Now.
Those caramel eyes glowed, lighting a fuse inside me body that threatened to explode if I didn’t do something, anything to ease the ache I was feeling. I had minutes, maybe seconds before my world ended if I didn’t get Dino inside of me. I had been waiting years for this, imagined having him take me a hundred different ways to satisfaction. That’s what happens when you have nothing but your imagination to go on. But I couldn’t draw on that now, my instincts were telling me to take. Take from him while he was here, even if I had no idea why that was.
Dino hummed then, a low sound, and because I must have hesitated too long stuck in the beams of his hot stare he began moving again and licked my lower stomach lazily. Just once, but before he could return to what he had been doing previously I pressed down on his shoulders. Not hard, just enough to let him know that I wanted him to move. He took my rudimentary instruction very well and laid on his back on the floor, his slow grin spreading on his face as he rested his hands behind his head, waiting to see what I would do.
Any other time there could have been foreplay, I would take my time touching his body, tasting it as he had just done mine, but I couldn’t. The last few years between Dino and I had been foreplay, and my world was falling apart in a matter of days. I was greedy, I wanted to get as much as I could before he disappeared in a puff of smoke. Before I disappeared. I took advantage of his already aroused state and came down on him hard, surprising him so much that his eyes widened and he barely had time to grab the sides of my hips before I was moving again, sliding up and down, our bodies already slick with need.
“Holy shit, Jeanette, too fast,” Dino panted, fingers digging into my thighs to slow me down.
“Fast is all I have, Dino, give me what I need. What we both need.” I’d never held back from giving attitude to Dino, and I wasn’t going to hold back now. I was telling him what I needed from him, like all men claimed they wanted a woman to do in the bedroom. Or dining room floor. Whatever.
So he did. I rose up and he pulled down, fast, faster. I could see the muscles in his abdomen flex with the effort, and the cords on his neck standing out as he fought to keep my grueling pace and give me what I needed. I came so hard and fast it took me by surprise and I almost didn’t know what was happening. Of course, I had orgasmed before, I was a grown woman, but twice in a row? Never. Dino was close though, and I wanted to watch his face as I gave him that pleasure, so I switched the pressure just a little bit and heard just how much he liked that from the rumble that started in his chest.
Without warning I was flipped onto my back and Dino pulled out, letting the warmth of his release slide onto my stomach and thighs. After a moment he braced himself on his forearms and his worried face loomed above mine. Worried? Why is Dino worried? I couldn’t think of a single thing that was wrong, I couldn’t think of much at all actually, my brain was mush.
“Jeanette, we didn’t use a condom. I’m so sorry for pulling out so rough but I didn’t think until the last minute and…well I’m not an animal, Jeanette.” Dino leaned down and kissed me on the lips softly. He thought he could have gotten me pregnant. It was oddly…endearing. He couldn’t know that he needn’t have worried. That wasn’t something that could happen to me anymore.
“At least one of us was thinking properly,” I murmured as he used the shirt I had ripped off of him to gently clean him from my body. His pants were down around his ankles still and his white undershirt was still on but pulled up front where I had brutally yanked it so I could touch his heated skin. Jesus, I was a barbarian.
“Thinking? Fuck, Jeanette, I don’t think I’ve had a thought in my head since I kissed you when you opened the door. This is not what I came over here for, holy shit.” Dino ran his hands through his tousled dark hair, and for the first time since I met him, Dino looked at a loss for words. Like he didn’t really know what to do next.
Alarm bells went off in my head then, and even though I was still completely naked and vulnerable, I heard the ice in my voice. “Just what did you come over for, Dino?”
10
Dino
I fucked up. Totally and completely screwed up my entire mission, and here was Jeanette, sitting naked on the carpet and looking at me like I was about to drop the world on her shoulders and I am.
I fucking am.
I came here to help her, instead I ended up fucking her on the floor like a crazed beast. I was the worst sort of shit human ever, but she opened the door wearing almost nothing and my brain short-circuited. I just thought I could kiss her, catch her off guard so she wouldn’t run screaming. I didn’t expect her to melt into me like butter. I touched her, and it wasn’t like I could untouch her. Not that I would. Nope. Jeanette would be branded on my body and mind until I died, that was the impact our sex left on me.
She. Was. Amazing.
And she was stuck with me whether she liked it or not because I would never let this David fucker come close to her again. I wouldn’t let her run. Now, I just had to tell her that without freaking her out even though I royally screwed up my intro.
I didn’t regret it though. I did, however, regret what I was going to have to do now. I was going to have to take that beautiful moment we just shared and shred it. What I was going to tell Jeanette now was going to be the ultimate betrayal and I hated it. Hated that I had to do it.
I waited until she pulled her clothes back on, waited until she had gone into her closet and pulled on an oversized t-shirt and stood in front of me, arms crossed, one foot in front of the other in a classic pose of impatience and waiting. Luckily it didn’t take me nearly as long to get myself back together considering I was still pretty much wearing my undershirt and jeans. I didn’t want to have to have this conversation with her with my dick hanging out. The long sleeve shirt I had been wearing went straight into the trash. It wasn’t such a loss, I’d sacrifice a hundred shirts just like it if she wanted to rip them off my body like she did earlier.
