Not My Heart to Break (Merciless World Book 3)

by W. Winters

  The two of them barely let her get a word in as they talk, but she laughs—fuck, I can hear that sweet mirth all the way up here. Just like I can see the rosy flush in her cheeks when she agrees to take a shot with them. Just like I can see the dip in her throat that I used to lick when she throws back the shot of clear liquid.

  It’s been a year, but I swear I remember the way she tastes.

  It takes a minute before she asks them something. She rocks on her heels as she waits for an answer and both of the guys look around the first floor.

  It’s when they point to Derrick that the hate creeps in. That chill on my skin turns to ice and I decide I’m sick of waiting.

  She asked for Derrick. Not me.

  My eyes are trained on her as I make my way down the stairs. My jaw is set as it is, and I can’t change that fact for the world right now. Past the masses dancing on the floor, I make my way easily to where Derrick’s seated in a leather wingback chair on the far edge of the wall where security is located.

  A woman turns around, tall and slim, when I brush past her. I barely notice anything about her except the short red dress that clings to her curves. She smiles when she sees it’s me, her eyes hopeful but she quickly lowers her gaze and backs away.

  Maybe it’s the hate in my glare that told her I’m not in the mood for these games tonight.

  I’m barely contained, hardly capable of a single rational thought as that last moment I had with Laura runs through my mind. The past and the present swirl in front of me, hitting me harder and more forcefully than the strongest cocktail I could drown myself in.

  Laura plants a kiss on Derrick’s cheek... It’s short lived and her smile is sorrowful.

  The anger that carved itself into a glower relents and dims. Even a year isn’t enough time. There will never be enough time passed to make it better.

  Regret is my enemy. Guilt its friend.

  I’m standing there like a lion stalking his prey when Laura turns around, not looking where she’s going, brushing stray strands of hair from her face as she bumps right into me.

  “Sorry,” she quickly breathes, and then she looks at me. Her blue eyes have flecks of gold in them, and like a concoction of emotion they swirl as she stares at me. Her lips are slightly parted, and they stay like that. Open and waiting with disbelief.

  “Laura.” I say her name and feel the thrill of doing just that simmer in my blood.

  “Seth,” she whispers. Her shoulders drop slightly and then she covers herself, as if instantly cold.

  “I um, I had something to give Derrick,” she tells me, but her eyes don’t stay on me. They stray, unable to keep my gaze. I watch the cords in her neck tighten as she swallows; I can’t help but notice how her hands keep nervously playing with the hem of her shirt.

  “You afraid to see me, Babygirl?” I ask her lowly and that gets her attention. Those beautiful blues find mine and for a moment, I feel everything all over again.

  The undeniable lust, the tormented love, and finally, the loss. It all echoes in her doe eyes.

  “Should I be?” she asks me, her cadence caressing. Her teeth sink into her bottom lip as she holds her breath waiting for my response. That lip I used to nibble as she moaned my name. Lips that used to kiss me and only me.

  “You should leave.” I push out the words, feeling a wash of cold run over my flesh. It comes back in waves, but the loss takes so much with it.

  She swallows thickly with a nod and turns to leave without another word. Her thick hips sway and my gaze stays pinned to her until she disappears behind the double doors. She doesn’t look back.

  She never did.

  “You fucked up.” Derrick’s deep voice carries over the beat of the music. His eyes stay glued to the television that displays over eight feet of the white and blue bars of an equalizer, changing with the rhythm.

  It mocks me. The fact that everything in this place keeps moving, mocks me.

  He takes a swig from his beer bottle, not bothering to look at me.

  I have to close my eyes and breathe. Without her here, all that’s left is anger.

  I already know I fucked up. I take in a steadying breath as my teeth grind together.

  The music keeps going. The women keep laughing.

  My muscles twitch, consumed with a feeling of restlessness, the need to move, to do something.

  “We both fucked up.” Derrick’s remark makes me open my eyes. Slowly and with a loathing for all of this, for everything I’ve built since she’s been gone.

