Chapter 51 Mateo
MATEO
The drive back was tedious.
I wanted to be right there, next to her, feeling her skin under my hands so I could be certain she was okay. But I knew that she and Ronan needed to get back to a better place, to work through whatever was still keeping them apart.
I was confident that if I gave her the space to be with him, she would still return to me. I didn’t see this as a competition or some prize we had to fight over. I saw the end game, and it was her.
Once we arrived back at the high-rise, that ominous feeling of uncertainty crept up, and it seemed like it was affecting all of us.
Senior’s body was gone, and the evidence of his death was cleaned up.
Hughes needed a raise, that was for damn sure.
But I also knew the sick fuck enjoyed the messy jobs.
“Go with Kane upstairs, I have to call a meeting with our top men. I need to explain the Archer situation to all of them,” he said, scrubbing his face with his hands in anxiety.
“You did nothing wrong. None of you did. Your men will see that. The Archers betrayed the Black Crows and endangered every man and woman in this building by consorting with the enemy.” She got on the tips of her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips.
“Well fuck, maybe you should address the men then,” Zerkos joked.
“Don’t tempt me, I’m officially in the market for soldiers,” she told him, raising her eyebrow sarcastically, but it was enough to get my attention.
“You meant what you said then? You’re going after your uncle?” I asked her.
“I won’t spend the rest of my life running anymore, the only way out is death. I’ve always known that. For a long time, I just accepted it would be him over me, but I’m done with that now. I’m done letting weaker men control my future. He’s outlived his life expectancy,” she explained.
Ronan met my gaze, and I could practically read his mind. He wanted to know what this meant for them, if she’d leave him to fulfill her destiny, if there was room in it for him. So, I ended that train of thought for him before it could rollercoaster into something else.
“Then we’ll help you kill the bastard,” I told her. She narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously.
“You’ll go to war with me?” She asked, pressing the palms of her hands flatly to my chest.
“No sunshine, I’ll go to war for you. I’ll be your weapon, if that’s what you need, or I can sit back and watch you get your hands bloody.
Whatever you choose,” I reassured her, looking into the obsidian tunnels of her eyes, and Ronan growled behind me.
“He will too.” I smirked with a nod towards him, and she rolled her eyes at me with a smile.
“Put her somewhere decent for me, please?” Cecilia turned to ask Ronan just as Ethan opened the trunk to let Oksana out. He nodded his head at her, and she reached in to give him one more kiss.
“Take her to the apartments on seven, keep some men out front” Zerkos told Ethan just as I pulled Cecilia away and walked her back inside.
“Where is he?” She asked me while we walked inside through the lobby.
“Let me take care of you first,” I reached down and raked my hand through her hair before lifting her chin to look at me, “You look like you’ve had a rough day.
” I leaned down and rubbed my nose against hers, “Let me make it a little better.” She sighed into me as I embraced her, feeling those walls she worked so hard to keep up softening at my touch.
“That sounds nice,” She nodded up at me.
Once we got back up to the penthouse, we made our way into my bedroom. I closed the door behind me as she walked in, looking around like it had already been so long since she was last here, instead of just the other night.
“Take your shirt off,” I instructed her.
She turned her head back and cocked an eyebrow my way with a mischievous look on her face.
“I want to see how your back looks.” I explained with a knowing smirk, shaking my head at the bronze vixen in front of me.
She let out a heavy sigh like the reminder of the permanent mark on her skin was a deeper burden than the actual pain of it. I grabbed the edges of her top and helped her lift it up, she lifted her arms to get it out of the way, and it was revealed.
It was hard to look at.
Hard to stomach.
Not because of how brutally painful it looked, or that she was scarred forever now. But because it reminded me of an atrocious failure.
Our negligence.
Instead of protecting her, we’d let someone do this to her.
She turned her head over her shoulder with a sorrowful look stained in her eyes.
Barely letting the pads of my fingers graze the skin around the hardening wound, I ran them gently and slowly across her back, pulling a shudder from her.
“Lay down,” I instructed her, and she fell flatly on the bed, stomach on the mattress with a huff and a groan, the day’s exhaustion surely settling in.
I perched myself over her, running my hands softly down her back, lightly stroking my fingertips down, then moving them back up. Placing my lips on her neck and all around her back, I made my way south, achingly slow with a tenderness I didn’t know I had control over.
But she was meant to be savored.
Worshiped.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and before I realized it, I repeated it after every kiss, like a prayer, chanting it into her skin. “I will never let anyone hurt you again.”
“That’s a hell of a promise to make,” she breathed out as I lowered my hands down her body.
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I rumbled into her ear.
My hands covered each firm peak of her ass, and unable to stop myself, I squeezed, eliciting a wanton moan from her, commanding my dick to attention.
Her eyes stayed closed, but as I thumbed the waistband of her shorts, she lifted her hips in the air, and I obeyed her silent command, moving them down her legs and throwing them aside.
I pulled her up like a rag doll and brought her over to my shower, sitting her down on the concrete stool and turning the water to a fine mist over us.
