13. Mia
13
MIA
“ I ’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Carmen says for perhaps the hundredth time as I walk her to her front door.
“It’s okay, really,” I say once again, knowing my reassurance really isn’t going to do much. It hasn’t so far. “This is what you hired me for.”
“I shouldn’t have slapped him,” she whispers. Big brown eyes staring up at me. She only just stopped crying a few minutes ago.
“If you hadn’t, I would’ve. I’m kinda proud of you, actually.”
She half smiles at this. I take it as a win.
“Take it easy, all right?” I back away from the door and head back to the car.
She offers me a wave as I pull away, and I’m suddenly struck by how small she is. Logically, I know she’s probably slightly taller than me. But this poor girl seems so unprepared for the world she’s been thrust into, and it makes my heart ache a bit.
I focus on that as I drive back to the townhouse, as well as the throbbing pain in my arm that is concealed beneath my jacket. It’s easier than thinking about what I’m about to face.
There is probably still glass in the wound. The window had exploded out of nowhere, and I’d shielded Carmen instinctively.
But I wasn’t about to pull over to patch it up. Not when the keen sting was the only thing reminding me to keep to the speed limit.
Going home crosses my mind. It would serve him right if I never showed up at the brownstone again.
I tell myself it’s my anger that tethers me to him. That the reason I pull up to the familiar building is because confrontation is always inevitable when I’m in this state. I’ve never shied away from this before; hiding away wouldn’t serve me now.
I tell myself it’s anger when I open the door and find him waiting at the bottom of the staircase, head in his hands. Dark blonde hair, entirely unkempt, falling over his chocolate eyes.
It has to be the anger. That’s the only reason my heart begins to race.
His head snaps up the second I walk in the door.
And oh, oh…the concern in his eyes would make a lesser woman swoon.
But there would be no need for his concern if he hadn’t intervened like that.
I wrestle off my jacket and kick off my boots and don’t bother lowering my voice. “You weren’t supposed to fucking be there.”
“You’re bleeding.”
His words catch me off guard, so I flounder a little as he reaches for my arm to examine my wound.
I shove him away. “You were supposed to stay here and monitor everything from afar. That’s what we agreed.”
“Come into the kitchen. I need to take a look at that.”
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“For God’s sake, Mia!” he finally snaps, towering over me in a display of assertiveness that I’m sure works very well to intimidate his little underlings. “Yell at me after you’ve stopped bleeding all over the carpet.”
He pulls firmly at my good arm and half drags me under the overhead light at the kitchen counter.
I try to ignore the fact that this is the first time he’s touched me in over a week. But his fingers bear the same calluses that clung to my skin in the throes of ecstasy, and it’s so, so hard to concentrate when it feels like he’s burning my wrist with his touch.
He disappears for a moment before coming back with a medical kit. I almost laugh at the sight of it: it’s huge and definitely war-zone grade, judging by the myriad of thick, slash-proof pouches inside of it.
We had the same one growing up.
“When did this happen?” he asks as he leans over my arm to inspect the damage.
I try not to hiss as he tugs gently at the tender skin. Under the harsh lighting, the long gash seems much deeper than I’d originally thought.
“Window,” I grit out. “I think the adrenaline masked the pain.”
“There still glass in it?”
I shrug as he pulls out a pair of tweezers and gets to work. The bleeding has begun to stem, but if I were being totally honest, I would tell him that I need stitches.
“Fuck,” I hiss as he applies a little too much pressure extracting a chip of glass.
Wordlessly, he withdraws and comes back with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses before returning to my arm again.
I don’t bother with the glasses. I drink right from the bottle.
“I can’t believe you drove all the way back like this,” he mutters after a moment of silence.
“I can’t believe you shot that guy in the head.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “I will take you to a hospital,” he says it like it’s a threat.
“I will bleed all over your carpet,” I also say as a threat.
“Are you sure you’re mentally sound? You just keep mimicking me. You’re usually more original than that.”
I scoff as I take another swig of whiskey. “Are you sure you’re mentally sound? You—oh fuck!”
It takes everything within me not to jerk my arm away as the pain shoots up my arm with lightning efficiency and shattering agony.
My head must have slumped at one point as I find myself staring at the counter. A hand is soothingly stroking the back of my neck.
“Hey.” His voice is so much softer, so much more earnest. Like the last conversation never even existed. “That’s it, that’s the last of the glass. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on breathing.
I’m inexplicably comforted by his tone, by the pressure on my neck.
“I’ve got some skin glue here. It might sting a little when I put it on, but that’s it. Okay?”
I nod my head and shudder slightly as he lets me go to tend to my arm again.
There’s nothing to be said as he continues to work, fingers diligent and surprisingly gentle. He murmurs a few times to instruct me to move, but the silence that stretches between us has lost the angry charge it had when I arrived.
Something else creeps into this moment, something I don’t recognize until Leon has finished wrapping the gauze around my arm and finally decides to voice it.
“I missed you,” he sighs so quietly. “Isn’t that insane?”
Oh God, I missed him too. A week of nothing, and it was infuriating and awful. And I hated not being able to be here and hated the part of me that wanted to be here. We’re a mess.
Instead, I say, “You’re the one who walked away.”
“You don’t want this,” he says, but this sounds a lot like me to my ears.
“I don’t,” I reply because he said this and not me. “You don’t want me either.”
His smirk pierces my heart out of nowhere. It’s bitter and doesn’t reach his eyes, but it does something very, very warm to my insides.
“That’s not what I said.”
The warmness crackles from within me, and I’m suddenly very aware that he’s still holding my bandaged arm, that we’re so close, leaning across the counter.