  “Boss,” Connor calls out, sliding a tumbler of whiskey over to me. I stare down at the glass, remembering everything. Watching it play out like a movie across the surface of the amber liquor.

  Rowan calls out, “Boss,” at the same time as someone else, but all I can picture is the night she left. The memory goes backward in time until I’m with her that morning, kissing her lips, feeling the dip of her waist. The voices around me lower in volume until I hear “Seth” instead.

  There’s never a minute. Never a quiet moment.

  If there was, none of that shit would have happened.

  I hear her tell me she loves me. I can practically feel her lips against the shell of my ear and the warmth that traveled down my shoulder that morning.

  I didn’t know I’d never feel that warmth again. I didn’t know. But I should have.

  It was all my fault.

  With the single bellow of a roar torn from deep in my chest, I throw the glass in my hand recklessly at the flat-screen TV. The glass shatters, falling like rain, crashing into the liquor bottles lining the bar.

  Connor and Rowan have to duck and cover their heads as I seethe, drawing in a breath and then another. I’d feel more remorse if she hadn’t spoken to them, laughed with them. I’d feel guilty if she hadn’t given her smiles to them so easily, when she didn’t have a damn thing to give me.

  I’m a bastard; I’ve always been a bastard.

  “Get out,” I say and my command ricochets in the large open space. Stunned faces stare back at me, the bar silent save for the occasional tinkling of glass shards. No one moves and that’s their mistake too.

  “Get the fuck out. We’re closed.” The low threat isn’t hidden and a sea of women in short dresses suddenly start moving. No one looks at me for more than a split second as the patrons grab their shit and head for the door.

  My crew stays where they are, their eyes on me. All but Derrick. He doesn’t look at me. He takes a swig and stares at the broken TV as if it’s still a visual for the nonexistent music. Even as Connor and Roman ask me if I’m all right, I watch him staring blankly at the broken glass.

  “If you want to help me,” I begin as I finally look Roman in the eyes to answer him, feeling the rage subside but something else still lingers as I continue, “clean up this fucking mess.”

  The two men who are some of my best friends look at me with sympathy. I see it staring back at me in their eyes and it makes me grit my teeth. With the sound of my blood rushing through my ears, I grip the collar of Connor’s shirt and bring the steadily spoken, low threat to his attention as I say, “Don’t ever let her in here again.”

  Thirteen months prior

  Seth

  My cock is stiff in the matter of a half second watching Laura do a feline stretch on my bed. The mattress protests with a groan until she settles down cross-legged and lays the book she’s been studying in her lap. It looks heavy and uncomfortable, but I know she’ll read it until she’s tired, taking notes on that bright green pad of paper. She’ll be tired enough that she stays, though. That’s all I want.

  “Why are you staring?” she asks and then taps the pen in her hand on the edge of the book. Once, twice, before looking up at me with a cocked brow. I was going to answer, but then she slips the end of the pen between her teeth.

  She laughs at my groan and then reprimands me. “You’re impossible.”

  “Maybe I just like seeing you on my bed,” I offer her.

  Even
with her tough-girl act, she smiles. “You’re cute.”

  The way she sways slightly, reveling in the small statement does something to me. It took years to get to this point. Years of me fighting and struggling to feel stable.

  Years of her by my side, carrying me along the way when I was too fucked in the head to see straight.

  She glances down at her book and then back up at me. “Are you just going to keep watching me read?” Her tone is playful, a little taunting. It makes me that much harder.

  I have to get out of here in thirty, meet the guys and tell them what’s going down. I have time to enjoy her though.

  I’ll always make time for that.

  “Lie down and spread your legs for me.” I give her the command and wait for her reaction.

  She bites down on her bottom lip, trying to contain her smile. Closing the hardback, she places it on the bedside table, scooting her glass to the side with the spine of the heavy anatomy textbook. “You like it, don’t you?” she asks as she shimmies her way down the bed.

