22. Wolfe
WOLFE
Every restraint I’ve been holding onto for the past four hours snaps like a rubber band pulled too tight.
I grip her waist, then spin her off the door and onto the bed.
She lands on her back and looks up at me with those dark eyes and her hair fanning across my pillow, and for a second, I just stand there because my brain needs to drink this in.
Eva. In my bed. Wearing black lacy panties and nothing else.
Looking at me like she wants to eat me alive.
My brain takes the snapshot. Then my body takes over.
I lower myself on top of her and kiss her hard.
She tastes like wine with a tinge of peppermint from the Altoids she popped on the way home.
I will never get used to the way she tastes.
Every time I kiss her, my brain tries to categorize it and fails because she doesn’t fit into any category I’ve ever built.
Her hands pull at my belt as she licks her lips. I grin and pull it off myself. Then I kick off my pants and boxers. She wraps her legs around me to pull me close. Then she bucks her hips and grinds against my cock, the friction making my vision blur.
“Wolfe.” My name comes out of her mouth sounding broken and desperate, and it does crazy shit to my blood that I couldn’t explain if my life depended on it.
I drag my lips down the side of her throat, then over her collarbone, finally hitting the space between her breasts where her heart hammers against her ribs. I can feel it vibrate against my lips.
Fast. Hard. And mine.
I dip my head lower, savoring the taste of her skin as my lips skim her stomach. Her muscles tighten under my mouth. I hook my fingers in the waistband of her panties and pull them down her legs slow enough that she makes a frustrated noise and lifts her hips to help.
“Patience,” I murmur against her hip bone.
“I don’t have patience. You know this about me.”
“I know. That’s why I’m taking my time. I want to drive you out of your mind. Just like you’ve done to me all night.”
She lets out a whimper when I kiss the inside of her thigh.
Her hands find the back of my head and her fingers twist in my hair.
I look up at her from between her legs and her eyes are dark and half-closed.
Her chest heaves and she has never looked more beautiful than she does right now, spread open, wanting and trusting me with every part of her body.
I lower my mouth to her pussy.
The sound she makes when my tongue parts her lips is something I will carry in my head for the rest of my life.
It’s raw and shocked and desperate. Her back arches off the bed and her hand grips my hair so hard it stings.
But I don’t give a fuck about the pain. I don’t care about anything except the tang of her juices, her soft pink walls quivering around my tongue, and the way her thighs tighten around my head when I find the spot that makes her beg for more.
I focus the way I focus on everything that matters to me.
She is the only thing in my world tight now with my total and complete attention.
Every nerve in my brain locks onto her reactions.
When she gasps, I do the same thing again.
When she moans, I press harder. When my name tumbles from her mouth.
I slide two fingers inside her and her whole body bows off the mattress.
“Fuck. Wolfe. Oh my God. You’re so incredible,” she rasps. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare fucking stop.”
I don’t stop. I flick her clit with my tongue, my fingers hooking deep inside of her.
Tension coils in her muscles, her thighs trembling against my ears.
She fists my hair, pressing my head against her as she thrusts hard against my mouth.
It hurts like hell, but I want her to pull harder because the sharp sting keeps me grounded while the rest of me is drowning in her.
“Fuck!” She slaps a hand over her mouth to muffle her screams as she comes hard.
A rush of juices fills my mouth, her body writhing on the mattress.
I stay with her through it. Every wave, every aftershock…
until she goes limp, and her other hand loosens in my hair, and the only sound in the room is her ragged breathing.
I press a kiss against her inner thigh. Then her hip. Then her stomach. I work my way back up her body slowly because I’m not done learning.
I will never be done learning.
She pulls me up by the shoulders and kisses me. It’s deep, hungry, and needy.
“I want you inside me,” she pants, grabbing my cock and pumping it hard. “I want this hard cock. Now.”
Fuck, yes. I reach for a condom in the nightstand drawer and roll it on.
Then I push into her and the world goes quiet.
Not my normal quiet. Not the metal music kind of quiet. The kind of quiet that only exists inside this woman. The silence of every thought in my head surrendering to the feeling of her body around me, hot and tight and perfect.
She locks her legs around my waist and pulls me deeper. I bury my face in her neck and breathe her in, that same soapy scent I caught in a corridor two years ago and haven’t been able to get out of my head since.
I fuck her with long, deep strokes. Every thrust pushes a sound out of her that gets louder as I go harder. Her nails rake down my back. The headboard hits the wall. I grab her thigh and hitch it higher on my hip, and the angle change almost makes her choke on her words.
“Right there,” she gasps. “God, right there. Don’t…move.”
I don’t move. I stay exactly where she tells me and drive into her at the same angle over and over until she’s shaking, clawing my skin, and chanting my name like it’s the only word she has left.
I talk to her because she told me to. Every time. Forever.
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You wrecked me tonight. That dress. Those stairs. I sat at that table for hours thinking about this exact moment and it’s better than anything I imagined.”
“Wolfe—” Her voice cracks.
“I’ve got you. Let go.”
And she does. The orgasm tears through her and she screams my name into my shoulder. I feel it in every part of my body. Her muscles clamping down on my cock like she’s trying to milk the cum from it, her nails lancing my back so deep she might be drawing blood.
I last about three more seconds. The orgasm slams into me like I’ve collided head-first with a brick wall. My whole body seizes, and I groan against her neck while everything goes white and hot and empty and full at the same time.
We lie there, her leg thrown over mine, her face buried in my neck, my face in her hair, our hearts pounding at the same frenzied pace.
“Wolfe,” she finally whispers.
“Yeah.”
