Untamed (New York Heirs #1.5)

by Drea Blackery

  “You ran,” he snapped. “You fucking ran!”

  I shoved all my weight against the door, but it didn’t even budge an inch. “How did you find me?” I gritted.

  “The tracking app I installed on your phone.” He practically spat the words. “Your trail ended at Upper East and I called every fucking hotel in a five mile radius.”

  I closed my eyes briefly.

  I’d completely forgotten about the app. A year ago Marlon and I had gotten separated on a trip to his home in Rio. He’d been uncharacteristically worked up about it, thinking that I had been taken by a rival clan. He paired our phones together for emergencies since then.

  I kept my back braced against the half-open door. “I have nothing to say to you. Please go.”

  Marlon didn’t go. “Are you angry that I took your virginity?”

  I shook my head wearily. “No, it was perfect—”

  The door suddenly pushed in, almost tipping me over as Marlon shoved his way into the hotel room. He kicked the door shut behind him, then strode up to me and took my shoulders.

  “Look at me, Emmaline.”

  I stared up at Marlon’s dark, handsome face, his soulful hazel eyes. I never stood a chance.

  “Don’t push me away,” he said grimly. “You love me, and I care for you. I want to try this out.”

  There they were, the words I’d been wanting to hear for years.

  But now that I’d heard it, I realized that was all they were—words. And Marlon’s words, no matter how pretty, weren’t enough to fix the bone-deep wounds inside of me.

  “For how long?” I countered softly. “You’ve wanted me for a day, but I’ve watched you want others for years. How long will you try this out until you’re tired of me? Six months? Six weeks? Six days? When you’re done trying, what’s gonna happen to me?”

  Marlon’s brows drew together as he watched me. He had no answer to that, and it broke my heart.

  “One day, you’ll come home and you’ll tell me that you met this girl that you want to “try out.”” My throat hurt with the effort to keep my voice steady. “I’ll have to get lost, won’t I? Or maybe you’ll pity me. You won’t want to hurt my feelings, so you’ll keep it quiet and fool around with her behind my back.”

  “Fuck, Em, I won’t cheat on you—”

  “But you’ll want to.” I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling unbearably cold even with the heating in the room. “You don’t do monogamy, remember?”

  “I’m making an exception for you.” Marlon took my face in his hands and looked down at me expectantly, like he thought I would jump at his offer of not seeing other women. “There’s no one else, just us.”

  I wanted to believe him.

  But I couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  Marlon shook his head slowly, his expression furious. “You’re not going to run. You’re going to stay, and you’re going to let me replace all that shit in your head with better memories.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. My brain is not a hard disk you can overwrite.”

  “Then I’ll win with this.” He stabbed his finger at my chest, over my heart. “This is mine,” he told me in a dangerous voice. “And your body, this pussy.” He fixed his angry gaze on me. “Mine.”

  I smiled bitterly. “You’re supposed to be the most unjealous person in the world.”

  “Not when what belongs to me is taken away.”

  “Marlon—”

  “I’m only going to wear you down, Emmaline.” He took my jaw firmly, glaring down at me. “Give us a try, that’s an order. We are right for each other and you know it.”

  I wanted to deny it, but the words just wouldn’t come.

  Marlon took my mouth then, backing me up against the wall. I clung on to him as he raided me and lit my every nerve on fire. I felt him everywhere, his muscled thighs bracketing mine, his big erection against my stomach, his hard chest crushing my breasts.

  I gasped and turned away, burying my face in his shirt. “What do you want from me?”

  “Everything.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Never.”

  I tightened my arms around Marlon as his lips wandered down to my neck. He pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss over my racing pulse, tasting it with his tongue.

  I needed him to leave. I needed to be alone to forget him.

  But what I needed and I wanted were different things.

  I let Marlon slip my bathrobe past my shoulders. The fluffy fabric fell to the floor in a heap of white, baring my body to him.

  He ran his hands over my naked waist and hips as if he needed to keep touching me. “Let me take care of you.”

  It’s not my body that’s hurting, I wanted to tell him.

  But I knew Marlon wouldn’t understand, not when he didn’t even know what love was. It was like describing the color red to someone who couldn’t see.

  I held onto his neck as he picked me up and carried me to the bed. “Marlon, we can’t…”

  “I won’t take you, Emmaline. I’ll just make you feel good.”

  Marlon pressed me back into the mattress. He parted my knees and settled between my thighs, lowering his head between them.

  My eyes widened. Was he going to—?

  The answer came when Marlon pressed his mouth over my entire pussy, branding me with his heat.

  “Oh my god—”

  My head fell back as his tongue worked over my clit and my lips. I was still sore from the sex before, but Marlon pleasured me unhurriedly, taking his time with me.

  I tangled my hands in his hair, holding him down as I moaned softly.

  “This is for you,” he murmured against me. “No one else.”

  He cupped my ass and tilted me to his lips, running them over my slick flesh. I clamped my thighs around his head as he thrust his tongue into me in steady sweeping strokes. He gripped my hips like he never wanted to let go.

