by Quinn, Cari
There was a life lesson in this somewhere. Never drink with a man who’d as soon as knife you as pat your arm, as he was doing right now.
“Ah, Fox. He enjoys his drink a little too much,” Giovanni said with false affection, narrowing his gaze at me in warning.
He didn’t need to bother. I wasn’t spoiling for a fight. All I wanted was to go home and sleep it off with my girl curled up beside me.
Or you know, look up and watch her stare down a table of unsmiling men—and a wide-eyed waitress, who still had an exposed breast—with her hands on her waist like an angel of deliverance.
“Who got him drunk?” she asked, throwing her braids back over her shoulders. “I suspected you,” she said to Giovanni, “but I see you brought reinforcements.”
“Who is this?” Marco said under his breath to Lorenzo, who merely shrugged. But I didn’t miss the way his dark eyes lit as they roved over Mia.
I might be a mostly affable drunk, but any jerk who eyefucked my girl in front of me was asking for it. Smith and Wesson aside.
“Gentlemen, this is Mia Anderson,” Giovanni said smoothly.
“The fighter,” Lorenzo said with obvious reverence, and the gleam in his eyes only grew. He displaced the waitress from his lap, sending her off with a flick of his fingers along her bra to adjust her nipple and a pat on the ass. He rounded the table to Mia. “I’m Lorenzo Donato. I’ve heard much about you, Ms. Anderson. It is a pleasure.” He extended a hand and she took it, confusion written all over her face. He lowered his mouth, his intent clearly to kiss her knuckles.
I rose. What the fuck.
But Mia reacted before I could. “Sorry, I’d rather not have the mouth that was just on some babe’s breast on my hand.” She yanked hers back and wiggled her fingers with an artificial smile. “I’m kind of a germaphobe.”
The grin that split my cheeks didn’t help the throb in my skull, but it damn sure dialed back my aggression. Giovanni cleared his throat, but I could tell he was on the verge of a grin too. As was Marco, if that was even his name.
Lorenzo, however, seemed to have developed a tic. He flexed his jaw several times before he stepped back, still not taking his chair. His expression toward Mia had iced over, and that prompted me to shift onto the balls of my feet. I still hadn’t sat down again.
“You know, I hate to end the evening this soon, but I have an early day.” I was none too gently shoved aside by Giovanni as he slid out of the booth. “Gentlemen, it was good to see you as always.” He leaned across the table to fistbump Marco, then shook hands with Lorenzo, who continued to stare at Mia as if he’d forgotten how to blink.
I didn’t like it one bit.
“You got a problem?” I asked when I couldn’t take another second of Lorenzo’s scrutiny. “If you do, let’s settle it here and now.”
Finally, the hard planes of his face cracked into a small smile. “And who will be doing the settling? You, a pathetic drunk?” His smile sharpened. “You’re no better than your father.”
Mia grabbed my arm. “Tray,” she warned. “Not here. He’s not worth it.”
“Oh, I assure you, I’m worth more than either Trayherne Knox’s useless son or his whore girlfriend can afford to pay.” His mouth curled dismissively as his gaze flickered to Mia. “Tell me, does he know about your penchant for rich men? And what you do to them when you decide you’re finished?”
I didn’t think. Didn’t breathe. I lunged around the table, my hands clenched, but Mia was closer and she got there first. Goddamn my sluggish reflexes. Fucking alcohol.
Without hesitating, she reeled back and slammed her fist into Lorenzo’s jaw. The other man hit the floor, and Marco scrambled out of the booth to help him, his expression incredulous as he looked from Mia to his fallen friend.
“Giovanni,” he barked.
“I’ll handle this,” Giovanni said in a clipped voice, grabbing my arm and Mia’s and shoving us away from the table. I was on the verge of prying his hands off me when he spoke close to my ear. “We need to leave now. Trust me.”
I glanced at him and was staggered by the ferocity in his gaze. He wasn’t kidding around.
Handling us or not, he wanted us gone. Not just us. He was coming too.
