by Sam Mariano
“I know you started out using me, but don’t try to tell me all of it was fake. You wouldn’t be standing here in this hallway if you didn’t like me at least a little bit.”
“Keeping an eye on you is me protecting Rafe’s interests.”
Her eyes narrow, like she’s had about enough of my bullshit. “Oh yeah? Was eating me out protecting Rafe’s interests? How about shoving your dick down my throat?”
Damn, she’s got me there. Instead of saying that, I respond like the asshole I am. “Well, I don’t work for free. I had to get a cut of the profits, didn’t I?”
Laurel stares at me, but it doesn’t even piss her off. Somehow she deflects my taunts and barbs like they don’t bother her—which is odd, since I say them specifically to bother her. As if I’m some Romeo she still wants to run away with instead of the dickhead with the mean mouth, she asks, “Why won’t you even consider Chicago?”
“You are having Rafe’s baby,” I say slowly, since she can’t seem to get it through her stubborn head.
“You said that didn’t matter to you.”
“He is not going to let you go to Chicago. He’s damn sure not going to let me go to Chicago with you. There is no chance of any of this happening. Get your head out of the clouds and focus on what you can have. It’s not me. It’s never been me. Nothing has changed.”
Futile anger burns in her big blue eyes now. “You drive me crazy. You’re a liar and I want to punch you in the face.”
Turning my face slightly and patting my cheek, I tell her, “Go ahead. If the slap made you feel better, a good right hook may get you the rest of the way.”
Sighing and slouching back against the wall, she scowls at me. “Don’t tempt me.”
Since she clearly needs a firm hand to push her in the right direction, I offer mine. “Now, you say you’re giving Rafe a chance, but this Chicago plan is clearly not something you just pulled out of thin air. Stop wasting your time on me. You and me can’t happen. It’s not in the cards.”
“Fuck the cards,” she returns, folding her arms across her chest defensively. “Fuck the dealer. Fuck the deck. Fuck the whole game.”
She can be as mad about it as she wants, but it is what it is. She can’t force me into a relationship and she can’t see inside my head, so let her think it’s easy for me. Maybe she does need to hate me. I’m not quite ready to push her there yet, but as stubborn as she’s being, I might have to. I’ll give her a little more time, see if she can get over it on her own.
I’m a permanent fixture in her life if she and Rafe are together, so I really don’t want her to loathe me to the point of discomfort when I’m around. That’s going to make my life harder. It’s going to make Rafe push me away, maybe give his favor to someone else. I should be next in line for a promotion—I was before Laurel—but not if things don’t settle down between us.
This girl is fucking up my whole life.
“Give Rafe a chance,” I tell her. “You liked him before you met me, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.” She looks me dead in the eye. “But then I met you.”
I’m not going to go around in circles with her—I can’t. Whether Rafe comes after us or he doesn’t, I know without a doubt he’s watching and noting every second we’re both gone. “I can’t do this with you right now, okay? I can’t do this with you at all. We aren’t exes. We weren’t together. Get over it.”
Her whole being stiffens, her eyes dimming with hurt. It stings me, too, but fuck, what am I supposed to do? I need her to move on and get past this shit. If she does, I will. Rafe will get over it, our relationship will recover, and someday this will be something none of us even thinks about anymore. Almost like it never even happened.
“I should want him to kill you,” she mutters, shaking her head and moving down the wall until she has enough distance to storm away from me.
I almost let her, then her words—and her inflection—hit me. My hand shoots out and I grab her arm, dragging her little ass back against me. “What was that?”
She catches her breath, but doesn’t speak.
“What did that mean, Laurel?” I press. “Did Rafe say something to you?”
“Oh, now you want to talk to me,” she says knowingly. “Fuck you, Sin.”
This is not the fucking time for games. I’m not Rafe, I don’t get a kick out of her shit, so instead of playing that game, I play my own. I push her against the wall—not hard enough to hurt, just to remind her who’s boss—and soak up the sound of her startled gasp. My body follows, my chest pressing against her back.
