Liar

by Zahra Girard

  It hits that spot inside her and the gasp that bursts from her lips is delicious.

  I’m focused on her. Just her. And it is incredible.

  “So, boss, are you convinced?” I ask, before putting my lips back on her sex.

  “Keep going. Don’t stop. Please,” she practically shouts.

  I chuckle, and part of me wants to tease her some more, but it’s like she reads my mind and she clamps her legs so tight around my face I feel my jaw pop.

  “Don’t even think about stopping,” she repeats.

  “Yes, boss,” I murmur, my face full of her.

  Licking, sucking, stroking, I pull her closer to climax. I listen to her breathing and her body. I want this to be perfect for her.

  She curls up tight, her whole body flexing and tightening as she reaches her peak.

  I watch, eyes on hers, as she unfurls, groaning as tremors shake her. Seconds pass and the shaking subsides and her thighs release my face.

  I kiss her once more between the legs, smiling as she shivers at the touch.

  She’s beautiful in a way that’s unlike any other woman I’ve ever been with.

  “Convinced?” I say, blasting a grin so wide my cheeks hurt.

  She sits up. Goosebumps cover her chest and her pupils are wide and bright.

  Her tongue darts out for a second, tracing a line around her lips.

  “That’s a good start,” she says between breaths. “But we’re not done yet.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Stephanie

  He towers over me, moonlight glistening on his smile, black-ink shadows criss-crossing his muscular chest.

  My body is humming. Every part of me is running a million miles a minute.

  Somehow, I convince my thrumming body to sit up.

  I look at him — that smile on his face is so sexy, so confident, like he knows he just gave me the best orgasm of my life — and I lick my lips.

  “That's a good start, but we’re not done yet,” I say.

  His smile gets wider.

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  Those words send a frisson of excitement simmering up my spine and vibrations surging to my fingertips and toes. My body feels electric — every part of me attune to his touch.

  Fingers working slowly, he unhooks his pants and I watch, rapt, as he removes them.

  He’s mouth-wateringly hard and his boxers do nothing to hide just how big he is. His abs and pecs flex as he slides them off and all I can do is stare at just what a marvel of masculine hardness he is.

  Every part of him looks like it’s been battered and shaped to be harder than steel. Slabs of muscle cover his perfect body. A powerful chest, built arms, and that ‘v’ just above his hips that points down to his big, throbbing cock.

  Surprising myself, I impulsively move forward and, even though my hands are still tied, I try and take hold of him.

  “I want you,” I say, over and over again.

  I need to feel him inside me.

  I want to experience every part of this man who makes me feel so brave, who takes my cares off my shoulders and makes my world so much better.

  I’m not even halfway up before he takes my wrists.

  “Nuh-uh,” he chides me. “That’s now how this negotiation works. In business, you don’t give up an advantage once you’ve got it.”

  He pins me back down.

  “Now be good.”

  The world seems to go in slow motion. I lay there, body on fire, while he takes his time. Just the brush of his cock against my aching pussy is enough to make me jolt like I’ve been set on fire. I’m still so sensitive from earlier — almost painfully so — but I want this.

  I feel alive again; I feel passion and heat and excitement — emotions that I’d all thought were dead.

  When he finally takes me, my eyes shut, my lips part, and a low moan escapes.

  I can’t help it. I say his name again and again, like a prayer.

  “Luca.”

  I wrap my legs around him. I don’t want this to end.

  I can feel every part of him — the heat of his body against mine, the heat of his cock pulsing inside me, his muscles holding me exactly where he wants me — and I feel so alive.

  Eyes open again, I look at him, watching his toned body move in rhythm, flexing and thrusting into me. The tattoos on his body just set off his muscles, highlighting how defined and powerful he is.

  “You feel fucking incredible,” he says, looking down at me.

  He comes in for a kiss.

  “You’re even more beautiful than I imagined. Just thinking about you makes me hard… Fucking you is just out of this world.”

