by Quinn, Cari
If she’d come at me with both fists, she couldn’t have hit me harder than her words did. Delivered with those guileless eyes riveted on mine, they were a punch straight to the solar plexus.
I pushed her sweater off her shoulders and stripped her out of her dress and underwear as fast as possible. My hands weren’t steady, and I might’ve felt embarrassed at my lack of control if she hadn’t shivered too when she helped me shed my boots and the rest of my clothes. Then we were skin against skin, her bare breasts flush to my chest, and Christ, I groaned like she’d taken my cock into her mouth. Feeling her against me was the most erotic sensation I’d ever encountered.
Until she swung her lithe legs up on the counter and curled her toes over the edge. She spread her knees wide, giving me an intimate view of her glistening dusky pink flesh.
“Jesus,” I breathed as she traced a fingertip over her shaved smooth mound and dipped it inside, swirling it over her clit. I watched her, transfixed, leaning forward like a starving man when she offered me her hand. I gripped her wrist and feasted on her fingers, watching her all the while.
She was nothing but hungry eyes and quivering lips. Both sets of them.
I found a condom in my wallet, slicked it on. And entered her with a thrust that would’ve sent her head colliding into the wall if my hands hadn’t been there to cushion it.
“Fucking hell, yes,” I hissed.
The almost week without her had taken its toll, and I wasn’t sure if I’d last half a dozen strokes. Especially when I glanced down and glimpsed the sight of me soaked with her, sliding so deep into her swollen flesh. Watching her open up for me, her body giving way to the minute rocks of my hips.
Her breath stuttered over my forehead as she realized the object of my attention and glanced down herself, letting out a moan that ripped over my shredded nerve endings. It was dirty, indescribable. But it was also unspeakably beautiful, seeing how perfectly we linked up. How if I moved faster, she bowed into my strokes, taking them as if she’d been born for the single task of fucking me.
And when she clenched around me, telling me that she was close, I sped up in response, swiveling my hips until I hit that spot inside that made her kiss-swollen lips fall open on a silent moan. My hands roamed her hips, her back, her breasts as I angled up, rubbing her clit with my dick, wanting to touch every part of her inside and out.
Then it was too much, her fractured breaths, her stilted moans, the fluttering of her walls around my pulsing cock. I slammed into her, using her knees for leverage, bending my knees to hit her just right to send her soaring.
When she finally did, she cried out my name and dragged her nails down the back of her neck, holding my mouth to hers so that I could taste her whimpers as she came and came.
I wasn’t capable of holding out against her wild throb around me, any more than I could resist her begging pleas. I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to shatter like she’d been shattered.
We were each other’s decimation and salvation, all rolled into one.
One more thrust deep and I gave up the fight. My balls drew tight, and the name that was a drumbeat in my head roared from my chest. Hers. Always hers. I kept pumping through it, desperate to make it last. I didn’t want the pleasure to fade. The connection. Because what was behind it was only dark, vast emptiness, just waiting to swallow me whole.
I couldn’t stop fucking her. Once I’d come, it wasn’t enough.
Not even close.
I scooped her up and turned her around, slapping her hands to the counter while I tied off the first condom and fumbled for another. She was sobbing, her forehead pressed to her arm, her body one shivering exposed nerve, and I couldn’t get the goddamn rubber on fast enough. Then somehow I was inside her again, my hips hammering hers, my mouth fastened to her shoulder while I fingered her frantically between her sticky thighs. My hand slid over my cock, driving it farther into the recesses of her. Nothing was deep enough.
She bucked against me, hurtling into another orgasm, and I was still working her, fingers and cock both, sweat dripping in my eyes as my pelvis battered her ass. She bowed to me, her back curving, her pussy trembling around me as I drove headfirst into the wall and exploded inside her, so deep that my skull pounded from the force of my orgasm. I was throbbing everywhere. Breathing too hard to hear her, too tuned to her to need breath.
