by Katy Evans
A tear runs down my cheek.
He slams a hand to the window and curses. “Fuck this.”
“It hurts,” I sniffle, talking to myself as I lower my hands. “You hurt me like nobody’s ever hurt me, Greyson! I can’t stop thinking about it. Do you call her princess? Do you spend your weekdays with her and your weekends with me?”
He stays silent, gazing out the window, his shoulders tight. “I don’t call anyone else princess. I don’t spend time with any woman but you. Hell, I work my days around just so I can come home to you.”
“Then why are you here with her? I’m not big on second chances, you know! But I’ve given you every fucking chance you’ve wanted!” I cry.
“She is nothing.” He grabs my face with his free hand, hissing through ground teeth, “She is nothing but a work contact. You are everything, you’ve been everything from the moment I saw you, screaming for Riptide. You didn’t see me, you didn’t see me, Melanie, but I’ve watched over you ever since—you are everything. Can you say the same about me? Can you say the same about him—that he’s nothing?”
I stare blankly at him for a moment. “He’s nothing, he’s a friend, I swear. He was a fuck buddy when I came over to see Brooke sometimes, it meant nothing!”
He stares at his hands. “But he’s touched you.”
I suddenly can’t stop myself from touching my boobs. So much smaller than the redhead’s. “Who was she? What’s her name? How do you know her?”
He rubs his face with both hands. “Just a business contact. She gets the dirty on men I need to negotiate with. I’ve never had a relationship with her. I’ve had a thousand fucks, but she hasn’t been one of them. My every single fuck for weeks has been you.” He looks out and curses, and I wipe my tears.
I see his face and remember the way he smiled at her and my stomach roils with fresh jealousy. “I wanted to pull her fucking hair out.”
“I want to pull his guts out!” He grabs me by the shoulders. “What part of you being my girl didn’t you understand?”
“I refuse to be yours if you’re not going to be mine. If you fuck around I’m going to fuck around—an eye for an eye!”
“Stop being a stubborn-fool drunk and listen to me. I am not cheating on you—but you were.”
I fall quiet.
“Were you?”
“You and I were over the moment you walked past me and I realized all this time you’ve been lying to me,” I cry, sniveling.
“Come here,” he rasps out.
“Why?”
When I edge a little close, he opens his arm, and my eyes blur more when I think about explaining to him what Riley knows about my secret. “I’m fucking sorry, Melanie,” he says.
He pulls me into his chest and the familiarity in his embrace and the comfort I feel in his arms unexpectedly opens my floodgates.
“I’m sorry too, Grey,” I cry.
I start sobbing harder as he presses a very firm, almost desperate kiss to the crown of my head and squeezes me with almost enough force to break me and says, “It’s going to be okay. You’ll never have to run to another man again because I’m going to be right here. Right here for you, if you still want me after I tell you what I have to tell you.”
I try to wipe my face and look into his eyes. “You made me feel unworthy, Grey. Like you’re hiding me. I don’t know who you are, your parents, your family, I don’t know anything about you. Please, I want to know you. Can’t you see I want to know you,” I sob.
His eyes look haunted as he looks at me. “I hide you to protect you, because you’re my princess.” He strokes my nose. “I’ll tell you about me. Just let me enjoy the way these eyes look at me a little longer.”
He kisses my wet eyelids almost desperately, like what he is telling me is going to be bad, real bad, and like he thinks I won’t be able to stay after I hear it.
I cry harder. I’m used to his touch. His touch is unique, delicious, and I’ve felt it for eight weeks, but I knew one day it was going to break me.
NINETEEN
* * *
LOST
Greyson
Melanie slides her hands around my waist and buries her face in my shirt, and I pull off my gloves and shove them in my pocket so I can run my thumbs down her cheeks to track her tears.
Peace.
She’s the most restless woman I know, but she gives me peace. Things were perfectly planned.
