Chapter 4
four
It took me a second to process what Wester had said. “What? What do you mean?” I had to have heard him incorrectly.
“It’s the only way they’re going to believe we’re a couple. We have to have sex. And it has to look like you’re enjoying it.”
Oh, shit, he really had said that. “I can’t do that! I don’t even know you.”
His eyebrow rose. “No? I can still taste you on my tongue. An hour ago you were completely prepared to have sex with me.”
He was right and that made me flustered. “But that’s before I knew you thought I was my sister. I’m mad at you,” I added, lamely. Damn, I really had no argument. But I’d changed my mind and that was the last word on the matter. A woman was entitled to change her mind once she found out a guy was a jerk. Besides, these were not sexy circumstances. I couldn’t just turn it on that easily. “I can’t.”
Closing the gap between us, he bent over and kissed my earlobe, drawing the tender flesh into his mouth. A sigh escaped my lips before I could prevent it. Maybe I could turn it on.
“This is life or death,” he murmured into my ear. “Trust me to get you out of here alive.”
Goosebumps rose on my skin and I knew he was right. This wasn’t about my ego or embarrassment. Or modesty or confusion. I needed to pull myself together and acknowledge that this was serious shit. This was a world I didn’t understand at all, and I was the proverbial babe in the woods.
My jaw was still throbbing from the blow the henchman had given me. I didn’t doubt I was in serious trouble. I had no idea if I could truly trust Wester or not considering he had seemed hell bent on revenge against Ricardo, but I didn’t exactly have a choice. I did trust that Wester wouldn’t punch me, and I knew he could make me feel good, even if we were faking. Yet he had said there were cameras…
This was all madness. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off.
But I nodded. “I’m scared,” I whispered.
“Don’t be scared,” he said, giving me a soft smile. “I’m going to protect you. And I’ll shield you from the camera so too much of you won’t be showing. And leave your robe on.”
That made me shiver. I swallowed hard. I was going to burn this robe if I got out of here alive. “Okay. Tell me what to do.” I needed guidance. His confidence.
“Just be you.” His hand came up and cupped my cheek.
He looked so calm, so in control. He was looking at me like I was beautiful, as if he cherished me. His eyes held depths of emotion I couldn’t plumb but could interpret however I chose. Right now, I needed something to hold on to, to anchor me. “I can be me, if you can be you.”
I wasn’t even sure what I meant by that, I just knew that I needed him to be something. To be more than the random guy I’d met earlier that day. To be real, even if it were imaginary and impermanent, just to see me through this. I needed a connection, a lifeline, bonding me to him, giving me strength and courage so that I could get out of this alive.
Wester smiled. He kissed first one corner of my mouth, then the other. The tenderness of it made me sigh, relaxing my shoulders just slightly. Then he took my lips with his in a slow, sensual, devastating kiss that reminded me of why I had succumbed so easily to him, and why if I could shove my fear aside, I could pull this off. At first my response was stiff, but then his hands slid into my hair and massaged the nape of my neck, while his tongue teased over mine. He kissed like there was no urgency, no plan, no destination. Like there were no cameras.
The thought made me panic a little. I started to pull away, picturing the mysterious Benito’s staff watching us somewhere in a dark office, critiquing how we kissed. “I can’t do this.”
“Shh.” Wester didn’t grip me tighter, which would have made me panic more. He let me go completely but he stared at me, his eyes mesmerizing. “Imagine that we’re together, in love. We’re leaving on a cruise later or going to the beach because we have time on our hands and we want to spend it together. It’s been days since we’ve seen each other and we missed the feel of each other. The taste.” Reaching out he threaded his fingers through mine and drew my hand to his chest. To his heart. “Imagine if you were in here and how that would feel.”
It would feel special, amazing. Like I was the luckiest woman in the world because Wester was untouchable. I could see that already. He was the man whose eyes revealed nothing other than what he wanted them to. Melancholy washed over me and the loneliness I’d been ignoring came to the forefront. It had been too long since I’d felt that spark of something, anything with a man, and even longer still since I’d felt cared about, loved. I wanted to delve into the moment, the fake intimacy for more reasons than just to save my life. “Kiss me.”
