by Lewis, R. J.
“Your grandmother was right,” he finally whispered to me bitterly. “I couldn’t fucking protect Kate. How the hell can I protect you? How can I save you from all this bullshit, Emma?”
I shook my head at him. He didn’t get it. “You can protect me and you have. Graeme and Hawke have never let you down. You didn’t have the support then as you do now, and I know what I’ve gotten myself into. I’m willing to live this way. It’s just…I’m doing this because I get to be with you and…I don’t want to be rescued, Marcus. I just need to be loved.”
He looked vulnerable. Torn open. Conflicted. He swallowed hard and said, “Years ago when I used to really hurt people, I’d shoot up after. It got bad when Kate died. That’s why I need Hawke. He’s there. He’s always been there to clean it up for me when it got too bad. He made me put the heroine away. He made me do clean kills and had the guys do the really dirty work. Tonight I was without him, and tonight I tortured a guy, and I had no way to get this feeling to go away.” He paused and finally looked at me, his warring face cutting holes through my chest. “And then there’s you. You see my ugly side, you see me like this, fucking split open, a man washing his hands clean of somebody’s else’s blood, and you still stay. You…don’t fucking leave for one second, and I bet you haven’t even thought it too, huh?”
I blinked back tears. “No.”
“Because you love me.”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.” He shook his head, his face pained. “You rip my heart open. You fucking rip it apart, Emma.”
“Would you rather I didn’t?”
“I’m addicted to it, doll. I fucking love you for it. I fucking love every inch of you, and there’s not one inch of you I deserve.”
My heart squeezed in my chest. I felt lightheaded by his words. I moved to him quickly and wrapped my arms around his torso. I held his cold body to me, burying my face into his chest to silently cry. It mattered so much to me that he loved me. They were happy tears, and he wrapped his arms around me, comforting me when I should have been the one comforting him after his breakdown.
“This man after us is bad, Emma,” he gravely told me a few minutes later. “He’s very bad.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Terry Mulligan and he’s powerful. He ran the streets decades ago before he got locked up for murder when someone on his side sold him out.”
“You’ve never heard of him?”
“The city got run by so many gangs, I didn’t look that far back. There was no reason to. I’ve stayed focused on the present.”
“Why is he back?”
“He got out of prison. He had two step-sons operating on the small side when he was locked up. They made enough to make it by, waiting for their old man to come out. Turns out he has a lot of people on his side that have been waiting for him. Which means he still has a lot of money locked up somewhere.”
I frowned in confusion. “Why is he making himself known like this?”
“The step-sons, they were the brothers I killed for Kate’s murder.”
“Oh, my God,” I whispered.
“He’s trying to fuck with me. Doing the same M.O. the brothers used on me. He wants his revenge. He has a thing for revenge. He wanted the man that screwed him over left untouched so he could personally kill him when he got out, and he did. He hunted him down hours after he got out and plucked him off slowly. He’s got an itch for torture. Takes it slow, stretches it out for weeks until the man is so weak he can barely move, and then he releases them and hunts them down like animals. He likes to play, and that’s a level of fucked up that I’m not even familiar with.”
I felt bile climb up my throat at the images his words induced. “And he wants to do that to us?”
“Don’t think about that, it won’t happen. When it comes down to it, he wants to take my place. If he takes me down, he’ll have my businesses and a whole shitload of unemployed men to buy up. And that won’t happen either. I won’t let him.”
I pulled away and looked up at him, unable to shake my fear. “What are we going to do?”
He sighed, looking back at me with tender eyes. “I’m going to hunt him down, and you’re going to pack your shit and go away until I find him.”
I froze, my mouth dropping open in shock. “What?”
He nodded slowly. “I can’t afford to have you hurt, Emma.”
“I don’t want to be away from you.”
“What else am I meant to do?”
“Keep me around.”
“No.”
I slid away from him, feeling hot angry tears fall down my face. “And where are you going to send me? To those sleazy bikers? They’ll rape me, Borden.”
“They won’t lay a finger on you.”
“I don’t trust them!” I fumed. “If this psycho wants to hunt you down, what do they care? They’ll just have another guy to run their businesses through. I’m not important –”
“You assume this fucker will kill me, and he won’t. I’m a tough cookie, doll. Killing me will take a lot of fucking effort, and I tend to fight back harder. The bikers don’t concern me. I know who is loyal to their word, and Hector won’t let me down.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Hawke knows it, and you were right about the way I feel for my guys. Graeme and Hawke mean a lot to me too, and I was too proud to admit it. Hawke is like a brother to me, regardless if he fucks you with his eyes. I trust him, therefore I trust his judgment. The bikers won’t do you harm.”
