by Zaires, Anna
Marcus’s mouth twists. “Oh, he was definitely guilty. If not of that specific crime, then of a dozen others. He’d done time before, more than once. Grand theft auto, breaking and entering, arson—he’d been convicted of everything short of kidnapping, rape, and murder. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d done that too, just without getting caught.”
I stare at him, my chest aching. “I’m sorry. That must be so tough for you. Have you always known about the kind of man he was, or did you find out later, as an adult?”
“I’ve always known. My mother loved to tell me about his exploits in detail, so I grew up on tales of his robberies like other kids do on bedtime stories.” Bitter amusement glimmers in Marcus’s gaze. “Her favorite thing was telling me how much like my father I was, how I was bound to grow up to be just like him.”
“Well, she was clearly wrong,” I say fiercely. I can sense the pain underneath his lightly spoken words, and it makes my heart feel like it’s being sliced into pieces. “You’re nothing like him, and if she could see you now, she’d know it.”
“Am I not, though?” A shadow passes over Marcus’s face. “Because sometimes, I wonder.”
“You’re not,” I say firmly. “Not even for a second. Blood doesn’t tell, remember? It’s the choices we make that determine who we are.” The man sitting in front of me might be driven in the extreme, and downright ruthless at times, but he’d never hurt innocent people. I know that about him, I can feel it. The intense ambition that burns inside him could’ve led him down a darker path, but it didn’t—because early on, he chose not to be like the man who sired him, just like I chose not to be like the woman who gave birth to me.
Marcus’s gaze softens, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Choices, huh? That sounds like one of those anti-drug slogans for teens.”
I grin. “It does, doesn’t it? I should probably come up with something more creative.”
“I’m sure you will if you put your mind to it. You’re a great writer,” Marcus says, and I blink at the earnestness in his tone.
When would he have seen my writing?
“A great editor, I mean,” he amends, and I exhale in relief. For a second there, I was afraid he’d somehow caught a glimpse of the story I started working on this weekend.
At this stage, I’m not ready to acknowledge to myself that I’m attempting this, much less talk about it with anyone. As an English major, I’ve known far too many people who started a novel and never finished it, and as a freelance editor, I’ve seen how hard it is to craft a compelling story. I may know proper grammar and be able to string sentences together, but the odds of me getting past the first few chapters, much less finishing an entire book, are slim. As a book-obsessed teenager, I tried it and failed miserably, getting stuck less than two thousand words in. Later, in college, I was able to write a few short stories for my Creative Writing class, but a full-length novel is a different beast. It requires dedication and persistence, and that certain something I’m not sure I possess—which is why I decided to leverage my love of books into a career in the publishing industry rather than trying to become an author myself.
Editing stories can be just as fun as writing them, especially if it’s a genre I enjoy.
I’m about to joke with Marcus that it’s hard to catch your own clichés—hence editors being a necessity—when a loud crash from the living room makes me jump to my feet.
“Puffs!” I yell, running toward the sound—and sure enough, the disaster I expected is here.
One of the modern-art sculptures by the couch is lying in pieces on the floor.
22
Marcus
“Stop apologizing,” I tell Emma as I lead her into the bedroom, my hand resting on the small of her back. “I’m the one who insisted you bring them with you.”
“Yes, but I knew better than to listen. You’ve never lived with Mr. Puffs; you don’t know how destructive he can be. That cat is an absolute menace.” She sounds so disgusted I can’t help but laugh—though there’s really nothing funny about losing a piece of art that cost two-and-a-half million dollars.
“It’s fine,” I say, and to my surprise, I mean it. The broken sculpture was one of the first collectibles I acquired when I started making serious money, and each time I’d looked at it, I’d felt a sense of satisfaction at the knowledge of how far I’d come. And for years, that satisfaction, that feeling of acquisitive pride, had been enough. But not any longer.
Having met Emma, I want more.
