Chapter 13 #2
“You always get into fights unprovoked?” She sauntered toward me, hips swaying, heels clicking. Her confidence turned this strip of concrete into her personal runway just as the first droplets of rain fell.
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you think? I always know where you are.”
I slid my jaw back and forth. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Her hand fell to her cocked hip. “Why not? You’re here. I’m here. It’s a little reunion.” She glanced at her phone and wiped at the droplets sticking to the screen. “Still time to grab a drink if you want.”
Behind her, a bruised cartel man shifted upright like a bloody specter, his body wobbly and slanted against an old metal pipe grinding against concrete. A ragged grunt scraped out of him, and he swirled the pipe over his head. Directly at her.
All my calm vanished under the sudden tightness of my skin.
My inner beast charged, hot-blooded, slobbering, and thirsty for blood.
I tackled him to the wet ground and pummeled his face.
Quickly I lost count of the number of punches.
There was only the release of watching his nose cave in.
Of feeling his eye sockets burst. Of the hot liquid coating my burning fists.
Fingers dug into my shoulders. They pried and tugged, but I didn’t stop. Through the garbled moans. The wet, hissed inhales. The flop of his hands as they fell to his sides like an open-ended plea.
A shadow blocked out the fragile yellow light, and my mystery woman stooped down. Her face so close to mine that her perfume cloyed my nose. It was too sweet and too gentle against the grotesque shape of the smashed-in face beneath me. My fist rose, poised to deliver another blow.
“Enough. He’s dead.”
She slapped me. Her entire body twisted with the force of it. The sting warmed and pulsed like a light bulb on its last leg, flickering on and off and whirring before it shattered.
“Do you hear me?”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t even move. No one had slapped me since I outgrew my father’s discipline. No one dared, except this sylphlike woman.
A hand wrapped into my sweater and jerked me forward with strength her figure shouldn’t have allowed.
“Snap out of it.”
Another slap hit. My cheek flared with dangerous warmth. A string of French burst out of her. She raised her hand again. This time, I caught her wrist mid-strike.
“Stop hitting me, woman.”
“Oh, good. You are back to your pleasant self.”
I wrenched her closer, forcing her to her knees before me. Nose to nose, close enough to taste her strawberry-tinged breath, I bared my teeth.
“This isn’t a game.”
Spittle flew between us, but she didn’t cower. Instead, her delicate hand tightened into a fist around my torn shirt, and my cock jerked at the power shift between us.
“You’d be dead without me,” she accused. “Be grateful. You’re a menace to yourself. What kind of person takes on seven armed men by themselves?”
“What kind of a woman jumps into a fray they don’t know?”
“This one.” She tried to pull away, but I wasn’t having it.
At the junction between her neck and shoulder, her pulse quivered, right where my teeth ached to bite down and taste the light sheen of her skin. Would it taste sweet like her perfume or tangy like her anger and self-righteousness?
Those types of lust-ridden thoughts were better ground to dust, but god help me, they wouldn’t leave me alone.
“Why?” I growled.
“Isn’t it obvious? They overpowered you. They would have killed you.”
“Never would’ve made it that easy for them.”
She scoffed. “Unbelievable.”
“Are you not going to thank me?”
“For what?”
One look at the bloody pulp at our feet stoked my rage once more. He almost clipped her.
She caged a chuckle behind closed lips. “You’re crazy if you expect me to thank you.”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart.”
“I could have handled him.”
“Sure, you could’ve.”
Again, she tugged to get free, but I wasn’t letting her go.
Not when I had this little stalker finally at my mercy.
The flames of the fight still crackled in my ears, and its fire thrummed through my veins, not yet ready to burn out and die a slow death back into ennui.
I was the live wire she zapped herself onto, and there was no decreasing my voltage. Not yet.
I jerked her onto my lap as my aching hand buried itself in her hair and captured her by the nape. Her thighs locked over mine, and her core wedged against my hardening groin. My shaft throbbed with need, shoving against my zipper.
A storm of emotions morphed her face as quickly as a hurricane. Anger, worry, confusion, so many more. It was difficult to keep track of.
