11. Lynx
LYNX
Dear Diary,
Today I watched Luca sulk about a hockey team while I tried not to strangle him. Self-control is exhausting.
Ididn’t know which Mr. Guerra I was more pissed at.
Carlos for his little display of ownership over Nyah and for putting me in my place like I was the scum on the soles of his shoes.
Or Luca, for the way he’d just been handed ownership of a hockey team. When he didn’t even like the fucking sport!
Oh, how sweet it must have been to have money.
I trailed him and Nyah up the stairs to their rooms, raging on the inside over the fact he was acting like a sulky, rich brat.
Where the hell was the tradesman in jeans and dirty boots I’d met at the fights?
I could admit that Luca looked good in a suit, but I didn’t get people with money.
I grew up in fucking Saint View, and in the trailer park at that.
I barely had a ninth-grade education. Hell, the fact I could read seemed like a damn miracle.
I was a thug at best. I’d never been good at anything other than sex, selling drugs, killing people with little to no regret, and hockey.
Which I’d only gotten to play because my mom’s boyfriend had worked at the old Saint View ice rink.
The place had been a hole, even back then, and I wasn’t surprised that by the time I got out of prison, they’d built a new one.
I’d been aching to get on the ice ever since.
If someone had handed me a team, albeit a pretty bad one, judging by the few games I’d caught on the TV at Psychos, I would have been jumping up and down like I’d won the lottery. A whole fucking team! Shit, I would have given my right nut for that opportunity.
And yet here was Mister Silk Pants, stomping off upstairs and throwing a tantrum because he didn’t want it.
It didn’t matter that I thought Luca was hot. And that the feeling was apparently mutual.
We had nothing in common.
Nyah disappeared into her bedroom and closed the door. Luca did the same farther down the hallway.
I stood there in between, like the fucking chump I was.
Five hundred and seventy-one. Five hundred and seventy-two… So many grapes to count.
“Lynx!” Luca hollered from inside his bedroom.
I ignored him.
A moment later, his door opened and he stuck his head out. “You deaf?”
I didn’t bother looking at him. I was too busy counting. “I’m not. I heard you bellow. But it’s not my job to jump at your beck and call. I’m here to protect Nyah. Not to be your servant.”
“Just come in my room, would you? I need to talk to you.”
“No thanks. I can’t do my job from in there.” Even if my job right now was ignoring how fucking good Luca smelled and staring at a painting I was beginning to despise. “Now you’ve made me lose count and I’m going to have to start over. Thanks.”
Luca just squinted at me, clearly confused, but clearly also not caring enough to ask me to explain. “Just get in here.”
I turned to glare at him. “You might not take your job seriously, but I do. I’m not leaving Nyah unprotected.”
“From what? She’s in her house!”
I clenched my jaw. Had he not seen what had just happened to her downstairs? The people in this house were exactly who she needed protecting from.
Not that I could do anything to stop Carlos Guerra from exposing her and sucking all over her tits like he was breastfeeding.
I threw up a bit in my mouth.
But at the same time, I realized Luca was right. I couldn’t protect her in this house. Not from the man who owned it.
Who owned all of us, apparently.
That didn’t sit well with me.
Luca huffed and stomped out into the hallway, past me, and flung open Nyah’s door.
“Hey!” she shouted from inside.
Luca ignored her and rolled his hand in the direction of the open bedroom, but his gaze was on me. “Go on then. If you won’t talk to me unless you can be near Nyah, then we’re going to have to do this in her room. We aren’t having it in the hallway where anyone can hear it.”
“Uh, excuse me? Do I get a say in any of this?” Nyah called.
“No,” Luca said simply.
She huffed but didn’t actually complain when Luca walked in. So a second later, I followed, shutting the door behind me.
The first thing I noticed was Nyah’s eyes. They were red and her makeup, that had been flawless earlier, was now smudged beneath her eyes.
There was no doubt in my mind she’d been crying.
Because of Guerra’s little show? I hadn’t liked the way it had played out. She’d seemed surprised, but she hadn’t said no.
Had she wanted to? He was her fiancé after all. I’d assumed she would want to be with him.
Though perhaps she hadn’t wanted to be put on display like that. Either way, I didn’t like that she was upset. She’d put on oversized pink sweats, and she was adorable in them.
I needed to slap myself in the face before I developed a full-blown crush on this woman.
This very unavailable woman.
I’d heard Carlos’s threats about touching her again. I got the impression he and his posse wouldn’t have thought twice about putting a bullet in my brain if they had so much as an inkling that I’d seen Guerra’s fiancée in her birthday suit.
Luca frowned at her. “Were you crying?”
Clearly, he was less tactful than I was.
She scowled at him. “If I was, it was only because I’ve had to be subjected to you.
Why the hell are you in my room? If you’re here to snoop for some sort of proof that I’m secretly working for my father, feel free to go ahead.
I have nothing to hide. Want to rifle through my underwear drawer? Just say that.”
She was all attitude and sass with him. They’d clearly gotten off on the wrong foot, their attraction to each other probably not helping things, though I doubted either of them was admitting to that.
But nobody verbally sparred the way the two of them were if they weren’t also secretly thinking about getting them into bed.
Not exactly the most mature form of flirting, but flirting, nonetheless.
Though the two of them might rip my head off if I dared to suggest such a thing, so I said nothing and left them to their argument.