I just didn’t think I would ever get the chance again once she heard what I had to say.
“Dino.”
That was it. Just my name. Playtime was over and it was time to come clean, well, as clean as I could.
“About last Friday night,” I began slowly. I was so reluctant to even have this conversation and my normal confidence disappeared in a puff of smoke as she looked at me with guarded eyes.
“You came over here to find out why I left the auction? Look, I know I owe you an explanation, but you could have called.”
“You are going to want to let me finish Jeanette.” I let a little impatience creep into my voice and she visibly started at the change.
“I just got back from a meeting with Chaz, which isn’t so strange, we have meetings every few days, but there were new people there. One of the guys was that numbnuts that called you by the wrong name.” I saw her weight shifting from foot to foot while her eyes glanced towards the front door, which I had positioned myself in front of on purpose. I was going to have to be so fucking careful with my next words.
“There was someone else with him as well. A cop. He said his name was David Ashley.”
It was an explosion of arms and legs, which is the only way I can think to describe it. I saw her begin to move so I reached out, just to stop her forward movement I swear to God, but she brought her leg back and straight into the center of my thigh causing me to come down on one knee. Her right arm shot straight out, and Jeanette Clary punched me in the fucking face.
Holy shit I saw stars.
I recovered quickly though, either she wasn’t that strong or she had held back to keep from damaging me, but I caught her right before she got the lock twisted in the door. Caught her and pinned her body to the door with my own, my arms holding hers firmly to her sides and my face in the crook of her neck. It would have been seductive in any other situation, but as it was I had to hold my face in her neck because she was trying her damnedest to head-butt me into a broken nose, which was already dripping blood onto my up
per lip from the fiver she had given me seconds before.
“Jeanette, Jesus fuck - stop it, I’m trying to help you.”
“No,” she screamed, her voice high-pitched and reedy, on the very edge of a breakdown, “no one helps. No one! You are going to take me there, back to him. I won’t go. I won’t go.” The struggling picked up and I was afraid she was going to hurt herself in her frenzied attempts to get out the door. It’s the only reason I did it, but I wasn’t sure what to do to get her attention short of using more force to restrain her, and after hearing what I had from Gabe I knew I couldn’t do that. Instead I slammed my open hand on the closed door I had her pinned against. As hard as I could I slammed my hand down, the noise a cannon boom in the empty entryway to her condo.
All movement ceased. Jeanette stood against the door, completely still; her eyes squeezed shut, not even daring to breathe. I hated myself for scaring her, but there was no other choice.
I kept my face pressed into her neck, and spoke slowly, enunciating every word so she wouldn’t misunderstand. “Jeanette,” she shivered as my breath puffed against her skin, “I will never give you back to that man. Not now, not ever. I want you to trust that, if nothing else, okay? I am going to back up and let you go, because you got me pretty good and I’m bleeding down the back of your shirt. I need to know that you are going to be calm, and we can walk into the other room and sit down on that uncomfortable looking couch and talk about this. To help you I need to know some things, but I want you to know, you are not alone. Okay? Can I let go of you now? Are you going to trust me?”
She nodded slightly, and I let go of her arms, backing away from her and the door. I was trusting her not to run now, and it was a big gamble because I don’t know that I could recover and catch her again if she were to try to take me out. Slowly she turned around to face me, and I could tell by the look in her eyes that she had shut me out again. That small little door that had been opened, when she had been moaning my name and I had been encased by the heat of her body – it was gone. I knew it would be before I started. I didn’t deserve that warmth.
I wanted it anyway.
“Trust you? Why should I trust you? I don’t even know you and you just came back from a business deal with the fucking boogeyman.”
She trusted me enough ten minutes ago to let me put my dick in her, but I knew what she meant, and she was right. If what Gabe told me was true, and I had absolutely no reason to doubt him at all especially after her reaction to his name, then David Ashley really was the stuff of nightmares. He would be lucky if I let him live.
“Come sit down and talk with me, I have questions that need answers if I am going to be able to pull this off and I need you to help me. This is delicate.” Jeanette arched her brows at me, distrustful of my words, but she still followed me back into her living room and sat on the cheap looking plaid sofa. Knowing how rich Gabe was, and how protective of Jeanette he could be, it was just strange to see her in such a sparsely furnished living environment.
“We have about a day to get things situated before I am going to have to start reporting back to Chaz about you. Right now, no one is even sure that you are this Gabriella Hensley, and Chaz didn’t like having a cop from another state show up in his office digging for information.” Jeanette shuddered at the name, Gabriella, and she cut me off before I could tell her more about what was going on.
