His smile went even more sinister. “You asked for it, you pain in the ass. Remember that,” he said, charging at me. Three things happened in almost the exact same second: his hand went around and grabbed my neck at the base of my skull; his arm went around my hips; his lips slammed down on me. My own hands went out instinctively, grabbing his arms and pulling me tighter to him. Which my hyper-active libido was happy to oblige. My legs went up, folding around his hips. My back slammed against one of the walls he had just constructed and his lips ripped from mine and he smiled at me. “Yeah, walls were a good idea.”
His head dipped and his mouth crushed into my neck as one hand moved from my ass and slid around my belly, working my button and zip and slipping inside. His fingers pressed against the material of my panties, but the tight material of my pants wouldn’t allow for more than that.
“Fucking skinny jeans. Worst God damn invention ever,” Shane growled, reaching for my legs and unwrapping them from around him. As soon as my feet touched the ground, his fingers snagged the waistband of my jeans and pulled them down to mid thigh. His fingers didn’t tease. They didn’t pause. They pressed down on my clit through my panties and started working it in fast circles. His eyes got heavy as he watched me slowly start to lose control.
“Shane, please…” I groaned, needing more than his fingers on me, needing him buried deep inside.
“Please what?” he asked, no smile, dead serious about making me say it.
“Please fuck me,” I demanded and his eyes went dark as one hand went into his back pocket, fished out his wallet, found a condom, then tossed the wallet away. He released his button and zip with one hand, pulling down his pants and boxers, exposing his hard, straining cock and I felt my pussy tighten in anticipation.
I lost his finger as his hands grabbed my hips and turned me roughly, pushing my front up against the wall. Then my panties were yanked over my ass and down my legs. There was the barest of pauses as he protected us before his hand reached out and slapped my ass. “Love this fucking view,” he murmured, his knee pressing my legs slightly apart. His cock pressed between my folds, teasing upward and pressing against my clit for a second before quickly moving back down and slamming inside me in one deep thrust.
He fucked me then, just as I requested.
Fast, hard, borderline brutal.
Just as I wanted.
I came hard way too shortly after and Shane followed right behind me, his head in my neck, growling out my name as he did so.
“So that was a proper hello?” I asked when I found my voice again.
Shane chuckled, biting hard into my shoulder. “Fuck yeah it was.”
“So that is how I need to greet you from now on?” I asked, smiling mostly because he couldn’t see it.
Shane went silent for a second then he pulled back from me, sliding out of me, turning me, eyes finding mine. “Is that your way of saying you’re in?”
Was it?
I guess it was.
“No promises though,” I warned, knowing there was no happy ever after in my future.
“Can’t give you any either,” he agreed with a nod, one hand moving down to snag my panties and dragging them back up my legs. “Would be lying if I tried. So let’s not even try to do that shit. We can just let it happen, yeah?”
He made it sound so easy, so possible. I almost believed him. “Yeah,” I agreed, but my smile was half-forced.
“Okay. Good. I gotta deal with this condom. When I get back, your ass is helping me put up the walls.”
“Why should I help you put up walls?”
“Because we’re going to be seeing more of each other and I’m not going near your apartment building,” he told me as he went into the bathroom.
I reached for my pants, putting them back in place. “Why not?”
“Because I own the place. Don’t need my tenants hearing me fuck you all the damn time. That means you’ll be here a lot. And, I imagine, a bathroom with walls is a prerequisite for you staying here.”
“I think bathrooms with walls are a prerequisite for anyone,” I said, defending my stance on the matter as I leaned down and grabbed the nail gun.
Shane came back out then, raising a brow. “I don’t know if I trust you with that thing.”
“Don’t say anything to piss me off and you won’t have to worry,” I smiled, aiming it at him with a wink.
“Yeah, what are the chances of that happening?” he asked with a grin.
Then there it was again.
Comfort.
Rightness.
Home.
And it was scary.
I was worried.