“I’m in your room because I need to talk to Lynx, and he’s decided he’s your guard dog and won’t come in my room without you.”
“Jealous?” Nyah shot back at him.
He so clearly was.
But red heat flushed his skin, and he glared at her, stalking across the room, forcing her to walk backward until she hit the wall.
I let it go only because he wasn’t actually touching her.
But he towered over her, intimidating her.
Or…at least tried to.
I couldn’t help but grin at Nyah staring right back up at him, refusing to back down.
But Luca’s voice was deep and cold when he spoke. “Are you insinuating I like men?”
She shrugged. “Do you?”
Yes, I silently answered for him.
He ran his finger from her ear along her jawline, and then down over her throat.
I was sure he didn’t miss the way her breath stuttered. Unlike when Carlos had touched her and I’d seen her body physically stiffen, when Luca touched her, she leaned in. It was the slightest of movements, but I saw it, and I would have bet Luca felt it.
His thumb came to the side of her neck, pressing against her fluttering pulse.
He waited a moment, then leaned down, so his lips brushed her ear. “Either you’re scared of me, princess… Or you’re turned on.”
She shoved him away from her, and he grinned, laughing to himself.
“I hate you,” she muttered, getting onto her bed and tucking her arms around her legs.
“Feeling is mutual.”
He turned to me.
I raised a knowing eyebrow. He was so fucking full of shit.
I hadn’t missed that he hadn’t answered her question about whether he was into guys or not.
If Nyah thought about it long enough, she might have realized too.
But he’d rattled her by getting in her personal space and using the attraction between them to distract her.
I wondered if either of them actually had any idea what they were playing at.
Luca ignored my eyebrow and took up the spot against the wall that Nyah had just vacated. “Do you know anything about hockey?”
I breathed out slowly. “I’ve been in a cell for the past ten years—”
Luca grimaced. “So that’s a no.”
God, he was so impatient. “That’s a, ‘I played all through high school and college.’ It’s the only reason I even went to college. Full scholarship.”
Shame I hadn’t realized what a gift I’d been given back then. I’d rarely turned up for class, knowing they weren’t going to do shit because I was the best player on the team.
Hadn’t that all fallen to pieces after, when I couldn’t find a job and hockey no longer wanted me.
Luca lit up like a Christmas tree. “So you know stuff?”
I snorted. “Like how to skate and how to hit a puck? Sure. Like how to run a team? Fuck no.”
Luca pointed at me, clearly choosing to ignore my hesitations. “But you know how to play. The rules and shit. Teach me.”
Nyah rolled her pretty eyes. “Or, you could try googling it, like anyone else would. Instead of acting like a spoiled brat and demanding Lynx do you favors.”
But I grimaced at the idea of anyone trying to learn how to play hockey from an internet search.
Google couldn’t teach you what it felt like when you laced up your skates or what the ice smelled like first thing in the morning before you’d even had a coffee. It couldn’t tell you how to hit a puck so perfectly it avoided everything in its path and landed square in the back of the net.
I’d been dying to get back on the ice ever since I’d gotten out of prison. I just hadn’t dared.
But now Luca was practically making it my job.
“I can teach you,” I agreed. Then glanced over at Nyah.
“If Nyah doesn’t mind coming along. I don’t exactly have much free time at the moment.
If I’m not here, it’s only to go home and sleep and then I’m back.
I’ve got club stuff to do on my day off, so it’ll have to be while I’m here. So it’s really up to Nyah.”
Luca sighed heavily. “What say you, princess? Want to come see this team I’ve inherited that apparently sucks ass, but I somehow need to make profitable if I want to keep my head?”
Nyah pretended to inspect her nails. “I don’t know. I think there’s probably a lot of wedding stuff I need to do. But I mean, maybe we could find some time to go to the rink if you get down on your knees and beg me.”
He smiled slyly, stood, and went to her side of the bed.
She looked up at him, no trace of the watery eyes she’d had when we’d let ourselves in.
He dropped to his knees silently on the thick carpet, and she grinned like she’d won something.
Until he circled his fingers around her ankles and gave them a sharp tug so she slid across the bed.
Like he’d done it a million times, he had her legs spread wide around him, while he kneeled in between.
None of us missed the gasp that echoed around the room.
Or the way it sounded breathy and turned on. Rather than shocked and scared like when Carlos had surprised her.
Luca’s gaze rolled up her sweats, lingering on the tiny patch of bare skin showing between her pants and her hoodie, and then higher until he reached her face. “I’m on my knees, princess. You sure the only thing you want me to do is beg?”
For half a second, I thought she was going to turn into a puddle, and I was going to have to stand in the corner of the room while he yanked off her pants and put his mouth on her pussy.
That’s exactly what the tension in the room demanded. Hot, wet, sweet fucking.
But she just put one bare foot to his chest, kicked him back, and sat up, all in one motion. “I’ll come. But then you guys owe me a favor in return.”
Luca looked at her with distrust. “What sort of favor?”
She shrugged. “I’ll call it in when I know what I want. Until then, you’ll just have to agree to owe me.”
Luca rocked back onto his heels and stood. It was clear to me he didn’t like the idea of owing anyone anything. He glanced at me.
I shrugged. “She’s the boss.”
“Pussy-whipped,” he muttered.
I laughed. Because while I was getting paid to do whatever Nyah told me, what was his excuse?