4. Eva
4
EVA
N o one threatened me . Not if they wanted to live.
Yet, Liam just had. He told me to leave him alone, and it was the last thing I wanted to do. He intrigued me. He annoyed me. There was something about him that I couldn’t ignore.
“Don’t you dare.” Glaring up at him, I hated that I had to crane my neck to face him properly. To maintain direct eye contact—which I always did, with everyone so I would not leave room for anyone assuming I was weak or intimidated—I had to almost dip back as we stood so close together. Inches parted us, and the longer I held on to his sleeve, the more this gnawing desire pushed me to grab hold even more.
I wanted to wrap my fingers around his bulging biceps, knowing they wouldn’t close over the girth. I needed to push against his chest and find out why his shirt strained over his muscled physique, if he really was that lean. I yearned to push and push, to test him and see how soon he’d snap and act on this tension that set up between us as instantaneously as our mutual loathing had.
His nostrils flared as he glowered down at me. The piercing blue of his eyes sparkled darker. And with the hard press of his lips, so tight together in his scowl, I felt tempted and encouraged to prod at him just that little more, to poke and push his buttons and see him really react.
He stepped closer, into my personal space. “What shouldn’t I dare?”
Having him nearly flush to me short-circuited my logic. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t comprehend a witty comeback. Men didn't have power over me. They didn’t intimidate me.
But he did. Within each other’s space, we were caught in a firestorm of chemistry that ticked closer and closer to combustion.
“Don’t you dare tell me what to do,” I replied, hating that it wasn’t the strongest string of words that I was capable of. I already said that, didn’t I?
“Listen to me, Eva.” He took a chance to step one more foot toward me. The toes of his boots bumped my shoes. His scent hit me, something clean and spicy. His body heat radiated to me, enticing me to curl toward him. As I dragged my gaze up from his chest to find those blazing blue eyes, I licked my lips and wondered if I could still taste his drink on his.
“I’ve had a shitty few days. Tonight has been nothing but a surprise, and not all of it is favorable.”
I steadied my breath, unwilling to show him how much his gravelly, gritty growl turned me on even more. I had no business wanting someone like him. Rough and tumble, rugged, and dressed down, a simple but strong man unlike the glossy, proper Mafia soldiers and men supposedly worthy of someone with my status.
“The last thing I want to do is put up with an icy pain in the ass like you. Mafia diva or not.”
Anger charged through me, twisting with the threads of desire he stoked in me.
“If you don’t leave me alone and find someone else to pick on…”
Then what? Then what! I had to know. I wanted to learn what he’d try to do. If it included giving in to this sexual tension that I had no way to explain, then I wanted to hear it.
He lowered his head. His breath whipped so hotly over my ear, tickling me and turning me on at the same time. “Then the next time you push me, I’ll fuck you so hard that I’ll ruin you for any other man in this world.”
I shivered and closed my eyes at the vision he painted. His big hands on me. His mouth tasting me. Fingers exploring and teasing. His dick sliding into me.
Oh, God. Please. I need it.
I shouldn’t want him, but I did. Inexplicably, I yearned for him to deliver on that filthy threat.
As he stepped back, I opened my eyes and glared at him. “You wouldn’t.” It was a weak argument, one I doubted. But I couldn’t let him have the last word. I didn’t know who the hell he was. He was a stranger, not from my world. Regardless, I would never let a man have the last word.
He didn’t speak, staring back at me with such an intensity, I wanted to lunge at him and test his theory.
Then he turned, giving me his back and striding through the crowd. I stood there, rooted in place, stunned.
My heart hammered so fast, as though I’d run a marathon. My lungs strained to pull in air, too shallow to fuel the adrenaline rush of being challenged, rejected, and scolded away. The realization that he’d walked away was too much to bear.
That was it. His dismissal. His resistance was what damned us. Because in doing so, in walking away from me and this electric draw and what pulled us together, he’d declared himself off limits. Forbidden. He already was forbidden. I had no business lusting after a nobody like him. Wanting him was a form of rebelling—against my life, against this need for a distraction.
