Chapter 38
Madelene
“And those pens?” Lauren asks, her eyes rolling once again.
“Still on back order.”
“Angel’s going to be pissed.”
She has a glint in her eyes that tells me his anger is a treat for her. She’s made comments that have caused me to pause and wonder just what goes down between the two of them, but I’ve never gotten brave enough to ask. Her sexual relationship with the scary man is none of my business.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her.
“But it could be.” She winks at me before going back to the stack of papers on the desk in front of her.
It’s been six months since Hollis took me from Chicago, and I can honestly say it’s been the best six months of my life.
Hollis has demanded more from my body than anyone ever has, but I don’t go to sleep in fear of what’s going to happen.
He can’t guarantee my safety every second of the day, and I know that bothers the shit out of him on occasion, but I know he’ll sacrifice his own life for me if it comes down to it.
The crazy thing is that I’d do the same for him, something I know he appreciates but would never ask of me.
“I wonder about you sometimes,” I say with a chuckle.
“All you have to do is ask.”
I look up, meeting her eyes, and they sparkle with something I’ll probably never understand.
I’ve heard stories of what Lauren has been through in her life, catching bits and pieces here and there.
We’ve never sat down and compared life stories, but I get the feeling if it were a competition of who endured the most then what happened to me pales in comparison.
I shake my head. Not because I’m not curious, but because it seems like I would be expected to reciprocate, and I’m nowhere close to talking about the things I’ve been through.
I don’t even speak of them to Hollis. When I’ve tried in the past, he got so angry, not at me but the dead men who hurt me.
I’d much rather spend my time paying him back for running water, electricity, hell, even the taxes he pays on the road we take when he brings me to the office for my twice-a-week part-time job.
I started working at the Mission Mercenaries office when Lauren went into labor, coming in twice a week while she was on maternity leave.
When she came back to work, I was told I could stay if I wanted to.
I need something to do with my time. Plus, I need a little cash to tease Hollis with.
Nothing gets him more riled up than me reminding him I have money in the bank to pay for my own things rather than being indebted to him.
It makes him creative in what I owe him for, and I’m quite ecstatic about how I had to pay him back for the hardwood flooring that I walk on in his house even though he had it installed a year before I came along.
The house he took me to after he dragged me out of Mexico was just what I figured, a safe house.
His real house, consequently, also in McAllen, Texas, was furnished better, although it was in desperate need of a woman’s touch.
He didn’t bitch and complain too much when I started adding some softer touches to it.
He was pleased by getting his payment for them.
I had no idea throw pillows would not only cost him financially, but I’d also have to pay him for his emotional distress caused by having to look at them. That expense took all weekend to repay.
“To be in your head right now,” Lauren says, pulling me from those tantalizing, delicious memories.
I duck my head, making her laugh, but it doesn’t stop the heat rising in my cheeks.
“I was thinking about grocery shopping.”
“The fuck you were,” she argues. “You know I knew there was a connection between the two of you the day Nash dragged Hollis in here in cuffs.”
I can’t deny her observation because I felt it even then too. I was just working under the assumption it was one-sided. Fuck, am I glad to have been wrong.
“I never thought my life could look like this,” I confess.
“Loving a dangerous, unyielding man has its perks.” She angles her head toward the front door.
My body already starts to come to life at the sight of Hollis using his key to open the office door.
The only way he’d allow me to work here is if he had access to me at all times.
Having to wait for someone to unlock the door in order to enter, with a wall of glass and metal between us, was never going to happen.
Angel got a little irritated about his demand but after Lauren whispered something in his ear, he quickly relented.
My mind whirls with how the afternoon will go.
“Is it lunch time already?” I ask, my voice breathier than it ever should be in front of others.
A slow smile spreads across my man’s face. “It’s going to be an expensive one.”
“That new steak restaurant across town?” Lauren asks, but she must notice the look on both of our faces because she chuckles, muttering something about us being kinky bastards.
“Expensive?” I ask, swallowing in an attempt to mask my excitement.
“I’m not sure you can afford it.”
I dart my eyes to Lauren who doesn’t even have the courtesy to look away when we briefly make eye contact.