Swallowing hard, I looked back as a crowd formed. Who the hell were those guys? People were shouting, and the panic level in the club didn’t match what had occurred. Everyone was rushing about as if a visiting dignitary had been attacked, not just an ordinary guy who’d gotten into a bar scuffle. I tried to process what I was seeing, but between my alcohol-dulled reactions and my lack of coordination, I found myself propelled by Giovanni onto the sidewalk.
What shocked me more was that Mia had gone too. Without a fight. Without speaking.
Gio kept his fingers clamped around my arm and looped his other arm around Mia’s waist. The way he was herding us up the block set off a million sensors in my brain, but I couldn’t quite transmit my concern into action.
But Mia wasn’t drunk, and she wasn’t reacting at all.
“Stop,” I finally snapped at Gio, pushing his arm away as I reached for Mia.
She didn’t glance at me. She was like a mindless doll, just putting one foot in front of the other as we made our way through the Friday evening crowd. Somehow people kept moving aside to let us pass, three-as-one, as if they sensed something major had happened.
Weird. This was all so fucking weird.
“Not here,” he snapped back, driving his elbow into my back to keep me going. “We need to get gone. Out of the area. Now.”
“Who are those guys?” I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting them to follow us.
“I made a mistake,” he said instead of answering my question. “Never should’ve brought you there. Never should’ve waited around for Mia. I didn’t know.” He studied Mia’s blank, emotionless face before shifting his focus to me. All the while, he continued to haul us up the street as if our own pace simply wouldn’t get the job done. “They’d run you both.”
What the fuck was he talking about? “Who are they?” I repeated. “I thought the guns were a bit much for a…” Jesus, what was the word I needed? My thoughts were fuzzy, the alcohol taking over in spite of my struggle to remain clear. My lack of tolerance was really kicking my ass tonight.
“They would kill you as soon as look at you. And now…” He shut his eyes for an instant before staring straight ahead. His jaw worked, over and over. “You’re going to have to stay with her, every minute. Every fucking minute, Tray.”
The first frisson of real fear cracked the glaze of alcohol. “Of course I will.”
Even in the middle of my confusion, I knew something was very wrong with Mia. She wasn’t responding as Giovanni talked about her as if she was a little woman who needed protection. She wasn’t doing anything but walking.
Fragments of what had been said in the club pinged through my muddied brain.
Penchant for rich men…what you do with them when you’re finished.
He knew about Mia’s past. About her kidnapping. Somehow that fucker had known.
“Who is he?” I asked again, my voice rising. I had as much control of it as I did of my reflexes.
Giovanni just dragged us with him into the parking garage where we’d parked earlier and pushed us up the ramp.
I’d let him drive. I couldn’t remember why. But as I climbed into the back of his Escalade with my oddly silent girlfriend, I was grateful. As much as I wanted to rid myself of Gio and this night entirely, at least I could wrap my arms around Mia. At least I could tip up her chin to gaze into her eyes.
Dark, empty pools reflected back at me.
“Mia.” The fear was back, stronger than ever. He could warn me of death threats, and I’d only be marginally afraid. No one would touch her in my presence. I would die for her without thought, without question.
Staring into her eyes now, I wondered if she’d gotten there first.
“What’s wrong with her?” Giovanni dema
nded, throwing the vehicle into reverse and rocketing out of the lot with a squeal of tires.
I don’t know. I couldn’t find the words. She was in my arms, but she was just…gone.
A tremor went through me and I lowered my forehead to hers. Softly, I breathed against her mouth until I heard hers hitch as if she’d begun to inhale and exhale once again. Her eyelids shut, blocking me from the vast expanse of nothing her eyes had become.
“Is she okay?” Giovanni took another corner so fast that the vehicle skidded. “Goddamn you both, fucking talk to me.”
“I’m okay,” she said hollowly, and it was as if a stranger had spoken. She looked like Mia, sounded like Mia, but she wasn’t the girl I loved. She was a facsimile, a passable reproduction.
Giovanni glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and in his gaze were the questions I would never answer. He knew, as I did, that Lorenzo had hit on something she couldn’t bear. All people have weak spots, places too sensitive too touch. Mia’s was an exposed nerve, raw and aching. Even a wisp of air brushing the root was enough to make it throb.