“That thing you did. With your mouth.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s going to be a regular occurrence or I’m moving out.”
“Noted.”
She lets out a breathless laugh, her arm slung across my chest.
“Also,” she says, tilting her head up to look at me. “The talking.”
“What about it?”
“The talking plus the mouth thing are non-negotiable.”
“I’ll draft a contract.”
She snorts and kisses my shoulder. “You’re such a weirdo.”
“And yet, I had you begging not too long ago. So who’s the weird one?”
“Point taken.” She pulls my face up and looks at me again. This time her eyes are wet. She’s not crying. They just…glisten. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“That was...” She lets out a low whistle. “I can’t even put it into words.”
“We’ll find one.”
“Or maybe we won’t.” She lifts herself onto her elbow and kisses me. Soft. Slow. Nothing like the desperate urgency from five minutes ago. “Maybe some things don’t need words.”
I clean myself up, then roll onto my side and pull her back against me. She fits in the curve of my body like she was made to fit there. Her back against my chest. My arm secure around her waist. My nose in her hair.
We lie there. My thumb traces circles on her hip. She puts her hand over mine.
“We should sleep,” she says.
“Yeah.” Like my brain’s going to allow that to happen.
“We have a lot to do tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
But neither of us sleeps.
And I make her scream my name into her pillow five more times before the sun comes up.
The next morning I take Eva to Rosario’s.
She hasn’t been there in almost a week. Lochlan gave the order.
Visiting Sal could draw Dmitri’s attention to the restaurant and blow the surveillance perimeter.
But this morning Eva told Ronan she was going whether he liked it or not.
He went along with it and said he’d speak to Lochlan, probably because arguing with Eva has become a fight nobody in this house wins.
Lochlan’s team cleared our route. Cillian’s people have eyes on the block. We take a car with tinted windows. I park across the street and scan every window, door, and parked car outside before we move toward the restaurant.
I can hear the excitement in Sal’s voice from my spot on the sidewalk. I’m sure people three blocks away hear it, too. I stay outside for another minute to check out the perimeter because my brain automatically makes me process any potential threats to Eva.
I head for the front door when a man steps out of the alley next to the restaurant.
He’s one of the Albanians. I recognize the stance, the look he gives me. He’s part of Hoxha’s crew. Lower level, though. One of his soldiers.
“Molloy,” he says.
I stop.
“Walk away. She’s not yours to protect.” He keeps walking toward me.
I slowly turn to look at him, my lips pulled into a tight line.
I don’t answer, but my brain reads him. His stance is wide, which is fucking stupid.
His weight is on his back foot, which means he’s going to lead with his right.
I catch a glimpse of something on his hip.
It’s the handle of a knife. It wouldn’t be a gun. It’s too public for a gun.
He steps closer. “I said walk away.”
Everything goes still. The neighborhood sounds fade to white noise. There’s just me, this man, and the space between us.
He reaches for his hip.
I move.
He swings the blade, the hiss of it slicing the air.
I step inside the arc the way Cillian taught me.
I redirect his wrist and use his momentum to slam him into the brick wall.
The knife clatters on the ground. He tries to turn away, probably to run, and I slam him twice in the ribs with hard and precise shots.
They’re the same spots I’d aim for on the heavy bag except this one grunts and doubles over.
I catch his arm, wrench it behind his back, and pin him against the wall with my forearm across the back of his neck.
He’s fucking done.
“The restaurant is off-limits,” I hiss into his ear. “Tell Dmitri this is the last warning anyone gets.”
I step back. He grabs his ribs, stumbles sideways, and takes off down the alley without looking back.
I pick up the knife, fold it up, and pocket it.
I turn around.
Eva stands in the doorway of Rosario’s, her hand gripping the frame. Her mouth is open.
“Inside,” I say. “Now.”
She doesn’t argue. She backs through the door, and I follow her in. Sal works behind the bar, oblivious to the almost knife fight that just took place outside his restaurant.
Eva grabs my hand and drags me into the hallway by the restrooms.
“What the hell was that?” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.
“A problem.”
“A problem you solved in six seconds flat.”
“His stance was sloppy. And he showed me the knife when his jacket fell open. Fucking amateur.”
“Wolfe.” She stares at me. “You just put a man through a wall.”
“Into.”
“I swear to God, if you correct my prepositions right now—”
I shrug. “His form was bad. He wasn’t a contender.”
“Not a contend—” She scrapes her hands down her face. “Who the hell taught you to do that?”
“My brothers. All of us were trained. My Uncle Patrick started with Ronan. Ronan passed it down.”
“You. The guy with the glasses and the Cheerios. You can do that.”
“My father wanted soldiers. Every Molloy son learned how to fight. I trained the same way my brothers did until I was seventeen. Then I told my dad I was done with it.” I look at my knuckles.
They’re red again. “I chose the computer screen over the mat. He didn’t accept that.
It was one of the things he tried to beat out of me. ”
“Beat out of you,” she repeats. The color drips from her face.
“I never forgot my training. I just stopped using it.”
“Until today.”
“Until someone got between me and the place where you were.”
She stares at me. Then she grabs the front of my shirt, pulls me down, and kisses me.
“That’s terrifying,” she says, clutching my jacket as she presses herself into me. “In the best possible way.”
After a few seconds, she lets go, smooths her hair, and walks back into the restaurant like absolutely nothing happened.
Six seconds. That’s all it took. And I would have done worse if he’d gotten past me. I would have done things my brothers taught me never to do outside of a controlled space.
For her. Without a thought. Without hesitation. Without caring what it cost me.
That’s not the man I was before Eva.
And I’m starting to think he’s not coming back.