by Aria Cole
“Nothing sooner? That’s too late.” I frowned, thinking that was more than enough time for Maxwell to find me. He’d be letting loose the dogs at five minutes after one when I didn’t return for the rest of my shift. “I can’t wait that long.”
“Well…” Click, click, click. “Syracuse at five?”
That would send me in the exact opposite direction of Philly.
“Nothing sooner?” My muscles tensed.
If I couldn’t be out of here in the next hour, Maxwell would find me and haul me back to his apartment for more rough fucking and callous treatment. He obviously didn’t like me. I wasn't only doing him a favor by leaving. I wouldn’t be put out on the street like a dog. I knew how to take a hint.
“No to Syracuse…” Click, click, click. “Scranton at four forty-five, but you could drive there faster than waiting for the train. It’s only a few hours.” She looked at me pointedly.
I sighed. “Fine. Syracuse at five is fine. Maybe I can pick something else up there.”
I rummaged through my purse, anxious to pay and get a ticket in my hands. At least this gave me enough time to run back to my apartment and grab the few things I cared about. I could buy new clothes. I really just needed my little black lockbox with spare cash stashed inside. I’d hidden it well—in the top of the ceiling of the bathroom—and thankfully those boards had been undisturbed when my apartment was ransacked.
I purchased the ticket and stuffed it in my bag, smiling at the ticket agent and telling her I would be back shortly to wait for the five o’clock train. And from there, who knew where I’d go?
I opened the door into the warm afternoon light and ran smack into a wall of a body blocking my exit.
Damn. My time had run out already.
“Going somewhere, sweetie?” Tony’s shiny eyes flicked up and down my neck before landing on the V at my cleavage.
“No.” I bumped into his shoulder as I made my exit, my heart thudding uncontrollably.
“Not so fast.” His uncomfortably tight grip dug into my elbow and made a small squeak release from my throat. “Let’s take a walk.”
“I don’t have it. I don’t have any money,” I insisted.
Tony Scardelli’s leering gaze ate up the air between us.
“Oh, don’t I know that.” He hauled me around the corner of the building and to what I knew to be his car.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I shrugged out of his grip, immediately wishing for a rewind. I should have avoided the train station, never left the library without Maxwell, just like he’d asked. Damn.
“I want to talk to your boyfriend.” He removed one hand from his pocket and flashed the edge of a small knife.
“Boyfriend?” I shook my head, only seeing the knife. The silvery glint. The promise of pain and mutilation. Would Tony go that far? Anything for my dad—he’d proven that time and time again. He only had loyalty to my father, and right now, my father wanted something I didn’t have.
“Don’t play dumb with me. He already paid the debt, but dear old Dad sent me back for more.” His hand snaked around my neck and gripped the base of my hair while he leaned in, his vile breath washing across my skin.
“He wants another one fifty, and you and I are going to discuss how to go about getting that. Isn’t that why you went after the filthy rich librarian? Thought his bank account could help you out of a jam? Little gold digger.”
His mouth turned up, and my stomach twisted. Wait a minute. What was he talking about? And how did he know so much about Maxwell?
“Get in the car and don’t make a scene.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. Maybe I could talk my way out of this just as I’d done every other time with Tony and my father. He knew me; I’d practically grown up with him. But a sickening feeling down deep in my gut told me I wouldn’t be talking my way out of this one.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Maxwell
My heart thundered an unnerving rhythm in my chest as my fists clenched at my sides.
Her with him.
What the fuck?
I turned, thinking better of it—of her. They’d used me, con artists, the both of them, and I’d fallen into their perfectly set net. Maxwell Black, manipulated by love and left the victim again.
I took two steps around the corner of the train station before my conscience stopped me cold.
Not her. Not Elle.
She’d given me all of her. I didn’t know why she trusted me. I hadn’t earned it, but I was devoted. She was the sweet oxygen that filled my chest and got me up in the morning.
I had to see her.
I turned, backtracking around the corner. At the very least, I could toss that train ticket she’d probably just bought. Then I spied Tony pushing her into a car, his heavy palm on her shoulder as he handled her too forcefully for my liking.
“Get your fucking hands off her!” I roared as I took long strides toward them.
I yanked his elbow behind his back in an awkward three-quarter twist. My other forearm encircled the bobble head on top of his thick neck, and with my thumb pressed into the soft tube of his jugular, I threatened his air supply and pulled him away from the car.
“Get out, Elle.” I shot her a look that said, Now.
Luckily, she complied, and with her purse tucked meekly under her arm, she backed a few steps away until her back was flush against the rust-red of the building, her body all but collapsing as she slid down the wall in fevered tremors.
Jesus, he’d hurt her.
“I’ll yank your fucking balls off and force-feed them to you with a spoon if you hurt her.” I twisted my grip at his elbow, placing pressure on another tender point. The wince and grit of his jaw told me he felt it. “Don’t fuck with me, old man. I can do much worse.”
I wrapped a palm around the base of his neck and slammed his forehead into the doorframe of his shitty old Lincoln. “If I see you in my town again, you’ll be sinking to the bottom of that lake behind us. My federal agent buddy won’t even be on the expressway before your insignificant life is snuffed out.”
