“Oh, him.”
Angelina glared at Adam. He stared back at her in silence. Was there a twinkle of humor in his eyes? Did he find her groveling for some word of Marc’s well-being amusing? She’d given up on him answering her when he motioned for her to move toward the corner of the bar, leading to the poolroom. He stopped at the last booth—not just any booth, but the same one Angelina, Marc, and Luke had shared the night she’d met them here in late September. Well, the night she’d thought she was meeting Marc for the first time, anyway.
Had she ever really met the real Marc D’Alessio?
Angelina scooted to the middle of the bench that had been occupied by Luke that night so long ago. Maybe the memories of sharing the opposite bench with Marc would be less intense.
Hardly. She could see Marc as if he, rather than Adam, was sitting across from her. She could almost feel Marc’s hand on her shoulder as he shielded her from Allen in such a protective way that night. Her eyes stung at the memory. How had they grown so far apart after having shared so much?
And how could she still miss him so much when he wanted nothing to do with her? She’d thought he might call after he got back from California. Luke said he’d come to some kind of epiphany after his accident on the ice just before he’d left with the team to rescue Savannah. So where was he? It had been a month since the rescue.
Maybe epiphanies were only for the characters in her romance novels.
“What did you need to know, Angelina?”
She brought her focus back to the moment and blinked. “Is he taking care of himself?”
Does he need me anymore?
“Not from what little I’ve seen of him lately. Spends too fuc…damned much time alone up in the mountains.”
Still? Marc escaped to the mountains when he needed to think. From what she’d heard from Luke, he’d been doing that for months, with or without clients from his outfitter/adventure business. Hadn’t he figured out yet he wasn’t going to solve his issues about his murky past by hiding out in the mountains? What happened to the soul-searching epiphany Luke said Marc experienced during the ice mishap?
Did he ever think about what he wanted to do about Angelina while he was out there?
“You want to vocalize any of those questions running through that pretty little head, hon?”
Oh, she’d forgotten about Adam! “Sorry. I’m out of shape when it comes to mental discipline these days.”
“You need a Dom. He’ll teach you to focus fast enough.”
“I had one. I don’t think I’ll ever want another.” She blinked rapidly, trying to stop the flow of tears. “What did he tell you about what happened with us?”
“Not much. I have a feeling there’s a lot he hasn’t figured out for himself—or maybe just a lot of stuff he doesn’t want to figure out.”
“He learned a long time ago to repress, suppress, and otherwise hide behind a mask.”
Adam raised his eyebrows as if this was some kind of revelation. Or was he simply surprised at her perception of the situation? He narrowed his gaze on her, making her squirm on the hard wooden seat.
“What are you doing about getting your Dom back?”
“Doing?”
“I hear you left him, not the other way around.”
Angelina’s heart pounded as her Italian blood began to simmer. Adam knew more than he was letting on, but she had a feeling he didn’t know the reasons behind her leaving. She’d promised not to divulge Marc’s secrets but he shouldn’t come across as a victim needing sympathy either.
“I might have left him physically, but he left me emotionally months before. He never let me in.”
Adam stared at her for a long time before taking a swig from his bottle of water.
She and Marc should have been able to confide in each other. Why hadn’t he been able to open up to her? Instead, he’d just closed himself off until there was no hope. She thought giving him a wake-up call by leaving would get his attention and make him see that running from her, even mentally, wasn’t going to fly, but he’d let her go without even a phone call to see how she was.
Well, he had texted when he got back from Italy. She just hadn’t been ready to forgive him yet, so she hadn’t replied.
Damn it, more than two months had passed since they’d talked with Mama without any progress in sorting out his past. How long did he plan to go without doing anything?
“I’m not going to let him keep running, Adam.”
She almost thought she detected a crinkling of his eyes, but he didn’t smile. “How do you plan to stop him?”
Angelina had no clue. Heck, she’d just moved out on him for good. Why did she want to find some way to win him back? And how did she intend to do it? Dio, how could she be such a loser to hang onto a man who couldn’t commit? They’d both spent so much time avoiding each other.
She leaned forward. “I’m going to go to Denver and haul his ass down off the mountain, for one thing.”
Adam did smile this time.
Emboldened that he didn’t say she was overstepping her place, she added, “Running never solved anything.”
“That’s for damned sure.”
He agreed with her. She might need him as an ally, so this was good. She knew he loved Marc, too. In fact, Marc and Adam had a lot in common. Both of them were lost little boys inside strong men’s bodies. Adam’s mother told her at the wedding about how hard Adam ran from the emotional baggage of his past for most of his life. Well, Angelina wasn’t going to let Marc run for thirty-something years. He’d run long enough.
Suddenly, Angelina realized she’d been running, too. Rather than stay and insist Marc deal with his past and their future, she’d walked away from him. No, ran. And she’d regretted it every day since, as if she’d lost a part of her own heart. Her strong, stubborn Italian heritage had led her to choose being miserable instead of just going back to him and forcing him out of his mental isolation.
So now what?
Perhaps she needed to form a plan of attack…er, action. She’d already tried the full-on attack when she’d topped him, up to a point. She needed a new strategy.
