by Sam Mariano
“Not specifically,” Laurel replies as she chops her tomatoes.
“If you do murder him, I’d prefer it not happen in my kitchen,” Rafe tells her. “I have a thing about eating meals in a room that was once covered in blood. Plus, I would have to buy new knives. It would be a lot of trouble for me, all things considered.”
Laurel lifts the board and scrapes the tomatoes into the pan. “Well, I would never want to make your life harder,” she says, with exaggerated sweetness.
Rafe takes a sip from his coffee mug, then tells her, “Now I need more coffee.”
Laurel shakes her head, but grabs the coffee pot and heads over to refill his. “I’m starting to see why you lazy bastards are so fond of waitresses.”
“I’m not fond of waitresses,” Rafe replies, looping his arm around her waist and pulling her flush against his side.
My whole body tenses. I tell myself not to look, but I can’t look away as he presses his lips to Laurel’s in a very slow, very deliberate kiss. Fury ravages my insides, surging through me like a livewire. Laurel is too surprised to respond too enthusiastically, but it’s not like she pulls away. It’s not like I should expect her to after last night, but flashes of me on top of her come back, my lips leaving a trail down her neck. Someone else shouldn’t be fucking kissing her when 12 hours ago I was doing all that.
My gaze drifts to her neck now, and I see it. I feel fucking triumphant when I see it, even though I shouldn’t. It’s not a dark bruise. I caught myself quick, but not quickly enough. There’s a faint mark on her neck, and I’m the one who put it there.
Clearly she didn’t notice, or I would think she would have covered it up. Fuck. I’m not sure if I hope Rafe sees it—fucking asshole deserves it—or I hope he doesn’t, because he might fucking kill me. In addition to killing me, he just might be pissed off enough to take off the kid gloves and stop waiting around for Laurel’s feelings to fall in line. Nothing makes a man fuck his woman more brutally than the knowledge that she let another man leave his mark on her.
When he stops kissing her, he smiles at her tenderly and says, “I’m fond of science nerds.”
Her gaze drops, some of the spunk going out of her. I take it to mean she’s still uncomfortable being affectionate with him in front of me, but after last night I would expect her to want to throw it in my face. She doesn’t have enough meanness in her, I guess. She’s mad at me, but she doesn’t want to cut me to the quick. Her strong sense of loyalty still tells her since she had me all over her last night, she shouldn’t be kissing someone else in front of me this morning. She’s fucking right, too. I know I deserve it for giving her up in the first place, but I don’t want to see this shit.
Once Rafe releases Laurel, she goes back to the counter to resume making our food, this time without mild death threats or barbed comments.
When everything is finished, she splits the food between two plates. She brings them over, hesitating briefly before putting either plate down, then she reaches both arms forward and puts down both plates at the same time. She walks away muttering something about “sexist bullshit” but then she turns her little ass right back around and brings a plate of cut up orange slices and strawberries for us to share, I guess.
“Eat up, boys,” she tells us.
“You didn’t save any for yourself?” I question.
“It’s probably poisoned,” Rafe states, grabbing a fork and digging in regardless.
Laurel smiles to herself, then she does the most evil thing she has ever done. She holds up a banana and cracks the top, then slowly begins peeling it. “Oh, I have my breakfast right here.”
Goddammit. I ignore her, stabbing the center of my egg so the yolk spills out. I will ignore Laurel eating the phallic-shaped fruit. I will not think about her lips around my dick. I will not wonder if her lips have been around his dick. I will not take my gun out, shoot Rafe mid-bite, and haul Laurel’s little ass right out the front door.
Focus on the fucking eggs.
I can’t focus on the eggs. My gaze darts to her just in time to see the tip of the banana disappear into that perfect fucking mouth of hers. My dick responds immediately, and then it only gets worse when I look at her neck and see the mark I left there last night, then my eyes drop to her tits and I see them begging to be let out of that white bra.
