Instead she stared at him, ignoring everything he’d just told her, focusing on his handsome face instead. “What happened to your eye?” she asked bluntly.
He didn’t even blink at the question. “I had the shit beaten out of me. One of my pupils is permanently dilated.”
Her insides twisted. Oh Jesus. He’d been beaten hard enough he’d sustained a permanent injury?
What? Jail’s not exactly a party; you know that. Just like you also know who put him in that jail to start with.
She forced that thought away too, because that was another minefield she didn’t want to enter. “What about the eyebrow ring? I thought you didn’t like piercings.”
“I don’t. I keep it as a reminder.”
“A reminder of what?”
He moved his hands on the back of the couch, shifting back a little. “Of what happens when people fuck with me.”
She shouldn’t have asked her next question; she really shouldn’t. But she couldn’t help herself. It just came out. “And what happens when people fuck with you?”
He smiled, and it was terrifying. And a completely separate part of her could only watch in confusion because it was so very unlike the Levi she knew. That Levi had never looked dangerous. Oh, he’d always been very certain about what he wanted, very sure. He’d possessed a kind of confidence in himself that had bordered on arrogant, but it had never bothered her. In fact, she’d found it oddly reassuring. With her own life full of uncertainty, Levi’s lack of uncertainty had been comforting.
Still, he’d never had this . . . edge to him. This aura of contained violence and barely leashed menace. A wildness that thrilled something inside her right down to her most basic level.
Maybe that was why it was so terrifying. Because wildness was the last thing she wanted, and certainly not now, not when she’d finally gotten some stability in her life.
“What happens?” Levi lifted one hand from the back of the couch, and, before she could move, he took her chin in his hand, holding her tightly. She stiffened, trying to pull away because for some reason his fingers felt like they were burning her. But he only firmed his grip. “What happens is this,” he said, and leaned forward.
And covered her mouth with his.
She froze, unable to believe what was happening.
Levi was kissing her. Levi was fucking kissing her.
Adrenalin surged like the tide, and she sat there absolutely rigid, because it had been twelve years since anyone had kissed her, and she still remembered what that had been like. Wet. Uncomfortable. Unpleasant and wrong.
Because the last person to kiss her had been Evan.
So it was a shock to find that there was nothing unpleasant about this. Nothing uncomfortable or wrong. Levi’s mouth was firm, decisive and yet soft, warm.
It was so unexpected she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, then pushed inside, and all of a sudden, a prickling wave of heat swept over her skin, leaving her almost shaking.
God, what was happening to her? Because this was Levi, her friend. And she’d kissed him a thousand times before, chaste kisses on the cheek or the forehead. But nothing like this . . . Slow and lazy and achingly hot.
This is what a kiss should be....
Something inside her rebelled, at the same time as something else surrendered, and she shuddered, her mouth opening under his as he began to explore her more deeply, holding tight to her chin. And it felt like his fingertips were imprinting themselves on her skin, as if every whorl and ridge would be marked there when he let her go.
He tasted like peppermints, but with a dark, alcoholic flavor underneath, like bourbon or maybe rum, and it was so . . . good. She could feel her body begin to belatedly wake to life, her skin getting tight, an ache between her thighs.
Evan made you feel good too, sometimes.
An old, half-forgotten instinct kicked in, and suddenly she was ripping her chin from his grip, knocking away one of his arms, and propelling herself up, the gun slipping sideways off her lap and onto the cushions as she got off the couch.
He let her go, saying nothing as she took a few unsteady steps, putting some distance between them, her back to him. Her heartbeat was hammering in her ears, and her mouth felt weird, all full and swollen. She couldn’t seem to get enough air in her lungs.
“Get out.” A faint huskiness edged her voice, the frayed edge of a fear she thought she’d long put behind her. “Just get the hell away from me.”
“I want an answer, Rachel.” His voice behind her was as cold and as flat as it had been before. As if he hadn’t just punched a hole clean through the armor she wore every day. “I’ll let you have the day to think about it, but tonight I’m coming back here, and I’m staying. Which means you’re either going to be in bed with me or you’re going to be out on the street. Your call.”
She curled her fingers into her palms, driving the nails deep again, trying to settle herself. Using the pain to put that armor back in place. She was desperate to turn around, to tell him what he could do with his goddamn ultimatum. Such as go to hell and never come back.
“I’ll think about it,” she lied.
But she wasn’t going to think about it. She already knew her answer would be no way in hell. Which meant that she was now going to have to find some way to keep Levi off her back before he returned tonight.
“You do that,” he said. “I’ll be back, baby. Don’t forget.”
“I’m not your fucking baby.”
“No.” And this time his voice held a note of something she didn’t quite understand. “You used to be my sunshine.”
Rachel closed her eyes, the word spearing straight through her chest.
Sunshine. That’s what he’d used to call her back when their friendship had been brand-new. Sunshine for the brightness of her smile, he’d said. She’d told him that was pretty fucking corny, and he’d laughed, agreeing with her.