I just shook my head, gutted by this turn of events. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I didn’t want to leave Granny behind. He seemed to read my thoughts. “Your grandmother will be looked after too.”
“What, are you going to send my granny to the bikers too, Borden?”
“No. I’ll arrange something else for that old battle axe. She’ll be fine.”
“She won’t go anywhere if you ask her to.”
“I won’t be asking, and she won’t have a choice.”
“I’m not going,” I defiantly retorted. “You can’t just send me away like a piece of property.”
“In the eyes of everyone else, you are my property,” he replied coolly. “And you’re going.”
Oh, he was infuriating! I didn’t know whether to curse at him or beg him to change his mind. There was no getting through to him when he was dead set on something, and this something was sending me away.
Unable to help my bitter tone, I gritted out, “And when are you going to ship your property off?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Fuck his vague answers. I swallowed my sadness as I demanded, “Will you see me?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
His lips pulled up in a delicious smile. “Look at you. Unable to be away from me, like I’m your fucking oxygen or something.”
I narrowed my eyes irritably at his sarcasm and uttered almost silently, “You are.”
He let out a long exhale, that smile fading. “I know, doll. I know because you’re like that for me too.”
A tear slid down my cheek, and he swallowed hard as he watched it slide down my face. He gestured to me to move closer, quietly saying, “Come here, beautiful. Let me hold you.”
I crawled back over to him and he wrapped me in his arms, holding me close, telling me that everything was going to be fine. But I didn’t think it would be. I felt something stir inside me, an unsettling feeling that made me sick to my stomach.
This was the calm before the storm.
Eleven
Emma
I woke up the next morning to the feel of soft kisses running up my bare arm. Borden’s hand moved beneath the hem of his oversized shirt – the only piece of clothing I wore to bed last night after I left the bathroom and had to change my clothes from them being soaked sitting on the wet floor. I let out a light breath as his hand roamed my abdomen, tickling my flesh lightly
. His kisses moved up my neck, licking a trail to the soft spot behind my ear, and his hand grabbed my breast, squeezing them firmly before rolling my nipple between his fingertips.
I pushed my ass against him, feeling his naked body, his hard muscle, his long length. I smiled. “I see morning sex is on the menu today.”
“Mm,” he moaned, letting go of my breast and moving his hand back down my body. “You’ve been sticking your ass against my dick all night, babe. I’m only human.”
“Human? When you fuck, you’re a god.”
“No fucking today.”
I wanted to ask what he meant when his hand settled between my legs, pushing them apart to accommodate him. In a second, all thought vanished. He rubbed me, and like fireworks the pleasure shot up and burst inside me. I wriggled against him, my mouth opened and panting as he continued to rub me to wetness, his hot breaths against my neck, his tongue lapping against my skin. It was all a heady combination, and in no time I was crying out, encouraging him with the roll of my hips to keep going. He slid his fingers up and down my core, pushing the tip of his index inside me and worked his thumb over my clit. He rubbed me and he rubbed me, causing every inch of me to tense and buckle against him, moaning quietly as the pressure within me built.
“I like when you’re close,” he murmured, his dick impossibly hard against my ass. “I get to control when you come. I get to bring you close and leave you hanging.”
“Sadist,” I moaned, biting back a smile.
“Yeah, and you’re my little slut, aren’t you?”
I nodded, pleasure from his words blooming within me. He withdrew his hand, leaving me empty and unsatisfied. Then he pushed me on my back and climbed over me, and before I could open my eyes, he smashed his mouth against mine. He kissed me like I was filled with oxygen and he couldn’t breathe. He kissed me like he would never kiss me again, deep and slow and without any sign of stopping. I wrapped my arms around him, keeping him close to me. When our tongues clashed, we groaned at the same time. Without waiting, he spread my legs apart and pushed into me, never stopping the kiss once. Then he stilled, and my body burned at the fullness of him. This never got old. Ever.
“This is what I’m going to miss,” he murmured against my lips. “Not having you in my bed. Not feeling your wet little cunt wrapped around me. I’m almost having second thoughts.”
I opened my eyes slowly. He was already staring down at me, his lustful face inches apart from mine.
“You act like I’m not going to see you again for a long time,” I whispered to him, and it was easy hiding the worry in my voice, because I was turned on as ever.
He kissed me again, this time lightly. “It’s more that I want you anytime of the day. I want your voice in my ear, your legs wrapped around me whenever the fuck I want, your sexy little tongue licking at every inch of me.”
“So you coming out to see me will be an inconvenience,” I said humorously.