I swallow hard and fall back on my anger. “Why did you shoot him? I had everything under control, Leon. You could have jeopardized the whole thing.”
“He touched you.”
“What do you…” the words die in my throat.
Leon looks at me with an intensity that suddenly forces the scattered jigsaw pieces of this entire ordeal into place.
He was jealous.
He killed a man because he touched me.
He…
My heart hitches as I stand, walking around the counter toward him, searching his face for confirmation of my theory.
His eyes widen as I approach, backing up against the counter as I crowd him. I take a purposeful step between his legs and watch as he stiffens while his scent overwhelms my senses. How dare he smell so good?
For a beat, we just stand there. Then his eyes drop to my lips, and I just know.
“No one else can have me, can they?” I whisper. “You can’t want me, but no one else is allowed, is that it?”
His voice matches mine. “You can do whatever you want. But I will not share you. We’ve been over this.”
“He wasn’t…” I pause. There’s no anger anymore, no excuse for the way I feel tethered to him now.
He walked away. He didn’t want me. I spent all week thinking he didn’t want me, but right now? God. “I need to see something.”
He swallows as I lean in.
The kiss is chaste, my breath caught in my chest, not quite feeling anything beyond my numb lips. I pull back almost immediately, searching his face for something I swore I saw a moment before.
But his face is entirely blank. Emotionless.
I miscalculated.
I pull away even more. “Shit, I?—”
Suddenly, lips crash against mine with such ferocity I’d have stumbled to the floor if it weren’t for the arm tightly encircling my back, holding me against his chest.
I’m uncaged, unrestrained, my mouth open and fully claimed. Leon barely lets me breathe, but I don’t think I want to anyway.
Because he might have missed me, but I’ve missed this.
I’m losing myself to his touches, drinking him in like a woman parched, and he’s just giving and giving and giving.
My good arm wraps around his neck, pulling him in closer and closer, and God, I’m so mad at him. But God do I need him.
“I’m not…” I want to swallow the protest, but I need to know. “I’m not ovulating.”
“Get rid of those fucking shorts,” he hisses, ignoring me entirely as I bite down on his bottom lip. “I never want to see them again.”
I take that as an instruction to be fulfilled immediately, judging by the way his hand slips down to my waist.
I pull away to wriggle out of the offending shorts, vaguely aware that things are clattering to the floor around me. I don’t have time to check what fell on the ground before his arms are around me again and he’s lifting me .
I fall into him and take the opportunity to capture his lips again as he sets me on top of the counter. I’m luxuriating in every groan that escapes him as desire begins to pound between my thighs.
He steps between my legs, both hands cradling my face, as he pulls us apart, only to begin worshiping my neck with his mouth and tongue.
“That feels so fucking good,” I moan as his teeth begin to tug at the sensitive skin. Marking me, claiming me.
A hand drops between my thighs and palms at the wetness there beneath my panties. It feels like my entire body is on fire. The sounds I make are barely even human.
“They can’t touch you. They can’t look at you. They need to know. They need to know.” His growls are like a mantra against my neck, the low timbre of his voice doing nothing but aggravate my already overwhelming desire.
His fingers slip beneath the fabric of my underwear, and I’m like putty in his hands. My good arm is around his neck, hoisting myself up for the perfect angle, turning to find his lips again as I sink onto his hand.
My tightness gives way to his fingers like they were created to be there.
“You’re so fucking wet for me,” he hisses against my lips. “They can’t do this to you, can they? It’s me. It’s only me.”
God. I don’t think I can make it upstairs.
I can already feel my juices trickling over his hand as he works me open. His other goes up my shirt, pulling it up so that he can access my chest with his mouth. A tongue slips beneath the fabric of my bra. Teeth nip at the tautness of my nipple.
Something entirely unholy takes over my body.
“There’s no one else. No one else has ever?—”
“Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours.” It comes out in a half-scream. “God, fuck me, please . I’m yours.”
His hands withdraw, then bury themselves in the flesh of my hips. He flips me over on the counter.
Cool granite presses into my cheek, offering me a moment of clarity as I listen to him taking off his pants. I want this. Goddammit, do I need this.
My panties are removed with a tight snap, and then he’s there.
Hard, throbbing, touching, but not entering. Letting me learn the sensation, letting me marvel at how strong his desire is for me.
“Please,” I beg. “Take me, claim me. No one else. No one else.”
He stops hesitating. He sheaths himself to the hilt, and I see fucking stars. Vaguely, I’m aware of the countertop biting into my hips and the low throb of my injured arm, but the pain only adds to the pleasure.
Especially when his hands curl around my hair and yank, arching me into an angle that allows him to push even further.
And it hits, it hits, it…he…fuck.
My brain short circuits. All I can hear is the pounding of his body, slamming into me, over and over.
All I can feel is ecstasy. I don’t know if I’ve already hit my orgasm. I don’t know if I’m still riding it out or if it is to come. It’s just pure feeling, pure rhythm and carnage and craving.
I never want it to end. I want to be used like this forever. I want to drown in the feeling of him inside of me. I want to be resurrected by the hands that grip me tight enough to bruise.
A lifetime passes. An arm scoops me up. His rhythm accelerates. I’ve come undone at some point. I’m just his to have and to hold.
There’s a groan, and I’m lifted up entirely. His lips are on my neck, on the side of my face, desperate and wanting, and God do I want them.
He shudders beneath me, and he holds me so, so close as he finishes. His lips are wherever he can find skin, and I sink into his embrace.
Take me, hold me, I’m yours.
And I can’t think of any reason at all why that could be a terrible, awful idea.