  It didn’t take long for my climax to build again. I came with a breathless cry, arching my back as I orgasmed against his mouth.

  Marlon eased up when I fell back into the bed. He gathered me against him, holding my head close.

  “Where were you planning to go?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know yet.” I tried to catch my breath as I rested my forehead against his chest. “Asia, maybe. I could teach English there.”

  “When were you going to return to me?”

  “I wasn’t,” I whispered. “Maybe we could be friends again one day, but I can’t stay with you anymore.”

  Marlon tightened his arms around me. “Then I can’t let you leave. Give us a year, querida. Don’t throw away everything we shared.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m sorry. But I need to build my own life away from you. I need to be my own person.”

  Marlon was silent.

  “Then your days are yours,” he finally said. “Just give me your nights. One year, Emmaline.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Half a year.”

  “Marlon…”

  He held me closer. “Is it that bad being with me? I thought we were happy.”

  I rested my cheek against his chest, running my fingers over his tattoo designs that I knew by heart. Marlon was hurt, and even though I wanted to stay stubborn, I hated the thought of him unhappy.

  “Seventy nights,” I whispered. “I’ll give you seventy nights, but only for you to get over your infatuation. After that, I’m leaving.”

  Marlon tensed, clearly wanting to argue. “Why only seventy?”

  “That’s the longest you’ve ever lasted in a relationship.”

  “Emmaline, this is different.”

  I remained silent.

  That was what Marlon said every time he fell in love with someone new, and I knew that this would fade too. I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Marlon exhaled when he saw that I wasn’t going to change my mind. “Sleep,” he said in a low voice. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.�
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  I curled against his chest. It was warm and safe and strong, and I never wanted to leave.

  But I had to, for me.

  Seventy nights.

  After that, I’d disappear from his world.

  Emma was a girl I hired on a whim, but over the years she became many things to me.

  She was the one I stayed up all night watching movie reruns with. The one I cracked a cold beer with at the end of the day. The one I talked to about my ambitions and my fears.

  She was the one I went to for comfort when my grandmother passed. The one who held me all night when I broke down. She was the only woman who knew every weakness I had, and the only one I’d ever planned a future with.

  And she was like air, when it was being taken away. I never knew how much I needed it until I couldn’t breathe. Now that it was gone, it was suddenly the most important thing in the world.

  Emma had given us an expiry date of seventy days. I wanted to change her mind in half the time.

  But it didn’t happen. The writing was on the wall from the very start.

  I had knocked on her hotel room door the next night, and she let me in.

  “Just touch me,” she whispered as I kissed her neck. “I can’t handle more than that.”

  I brought my forehead to hers. “Let me make love to you. I’ll make it good for you.”

  Emma shook her head stubbornly. “I can’t sleep with you.”

  I knew her like the back of my hand, and I knew what she was trying to do. She wanted to keep distance between us.

  Letting me stroke her to climax wasn’t keeping distance, and I pointed that out. But Emma was like a stone wall once she made up her mind.

  She checked out of the hotel three days later. Instead of moving back home with me, she rented a studio down in the Meatpackers district of the city and stayed there.

  Every night I knocked on her door. Emma let me into her bed, and there I spoke to her words in my language, promises and endearments that I had never said to anyone before.

  In return she let me pleasure her, let me taste her, let me come all over her body. But never sex. Never making love.

  But that wasn’t the only thing that was wrong.

  Emma used to smile easily—a soft curve of her lips whenever she saw me, the one that made me happy to be returning home to her, or a reluctant grin when I teased her.

  After the night she gave herself to me, she stopped smiling.

  I did everything I could think of. I filled her studio with so many rose bouquets that it covered every surface. I got her her favorite candies. I offered to adopt a dog with her since I knew she loved them.

  Nothing worked.

  Then on Day 35, on the deadline I gave myself to win her trust, I saw her smile again for the first time in a long while.

  But it wasn’t because of me.

  I waited outside her college gym sometimes, just to push my luck. Emma never told me to leave, so I’d started showing up more and more often.

  I was waiting outside again that day when I saw that guy talking to her.

  Dylan Cole.

  He had said something to her. Emma tugged at her ear, something she did when she was embarrassed.

  And then she smiled at him.

  My heart had stopped. It was the same smile she used to give me.

  That night I pleasured her so hard she screamed my name and passed out from exhaustion.

  But she never smiled for me.

  Te amo, she told me before. I held on to that.

  On Day 67, I heard her laugh. It was a soft music, like the first sound of spring when the birds returned after winter.

  But she hadn’t laughed for me either. It was something that bastard had said again. The two of them stood at a corner of the gym, their golden heads close together, speaking at a volume only they could hear.

  I wanted to rip the fucker away from Emma, but I knew if I did, it would be the last time I ever saw her.

  She was slipping through my fingers like sand, and no matter how hard I clenched my fist, the grains kept flowing faster.

  “Why did you love me?” I asked Emma that night as she lay in my arms in the dark.

  Her eyes were closed as she drowsed, exhausted from the orgasms I gave her. “I couldn’t help it.”

  I didn’t like that answer. “If you had a choice, would you have loved me?”

