Taking his hand on my stomach, I weave my fingers with his and melt further into his body, closing my eyes and concentrating on feeling him on every inch of my skin.
“I dreamt of you.” His voice is hoarse with sleep, his breath hot against the back of my head. I open my eyes and stare forward, waiting for him to go on. But he doesn’t, and I start to turn over, hearing him hiss a little when he finally slips free from me.
I shuffle over with his help until I’m mirroring him. His hand finds my hip, and he props himself up on his elbow. He is gorgeous in the morning. All sexed up, his eyes drowsy. “What did you dream?” I ask as he circles his fingertip on my hipbone. A flurry of tingles pitter-patter over my skin, reaching my nipples, and he smiles at the stiffening of them, leaning down and brushing his lips across one. I exhale and roll to my back, letting him crawl onto me and spread his body over mine. My hands delve into his messy hair while he splits his attention between each breast.
“I dreamt about these.” He bites down on my nipple, making me solidify beneath him. “And this.” His hand sinks down between us and cups me, his long, thick finger slipping easily inside of me. “And these.” He moves up to my lips and indulges my mouth for a few, mind-spinning moments while he works me up once again. It’s easy affection, and it’s wonderful. “I dreamt it was all mine.”
“And is it?” I ask. “All yours?”
“There’s no question.” His grin is wicked as he goes back to my chest, devouring each breast hungrily, his one finger turning into two. “My father always warned me that women make you vulnerable.” He works his way down to my stomach and brushes his nose across my skin, studying the expanse of flesh. I prop myself up on my elbows to look down at him, watching him drift lower and lower. My blood whooshes with anticipation.
I breathe his name, spreading my thighs wider for him. He replaces his fingers with his mouth and licks me softly, kissing me gently between each sweep of his tongue. Good God. I drop to my back and sink my hands into my hair, searching for control.
“That good, baby?”
My internal muscles begin to contract, my shakes rapidly taking over. My heart booms faster, my temperature swiftly rises. His tongue is magical. And when he slips two fingers inside me again, doubling the sensations and pleasure, it’s my undoing, my legs hardening as I come all over his face in sharp, rolling waves. I sink deeper into the bedsheets, electric shocks stabbing at the swollen cluster of nerves in my clit. My cheeks puff out, my body dazed from the fast onslaught of pleasure. I’m sated and hot as he kisses me gently, pulling his fingers free, trailing his mouth across my skin as he crawls back up my body. “Morning,” he whispers, shifting his hips and driving straight into me. His move has my fading orgasm rebuilding.
“Morning,” I sigh, hugging him, letting him take me to a place far better than this world. His drives are deep and exact, his grinds steady and firm. I’ve lost count of the amount of orgasms we’ve shared throughout the night, and more are on the way. He’s right. I won’t be able to walk properly, but it’s okay. Because Danny will carry me wherever I need to go. Which isn’t far from him. I smile to myself and stick my lips to his shoulder, stroking across his upper back as he sinks into me consistently and precisely, stripping back my breathing to shallow pants. He’s a surprisingly masterful lover. Gentle, selfless, and utterly consuming. I’m totally taken by him, everything about him. His ethics are questionable. He’s probably killed as many people as women he’s fucked. He’s cruel, callous, and he slapped me within an hour of meeting him. It’s backward for me to feel anything other than hatred for him. But I don’t hate him. I admire him—admire the state of mind he has me in. I admire him for being as fucked up as me. I couldn’t tell you if the ache in my heart is love. I couldn’t tell you whether the sting in my eyes when I think about his absence is love. I couldn’t tell you if the butterflies in my tummy each time I look at him is love.
But I fear it is. Because it’s the same ache I feel whenever I’m blessed with a picture of my son.
I close my eyes and breathe his sweaty skin into me, turning my face into his neck, squeezing him that little bit tighter. If I want to be his, then I am. But there’s so much he doesn’t know about me. “Danny,” I whisper, my voice broken by the overwhelming sensations invading every piece of me, of the feel of him moving inside me. Just tell him. Spit it out. The longer I stall, the worse it’ll become.