“Why are you working for Chaz Malone in the first place, Dino? I think, given the circumstances you can tell me that much can’t you? My life is literally on the line right now, because he almost killed me last time, Dino. I won’t survive him again. You have to give me something. I need something from you.” She was trying so hard to hold her shit together, I could see it in the shaking of her shoulders and hands as she clutched them to her thighs, sitting ramrod straight on the couch as far away from me as she could get while still having both butt cheeks on the cushion. Her body was shaking but her voice was steady and full of hate for the man that for some reason was so obsessed with her that she had to create an entirely new identity just to get away from him.
Ugh, she was right. I had to give her something, but what could I say without giving everything away?
“You know, you might not think it, but I actually have a family,” I said. “Not a wife or anything, but I do have an extended family.” Jeanette raised one eyebrow in surprise but didn’t interrupt me. “It’s a little unorthodox, but they’re mine. Chaz Malone is threatening them, and I can’t figure out why. I’m working for him to find out, and when I find out I am going to destroy him from the inside out. That’s why I can’t tell you, I can’t let anyone know who I truly am. The more people that know, the more it’s a liability. Just know that I can’t afford to blow my cover with him right now, but it has actually worked out as a blessing because I happened to be in the right place at the right time for you. As of right now I am the pipeline of information from you to David. Help me get him off your scent. Fill in the blanks for me, Jeanette. What does this guy have on you? Who is Gabriella Hensley?”
I pulled the picture out of the back pocket of my jeans. It was crumpled from our previous romp but still in good enough shape that the image could be seen. Jeanette took it from me with still trembling hands, smoothing out the wrinkles as she stared at it, tears in her eyes.
“You know the thing that people like about small towns? They like the closeness of community. Everyone knows everyone, and there is a major sense of everyone being connected. I took a job at a property management company in Bethel because it paid well, and I was working my way through community college. I was just a kid who was raised in county foster care, I didn’t have a family. I was an adult with no one, but I was doing fine that way, you know? I wasn’t raised in a horrible environment, no horror stories of abuse in a broken system. Just sterile, so I was really thirsty for love and acceptance when that tall drink of water in a blue uniform came into my office for the first time.” Jeanette smiled as she told the story, but her smile was dark and empty, completely void of any humor.
“I don’t even know what attracted him to me, but it was probably because I was different. I didn’t come from that same small town where everyone knew everyone else, including their business. He was very caring and very attentive, and I was swept completely off my feet. A few months together and I had ditched my apartment to move in with David and everyone in town was asking about when the wedding would be. It was a fucking fairytale. Until it wasn’t.” Jeanette paused for a moment and her eyes snapped up to mine. “Dino, you know the first time he hit me I was so pissed. So pissed off, and I gave him the riot act. He was really fucking sorry, and I know they all say that, but he had blown up over something so stupid and I just could not believe he had let his temper get away from him like that. We had been together for over a year, living together for almost six months, so I felt like I knew him and that it was a freak occurrence.” She broke eye contact again, and still fingering that photo on her lap, stared off into space over my right shoulder as she continued. “The worst part wasn’t the hitting, because it’s not like I was a punching bag for him. I can count on four fingers the number of times he raised his hands to me. No, David was a monster in other ways. The first time he hit me I forgave him, and he went back to his normal self for a while. Something wasn’t quite right, but I assumed things were stressful on the force. Cops have a hard life, I know.”
Yeah, it takes a special kind of person to deal with being a police officer, I got that, but this guy wasn’t that kind. I kept my mouth shut though and let her keep going. Get that story out that she had been holding inside for so long.
“But he had to have control over everything, like I couldn’t handle anything on my own. I thought he was just overprotective at first and didn’t want me to worry about anything. Everyone in town would say, “Oh, Gabriella you are so lucky, David treats you just like a princess. You must feel like you found Prince Charming.” Swear to God they were all saying the same thing on repeat, but
they didn’t know that my paycheck was direct deposited into a joint account, or that I didn’t have a debit card for that account. That David would put the gas in my car for me, then would check the mileage on my car to see if I was driving anywhere other than from the house to work. That he knew the hours I was in the office down to the people I talked to that day. It was so fucking weird. I would have thought that he had my office bugged if I didn’t know David’s true power. His charisma. People were just compelled to tell him things. Good old Officer Ashley, Mister Protect and Serve. He could get a person involved in any kind of polite conversation and get any information on me he wanted. I couldn’t get a pack of gum at the grocery store without David knowing. I wasn’t allowed to have friends - that was what brought about the second time he hit me.”
I was hanging on her every word, just waiting for her to give me something that I could nail this guy to the wall with. I don’t know what made him a bigger piece of shit, that he was a dirty cop, that he could hurt a woman, or that he had done those things to Jeanette. It didn’t matter, she would have her life back, and he would fucking pay.
Tell me something, Jeanette, I begged inside my head. Tell me something to put him away.
“I became pretty good friends with one of the girls in my office. We hired her to be the receptionist after I had been there a while and they noticed I was better at accounting than the person that was currently in that position. With some company shuffling I took over that position and we hired Sarah. She was close to my age and in school too, we used to joke that we were each other’s work wives.”
Dino (Glass City Hearts Book 2) Page 10