He did. Just the softest, briefest gentle kiss. A ache throbbed in my chest and I didn’t know what it was, what it meant, but when he led me to the bed, I didn’t resist. I fell back onto the soft downy comforter, but Wester shifted it out from under me.
“Get under the covers,” he murmured.
The sheets were cool, but my skin felt flushed, feverish. He peeled off his suit coat and tossed it on the chair by the bed. Then he undid the buttons on his white dress shirt before yanking it off one sleeve at a time. I took in his muscular chest, covered in tattoos. I reached out and skimmed my fingers over his warm flesh, tracing an intricate voodoo doll, gruesome and bleeding, pins jabbed through it. “What is this?”
“Nothing.” He took my hand and raised it over my head.
The sharp motion had me sucking in my breath, my nipples hardening. He bent over and drew one into his mouth, teasing at the tip with his tongue. My response was immediate, a low groan drawing from my lips without thought or warning, my back arching up to meet his touch. He took his time, driving me crazy with first one breast, then the other, until deep in my body I felt the stirring, the driving need for completion. For long minutes he focused all his attention on my nipples, until desire had me starting to roll my hips, questing.
Finally he shifted, kissing down my abdomen and I tensed in anticipation, knowing what he could do with that tongue, wanting him to do it again. But he only gave me a brief teasing lick over my clitoris before reemerging. The covers were too bulky, he would suffocate under there, and I knew he wouldn’t pull it back and expose me. I almost wished we could throw it over our heads and disappear into a cloud of heat, passion, and sweet sex. But that would accomplish nothing and fear skittered down my spine again, an ever present pressure.
But then he shifted alongside of me, his hand covering me, thumb pressing into my heat. He still held my hand over my head and I tried to move it, wanting to touch him, but he just gripped me harder. He swallowed my sound of protest with a deep, penetrating kiss, his tongue teasing over mine. I didn’t know what I was feeling, my emotions jumbled and chaotic, overlaid with unexpected, hot, liquid desire. My body wanted him. My soul did, too. I needed his strength, his confidence, holding me down so I didn’t float away in fear and panic.
Instinctively, my thighs fell further open for him and I could feel the press of his erection, bulging and promising. He abandoned stroking me to unzip his suit pants. There was a rustling but I couldn’t see because he was still kissing me, desperate, hard kisses. When his touch returned to my inner thighs, I rose to meet him, wanting his finger deep inside me. He stroked my dampness before shoving my right leg further out, creating a wide open space for him to take me.
When he did, I cried out in shock, but the sound disappeared into him. He was crowding me everywhere, from head to toe, and I didn’t know how to feel, what to think. I just knew that this was insane, yet even more crazy was the fact that it felt so damn good. Natural. Like the fantasy he had spun—the woman craving intimacy with the man she loved.
As he started to move inside me, he shifted his lips to my neck to nuzzle the sensitive flesh there. He was all tightly coiled muscles and lean power, taking me with a big, hard cock and I lay there, too stunned to even wrap my legs around his waist. I felt consumed, but in the best way possible. I turned my head away from his dark, short hair, but that was a mistake. I saw the room beyond us, a strange place, with a strange man inside me, and I whipped my head back so quickly I cracked heads with him.
“Oh God, sorry,” I whispered then cursed myself at the stupid banality of a comment like that under these circumstances.
He gripped the back of my skull, knotting his fingers into my hair and tugging ever so subtly. Those ice blue eyes stared down at me, shuttered. “Let me fuck you hard,” he said, his voice rough and low. “I want you so fucking bad.”
I was pretty sure he had me, given how deep his cock was inside me, but he was moving slowly, sensually. I wasn’t sure I could take any more, but neither could I resist those eyes, that intensity. He wanted me and it felt like a triumph. He truly wanted me. Unsure of my own voice, I just nodded.
Wester’s nostrils flared and he said, “You’re beautiful, Olivia.”
