courting her, or whatever that shit is called, and for a while we thought maybe he was changing. He’d take us out as a family and started acting like a real father. But he kept cheating. Ma found out and went through with the divorce.”
I quiet, remembering that time, but mostly realizing I’ve just spilled more about my father than I’ve ever told anyone. The old man and I weren’t close. We couldn’t be with the way he treated my mother. Except some things he taught me, I’ve hung onto, and keeping quiet about shit that goes on in your house is one of them. Family secrets. That’s what he called them. Is it a wonder I’m so tight-lipped and a good liar?
Aedry, being who she is, doesn’t let me stay quiet for long. She lures me back to those demons in a way no else would dare to. “What was he like, following the divorce?”
It surprises me how easily I answer. “Pathetic,” I tell her truthfully. “He’d show up, crying and begging her to come back to him. But it wasn’t until Ma started dating years later that something in him switched. My father, he couldn’t handle it. He . . .”
I can’t tell her he said he’d kill anyone he saw her with, or how no one else could have her. That shit’s too fucked up. What I do is allow her embrace, folding forward so she can link her arms around my neck.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
She told me not to kiss her, but when I turn to take in her face, that’s exactly what I do. My tongue sweeps over hers, going deep. She moans, but then quickly pulls away. I don’t let her get far, holding tightly to her hips.