Slipping my own clothes off I threw them over my shoulder, missing the hamper but trying not to let it bother me.
I lathered up a loofa and began at her feet, scrubbing every inch of her that had been tainted by someone else’s hands today.
I couldn’t erase what they’d done.
But I could try to remind her she wasn’t so easily broken. I knew firsthand that she wasn’t just the strongest, but the most dangerous woman I’d ever met.
Once I’d cleaned her of the mark today left on her, I washed, then pulled us both deep into the shower mist. She looked up at me, beads of water lingering on her eyelashes as she batted them away with slow blinks.
“You’re making it damn near impossible not to fall head over heels for you,” she bit her lip, and I smirked in response.
“Then my plan is working,” I kissed her neck, trailing up behind her ear firmly.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” her eyes locked onto me, “I won’t let you go, if you’re not careful,” it was a threat somehow, but even with the vicious way her gaze cut into mine, it sounded like the sweetest promise. The one thing I could look forward to in this brutal life we lived.
“Well thank fuck, because I’m reckless,” I released the words, making space to devour her instead.
As I forced my way through her lips, our tongues tangled in a frenzy and she pressed her body against mine.
Her throat let out frantic whines as she rocked her center against my thigh for friction, making me even more desperate to get inside her.
I let my hand fall between her legs to rub two fingers against her clit, moving back and forth and coating my fingers with her sweet, slickness. She dropped her head back and clenched her hands around my bicep and shoulder as I coaxed pleasure out of her in slow circular motions.
“Fuck,” she cried, squeezing harder and pressing her nails firmly into my skin. She let out a disappointed groan when I pulled away, curling the corner of my lip into a smile.
“Open,” I instructed her again, and she parted her lips as I slipped the same fingers into her mouth, “See why we're all so desperate for a taste of you.” She closed her lips around my fingers and didn’t break her gaze from mine as she licked her own arousal off my fingers.
I grabbed her ass with both of my hands, lifting her off the ground, and she crossed her ankles behind my back.
She pressed deeper into me, so that my hard cock was straining against her wet pussy.
She moaned from her chest while I continued to kiss her and walked us both back into the room, letting the air dry the water on our skin.
I sat her down on the bed again and stepped over to the nightstand, opening the drawer and pulling out a small bottle of massage oil. She gave me that uncertain suspicious look I was growing to love, and I commanded her to lay on her stomach again.
She didn’t challenge me.
“I told you I wanted to take care of you,” I squirted the oil into my palms and rubbed my hands together to heat it before rubbing it on her shoulders, making my way down her sides while sneakily getting a handful of her luscious breasts.
She moaned encouragingly, and I continued my way down her body, rubbing the oil at a tediously slow pace.
Making sure to give attention to every single muscle on her body, as long as there wasn’t a healing wound near it.
“I’m turning into putty,” she slurred out after about thirty minutes and hummed appreciatively.
I dipped my fingers where her legs split open and slid my oil-slicked digits against her wet cunt. She let out another soft whimper, still pent up from not getting her release in the shower, and I chuckled loud enough for her to hear me.
“You’re not playing fair,” she whined.
“Who said anything about playing fair? I’m playing to get even,” I scoffed out, sliding a finger inside, eliciting a gasp from her before she jerked her head back to look at me.
“Get even? Como?” She widened her eyes at me.
“We could have been doing this from the beginning, but you chose to keep your secrets. Maybe, I want a little bit of payback,” I winked at her, sliding another finger inside as she moaned and raised her hips to meet me.
“We wouldn’t have been doing this from the beginning if I hadn't kept my mouth shut. Don’t kid yourself,” she breathed out, and I pulled my fingers out, narrowing my eyes at her.
She was fucking right. There was no alternate universe where Ronan’s ex would have come in here spewing the truth about her past and ended up in my bed.
It just wasn’t plausible.
“Stop torturing me Kane, or I’m going to make you regret it,” she gritted out, using my last name as a weapon, and the amusement stripped from her face.
I plunged three fingers deep inside her.
She fisted the sheets below her, biting her lip as she turned her head back to look at me again.
I moved in and out of her slowly, rubbing my thumb over her clit until she finally shattered in my hold, her climax overpowering her.
She cried out loudly, but I could only relish the moment briefly as I realized for once, that there wasn’t music playing in the background to drown out her noises.
Then he appeared at the threshold of my door, his arms crossed over his chest while he stared at Cecilia, naked and wrung out from her orgasm.
That hurt puppy look he’d been wearing all week was still clearly plastered on his face, and if anything, it cut a little deeper right at this moment.
He just stood there, like he didn’t know if he wanted to explode from rage, take her away, or kill me.
He’d threatened it enough times now.
She was breathing heavily under me, her face plastered to the mattress, but then she finally looked to see him standing there.
He turned to leave.
“Don’t go,” She whispered softly, reaching her hand out to him, deciding all of our fates. “Please.”
Instead, Ronan closed the door behind him and stepped further into the room.