Right now, she was my oxygen, my life. Everything I’d ever need, and nothing I could ever have.
I slid my arms around her waist and clutched her to my chest, letting her heartbeat lull mine into steadying. I brushed my hand over her hair and kissed the back of her neck. “I’m sorry. I lost all control.”
“Don’t apologize. That was…” She sighed and stood up fully, swaying. I caught her and pressed my face to her shoulder, inhaling our combined scents with a relief that bordered on madness. For this instant, she was still here in my arms. Whole, safe, perfect. “Perfect,” she echoed.
I pulled out of her with a grunt and took care of the condom. The moment I moved back to her, she curled against my chest. “I didn’t hurt you?”
“Oh, you did. In all the best ways.” She tipped back her head and showed me her starry eyes. They were like the night sky from the Ferris wheel, reflecting like jewels. “I want to make bread.”
“Okay.”
“Then I want to spoon with you until morning comes. I want you to hold me while I sleep.”
Throat tight, I nodded. “I can do that.”
Her expression softened and she touched my cheek with gentle fingers. “And I want you to tell me about Emilia. Please, Gio.”
The ground crumbled beneath me, caving under my feet. And I went into freefall.
She gazed up at me without speaking for the longest time, then she nodded and bent to pick up her undergarments. “If I’d had any doubts, that look just erased them.” Crouching, she gathered her clothes with shaking hands. “She was to be your wife. The mother of your baby.”
She wasn’t to be the mother of my baby, she was the mother of my baby. She’d only carried our child for weeks before she was gunned down. The baby had been tiny, barely visible on a scan. But it had lived.
It lived.
But none of that left my mouth. My vocal cords were frozen, just like the hollow chamber in my chest.
“She was innocent,” Carly said from her position near the floor. “Caught up in something much bigger than she was. A victim of a war she’d never fought.” She lifted eyes brimming with too much knowledge, too much pain, and far too much empathy. That kind of understanding would be my undoing, and keeping this secret was necessary to ensure her safety. “You watched her die.” She let out a soft sob. “Gio, I’m so sorry.”
I turned away and braced fists on the counter still warm from her body. From our lovemaking. Now the scent of it stung my nose, as acrid as ozone.
I’d watched Emilia die, and I’d betrayed her by caring for another. It wasn’t enough that she’d died because of me, now I couldn’t even be faithful to her memory.
My body was one thing. Sex was meaningless, a way to fill the gaping hole. But it never touched me. It never meant anything.
Until now.
Carly rose and wrapped her arms around me from behind. Now the friction of skin on skin might as well have been chains clinking together. Leg irons binding me to her, no matter how I fought to shake her free.
“Did she beg you to turn away from that life, as I’ve begged you? I know you have your reasons, things I don’t know, but it’s too dangerous. Can’t you see that?”
“Tesoro, don’t.”
Even in my fury that this had been dredged up between us—though I’d known it would be one day—I couldn’t stop from calling her my treasure. She was so important to me. So vital and alive and whole.
Too bright and beautiful for me to keep.
“I have to. We can’t go further with this between us.” She pressed her cool cheek to the flaming hot skin of my back, silently offering her
support. “Did she ask you to make a choice, as I’ve asked you to choose?”
Silence was my only defense. I didn’t pick it willingly. The words inside me had dried up and withered away, leaving behind only ashes.
“Maybe this time it will be different.” Carly’s voice quivered. “We can make it different. We belong together, and we can have it all, Gio, I swear. I’ve made so many mistakes too. Done things I’m ashamed of. But I’m leaving that behind, and you can as well. All you have to do is choose—” She broke off but what she didn’t say echoed in my head just the same.
Choose me over them.
Choose me over your need for vengeance.
Choose me over Emilia.
“I will never choose you.” I fisted my hands until my knuckles sang with pain. “Never.”