I want to bask in her sweet, seductive warmth, to experience the affection she gives so easily to her family and her pets. And if that means I have to put up with some broken sculptures, so be it.
I want Emma to love me, no matter what it takes.
The realization detonates in my mind like a hydrogen bomb, and my heartbeat surges, my hand tightening on Emma’s fingers before I can catch myself.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, glancing up as we stop a few feet from the bed.
I drop my hand and step back. “Nothing.” But even to my ears, my voice sounds off, all hoarse and shell-shocked.
And I feel shell-shocked, blasted apart by the realization mushrooming in my mind.
How have I not seen this before?
How could I have been so blind?
“Love,” she told me the other weekend when I asked what more her cats needed after she’d fed them, changed their litter, and played with them. As far as I was concerned, all their needs had been met, but Emma knew better. She knew they needed what only she could provide: warmth, caring, affection.
Love.
“Seriously, are you mad at me?” A worried frown creases her smooth forehead. “I can take the cats home right now, before they can do more damage. And I’ll reimburse you for the sculpture. I know it’s probably crazy expensive, but I can make monthly payments until—”
“Fuck the sculpture.” My voice is low and savage as I step toward her. My face must also reflect the turmoil inside me, because her eyes widen and she starts to back away. Only it’s too late. Catching her upper arms in an iron grip, I drag her against me and, bending my head, claim her mouth the way I need to claim her heart.
Totally. Completely. Without giving her a choice in the matter.
Her lips part on a gasp as her head falls back, and I feed from her mouth, reveling in her taste, her feel, the sweet, addictive warmth that’s obsessed me from the beginning. I inhale her breath into my lungs, coveting it, coveting her. All of her. Her small, luscious body and her clever mind, her Salvation Army sense of style and her stubborn independence. Her compassion, her redhead’s temper, her love of animals—all the delightful, messy parts that make her so wrong for me, yet so perversely right.
Her hands come up to grip my sides, and her body melts against me as she returns my voracious kiss, her tongue pushing against mine, invading my mouth as greedily as I invade hers. She kisses me like she can’t get enough, like I’m the only man in the world for her, and as more blood surges to my groin, I lose the last shreds of my self-control, turning into that most primitive of all beings.
A man dying to claim his woman.
And she is mine. All mine. Every lush, delectable inch of her. I tell her that with every burning kiss I lay on her pale throat, with every greedy stroke of my hands over her supple curves. I brand her with my mouth and teeth and tongue, leaving pink marks on her tender skin. Her clothes rip in my impatient grasp, as do my own in the next few moments, and then we’re on the bed and I’m surging into her, taking her with a violence I didn’t know lived inside me.
A violence that should terrify her, but that she chooses to embrace instead.
Mine, I tell her with every brutal thrust, and she answers with a clenching of her inner muscles, with wet heat and silky softness, with her lips on mine and her arms looped around my neck. Her legs fold around my ass, her hips lifting to take me deeper, and it’s the closest thing to paradise I can imagine in this world. My mind is blank, my
vision blurred as I drive into her, over and over again, propelled by a need that knows no bounds, no restraints.
I don’t know if she reaches her peak first or if I do, if it’s her orgasmic spasms that trigger my release or my convulsive grinding on her pelvis that triggers hers. All I know is we find ourselves in the eye of the same storm, caught in a sensual upheaval so intense that when it’s over, we’re both left completely drained, our chests heaving in the same rhythm as we lie tangled together, our hearts thumping heavily but in sync.
“Are you okay?” I finally find the strength to ask, lifting my head, and she nods mutely, looking dazed and shaken as I climb off her.
The bed is a mess of twisted sheets, the floor covered with our torn clothes, but for once in my life, I don’t give a fuck. Gently, I scoop up Emma and carry her into the shower, where I wash us both, noticing as I do that I once again forgot to use a condom. We’ll need to get another morning-after pill tonight—tomorrow, at the latest—but right now, an unintended pregnancy is the least of my worries.
