by Sybil Bartel
Dropping her gaze, she didn’t respond, and I didn’t think she was going to. Then she gave me a taste of the emotion I knew must’ve been simmering below the surface.
“I thought he was my uncle,” she said, tight and controlled. “He’d come for Sunday dinners and kiss my mother’s cheek, but he’s nothing more than low-life scum.”
He was way more fucking dangerous than that. “He’s ruthless.”
“You’re ruthless,” she countered.
Fuck if I didn’t want to smile. “Well, you don’t have to worry about any of this anymore. You’re out, you’re safe, and you’ll be back at your father’s place soon.” If I was being fucking honest with myself, I’d admit that I hated the idea of dumping her at her father’s estate and leaving her vulnerable and without my protection. But she was free, and I’d done the job I’d been contracted to do.
For a long moment, she didn’t say anything and we both stared out the front window.
Then she inhaled and said the last fucking thing I expected her to say. “Please don’t take me to my father’s.”
I COULDN’T GO HOME.
Not now.
Not with these thoughts in my head toward my father, not with how I looked. I couldn’t let my mother see me like this.
So did the only thing I could think of to do. I begged a perfect stranger. “Please don’t take me to my father’s.”
His arms around my shoulders stiffened, and he drew in a deep breath. “Your father’s waiting for us to bring you back. His estate is guarded. You’ll be safe there.”
There was no us, it had been all him. He’d swept into my hell, and he’d saved me. He’d saved me from getting raped, he’d saved me from Dante, and he’d saved me from getting thrown from that boat a moment before impact.
And none of that would’ve happened if I’d been safe with my father’s security. Which I wasn’t. I never had been. So no, I couldn’t go back there.
I wanted to stay with the bodyguard—and not because he was a hero. I wanted to stay with him because he was honest and real, and he put up no pretenses, and for the first time in my life, despite everything, I felt like I could be myself. Not the perfectly put-together daughter of Bernard Loic who carried the Loic name and went through life sheltered and on autopilot. I didn’t want to be her anymore, and I didn’t want to go back to her life.
But I also didn’t want to hate my father for knowing Dante Cortez, and I didn’t want to feel consuming rage for a dead man who’d almost raped me. I didn’t want to fear facing a lifetime of more incidents like this because I couldn’t divorce myself from who I was or what I was born into. And I most definitely did not want to feel like the bruised woman upstairs who’d looked into the mirror and immediately thought she needed makeup to hide the bruising, feel whole, and be pretty.
I didn’t want any of that.
For once in my life, I wanted to be brave like the man who’d kicked his way through a window, a warrior who didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. And I wanted to be the woman who swam out to an unconscious bodyguard, turned him over, and kept his head above water until help arrived. I wanted to be the woman who was resourceful enough to use sign language when her own voice failed her.
And I wanted to stay exactly where I was right now.
Lying next to a fearless bodyguard on a sheet-covered couch in an unfinished house. And I wanted to run my fingers along the deep ridges of muscles traipsing across his abdomen that mocked every single model I’d ever seen in any magazine ad. I wanted to touch him, and I wanted him to touch me because everything about this man was stunning.
Except for the deep bruising forming along his ribs.
Bruises he’d gotten rescuing me.
My fingers, my hand, they had a mind of their own.
I skimmed over his warm skin once.
His chest rose with a sudden inhale, but he didn’t stop me.
Emboldened, I did it again.
But then the old me came back, and I hesitated.
And that I hated more than any of the other thoughts crowding my head, so I made a decision. I was done living in fear.
My palm flattened, and he may have sensed my intent, but he wasn’t quick enough.
My fingers curled around the huge, hard width he had under his boxers, and he jerked in my hand before his fingers clamped down on my abraded wrist.
“Ludeviene,” he warned, his deep voice more rough than I’d ever heard it.
I put two words together I’d never said before in my life. “Take me.”
“No.”
