Maddox (The Italian Cartel Book 5)

by Shandi Boyes

  He didn’t change his position so he can feed his impressively thick shaft in and out of my mouth. He did it to ensure he can see exactly how far I take his cock down my throat.

  “Fuck, Demi, fuck,” he curses when his engorged knob reaches the very back of my throat. “You can’t be as insanely sexy as you and know how to deep throat. You’ve got to give the competition something to strive for.”

  His praise has me taking him into my wet, heated mouth faster. The strain it causes my cheeks is almost unbearable, but I soldier on, determined to show chemistry will always outrank skill level. I wasn’t eager to return the favor of my previous sexual partners since they mostly left me high and dry. I can’t use that excuse with Maddox. He’s brought me to climax more times than I’ve climaxed in my entire sexual history.

  Suck after suck, I take him deeper and deeper. The moans simpering from his mouth encourage my relentless pursuit. I flatten my tongue, swivel it around his knob, and trace it along the veins feeding his magnificent manhood over and over again until his balls draw in close to his body.

  I’m wet just from the way he watches me drive him to the brink one needy suck at a time, so I won’t mention how delicious he tastes. This isn’t supposed to be about me. I want to thank him for what he did and express that I’ll completely understand if he wants to take it all back once he realizes exactly what he did. I won’t hold it against him at all. Just the past two nights of freedom make up for a lifetime of injustices.

  My nipples pucker against my lace bra when the salty goodness pumping out of Maddox’s cock thickens. He’s close to the edge, and I’m about to take him there.

  “What…” I push out in disbelief when he withdraws his cock from my mouth just as the veins keeping it hard match the frantic rhythm of the throb of my clit.

  “I want to be inside of you when I come.” Maddox pounces to his knees, flips me over, arches my back, then enters me from behind.

  I call out. Screaming my only response since I have nowhere to grab, and I’m being filled by a dick that deserves an upstanding applause. With my hands slippery from the heat bouncing between Maddox and me and the Twister mat being made out of plastic, I’m going down no matter how hard I fight. The floor gets closer with every brutal pump Maddox does, but I keep the knowledge of my soon-to-be collision to myself, preferring to die being fucked like I never thought possible than stop him now.

  “You… oh God… yes…” I say through frantic breaths when Maddox grips my throat. His hold isn’t close to painful, but since he had to weave his arm through the gulley of my breasts to do it, I’m no longer concerned about faceplanting onto the hard floor. He has me. He has me so fucking good. “Oh God… oh. I’m going to come.”

  I power through the sheer insanity engulfing me when Maddox grunts out, “Good, ‘cause I’m right-fucking-there with you.”

  He pumps into me over and over again until my screams turn earthshattering, then he buries himself balls deep, grunts my name, and spills his load inside of me.

  21

  Demi

  I stare at the bathroom door, unsure whether I should knock or not. Maddox has been in the shower for the past thirty minutes. For someone like Sloane, that isn’t a big deal. She only ever leaves the bathroom once the water runs cold. But for Maddox, a man who was pushed to the absolute brink long before I took his dick between my lips, it seems a little obsessive.

  He was handling things better than expected. We ate, talked a little, then we fucked like what happened last night wasn’t real. Even with the hour being early, I was hoping to get back to the talking part of our recovery, but Maddox’s phone had other ideas. He had only just finished cleaning his cum from the inside of my thighs when it buzzed on repeat. Since it was barely five in the morning, I encouraged him to answer it, panicked it might have been important.

  The expression on Maddox’s face when he read his messages revealed that was wrong of me to do, but instead of telling me the reason for the deep groove between his brows, he announced he was going to take a quick shower.

  You know the story from there.

  I could ask him through the door if he’s okay, but that seems a little impersonal, especially considering he’s the only person who truly knows me since he was forced to walk in my shoes only hours ago. Furthermore, the battle he’s facing is solely my fault, so shouldn’t I be the one to guide him through it?