No amount of camouflage makeup or thick layers of scar tissue would ever be enough to cushion the agony.
“Where am I taking you?” He slowed slightly to swerve around a lumbering bus before punching the gas again.
I rubbed my cheek against hers, struggling against the helplessness that seemed to seize me all too often. Where were we going? Where had I started this goddamn night? Nothing made sense in my jumbled brain. I just wanted to be in the dark with Mia, every part of our skin touching, her breaths mine. I would heal her the only way I knew how. Not with sex, or words.
Just with the therapy of her heartbeat matched to mine.
“The gym.” That was where all of this had begun. And before that, with my mother. With welts of blood blooming under her skin and gushing freely under mine.
“No,” he said softly.
My gaze lifted to his again. And held. I didn’t understand everything he was trying to nonverbally communicate. Hell, any of it.
“It’s not a good idea for you to go back there tonight. Let me drive you both home. Tomorrow, I’ll pick you up, take you to your car.”
Arguing would take more strength than I had left. I felt drained, as if I’d fought a succession of increasingly larger opponents. Each one escalating the level of pain until it was on scream. Eventually, it reached a point where numbness was the only recourse.
I was so fucking there.
“Okay.” I rattled off her address—my address now—and drew her tighter against me. If I could, I’d absorb her tissue and bone into mine, reinforce it until she became whole again.
But I didn’t have that option, and hell, I wasn’t even close to whole myself.
She curled into me, her nose bumping my chin, her ice-cold hands disappearing into the folds of my shirt. It was the closest to a reaction I’d received since getting into the truck with her, and I sighed as I rubbed my cheek over her hair.
And discovered Gio was watching us through the rearview again, his gaze thoughtful.
“What?”
“I never saw it with you two. I mean, I saw the sparks. Everyone does. But this… I guess I didn’t think it was possible.”
Indignation smothered the crushing weight of…nothing. That blissful beyond that held nothing but dark. If not for my fear for Mia, it would swallow me whole.
“That she could love me?” My lips felt too thick and clumsy, but somehow I formed them around the words. They were important. “That I could love her?”
“That either of you could let anyone in.” His attention returned to the road. “Fighters, we usually do better single file.”
“I’ve spent enough time single fucking file.” I didn’t mean to spit out the words.
To soothe, I smoothed my hand up her back. She didn’t respond.
Neither did Giovanni.
“What about you?” I asked when the silence in the truck became deafening. All the other noises seemed far removed. The distant honking of horns, the clatter of a subway car over the tracks. The endless drone of wheels rolling on the pavement.
“What about me,” he replied after lifetimes passed in the interim.
“You’ve always been single file.” I didn’t know what I was getting at. I certainly didn’t give two shits about Giovanni Costas’s love life.
But there was so much more going on tonight than two fighter dudes—one retired—checking out a few undressed girls with some associates. There was a subtext rife with things I couldn’t begin to decipher, especially right now.
But I would. I’d damn well remember all of this tomorrow, and I’d get to the bottom of what that bastard had dragged me and my girl into like fucking unwitting lambs.
Normally, I wouldn’t have ever thought of myself or Mia that way. But tonight, yes. I couldn’t even guess at the scope of what we’d stumbled into.
“What else would I be?” he returned, the oncoming headlights illuminating his fingers flexing around the wheel.
“Who are those men?”
“It’s better for you if you don’t know,” he said finally. “Tonight was my mistake. I’ll fix it.” His hands tightened. “Somehow I will fix it.”
I didn’t like how low his voice had gone, or the relentless clench of his fingers around the wheel. So much more was going on here than I could puzzle out, and until I made sense of it, Mia could be in danger.
I glanced at her, at the watery stars the streetlights painted on her ghostly cheeks. Her thick dark lashes lay undisturbed, though I doubted she was asleep. She was drifting, lost to whatever battles she waged in her own head.
“What will they do to her?”
“I won’t allow anything to happen to Mia.” His response was too swift, too loud. Almost as if he was convincing himself as much as me.
