by Quinn, Cari
I sincerely hoped.
“This is your dog?”
The derision in her tone peeved me more than the hostile flash of her eyes. Hostility I could handle. Insulting Vey? Oh fuck no.
“Yes, this is Veyron. He usually has more manners, but he senses when he’s in the company of someone who lacks them.”
Much to my surprise, she grinned. Flat-out grinned.
“He’s so cute.” She rubbed her nose against Vey and one or both of them moaned with what sounded like pure delight. “Aren’t you, pretty boy? You don’t need a groomer. Not a beautiful boy like you.”
“Tell me that when I take him out for a walk and he manages to find the only puddle of mud in all of Brooklyn.”
“Pretty boys need to play, don’t they?” After she pressed a kiss to the spot between Vey’s eyes, he rolled over again, paws up, belly quivering.
I understood the feeling regarding Mia under normal circumstances. When she was making kissy-face with my dog? Hold me back.
“Get in here already,” I said gruffly, my knuckles going white where they gripped the door. “You’re letting in the cold air.”
It was a comment straight out of my mother’s mouth, and considering it was an interior hallway, there really wasn’t a ton of cold air to worry about. But I needed to get control of this situation somehow and if I didn’t do it from the jump, she’d launch her offensive first.
Either we were fighting or fucking. Forget a happy medium. I supposed we could always try having a conversation like semi-reasonable people, but from her steely-eyed expression as she rose, that conversation would not be occurring tonight.
“Come on, boy,” I said to Vey, checking my impatience when he chose to lean against Mia’s leg and stare up at her as if she’d turned into a human-sized Milk-Bone. “Inside.”
Both Mia and the dog ignored me until I pivoted away and stalked into the living room. My destination? The fucking bar, for a much needed fucking drink.
And this time, I went for my father’s choice of alcoholic lubrication. I just needed the burn in my gut. I didn’t care how I got it.
I splashed scotch into a short glass and tossed it back in two swallows, narrowing my eyes on the seascape print on the wall above the mantel. My mother had painted it for a nursery she’d only had for a short time, for my father’s unborn and cherished daughter. When I’d moved here, she’d fobbed it off on me though I’d always been a mountain hiking kind of guy. Beaches were for dudes who worked on their tans and ate granola out of plastic baggies. Guys like Slater. Me, I wanted the smell of pine and hard-packed dirt under my feet as I climbed the steepest grades. Sweat burning my eyes, my muscles cramping from use.
Screw coconut oil and a hammock.
And now I was thinking about the Adirondacks and stupid watercolor beach prints rather than acknowledging the soft snick of the door and the stare I could feel radiating through my shoulder blades.
Turning, I gestured with my glass. That I’d given in and gone for my father’s preferred poison only made my smile that much sharper. “Can I offer you a beverage? I have milk, beer, and a pricey selection of spirits. Perhaps you’d prefer a Perrier?” I didn’t have Perrier but I enjoyed her sneer.
“No need. This isn’t a friendly visit.”
“Of course it’s not.” I jerked my arm, and my heavy watch rolled around my wrist. “I get it. You’d rather have my blood. That’s all you want from me, isn’t it?”
A hint of apprehension slid into her gaze. My dark mood gloried in it.
“Is this a bad time, Fox?”
“Fucking Fox. That’s not my goddamn name.” I didn’t know why I was so furious. My parents’ visit hadn’t helped, but it was more than that. So much more. As my gaze zeroed in on her, I realized what part of the problem was.
She wasn’t wearing my jacket.
Why did I care? She’d been using it to keep warm, plain and simple. If she wanted to freeze to death in that thin piece of nothing instead, that was her choice. I couldn’t convince her to take care of herself.
“You must be cold.” And then I knew why she was there, with crystal-clear certainty. “This is about the gloves. She told you I bought them for you, and I sneaked in your room and—” I couldn’t finish.
Which made me sound like a creeper and a dick, because there was no damn reason for my voice to be so thick.