But whenever he’d called her that, or sometimes “Sunny” for short, she’d never protested or complained. Secretly she’d loved having a pet name, hoarding it like a dragon with a piece of treasure, glowing whenever he used it. Making her feel like she was something good, something bright, and not just the sad little girl who everyone left. The father who hadn’t wanted anything to do with her. The mother who’d loved drugs more than she’d loved her daughter. The grandmother who’d struggled to look after her, only to succumb to dementia.
Yet Rachel didn’t feel like anyone’s sunshine now. Now, the name just made her feel like a fraud.
“Not anymore,” she said.
“No,” he agreed. “Not anymore.”
There was a silence behind her.
She turned around, but he had gone.
* * *
Why had he said that? Why the fuck had he said that?
You used to be my sunshine.
She had, but that had been years ago. In another life, when he’d been a different man. He wasn’t that man now, not even close. Prison changed a person, sometimes beyond recognition.
Levi stood on the sidewalk outside the building, one of a number he’d managed to acquire, and closed his eyes. Inhaled. The smell of the city filled his nostrils: trash and engine exhaust, hot asphalt, the rich scent of freshly ground coffee from the café next to the tattoo studio.
Royal Road had changed since he’d gone away. He couldn’t believe how much. Oh, Gideon had said as much during his visits, and Levi’s current plans all hinged on that very gentrification.
But it was one thing to hear about it; quite another to see it.
Opening his eyes, he took a glance up and down the street.
The signs of regrowth were there in the industrial-looking café, a vintage clothing store, and some kind of design shop with funky-looking bits of crap in the window. Housewares or “rich-people shit” as Rachel had liked to call it. A previously abandoned warehouse with the word Anonymous spray-painted on the exposed brick wall. I
t looked too artfully done to be a random bit of graffiti, and the door set into the wall beside it looked too clean and new for an abandoned building. Which meant that maybe the building housed some kind of club or bar or something.
Yet for all the new stores that had popped up, there were still traces of the Royal he remembered. The convenience store with its dusty windows and the cracked glass door. The sleazy sex shop with its lurid pink lighting and mannequins wearing naughty nurse outfits and rubber fetish gear. Gino’s, the rundown, seedy bar they’d all used to try not to get carded in.
Jesus, this place. He’d hated it back then. Felt suffocated by the smallness of it. The narrowness of the world all the inhabitants lived in and the poverty of their lives. He’d dreamt of getting out, going somewhere clean and bright, where there weren’t drug dealers hanging out on street corners and spent needles in the gutters. Where you weren’t in danger of getting knifed if you had to go out after the sun had gone down.
Those days of dreams were gone.
After two years of silence from Rachel, Levi’s father had died. Then Mace and his gang had caught Levi alone in the prison library and beat him half to death. And when he’d woken up in the infirmary, in agony, his dreams of escape in ruins, he’d seen those dreams suddenly for what they were. Childish. Futile. Fragile.
In that moment he’d known. Dreams were for children, and he wasn’t a child any longer. Only action mattered. Only action was hard and concrete and certain.
So he’d taken the money he’d earned while working for Gideon, plus a nice fat and very unexpected life insurance payout from an old policy his dad had taken out years before, and through some third parties Levi had started investing it.
Then he’d earned himself a business degree.
Then he’d started investigating Royal Road, studying the neighborhood, looking at all the businesses currently operating there and buying up as many of the abandoned buildings as he could afford.
Escape was for cowards and dreamers, and he was neither.
He didn’t need to find a better place. He’d make one. Starting with Royal. All it would take was money and determination, and he had both of those things in abundance.
He was going to make his dreams a fucking reality.
And that included Rachel.
He let out a breath, resisting the urge to take a glance at the building behind him, the one with the neon Sugar Ink sign in the window.
Gideon had told him all about her tattoo studio, and when Levi had realized the building housing it had been abandoned, he’d bought it just in case he needed the leverage.
Fuck, he could still taste her, still feel the imprint of her lips on his. It made the blood pound in his veins and his cock get hard. Made him feel like he was half drunk. Softness and heat and woman . . . everything he’d been missing for so long. God, he was so hungry.
Maybe that had been a mistake, to kiss her, but he’d wanted to test himself—test her too. She’d been all rigid at first, and then her mouth had opened under his as if she’d been as desperate for him as he was for her....
He shook himself, pushed the thoughts away. Then he turned and started heading back toward Gideon’s, putting distance between himself and her because otherwise he’d be going back into that studio and bending her over the metal counter before either of them had a chance to breathe. And there was no way he was going to do that.
Finally he had some power, which meant all of this was going to happen exactly when and exactly how he wanted. He’d been at other people’s mercy for most of the last decade. The last thing he wanted to be was at the mercy of his own damn body.
Back in the garage, he found Gideon under the Cadillac that had been up on a hoist, doing something to the car’s exhaust, judging by the crunching metal sounds coming from beneath it.
Levi didn’t say anything, just waited until Gideon finally rolled out from under the car. He was holding a wrench in one oil-stained hand, and there was a pissed look on his face.
Levi knew why Gideon was pissed. Pity Levi didn’t give a fuck. “It’s between Rachel and me, like I told you,” he said before Gideon could utter a word. “I wanted to get a few things straight.”
