Ryan (The Mallick Brothers #2)

by Jessica Gadziala

  He pulled out and slammed back into me and my hips rose to meet him. Just hard at first, then both hard and fast. Our breathing went shallow, our bodies seemed to battle, both desperate for victory. My whimpers became moans that were loud to even my own ears and his silence became hisses and grunts of need as I started to tighten around him, as he got impossibly harder inside me.

  He slammed forward one more time and the world went white for a second as an orgasm more intense than I knew was possible started where we met and exploded outward until it seemed to encompass my entire body. His name screamed from my lips and mine hissed from his as he buried deep, jerking upward as he came with me.

  Again, perfect.

  His head tucked into my neck, staying there for a long time while his breathing evened out. He pressed a kiss there before pushing up, eyes heavy, but assessing. "Okay?" he asked, balancing on one arm so he could brush a strand of my hair out of my face.

  "No," I said shaking my head, watching as his whole face tensed. "Not okay. That's not even close to how good I feel right now," I admitted, smile as I watched him exhale hard and relax again.

  "Let me up for a minute, honey," he demanded and it was about then that I realized my legs were crossed around his hips and my arms over his upper back.

  I loosened my grip and he slid out of me, planting a kiss to my forehead before taking his feet and walking to the bathroom.

  Alone, I scooted up the bed and slid under the sheets and comforter, rolling onto my side facing the bathroom door to shamelessly watch him walk back out a moment later, completely, gloriously naked toward me.

  He got to the side of the bed, lifted the sheets, slid in, and propped up against the pillows. His arm slid beneath me. "Come here, Dusty," he said, his voice soft.

  And, well, when a hot as all sin man went down on you, screwed you blind, deaf, and dumb, and then demanded you cuddle up with him, you cuddled up with him.

  I practically flew at him and his arm wrapped around my lower back, holding tight as the other hand sifted through my hair and drifted lazily up and down my back.

  "Alright, I think it's time," he said oddly, pulling me out of a dreamy, almost sleepy haze.

  "Time?" I repeated, running my fingers over his coat of arms again, tracing the letters of his last name.

  "Told you I would tell you about my scars and my past and my family," he went on, making me snap fully awake.

  "Oh, right," I said, placing a kiss to his chest. "Okay. Lay it on me," I said, trying to be light because he had tensed a bit under me.

  Whatever I might have been expecting, though, didn't even come close to the truth.

  THIRTEEN

  Ryan

  I never had to have the 'talk' before.

  I didn't mean the relationship talk or the 'we're only fucking each other and you're on the Pill' talk or even the 'this isn't going to work out' talk.

  I meant the truth about my lifestyle talk.

  Because fact of the matter was, I either never had a woman around long enough that I needed to explain it to her or she just knew from the jump. My family's reputation wasn't exactly secret around Navesink Bank. And while we all did have legitimate businesses, had reputations other than the family business, fact of the matter was, we would always be seen as loansharks and loanshark enforcers before we would be seen as gym owners or jewelry store owners or tattoo artists.

  "Whatever it is can't be quite as nuts as being an agoraphobic involved with drug dealers," she went on when I didn't immediately speak.

  I wasn't ashamed of my life, my family, how we made our money. Far from actually. But I was finding the words hard to bring forth.

  And, I realized with an almost blinding clarity, it was because it mattered this time. She mattered this time.

  Getting involved with Bry and his problems aside, she wasn't the type of girl who ended up with a fucking loanshark enforcer. She taught kindergarten. I had hardly heard her even fucking curse. She was good and sweet and clean.

  All the things my life wasn't.

  But fact of the matter was, there was no putting it off. Dusty wasn't some one night thing. She wasn't a fling. She wasn't even in the same ballpark as those women.

  She mattered.

  I wanted her.

  I wanted her in a more permanent way.

  And she had given me her story and she had given me her body.

  It was time for me to give her my story.

  Whatever the consequences.

  I took a deep breath and gave her a squeeze.

  "My father, brothers, and I all own businesses. We are legitimate businessmen. But that isn't all we are."

  "Okay," she said, not sounding as nervous as I thought she might, especially given the tension in my voice.

  "My father is and has always been a loanshark."

  Right then, she did the damnedest thing. She fucking snorted.

  When I didn't say I was kidding, she pushed up, big smile in place, her hair falling forward. "You're serious? A loanshark? Like a 'you give me your money or I break your kneecaps' kind of loanshark?"

  Her smile was so infectious that my own lips twitched. But it was serious and I needed her to understand. "That's exactly what I mean, honey," I agreed. "And all my brothers and I, except Hunt, all work for him."

  The smile slipped as her eyes went thoughtful, her brows drawing together so two little lines formed above her nose. "Work for him how?"

  "We're enforcers," I admitted.

  There it was out there.

  She paused for a long second, searching my face, looking for humor, but finding none. "So an enforcer..."

  "Does the kneecap breaking," I filled in for her.

  Her tongue moved out, wetting her lips, and it took a fuckuva lot of self-control to not throw her back onto the bed and fuck her until she forgot I said anything about my family.

  "Seriously?"