But I wasn’t going to let the fear get the better of me.
Because what was on the other side of it, yeah, I had a feeling it was going to be epic.
THIRTEEN
Lea
It happened almost naturally.
The first night, we finished building the bathroom. We ordered in. We went to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to Shane kissing up my legs and, well, things got heated from there. I woke up. Not in his arms, because I apparently had battles when I slept, something Shane was all too tickled to point out to me. Besides, Shane got up early because he was one of those morning people freaks. So I woke up in a big rumpled bed with the smell of fresh coffee everywhere.
And let’s not mention a warm, gooey feeling inside that I tried hard to ignore.
Shane went to work, dropping me at my apartment on the way and telling me with no preamble, “Pack some shit and drive over to my place when you’re done with work.”
I got ready for work. And, not sure how I felt about doing so, I packed a small bag with just the basics: toothbrush, deodorant, makeup, ‘just in case’ tampons, a couple pairs of panties and one change of clothes. I didn’t want it looking like I was going to be moving in there.
Then I went to work. After work, I went to Shane’s where he had left the door open and was passed out in bed. Unsure what to do, I quietly backed toward the door again.
“Get your ass in this bed,” his sleep-rough voice demanded, muffled by the pillow his face was half-buried in.
“You’re sleeping. It’s late. I’ll…”
“Don’t make me get up and drag you over here,” he warned, still making no move to turn to face me.
“Shane…”
“Lea…” he said back, a trace of humor there.
On a shrug, I locked the door, set down my bag next to it and made my way to the bed. Kicking off my shoes, I moved to grab the sheets.
“You can’t possibly sleep in those tight ass jeans,” he mumbled and I agreed so I undid them and slid them down my body. “Or that bra,” he went on and there was definite humor in it. But, again, he was right. I reached behind my back and unclasped, dragging the bra through my arm hole.
“Am I ready for bed now?” I asked, smiling a little at his back.
“I don’t know. I don’t think you’re naked yet.”
“You’re not naked either,” I pointed out, the blanket tangled around his thighs, letting me see his black boxers.
Just then, his body jumped, flipping onto his back. He reached down, snagged aforementioned boxers, and ripped them off. “Sure am,” he said, cocking an arm behind his head and sending me a devilish little smirk, completely comfortable in his own nudity. As he should be with a body like he had.
“Alright,” I said, lifting my chin a little and quickly pulling off my shirt.
“Panties too. We’re free-balling it.”
I laughed at that, snagging the lacy pink panties I had put on because I knew at some point Shane would be seeing them, and slid them down my legs. “We good now?”
Shane’s eyes slid over me for a second then he grabbed the blanket and held it up for me to slide under. Which I did, happily. His arm snaked around my back and hauled me to his side. And while his fingers did trace up and down my spine for a long couple of minutes, it wasn’t sexual. It was just intimate, sweet.
; And before my greedy body could get too worked up, Shane’s breathing went deep and even and I craned my neck up to see he had passed back out again. And that, somehow, meant something to me. He didn’t want me in his bed directly after work just to fuck me. Not that I would have complained about that. Any excuse I could find to get his hands and mouth on me, well, I’d take it. But it felt good to know that he sometimes just wanted me there, just wanted me in his bed, just wanted me to lay on his chest and in his arms while he slept.
Yeah, that was an unexpectedly amazing feeling. And I let myself stay up until almost six AM basking in it before my overtired eyes finally shut.
For all of half an hour before Shane’s internal clock woke him up and I was suddenly rolling onto my back. My mostly-asleep brain was present enough to take in the sensation of his fingers teasing up my belly and tracing the sensitive undersides of my breasts, but not present enough to make me open my eyes. So I lay there and let him stroke over me, the sensation almost reverent, like he was worshipping each inch of me, trying to commit it all to memory. Then, when I was writhing and moaning enough to make a porn star blush, he slipped inside me.