I shoved him into his car and slammed the door. His plump form started the engine with trembling hands, and he was peeling out of the gravel before I could even turn to help Elle.
When I did, our eyes locked, and fat teardrops fell down her face. I rushed to her, and gravel bit into my kneecaps as I landed in the dirt at her feet.
“My beautiful girl, are you okay? Did he hurt you?” My hands roamed her arms, her shoulders, checking for bruises or scrapes that would send me on the rampage.
Her head shook, tears running down her cheeks as she sat shaking.
“Let’s get back to the library.”
Elle’s head shook in reply, her hand reaching into her purse. “Syracuse.”
That was where she’d been headed. Running from me.
Dammit. I thrust a hand through my dark hair and realized I’d have to ‘fess up and tell her everything if I were going to convince her to stay with me. This was all on me now. She deserved that.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Elle
My heart rattled to a halt when he ripped my train ticket and tossed it in the garbage can. He stalked back to me, eyes burning, before he swooped me into his arms and carried me back to his library.
Seeing Maxwell show up at just the right time, I’d wanted to break down in tears and thank him. Tell him I was sorry I’d run out on him, tell him why I had a history of running when things got tough.
Maxwell rummaged in a kitchen drawer before he returned to me. “Drink this.” He shoved a double shot of tequila my way before taking a long slug from the bottle. He clamped his jaw tight, eyes glazing as he looked at the ceiling before he took another chug.
“I’m okay.” I swallowed, feeling my throat ache with tears.
“Take it,” he insisted. “It’ll calm your nerves.”
But apparently it was his nerves that needed calming. His hands were nearly trembling.
>
“If you’re worried about Tony, he won’t be around again.”
“Not worried about that half-assed, wannabe thug.” He took another swallow of his drink before slamming the bottle on the counter and stepping away.
“First, you’ve got to tell me why you were leaving.”
I turned, my heart sinking. I wasn’t going to get off the hook so quickly with that. “I’m used to running. Bad people have haunted the shadows my entire life. We always had to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. But the way you’ve treated me ever since…” I remembered the feel of his lips tracing my skin, my hipbones, the dip at my navel before he’d crawled up the bed and sucked long strokes at my neck. I nearly sighed, my thighs twisting with pleasure. “After that, you treated me terribly.” I lacked the courage to go on. It had hurt. He’d hurt me; that was all he needed to know.
Maxwell’s dark eyes turned on me then, softening before he stepped across the kitchen and dropped to his knees on the polished wood floor. Nearly face-to-face with me he was so tall, his hands clasped mine, and his thumbs grazed my wrists with gentle sweetness. “No, I’m so sorry. Christ, I didn’t even think about that side of it.” He glanced up then away again. “It all just happened so fast with Tony and the money. I’m not used to having a woman in my life.”
“Wait. The money?” His words triggered the memory of Tony mentioning my boyfriend paying up, but Maxwell hadn’t, had he? My hands went to his strong jawline. I cupped it, ready to beg him to tell me he hadn’t wasted money on my father, on me. “Maxwell, you didn’t pay him, did you?”
“I did,” he said evenly before his eyes darted away, his lips turning down in a frown.
“What did you do?” I shook my head, shocked he’d hand over that kind of cash to a stranger. Shocked that he had that kind of cash at all.
“Nothing I wouldn’t do again.” He stood and stepped away.
I trailed after him, unwilling to let him get away just yet. He rested his backside against the counter and crossed his arms. I placed my palms on the counter on either side of his hips, caging him in as best as my small frame could.
His eyebrows shot up, and his grin twisted up for a second, sending butterflies flitting throughout my stomach.
“Tell me.” I twisted my fingers around his own and squeezed.
“I paid him the two hundred thousand to leave. I’d do it again. He threatened you.”
“No, he wouldn’t have harmed me—”
“He ransacked your place! Stole your shit!”
“We don’t know that was him—”
“He was stuffing you in the backseat of his car when I found you an hour ago,” Maxwell bellowed, all but silencing me.
I didn’t know what Tony had been planning, but it hadn’t been good. I knew that.
“I paid him the money, but then I wondered if maybe you’d sought me out. Knew of me.” His eyes pulled down to mine again. “Read the headlines.”
My gaze held his steadily, but I was stupefied and wondered what on earth he was talking about. “I didn’t read anything. I just picked the train that left first. What headlines? What are you talking about?”
He tried to pull his hands away, but I held them firmly, showing him he couldn’t escape me.
“I don’t…” His eyes averted to the ceiling again. “I don’t leave the house because of what happened a few years ago…” His eyes caught mine.
“Well, that’s silly. You’ve left the house with me.”
He shook his head in slow, torturous swings. “First time in four years.” His eyes shuddered closed, and I felt the pain pulling at his corded muscles.
“Well, what could possibly have happened four years ago?” I asked, shocked down to my bones that anything could have stopped this bigger-than-life force of a man from stepping outside his cherished library.
“I sent my father to prison,” he said flatly, as if he was preparing to watch me run.
I scrunched my eyes, assessing the hard angle of his jaw and that violent slash of scar tissue that decorated his cheek. I traced my fingertips across the pink scar.