“No,” he replied, solemnly, his face filled with emotion. “I’d travel to the ends of the earth for you, Emma. Because this feels right, doesn’t it? It feels like I’m meant to have a part of me inside you.”
My chest tightened. I nodded. “It feels right.”
He kissed me again softly, moving his hips back and then forward. His strokes were hard but slow, and they hit that special spot inside me every single time. The spot that made me dig my heels into the mattress; the spot that made me pant faster against his mouth, breathing out his name. My hand slid down his hard back, my nails lightly scratched at his skin. I cupped his ass as he buried himself to the hilt inside me every time. He murmured things to me. How beautiful I was. How good I felt. How right this was.
He was making love to me, and it was better than all the hard fucks combined, because it felt like he wasn’t just giving me part of his soul, but all of it. We came at the same time, his fingers entwined in mine. Then he looked down at me, and with another gentle kiss, he said, “I love you, Emma.”
He didn’t say it in the spur of the moment when he was about to come. He didn’t say it because he was all over the place with his emotions. He was saying it because he wanted to, and it made all the walls I’d built for the sake of self-preservation crumble.
“I love you too, Marcus,” I said steadfastly, taking his lips against my own before he saw the tears that fell out.
Twelve
Borden
He fucking loved her.
He watched her in the shower, though he pretended to be occupied with brushing his teeth. And what a ridiculous fucking thing to look forward to, these little domestic moments, him brushing his teeth while she lathered her hair in shampoo in the same stall he’d spent last night washing some other man’s blood in. And that latter bit was where the domestic shit ended. Life was a mixture of normalcy and clusterfuck, and yet with Emma, it didn’t feel like a burden of a life to carry. She accepted all of him. He didn’t need to change. He didn’t need to prove anything to her.
He watched that delicious ass of hers jiggle as she scrubbed her skin clean, and he couldn’t help it. He rinsed his mouth and threw his clothes off. She was flushed under the hot water as he stepped in, and the smile she gave him – that particular smile where she tucked her bottom lip under her front teeth – seared him.
“Get on your knees,” he told her, his voice thick with need.
That smile wore off and was replaced with lust. She immediately went down on her knees and he inched to her, hardening already at the sight of her bare breasts and thick lips. Fuck, he needed those sweet little lips around him.
“Fuck me with your mouth, doll.” He sounded breathless ordering that.
She wrapped her hand around his length and sucked at the tip of him. Shudders ran down his spine, that delicious feeling of pleasure. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes and never looking away as she pleasured him. Borden settled a hand over head, guiding her in and out. Slowly, his hips started moving on their own, forcing himself deeper into her mouth.
“Fuck yes,” he groaned as she sucked him.
She looked incredible. This moment would be seared in his brain for many lifetimes. She moved faster and he grew harder. She doted on his dick like it was his mouth, licking and sucking. She twirled her tongue around his piercing and groaned with him, like she was getting off on his pleasure without even touching herself.
That’s it. That’s it. He felt his cock swell and get harder. Delicious sparks formed in the pit of him, and losing himself, he took her head with both hands and fucked her mouth faster. In and out, in and out…And then he came. He came hard.
“Holy fuck,” he rasped out. “Holy fuck.”
She swallowed all of his come and continued to suck on him long after he’d calmed down. Then she stood up, smiling brighter than before. He could never get tired of that smile, or that mouth, or that sweet little body.
He stopped dead for a few seconds, staring at his stunning little minx, and it hit him. His possessiveness officially went up a notch – a notch that made it officially into deadly territory.
His heart thundered within him. She moved to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. He stared dazedly into her dark eyes, over every inch of her face, and he had to swallow the knot in his throat at what she was doing to him.
I’m going to marry you. He thought to himself as she kissed him. I’m going to marry you. I’m going to make you mine, and nobody with a swinging little cock will come within a foot of you again.
He then pushed her back, until she was against the tile wall, and then dropped to his own knees.
“You’re turn, doll,” he told before burying himself between her legs.
*
He had to drop Emma off at work an hour later.
“I’ve got things to do at the port today,” he told her.
She clung to his chest in the back of the car, not wanting to leave him. “Can I come with you?”
“No, baby, this is shit you can’t get involved in.”
; “What sort of shit?”
“Warlord shit.”
She frowned. “Oh.”
Hector’s first shipment of drugs was due to arrive any minute, if it wasn’t already there anyway. The Warlord members would swing by at noon, and he needed to get his paperwork from the customs office ready by then. He had a man on the inside – a man in serious debt – he had been able to bribe to get these sort of shipments through, and after a call yesterday, he made sure that man would be at work today.