  "Well, not exactly. There really isn't a whole helluva lot of kneecap breaking these days. I won't say it never happens, but it's rare."

  "You beat people up?" she asked. I could see the gears turning, could see her putting the pieces together- my scars, the way I fought, my knowing about patching up injuries.

  "On occasion. It's usually not me doing much of the beating, but it happens."

  "Who does then?" she asked, not sounding horrified. If anything, she just seemed... curious. "I can't picture Mark hitting people. He's so... laid back."

  "He does more of it than I do, but not by much."

  She paused then, shaking her head. "Not Eli. Come on! He bonded with my cat! He gave him food off of his plate."

  "Remember when Eli first walked in, when he got a look at your face and he froze and went all creepy and silent?"

  She pressed her lips together slightly at that and nodded. "Yeah, that was a little weird."

  "Eli was never meant to be violent. But we were raised to know that our family business involved violence, that we were all expected to follow in our father's footsteps. So Eli was, in a way, forced to be something he wasn't. And because of that, when he gets angry, it's nothing like you've ever seen before. It's brutal and primal and freaky as all hell to see. Eli is the last resort, when we've exhausted all other efforts."

  "These other efforts would include your other brother, right? Shane? He's the one who does most of the... enforcing?"

  "For the most part, yeah. He's good at it. He can keep control but still do damage without losing his fucking mind." She watched me for a long minute, a sort of mask down over her face, making her unreadable for a long time. "Tell me what's going on in there," I demanded, tapping her temple.

  She shrugged a little at that. "I'm just wrapping my head around it. Have you ever been arrested?"

  "No, honey."

  "But I assume the cops around here know about what you guys do..."

  "For the most part, yeah."

  "None of your brothers have been..."

  "No," I cut her off. "Well, not for business reasons a
nyway."

  Despite the heavy situation, her lips tipped up at the side. "What for then?"

  "Drunk and disorderly mostly. Shane and Mark used to yuck it up something fierce and one of us would have to haul it down to the station and pull then out of the drunk tank and bring them home. Hasn't happened since they were in their twenties, but it happened. More than once. More than half a dozen times actually."

  "If you all have other businesses and you are doing well, then why do you guys still do the loanshark thing?"

  That was a valid question and one I didn't really have a satisfactory answer to. Why? Tradition, maybe might be appropriate to say. It was something my father built from the ground up. The only reason we could all eventually have things like our own businesses was because of all the work he put into it, the money that was every penny he had in the world that he loaned out with interest and then collected on. It hadn't always been easy. In those early days, he was pinching pennies. He and my mom struggled. Then the five of us came and added to the strain. But he finally started to do well, hired others to help him, and when we were old enough, we all wanted in.

  "I don't have a good answer for that, honey. It's just how it is. And I won't lie to you and say it is going to change, that I will reform or some shit. This is who I am. This is what I do. I don't see that ever changing."

  A part of me wanted to reassure her, tell her I might give it up, I might go straight, I might just be like any other normal businessman. But if what we had between us was going to work, we needed to be raw and honest with each other.

  She gave me the truth about her and her anxiety and agoraphobia. She hadn't tried to say she would be completely normal one day, she would never have another panic attack again, she could be someone she wasn't. Likewise, I couldn't tell her I could be someone I wasn't.

  It was truly a situation where she needed to take me as I am.

  And there was a large part of me that was genuinely concerned she might not pick me, she might change her mind and decide that I wasn't worth possible sleepless nights when she knew I was chasing down a client or the sick-stomach feeling when I came home bloodied and bruised.

  She had every right to want better for herself.

  And I would just have to accept that.

  "So when you're old and wrinkly and have arthritis..."

  "If you met my father, you would know 'old and wrinkly' isn't something I have to worry about."

  "Silver fox, huh?" she asked, giving me a saucy little smile.

  I sidestepped that, no one wanting to think of their father along those lines. But we could agree that I had a full head of hair and good bone structure to look forward to. And so long as I kept myself in shape, I figured I would be able to own the 'silver fox' title when I was older. "I imagine, by then, the business might have evolved to not include that anymore or, possibly, the kids might take over."

  "Kids," she prompted, seeming to tense slightly at that.

  "Yeah, kids," I agreed, brows drawing together.

  "You want kids?"

  "Hell yeah, I want kids," I said, giving her a smile. "I grew up with four brothers, Dusty. It was chaotic and loud and frustrating and privacy didn't exist and you had to develop a thick skin both literally and figuratively because the physical and verbal beatdowns never let up, but I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. I always had partners in crime and now that we're adults, we always have each other's backs and we can always lean on one another. I would want my own wild and crazy family one day too."

  Her gaze fell from mine, looking at my chest.

  "Do you want kids?" I asked when the silence stretched long enough to almost be uncomfortable.

  She didn't look up and answered my chest instead of my face. "I always used to."

  "Why used to?"

  She laughed humorlessly at that. "Because I can't get pregnant when I can't leave my house. I can't go to the doctor or the hospital or school conferences or sports practices. It would be... unfair to put my mental illness onto a kid."