  Confident that is the case, I exhale a big breath, then push down on the handle.

  “M-Maddox?” I hate the stutter his name is delivered with, but it can’t be helped. I’m genuinely petrified my uncle has forced him to become a shadow of himself. It didn’t seem like that when we fooled around on the Twister mat, but what else could be the cause for his unusually long shower? “If you stay in the shower much longer, you’ll turn into a prune.”

  The cabin’s water heater must be massive. There’s enough steam to assure me the water pumping out of the showerhead is still scalding. It takes three lengthened strides to part the steam enough to spot Maddox in the shower, and when I do, my heart sinks to my feet. He’s seated on the floor, his back is resting on the marble tiles, his head is flopped backward, and his eyes are closed. The knuckle-busted hand he gripped my throat with earlier to save me from tumbling to the floor is resting on his bare thigh, and it’s uncontrollably shaking.

  Even with his hands being pelted by a healthy spray of water, they’re more battered than they were only an hour ago. I’d say his new welts are complements to the grout brush dumped next to his thigh. Its white bristles are stained with blood and flecks of skin.

  “Maddox…” If there weren’t a massive groove between his reddish-blond brows, I could pretend he’s fallen asleep. Unfortunately for all involved, I know that isn’t the case. “Is everything okay?”

  When he pops open his eyes, the pain in them cuts through me like a knife.

  He’s hurting—badly.

  Past pretending this is okay, I tug off the jeans I placed on before we ate, throw open the glass shower door, then step into the steam-filled space. I hiss through the shock of the high temperature of the water while moving Maddox’s hands off his thighs. Once I have them at his sides, I straddle his lap, curl my arms around his stiff shoulders, then bury my head into his neck. Even with him remaining as stiff as a board, I hold him tightly while repeating for him to breathe through the dread crushing him.

  This is the exact reason I ran yesterday. The Walshs have a reputation, but it isn’t one built on fear. Their parents raised them with respect, values, and love. That makes them incapable of killing without feeling an ounce of remorse.

  “It’ll be okay,” I whisper into his neck, my lips quivering. “I promise you, I will make things right.”

  I’m anticipating for it to take more than a few measly words to drag Maddox off the edge he’s precariously dangling on, so you can picture my utter bewilderment when he tugs me in closer after banding one of his arms around my back. He draws me in until my chest is flat against his and his nose is buried into my hair.

  When I tug the ponytail holder out of my hair, wanting absolutely nothing between us, his exhale ruffles more than my partially soaked locks. It kickstarts my heart as well. He should hate me for what I forced him to endure. He should despise me on sight. Instead, he acts as if I’m the only person capable of saving him.

  “I’ll make this right, Maddox. I’ll fix the mistakes I made.”

  We sit in silence for several long minutes. It hurts knowing he’s hurting, but it also feels good that he can accept my comfort without it making him feel weak. Only brave men are in touch with their emotions. The others are usually the villains of the story.

  “He had a family,” Maddox confesses a short time later, his voice croaky and distant. “A wife and daughter.”

  I pull back, the pain in his words too profound to disregard. “You didn’t have a choice.”

  “His daughter is only three. She’s a baby.”

  “You didn’t
have a choice,” I echo, my words spaced by big, determined breaths. “If you hadn’t done what you did—”

  “He would have hurt you.” I nearly shake my head, but his next confession steals more than words from my mouth. They pinch my resolve as well. “He was married, his wife gave him a daughter for fuck’s sake, so why did he torment me with how he was going to rape you?”

  I knew there was more to his snapped response than first perceived.

  Now I know what it was.

  Maddox didn’t just protect me from one monster. He went against an entire warehouse of beasts.

  “Igor tormented you because he wasn’t you, Maddox. He knew the difference between good and bad, but he didn’t care. He had no morals… none. He killed because he wanted to. You did it because you had to. It was you or him…” When he shakes his head, I talk faster. “It was you or him, and you made the right choice when you picked you. He was a monster, so for all we know, you could have saved his daughter from a lifetime of suffering.”