She leaned toward Adam. “I know you and Karla are house hunting. If you’d like someone to stay at the club, I’d be happy to until Marc and I get this worked out.” Staying here in Aspen Corners when her heart was in Denver already wasn’t going to work.
“We just moved you down here.”
“I made a mistake.”
“Well, I appreciate the offer to keep an eye on things at the club, but Grant’s already agreed to come into the partnership of the club as a co-owner and she’ll move in when Karla and I move out.”
“Oh.” Darn. Without a job, she couldn’t afford her own place in Denver.
“But there’s Karla’s old room, not to mention the one you stayed in before. I’m sure Grant wouldn’t mind the company.”
She smiled. He was throwing her a life preserver, which he wouldn’t do if he didn’t think she was right for Marc. She realized he and the others here hadn’t written her off when she’d left Marc. They counted her as a friend as well, which warmed her heart.
“That’ll work for me. And I’ll be happy to prepare bar food for club members to earn my keep, too.”
“You don’t need to earn anything except maybe the trust of a man who doesn’t trust easily. But I won’t discourage you from cooking anytime you want. Maybe you could give Karla some more lessons. We’ve had steak Florentine more times than I can count since you taught her how to make it. Good grub, but I need something besides that and her tuna and broccoli casseroles.”
“That would be perfect, Adam! Thank you!”
He grew serious again. “I’d also appreciate it if you could just provide some diversions for Karla in the coming months. She needs someone to keep her…busy.” Adam made a sour face and, from what she’d overhead from Karla earlier about Adam’s oh-so-doomed plan to abstain from having rough sex, Angelina could imagine what was bugging
him.
Soon reality hit. She couldn’t move in to the club. She just signed a six-month lease and had no steady income except for catering jobs.
A knock at the bar’s front door jarred her thoughts before she could explain the situation to Adam. Someone passing by probably thought he could get in before the bar’s regular hours. She brought her focus back to the conversation quickly. She needed to practice on maintaining her focus if she was going to have a chance winning Marc back.
Adam turned toward the bar and nodded at someone. Now who had the focusing problem? Karla must be there.
Adam turned back toward Angelina. “Back to Marc.”
The strains of Dean Martin’s rendition of Return to Me poured from the jukebox. Angelina’s mind returned to the night she’d danced to another of Papa’s tunes on the jukebox in this bar, held in Marc’s embrace. Tears filled her eyes. She once again wished she hadn’t given Rico Papa’s record collection. Only now they reminded her of the loss of Marc, too, not just of Papa.
What was Marc doing now? He never seemed to be around their mutual friends when she was, so she assumed someone was making sure they didn’t bump into each other. Awkward. At least she could still be friends with Karla, Luke, and the others she’d met through Marc. She looked up at Adam. “Does he ever ask about me?”
“That’s between Marc and me, but I don’t plan to share this conversation with him, either.”
“Fair enough.” Adam wouldn’t break a confidence. Of course, Marc knew she’d always been a little intimidated by Adam. She had a feeling he intimidated Marc somewhat as well. She doubted Marc would ask Karla, but maybe he’d ask Luke, especially after he learned she’d spent weeks at his place.
Dio, she missed Marc. What if they never could patch things up? Would he ever fully trust her? Could he trust anyone? She looked at Adam.
“How did he come to trust you?”
Adam brought his gaze back to her and zeroed in on her. Her heart thumped under his scrutiny. “In combat, you either trust the people you’re with or you get killed. Many weeks of training during boot camp broke him of any notion he could fend for himself over there. The Corps breaks down that streak of independence most recruits start out with. Later, during his training as a roper at Pendleton—”
“Roper?”
“That’s what we call the recon Marines in training because—well, never mind.” He waved the thought away. “Anyway, he learned he had to rely on the members of his team, and they would need to have each other’s backs when our boots hit the ground.”
“How can I ever make him see that I have his back? That I don’t want to harm him?”
“Time.”
“But we’ve run out of time. He doesn’t want me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You two just need to talk and work this out.”
Adam glanced up just as a warm hand cupped her upper arm, and a chill ran down her spine.
“Dance with me, tesoro mio?”
My treasure?
Marc! Her heartbeat pounded into her throat. She looked at Adam who just grinned.
In slow motion, she turned her face upward and found Marc standing beside the booth, several days’ growth of beard on his face, hair disheveled—and sexier than she’d ever seen him before.
“Marc?”
“In the flesh. Come, pet.” He held out his hand to her.
Adam cleared his throat. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to get here, Doc.”
“There are some avalanche warnings out, so I tried to find a safer route. It took longer.”
So Adam had asked him to come—or at the very least knew he might come. She wished Marc had chosen to come here of his own accord; of course, he wouldn’t have known to find her here if Adam hadn’t told him.
She took Marc’s hand, and he guided her out of the booth and onto the dance floor. She’d missed his touch. She’d missed him, period. He cupped her chin and tilted her head back. Electricity ricocheted throughout her body, especially where the sides of his fingers touched her chin and neck.
“You look so beautiful, mio angelo.”