His head lifts so he can get me in his sights, and I fear for a moment that he’ll see all of my sins in my eyes. He continues to thrust gently and slowly. “What is it?” He dips and kisses me, holding his mouth on mine as he keeps up his dizzyingly expert pattern of drives and grinds.
I lose my nerve, fearful of the reprisals. I’m not scared that he might hurt me. Not physically, anyway. I’m scared he’ll turn his back on me, and this tranquility will be stolen from me. I swallow and shake my head, distracting him from pressing me by cupping the back of his head and plunging my tongue into his mouth, sweeping through hungrily. Sparks start to fly, my world starts to spin, and when Danny grunts under his breath, I naturally start to thrust up into his plunges. My fingers claw. He starts to shake. “Shit, Rose.” His hips jerk, and on a drawn-out mumble of nonsense, he sinks his face into my neck and bites down gently, pushing me higher and higher with each drive into me. Stars start to hamper my vision, my pulse in my ears distorting our moans of ecstasy. Our bodies become frenzied in the search for their releases, our voices louder.
My climax is there, right there, just waiting for me to seize it.
But it seizes me. It grabs me and tears me apart with the force, and I cry out into his shoulder, my body hijacked by stabs of merciless pleasure. I gasp, I choke, my eyes fly wide open as it savages me. “Oh my God,” I pant, blinking rapidly, my nerves sizzling. The pull of my walls around him is natural and unstoppable, milking him on and on as he growls his way through his release. I’m dizzy, my world spinning crazily. Never before has helplessness felt so good.
Exhaling loudly, he rolls off me, falling to his back and throwing his arms to the pillow above him. The cool air that blankets me is bliss, but nothing like having him swathing me. I move onto my side and place my finger on his tummy, drawing over his abdominals, counting them as I do. Not that I haven’t mentally done it a dozen times. Eight. Danny Black doesn’t just have a six-pack. He has an eight-pack. I smile as my finger draws lines in the shadows between his muscles. “Can I ask you something?”
His head drops to look at me. “No.”
I give him a feigned filthy look and pinch the flesh over his ribs. Of course, he smiles. It’s beautiful. I might be pushing my luck, but that seems to come naturally with him. “Why are you unkind to Esther?” If I were her, I would have told him to go fuck himself. “She does everything for you. Washing, cleaning, cooking, and you’re so clipped with her.”
His face falls into impassiveness. Coldness, a coldness I’m familiar with, but now I get a strange vibe from it. It tells me he’s wondering whether he should say what he’s about to say. He inhales. “Isn’t washing, cleaning, and cooking part of what a mother should do for their child?”
For a second, I’m thrown by his statement, my brain unable to compute the connection. Then, like a lead balloon, realization drops. I recoil, my hand leaving his stomach. Esther is his mom? “I don’t understand,” I admit, floored by confusion and shock.
“She’s my mother.”
No. I’m clearly missing something here. “But you treat her so terribly.” I’ve obviously said something wrong, because warning falls like an iron veil over his soft eyes, hardening them. I retreat, heeding the threat, keeping my mouth under control before I unwittingly say something else to anger him. But I know him well enough now to know that these flashes of anger are actually pain.
I can see perfectly well that he’s working hard to contain his irritation, and though I wish it wouldn’t, it just makes my curiosity heighten. Eventually, he rips his steel stare from mine and breathe
s in. “My mother abandoned me when I was eight years old,” he says softly, though resentment burns the corners of his quiet voice. Something tells me that this isn’t something he’s talked about much, if at all. I honestly don’t know what to do, so I do what’s natural. I take his hand and hold it. My move, thankfully, loosens him up a bit, and he cracks the straightness of his mouth with a small curve, lifting our held hands to his lips and kissing my knuckles. “Carlo Black isn’t my biological father.”
My mouth falls open. “He isn’t?”
“I’m British, Rose. Carlo was American. How does that work?”
“Easy. Your mother could be British.” I frown. “Which she is.” I’m stumped.
“Come here.” He sits up and pulls me onto his lap, arranging my legs on either side of his hips while I continue to frown. “Remember I once told you that someone saved me?”