My heart beats in my throat and all the blood in my body rushes straight to my cock. In an attempt to behave like a man who isn’t aroused to the point of fucking pain, I cut into the egg, shovel some herb-sprinkled tomato onto my fork, and bring it to my mouth. I’m sure it tastes good—it sure looks and smells good—but it may as well be cardboard for all the enjoyment I’m able to get out of it.
My whole body is so fucking tense, I feel like I might explode. I want to do things I can’t do. I want to shove this plate away from me, walk around the counter, grab a fistful of Laurel’s brown hair, and tell her to drop to her knees. I want to see unquestioning obedience in her eyes as she drops right in front of Rafe, like she did the day he brought her back from the Grand Canyon. I want to free my cock and shove it into her pretty little mouth, to see her big blue eyes looking up at me as she takes every inch. I definitely want that talented little tongue of hers running along my length until my cock hits the back of her throat. With Rafe sitting there, too fucking stunned to do a goddamned thing about it, I want to fuck Laurel’s face and see the desire in her eyes, like letting me use her is the single greatest experience of her life. Then I want her on her hands and knees, legs spread, this skimpy fucking robe bunched up around her waist while I give her pussy a good pounding and remind her that good girls get treats. I want to fuck her good and hard until her heart races in her chest and she struggles to breathe—but for a good reason, this time. Only for good reasons from here on out.
Only I can’t, because of the asshole sitting on my left. Because he had the dumb luck of knocking her up on a one-night-stand, and now everything is a tangled fucking mess.
Why couldn’t it have been me? Why couldn’t I be the lucky bastard who knocked her up? Then she’d be mine and no one could say shit about it.
I shove back from the counter and stand, carefully angling my body to try to hide the hard-on as I do.
“What are you doing?” Rafe asks, watching me.
I need to get the fuck out of here, that’s what I need to be doing. Before I do something I’ll undoubtedly regret, before I alter the course of all our fucking lives because Laurel decided to have a banana for breakfast, I need to get the fuck out of this house.
Only I can’t, because Rafe will know exactly why.
“Forgot to wash my hands,” I mutter, as I head for the bathroom to jerk off to the mental image of Laurel choking on my cock.
Most days I have enough on my plate that I don’t have time to think much about Laurel, unless it’s her safety I’m worrying about. When I’m done doing the work Rafe knows about, I spend the rest of my downtime keeping an eye on all the fucking trouble-making women he has unwittingly invited into Laurel’s life.
The southern belle was simple. Let the club manager know I need security tapes, slip a little money to one of the other waitresses to get the dirt on her, chat with a bartender I noticed she spent extra time with, keep an eye on everybody for a couple of days. The preliminary round of research on her tells me she’s probably not the one who tampered with Laurel’s glass—if anyone did. It could be I’m chasing my own tail here, but I’d rather find out I wasted my time than find out too late someone really is out to hurt Laurel and I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
Marlena is easy to keep an eye on now that I got access to her apartment. I could break in and plant bugs, only problem is Rafe has that whole apartment community gated with a guard, and every license plate coming or going gets recorded. My original plan was to boost a car just long enough to get that particular job done—didn’t want to take one from the shop, just on the off chance Rafe cared enough to trace it back to that—but then Rafe gave
me a much easier in with his fake date. I’d like to stroke my own ego a little and say Rafe’s cast-offs keep taking to me because I’m something special, but while Laurel and I really did have an attraction, I feel not a damn thing for Marlena, and she was ready to make the fake date real.
I haven’t quite put my finger on what Marlena is, but there’s something about her I don’t fucking like. It could just be that Laurel hates her. I’m too close to it to see straight. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Whether her interest goes where the wind blows it or there’s some other reason, Marlena was all too happy to invite me back to her place, and I was all too happy to plant bugs when she went to the bathroom so I could keep an eye on her comings, goings, and visitors from the comfort of my home.
Or my car, as the case has been, because I’m also keeping an eye on Cassandra Carmichael. That has been a lot harder. She goes out all the time, and in order to know what she’s up to, I need to be following her. I put a tracker on her car to see where she goes when I can’t be there, but all I have is unattached locations. I can’t know who she is meeting with from a tracker on her car.
