Chapter 11
Luke
E mma slid her hand over my cheek until her fingers slipped into my hair. She reached up, pulling my head down until she crushed her mouth against mine.
Oh, fuck.
Those soft lips so prone to talking back tasted sweeter than I could have imagined. The shock of her taking charge on this damn desire simmering between us excited me. I burned. A fire lit inside me, and I’d be damned if I didn’t enjoy the heat of this sin.
She gasped, breaking the kiss as swiftly as she’d stolen it. Those sparkling bright eyes gleamed so intensely this close. They suckered me in. They taunted me to want more, to want everything she’d give me.
Her hot breaths whipped against my mouth for this long moment of hesitation.
But didn’t she know there’d be no going back now? Now that she’d broken the ice and taken the first step—or fell under the pressure of giving up this futile resistance—all hope was lost.
One little fucking kiss wasn’t enough.
She furrowed her brow, dragging her gaze from my mouth to my eyes. As soon as she met my stare head-on, she narrowed her eyes and dove back in for me.
Oh, fuck yes.
I knew she was trouble. I freaking knew it. But here I was, addicted after the first taste. As soon as her mouth collided with mine with such needy hunger and impatience, I was a goner. The warmth of her skin touching mine, the sensual pressure of her lips parting and her velvety tongue sweeping into my mouth. She was bold. She was a force of need.
And I was determined to give her as good as I got.
I lifted my hands to set them on her hips. Before long, as she sucked on my tongue and moaned, I dug my fingers into her waist. I had to hold on to something with how swiftly she rocked me off my axis. Each mewl that left her throat made my dick harden faster. Every tighter cinch of her hands on my head, framing me and keeping me in place, made me dip her back further.
I devoured her, licking and sucking at that mouth so prone to smartass retorts.
As I spread my hands from her sides, I explored the sweet curve of her back, then lower. Fuck me, running my hands over the swells of her ass elicited a growl from deep in my chest. It tumbled out of me, swallowed away from her kisses.
I felt unchained. Raw and uncensored. Making out with this pain-in-the-ass woman who no place in my life wasn’t supposed to be happening. It shouldn’t have been in the cards for tonight.
But nothing could stop us now.
“Luke.” She panted my name as she stumbled into a pothole, but I didn’t stop my progress of walking her toward the nearest wall. Darkness blanketed us, but the streetlight behind me showed me plenty in the mere inch of a gap between our faces.
Those sexy-as-fuck blue-green eyes. So wide open and full of lust. Her swollen lips, bruised from the force of my kisses. And the hint of a glow high in her cheeks, evidence of how worked up she was with me.
“I thought I told you to go away,” I muttered before I lowered my mouth to hers again. I caught the corner of it as she backpedaled under my lead. The curve of her mouth was sexier yet. Her triumphant smile taunted me. Her unflinching stubbornness would be my undoing. She wasn’t afraid to own up to not listening to me. She wouldn’t take shit from me and we both knew it.
Fuck, am I done for.
She rocked back to the wall, not waiting to use it as leverage. With her foot on the wall, her knee in the air, she lifted her leg to push up to kiss me harder. I breathed as fast as I could through my nose, drowning in the potent lust that she’d set me on fire with. I vented, kissing her as a punishment for tempting me. I stole her breath, eager to have her burrow that much further into me.
It didn’t matter how hard I ground against her, pinning her to the wall as I cupped her ass. She took it all. She was greedy for even more, locking her arms around my neck to keep me close. Lost and swept away in the combustion of tension between us, I gave up caring about everything else. The world faded until it was just me and Emma, right here. Kissing until—
“Emma?” Her friend shouted. “Emmalina!”
I backed up, holding one hand on her hip so she wouldn’t fall. She didn’t flinch away, but her clumsy step to the side almost landed her on the pavement.
“Emmalin—oh.” The other woman skidded to a stop, catching us parting. A foot of a buffer hung between me and the woman I wanted to kiss again. She panted, looking back up at me with such a wicked desire in her expression. Staring at me with such longing, all that unspent energy trapped away, she winced in a slight pout.
“Um.” The other woman nodded. “I was trying to find you and—”
I retreated, holding my hand out to Emma. It wasn’t a wave. I didn’t intend to keep it up in warning, in a universal gesture of don’t . I wasn’t sure what I meant with that parting move, but I knew I couldn’t stand there and touch her for another second.
Desire burned through me, coursing through my veins like it never had before. I’d gotten laid. I’d fucked plenty of women. But never had a girl rendered me stupid and speechless like Emma.
Emmalina.
I shook my head as I turned and stalked off without a word.
Fancy name for a fancy lady.
One I had no business lusting after. I didn’t have an excuse for making out with her like that either. Thrusting my tongue in her mouth and earning her sexy mewls wasn’t supposed to happen. Not between us. Not with me.
I ran my hand through my hair, more frustrated than I was before I noticed her in danger.
“Luke!”