  In an instant, it is as if a lightbulb switches on in his head. I don’t know if my words switched it on or my bruised face. Whatever it is, it clears the remorse in his eyes even quicker than it lowers the severity of the groove between his brows.

  “She could have been you,” Maddox whispers as his eyes float over my face. “She was his blood, but your uncle proves that doesn’t matter to those men. They take what they want, and they don’t give a fuck about who they hurt in the process.”

  When he briefly touches the marks on my face like he did earlier in the car, a tear topples down my cheek. I hadn’t thought about Igor’s daughter’s life replicating mine during my reply. I was merely trying to ease Maddox’s guilt. But when I truly think about it, he’s right. Anytime I saw Igor’s wife, her chin never left her chest. I thought she was shy. Now I feel like an idiot. Keeping quiet on abuse is almost as bad as being an abuser.

  If Igor hurt the woman he apparently loved, how cruel was he to the girl he was told he must love? I never doubted my dad loved me, but he loved my mother more. You can’t choose your family. You’re stuck with whomever you get. My relationship with my uncle is sure-fire proof of that.

  “One man’s life ended tonight, Maddox, but so many more were most likely saved… including yours, the most important of them all.”

  He chipped away a massive chunk of concrete from my heart on a freeway two nights ago when he told me I mattered. Now I’ve done the same for him. There’s just one difference. I truly believe what I am saying. I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t occasionally pretended to be a Walsh during my youth. I was too flabbergasted by Maddox to want to be his sibling. I simply wanted to be a part of something that mattered.

  Maddox made my wish come true when he stood up for me in the second grade, then he completely knocked it out of the park when he took care of me while I cried. He didn’t do that because he felt obligated, he was there for me because he wanted to be.

  Confusion blasts through Maddox’s greenish-blue eyes when I say, “I was wrong to run. I thought you wouldn’t get hurt if I left, that there was no way you’d miss me since we had only been together the one time. In the end—”

  “You hurt me more?”

  It takes everything I have not to let my tears fall when I nod.

  Maddox gives me a moment to compose myself before he confesses, “You didn’t physically hurt me, Demi. You hurt me here.” He gathers my hand in his before he places it over his chest. “I had no clue where you were or what he was doing to you.” His eyes float over my face as he says, “He did that in less than five minutes. You were gone for hours.” I choke when he chokes. “I thought he had—”

  I kiss him before he can say another word. It’s stupid of me to do. Things are tense, and he’s baring his soul to me, but I can’t take another second of wondering what went through his head when he walked into his empty room. It kills me thinking about how things could have ended if he hadn’t found Igor’s weak spot, so I can only imagine the torment he endured during our nine-hour separation.

  “Forgive me,” I beg over his kiss-swollen lips after kissing him senseless. “I ran because I thought things were moving too quickly, that you’d be better off without me. I was wrong. Things may be new between us, but they were—”

  “Years in the making,” Maddox interrupts, soothing the pain of my aching heart with four little words.

  “Yes. Perhaps even decades.” As my eyes dance between his, I nod. “A second feels like an hour when I’m with you, but it felt even longer when we were apart. I promise to remember that the next time I get scared.”

  “I’d rather you not be scared.” I nuzzle into his hand when he curls it over my unbruised cheek. “But I understand I haven’t given you much choice.” When confusion blasts through my eyes, he treks his finger across my lips. “You saw me kill a man. It’s understandable you’d look at me differently.”

  The confusion on my face jumps onto Maddox’s when I shake my head. “I didn’t see what happened. I was behind the bleachers.” He sucks in a relieved breath that is quickly withdrawn when I add, “But even if I had, I wouldn’t have looked at you any differently. You’re not him, Maddox. You’re not a selfish prick.” I’m not against using his words on him if it helps him see sense through the madness. “He hates from the get-go. You do the opposite.”