When she didn’t reply, I returned to the scotch. Amazingly enough, after it scalded through your throat lining it didn’t taste like warm piss anymore. Three sips in and I didn’t even care about the hangover I’d have during training tomorrow.
Fight week meant I’d be ramping it up for the next four days, with Friday off. Woo-frigging-hoo.
Training. That was my life. I was a fighter. An emotionless shell bred to break bones and create wounds.
No more, no less.
What had made me think sports medicine would be a good fit for me? I wanted to help people, had always wanted to, but I was no good at it. I hadn’t helped my mother get away from my father’s fists, and I couldn’t even help Mia find a little comfort.
She had one use for me. If I couldn’t hurt her, she wasn’t interested.
I tightened my fist, and the glass I held shattered. Just fucking exploded in my hand.
Blood spurted around the shards digging into my palm, opening up fissures that spider-walked over my skin. Instead of grabbing something to mop up the blood, I clenched my fingers and watched it squeeze out over my knuckles.
Mia’s gasp brought me out of my fog. She hurried forward and yanked down the sleeve of her hoodie, pressing it to my hand with surprising gentleness. I still didn’t open my fist, but just her touch steadied me.
“Open up, Fox,” she said through gritted teeth. “Tray.”
I did as she asked, and the pieces of glass I’d advertently driven farther into my hand fell to the floor. Along with a few more drops of red.
“God, what did you do?” She grabbed the nearest decanter on the bar and doused my hand in scotch before I could protest. Loudly. While sort of howling.
Holy mother of fucking hell, that hurt.
“Jesus, Mia, you ever hear of pouring scotch in the wound?”
Her brief look of horror morphed into a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-lip-twitch. “Thought that was salt?”
“Turns out scotch hurts worse. File that away in your book of torture tricks.”
I lifted my hand to my mouth, intent on lessening the sting, but she gripped my palm and carefully drew it away. She shocked me into silence by dragging my fingers between her lips. She sucked gently, lapping up the scotch and the blood trickling from the nearest cut. Erasing one pain and creating a whole new one that couldn’t be soothed with scotch or wet kisses delivered by a girl with eyes darker than the woods at twilight.
Woods at twilight? A couple days without sex—without Mia—had driven me stark raving mad.
“So the pale skin isn’t just incidental?” I tried futilely to swallow the cotton wool that had somehow embedded itself in my throat. I was pretty sure it had happened right about when Mia’s pale pink lips had slipped over the tips of my fingers and pulled. Each minute movement of her mouth throbbed through my cock.
I barely felt any wounds now. Blood? What blood? The fleeting pain had morphed into pleasure, drugging and sweet, making me lightheaded.
Could’ve been the platelet loss. Or it could’ve been the sense of impending doom because I was about to fall to my knees and beg for her to let me take her to bed. My bed.
“You’re a vampire.” The words tumbled out of me as her tongue snaked between my fingers and dipped over my knuckles. There wasn’t any blood in that particular spot, and she was taking little testing licks rather than sucking now at any rate. But a glow had stolen over her cheeks, lighting her up from within. That my blood had that effect on her was more reasonable than assuming she was enjoying…feasting on me.
Enjoying me, period.
While I stood there gawkin
g, she released me to unzip her hoodie and rip off the bottom strip of her T-shirt. Despite the fact that the fabric had nearly worn through, her easy strength made my mouth go dry. That cotton wool feeling migrated to my head as she pressed the fabric against my hand, applying just the right amount of pressure to slow the already lessening bleeding. She still didn’t speak.
If she was trying to break me with her silence, she wouldn’t have to work too hard. The rational part of my brain—assuming I still had one—was lying in shards on the floor with that glass.
Too bad I hadn’t broken the scotch decanter instead.
“Don’t want you to bleed all over the hardwood floor.” Her voice sounded distant, tinny. “Let’s get you in the bathroom so I can make sure there’s no glass embedded in the cuts.”
I let her lead me down the hall to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet, watching with dull eyes as she sorted through the medicine cabinet and pulled out supplies. Dealing with injuries was part of my business, so I had the full array of gauze and wraps and antiseptic. Finding tweezers was harder, so she eventually settled on a toothpick and lots of rubbing alcohol.