I didn’t care how weak it would make me, but I had to chase him down.
This was not the end of it. It couldn’t be.
No man ever told me off and ordered me to back off. And I’d be damned if he considered himself the first one to do it.
Cutting through the crowd, I sought him out. He was so tall, it wouldn’t be difficult to find him, but he was stealthy and fast. With all the guests clogging up the room, I only just caught sight of him slipping out the doorway and into the hall.
I’ll be damned if you tell me how it is.
I rushed after him, furious and so turned on that those forces seemed the same.
In the hallway, more people blocked me, but I wove around them all. Once the path was clear, I picked up my pace and jogged after him.
“You—”
My remark was cut short. He whirled, catching me around the waist before he turned us. With such a quick, sudden movement, he surprised me, almost as if he’d been counting on me or hoping that I’d seek him out.
Whatever I could’ve said no longer mattered. His hard, hot mouth crushed against mine. At the first forbidden touch, I moaned at the rush of excitement, of red-hot desire. With just that one kiss, pinning me to the wall of the closet he’d pulled me into, he enflamed me from the inside out.
“I told you,” he growled, panting as he broke the kiss.
One kick back at the door slammed it shut. An exit light glowed overhead, casting shadows over his rugged, tense face as he seethed at me.
“I told you what I’d do.”
“You don’t call the shots,” I argued as I grabbed his head and pulled him back for a hard kiss. He grunted into my mouth, parting my lips to slide his tongue in. He fought for dominance, exploring my mouth and forcing me to accommodate him, and damn it, but I gave in. I anted up to his silent demands by kissing back just as hard, and I held on tight, desperate for more and more of this wicked heat and need he requested.
“The fuck I don’t,” he argued as he roughly wedged his leg between mine, making me spread mine. “You had to push. You wouldn’t stop. And now you’re getting to get it, you fucking brat.”
I groaned at his angry words. It was twisted to be turned on by his gruffness, but I was dripping wet, aroused and needy for his touch. As he shoved up my dress and yanked at my panties, I fumbled for his pants.
“You hear me?” He swatted my hands away, taking over to unzip. “I’m going to fuck the sass out of you. You want a lesson? You want to know what happens when you piss off the wrong man, you fucking slut?”
I closed my fingers around his long, hard length. “Oh, really?” I taunted back. No man spoke to me like this. No one told me how it was. And no one ever belittled me and called me a slut. Hearing that degradation from him, though, was a hell of a turn-on. I didn’t have any kinks. Until him. Until now.
“You’re calling me a slut?” I challenged as I stroked him.
He sucked and kissed, bit and licked all down my neck as he ripped my panties down. My fingers were slick with his precum as I pumped his erection, making sure to feel every rigid inch of his thickness. This was the fastest I’d ever fallen into sex, but it was still taking too damn long. I was rabid for him, but this dirty talk didn’t put me out of the mood.
“Yeah. A mouthy, smartass slut.” He grunted and thrust into my hand, humping me as I clumsily stepped out of my panties. If he wasn’t pinning me to the wall, I would’ve fallen with how shaky my legs were.
“I’ll show you what happens when you don’t listen,” he growled as he hoisted me against him.
I gasped at the first hard bump of his dick at my entrance. Slippery and throbbing with my juices, he almost speared right into me. I wished he would. I needed him to.
Please. I clung to him, hoping he’d feel how badly I couldn’t let him go. I wrapped my arms around his neck at the same time I sealed my lips to his.
This was wrong. He had no right to talk to me like that. He had even less right to secret me into a closet and threaten to fuck me, to ruin me for any other man.
But I wanted it. So, so bad.
“I told you to leave me alone,” he said, imprinting that sexy, husky tone in my mind as he rubbed his dick back and forth over my wet entrance. “I told you to fuck off. But now, I’m going to fuck you.” He finished his claim by notching his cockhead into me. Even just that tip stretched me. It burned in the best way. I relished the hint of a fullness that would push me to come so fast.