  "Honey, there's no one who can predict the future. There's no one who can say definitively that you will always be stuck in your house, that you will always need a comfort zone. People fight back against their agoraphobia every day and win. They rebuild their lives and they make connections. They fall in love. They have kids."

  "Yeah, but there's no telling that that is how it is going to go for me."

  "No," I agreed. "But I think you're a little young to lose hope in the rest of your life. And I think you are not seeing how much things have changed for you just in a couple weeks."

  "I've only been out of your apartment for..."

  "The night of the carbon monoxide leak, Dusty. You freaked and you didn't like it, but you did stay in my car and you did calm down. Then you bought me a Christmas present and left it outside my door. You let me in on Christmas. Then you didn't even hesitate about coming to my apartment. And to top all of that off, you're in a fucking hotel room with me now, out of your comfort zone, recently fucked for the first time in who knows when, but still calm. These things aren't small. You can't look at how far you have to go and get discouraged. Look back and see how far you've come instead."

  She took a couple slow, deep breaths and looked up at me slowly. "Three."

  "I'm sorry?" I asked, stroking a hand down her spine, feeling my cock stiffen slightly when she shivered at my touch.

  "Three years."

  "I'm gonna need more than that, honey."

  "That's how long it's been. Since I've... you know."

  "Been fucked?" I supplied, giving her a huge smile when she actually fucking blushed. "Like that you're sweet and everything, Dusty, but you're going to be constantly red in the face if the word 'fucking' makes you uncomfortable."

  "It's not the word," she objected, giving me a strange smile I couldn't quite interpret.

  "What then? The time?" I asked and her gaze dropped for a second before coming back up. So that was it. "I didn't figure you'd been having a ton of guys over to sleep with, Dusty. I knew it had been a while."

  "A while is like... eight months, a year at the most..."

  "By whose standard? Everyone fucks differently. Some will take home whoever the hell smiles at them and tells them they're hot. Others need to be in love. Some don't do it at all until they marry. What the fuck does it matter how long it's been? Because if this is some insecurity thing? Like maybe you think you're out of practice or some shit like that," I said, watching as she went redder. That was exactly it. Of all the asinine things. But that was what her anxiety did- it made mountains out of molehills. "Then let me go ahead and get this out of the way and ease your mind a bit."

  "Ryan, no. It's fine..." she said, shaking her head.

  "Nope. It's not fine. I got a woman in bed with me that I was just inside a couple minutes ago and she thinks she was somehow disappointing. That shit will never be fine. Look at me," I demanded, my voice a little more firm than usual, but she still didn't raise her eyes. I reached out and snagged her chin, dragging it up. "You're not out of practice. And you sure as fuck are not a disappointment. In fact, what we just had right here, that was the best I've ever had. And not just because the way you scream my name makes it hard not to come right then and there or that you have the sweetest pussy I've ever tasted, but because it meant something, okay? That meant something. So don't be going and tearing it down and making it ugly or something to be worried about. Okay? Dusty?"

  She blinked hard a few times, trying to make the glistening I saw there go away before turning her face and kissing my hand. "Okay."

  "So that's settled. Back to the original question. You want kids?"

  She gave me a small smile at that. "Yes. I want kids."

  "One or a litter?"

  To that, she laughed. "As an only child who had very few friends growing up, I would want my kids to have siblings so they could always have a buddy around."

  "Sounds like a good plan. So, not to kill the less tense mood we got
going on right now. But I figure we need to get this out of the way. What's going on in your head about my job?"

  She went thoughtful at that. "I know I'm supposed to be freaked about it..."

  "But?"

  "But, you've been nothing but good to me. Your brothers have been good to me. You're the first person I have come across in a long time who doesn't make me anxious. I think the good is outweighing the bad right now."

  "I just want to make sure you know what you're getting into here."

  "I understand the situation," she said, giving me a small nod.

  "And you know it's not going to change," I pressed.

  To that, she laughed a little. "I'm a big girl, Ryan. I have long ago figured out that you can't change people or situations. You have to take them as they are. And in you're case, I'd be happy to."

  Oh, shit.

  I knew right then and there that I was in trouble, that things had gotten serious. Because hearing her say she would be happy to take me as I was, yeah, there was a feeling in my chest that, while I hadn't experienced it before, I knew it for what it was.

  "What's that look for?" she asked, head tipped to the side, watching me.

  "What look?"

  "You look... anxious," she said with a smile. "I know that look intimately. And you have it." Then her face fell a little. "Was that, um, too much? I mean, I can..."

  "Shush," I said, reaching up and putting a finger to her lips. "It wasn't too much. It's just... new for me."

  "Yeah, well, your apartment does seem to suggest that a woman hasn't stayed in it for more than a night or two."

  "What's wrong with my apartment?"

  "Got a pen and paper? This could take a while."

  I laughed at that, rolling her onto her back and kissing her until she forgot all about pen and paper and complaints and grievances about my apartment.

  "You can do whatever you want to it," I said after and watched as she blinked up at me, eyelids heavy, lips swollen for all the right fucking reasons.

  "Do whatever I want to what?" she asked, voice breathy and the sound shot right to my dick.