The single syllable echoed through the empty house with force, but his erection pulsed under my grip.
Bolstered, crazed—I didn’t know which—I didn’t let go, and I didn’t give in.
“Yes,” I said stronger, wrapping my other hand around the back of this strong neck. “Yes,” I repeated, squeezing his hard length and looking up into the violent storm of his darkened gaze.
“You’re injured.” His nostrils flared and his voice turned lethally quiet. “You’re bleeding.”
“I don’t care.” And I didn’t. I’d seen so much blood in that house and on that dock, what little was left of my period was nothing. I wanted him. I wanted to feel him inside me so bad, I wasn’t just aching for it, I couldn’t breathe. But I felt like I was losing a battle and I wouldn’t survive without this, without him, without knowing just once what it felt like to have a man like him taking me. So I threw out what I thought every man wanted to hear. “I can’t get pregnant.” Not when I had my period.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” He grabbed both sides of my face, and his mouth slammed over mine.
His tongue drove in and nothing, nothing about it felt like any kiss I’d ever had.
Deep and soul crushing, he kissed me like he was as starving as I was. Pulling me onto his lap, angling my head into his kiss, he devoured every inch of my mouth.
The scent of ocean, the faint taste of cigarette, the heat of man and musk, he smelled and tasted like perfect oblivion. I didn’t relish it, I laid down and rolled in it, smothering every unbearable memory in his dominance.
Then, just as abruptly as he’d taken my mouth, he pulled away. Our lips parted, his chest heaved, and his rough hands held my face firm.
He stared at me.
Then he stomped on my precarious hold on sanity.
“I’m not what you want,” he rasped.
I swallowed the taste of his saliva. “You’re everything I want.”
“Bullshit.”
I had nothing left except the truth. “I saw you… first,” I added.
“Yeah?” The pointer finger of his right hand twitched against my face and his eyes narrowed, but his voice remained eerily calm. “Was that before or after you walked your trust-fund ass into the club in thousand-dollar heels?”
I didn’t have time to ask him how he knew how much my shoes cost, or tell him I’d bought them for myself with my own money.
He wasn’t finished.
“Or was it after I watched no less than half a dozen assholes try to get up your short-as-fuck dress? Did you want them too?” He dropped his voice and thrust his hips so I could feel every inch of his hardened length between my legs. “Did you want to fuck them too?” Staring more intently at me than anyone ever had, he dropped his voice even lower. “Did you want them to pound into your tight cunt?”
His abrasive, dirty, cruel words cut across the wounds of the old me and sank into the raw flesh of what I was now. “I came to you,” I defended, stretching the truth. “You sent me away. In the alley, you sent me away.”
“What were you gonna do, sweetheart? Take a walk on the wild side then go home to daddy billionaire?”
Every word was a test. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did. “That’s why you told me to leave? Because of who my father is?”
“I didn’t know who you were then. I didn’t have to.” He dropped his hands. “I knew you were from money.”
I sat there
.
On the lap of a man.
Something I’d never done.
Something I never would’ve done twenty-four hours ago.
In a darkened room, in a darkened house, with streetlights as our only source of illumination, we stared at each other. His chest rose and fell with steady breaths. My hands trembled. He had experience, a lot if the way he kissed was any indication, and I had none.
That didn’t used to bother me.
Now it did.
I hadn’t lived.
I could’ve died, and I’d never lived. Twenty-four years old and all I had to show for my life was a condo, a part-time career I wasn’t sure I wanted anymore, and a bank account subsidized by the grace of my last name.
I didn’t know how to live.
“I don’t know what to do next,” I admitted.
He didn’t take his eyes off mine. “I know.”
Low and deep, the sound of his voice sent a shiver up my spine. And that alone told me how out of my element I was. “My apologies.” I moved to get off him.
His hand caught my waist, stopping me. “What do you want?”
Heat touched my cheeks. “I thought I already made myself clear.”