“You hear me, slut? I’ll fuck this attitude out of you.” He drove in, shoving me up against the wall in one long, swift thrust.
“Fuck! Liam!” I gasped, arching without any room to move, sandwiched between his hard body and the wall. Impaled on his huge dick. Braced between his hands on my ass cheeks, his fingers digging in tight. “Fuck!” I struggled to catch my breath at the brutal, instant force of his cock so deep inside me. All the way. It was too much and not enough in the same stroke of intensity.
“That’s right, Eva.” He kissed along my jaw, nipping at my sensitive flesh already suffering from the whisker burns of his stubble. “Cry my name. I don’t give a shit who hears. You scream me name and let the world know that I’m fucking your tight cunt.” He pulled out and slammed in all the way again. “I’ll pound this attitude right out of you.”
“Oh, fuck.” I let my head roll back on the wall. So overwhelmed with the stretch of his girth, I wasn’t sure I could handle it. If I could handle him. His rough talk was half the thrill.
“You want me to fuck you, little slut?” He groaned as he rocked back and forth, driving me up against the wall. “You want my dick to fill your pussy?”
“Oh, my God.” I slumped back to the unforgiving surface with each of his hard pushes into me. Over and over. He drove into me like a beast. Not stopping once, he thrust into me and slid his hardness over the tender flesh of my pussy until I was on the verge of coming.
“Tell me, Eva. You like being a bratty little slut? Begging for my dick?”
I whined, so lost to the concept of words. All I wanted was that orgasm. It was so close, so teasingly close. Never before had a man fucked me like this, hard, without any preamble other than a threat to ruin me. Right now, bouncing on his dick in a closet, I wanted it. I needed him to ruin me, to satisfy me in such a way I hadn’t known I could enjoy.
“Tell me. You want my dick?” he ordered.
“Yes!” I cried out before he kissed me hard. “Yes!”
“Then come, you stuck-up brat. Milk me. Come wrapped around me.”
I groaned, so close to shattering that I strained not to lose the momentum of pleasure. It was so fast, so torrid and forbidden, that I couldn’t keep up with the intensity of the sensations pummeling me.
“Come, Eva. Come on my dick.” He kissed me harder, giving me yet another chance to taste the heat of his flavor and the hint of the liquor he’d drunk. “Squeeze me. Obey me, you fucking bratty slut.”
“Liam,” I whined, arching my back to get the last bit of friction that would send me over. “Please!”
“Come, Eva. Now. Then every time you think about another man fucking your pussy, you can know that it’ll never be as good as this.”
He gripped my hair and held me in place for his rough kisses. With my head held steady, my upper body followed suit. Clutching my ass with his other hand, he trapped me in place for him to smack his hips to mine, ensuring his dick pierced into me perfectly.
My thighs trembled at the first waves of my orgasm. It hit me so hard, without pause, that I feared I couldn’t hold on, that I couldn’t survive the intensity of the bliss exploding.
He didn’t drop me as the euphoria burned through my veins. But he melted me, incinerated me inside and out as he pumped into me a few more times then followed me with his release.
I struggled to breathe, contorting my face into a wince as I clung to him and tried to stay afloat. I was dizzy and soaring with the onslaught of sensations that bombarded me with the relief he spurred.
“Fuck,” he grunted as he burrowed his face against my neck. He staggered in his step but didn’t drop me. “Fuck, Eva. Fuck .”
I cinched my arms tighter around his neck as I tried to come down from the high of my orgasm, doubting that I’d ever, ever be able to face him again. I couldn’t. Not if we ended our arguments like this .
If he hadn’t ruined me for any other man, he sure as hell wrecked me for the rest of the night.
As soon as I could stand, I pushed away from him and ran out the door, afraid of facing his cocky face after proving he was right.
He’d done something to me. He’d made an impression. He’d shown me how damn good it felt to surrender, if only for a quick, hot moment.
With his hot cum leaking out my pussy, I ran out of there to figure out how to get over the lapse of judgment that felt way too good.