I didn’t turn back, walking away. “Go home,” I replied sternly.
She didn’t like anyone telling her what to do, but that was too damn bad. If she chased me down again, I wouldn’t stop at kissing her until her legs trembled and her pussy likely dripped.
Thinking about how aroused she had to be with grinding up against me, I squeezed my eyes shut and willed away the visual.
I was an idiot. An absolute fucking moron to cave to someone like her. It was stupid to kiss her, and now, now I’d suffer the reminder of what I couldn’t have. Because nothing changed. I didn’t have time for her drama. I didn’t have the capacity to let her into my life or to give her a chance to matter.
I knew better than to surrender and kiss her like that. I fucking knew it!
And after that fight, which was an even bigger fuckup.
I was a dumbass to kiss Emma and get that much deeper in wanting her. But fighting Orsen? I could be in trouble for that unofficial and spontaneous fight.
Attacking Orsen was a prime example of what I wasn’t supposed to do. He was the kind of fight Jimmy didn’t want me messing with yet. Orsen was one of the men I supposedly wasn’t “ready” to take on.
I dismissed all that in kicking his ass.
And the other one. I might have killed him, but I doubted I had. I wasn’t hanging around to check. They weren’t the men to treat like that. If they were members of one of the crime families around here, I was fucked. I could fight just about anyone and come out on top, but I wasn’t so stupid to think I could go to war with an entire organization.
“Fuck.” I sighed as I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. Taking it out, I saw that it was the man himself. Jimmy.
“Fuck my life.”
I answered, bracing for his wrath.
“What in the fucking hell are you thinking attacking someone from a mafia family?”
I winced, walking on. Mafia . At least it wasn’t the cartel. I’d be dead already. Those mafia men had to dick around with drama and mind games, but the cartel didn’t play like that.
“I just heard that you took it upon yourself to pick a fight with Orsen fucking Martinez?”
I grunted. “Word travels fast.”
“Don’t give me that shit!” he roared. “I just told you not to mess with them. With anyone other than who I have you matched with.”
I scowled, wondering how in the hell he could’ve heard that news so fast. It just happened. He had to have more eyes and ears out and about, always spying, and it made me wonder again who the hell Jimmy was. Who he worked for and where his loyalties lie.
“I’ve been telling you, Luke. Stay in your own fucking lane.”
I ground my teeth, feeling the ache of a hit that Orsen managed to land there.
“Fight the fights I arrange for you. Nothing more.”
“That wasn’t a scheduled fight,” I argued. “It just happened.”
“The fuck it did! Why? Why the hell did you have to fight him?”
I wasn’t getting into any sort of an explanation about Emma. She wasn’t mine to defend. If anything, she served as another reminder of how I couldn’t try to save everyone. I had to harden my heart.
Annoyance rose within me. “It doesn’t matter. I had my reasons.” Before he could rant again, I added, “This just proves that I can handle it, though.”
“Did you attack him to make a fucking point? Huh?”
It had crossed my mind, but I only got involved to spare Emma a worse fate.
I couldn’t answer though, because I’d only gone to that club to talk with Ben. He was probably too drunk to remember anything or that we’d talked, but I showed up with the intention of setting up my own connections.
Could I actually go rogue? Could I fight without Jimmy’s representation to earn more?
With this call, I couldn’t be sure if I should trust him at all anymore. My ability to trust others was already pretty shitty, but I’d leaned on Jimmy’s guidance for years. As I debated my answer, I couldn’t ignore my gut instinct that I should be more careful with him and what I should say.
I felt like this was a warning I had to heed.
If Jimmy was keeping my best interests in mind, why wouldn’t he want me to advance at all?
If he didn’t pose a threat, why wouldn’t he be more upfront about details?
I couldn’t pinpoint why I wanted to be guarded with him, but I would watch what I said and did from here on out.
“You almost killed that bastard. Not Orsen, but whoever he was with,” he groused. “For fuck’s sake. You don’t want to make a fucking point like that.”
I didn’t, actually. If that man died from my actions, whoever he belonged with would come after me.
I sighed, feeling like I couldn’t take on any more weight on my shoulders. “There was a woman—”
“Oh the love of— Are you shitting me? You got that mad over a piece of ass?”
“She’s not—”
He cursed some more, not giving me a chance to explain what I didn’t even fully understand. My association with Emma wasn’t a simple scenario to dissect. I knew I couldn’t have her, but I couldn’t shut off my concern about her either. Nor my willingness to let her kiss me like that.
“That fight was over a woman ? Come on, Luke. You’re smarter than that.”
I wished I could say that I was.
I couldn’t trust Jimmy, and I couldn’t trust myself either—not around Emma.
Despite all my reasons not to, I wanted her too damn badly.
She’d burrowed under my skin so stubbornly, but I vowed, right here and now, to avoid her at all costs. At the Tropican. At any clubs we ran into each other. Everywhere.
She had no business being in my life and I damn well had to start acting like it.