All my life, I’d been driven by ambition, pursuing wealth and power because I thought that was what I needed. I took pride in my possessions, my social status, everything I’d achieved—and all the while, I’d been missing the one and only thing I truly wanted.
Like Emma’s cats that evening, I’d had all my needs taken care of except for one. And like her pets, I can’t get it from anyone or anything but her.
Love.
I want that from her. I need it.
I have to have it because I’m no longer just obsessed with her.
I’m in love with Emma Walsh, and the knowledge scares me shitless.
23
Emma
Something’s changed. I can feel it in the way Marcus holds me, the way he looks at me as he carries me back to the bed after toweling me off like a doll. Our sex life has always been intense, but he’s never taken me the way he did tonight, with a dark, almost savage desperation… a hunger that seemed to go beyond the physical.
What happened didn’t feel like sex.
It felt like a mating.
I’m still trying to gather my endorphin-fried brains as he carefully sets me on my feet next to the bed and straightens the tangled sheets and blankets. The luxurious bed looks how I feel: like a tornado touched down on top of it.
A tornado named Marcus, whose gloriously naked body is all bronzed skin and flexing muscles as he stretches over the bed, tucking the blanket underneath the mattress like a maid at a hotel.
“Geoffrey hasn’t gone home yet, so I’m going to send him to get the pill,” he says when he straightens, and I stare at him blankly for a moment, my mind still on the way his muscular ass looked when he was bent over, doing his neat freak thing. Then it dawns on me what pill he’s talking about.
“We forgot the condom again?”
He nods, his gaze hooded.
“Shit.” I can’t believe I didn’t catch that myself. Actually, no, I believe it. With sex that intense, I could’ve had a kidney taken out and been none the wiser. Case in point: he’s been carrying me around tonight like I weigh no more than my cats, and I’ve just now realized it.
Those big, sexy muscles aren’t just for show. And neither is the semi-erect cock hanging between his legs. My mouth waters at the thought of wrapping my lips around that long, thick column and—
Oh my God, Emma, stop it. You’ve just had sex with the guy. Enough.
“I think I need to get on birth control,” I say, forcing myself to look at Marcus’s face instead of all that muscle-y temptation. “It’s ridiculous that this keeps happening.”
He stills, an indecipherable something darkening his gaze. “Kitten…” His voice is low and soft. “Do you want kids?”
Wait, what? “You mean like… ever? Or soon?”
I’m sure he doesn’t mean the latter, but I have to check, because his timing is odd, to say the least. It would be one thing if we were having a nice dinner and the conversation drifted to our future dreams and goals, but we have a forgotten-condom situation on our hands. At this very moment, his little swimmers are inside me, and if they’re anywhere near as goal-oriented as their daddy, we need that morning-after pill, pronto. And I need to find the cash for a long-overdue visit to my ob-gyn.
Not having health insurance sucks.
Marcus’s gaze is unblinking. “Either. Both.”
“Well, I…” I gulp in a breath. “I do want kids. Eventually. With the right person.”
There, that should be a neutral-enough response. My dream is actually three children, two girls and a boy, spaced about two years apart, but I’m not about to tell Marcus that. Men tend to get freaked out when women get overly specific about stuff like that, as if a woman fantasizing about children in the future means she wants to steal his sperm that very day.
I’m about to congratulate myself on getting out of that sticky—literally, I can still feel a little stickiness between my legs—situation, when Marcus’s jaw tightens and he turns abruptly with a curt, “I’ll be right back.”
He disappears into his ginormous walk-in closet and emerges a second later in a dark blue robe. Without so much as a look at me, he strides out of the bedroom, and I hear his footsteps in the hallway. They’re fast, almost angry.
Crap. Did I upset him somehow?
I hope he doesn’t think I’m trying to trap him with a baby, because that would be totally unfair. He’s the one who forgot to use a condom, not me. Unless it’s again whatever it was that got him upset earlier?
My cats destroying his place, maybe?