Her arms fell away from my waist. In their place, all I felt was cold. Sinking through the skin, permeating organ and bone. Numbing me to all that I couldn’t survive.
When the door shut behind her a moment later, I went to my knees and fumbled for the rosary around my neck. And prayed.
Nineteen
I took the subway home. At almost three a.m.
The man who’d supposedly been so worried about my safety didn’t chase after me. Not that I would have responded if he had. I would’ve walked home on bloody hands before I sat beside him in a vehicle. Or before I let him touch me again.
Not after he’d spoken to me with such venom.
I understood he was hurt and reeling. But to say what he had—to crush me like that? I couldn’t excuse it. When all I’d asked for was the truth and his promise to stay away from those men who had caused us such grievous harm.
The short trip home was still long enough for me to replay every moment of the night. The magic of the carnival, the joy at finding his kitchen fully stocked for me. The wildness of our lovemaking.
I was only eighteen. Too young to be truly in love. That was what I told myself as the subway train chugged through the dark, and I sat on the edge of a seat, almost hoping in some sick way that someone would make me hurt on the outside like I hurt on the in.
Maybe I was more like my sister than I’d ever guessed.
I let myself in the apartment and curled up on the couch without undressing. I didn’t get a blanket. Didn’t wash my hands or my face. I didn’t have the strength to move.
Morning came, and Mia and Fox went to work. I huddled into the cushions and mumbled that I wasn’t feeling well. Nothing to worry about. Just a bug.
I wasn’t truly sick. I was broken.
Later in the day, when Mrs. Knox had gone off to visit with friends and the apartment was blissfully quiet, I dragged myself into the kitchen and drank two glasses of wine on an empty stomach.
And promptly fell to my hands and knees in the bathroom and tossed it all back up.
After that humiliation—luckily witnessed by no one—I curled up on the couch and watched about thirty-two episodes of Bridezillas. I didn’t cry once.
The next morning, I went to school like normal. I laughed with my fellow students, took notes, and made one hell of a consommé. After that, I went to the Salad Hut for my normal shift. In short, I rocked the “act normal and no one will know your heart has been filleted like a day-old tuna” portion of the program.
After work, Kirk asked me if I wanted to go out to eat, which was code for come over to my place and play video games then give me a blowjob. Normally, I would’ve said no, as I had several times over the past month I’d been…engaged with he who shall not be named.
That night, I said yes, though we actually ate at a sandwich place. I skipped going home with him, and I definitely skipped the blowjob. I didn’t even kiss him goodnight.
So much for the sparks I’d once thought we had. Now they were kaput.
Tuesday, I went to school and then to the doctor’s as planned. My finger was doing okay, so I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d even bothered to keep the appointment.
Until Dr. Sherman walked in and asked me her typical barrage of questions before we actually got to the point of why I was there. All the usuals—trouble sleeping, any unusual symptoms, when was your last menstrual cycle.
And I didn’t have an answer.
I flipped through and tried to remember. After school had started, definitely. After Mia’s fight…the end of September? Maybe. It was now early November, so I was late. Weeks late.
I was never late.
“Carly? Do you know the date of your last cycle or…” She trailed off, looking grave.
“Oh, sorry. I have a lot on my mind.” I gave her a big, wide smile. “Actually, I just had it two weeks ago. Sorry. I didn’t mean to space out like that.”
“You’re sure?” Dr. Sherman leaned a hip against the gurney I was seated on. “Because antibiotics can alter cycles and efficacy of birth control, so it’s important to—”
Efficacy of birth control.
Right. Because now was the time for me to find out about that. Or else I’d just glossed over that information like I’d tried to gloss over so much with Gio.
“I’m good,” I said, cutting her off. “Can you just look at my finger?”
“Of course. Just wanted to make sure everything else was in order as well.”
Everything was fine. Just peachy.
I walked out of there a short while later with a clean bill of health for my pinkie and a baby in my belly.