Melanie was in Seattle. I was here in Denver gathering the evidence for my second-to-last mark. I was going to steal into his place at midnight, blackmail and harass him for payment, so that by tomorrow, I’d be able to fly back to her.
But hours ago, Derek texted me that she was at the airport. By the time the incompetent fuck parked, she’d checked in and he lost her past the security checkpoint. I barked at him to buy any fucking ticket, get past security, and find her. He got a ticket, but failed to find her. So I asked C.C. to search the flight records while I finished the damn appointment with Tina and got to things myself.
But no. Melanie ended up here, at the same fucking restaurant, at the same time as Tina Glass and I were here, and she saw me. I couldn’t afford to have a criminal like Tina Glass get any wind of us, otherwise Melanie would be exposed to Zero’s world, and she would be vulnerable.
God, but the hurt in her eyes? If that wasn’t enough to bring me to my knees, it almost was when I saw her in that asshole’s hotel room.
You can’t hurt a woman like Melanie and expect her not to react. You can’t expect her not to try to peel away the hurt so she’s the happy girl again everyone knows.
I feared I’d lost her.
I feared the determination in her eyes when the door to that hotel room opened and I saw her.
And I saw the hurt in her eyes.
And I was angry, so fucking angry, but the most gripping, surprising, infuriating emotion in me was the fear.
Fear of never again tasting those lips, never feeling those eyes on me, never playing her stupid games with her . . . The only times I ever feel good are with her. Good not at killing, blackmailing, and doing what I was taught to do. Just good.
She moves now, and fire in my veins sizzles and smokes as her hair brushes against my neck. The curves of her body fit perfectly against me. She’s sitting on my thigh, and her hip is against my cock. When she shifts, I groan softly into the crown of her hair, my muscles knotting. Lava flows over me at the mere feel of her.
I want to fuck her so hard, punish her for thinking any other bastard would do.
Her hair is messed as if she’s rolled out of that asshole’s bed, but she’ll never be satisfied until she rolls out of mine.
Her eyes are glazed with tears for me.
Every muscle in my body tight, I brush her hair aside and kiss the back of her ear. “I want to taste your bare skin very, very desperately,” I murmur.
She jerks my shirt out of the waistband of my pants and sets her hand under my shirt, over my heart, touching my nipple ring. We remain like this, her eyes closed, her cheek to my chest, her closeness turning me inside out.
I duck my head and she holds her breath as if she’d been praying for me to, and she tips her head up so we can kiss. Our lips meet, softly. There’s the tightening in my cock, the rapid beat of my pulse, the taste of her on my tongue. My hunger spins out of control as I open her wider and kiss her slow, but deep.
Each repetitive flick of her tongue sets loose a wildness in me, that elemental pull between us stretching and strengthening.
She eases back and I look down at her, absorbing the feel of her as she slowly lifts her eyes to mine, pure green, and I feel like my chest is being torn open and she’s squeezing my heart with those dainty white hands. I feel more for her than I’ve felt for anyone in my life. I never thought I could be capable. I lost something I loved too young. I built a fortress around myself, and it’s been there, not allowing anyone a fraction of real, raw emotion from me.
But what I feel for her . . .
<
br /> Nobody has ever had the power to hurt me like she now has. Since my mother left, nothing has been truly important to me. I’ve never let myself care for anything or anyone. Not for my father, my uncle, my brother.
Now a little girl whose father calls her grasshopper has the power to break me in two—me, a fucking criminal, alone most of his life. And if any one of my enemies knew, they’d use her to take Zero down in a heartbeat.
And now we’re too far in for her to stay in the dark any longer. I need to know if it’s me she loves, or the idea of me.
She will leave you. Despise you. Reject you.
I’m already mourning the loss of her as her hand wanders to the zipper of my pants, and the merest brush of her fingers gets me hard while my chest throbs with the loss.
She’s fucking lost to me already.
