by Rose, Callie
The air outside has turned cold in the absence of the sun, and my tank top feels too thin and flimsy. I rub my amputated arm with my good one, wishing I could properly wrap my arms around myself.
Theo reaches over and turns a knob on the dash, then flicks the air vents so that warm air blows toward me. He presses another button, and the seat beneath me begins to heat up.
The warmth relaxes my tight muscles a little, and despite myself, I find my gaze flitting over to study his face.
“So do you just do whatever Marcus tells you to all the time?” I finally ask. “Are you at his beck and call twenty-four seven, or what?”
Theo grins, keeping his gaze on the road. “Not exactly. But when he needs me, yeah. I’m there.”
“Why? Are you his groupie? Did you lose a bet to him or something?”
I’m needling him a little. I want to get a rise out of one of these guys, and I’m still pissed about the way Marcus basically forced me into accepting a ride home. I’m pissed that there are three of them and only one of me, which means they always have the advantage.
The smile slips from Theo’s face, and when he turns to look at me, his expression is dead serious. “No. No bet. But Ry and I would follow Marcus into hell if he asked. We owe him. A lot more than any single debt.”
My stomach dips a little at the sudden change in his demeanor. From what I’ve seen, he’s the most easy-going of the three men, which makes it disturbingly easy to be drawn in by him, to be taken by his charm.
The way he’s speaking right now, though? The darkness that hovers behind his blue-green eyes? It makes me positive that he’s been through just as much shit as his two friends have.
“Why? What’s your deal? Are you guys in a gang or something?”
Fuck. I told myself I didn’t want to know anything else about Marcus or his friends. But this feels like it doesn’t count, because I’m not asking Marcus directly. And my curiosity is too powerful to ignore.
Besides, if I want to have any chance of getting them out of my life, maybe I should be learning more about them. Gathering information to use against them if it comes down to it.
Theo chuckles. It’s a freer sound than Marcus’s laugh, as if he can actually still find humor in things. “Nah, not exactly. We’re just close friends.”
“What do you all do?” I glance around at his fancy as fuck car and his casual but clearly expensive clothes. “Let me guess. You designed an app that took off and made you millions.”
He laughs again, seeming truly amused by that. “Nope. Good guess though. Ryland and Marcus are both involved in their family businesses.”
“And you?”
“I’m…” He shrugs lightly, shifting his grip on the wheel. “Trying to get my own thing going.”
“What thing?”
He cocks a brow at me. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
I scowl. “Oh, so you three are allowed to basically stalk me, to beat up muggers in alleys and follow me around and drive me places in the middle of the night—but I’m not allowed to know anything about you?”
The shifting light of passing streetlamps moves over his face as he grins. “Fair point. I like that you’re curious about us.” He glances at me. “Marcus isn’t the only one who owes you, you know. When you saved his life, you probably saved ours too.”
“It was an accident,” I say automatically.
The words feel more and more like a lie every time I utter them, and the look Theo shoots me lets me know he doesn’t believe it for a second. I don’t want him to push for a different answer though, so instead, I distract him with a question of my own.
“If you and Ryland both owe me like you said, how come he hates me so much and you don’t?”
Theo flicks his blinker on and makes a smooth right turn. “Ry doesn’t hate you.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“He doesn’t.” He runs his free hand through his golden-blond hair. “He’s just… protective.”
Like Marcus fucking needs protecting from anyone.
I snort. “Yeah. Okay.”
“He’ll come around.”
I don’t answer that, because the honest truth is, I should have no reason to want Ryland to come around. It shouldn’t matter whether he likes me or not, and talking about him like this makes it seem as if he’s part of my life in a way that makes me uneasy.
As if he’s a permanent part of it.
As if our lives will always be entwined, no matter how hard I try to break the connection.
Or maybe even how hard he does.
“Why don’t you hate me then?” I ask, running my fingertips over the soft leather of the seat. “Why are you nice to me?”
Theo pulls to a stop, and I realize with a start that we’re back at my place. The drive went by faster than I realized, and I almost don’t want to get out of the cozy bubble of the car.
He leaves the engine idling and turns to face me more fully, brushing a hand through his tousled blond hair again. “Because I don’t think you deserve to be punished for doing the most selfless thing a person can do.”
“It was—”
I can’t even finish the sentence this time.
Theo watches the lie die on my lips, then nods slightly, as if he’s glad I didn’t finish. His gaze travels over my features, soaking me in. There’s something warm and open in his expression, and it makes me feel like he’s seeing all of me—or at least much more than I usually allow strangers to glimpse.
Just like Marcus, he’s slipping past all my defenses. But where Marcus blows holes in them and barges through, Theo just taps on them lightly until, unbidden, they open for him.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who I innately wanted to trust more.
And that scares the fuck out of me.
“Well, uh, thanks for the ride.” Dragging my gaze away from him, I unclip my seatbelt.
“Anytime.” One side of his mouth tilts up. “Bus fare is on me tonight. Oh, and hey—if you ever need a bus to take you anywhere else, just let me know. We run special routes for beautiful women with rose tattoos.”