The baby wasn’t guaranteed, of course. And I refused to take a test to find out. I didn’t want to know.
I’d just…wait. Surely if there was one in there, eventually it would make its presence known. In the meantime, I would stick my head in the sand and pretend it didn’t exist because I didn’t want my life to change.
I didn’t want to be having a baby with the man who had skewered my heart.
Somehow I found myself at The Cage, without any conscious knowledge of how I got there. I knew Giovanni worked at the Boys and Girls Club on Tuesday nights, and I also knew that Fox would be training tonight, since he’d had an earlier shift at the bar. I needed to talk to someone, and he was my best choice.
I’d been tempted to call Jenna, but I didn’t want her to freak out on me. Jenna was as level-headed as they came most of the time, except in a crisis. Then she went postal in two point one seconds flat.
I could do that all on my own, thanks.
On the way across the room to where Fox was doing pull-ups on a bar on the wall, I worked out different scenarios for how I could feel him out without telling him about my exact situation. Not that I had an exact situation to tell. As of right now, as far as I knew, I was unpregnant. Blissfully so. Until I saw that telltale word on a stick, I had nothing to be concerned about.
And since I never intended to buy a pregnancy test, ever, I was golden.
I stopped beside him and smiled back automatically at his grin.
“Hey squirt. Whatcha doin’ here? Mia’s not arou—”
“What would you do if Mia told you she was pregnant?”
Yeah, okay, so that wasn’t one of the scenarios I’d played out in my head. Probably a good thing, because from the way he reacted—dropping down from the bar as if his hands had run out of strength, then promptly clasping his knees like he couldn’t catch his breath—my casual-pregnancy-talk technique could use some work.
Just like my dirty talking one, evidently.
“What did you say?” he panted.
I was already turning away. I needed to take a walk. Right out of the city. Maybe I’d walk to Mexico. That’d keep me busy for a while, right?
“Carly. Jesus, Car, wait up.” Fox grabbed my shoulder and I stopped, mainly because his spinning me around made my head whirl too.
You didn’t eat lunch.
Or breakfast.
Actually, I wasn’t sure when I’d last eaten a full meal. I’d been living on snacks the last couple of days, other than the sandwich I’d picked at with Kirk last night. Even that I’d barely nibbled.
/> “Let’s go sit down in my office.” Fox mopped at his brow with a towel, and I realized he looked as shaky as I felt. “It’s private in there. And we can have privacy to…talk privately.”
I frowned. “That’s a whole lot of privacy, bub.”
“I think that’s a smart idea, don’t you?” He gave a distracted, annoyed glance at all the other people working out before pulling me toward the exit.
“No, I think you’re busy. This isn’t a good time.”
“Who cares if it’s a good time? It’s happening. Oh, God, it’s happening.”
“What?” I followed him through the door and let him tug me up the hall, though I wasn’t real keen on having a sit-down with him right now. He was acting more than a little wacked out.
I hoped he hadn’t resorted to steroids for his fight with Gio. Maybe he wanted to win badly enough to take the risk.
“Drugs are bad,” I told him. “Seriously bad news.”
At his office door, he glanced back at me, lines forming between his brows. “What did you—”
The door flew open, and the person on the other side was not Mia. It was Vanity, the chick who’d spent a while last spring playing tongue twister with the father of my nonexistent baby.
“Oh hell no,” she snarled, her gaze drifting from Fox to me and back again. He still had his hand on my wrist, which was almost my hand if you were blind and stupid. “So this is why he’s fucking that cuntcake now? Because you’ve taken up with her sister? Foxy, you have no taste.” She shoved him back out of the doorway. “Less than none.”
All at once, I had a pretty good idea who the knife impaler was, and it wasn’t the woman who I was still sort of half-assedly trying to obtain the location of, amidst the many other things on my overflowing plate.
Slater was right. Olivia wasn’t the one currently hassling my sister. It was this crazy bitch.
“What the hell are you doing in my office?”