Chapter 51
chapter
fifty-one
SHAY
Calder fucked me until night faded into fuzzy, gray-orange dawn. Now I lay my cheek against his hot, solid chest. His arm wrapped around my waist, the sheets tangled at our ankles, and I traced the black lines on his chest with my pointer finger.
Happy.
Content.
I could still feel him, sticky and wet between my thighs.
“You’re quiet,” I said.
Calder responded with a hum, low in his throat. “Am I?”
His hand left my waist and traced lower, to my hip and down across my ass, leaving a shivering trail of goose bumps.
He slid his finger between my cheeks, pushing against my pussy from the back. I gripped his chest, lips parting. Something about that angle made me feel even more at his mercy.
“I don’t mean to be,” he said. The tip of his finger swirled around my entrance in a teasing rhythm, and his lips found the top of my head. “I like you wet with me.”
He spread his come around my pussy, lightly pushing in, then out.
Almost lazily. Like touching me this way was as normal as waking up.
I rolled my hips against his thigh, closing my eyes. He felt so fucking good. When was the last time someone had taken care of me like this?
Had it ever happened?
“Wait,” I said, voice breathier than intended, eyes still closed.
He stopped, immediately withdrawing his fingers. His hand found my hip again, and he watched me with a look in his eyes that made my gut twist.
Concerned.
Gentle.
“I just feel like there are a lot of outstanding questions,” I said.
“Ah.” He nodded, and his gaze found the ceiling as he slid his free hand through his hair with an exhale. The way he tilted his head up made the muscles in his neck stretch and cord against the tattoos. After a beat, his eyes found mine again.
“Shoot, Maniac.”
“Do you really work for the Mafia?” When he nodded at my question, I followed up. “Have you ever wanted to leave?”
“Every day.”
Our eyes locked, and the heaviness in his gaze made my gut wrench. I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself.
“Why can’t you? Are you, like, I don’t know…” I only knew the Mafia from books, and while there was a lot of variation, a major theme was the families. Was he part of some royal Mafia family?
As if reading my mind, Calder spoke. “Most people in this world are connected to some kind of family. That’s not me.
No one else in my family, immediate or extended, is connected.
If the Mafia is royalty, my dad was the guy cleaning the driveway outside the palace.
His job had nothing to do with the machinations of the Mafia.
He cleaned up their domestic messes—affairs, sex workers, he made disappear when they started getting chatty. ”
“How did he make them disappear?”
“Blackmail. Threats. Violence.”
I swallowed.
“He wasn’t important,” Calder continued, “but when you’re in, the only way out is a body bag. His death should have been the end of it.”
The only way out is a body bag.
I tensed.
Once again reminded that this was not a book, and I had no guarantee that I would get a happily ever after with the man I loved. That there was a very real possibility he would leave and I’d never see him again.
“Why wasn’t his death the end of it?” I asked quietly.
Calder responded with another long exhale. I felt the rise and fall of his chest against my ear. “It’s a long story,” he said.
I put my hands on his chest and rested my chin on them, looking up at him. “I have time.”
He speared his hand into my hair, gripping my skull and searching my face, the tension in his gaze stretched taut between us.
Then he released me, hand sliding back to my hip.
“My father was abusive,” he said, with an almost robotic apathy. “He beat my mother for years, until one day she was just gone. He tried to tell us she left, but…” His gaze was far away. “She wouldn’t do that.”
He took a deep breath and continued. “Anyway, without my mother to beat, he had to find someone else. He landed on my sister.”
Calder disappeared in a memory, gaze once again far off. The muscles in his chest and arms were wire taut. His jaw flexed, nostrils flared. Wherever he went, it wasn’t good.
I wrapped my arm around him, trying to provide some comfort.
That seemed to pull him back to the present. His stare landed on mine, soft like a sunset.
“I don’t really remember what happened,” he said.
“I remember grabbing a golf club when he went for my sister. Then he was on the ground, bleeding. The golf club in my hand.” His grip tightened on my hip.