Walking into his arms again, she felt as if the world had suddenly righted itself after months of being off kilter.
Safe, protected…
No, wait! She pulled a few inches away. How could she just melt into his arms like this? Nothing had been resolved. He’d shut her out for months. She steeled her resolve. “We need to talk.”
“Yes, but first, I need to hold you. What we need to do right now is dance.”
Angelina saw pain and something that looked like fear in his moss-green eyes and decided the time to talk could come later. She pulled him into her arms, wanting to comfort him and tell him everything was going to be all right—but she had thought that before and things hadn’t turned out so well.
“You feel so good, cara.” They danced for several songs, content to say nothing.
After a while, Marc’s hand glided up and down her back before creeping under her untucked blouse. He touched her bare lower back, sending a shiver up her spine. “You’ve lost weight.”
His accusation making weight loss sound like a bad thing made her smile. Even though she hadn’t intentionally tried to lose weight, she had dropped about fifteen pounds since she’d left Marc. But she could stand to lose a few pounds.
“I haven’t been very hungry lately.”
He grunted and pinched her ass. If she still lived with him and was under his training as a submissive, that grunt would have meant he planned to remedy the situation later—both by hand-feeding her in the kitchen and flogging her in the playroom so she wouldn’t neglect her body’s needs. Of course, his grunt meant nothing this time. Just an automatic response.
“Do I need to put you in culinary bondage and make you eat every dish your nonna in Marsala taught you to make? You know, this can be arranged quite easily. The equipment is still at my house.”
Her heart raced at the thought of being restrained by him again. She wanted to be in any kind of bondage with Marc again.
Stop it!
She admonished herself for being weaker even than Marc when it came to her desire for sex and submission. She needed to fight this urge to kneel at his feet. If anyone needed to be tethered to an appliance, it was Marc—to keep him from running from her. She wouldn’t let him use her body and send her away again. For Marc, their relationship always had been about the physical. She needed more than that. She needed an emotional bond that couldn’t be broken.
His hand crept farther up her back, and she felt her breasts freed of their bonds with a deft flick of the bra’s clasp. She tried to pull away, but he held on tightly. “Let me touch you. I missed you so much, pet.” His hands reached between their bodies to cup her breast.
“Marc, stop. We aren’t ready…” The catch of anticipation in her voice made her protest sound lame even to her ears. When he pinched her nipple, her hips jolted into his body, and she pressed against his erection.
But nothing had been resolved! Sex was a bad idea.
She pushed him away and looked up at him. “I can’t think when you’re touching me like that.”
He grinned. “I don’t want you to think.”
His charm wasn’t going to work this time. He’d played her body like this too many times, getting her to back down or forget what she’d wanted to say. Steering her focus away from the issue at hand. She needed to get him off this dance floor and turned to present her backside to him.
“Rehook my bra.”
Marc sighed. “You used to be so easy to distract. Where did you learn to be so focused?”
From you.
But she felt anything but focused now. Her nerves were raw, her mind scattered.
His hands slipped under her shirt again, and he took his sweet time fumbling with the hook of her bra, spending a lot of time rubbing the valley of her spine. Tingles coursed down her back to her pussy. He was touching her the way he used to when he prepared
her for a play scene. Warming her up.
Angelina put several feet between them and turned around, not caring her girls were still loose. “I’ll be back and then we’re going to talk.” She marched into the ladies room and rehooked her bra, checked her makeup, and took several deep breaths.
Adam had vacated what was becoming “their” booth, and she slid into the spot where he had been sitting earlier but not far enough in to invite Marc to join her. She tried to ignore the disappointment in his eyes.
“Now, Marc, we’re going to talk. No more touching. Except maybe hands—no farther than the wrists.”
He sighed again. “You’ve gotten a little bossy. I told you there would be no encore for Mistress A.”
Despite his words, Angelina saw a smile flicker across his lips before he obeyed and kept his hands off her. She smiled back at him.
Before she could find the words to begin, Rico placed what looked like her favorite white zin in front of her and a glass of white wine in front of Marc.
She looked up and smiled. “Thanks, Rico.”
“Don’t thank me, babe. Just doing my job. Marc ordered them.”
She looked back at Marc. “Well, then, thank you.”
This was her second drink, so she’d better go easy on it. She needed to keep her wits about her in case something came of this reunion later.
After Rico returned to the bar, Marc’s expression became serious. “I’m sorry.”
She blinked rapidly, hoping to stave off the tears.
Do. Not. Cry.
Not in front of him, anyway. He already had too much power over her.
“You didn’t deserve the way I treated you, Angelina. None of this had anything to do with you.”
His words stung. Nothing to do with her? They were stuck in the same place as before. “Marc, when are you going to learn that when you hurt, I hurt? I thought you wanted me to share your life with you, but…” She picked up her glass and took a gulp of the fruity wine, searching for courage, then gazed across the table at him again. “What I didn’t deserve was to be shut out. If we’re going to have any kind of relationship, we can’t keep secrets from each other. We need to support each other—in good times and bad.”
Somebody's Angel (#5 in a Military Romance / BDSM Romance series) (Rescue Me) Page 32