“Girls like you don’t go for guys like me.”
“I’m not a girl,” I defended.
“Women like you don’t go for men like me,” he corrected.
I wasn’t a woman. I wasn’t a girl, but I wasn’t what he was calling me either. “My apologies,” I repeated, moving off him.
“I asked you a question,” he clipped, following me and grabbing the underside of my knee. Pushing me to my back, he settled between my legs. “What do you want?” He wrapped my leg around his back and ground against my hips.
Oh God.
My core pulsed, my breath caught, and I ached, everywhere. “You.”
His mouth found the side of my neck. So tender it hurt, he kissed me. “What part of me, beautiful?” he whispered.
The traitorous truth spilled out of my lips. “All of you. I want you to make love to me.”
Pushing himself up, his expression hardened, and he stared down at me. “I don’t make love.” He thrust. Hard. “I fuck. See the problem?”
“No.” Yes.
“Liar.”
“Take me,” I begged.
Slow and controlled, he ground against me and his hard length shoved the material of the borrowed scrubs almost inside me. “And then what?”
I get dressed? I walk out of this house confident? He takes me to his house? I bleed more? I never want to do it again? I want to do it every second of every day? I didn’t have answers for any of it because I didn’t know. So I lied. “You take me again.” Was that possible? I mean, right after?
“What makes you think I do repeats?” he asked unapologetically.
Hurt, sharp and unexpected, hit so hard, it crushed me from the inside. I tried not to show any emotion, but his shrewd gaze caught the shift in my expression.
His tone softened. “That’s what I thought, sweetheart.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I turned my head and said nothing.
He thrust again, just once, and brought his lips a fraction away from my ear. “You want to fuck, I’ll fuck you. I’ll make you feel so damn good, you’ll forget every damn thought I know is running through that pretty head of yours. But that’s all I’m offering. I meant it when I said I’m not what you want, not past a hard dick pounding into your sweet cunt.”
Shocked, by his offer, by his words, by his admission—I turned to look at him. Then I asked the last thing I should’ve. “How do you know you’re not what I want?”
SHE HAD MY DICK SO hard and my head so fucked, all I wanted to do was yank her pants down and thrust in to her.
Instead, I chuckled.
She was so fucking innocent and naïve that she couldn’t grasp that a man who killed four men in front of her wasn’t what she wanted. Hell, maybe I misread every goddamn thing about her and she was as fucked as me and that was precisely why she thought she wanted me. Who the fuck was I to judge? I was lying between her lush thighs and my trigger finger was still fucking twitching.
“Trust me, sweetheart, I know what you want, and past this single fuck, it’s not me.” But goddamn, I was already thinking about taking her over and over.
I’d wanted to fuck her since I first laid eyes on her. I didn’t give a shit that she was a client now. I should’ve, I needed this job and Luna had rules up the ass about this shit. But I didn’t fucking care. We were the only two people here, no one would know.
But she had to say yes to my terms, and I was growing fucking impatient. I needed to shoot something, smoke a goddamn pack or I needed to fuck. Period.
“Make a decision,” I demanded.
Her sweet body shuddered under me, and her small-as-fuck hands landed around the back of my neck. “I thought I already had,” she said, breathless and sexier than I guaranteed she knew she was being.
“Not good enough.” Ruthless, I licked the side of her neck.
A small moan sounded in her throat, then she dished out a dose of balls I didn’t know she had. “I’m not going to agree to one time.” Her leg hitched higher on my waist. “I might want more.”
I smiled.
I fucking smiled.
“Is that right?” My mouth on her throat, I swirled my tongue. “How much more?” I had no business negotiating this shit with her. And I told myself I wasn’t. Then I tried to convince myself I was only humoring her to get laid, but fuck, I already wanted more of her.
Less shy now, more aggressive, she brought her face up and kissed my neck. “Show me what it’s like, and I’ll tell you how much more.”