My name on his lips sounded different, foreign to me. This wasn’t Olivia’s life. It wasn’t me. But before I could figure out what that meant, he braced himself with one hand on the headboard, the other buried in my hair, and he moved. Hard. Pounding. His body taking mine, the headboard slamming into drywall. My breasts bounced, my thighs tensing against the onslaught. Holy shit, was all I could think. I pressed my eyes closed, unable to look at him in all his masculine beauty.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
I obeyed, but I struggled to focus on his face, everything a blur of dewy skin, of soft pants, and the slap of colliding flesh. An orgasm was building deep inside my core and when it crested and exploded I gave a silent cry and tried to look away, but Wester gripped my face, forcing me to come under his scrutiny. I was drowning, being dragged under by his passion, his strength. The orgasm was a toe-clenching next level and even as it shattered me, I knew that this was intimacy born of desperation and yet somehow was the hottest damn thing I had ever experienced.
He had destroyed me.
After the waves receded, I sagged back onto the mattress, my thighs going slack and I let him fuck me, too shocked to even touch him. My robe bunched up under my ass around my waist and I felt connected to every inch of my body, from my tingling scalp where he still held my hair, to my aching nipples, to my slick inner heat, and all the way down to the bottom of my feet, which knocked against his hard thighs randomly as he rocked into me.
When he came, it was with tight control, his eyes briefly shutting and giving me a break from his relentless stare. His breathing changed and he let out a tight grunt, but that was it. Nor did he follow it up with a smile or any words of reassurance. He just frowned and breathed deeply, slowing down his rhythm. Then he rolled onto his back with a sigh and pulled me with him, so we were still connected. The robe fell over our sticky bodies and he brushed my tangled hair back. His eyes searched over my face, his finger swiping across my bottom lip.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes.” No. Not even close.
Olivia’s hair fell over my face and her dark eyes blinked down at me, glassy with spent passion and something else. Fear? I was glad she was okay, but for the first time in a long ass time I was rattled. I wasn’t even sure what the fuck had just happened, but her body had gripped me like a vice, and I had lost my ability to stay cool. To stay controlled. I had taken her hard, slamming the bed into the wall, and burying myself to the hilt in her warm and welcoming pussy. I wasn’t sure if it was the intensity of knowing Benito expected this, or the thrill of seeing and touching her naked body so quickly, or if it was just Olivia who had me so damn revved up.
“Good.” I smoothed my thumb over her cheek. “You’re amazing, you know that?” She was. She had risen to the challenge and had somehow made this the best sex I’d had in months. Maybe years. My dick was still inside her and I was lazily stroking her ass under her robe, knowing I was going to relive this one more than once while alone in my bed in my shithole apartment.
“I’m embarrassed.” Her cheeks had flushed a rich raspberry color.
“Don’t be.” Her breasts were pressing into my chest and under other circumstances I would be unnerved by what I was feeling—by how tender and satisfied I was. But reality was something different rather than a lazy afternoon in bed with a lover.
The picture I had painted for her was pure fantasy and nothing I ever wanted. Nothing I’d ever had.
And this was a fucked up kind of encounter, no way around it. Which was confirmed when there was a pounding on the door. “Lewiston, your time is up!”
Olivia stiffened.
“Don’t get upset,” I prefaced, which wasn’t the right way to start any sentence.
She dug her nails into my shoulders. “About what? I’m already upset.”
“I have to leave. That was my deal with Benito. He only let me in here to see if you’re safe.” I gave her backside a soft tap. She had a great body and it was really distracting. “But don’t worry, I’ll be back and I’ll get you out of here safe. No one is going to hurt you.”
“Don’t leave me.” It was a sad, plaintive plea, her eyes wide with unshed tears.
I steeled myself against the unexpected surge of tenderness, surprised by how much she’d gotten under my skin. Time to put a stop to that shit. “I don’t have a choice.” Lifting my neck, I gave her a kiss and rolled her off me and onto the bed, shifting her robe over her bare breasts.
Sitting up, I kissed my fingertip and placed it on her lips. “Remember we’re in love. That’s what you need to tell Benito.” I hoped her acting skills were decent, but so far, she’d risen to the challenge.
Olivia sat up and her hair tumbled over her shoulders, the robe gaping open at her neck. She was going to say something, only I didn’t want to hear whatever it was so I jumped out of bed and held my pants up with my hand. I needed to ditch the condom in the bathroom and get the fuck out of there. She was still just sitting there when I came back out a minute later buttoning my shirt.