“Is that how you talk to me?” I murmur, close to her ear.
I hear her swallow, hear her suck in a shallow breath. I don’t know if she’s afraid or turned on. There’s not a huge difference. It makes me hard either way. Laurel gasps again as I push my cock against her pretty little ass so she knows it.
Keeping one hand on her shoulder, I let the other drift down just above her knee, then I trail a hand up the back of her thigh, catching her dress and dragging it up, too. Laurel’s head dips back like she’s going to let it fall against my shoulder, but she catches herself.
“Now, I asked you a question,” I tell her, releasing the hem of her dress and skimming her ass with my hand.
A little breathlessly, she tells me, “You are the absolute worst, aren’t you?”
Smiling faintly, I run my lips along the shell of her ear. “Don’t act like you’re surprised.”
“I know you’re using me this time. This won’t work now,” she tells me.
“No?” I run my hand over her ass again, this time giving it a firm squeeze. “So if I put my fingers between these pretty little legs, you won’t be wet for me?”
With relish, she tells me, “If you put your fingers between these pretty little legs, I’ll tell Rafe.”
“Liar.”
“I could tell him to kill you, you know.” She can’t see my face, but my eyebrows rise in surprise at her casual threat. “You think you have all the power, but guess what? I have some, too. I don’t have to protect you. You certainly don’t care about hurting me, so I shouldn’t care if you get hurt. You’re probably just an unhealthy addiction and I should take my meds.”
Not sure I like how casually she’s referring to my death as the solution to all her problems. This isn’t going quite the way I thought it would. It was easy as hell to turn her into something soft and pliable with sex in my bedroom, but I guess now that I’ve hurt her, she has a line of defense against me.
I fucking hate that, and not just because it makes her harder to bend. I don’t like it because even if I deserve it, I don’t want her to have a line of defense against me. I want her open. When it comes to Laurel, I’m greedy as hell and I want full access.
I guess that’s unfair. Impossible. I can’t have full access to her if I want her to move on with someone else. I don’t want her to move on with him, it’s just what needs to happen.
I shouldn’t draw her deeper into my web, but I also don’t want to die. If Rafe has said something to her, I need to know. As it is, I know I need to watch my back, but that sounded specific. If he’s already made up his mind to get rid of me, that’s information I damn sure don’t have. If he hasn’t, I don’t want to jump to that conclusion. I need information, and I can’t use my usual methods of information retrieval on Laurel.
Locking an arm around her waist, I pull her back against my body. I drag my other hand down the column of her throat, trail my fingers lightly over her exposed collar bone, then grab one of her breasts like it belongs to me and squeeze. Laurel gasps, and that time her head lolls back against my shoulder. I have her, I just have to keep her. I massage her other breast and bend my head to murmur in her ear, “You want me to fuck you, don’t you? I can’t fuck you if I’m dead.”
“You’re not going to fuck me if you’re alive either,” she mutters at me with her eyes closed. “You’re just a terrible tease.”
Can’t argue that. “Tell m
e what Rafe said.”
“He said you’re an asshole.”
I crack a smile, then nibble on her earlobe.
Sighing with pleasure or defeat, I’m not sure which, Laurel says, “I can’t tell you. I don’t want him to get hurt, either. I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t guess. He’s keeping an eye on the situation.”
I release her earlobe, rubbing her nipples through the dress. “Which situation?”
“He wants me to get over you.” Opening her eyes, she looks up at me. “I haven’t had sex with him.”
Something inside me drops. “What?”
“I mean, since… Obviously I slept with him over Easter, but since I met you, I haven’t. I didn’t sleep with him last night.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not ready,” she states.
I try not to feel too pleased as she leans against me, letting me toy with her body, and tells me she’s not ready to fuck someone else—especially Rafe. He has a way of drawing in women, making them want him even when they shouldn’t. This one should want him, but she wants me instead.