Increasingly worried, I find the fluffy pink robe I wore the last time I was here and throw it on, then tiptoe out of the bedroom to peer down the spiral staircase.
Marcus is downstairs, talking to Geoffrey. Their voices are pitched low, but I catch the words “pharmacy” and “pill” and blow out a relieved breath.
For a moment, I was afraid he might be telling Geoffrey to pack up my cats’ things and throw all four of us out on the street.
I turn to head back into the bedroom—and nearly trip over Mr. Puffs, who’s decided that stretching out on his side directly behind me is a great idea.
“Puffs!” I bend down to grab him, but the evil cat flips over with lightning speed and streaks away, fluffy tail raised high.
If this were my apartment, I’d catch him after a few minutes of determined chasing—there are only so many places to run in a tiny studio—but Marcus’s mansion-sized penthouse is a different matter, and the cat seems to know that. With a gloating look over his shoulder, he disappears into the library, and I decide against pursuing him there.
From what I recall, all the pricey first editions in Marcus’s collection are under glass, and in any case, my cats don’t usually mess with books.
I’d like to think it’s because I raised them to respect the written word, same as I do.
Sighing, I return to the bedroom and go into Marcus’s closet, where I’m unsurprised to see my jeans, sweaters, and blouses hanging neatly—and looking particularly cheap and ratty next to Marcus’s sleek Italian suits and perfectly pressed shirts.
Oh, well. Not all of us shop at Bergdorf Goodman, or wherever it is that billionaires get their stuff.
I’m flipping through the meager selection, trying to decide what to wear to work tomorrow, when Marcus appears in the doorway.
“Geoffrey’s gone to pick up the pill,” he says, leaning against the doorframe. His face is partially in shadow, making his expression hard to decipher, but his voice is even, the earlier abruptness gone.
Maybe he’s over whatever caused his funk?
“Okay, thanks,” I say and take a breath. “So, about tomorrow… I have to be at work by—”
“Wilson will take you.” He straightens and comes toward me. “And he’ll bring you back.”
“Oh, no, that’s okay. I’ll take the subway and—”
“I promised your grandparents.” He stops in front of me, his f
ace set in uncompromising lines. “They want you safe and warm, and so do I.”
I stare up at him, fighting a warm sensation in my chest. I should be irritated by his autocratic manner, but I find his overbearing protectiveness oddly sweet. Still, I can’t just use his private driver willy-nilly. “Thank you, but—”
“No buts. Wilson is driving you, and that’s all there is to it.”
Okay, now I’m irritated. “Marcus—”
“And I don’t want you going back to your place tomorrow night.” His gaze burning into me, he captures my hands. “Stay here, kitten. Permanently. Starting with tonight.”
24
Marcus
Emma’s expression turns stormy, her small hands tensing in my hold, and I know I’ve gone too far. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew I was making a strategic mistake, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I need Emma locked down, tied to me, and I need it now.
The thought that she might get her cats and leave tomorrow, that she might walk away from me, even if only for one night, is exacerbating the seething cauldron in my chest. I feel like I’m on the verge of losing it and doing something totally insane—like handcuffing her to me and hopping on my plane to take her to some remote location. Say, an underground bunker in the Himalayas or an island in the middle of the Pacific. It doesn’t matter where, as long as it would be just the two of us and she wouldn’t be able to escape.
And yes, I know how fucked-up and criminal that sounds.
With the right person, she said, implying it’s not me. Up to that point, I’d been debating if I should tell her how I feel, risk the pain of rejection to find out if we’re on the same page. Yes, I’ve had to chase her pretty hard throughout our short relationship, but I could swear there’s a certain softness in the way she looks at me, a glimmer of the same addiction in the way she melts each time I touch her.
Even the fact that she agreed to come home with me tonight despite the complex logistics of bringing her pets along told me that I’m not alone in this obsession, that she doesn’t want to be apart from me any more than I wish to be away from her.