  “Like what?” I ask her, feeling my cock twitch and not wasting another second to remove these jeans. I kick off the denim and pull my t-shirt over my head, noting how Laura’s gaze drops down my chest, then to my boxer briefs the moment the shirt isn’t in her way anymore.

  I don’t know if she does it on purpose or not, but the way she rocks her crossed legs from side to side on the bed, like she’s impatient for me… fuck, I’m too hard.

  “You like the dom thing?” she asks in a whisper and a blush sweeps up from her chest to her cheeks.

  She asked me to try it out a few months ago. I tell her what to do. She listens.

  “Fuck yeah I do.”

  I stare at her as I shove my briefs down. I love how she swallows when she sees my dick and her breathing gets deeper when I stroke myself.

  “You already wet?” I ask her, a little cockier than I should be. With a little nod she hums an “uh-huh” in that seductive drawl she gets when I’m playing with her.

  It takes a moment. It always does. Rocking in and out of her slowly, waiting for her to adjust, my skin is fire against hers as I rake my teeth up her slender neck. I can feel my warm breath in my face, followed by hers as I lazily kiss her. Taking my time, feeling her body writhe under mine. Her kiss is tender and sweet. Her nails dig into my shoulders, sending a slight pain that urges me to go in deeper. Once, twice, then her breath hitches, her doe eyes widen, and my name is a strangled moan in the air between us.

  “There it is,” I groan in her ear as she pushes her head back into the mattress. With each of my forearms pinned against her shoulders, I don’t give her an inch of movement. When I pick up my pace, slamming myself deeper inside of her, she has nowhere to go.

  “Take it, Babygirl,” I grit between my teeth as I fuck her harder, faster, mercilessly. Feeling her warmth wrap around my cock, she’s already screaming her pleasure in the crook of my neck.

  I pound into her, feeling her climax and reeling in the way her cunt pulses around my cock. She’s a damn good lover, urging me on and taking everything I have to give her.

  With the steady pounding of the headboard against the wall, I pick up my pace, feeling my own release coming.

  Not yet. I want her to cum again. I want to feel it all at least one more time.

  I slow down, repressing my urge, going against everything I want.

  And then I do it all over again.

  My heart’s racing and my blood ringing with adrenaline as I pick up my head to breathe when it’s all over. She whimpers when I pull myself out of her, that sound I can’t get enough of. Every sound she makes is like that. It’s everything.

  With her hair a messy halo and her eyes half lidded but still full of lust, she looks well fucked. She should always look just like this.

  Checking the clock, I only have five minutes, but Laura will give me shit if I don’t hold her for a minute. Her thighs shake when I clean her up.

  My exhale is easy as I get back into bed, listening to it creak as Laura sidles up next to me.

  It’s quiet for a moment. I kiss her hair. She told me once it’s what made her fall in love with me. When she was falling asleep, I kissed her hair. As if love is that easy.

  “You going to get another this year?” she asks me as her fingertips run down the length of one of the bands across my right bicep. I have a sleeve of tattoos running from my wrist up to my shoulder, but around my bicep are three thin bands with untouched flesh between them. One for each year I won’t ever forget. The first year, my mother died and the second, my father was murdered. The third year, I got revenge.

  “Another band?” I question her, feeling a crease settle between my brow just as she nestles into me with a soft sigh. Her eyes never leave the tattoo.

  “Yeah?” she asks.

  It’s been two years since my last tattoo. Because that’s how long we’ve been together. Maybe she doesn’t realize it’s been that long. I sure as hell do though. I didn’t get one last year. And I’m not planning on getting another.

  It was all before this. These past two years have felt like… like after. There’s no other way to describe it. She’s here; I have my crew. There are no more demons left to fight. It’s all just something I think of simply as after. “I think I might get something different,” I answer her.