For a split second I thought there was something in her eye that had me reaching for my gun. Only Benito’s bodyguard had confiscated it from me. So I was standing there half-dressed, hand scrambling over my waistband for a weapon I didn’t have. But Olivia only lay back down on the bed and turned away from me, lying on her side facing the wall.
The knock came at the door again.
I hesitated, not sure what was wrong with her, but I knew I was out of time. Comforting was not something I was good at anyway. First sign of a woman’s emotion, I was out of there. Tonight was no different. “I’ll see you soon.”
She didn’t answer but I scooped my suit jacket off the chair and knocked on the inside of the door. Benito’s guy opened it and smirked at me. I winked at him and strolled past him, still reeking like sex. I had to play this right.
The door slammed behind me and I winced inwardly, feeling bad for Olivia. She was in over her head. This wasn’t anything she deserved or had bargained for. Then again, who knew what her life was like? Maybe she and Eva were used to running with drug dealers. But I didn’t think so. There was something intelligent but na?ve about Olivia.
Or maybe I just was seeing what I wanted to see.
I was doing the last button on my shirt when I walked back into Benito’s living room. He made a show of clapping, looking amused.
“Congratulations, my friend. But you’re losing your touch, Lewiston. That took twenty minutes.”
Sinking down onto his white leather couch across the coffee table from him, I made a show of spreading my legs apart and sinking into a super casual position. “She’s camera-shy. It took some convincing.”
She had been. But she had seemed to grasp the enormity of the situation. If Benito thought she was useless to him, he’d kill her without hesitation. I knew him well enough to know that.
He laughed. “So you see she’s okay. Now get the fuck out of my house, bro.”
There was the rub. “When are you letting her go?”
“When I get my two-hundred grand from her worthless, piece of a shit husband.”
Damn. I whistled. “That much?”
“That much. So don’t go thinking you can cover his debt to get your girl back. I want the money, Wester. You understand I don’t have a choice.” He rubbed his neck and gestured to his bodyguard to get him another drink.
“I understand.” He couldn’t let anyone in the business see him showing weakness or favoritism. He had to be ruthless or he’d be out of the business as fast as he’d risen in it. “I’ll deliver the money from Ricardo myself.” No fucking clue how I was going to do that, but I had to. Olivia needed to be rescued from all this bullshit. It was the right thing to do.
That had nothing to do with the fact that I could practically still feel her pussy wrapped around my cock.
Benito’s eyebrow rose. “You’re playing a dangerous game, you know that, right?”
I did. “Yeah. Don’t worry about me.” Though I did start rubbing my shoulder where I’d been hit before I realized what I was doing.
“You don’t play so well with the rich and famous, you know.”
His concern was touching. “I’m not as good at sucking dick as you are.”
He snorted. “Fucking prick. Still just as ballsy as ever.” Then he got that gleam in his eye I recognized. I knew what was coming. “You ever think about that night?”
That night. Yeah. I thought about it. “I’m not discussing that night with you.” The night I had almost killed Benito with my bare hands when it had all gone wrong at that party. I wasn’t talking about it. Ever.
He was unfazed. “Don’t get all worked up.” He stood. “Don’t show up here again unless you have my money.”
“How about I do one better than that?” I stood, too, and pulled on my jacket. “How about I bring you the man himself.” The idea had taken hold and now it was simmering. All my anger toward Ricardo and Benito had blended together into a hot steamy mess of emotion. Adrenaline surged through me and it had nothing to do with Olivia.
“Bring me Ricardo? On a silver platter? It’s tempting. But I want my money more than his ass.”
“You’ll get them both.” I put my hand out. He took it. We clasped not in a handshake but fists clenched together. “You have my word.”
“Gracias, brother.” He hugged me and I tried not to stiffen. “Say hi to your mom for me and tell her I miss her empanadas.”
As if I would ever discuss Benito with my mother. “Of course.”
Then I took my gun back from his bodyguard and I left, pushing thoughts of Olivia’s warm skin out of my head.