I only screamed five, maybe six, times.
Once she finished, she bandaged me up then leaned against the sink and gazed at me with those eyes that had seen so much yet still managed to look unflinchingly at whatever they faced. If only I could be that honest. That brave.
“My father thinks I’m a loser.”
She didn’t laugh at me for my rich boy trauma. Just waited. And watched.
“He never wanted me to fight. I was supposed to stay in pre-law at Cornell and then go into the family firm. When I dropped out, he wanted to disown me, but he wasn’t about to let his cronies see his son not doing well financially. Reflects badly on him, you see. So he dropped money in my bank account, offered me this apartment, and basically shut me out of his life other than the monthly visits my mother still insists on.”
“They were here tonight.” She pursed her mouth at my nod. “Explains the scotch. I thought you were a Harp kind of guy.”
For some reason, that made me laugh. “See, that’s the thing. They don’t care what I am. They gave me a purebred dog—a great fucking dog—and named him after a sports car. I wasn’t going to change his name after they’d called him that for a few days, but it’s not me. I’d get a mutt at the pound and name him Fred.”
She gripped the sink behind her and looked up at the ceiling as if it contained the answers to all the world’s questions. “And fighting is you?”
I had no reason to tell her the truth. It wasn’t her business. “No.” Another laugh racked my chest, jarring my hand and making it throb. “Fighting is so far from me that it’s in another zip code.”
“So why do you do it?”
“When you want respect, sometimes you pick dumb ways to get it. I wanted to be my own man.” I shrugged, feeling like the biggest tool who’d ever lived. Oh, yeah, so I got paid to bloody other guys’ faces. That made me awesome. “And I knew he’d hate it.”
“That’s not the only reason.” Her quiet certainty cut through the noise in my head. “You enjoyed it once.”
“Yeah,” I admitted reluctantly. “I did. It felt like vindication for a kid who’d been called pretty for way too long. The first time I broke my nose I deliberately waited to get it looked at, hoping it wouldn’t set right.” I shook my head. “I was fucked up back then. Still am.”
“You could’ve just phoned it in and whaled on guys however you could. But you studied the martial arts. You trained. It mattered.”
“Yeah, so what? It mattered then. It doesn’t anymore. I did what I set out to do, and my father still looks at me like the shit on the bottom of his shoe. I still—”
When I tightened my jaw and glanced away, she knelt between my knees and gripped my thighs. Her hands weren’t delicate. They could break things and did so with glee. And as it turned out, they could heal too. Her touch melted through denim and through skin and bone, easing the tension I’d become so used to carrying that I didn’t notice it anymore.
“Tray. Look at me.”
I looked. Something drew me to her in a way I didn’t understand. Before, I’d reassured myself by thinking that she aroused my rarely used protective instinct. Now she was trying to offer me comfort, though I knew she’d come over to my place to hand me my balls.
Again.
“You don’t want the gloves,” I said dismissively, eager for a change of topic. I wasn’t going to confession for anyone—especially not Mia, who only saw me as a means to an end. “I’ll return them.”
An emotion I couldn’t name flashed over her face, dulling the brief flare of hope in her eyes. For a moment, she’d been out of her head and in mine. With two careless statements meant to shove her away, I’d snuffed out that light.
Oh, yeah, I was a prince, all right. And I was about to prove it.
I lurched to my feet, my unexpected action nearly sending her back on her butt on the rug. Her super-quick reflexes kicked in and she rose, watching me warily.
My mood had shifted right back into anger after that temporary detour into self-pity. I wasn’t about to dwell on all that woe-is-me shit. Not when she was staring at me with wet lips and eyes like vats of dark chocolate surrounded by thick, tangled lashes. She made me into a poet and a heathen at the same time. I wanted to write goddamn sonnets to her fragile beauty and frightening strength, and at the same time, drag her to the floor and fuck her senseless.
It didn’t make sense. None of this did.