“My brother took the fall. When I tried to say it was me, he told the police I was distraught and not thinking. One of us had to be there for my sister, and since I was the one with good grades and potential, it had to be me.”
His tone was filled with a guilt so bitter it could break rock. My heart split in two, aching for him, his brother, his sister—the life they should have had but didn’t.
I couldn’t imagine not having Lithie.
“But I did my best to be what my brother wanted,” Calder said. “I went to school. I got my master’s. I got a nice, boring job in accounting—”
I made a face. “Forensic accounting. Loophole.”
He laughed. “Yeah, maybe.”
Silence settled.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“They approached me in my last year of grad school with an offer. They needed a new cleaner, and since we owed them—”
“Owed?” I couldn’t help my interruption. “You didn’t owe them anything. That’s bullshit.”
A soft smile quirked his right cheek at my outburst. He stroked my hair from crown to ends.
“We murdered one of their own,” he said. “So in their eyes, we did. They said I could either take the job, or they’d take Stone’s life. It was my fault. All of it. So I took the deal.”
A spiky heartburn shredded my chest and I sat up, unable to hold still.
My gaze landed on the window, where the curtains glowed as day replaced dawn.
It was such bullshit. It wasn’t fucking fair.
And I had no idea how to fix it.
It was too similar to being sick.
Calder’s touch landed on my back, tracing the notches of my spine.
“So I decided I would be the opposite of my father if I couldn’t escape,” he said. “That’s what you saw earlier today.”
I looked over my shoulder, catching his stare.
“Rather than making women disappear, I made their abusers,” he continued. “It started by accident. I was in Toronto, cleaning money, when I noticed a low-level was financially abusing his wife. From there, word got out.”
“How do you make them disappear?” I asked.
“Blackmail. Threats. Occasional violence.”
“So…the same tactics as your father,” I said. “But for good.”
His brow crinkled, as if he hadn’t thought of it. “Yeah, I guess so.”
I fingered the fabric at my side, spinning it around my finger and making little whirlpools in the soft cotton.
“Did I scare you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, I mean, that’s not what scares me. It should. But…what if you’re like Graham?” I whispered. “He was good in the beginning too.”
Calder barked a laugh. “I chased you through a graveyard on our first date, stalked you, got you involved with the fucking Mafia. I wasn’t good in the beginning.”
My brow furrowed. “You know what I mean.”
“You have my biggest secret, Shay. If I even step a toe out of line, you could put me away for a long, long time. You have all the power. You always have. You always will.”
“Blackmail? That’s not very romantic.”
He quirked a brow. “Neither is stalking to most people.”
I stifled a smile, looking back down at the blanket.
“So when you’re done here…” I made rivers in the fabric with my pointer finger. “You leave?”
Calder reached for me, dragging me back down and against his side.
“I don’t know how this will work, Shay,” he said, stroking up and down my back. “You deserve more than a ghost for a boyfriend, someone who can only give you glimpses at a life.”
I lifted myself up again so I could catch his gaze. So he could see how serious I was about this.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “We’ll see each other when we can, even if it’s secret. Even if it’s only for a little.”
He shook his head. “You have a life here. You have a grant—”
“I don’t have it,” I said.
“You will,” he said, stern.
He continued to trace up and down my spine, our stares locked. I thought about what he said, deserving a life, not glimpses of it.
And then it hit me.
“Even with a ring on my finger and a white picket fence, there’s no guarantee,” I said. “My father married my mom, and he still left. Graham gave me a ring, and still abused me.”
At the mention of Graham, his hand stilled on my back, jaw clenched.
“I don’t need you to promise me a life,” I said. His brow pinched, like he wanted to contradict me. “I don’t,” I emphasized, and leaned forward, until our noses were nearly touching. “Just promise me you won’t give up today, because tomorrow might not come.”
Then I kissed him, proving my earnestness with my lips.
What started out as a soft kiss quickly turned demanding. Calder gripped my lower back, tugging me tight against him, groaning against my mouth. He devoured my lips and any breath I had, tongue snaking in.
Until I was hot and aching and restless.
Then he pulled back, lips still touching mine, and said, “I promise.”