It wasn’t what seemed to be our usual desperate fucking. It was slow and sweet, like we had all the time in the world, like nothing was more important than sharing our bodies with each other.
The words making love popped into my head just as the orgasm coursed through my body, seeming to only intensify it with that realization.
Because with all the sex I had had in my life… I had never had someone make love to me. I wasn’t even entirely sure I understood the turn of phrase until Shane showed it to me. And, judging by the contented yet confused and a bit awestruck look on his face as he looked at me after he came as well, I was pretty sure the experience was a new one for him.
He held me for a long while until his phone started blowing up across the room and he sighed, smacked my ass lightly, and got out of bed to go get it. He did this completely naked, I might add. And I felt no embarrassment whatsoever in watching as he answered his phone and moved around the kitchen making coffee.
I passed out while he was in the shower and woke up alone with a note on the coffee pot when the smell eventually dragged me from bed.
Need to handle some gym shit. I’ll be back in a couple hours to fuck you. Fee said you’re off today so I’m gonna take you out to Chaz’s. Mark owes you a couple rounds. He reminded me this morning.
He didn’t sign it and there was no real sweet sentiment to it, but it took just about everything I had not to carefully fold it and tuck it away in my overnight bag for safekeeping.
But I wasn’t that big of a sap.
Except I was and I had it folded in my bag for a second before I grabbed it again, balled it up, and made sure I mushed it into the old coffee grounds in the garbage so I didn’t try to save it again.
I took an obnoxiously long shower in his luxurious bathroom, put on some makeup, but not much because if he had plans to fuck me when he got back, I knew it would be of the rough, wild, sweaty variety and I didn’t need mascara running down my face.
I wasn’t wrong either.
Shane got in around four, gave me a good solid fucking that I swear made me have a complete out-of-body tet-a-tet with God, then we got dress and hit Chaz’s.
Mark did as he had promised, buying us rounds. Eventually, Ryan and Eli showed up, joining in until I was good and wasted. Years of drinking with men who did so like they were stranded in the Sahara making my tolerance good and therefore preventing me from ever getting to the point where I was sloppy.
“Come on now, he’s hardly the prize of the family,” Mark said, hopelessly flirting with me (and any other girl one of his brothers showed interest in, just to piss them off). Mark was the shit-starter of the family I learned really quickly. Shane was the brute with a lot of opinions and, luckily, enough brains to back them up. Ryan, the business head. I couldn’t really get a feel for him, always being so staid. I couldn’t even tell if he liked me and I found myself overly concerned with that approval. Eli, well, was Eli. He was a strange mix of restrained and friendly. His dark intensity didn’t seem to lessen in getting to know him better, but instead became one of the most interesting things about him. I learned around the fourth round that he was a painter and a writer and that some day he hoped to make that a bigger part of his life. There was a sadness when he said it though, as if he knew the chances were slim.
Sometime around midnight, two guys walked in, making the Mallicks shake their heads. One was slim, a swimmer’s kind of body, completely covered in tattoos, even across his neck, with slicked back hair and green eyes, dressed in tight black jeans, a black Alice In Chains tee, and freaking creepers. Beside him was a giant mixed-race light-skinned black man who was tall and wide and tatted as well with a sharp, perfect face and a relaxed kind of confidence about him.
“Who are they?” I heard myself asking, considering them over my drink.
“Shooter is the fuck with the greaser look,” Shane informed me, jerking his head at the man in question who gave him a smile that faltered a bit as the man’s eyes followed the length of Shane’s arm to where it draped over my shoulders. Then the smile positively threatened to split his face.
“And the other?” I asked.
“Paine. He’s a tattoo artist. He’s done some of my work.”
“But Hunter is a tattoo artist,” I said, not understanding why someone so fiercely loyal to his family would go to someone else.
“Hunt took off for a while some years back. That’s how he met Fee. I still needed to get inked and Paine is just as good.”