Today my life is a little harder, because something from this morning keeps sticking with me. Not just Laurel in the robe, my mental images of fucking her in Rafe’s kitchen, or the smell of her when I brushed too closely on my way back to my place at the counter after my trip to the bathroom, but something she said before she went upstairs.
She’s meeting Lydia for manicures?
I didn’t get the impression Lydia especially liked Laurel, and seeing as how she’s Gio’s wife, it has been significantly harder to get a peek at her dealings. She stays at home with the baby, and I sure as shit can’t get inside Gio’s house without being noticed, let alone hide a bug anywhere. The Morellis are a paranoid fucking people, and Gio’s house has a more advanced security set-up than Rafe does. Being a bachelor (and more easygoing than most of the Morelli men of my acquaintance) Rafe doesn’t have as much to lose. He doesn’t have as much to protect. Or he didn’t. Now he does, but he hasn’t caught up yet.
Now that he has Laurel and a baby on the way, he really needs to step up his security. It’s not just him in the world anymore. It’s not just himself he needs to keep safe, so he needs to lock that fucking place down like Fort Knox. He needs to pack go-bags for Laurel and the baby, walk her through what to do if anyone ever breaches the security measures he puts in place, and frankly, he needs to put in a panic room. He needs to make sure Laurel and the baby will be safe no matter what, and instead, his shit is so lax that I mauled the mother of his child on his couch last night, and he has no way of even knowing for sure, short of putting both of us in a room and trying to read our body language.
I know he gets a kick out reading people his way, but this is too important for that shit. Protecting your family isn’t something you can afford to take chances with. There’s no second chance when it comes to that.
Sitting here outside a fucking nail salon, of all places, I reach over and pop open the glove compartment. I go to reach for my sunglasses, and the Twix bar Laurel gave me catches my eye. The candy sealed inside is mushy and melted, of course, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw the damn thing away. I shove it back inside and grab my sunglasses, sliding them on. Then I draw out my phone to check the time. I don’t know how long manicures are supposed to take, but I know they’re heading to lunch after this. I need to remind Laurel to be safe, but I don’t want to text it, because I don’t want there to be a chance Gio ever finds out I don’t trust his wife around Laurel’s food and drink.
I see Laurel and Lydia stand and head to the counter to pay, so it’s time. I already scoped the place out before her appointment—the most ridiculous place I’ve ever had to check out, hands down—so I know the bathroom is in the door and to the right, while they’re paying at a counter to the left.
I text Laurel a brief, to-the-point message. “Go to the bathroom.”
Then I push open my door and head inside, hanging right and going to the restroom area. It’s single stall, not multi, but I slip inside and leave the door unlocked.
A moment later, Laurel shoves open the door and walks inside the bathroom, but she’s frowning down at her phone, not looking up.
She jumps when she realizes she’s not alone in the room, gasping and grabbing her chest. “Jesus Christ!”
I gently move her aside, reaching behind her and locking the door.
“What the hell, Sin?” she demands, eyes wide.
“Why are you going to lunch with Lydia?”
Laurel blinks at me, then shakes her head. “I don’t know. Because Rafe told me to?”
That sours my mood, fast. “Oh, okay. I forgot you do everything Rafe tells you to do.”
Narrowing her eyes at me, she says, “Yes, I do; I’m a good girl. Have you forgotten already?”
“Oh, I remember how good you are,” I murmur, taking a couple steps closer.
Laurel swallows, backing up against the bathroom door. I should hang back, but she’s being mouthy, and I want to crowd her. I like closing her in like this. I like the wariness that jumps in her eyes as she looks up at me. I can practically see memories of how good she was for me replaying in that dirty mind of hers, feel it in the way she loses steam now that I’m standing right on top of her, staring down at her.
Her voice has a faint bite to it, but more hurt than anger when she mutters, “Marlena probably wouldn’t approve of you standing so close to me in a locked bathroom.”
Ignoring her misplaced jealousy, I reach down and take one of her hands, lifting it so I can see what color she had her nails painted. They’re a muted color, barely tinted with pigment at all. “Not what I thought you’d pick out.”