  “So, how much ‘imagining’ about me did you do? Did you touch yourself thinking about me?”

  I never talk dirty, but this man makes me want to. I want to talk dirty to him just to hear him reply, just to hear the way every filthy phrase rolls off his tongue.

  “I couldn’t get to sleep at night without stroking my cock, thinking about how it would feel to thrust deep inside you. Thinking about your warm, tight little pussy wrapped around my cock.”

  “Is it as good as you imagined?”

  “Better.”

  He thrusts deep, hard, and I shut my lips and gasp. “Holy shit.”

  I’m coasting on this wave of pleasure and it is carrying me higher and higher, pushed on my Luca’s passion and intensity. Every push, every moan that escapes his lips as he fucks me deeper, every brush of his fingers on my body, it all lifts me up.

  “I need you. I need you like I never thought possible.”

  Tattoos shift, muscles upon muscles tense and release, and his hot breath brushes my cheek as he leans down to whisper in my ear. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  The tone of his voice, the fierceness in his eyes — He’s not lying.

  I crest again, riding so blissfully high that my body breaks in ecstasy.

  Shouting, thrashing, my sex clamping around his stiff cock, I come again.

  I’m in heaven.

  “I want you, I want to feel you cum,” I gasp as soon as my brain starts working again.

  “Soon, bella,” he practically purrs into my ear.

  He sits up and pulls out and I gasp at the sensation, like my body hates his absence.

  “I want to fuck you from behind. I need to see that beautiful ass of yours,” he growls, grabbing my hips and flipping me over.

  I don’t get a say in it.

  He takes me and I love it.

  Arching my back, rising to my knees and pressing my face flat against he bed, I give him what he wants and I grit my teeth as he takes it.

  Hard, deep, I feel the full length of him.

  Pain, pleasure, ride hand in hand.

  My body shakes with each thrust, his powerful hips and thighs smacking me from behind as he fills me with every last inch of him.

  “You are so beautiful, bella,” he mutters, and I feel myself blush, embarrassed almost, at how this handsome man seems so enthralled by me.

  I don’t hear a hint of a lie in his voice.

  He really thinks I’m that beautiful.

  I’m smiling, and I manage to raise myself up a bit with my bound hands and I start pushing back against him, echoing his thrusts.

  “Holy fucking shit, you’re good,” he moans.

  He cracks me on the ass and I thrust back into him harder, faster. His cock tenses and his fingers grip my hips, hard.

  I want him to feel good.

  I want to feel him release.

  “I want you to come,” I whisper at him. “I want it.”

  I can see him out of the corner of my eye when I look over my shoulder. Eyes half open, jaw set, sweat and ink and scars, every bit of him is into this, every bit of him is focused on enjoying me, enjoying us.

  “Give it to me.”

  “I can’t hold — fuck, Stephanie, you’re beautiful —” his voice cuts short.

  He loses himself, all of h
imself, inside me.

  I feel it: every shake, every tremor, every bit of him letting go.

  Luca is shaking, fingers digging in to my hips, holding me tight and still. I rock my hips a bit, moving them just so to coax out every last bit of him.

  We stay like that while the tremors subside and I relish the moment, relish feeling him so close to me, relish feeling this connection between us.

  Heaving a great sigh, he lays down beside me and suddenly I realize just how tired and spent I am.

  I am exhausted.

  Exhausted and happy and relaxed beyond words.

  “So, bella, what about it? Did I earn my raise?” he says, his voice a deep chuckle.

  I move to hold him and we wrap ourselves up in each other.

  I look up at him, my head resting on his chest.

  “It’s a start,” I say, but I can’t hold back the goofy smile on my face. “A good start. But I think there’s more negotiations in our future.”

  I’ve finally found a man I can open up to, someone who makes me feel stronger just by being vulnerable and open to them about my doubts and fears. Someone who’s honest about who they are, someone who’s honest about their rough edges and their scars. Someone I can trust.