“Sugar, honey, sweetie, darlin’,” I heard drawled behind me with a hint of a southern accent which just made it all the more appealing. When I turned, there was Shooter who I remembered Fee telling me was a sniper. He certainly didn’t look the part. “What is a a woman like you’d doing with a man like this?”
“Shoot, Lea. Lea, Shoot,” Shane said, raising the arm that was behind me and whacking Shooter on the back.
“He’s bad news,” Shooter warned, making a show of looking gravely serious.
I leaned forward toward him. “I hear you’re bad news too.”
He jerked back, hand to his chest like I stabbed him. “Oh, that hurts!” he said, giving me a grin that surely worked on the ninety-nine percent of the female population that did not belong to Shane Mallick.
“You want to get your ass kicked?” Paine, the sexy light-skinned black guy said coming up, nudging his friend. “Got a bar full of skirts and you have to hit on the one who has a man?”
“Oh, no worries,” I said, waving a hand. “Mark has already thrown his name in the cap too.”
“If you ever feel like taking a break from the Mallick brothers…” Shooter offered, taking my hand and kissing it.
“This doesn’t phase you at all?” Paine asked, gesturing at Shoot.
“Nah.”
I stiffened a bit at that, turning to look at him. “Well, why not?” I demanded.
To that, he shrugged. “‘Cause you’re not going anywhere.”
Alcohol making me even a bit bolder than usual, if that was possible, I blurted out. “You don’t know that. Shooter’s got a little something,” I said with a smile.
“Oh, shit,” Paine said, drawing my attention. He clamped a hand at the back of Shooter’s neck and pulled him away. “Have a good fight.”
I turned back to Shane, brow raised. “Well?”
“I’m not a jealous person, baby.” I opened my mouth to say something and he put two fingers on my lips, stopping me. “Being jealous of Mark or Shoot showing you attention says that I don’t trust you. I do trust you. You, however, don’t trust me. Which is something we need to work on.”
With that, his hand dropped. “I trust you,” I rushed to say.
To that, his brow raised. “The hostess of Famiglia?”
“That’s different. She was being outright disrespectful. Eye-fucking a man wh
o is there with a woman. That is unacceptable behavior.”
“I had no interest in…”
“That’s not the point though. The point was, she disrespected me and the very idea of exclusivity by openly flirting with a guy who, at least it looked like, belonged to another woman. It’s different with Mark and Shoot because they’re joking.”
“Lea, they’re not joking,” Shane said, shaking his head a little, lips twitching. “I fuck this up? We fuck this up? They’re all over it. Shoot because, while we don’t mess with each others’ businesses, a friendly rivalry over women is fine. Mark because he would much rather ask for forgiveness than permission. They’d fuck you in a heartbeat.”
“In that case, I feel like I should be insulted that you aren’t putting them in their place about it.”
“Why?”
Because it showed he valued me. Because it said he cared. But I couldn’t bring myself to say that to him.
“Nothing. Never mind,” I said, waving a hand and turning to face the bar which made his arm drop from my shoulders.
I took a breath, trying to remind myself not to get too wrapped up, that it was doomed to fail eventually. Shane moved in behind me, arms going on the bar to either side of my body, caging me in. He leaned in close, his mouth going close to my ear, his warm breath sending chills down my body. “Just because I don’t fuck up every man who shows interest in you, doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit about you. It means I am showing self-preservation. Because if I started shit with every guy who wanted to fuck you, I’d never stop fighting. Maybe that ex of yours fucked with your head or maybe you’re like every other chick in the world who has no fucking idea how hot they are, but let’s get this shit clear now- you’re gorgeous. Men will want to fuck you. I can’t get mad about that because fact of the matter is, you choose to fuck me not them. So instead of getting pissed about them, I’m gonna go ahead and be amused by it because when the night is over and I am the one inside you, I get the last laugh.” He paused, letting that settle in. And it did, down to my bones. “So we done with this asinine conversation?”
Shane (The Mallick Brothers Book 1) Page 15