  He angles his head to the side, his smile too content for someone whose sanity was hovering above extinction only minutes ago. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? Are you implying that I… l—”

  “No, that isn’t close to what I’m saying.” It is, but it’s way too soon to let my ridiculous notions speak for themselves. “I’m just saying your wired differently than the men in my uncle’s industry. In a better way.” My last sentence is pushed out in a hurry from the raising of Maddox’s brow. “I don’t want you to ever become like them. It would kill me to see you like that.”

  “I won’t ever become them, Demi.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I ask like there was no actuality in his tone.

  He pulls me in closer until it seems as if not even my soaked shirt is between us before he replies, “Because I have you, and they never will.”

  22

  Maddox

  For the past six days, I’ve awoken coated in sweat. It’s winter, so I shouldn’t be as sweaty as I am. It just seems to be one of the penalties for being a murderer. Some mornings, I wake up on the verge of screaming. Others, I stare at the ceiling, wondering what went through Igor’s head in the seconds leading to his death. Did he know he was about to die? Or was he as shocked as me I could end someone’s life?

  No matter how I wake, every single morning without fail, Demi is at my side, promising me it will be okay. She’s never once made me feel guilty about what I did. She barely brings up that night almost a week ago. She just curls her arms around my sweat-drenched body, burrows her head into my neck, then reminds me to breathe through the torment tearing me in two with shallow, perfectly-timed breaths.

  That isn’t happening this morning because I haven’t awoken in a cold sweat. I’m clutching a tattooed hand, squeezing it so tightly, I’m certain I am seconds from breaking several bones. I don’t know if it was instincts that woke me in the middle of the night or the fact I’ll never truly settle until Col is dead, but whatever it is, I’m glad I stopped the stranger before his hand got to within an inch of Demi’s cheek. She promised me she’s never been touched sexually against her wishes before, and I want to keep it that way.

  The breathy chuckle of the man who almost got within touching distance of Demi reveals he isn’t a threat, much less the words he whispers, “If you think I’m gonna hurt your girl, you obviously haven’t heard the stories about me.”

  Rocco was only released from prison a few months back. He was serving a second seven-year sentence for manslaughter. Why such a small sentence for such a horrendous crime, you ask? His first ‘murder’ was in defense of his mother. He was only f
ifteen and walked in on his father beating his mother to within an inch of recognition. His second stint was when his sister attracted the same type of scumbag as their mother.

  Some people say his reduced sentences were thanks to his friendship with Dimitri. I’m not so quick to jump onto that bandwagon. The judge assigned to both of Rocco’s cases came from an abusive background. He understood that sometimes the only way you can end the domestic violence cycle is with a bullet. He couldn’t exactly say that to Rocco, but everyone knew what he was thinking when he sentenced him to seven years behind bars with eligibility for parole in three. He was an adult during his last three court appearances, but he didn’t have the book thrown at him. People can be excused for being a little fucked up when they come from a childhood like that. Rocco’s misdemeanors are easily brushed off, and so are Demi’s.

  “Wanted to see the damage firsthand,” Rocco informs while taking in the rapidly healing marks on Demi’s face. Compared to what they once were, they’re barely noticeable. “Dimi’s decision makes sense now.” His words are barely whispers, but they’re loud enough to send an involuntary shiver rolling up Demi’s spine. She whimpers in her sleep before she rolls onto her hip, her hand instinctively moving to find me under the sheets. We’ve only been hiding out for just under a week, but it truly seems as if we’ve been together half a lifetime.

  After tossing the sleeping pants Demi pushed down my thighs with greediness last night into my face, Rocco nudges his head to the door leading to the living room, wordlessly requesting to have a word out of Demi’s earshot.

  Curious as to what he meant about Dimitri’s decision, I jerk up my chin. Rocco does one quick final sweep of Demi’s face before he gives us some privacy. After tugging on my pants under the sheets, I push Demi’s hair back from her face, then whisper in her ear that I’m going to grab a glass of water.