I groan and close my eyes as I battle my own urge to take her, right here, right now; instead I stop her wandering hand and kiss her. I want to dip my hand up her skirt, edge the panty aside and slip in a finger. She’s already panting hard and clinging to my neck, her head falling back in pleasure against my shoulder. But she’s drunk and I’m angry, and I’m jealous and want more than her body. I want her fucking soul, and I want her to give it to me knowing who I am.
Fucking fool, she won’t.
Groaning in pain, I lean into her mouth, and she kisses me hard.
She mumbles my name, and I hear myself whisper that she was an angel in the rain . . . the only woman I’ve ever spent the night with, bought a home for, followed around just for a glimpse . . .
A new tear slips down her cheek, but I’m the one undone. What shakes me is the tenderness in the way she curls to me even as she’s crying.
I press a kiss to the top of her head and I can’t seem to stop pressing kisses into her hair, my own self-loathing growing by the second.
Just one more mark now. I’ve got the evidence to nail him. And then I just need to whisper in her ear, to give me that fucking necklace I gave her because I’m going to give her another one, a better one, and that this one will take care of everything.
I’ll get control of the Underground. I’ll be smarter, better organized, I’ll make sure my mother is safe, and as for Melanie . . .
I tap on the car roof and lower the partition separating us from Derek. “Drive over to get her friend, the happy one,” I say with sarcasm.
Mumbling some sort of protest under her breath, she shakes her head. “Don’t go. I’ve been dreaming about you.”
“And call one of the guys,” I tell Derek. “I’ll need you to stay with princess while someone drives me to the airport.” I pull up the partition between us and Derek and groan. “Don’t say that now,” I whisper.
She grabs my hand and puts it on her tits. “When I see you, my boobs hurt.”
God. She’s so fucking drunk. “When you’re sober, I’m going to tell you some shit you won’t like,” I whisper, a gruff warning. “Don’t say anything now.”
“Greyson . . .”
“I’m going to tell you something about me but I don’t want you to try to fix me. I can’t be fixed. You either need to accept who I am or tell me you want to leave, and I give you my word I’ll let you go if you ask for that.”
She stops and blinks, her voice emotional. “You sound like you think you’re bad for me.”
“I am.” I glance out the window and grind my molars, tightening my hold because this might just be the last time I hold her like this.
“You’re not. What you did for me in the rain is one of the nicest things anyone has done for me.”
“Fuck. Stop saying that; you’ve said that before and that pisses me off.”
“Why?”
“Because you should be inundated with people doing nice shit for you. To you.”
She smirks. “I don’t like them doing nice things to me, I like it when they’re a little bad. Like you.”
I laugh. “Yeah, you’re so drunk. You wanted to kill me just now. Then fuck me. Now you want to canonize me?”
“Because you’re a bad boy, but a good man, and I’m in fucking lov—”
I shut her up with my mouth because I can’t take it. I can’t take her sincerity, the thought that she might seem to have forgiven me now, but she won’t when I tell her what I do, is something I can’t take. It’s grown too big, the way I feel for her, the way I respect her, like her, admire her, the way I want her to be happy and the torment of knowing that every moment I’m with her, I could be putting her at risk. I can’t risk her. She has to know.
And Greyson King will have zero future with her.
♥ ♥ ♥
SHE’S ASLEEP BY the time Derek brings her angry friend, who’s fucking fuming as he loads her and Melanie’s suitcases into the trunk.
She slides into the car. “What the fuck did you do to her?” Immediately she signals to Melanie’s neck. “She never takes off her precious necklace. It’s always under her shirt and today it was right on top of it. So, what did you do to her?”
For the first time I notice.
Melanie did take off my necklace.
There’s a roiling in my gut, a feeling like I’m sinking as I brush my fingers regretfully over her bare throat. I wanted her to use it, didn’t I? I wanted her to sell it.
It shouldn’t hurt like this, it shouldn’t even fucking matter.