Gideon put the wrench on the ground and got to his feet, leaning back against the Caddy, his arms folded. He was silent a long moment, his gaze unreadable. “You okay?” he asked finally.
It wasn’t what Levi was expecting. “Why? Do I not look okay?”
“You look . . . different.”
“What do you expect? I only just got out of jail.”
Gideon frowned. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
Yeah, Levi did know it. Gideon had been a friend for a long time, ever since Levi had met him in the Royal Road Outreach Center one night after Levi’s father had fallen off the wagon yet again. Levi had needed to get out, just get away, and there hadn’t been many places a teenager could go except the center. Gideon had been there playing pool, a silent figure seemingly much older. He hadn’t said a word to Levi, had just handed him a pool cue, and they’d gone from there. He’d even let Levi hustle twenty bucks out of him.
Levi pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. It was still weird to be wearing normal clothes and not a prison jumpsuit. “Yes, I’m okay,” he said flatly, because Gideon was a friend and the guy had stayed loyal all these years since. They all had.
Except Rachel.
Yeah, except for her.
Gideon shifted against the metal of the car. “I know you’re going to need some time to adjust and—”
“I don’t need any time to adjust,” Levi cut him off, an unexpected and unwelcome discomfort sitting in his gut. He hadn’t told Gideon about his development plan for the neighborhood, mainly because Levi knew how protective of Royal Gideon was. The guy was deeply distrustful of the gentrification process and didn’t want anyone messing with “his” neighborhood.
Sure, Gideon had wanted to get the lowlifes out of Royal just as much as Levi did, but Gideon’s vision was limited. He didn’t seem to understand how important it was to make the neighborhood grow and thrive. Safer was good, but now Royal needed to attract more people. People with money to spend. And the businesses where those people could spend that money.
Gideon was content with the rundown neighborhood the way it was, but Levi wasn’t. He was going to make things happen; he was going to make things change. Gideon wouldn’t be happy about that, but too bad.
Gideon’s expression darkened at the interruption, his gaze narrowing. “What’s up, Levi? You got something you want to say?”
He should tell his friend, especially about his arrangement with the Ryan Group, the investment company his lawyer had hooked him up with. Jason Ryan would be meeting with Levi and looking over Levi’s plans. Levi was going to take him on a tour around the neighborhood and show him the area’s potential. By the time Levi had finished, he was going to have the guy showering him in cash.
Oh yeah, Gideon’s going to be super fucking impressed with you.
As in not. But Gideon was just going to have to suck it up.
“A few things.” Levi held the other man’s gaze. “I should have told you earlier, but I don’t need a place to stay, and I don’t need a job.”
Surprise flickered over Gideon’s rough, blunt features. “What? But I thought that was a done deal. You were going to help me here in the garage and stay on the couch until you got yourself a new place.”
Yeah, he really should have told Gideon earlier. But he hadn’t. Mostly because Gideon had been so pleased to help him out, and Levi hadn’t wanted to seem ungrateful. “Thanks for the offer,” he said. “But I’ve already got that shit sorted out.”
Gideon stared at him. “Such as?”
Levi debated a moment on what to tell him. Not the whole plan quite yet, since he was still sorting out the details himself and needed to get the final agreement from Ryan, but he could tell Gideon a little.
“I have a place in a building a c
ouple of blocks away. Got it while I was inside.” As in he’d bought the entire building, had the top floor gutted and remodeled into an apartment, with plans for more apartments in the rest of the building.
Gideon shifted against the car. “Uh huh. What about a job?”
“I’ve got a few contacts looking into opportunities for me.” It was the closest he could come to the truth without actually telling Gideon. “And until I get an answer, I have some money I had stashed away before I got locked up.”
Gideon raised a brow. “Opportunities, huh? And what opportunities are these, Levi?”
Irritation twisted in Levi’s gut at the implications in the other man’s tone. “What do you mean by that? They’re all entirely legal, Gideon. If that’s what you mean.”
There was a silent tension gathering between them.
Then abruptly, Gideon sighed. “I’m not implying anything. If that’s what you want to do, by all means do it. I was just hoping you’d stay here a while and help out in the garage. I need another mechanic.”
Levi’s irritation eased. Christ, he really needed to not be such a touchy bastard. It was hard though, to remember how to trust people. Especially after so long being among people you couldn’t. Where you couldn’t afford to be weak, not even for a moment.
He tried to relax the tense muscles of his shoulders, rolling them surreptitiously. “What about Zee? Wasn’t he working with you?”
Something in Gideon’s face changed, a wry amusement flickering in his eyes. “Zee’s been expanding his gym and working with the outreach center. He hasn’t got time these days, and certainly not now that Tamara’s moved in.”
“Oh? That society chick?”
“Yeah.” Gideon pushed himself away from the car. “You can meet her tonight. We’ve got a little welcome home party planned.”
A flicker of regret shot through Levi. It would have been good to catch up with everyone, but he’d already decided what he was going to do tonight, and it didn’t include a party. “Sorry. I’ve already got plans.”
Wrong for Me Page 4