“What will they do,” I repeated, needing to hear it. I wouldn’t allow it either. That didn’t mean I was naïve enough to tuck my head under the pillow to block out the sound of a hand hitting skin.
I’d done that too many times.
Gio fell silent for so long that we’d nearly reached Mia’s apartment before he spoke again.
“They will kill her.”
Nine
Voices spun out around me, soft, hushed, urgent. Strong arms held me close, maneuvering me out of the vehicle. I wasn’t asleep. I wasn’t unconscious. I was there, except not.
If I’d truly wanted, I could’ve demanded to be let down. Of course I could stand on my own two feet. Hadn’t I been doing that all this time? But for once, I didn’t want to.
Mentally, I’d checked out.
He carted me upstairs into my apartment. I heard my sister gasp, and that more than anything roused me to try to open my eyes. But as soon as I had, the harsh sting of reality had me scuttling right back into my shell.
I’m sorry, Carly.
Tray’s gentle voice eased over Carly’s frantic whispers, until she grew tearfully quiet. Beyond both their familiar beloved voices, there was one more. Deeper, more intonation than emotion. Giovanni. Some small part of me rebelled at him being there in my apartment with my sister, but the rest accepted that knowledge with the same dull finality as I’d accepted all the rest.
It was so much easier to just float away. In this space, I wasn’t hurting or struggling or fighting to remain upright. I’d ceded all control, finally.
This day had been a long time in coming.
The voices buzzed around me for hours. Carly’s anxious tone, Gio’s richer, calming one. And Tray, sweet Tray, who kissed me with words on his lips that somehow pierced the haze and sated my only remaining need.
Love. Somehow he loved me, even still.
Long after Carly and Giovanni’s voices faded away, Tray’s remained. He spoke to my hair, to my cheeks, right next to my ear so that his messages flowed through me like honey injected straight into my veins. His hands never left my skin.
When I finally opened my eyes again, th
e pale rose gold light of morning had broken over the room. I wasn’t in my bed, but on Carly’s couch, stretched out fully dressed with a blanket tucked carefully around my legs. A pressure on my stomach had me lifting my head. Tray was asleep sitting on the floor, his head on my belly, his fingers loosely entwined with mine.
Tentatively, I touched the silken gold of his hair, marveling that this prince from a fairy tale had picked me. Me, the scrappy, scrawny girl who bore scars inside and out, and chose them willingly over silk and lace. I rubbed my thumb over the crease in his forehead, traced the sharp lines of his brow. Such a serious face he was making in sleep. His mouth was pulled tight, his eyes squeezed shut, long gold-tipped lashes still.
My fingers drifted downward to the slope of his nose. Patrician, I thought it was called. Aristocratic. Then those full lips, normally stretched in a smile. He grinned as easily as he breathed.
At least until he’d met me.
My hand hovered over his mouth. Those lush, sensual lips didn’t belong on a fighter. The pads of my fingers grazed the lower, then the upper, learning him in a way I’d never fully allowed myself before. It wasn’t enough to see. I need to absorb each molecule of him into my skin.
I’d just reached his stubbled chin when his eyes finally opened. Slowly, sleepily at first before full wakefulness brought him all the way back. He stared up at me incredulously, his Adam’s apple bobbing, but I gently closed his lips before he could speak. It wasn’t the time for that.
I wasn’t sure what it was the time for. I just knew words weren’t the answer.
He rose up on his knees and stroked my hair, his touch reverent. The blunt tip of his thumb skimmed my lower lip and I bit it, more to watch the flare of surprise in his aquamarine eyes than out of any sexual appetite. I only had one speed when it came to sex. Hard and harder.
This wasn’t even close.
But my mouth closed around his thumb just the same, and sucking on his flesh pulled the growing ache from my core into my belly. Heat spread, flames flickering where there had only been scorched earth before.
Lost in his eyes, I kissed my way down his hand, nipping the scars, licking the salt, tasting the flavor of who he was. I’d never bothered before. All I’d ever wanted was below his waist. A quick release, a fast hit of connection. Anything more would kill me. I didn’t know how to take pleasure that wasn’t laced with pain. Life, woven with death.