“Yes.”
“The person who saved me was Carlo Black.” He smiles at my shock, taking my hands and holding them on his stomach. “I was ten. It was two years after my mother abandoned me and left me at the mercy of her piece-of-scum boyfriend. It was the day this happened.” Danny points to his cheek with our hands, and my stunned eyes fall onto the beast of a scar that dominates his right cheek. “I’d been beaten black and blue for four years, starved and ra—” He stops himself, his gaze unlocking from mine. He looks past me into nothingness.
“Raped.” I utter the vile word, winning back his attention. “He raped you.” I feel sick. So fucking sick, I have to swallow down the bile building. Look at this strong, beautiful man. Just look at him. Raped?
The flash of vengeance in his blues is raw. And I get it. “So, you see, when Carlo put a bullet in my stepfather’s head, I didn’t shed a tear. I was mesmerized by Carlo—his crisp cream suit, his American accent, the two fifties he slipped me, and most of all, I was mesmerized that he had just killed my problem. Just like that. Gone. No hesitation.” Light flickers in his hard eyes, and though it seems inhumane to take pleasure from the death of a person, I can’t help appreciating how good it must have felt. I had a problem in Watson. And Danny killed the problem. In that moment, I felt a burden lift, and now, more than ever, I can’t help the hope building. The hope that Danny can erase all of my problems.
“He asked me if my stepfather caused the bruises on my ribs,” Danny continues. “And I told him yes. So he shot him.” He laughs a little. “Then he told me to get in his car. I didn’t hesitate. I got right on in there with a perfect stranger, a killer, and never looked back. My mother had abandoned me, and the monster I lived with was now dead. I had no one. Carlo brought me back to Miami. He fed me, watered me, made sure I was clean. He hired a private tutor and demanded I relay everything I learned each day. It didn’t make much sense to me, but who was I to argue? Then one day, on my eleventh birthday, I finally plucked up the courage to ask him why he’d saved me.”
“And what did he say?” I press, swallowed up in his story, eager to hear more of how Danny Black came to be.
“He said he wanted a son.” He smiles. “He wanted a son and he didn’t want a woman. So he took me. Simple as that. He told me that a kid who’d had half his cheek sliced off and didn’t cry about it was worthy of the status of being his son. He gave me a new birth certificate. Had my name changed to Black, officially adopted me, and I became an American citizen. I have not a fucking clue how he did it, but I never questioned him. I trusted him. Because he saved me.”
Given who Carlo Black was, it’s insane for me to think that Danny won the jackpot. But he did. “And your mom? How come she’s here now?”
“Because Carlo found her and brought her here.” His sweet reminiscent tone has gone and resentment is back. “I thought I wanted to find her. But when Carlo tracked her down, I looked at her and felt nothing but hatred. She chose drugs and prostitution over me. She left me to slowly die, and I will never forgive her for that.”
But she’s here. It’s Danny’s way of being cruel and kind all at the same time. This man, this killing, formidable, merciless man, isn’t as hard as the world thinks he is. He can’t turn his back on her completely.
I bite my lip, astounded, but especially that he’s told me. Confided in me. Esther serves a purpose. Danny’s giving her the chance to do all the things she didn’t do when he was a boy. “And now Carlo’s world is your world.”
Danny nods, though something in his expression tells me he’s not as pleased about that as he feels he should be. “And what about you?” Danny asks.
Me? I clam up. We are not having that conversation, and I’m ignoring the wretched guilt I’m feeling after he’s told me his story. I shrug as nonchalantly as I can. “Nothing to tell.”
“Rape.”
I naturally flinch at the word, feeling myself crawling into my shell. I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing, flexing my hands in his until he releases me. I rest my palms on his bare chest and lean in, giving his scar a light kiss, before I get up off the bed.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“To get my toothbrush.” It’s all I can think of to get me out of the room to compose myself. As I step away, he seizes my wrist stopping me, and I silently beg him not to press. “Rose?” I look over my shoulder tentatively, so nervous he’s going to demand answers. He studies me for a few moments, obviously taking in my sudden discomfort. “Don’t be long.” He lets go and edges down the bed until he’s lying again.