Laurel wrinkles her nose up, looking at her nails disapprovingly. “It’s not. I wanted the sparkly purple, but Lydia told me it was whorish.”
Cracking a smile, I tell her, “Should’ve told Lydia you’re a whore. Next time do that and send me a picture of what her face looks like.”
Biting back a smile, she smacks me on the arm. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop making it so hard to dislike you. You’re the worst. Remind me that you’re the worst.”
I cock an eyebrow. “I’m the worst? Lydia is offended by nail polish. I think she’s the worst.”
Laurel nods and lifts her eyebrows, like she can’t argue with me there.
That gets me back on track. “So what are you doing, going to lunch with her? I told you not to eat or drink anything she has access to.”
“Yeah, but Rafe told me to go to lunch with her. I figured you guys would be on the same page if there was something to worry about.”
Barely stifling a sigh, I murmur, “We’re not on the same page about much lately.”
Laurel’s plump lips turn down in a pout. “I hate that. I don’t want to come between you two.”
“It’s not your fault, it’s his. It’s mine. It’s…” I shake my head. “Don’t worry about it. I need to get out of here before she comes down the hall and catches me slipping out of here, though. I might have a hard time explaining why I was locked in a bathroom stall with you, and what with your on-the-spot lying skills, I don’t think you could pick up my slack.”
“You could have just texted me, you know,” she states.
“Didn’t want to leave tracks. Just in case things with Rafe…” I shake my head, since that will only worry her more. “It’s just a precaution. I don’t want to give anyone I work for any new reasons not to trust me right now.”
Worry consumes her big, blue eyes as she looks up at me. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything is fine. Go to the bathroom while you’re in here, and once you get to the restaurant, whatever you do, do not leave the table. Do not get up to use the bathroom. Do not turn around and look away from your plate or your drink for even a few seconds—and order something sealed in a bottle. I don’t care if it’s not cold.”
“Sin, why are you so worried about this? Is there something I should know?”
“I don’t know yet, okay? I’m trying to figure it out. But until I do, I need to know you’re going to listen to me and be extra cautious. Guard your food and drink like a drunk girl at a frat party watching for some asshole with roofies.”
“That is terrible.”
“People are terrible,” I inform her. “If anything goes wrong, if Lydia starts acting weird and you get a bad feeling, or she asks you to go somewhere off-plan or in her car, if she tries to get you alone for any reason, bail immediately. At that point, get yourself away from her, but calmly. Make an excuse. Go to the bathroom if it’s somewhere like this where you have privacy, and call me or Rafe.”
Eyes wide, she tells me, “You’re scaring me. Should I not be out with her? I can just bail on lunch altogether.”
“I’m sure you will be fine. Like I said, I’m just being cautious. It’s my job to keep Rafe and his interests protected. You are obviously one of his interests.” Her gaze darkens when I add that, which is my intention. “I just want to run through your options now. People don’t always think so clearly in a crisis. I didn’t want you to be in a situation where you didn’t know what to do, and Rafe with his fucking disposition, I’m sure he didn’t prepare you.”
“Great. Thanks for securing Rafe’s property. I won’t eat or drink anything I’ve left unattended. You can go take care of the next item on your to-do list now.”
I hate the feelings I know lie beneath her snide tone. I hate hurting her on purpose, but I’m too tempted to stay. I’m too tempted by too many things I can’t have, too many things I can’t do, so instead of sticking around, that’s exactly what I do.
26
Laurel
I can’t sleep again.
Extensive insomnia-induced Googling led me to the conclusion that it’s probably from the pregnancy. I tell my body to let me sleep as I lie in Rafe’s bed, staring at the high ceiling, but it’s no use. The longer I lie here awake, the more frustrated I get. I can’t seem to get comfortable, so I’m tossing and turning. Not wanting to wake Rafe up, I finally creep out of bed and head downstairs. Maybe a nice, hot cup of lemon tea will soothe my soul and help me sleep.