He rattles off his number, and I nod quickly, a little surprised that he’s offering to drive me around outside of this late-night favor to his friend. I know all three of these men have been following me, but I thought Marcus was the driving force behind it all, the one whose obsession brought them crashing into my life.
But the way Theo’s talking to me, the way he’s looking at me, it doesn’t seem like he’s doing this for Marcus at all.
Does he know what happened between me and Marcus tonight? How much do I still smell like sex? Look like sex?
My hair has to be a mess, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve got bite marks and hickeys all over my chest and neck. I probably look like I just got out of a gang-bang.
I can’t quite figure out how I feel about the fact that Theo knows I fucked his friend. All of this is such a jumbled up mess that nothing makes logical sense. Nothing fits the normal rules of behavior.
Trying to shove down the flush I can feel coloring my cheeks, I twist a little to open the door with my left hand and then slide off the heated seat and into the cool night air outside my apartment.
I push the car door shut, and as it closes with a thunk, the window rolls down again. Theo dips his head, dropping it nearly sideways so he can grin up at me.
“Goodnight, Rose. Sleep tight.”
I give him a jerky nod, rattled by his use of a nickname for me. It’s the same thing he called me at the bar, and the easy familiarity of it unnerves me.
Without saying anything else, I turn and hurry up to my apartment, fishing my keys from my pocket. The 3B decal is still somewhere in Marcus’s house, resting wherever it landed when I hurled it at the floor.
The memory of why I went over to his house in the first place, along with everything else that happened after I arrived, makes me feel suddenly exhausted. The day I spent doing boring office work downtow
n feels like another lifetime entirely, not something that happened less than twenty-four hours ago.
So much has happened since then.
So much has changed.
With a sharp shake of my head, I wrench the door of my building open and dart inside quickly. Once I’m safely tucked away in my own apartment, I chuck my keys on the coffee table and sink down onto the couch.
I sit there for a few minutes, letting the rough, worn fabric of the cushion beneath my palm ground me.
Then I dig into my back pocket and pull my cell phone out. Resting it on my lap, I type in the number that Theo gave me and hit “add new contact.”
I don’t know why I do it.
I’m never going to call him.
Chapter 11
Earth and air.
Rich brown and soft blue.
Marcus gazes down at me, his hands cradling my face.
Those beautiful, shocking eyes are glassy, and a tear slips down his cheek, cutting a path through the three streaks of blood that mar his face.
“Stay with me, Ayla. Stay with me.”
His voice is harsh and broken, his words growing muffled as the world starts to slip away.
Behind him, I see Theo’s crooked smile turn into a grimace of pain as he watches me die. Ryland’s face is contorted with fury, but for the first time, that fury isn’t directed at me. It’s for whoever killed me. Whoever did this to me.
“Please, angel.” Marcus grips my face tighter, lifting it toward his as his lips find mine. I taste copper and salt as blood and tears mix on my tongue. “Please don’t fucking leave me. Don’t let go.”
I can feel his weight over me. I can feel his cock driving into me.
Pleasure and pain light up every nerve ending in my body, and it’s almost enough to keep me from fading away. I wrap my arms around him, the fingernails of both hands digging into his back, trying to bring him closer.
Closer.
But already, I can feel the nerves of my right arm fraying, the internal bleeding cutting off circulation to the limb.
I’m dying.
I’m falling.
I’m fading away.
And not even Marcus Constantine can save me.
* * *
I wake with a loud sob, my body still shuddering from the remnants of the orgasm as sorrow and burning pleasure collide inside me.
Gasping for breath, I haul the covers over my head one-handed, then curl up on my side in the artificial darkness. Sunlight peeks in through little cracks between the blanket and the mattress, and I blink at the bright spots of light, letting my eyes adjust.
Goddammit.
This has to stop. This has to fucking stop.
Marcus Constantine has invaded my dreams since the night I stopped three bullets meant for him. But now that he’s invaded my life too, it feels like he’s everywhere. Like he’s in my fucking head, in my soul, tearing me apart from the inside out.
And instead of doing any of the normal things someone might do when they find out they’re being stalked, I went over to his house last night and had sex with him.
Unprotected sex.
I’ve been on the pill since I was fifteen, and even though I hadn’t even kissed anyone in years before last night, I never went off it. So it’s not that I’m worried about getting pregnant.
What scares me is that I didn’t even think about this until now. Marcus’s cum was inside me, is still inside me, and I didn’t even try to make him stop. In fact, if he had tried to pull out, to come on my stomach or something, I don’t think I would’ve let him in that moment.
Because I wanted to feel him.
All of him.
I wanted his cum to bathe my insides.
And that is so unbelievably fucked up.
It’s one thing to have a stalker, but that’s not just what this is. Because whether I want to admit it or not, my level of obsession with him mirrors the obsession he has with me.
I may not have been watching him for the past two and a half years, but I’ve been holding on to him all the same.
I barely know this man, and I don’t believe his insistence that some kind of blood bond exists between us, binding our souls together. I don’t believe that I’m responsible for one hundred million beats of his heart.