Relief. It nearly floors me. I take his shirt from the floor. “Mind if I borrow this?” I push my arms through the sleeves before getting his answer, then find my panties and pull them on. He watches my every move until I pull his bedroom door shut behind me. Then I stand on the other side, staring at the wood, my head thumping. All the words, every confession, are all on my tongue ready to be spat out. I just don’t know where to begin.
I hustle back to my room and find the phone behind the drawer, and I don’t think twice about texting Nox to tell him I have nothing to report. That’s the first step of my plan complete. The easiest step. I quickly replace the cell, scrub my teeth, and hurry back to Danny’s room, but when I make it there, he’s not in bed. I look across to the glass doors and see him on the terrace, his long body naked. My eyes root to his back as I creep up on him, slipping my arms between his and hugging him from behind. “You realize the panels are glass, don’t you?” I ask.
He moves so fast, it’s all a blur, and then I’m swiftly in front of him, my ass pressed up against the glass panel, Danny caging me in.
“It is?” he says, taking the bottom of the shirt I’m wearing and pulling it up to my waist. “Oh dear.”
I purse my lips and peek over my shoulder. It’s silly. If there was anyone in the garden below, Danny wouldn’t be exposing my ass to them. Not now. Returning my attention to him, I shrug and he wrinkles his nose, rubbing it with mine. Everything—the jet ski incident, Watson, last night, now, it’s all building a pile of rightness, telling me that what I’m doing is the best thing. “Can we have dinner tonight?” I ask. I’ll tell him then. It’ll give me the day to figure out where to begin and how I’ll explain bit by bit.
Pulling away, he cocks a questioning head. “Dinner? Like a date?”
What is that heat in my cheeks? “If you want to call it that.”
His lips twist, as he clearly tries to wrap his morbid mind around the concept of a normal date. I suddenly feel stupid and for a brief moment I waver on the edge of uncertainty. “A date,” he muses.
“It’s easy,” I explain. “Do what you’ve done the past two times you’ve taken me for dinner, just don’t kill or threaten anyone during,” I quip, trying to make light of what he clearly thinks is an odd suggestion.
“Okay.” He starts bending his arms against the rail behind me, bringing his face down to my neck. He presses a kiss on my throat before straightening them again, pushing away from me. Then he bends again, dropping down and placing another kiss on my chest before straightening his arms.
“What are you doing?” I ask, as he continues to bend and straighten his arms, like he’s doing push-ups against the railings, me trapped between his muscled limbs. Another kiss, this time on my cheek.
“I missed the gym this morning because of you.” He drifts away and my eyes fall to his biceps bulging. They are truly sigh-worthy, and an appreciative wisp of air leaves me.
“I think three sets of twenty will do.” I pout as I stroke down the length of his swelling arm, happy to admire him while he has a quick workout.
“You gonna count?”
“One,” I start as he slowly lowers toward me again, looking me in the eye as his lips land on my chest.
“Open the shirt,” he orders, pushing himself up straight again. I do as I’m bid and expose my front to his eyes as he slowly descends again. This time, he goes lower, kissing me between my breasts.
“Two,” I breathe, resting my arms on the metal railing and leaning back, making the distance between us greater. Not that it fazes him. With each press, he kisses a different part of my body, and with each flex of his toned arms, his muscles swell more, the blood pumping in more than one place. I’m so lost in the mesmerizing sight of him before me, I lose count, my mind only willing to focus on his mouth meeting my skin. By the time Danny finishes, there’s not an inch of my torso or neck that doesn’t have his lips imprinted on them.
His final descent brings his mouth down onto my forearm. My dressing is gone—Esther said the wound needs air—and he brushes a delicate kiss across the cut. Regret captures me again, and my eyes fall to Danny’s arm, where a bandage still covers his wounds. Not just one cut, but many cuts, all much deeper than my single slice. I swallow and lay my hand over the white dressing. “Why did you do that?” He pulls his mouth away from my arm and looks up at me, searching my eyes.
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