“I’m driving you two to a suite at a better and safer hotel,” I say in a cold, emotionless voice, low and keeping my eyes on Melanie. “I’d appreciate if you kept her company until I can return.”
“I’ll do it for her because it’s her birthday but not because you asked me to, asshole.”
TWENTY
* * *
CONFUSED
Melanie
I wake up disoriented, and then, like a brick to the head, it hits me.
I’m drunk, still.
More like hungover.
A fierce pounding in my temples makes me squint my eyes as I try to place myself. I groan and shift in bed, and I realize that I have a braid and I don’t remember doing my hair. To think that Greyson may have put his hands on my hair makes my stomach hurt.
I push to my feet and peer around the room. It’s three a.m.
I fell asleep in the car?
There’s an enormous bathroom and I feel so filthy, I go around the room in search of my stuff—and see my suitcase. Quickly I tear off my clothes and pull out a T-shirt and cotton undershorts, then walk around, parched. I guzzle a bottle of water and peer around. I’ve never been in such a big room. It’s lavishly decorated, and very cozy. There are pictures on the wall of wildlife next to wooden boomerangs.
Books run from side to side on one wall in a living room, and there’s another closed room. I see Pandora’s shoes by the bar and I frown in confusion.
I hear a noise from a third room and peer inside, and I see him.
My insides tighten when he doesn’t see me.
He’s got glinting silver things spread out over the bed. He looks freshly showered and is slipping into a shirt, sleek black slacks hanging low on his waist.
The lamps to both sides of the bed are made of onyx, each with a lightbulb glowing warmly at the center, filtering through the onyx in an incredibly elegant way. It kisses his skin golden, it runs through his hair, it touches him in a way that makes me fist my hands at my side.
The sight of him reminds me so much of other mornings. In his huge, empty apartment. When we were fooling around, sometimes taking a bath together. It felt like he was mine.
But he’s not.
Instant emotion swells inside me when I think of him and that woman.
Then I remember Riley.
Our fight.
What else happened?
As I try to decipher what’s on the bed, I notice he’s begun observing me with a quiet, narrowed stare, and something passes across his face, a wistful kind of longing that makes my own yearning slice me up in quarters.
“Where are we?” I croak.
“A hotel.”
“Not my hotel.”
“It is now.”
The sight of his nipple piercing glinting in the lamplight as he starts buttoning his shirt mocks me. I want to suck it as I ride him. Tug it and play with it as he fucks me, loves me. No, he’ll never love me.
“Zero . . .” I whisper. “When I was falling asleep, I kept hearing someone saying that number over and over, what is it? You were telling Derek to call someone to come pick you up at the airport, and several times he said Zero . . . What is that?”
He sighs and turns, then spreads his arms out and watches me cautiously. “Me.”
“Zero?” I nearly choke on the word. “Is Greyson not even your name?”
Greyson waits it out.
Which only makes me more confused, more frustrated.
“Zero?” I repeat. “What the hell does that mean? Certainly not the number of women you’ve fucked. Hell, I thought I knew you!”
“You thought you knew me?” His outrage is like a tangible thing in the room. “I thought I knew you! What the fuck, Melanie? Your necklace is missing! I find you in a room with another dude! You tell me what the fuck. You have a whole Underground in yourself, princess, I’m not the only fucking liar here!”
There’s a knock, and a guy with a sleek head peers inside. “I’m ready when you are. Derek will keep his post here—your reservation’s—”
“Leon, I need a fucking moment here,” Greyson interrupts as he stalks across the room, slamming the door shut on his face, but not soon enough. Not before I see the man. Recognize him, that tall, lanky man.
From the time I visited Brooke one weekend and stole away alone to the Underground, begging for an extension.
Extension? We can make you an extension of our cocks, how’s that, lady?
I glance at Grey and an even more terrifying realization washes over me, and with an awful wrenching in my gut, I finally, finally get it.