But that doesn’t explain why I’ve begun to crave his touch the way I do. Why he’s managed to break down defenses I spent years building up and perfecting.
He’s gorgeous and enigmatic and sexy as fuck, but it’s more than that.
I get hit on all the time at the bar—sometimes by men who actually seem interested, and sometimes by guys who just want to fuck the one-armed freak. But I’ve never had a problem telling any of those assholes to go screw themselves.
So why does this man have such a stranglehold on my soul?
Shoving away the remnants of my dream, and the flickering images of Marcus, Theo, and Ryland’s faces hovering over mine, I throw the covers off and slip out of bed.
As my feet hit the floor, a jolt of pain moves through my pussy, and I wince. I wasn’t wrong last night about being sore in the morning. My body feels raw and abused, and when I step into the bathroom and flick on the light switch, my mouth drops open slightly.
I can see Marcus everywhere on my body.
Little red marks decorate my collarbone, courtesy of his teeth. Bruises and little hickeys are peppered around the scar that sits high on my chest, and my wrist bears teeth marks too.
Reaching into the shower, I flip the water on as hot as it will go. As the bathroom begins to fill with steam, I step under the scalding spray. The heat sears my raw skin, but I scrub hard with a loofah anyway, as if I can somehow erase the marks and bruises Marcus left on me.
As if taking off a layer of skin will somehow erase the insane connection between us.
My hand slips between my legs, cleaning my pussy and easing the soreness there. I told Marcus he was too late to claim my virginity, but it barely feels like that right now. Before last night, it’d been so long since I’d had sex. I was so tight, and he was so big, that he might as well have been my first.
A throbbing pulse echoes in my clit, remnants of last night and the dream that woke me. The little bundle of nerves is still overly sensitive and almost tender, and I let out a soft noise when my fingertips brush against it.
I yank my hand away and switch my focus to my hair, shampooing and rinsing it before turning the water off and stepping out of the shower.
The woman looking back at me from the foggy mirror looks slightly less dazed, although no less marked.
Running my fingertips over the damp skin of my ruined arm, I trace the flowers I had drawn there, following the outline of the dark red petals before skimming the pads of my fingers over the deep blue-black ink that surrounds them.
The flowers look a little like pools of blood on a dark sidewalk. I never thought of that before, but now that the thought has occurred to me, it’s all I can see.
Goose bumps prickle over my wet skin, and I shake my head at my reflection.
It’s done.
The past can’t be undone, but the future can sure as fuck be reshaped.
And this ends here.
I don’t have to work until eight, so I spend the day locked up in my apartment. I scrounge through my meager pantry and find some food to cook, since I’ve been eating like shit lately. My stomach has been a knot of tension for the past couple weeks, and I haven’t had much of an appetite.
I’m not a great cook, but the food is palatable, and I force myself to eat all of it as I binge-watch trashy TV shows in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt.
At seven, I slip on a skirt and a pair of ankle boots, then throw on a shiny, low-cut top. I don’t bother with my prosthesis.
It’s a little cold for the amount of skin I have on display, but I throw a jacket on over it all and trot quickly down the stairs, then catch the bus a few blocks over. I’ll warm up at the bar, and I need to be wearing a skirt tonight. It’ll m
ake things easier.
Duke’s is already busy when I walk in, and I dump my jacket in the back and take my spot behind the bar, losing track of time for a while as I mix cocktails and pour beers.
When Greg Pruitt wanders in at around eleven o’clock, I nod to myself in satisfaction. Good. I figured he’d be here tonight; Fridays are his usual night. He’s pretty fucking predictable, and I was counting on him coming into the bar.
Not that I couldn’t do this with any of the other men who are drinking and talking loudly in the chaotic, cramped space—but at least I know Greg is a sure thing.
It doesn’t need to be anything other than a quick fuck. Hell, I’m not sure my body can take much more than that right now.
But Marcus Constantine needs to be given a message. And maybe I do too.
This thing between us isn’t a thing.
It doesn’t exist.
It can’t.
So I’ll prove it to him.
When Greg makes his way to the bar to grab his usual martini, I make sure I’m the one who mixes it for him. Instead of brushing off his awkward attempts to hit on me, I lean farther over the beat up dark wood, smiling provocatively as I slide his drink over.
His gaze drops to my well-displayed cleavage, and he licks his lips.
Yeah. That was fucking easy.
I don’t do anything more than that for a while, just keep serving him drinks while he keeps ogling me and bragging incessantly about his mediocre job. But when the bar starts to die down at a little after one in the morning, I ask Duke if I can cut out early.
“Yeah. Sure.” The stocky man shrugs, his gaze running down my body curiously. There’s no heat in his eyes—he’s more like an uncle or a cranky older brother than anything—but he’s definitely noticed I’m not wearing my usual work outfit.
Whatever.
I don’t need to explain myself to him.
“Thanks.”
I duck into the back and grab my jacket, slinging it over one arm. When I re-emerge, I find Greg among the remaining patrons and catch his gaze. Letting a slow smile cross my face, I tug my bottom lip between my teeth, then jerk my head subtly toward the back doors down the hall.