I stepped forward, deliberately getting in her face. She held her ground. Not shying away in any shape or form. Making me harder than I’d ever been.
“I want you. If you’re not prepared to deal with that, you need to leave.” In case she didn’t get the urgency of the situation, I shifted until she directed her attention beneath my waist. Something was throbbing again, and it wasn’t my hand. “Now.”
“You’re the one who said we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”
Her defiant tone coupled with her defensive pose worked as a one-two punch to my libido. Not that I needed much help. “You’ve said the same thing since day one. And you showed up at my door, not the other way around.” I cocked a brow, relying on machismo to cover up the fact that my muscles were quaking from the possibility she might walk. Again. “So which is it? In or out?”
She took my measure—actually, she stared at the outline of my cock through my jeans, and my cock didn’t mind—before lifting her shoulder. Clearly saying then do something about it.
Message received.
I bent and slid my arm under her butt, lifting her up and carting her toward the living room. My hand twinged at being called into service so soon, and I didn’t doubt I’d probably bleed right through her neat bandage, but I wasn’t about to let a little pain and gore slow me down. I had a very clear image in my head of where I wanted to take Mia.
Weren’t therapists always recommending replacing bad memories with good? I was about to test that theory.
Expecting her to complain at my mode of transportation, I stopped moving down the hall when she made no sound at all. She’d retreated into that silent, observant space that made me ten times more desperate to earn her reaction.
Leaning in, I caught her lower lip between her teeth in the way I already knew she liked. “Since you like to watch so much, you’re going to watch my mouth move between your thighs.”
Just like that, she sparked back to life and shoved at my chest. “No.”
“Yes.” My voice was patient and calm, belying the storm of emotions brewing inside me. I wasn’t the kind of guy who pushed a woman into doing something she didn’t want to. Ever. Treading gently in this case was a smart tactic, especially considering Mia’s background. I hated the idea of scaring or hurting her for even a moment.
But God, I needed to taste her. To help her enjoy it. To love her without words.
“No.”
But her vehemence
had weakened, and I could hear the curiosity bleeding through. She’d never voice it, never admit she was unsure.
I nuzzled that exquisitely soft patch of skin between her ear and her shoulder, drowning in the scent of her utilitarian soap. I blinked as I picked up a trace of something else, so faint that probably a bloodhound wouldn’t have detected it. But I did.
I reared back. “You’re wearing perfume?”
She flushed straight to her hairline and turned her face away. She hadn’t blushed when I’d mentioned going down on her, but mention the mere possibility that she’d done something girly on purpose and she turned magenta.
Holy shit, I could totally fall for this girl.
I barely smothered a snort. Could fall. Right. Like I still had some choice in the matter. I’d lost my choices where Mia Anderson was concerned the day I’d heard her tossing around obscenities in Carmine’s back room. Even before that, when she’d swallowed me with her eyes on a crowded street.
“It’s Carly’s fault.” She blushed even redder and glanced down at herself. “Look, maybe I should go.”
“That is an option. The other is that I lay you out on that bar over there and taste every part of you until I’ve had my fill.”
“Put me down, Tray.”
Her using my real name acted as erotic fuel. As if I needed any more. “Okay.”
Momentarily fooled by my affable tone, she didn’t react as I carried her closer to the bar. But when I swept it of the bottles and glasses? Oh, yeah, silent, watchful Mia gave quite the shriek, almost drowning out the sound of glass shattering on the hardwood floor.
I might’ve laughed—actually, I’m pretty sure I did—but I was too busy setting her down and tugging on the zipper of her jeans with my good hand while I seized her hair with my bandaged one and yanked her mouth to mine.
Any protests she had vanished with the first thrust of my tongue between her parted lips. She didn’t respond at first, just stayed still and absorbed my kisses with that eerie detachment I hated. Then her lips began to warm, and her tongue started flicking against mine with growing boldness. I crushed my chest to hers and consumed her mouth without hesitation, daring her to keep up while my hand slipped past the barrier of denim to something silky and slick.