I make payments whenever and wherever he sees fit. If I didn’t think that Angel would put a bullet in his head for pulling out his cock in front of Lauren, I’d worry he’d take me right here.
It wouldn’t be the first time he made demands of me in places other than the house.
I don’t think a day has passed that he hasn’t been inside of me in some form or fashion—in the shower, in the pool, on my knees.
It doesn’t matter to him. Sex, my pleasure and his, is always on the forefront of his mind, making me consider the strength he had in resisting those two weeks we were together in that shitty house.
He swears he was never like that before me, but I don’t see how.
Even the days when we know for certain another month has gone by without two lines showing up on the pregnancy test, he makes demands of my body.
I think those are the days I love him the most. He doesn’t treat me differently.
He doesn’t blame me for not giving him what we both crave so much.
He fucks me harder, deeper, promises me that it’s going to happen, and he’s going to enjoy every single second getting there.
I have no idea if my body will hum at the sight of him forever, but it hasn’t waned at all in these last six months.
“Think you guys can hold off fucking each other on the desk for ten minutes?”
I look over at Lauren, smiling when I see her grinning at us.
“Might want to make it eight,” Hollis says, grabbing my hand with a chuckle when I smack his chest.
Warmth runs through me. He normally guides my hand to his cock when he does this.
My eyes widen when he starts to do just that even with a witness.
It’s reminiscent of the way he did it at the little grocery store close to the house.
That afternoon ended with me bent over a tower of cases of bottled water with a warning in my ear not to scream as he lifted my dress, ripped my panties away and fucked me.
Of course he wouldn’t go fast and hard to get it over quicker, decreasing our chances of getting caught.
He fucked into me slowly, the head of his cock gliding over that spot inside of me that he knows drives me utterly crazy.
“What are you thinking about, Mads?” he asks, the tone of his voice taunting and teasing.
“Would you please—”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Angel says, coming from his office in the back.
Hollis looks from me to his pseudo boss, and his demeanor completely changes.
“How bad?” Hollis asks him.
Without answering him, Angel looks at Lauren. “I need you to call Liam, Fox, and Donavan.”
“Liam won’t go,” Lauren says as if she can read her man’s mind.
“You’ll be surprised what a man’s willing to do for revenge.” Angel presses a kiss to Lauren’s lips, and I look back at Hollis, giving them a little privacy.
“Going to have to miss lunch today, baby,” Hollis says. “I have work to do.”
Fear washes over me, but I do my best to shove it down. I don’t need him worrying about me while doing dangerous shit.
“Keep those nasty thoughts until I get back,” he says, pressing a too-brief kiss to my lips before following Angel out the front door.
Lauren and I are both staring at our men’s backs as they leave. This never gets easier, watching them walk away, not knowing if they’ll come back to us.
“Are you not going to tell me what they’re doing?” I ask, knowing even though I help out in the office there’s still a lot I don’t know.
“They’re going after the same group that held Angel and Liam hostage,” she says without hesitation.
“And Nash can’t help with that?”
Lauren meets my eyes. “Nash has been taken by them.”
I gasp, covering my mouth. I’ve heard bits and pieces of what this group is capable of.
My heart pounds, both for Hollis and the danger the group is facing, but also for Nash because of what he may be enduring.
A small part of me is concerned for Donavan.
He’s blood after all, but I don’t have a relationship with the man.
His presence is scarce around the office, and he’s held true to his declaration that Elio Lombardi is dead and that he has no family.
He even refused any part of the inheritance that came through a couple of months ago when I turned twenty-two. He wants nothing to do with his past life, including me.
I no longer even think of him as Elio. He’s one of Angel’s sub-contractors, an employee, the term used as loosely as possible, of course, of Mission Mercenaries.
I have a million questions, half of them I know better than to ask, and the other half will also probably go unanswered. Lauren sits back down at her small desk, picking up the phone to place the calls Angel instructed her to.
The entire group of men must be more in the know than I am, because it only takes a handful of words to mobilize all of them.
I pray that they all make it back safely, sending an extra plea up for Nash to remain strong while the other guys make their way to save him.
THE END