“But it’s a problem,” she adds. “He knows the reason I don’t want to sleep with him is because of you, and he doesn’t like it.”
“Well, sure.”
She hesitates. Her gaze drops. Now she’s thinking about whatever it is he said to her. “So, while I could try the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ approach and just pretend to be, it’s not that simple. In order to convince him I’m over you, it’s not enough that I can be around you…”
I nod my understanding. “You have to sleep with him.”
“I think he knows I could fake him out otherwise,” she murmurs.
“Could you? You’re not a great liar.”
“I can lie if I have time to prepare myself, I just can’t lie on the spot—and I can’t always lie to Carly even with prep time. It’s like lying to your mom.”
“I lied to my mom,” I offer.
“Well, you and I are very different people,” she points out, dryly.
Smiling faintly, I say, “That’s right, you’re a good girl, aren’t you?”
Some of the vulnerability I wanted appears in her eyes. “I’m not being very good right now.”
“Sure you are.” She’s just my good girl, not his. I won’t torture her by saying that. In fact, now that I know he hasn’t told her directly he’s going to take my ass out, I need to get her back on track. “Did he give you a time frame?”
“He said a few days. He was a jerk about it. Taunted me about my four day love affair.”
“Well, he wasn’t there.”
Her eyes spark, and I realize immediately I shouldn’t have said that. I all but admitted there was more to those few days than he could understand.
Brushing past that, I ask, “What did he say happens if you don’t get over me in the next few days?”
Dread fills her eyes, verifying my concerns. She keeps her mouth shut though, not wanting to answer me. Not wanting to sic me on him. I don’t fucking like it. I don’t want her feeling the drive to protect anyone from me—especially him. Her loyalty has to belong to me—all of it. I’m a greedy bastard; there can’t be any left for Rafe.
Which I realize is a problem since I’m pushing her to be with him, but I don’t fucking care. It doesn’t have to make sense; it’s just what I want.
I stop caressing her breast and let my hand drift down her torso. I run my hand over her still-flat tummy, and don’t stop until my palm is cupping her hot pussy.
Her voice is strained, her control a delusion. Whether that changes or it doesn’t, right now Laurel Price still belongs to me. I could fuck her right here against this wall if I wanted to. I could make her beg me to do it.
Fuck, do I want to.
Good thing one of us has some control.
Rubbing her pussy, supporting her weight as she floats helplessly into my depths, I assure her, “I’ll figure something out, okay?”
“What does that mean?” she murmurs.
“I’ll buy you more time. You do need to give him a chance, but I don’t want you to fuck him because you’re worried about me. It needs to be in your time or you’ll resent him.”
Sighing, she tells me, “This is a weird conversation to be having when you’re touching me like this.”
“Let’s not hate each other,” I murmur against the side of her face. “Let’s be friends.”
She moves her hips, rocking her pussy in my hand, wanting me to do more than rub her. Wanting me inside her. My cock hurts, it’s so fucking hard. There’s nothing in the world I want more than to give her what she needs, to spread those long legs of hers and bury my cock inside her.
“I don’t think Rafe would approve of this kind of friendship,” she tells me.
“Probably not,” I agree, inching my finger up under the fabric of her panties.
“Oh, God, Sin.” She reaches back and winds an arm around my neck, trying to pull herself even closer to me.
I’m so fucking tempted to at least finger fuck her right now, but that’s probably not the foot we should start out on. If Rafe did walk back here right now, he’d have to shoot me in the back of the fucking head. I wouldn’t even be able to blame him; I’d do the same thing.
I don’t want to leave her hot and bothered, but I can’t get her off, either. Letting my hand drift away from her core and up to her waist, I yank her close and murmur in her ear. “Go in the bathroom. Get yourself off. Think of me while you do.”