“Tell me no.”
She wiggled in my lap as an answer, and the taut line of restraint between us snapped.
My mouth crushed down on hers. There was no softness.
It wasn’t a gentle fusion of two people testing affection.
This was craving and need. A scrimmage for dominance.
A conduit for release. All that lingering anger and adrenaline crashed into it.
Teeth clashed. Mouths devoured each other.
Tongues battled. It was the collision of two storms, and lightning crackled between us.
She yanked at my hair and nipped my lips.
I squeezed her ass and hauled her against me.
She dug her nails into my back, my open wounds zinging with pain.
I thrust my clothed, rigid cock up the juncture between her legs and swallowed down her groans.
For the first time in years, I fell into the intimacy of another person, abstinence be damned.
With her in my arms, working my erection through our clothes with every pump of her hips, everything else ceased to exist. There was nothing beyond her mouth and body.
No dead. No injured. No gore. No drowning.
Nothing but the taste of her surrender. Nothing but the feel of our tongues advancing and retreating for territory.
In the back of my mind, a warning pulsed. It raged from the other side of my haze. It screamed there was a reason I didn’t do this.
“Yes, don’t stop.” She groaned, her body shivering against mine. “I’m so close.”
It was like the clouds split and clarity hit. Sirens rang in the distance. A muddled argument racketed from a street down. The damp wetness of new drizzle against my face finally registered. Droplets pattered against the debris and metal around us and doused the rest of the frenzy.
The waistband of her pants clung to the fingers I’d dug inside to pull them down. A breeze whipped against us and through my open pant zipper.
Jaysus, I was losing my fecking mind. I shoved her off me, rose, and adjusted my pants.
“What was that for?” she protested.
I swiped a hand down my face and extended the other to her. It was the least I could do after…that. The moment she was up, I dropped her hand.
Unease built between us like a bridgeless river. It was better that way. No attachments meant no loss. No loss meant no added layer of suffocating emptiness.
Questions brewed beneath her wet lashes. I turned away from her and surveyed the mess. I stomped over to each cartel man and pressed fingers against their necks. Three dead. Four unconscious. Inwardly, I sighed. I went a little too far down the rabbit hole with this.
I checked my phone, satisfied it still worked, and made a quick call to Brody with the street name, body count, and who.
He logged the information and assigned the job to the nearest active cleaner the clan had on duty, who gave an eight-minute response time.
Not great, but I was already lucky no cops had ventured this way during my lapse of judgement.
Until then, I hauled the bodies and piled them behind the couch.
I wiped the remains of my sweater over my face, suddenly feeling wrecked and drained.
Shoulders slouched, I cracked my neck and picked up my helmet.
In the visor, my blurred reflection brooded back at me.
Today I’d faced the demons, but then tomorrow would come, and I’d have to find something else to keep my head above water. Was it really worth it?
“Need a ride?”
I jerked around. She was still there, completely drenched and surprisingly unbothered by my shabby cover job. She bobbed her head at my helmet.
“You can’t drive like that.”
“Where are you parked?”
She stole a peek over her shoulder. “That black Lexus.” Her palms swept one over the other. “Why don’t you come back to my place? We can continue where we left off.”
Her face lit up with something close to hopeful naivete. Nothing like the woman who’d slapped a mobster without a second thought five minutes ago and humped my cock on a side street like a two-bit whore. It killed the heat she aroused.
Hope was pointless. It would only lead to another grave and the stinging misery of reality.
“No.”
“Cillian, we—”
“No,” I snapped. “Stop following me. Stop coming on to me. Whatever you think this is, it’s not. It never will be. Get the hint, and feck off back to where you came from.”
I expected her to scurry away from my rage. Instead, her fists clenched. Her mouth curved into an odd pout. Her light eyes blazed in the darkness of the night.
“You should know I don’t give up.”
As the cleaner pulled up and flagged me down, she reached her Lexus’ passenger door. I watched as she opened it, and the interior lights flicked on. A growl grated its way out of my throat, and my inner beast stretched its claws, all because the shadow of a man waited for her inside.