I fucking froze. “What?” She was a virgin?
Her face flushed, and she buried herself against my neck. “I meant show me what you’re like.” She rubbed her sweet heat along my cock, then she bit my fucking neck.
My dick surged. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I muttered. “You like it rough?”
She didn’t answer the question. Instead, she whispered in my ear, “Take me.”
I yanked her pants off, shoved my boxers down and fisted my cock. “Last chance,” I warned, rubbing through her wet-as-shit folds. “Say no.”
“Yes.”
I shoved into her in one thrust, and too late, I felt the telltale resistance.
Her back arched, her legs went stiff and she screamed out in pain.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
She went deathly quiet.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Ludeviene.” I grabbed the sides of her face as two tears slid down her cheeks. “Goddamn it, baby.” Motherfucking SHIT, she was a virgin, a goddamn virgin. Fuck, FUCK.
Another silent tear slid down her face.
“Breathe.” Goddamn, even her tears were fucking classy. But fuck, a virgin?
Sucking in a breath, she grasped my biceps in a death grip.
“Hold on, baby.” I had to pull the fuck out, but fuck me, I didn’t want to and it was gonna hurt her worse the way she was fucking clamped down on me.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I pulled her into my arms and slid out slow as possible. “Sh, sh, you’re okay.” Goddamn it, I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this comfort bullshit, and I sure as hell didn’t do virgin bullshit. But FUCK.
I pulled out the last two inches, and she buried her head against my chest and shook.
“Come on, babe, you’re okay.” I patted her back awkwardly. “It shouldn’t hurt now.”
She still shook.
I sat up, but she didn’t let go. She curled on my fucking lap and clung to me.
Blood on my dick, blood on the sheet, I didn’t give a shit about her having her period, but now I didn’t know if that shit was her period or her virginity, and it was fucking with my head, and she was upset, and goddamn that was bothering me.
I patted her back again like a fucking tool. “You hurt?”
Her bun having come lose, she
shook her head and her hair spread out over my chest. “No, why did you stop?”
Was she fucking serious? “You’re a virgin.”
“You don’t sleep with virgins?”
Fuck me. “No.”
Her posture stiffened, and anger filtered into her tone. “Well, I never intended to sleep with a murderer, so I guess that makes us even.”
Jesus fucking Christ, this woman. I almost smiled. “Is that right?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t want to be even with this woman. I wanted to dominate the fuck out of her. “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t come.”
She pulled back and looked at me like I had two fucking heads. “You mean… if you don’t… then it’s not…?” She sucked in a sharp breath. “You’re not serious?”
I didn’t know why the fuck she was sexy as hell all flustered, but she was. I didn’t do virgins. I fucked women who had a lot of experience and who knew the score. I didn’t have time to teach a woman how to suck my dick or take me deep. I didn’t want to fuck around with inexperienced shit, and I sure as hell didn’t want to risk a fucking virgin getting attached.
But goddamn, this virgin straddling my junk was making my dick harder, not softer.
Dangerously close to throwing her down and saying fuck it and just burying myself back inside the tightest cunt I’d ever experienced, I changed the subject.
“You cried,” I accused, like me taking her in one goddamn thrust was her fault.
Her shoulders straightened. “I didn’t tell you to stop.”
The fuck? “Woman,” I warned, “don’t give me that bullshit. You fucking convulsed like I’d stabbed you.”
Innocence, pure and fucking unaffected, spread across her face, and her voice went soft. “Well, you sort of did.”
I rubbed a hand over my mouth to stop the fucking smile. “I don’t even know what to say to you right now.” And that was a first.
Abruptly pushing off me, she stood. “Well then….”
Suddenly it was fucking déjà vu.
Blood on her thighs, her hair everywhere, she looked down at herself.
Except we weren’t on an island surrounded by cartel fucks, and my blood-smeared dick was rock-hard because I was a sick fuck.