The yearning is clear in her voice; she doesn’t want to get herself off, she wants me to do it. “Sin…”
I hold onto her and guide her upright until I can let go without her falling. She still looks a little lost. I feel bad about it, but those fucking plump lips of her in a light pout are pure torture. My cock throbs, begging me to abandon reason, get her on her knees, and push between those pretty lips so I can find some relief.
There’s a reason I don’t let my cock run the show; it’s a stupid fucking thing that wants to get me killed.
Smacking her on the ass, I nod to the bathroom. “Go.”
She takes a couple reluctant steps forward, but looks back at me over her shoulder, her big blue eyes conflicted. I lift an expectant eyebrow, my features unbending. She knows I expect her to listen, and even though she wants more, she obeys me.
Once she’s in the bathroom, I consider going into the other one and relieving my own fucking ache, but I can’t. I need to get my ass back to the table. Since I probably shouldn’t show up with a massive hard-on, I do my best to kill it while I walk back, but it’s a struggle. Like Laurel, my mind doesn’t want to obey; it wants me to follow her into the bathroom. It wants me to shove open whichever stall she’s in and catch her playing with herself, to lick the sweetness off her fingers and shove my cock inside her instead. It tells me we’re both so turned on it wouldn’t even take long. I could bury myself inside her hungry little body and no one would even have to know it happened. In my mind, I see her helpless with wanting as I batter the walls of her welcoming pussy, as I leave my mark on her so no matter who she goes home with, I’m the one she’ll always think about. Her hot, desperate cries would echo off the tiled walls and she’d come for me fast and hard, her sweet pussy squeezing me as her body shuddered with pleasure. My relief couldn’t be far behind that sexy fucking show.
Great. My mind and my dick both want to get me killed.
I can’t tell if I’m more alarmed or relieved when I get back to the table and Rafe isn’t there. My steps slow before I approach and I sweep the room. It’s a paranoid move, and I don’t know why; Rafe would never attack me out in the open like this. He’s not a fucking idiot. We do our dirty work in the shadows; our public behavior has to rise above shit like that if we want to stay under the radar. Flying off the handle over private matters would bite us in the ass, and anyone dumb enough not to know that gets killed off before long. Can’t have liabilities like that in our crew. This family hasn’t survived fou
r generations of rule by being sloppy and careless.
Women sometimes cause waves, though. It’s always been the case, and it seems like it always will be.
“Where’d Rafe go?” I ask Lydia, since she’s the only one at the table.
Rolling her eyes, she indicates over by the bouncer. “He and Gio are having a word with the bouncer about letting whores in when they’re here with the wives.” Her lips curve up with a cynical little smile. “He should know better, right?”
Don’t really know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. I’m careful not to be more than a distant acquaintance to the wives of the men I work for; makes it easier to mind my own business when it comes to their messy personal lives. Rafe’s should have been the ultimate relationship to keep my nose out of, but I can already see that’s not going to work. What am I supposed to do if he does try some shady shit like Gio? It’s hardly a secret that while Lydia is the one here tonight, this weekend it’ll be his girlfriend, Carla. Even Lydia probably knows, but as long as she holds her tongue, she can pretend it’s not true.
Rafe is far less used to monogamy than Gio, and especially if Laurel resists him too long now that he has her, what if she does lose his interest? It’s hard for me to imagine anyone ever losing interest in Laurel—I sure as hell can’t stop thinking about her—but then I’ve always been a one-woman man. Some of the other guys are known for keeping their wives and families in one corner, then having a little something extra on the side. They seem to think it’s their right, and sure, I think they’re assholes, but I don’t care when it’s them.
There’s not a chance in hell I would let Rafe stray on Laurel, and it’s not my business. As long as he covers all his bases and takes care of shit, his relationship is his own deal—or it should be.
My gaze drifts to Laurel’s empty seat, and I’m hit with fierce dread that I’ve irrevocably fucked things up here. Even once she gets over me and moves on with him, even if she’s never mine again, I’m too invested in her. Instead of keeping my distance and keeping my nose in my own business, I buried it in her pussy.
This can’t end well.