  Life just might be getting better.

  I shut my eyes and drift off. For the first time in ages, I’m not afraid of the dark.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Luca

  My eyes shoot open at the first crack of dawn.

  I’m grateful right now that waking up early is one of my habits.

  Though I was just in the deepest sleep I’ve had in a long time — courtesy of the world’s hottest boss, Stephanie — I was not prepared to bring someone home last night.

  Yeah, I’ve fantasized about fucking her, and now that’s it’s happened, I’ve learned my fantasies weren’t up to snuff about just how fucking sexy she would be, but I didn’t think it would be happening this soon.

  I slide out of bed, careful not to wake her.

  I’ve got a lot of work to do.

  A lot of guys, before they bring a woman home for the first time, they do what I call the ‘bachelor clean-up’. It’s where you do everything you can to make it look like you don’t live in a total dive. You want her to be thinking about how well you’re treating her, about the nice things you’re saying, and not worrying whether that three-foot high pile of dishes in the sink is home to a cockroach nest.

  While Stephanie’s sleeping, I do the same thing.

  Only, instead of cleaning up a mess, I’m cleaning up my image.

  There are things about me she can’t know about. Questions she can’t ask, because I can’t answer them, because if I tell her the truth, I know she’ll leave. Thankfully, a lot of those questionable things are in boxes shoved away in a back room because, even though I’ve been living in this place for months, I haven’t unpacked because why do all the work for what I know is going to be a lost cause.

  I’m glad she didn’t take a look around my place when we got in last night. Otherwise, she would’ve seen the Sig Sauer and the Glock that I’ve got sitting on my coffee table as a reminder to myself that I need to clean them.

  Like anyone will tell you, gun maintenance is a vital element in gun safety. And in making sure you don’t suffer an irritating misfire when you’re about to plant a slug in the back of someone’s skull.

  The pistols go in the back of the cabinet beneath my sink, hidden behind a bucket, some glass cleaner, and beneath some old rags. I take the combat knife I have sitting on my kitchen counter and stow it down there, too. I could probably explain the knife — a lot of guys have them and she works in a goddamn hardware store — but I can’t explain the bloodstains in the paracord-grip on the handle, or the sixteen tiny tickmarks on the side of the blade; one for each time this knife’s seen blood.

  Yeah, none of this is first date conversation stuff.

  It’s a part of my past that she’ll never have to find out about.

  Across the loft, she starts to stir, and I get busy doing kitchen stuff. Making coffee, looking like I’m going to throw breakfast together, that sort of thing.

  Then she starts snoring. It’s not a loud snore. But that quiet, contented half-snores that some women do when they’re deep in sleep.

  It’s cute as all hell.

  For once, she looks relaxed and at peace. The fear and fire that usually pushes her at the gym and at her job is gone.

  I take a second and just take in the look of her.

  She deserves the best. From life, and from me.

  She can’t find out about my past. She doesn’t deserve that kind of pain in her life.

  Having her in my life, seeing her smile, seeing her happy, being the kind of man she deserves. Maybe this is what I need. An extra bit of reason, of meaning, that tells me that building a new life isn’t just some empty bit of bullshit.

  Once I’m sure she’s still deep in sleep, I throw on last nights clothes and sneak out. Outside, even though the sun’s just up, I can smell the bakery across the street. The air is redolent with the scent of butter, yeast, flour, and other aromas that make my stomach growl.

  I don’t normally eat this kind of thing — I keep to a decent diet to stay in shape for my job — but, hell, I’m Italian and I can’t say that living next to a place that makes cornettos and ciambellos that are even better than my nonnas — though I’d never tell her that — didn’t factor into my decision to live here.

  The baker, Sal, and his wife Victoria, are bustling about the place when I walk in. Sal’s running back and forth from the oven to the counter, pulling pastries out and putting pastries in, his brown apron stretched over his big gut and practically dyed white with floured handprints. It matches what gray hair’s left on his head.