“Did he do this to you?”
Maxwell’s eyes shuddered closed as he nodded once. I sucked in a sharp breath as I felt waves of pain radiating from his large form.
This man was broken, terrorized in a way I couldn’t fathom, and had lived to tell the tale. He was so proud, so strong, smart, and sweet. And then suddenly it hit me. It all clicked into place.
“That’s why you think you’ll hurt me, isn’t it?” I asked before my hands circled his neck. I stretched on my tiptoes to place a soft trail of reverent kisses across his skin.
“He was a brutal child abuser; he beat me and whipped me my entire childhood, until I was old enough to fight back.” He caught one of my palms and placed a soft kiss at my knuckles before leading me to the couch and curling me into his side.
“I started fighting back when I was sixteen. I was lifting weights. Working out became the only outlet I had, and I did it constantly. After about six months, Dad tried to lay into me, and I snapped.”
His eyes were heated with emotion. It clearly hurt him to share this story. He still carried shame, but I could feel the hate coming off him in waves.
“I knocked him out then left the house and never came back. That is until four years ago. My mom was dying from cancer, so I had to come back. That old bastard wouldn’t lift a finger to help her. The last three months of her life, I was with her every day. She helped me stock the library from her bed. It was our last project together. But then she died, and just when I thought I was going to pack up and leave, he came back.” Maxwell seethed at the memory, his muscles twitching. “He was fighting me for everything she had. My mother left me an inheritance, all of it, and expressly wrote in the will that he was to get none of it. The night they read the final judgment, that the will was incontestable and that he wouldn’t get a red cent”—he pushed one hand through his hair—“he caught me leaving the bar. I was drunk. The lawyers, her death, him—it’d all caught up with me. He tried to catch me off guard, make it look random. He was in a hood and gloves, tossed the knife as he ran, but I saw him. I’ll never forget that gleam in his eye.” The rough pad of his thumb treaded the jagged mark as if he’d done it a hundred times. A thousand.
“He did this to you over money?” I squeaked.
He nodded slowly before his grin turned up wryly at one corner in such a sexy way I felt arousal beat to life between my legs. “Pretty terrible, huh?”
“I can’t imagine anything worse.” My eyes locked with his. I felt as though I finally understood the pain he carried so close to his big heart. “I’m so sorry that happened, but… four years? What made you go outside after four years of staying up in here?”
“You. You did, sweetheart.” He pushed a hand through my hair, and the pad of his thumb traced my lips before he placed a soft kiss across them. “You went running headfirst into trouble, and I had to save you.” His smile lifted. “I’d do it again, but don’t make me.” He pecked me again.
“But you didn’t even know me. I was nobody to you!”
“Not true.” He laughed. “Not true at all. From the moment I saw you on my library steps, I felt something down deep in my stomach. Something pounding through my blood that told me I needed you. I want to die the day before you do because I don’t want to live another day on this earth without you on it.”
His lips found mine, and we shared long, languid kisses. His hands trailed up my torso, wrapping in the waves of my hair as my palms traveled the hard angles of his hard body.
My man.
First Epilogue
Maxwell
Three months later…
“Elle!” I bellowed up the stairs, my heart galloping too fast as I waited for her. I knew she was up there, and I’d bring her down over my shoulder if that was what it took. “I’ll be right back,” I said to the gentleman at my side, leaving him alone in my library before taking the steps two at a t
ime up to my and Elle’s apartment.
I reached the landing just as she turned the corner to come down.
“Elle.” My eyes trailed up her creamy lace-clad curves from the slim silhouette gathered at her ankles to the full curve of her breasts under the beaded neckline.
She was beautiful, and she was mine.
The incessant throb of my cock pounded in my dark slacks before I pushed back the raging lust that simmered whenever I was around her. Today was not the day. At least not yet anyway.
“Ready to be mine?” I took her hand to escort her down the stairs.
Her dad wasn’t here—she’d insisted she didn’t want him present—so I would walk her down the proverbial aisle. A book aisle in this case. I would be her everything. Her escort, her protector, her savior, her husband.
“I was yours the first day we met,” she purred. She placed a kiss on my nose when we reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Shall we start?” the man I’d chosen to unite us for eternity asked politely, his eyes glancing to mine then back over to Elle’s.
I turned, her hand firmly locked in mine. I’d never let it go, come hell or high water. I was hers.
“Ready to tie yourself to me forever?” I winked, more than eager to get on with the show and tie her to me officially.
“I already did.” Her heart-shaped face tilted toward mine as her palm trailed down to the soft swell of her abdomen.
“Elle…?” My eyes darted from her chestnut gaze to her stomach and back again.
“You’re going to be a daddy, Maxwell.” She wound her hands around my neck and pushed up on her toes to plant a slow kiss on my lips, stealing my breath and taking my life with every heavy heartbeat. “I’ve been dying to tell you that.”
I smiled, thinking this was exactly the reason I loved her so much. She never failed to surprise me. I cupped my hands around her belly, waves of warmth and love washing over me. “I don’t know how I ever got so lucky. Elle, my wife.”