  “You’re running out of room,” she humorously replies and looks up at me. Her pale blue eyes glimmer with affection. “Between the gears from your bike there might be a little space to put something.”

  A huff of a laugh leaves me and I settle back on the headboard, although the alarm clock tells me I’m already running late.

  “Maybe I’ll get something for you,” I suggest and watch how she pulls back slightly to get a better look at my face. Her disbelief makes me smirk.

  I grin as I whisper at the shell of her ear, “Don’t be too scared.”

  “Not scared,” she says, and pushes me away playfully as she answers. She still doesn’t know if I’m serious or not and I like it that way.

  Stretching my arms over my head, I roll out my shoulders and get out of bed. Grabbing my clothes, I get ready for tonight.

  She looks surprised that I’m getting dressed. Shit, I didn’t tell her. Sometimes she leaves when I’m gone, but damn do I want her to be here when I get back tonight.

  Zipping up my pants and buttoning them, I explain, “I have to go meet up with the boys. You staying here to study?”

  “Yeah, I really have to. If I do well, the advisor said I could apply to the nursing program and have a good shot.”

  “You will. You’ll ace that shit.”

  She offers me a small smile but doesn’t say anything. It’s not like either of us were good at school. There was too much shit going on. Too much real shit that took up everything we had.

  I get her insecurity, I understand it. But she’s with me. No more of that. “You’ll ace it, and then you’ll move in with me,” I tell her, as if saying it makes it an absolute.

  Laura’s eyes are silently warning me not to bring this up and she bites the inside of her cheek. I don’t push her; I don’t have time to fight about this again.

  Instead I pull my shirt down over my chest, lean over the bed, and give her a kiss. And then another with my hand spearing through her hair.

  “You go to school. Be a fine-ass nurse. I can take care of us. Your schooling and all that.”

  My words are meant to reassure her, but the bright light that’s always a constant in her eyes dims, as does her smile. She fights to keep it in place.

  “I know you don’t know how this is going to work. But I’ve got you. I’ve got us.”

  She’s quiet and that doubt is still there. She wants a certain life—a quiet, honest living with white picket fences—a different one from this, but her place is with me. She knows it, I know it, everyone does. “I’ll make sure you get everything you want. I promise,” I tell her, and my voice is resolute.

  “I love you
,” is all she responds. That, and a kiss that deepens then turns into more.

  I’m going to be so fucking late.

  Laura

  Every time I see this house, it hurts. The jingle of the keys and the sound of a car driving down the road behind me are all that I have to comfort me as I walk through the front door.

  When I was a kid, I loved the slate floors of my grandma’s house. I remember thinking the coffered ceilings were the kind of thing castles had. I remember rocking on the front porch swing and the thoughts I had of stealing Mr. Timms’s roses from next door. His front yard was always prettier than Grandma’s overgrown shrubs. She worked at the diner until the week she died. She didn’t have time to smell the roses, let alone tend to them in her small front yard.

  Whenever I’d pluck a few roses, Mr. Timms always knew it was me and Grandma would make me go over and apologize once he told her. Stubborn old man liked his garden.

  That was then. Seen through the eyes of a child. I know better now. It’s a run-down house on a busy street in an old city. To add salt to the wound, the roses next door are grown over with weeds even though Mr. Timms still lives there. This street was destined for failure. I didn’t know it back then, and I’m sure Grandma didn’t see it when she bought the place after her husband of two years ran off with someone else and never looked back, abandoning her and her only son.

  The train, the highways, the steel mill behind the development. It’s all undesirable. My grandmother watched the neighborhood change as she aged. She hated what this town became when the steel mill went out of business decades ago and half the people here didn’t have a job anymore.

  I still remember the roses though. And I’ll never take down that porch swing.

  Shutting the door behind me, I take in what’s left of her home. Half the furniture is gone since holding the last estate sale. I kept Grandma’s chair though. I had it refurbished for her when the chemo stole her energy. I don’t want to sit in the chair. I don’t want to move it either.