  Victoria’s fussing with the espresso machine with one hand, blasting steam all over the place as she tests it out, and drinking from a takeaway cup of coffee with the other.

  “Luca, good morning. It’s been way too long, I was starting to think you’d left the neighborhood,” she says as soon as she sees me.

  “I’d have to be dead to give up coming here, you know that,” I reply.

  “What’ll you have, Luca?” Sal calls out from the other side of the bakery while he pounds on a big ball of dough. “Got some albicocca crostata due to come out of the oven in a couple minutes. And some strawberry Viennoiserie, too. First strawberries of the season. They are so sweet, it’s almost unbelievable.”

  My stomach is rumbling at me. Sex always leaves me hungry the next morning.

  “I’ll take two of each. And a good few zeppole and cornettos, too.”

  Victoria’s ears practically perk up at my order. “Two of each?”

  I nod, and grin. “And two coffees, too.”

  She laughs and starts in on my order.

  “Luca, is there something we should know?”

  “Just that it’s a very good morning, Victoria,” I reply.

  “You lucky dog, I remember what those first lucky mornings were like,” Sal says, handing me a bag loaded with piping-hot pastries.

  Victoria shoots him a look that makes the room feel twenty degrees colder. “And what about now, Salvatore Maranzano?”

  “Of course, now every day is great. There’s nothing like being married, let me tell you,” he says, then gives me a wink when Victoria’s not looking.

  She rolls her eyes anyway. “Treat this one right, Luca,” she says, handing me a cardboard carrier with two coffees in it. “Who knows what kind of trouble you men would get into without women around to keep you in line.”

  “Oh, the world would be a terrible place, that’s for sure,” Sal pipes in. He sounds sarcastic, but even so, he wraps his wife in a big, floury hug and the two of them are grinning like high schoolers in the first weeks of a romance.

  “Don’t worry, Victoria,” I say, and then I pay and I get back to my apartment before Stephanie’s even opened her eyes.

  I set the
coffee and pastries down on the coffee table and take a second before I wake her up.

  When I moved out here to Arroyo Falls, I didn’t think I’d last. Hell, I knew I wouldn’t last. I loved what I did, and there’s a part of me that’s still got those same dark impulses, a part of me that’d have no problems picking up my guns again and really putting them to work.

  This all seemed like a fool’s errand. I’d give it a shot, I made a promise to my brother that I’d try and if there’s one person I can’t disappoint, it’s him, but all along I knew I’d end up slipping eventually.

  I know myself. I can be a real fucking asshole when it comes down to it.

  But now?

  It’s still going to be a war. And there will always be a dark corner that urges me to settle my problems with a few ounces of hot lead. That wants to feel the weight of a pistol in my hand and answer life’s challenges with the click of a trigger.

  But now I’ve got someone to fight for.

  Her.

  “Wake up, bella,” I whisper.

  She stirs and opens her eyes and looks up at me with this sleepy smile.

  “Good morning,” she says.

  She’s beautiful.

  She’s worth it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stephanie

  Coffee. Pastries. Sex.

  He woke me with all three.

  Best morning routine ever.

  I’m smiling wider than Sabrina as I step in the shop. Of course, she looks pretty rough after last night. Pale, glassy-eyed, she’s definitely hung-over.

  But even then, she manages a weak sing-song. “Good morning, Ms. Turner. Frank’s going to be in all day today.”

  “Good morning, Sabrina,” I reply to her in the same kind of sing-song.

  Today just gets better and better.

  I should be hung-over too, but I think the morning sex and the caffeine took care of it.

  I’m so used to waking up, gritting my teeth, and having to fight to get out of bed because I know that my day is going to be just another terrible day in a months-long string of terrible days, that I almost don’t know how to react this morning.

  Everything just feels good and warm and positive.