  “I would.”

  “Even though it hurts?”

  She nodded sleepily, stroking her fingers over my tattoos again. “Meeting you was the most painful thing that happened to me,” she whispered, “but it’s also the best thing that happened to me.”

  And that’s when I realized it. Meeting her was the best thing that happened to me too.

  “Estou apaixonado por você,” I told her this time.

  I was already in love with her. I might have been from the very start.

  “What does that mean?” Emma asked me, but I knew she wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

  “Come back home,” I said instead. “I’ve made some changes. The girls are long gone.”

  They had been reluctant to leave the club, but Freida was supportive. Not that any of that mattered, because Emma’s reaction was the only one I cared about.

  “We’ll do everything different this time,” I ran my thumb over her soft cheek. “What do you say?”

  Emma bit her lip. “I can’t,” she said softly.

  My arms tightened around her in response, wanting to keep her with me even though I felt her floating away like a balloon.

  “Then come away with me,” I said in a low voice. “We don’t have to wait fifteen years, let’s do it now. We’ll go somewhere far away from here. I’ll take you to Brasil, or we can go anywhere you want in the world, just the two of us.”

  “It sounds amazing, Marlon,” she whispered. “But I can’t.”

  Because it wasn’t just the past that was hurting her.

  It was me.

  “Look who’s here.” The dark-haired man behind the desk smiled coldly as I strode into his office. “If this is about the contract, my answer’s still the same.”

  “Your money isn’t as big as you think, Wyatt.” I took the chair across the glass desk without waiting for an invitation. “There are many firms wanting to work with da Silva. Brookers is very eager.”

  “That’s why you’re here? To tell me you’re going to my rival?” Ryland Wyatt flashed his teeth at me, leaning back in his executive chair and folding his hands over his stomach. “Do me a favor. Tell Brookers they can go suck a dick, and while they’re at it, so can you.”

  I rolled my eyes. Ryland Wyatt was a skilled businessman, and was even tolerable when he had that facade on.

  But without it, he was just another elitist bastard who annoyed the fuck out of me.

  I helped myself to a cigarette from the holder on his table.

  “You kiss your mother with that mouth, amigo?” I said around the stick clamped between my teeth as I lit it.

  “My mother’s dead.”

  “I know.”

  Ryland narrowed his eyes. “The fuck are you here, da Silva?”

  “I’m giving you another chance to work with me.”

  “The title of most cocky piece of shit is already taken, but if you’re trying to give me a run for my money, you’re doing a damned good job.”

  I drew in from the cigarette. “Sixty percent share of the resort.”

  Ryland’s eyes sharpened instantly. He sat straighter, his nose swinging to the smell of money like a fucking radar. “Sixty-five, and we’ll talk it out right now.”

  “Done. I will start with my terms.” I stared him down across the table. “Other than the usual, I have something else I want that may be… different.”

  Ryland merely raised a brow as if he was used to such requests. “Do I need to be concerned about legalities? AKA, will it be criminal?”

  I tipped my head. “Maybe.”

  He nodded like it was completely reasonable.
“Go on.”

  “You have contacts across the world. If in the future I need someone to be found, I want you to find that person for me.”

  Ryland began to check off his fingers. “One. Are you currently tracking him? Two. Is he someone I know? Three. What did he do to piss you off?”

  “No, no, and none of your beeswax.”

  “I didn’t know you had that saying in Brazil.”

  I exhaled a cloud of smoke, taking my time to answer. “We don’t.”

  It was just something Emma used to say.

  Ryland sat back in his chair and studied me. “Any reason you’re not doing this yourself? You have the money and manpower. Last I heard, your clan is unofficially the richest in your country.”

  “This person is good at disappearing, and Wyatt has more influence overseas than da Silva. You can find someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Dammit, now I’m really curious,” Ryland muttered. He rubbed his chin as he watched me.

  I raised a brow. “If you’re trying to read me, save the trouble. You won’t find anything I don’t want you to find.”

  “Sure,” Ryland said easily. “But all I really need to know is that you’re worked up about this.” He rapped the table twice. “Seventy percent. I want seventy percent on the project.”

  Fucker. “Done.”

  “Seventy-five.”

  I smiled at him pleasantly. “Sixty.”

  “I’ll bring it back down to sixty-five if you tell me who this guy is and what he did to deserve an execution.”

  “Sorry, but I’m not planning to kill anyone.”

  “You sure as hell aren’t tracking him to invite him to a tea party,” Ryland retorted. “Look, you’ll need to tell me sooner or later. I can’t be searching for a ghost.”

  I stubbed the cigarette out on the ashtray on his desk. “It’s a her.”

  Ryland gave me a slow smile. “So the fucking tables have turned. Who’s the unlucky lady? Freida? Lola? A new girl?”

  I stiffened. Why the fuck did he jump to that conclusion?

  “No,” I said tightly. “She’s…a friend. Not one of the girls.”

  Ryland headed to his liquor cabinet, shaking his head like he found it funny. “And what’s the problem here? You cheated on her and now she’s leaving your sorry ass?”