Chapter 21
Luke
T his was rich. This was really fucking cute. Emma telling me that I was dangerous. I was a street fighter, trying to stay afloat. I didn’t have an organization behind me.
“You’re just as dangerous as of a man.” Emma furrowed her brow as I sped back to the Tropican. “You’re a deadly fighter. You almost killed that man in the alley.”
I had killed before. She didn’t need to know it, but she was getting close to the truth that I was a ruthless man.
“I saw you at that fight. You don’t even flinch at the idea of facing off with opponents who could kill you.”
Despite the high pitch of her claims, I caught a note of the worry lying underneath her words.
She cared. She was concerned about me.
Somehow, after a month of us resisting each other, she’d come to hold me close to her heart.
“You have to be careful,” she warned. “I feel like a hypocrite to tell you that after I asked you to come with me to that party house, but, please, Luke. You have to be careful, especially around someone like Antonio.”
Hearing her say his name with such ease, such familiarity, set me on edge. While I was touched that she cared about me, I wasn’t in a good mood. I didn’t like hearing her reference one of Miami’s worst crime leaders with that kind instant recognition.
“You should. You need to be careful about Antonio Marchese,” I growled. I could handle my own. I had. I took down Orsen, and if I was expected to see through a challenge of fighting Ferris, I would.
“I don’t even know how you’re familiar with him. How you’re connected.”
“I’m not,” she insisted.
I smirked at her. “I don’t believe that for one fucking second.”
“I am not connected to Antonio.”
I paid attention to the road, wondering why my stomach knotted with her reply. It sounded like she held back on saying yet , that she would be with Antonio in the future. Or maybe hiding the addition of anymore at the end of that sentence. Like she’d had to deal with him previously.
She was a virgin, though. I felt confident that was true. If she was relatively untouched, how could he have had her before?
I hated this sensation of being duped. Of her lying to me. Since I’d met her, I worried that she was hiding something big. That she was keeping vital clues from me. After that fight, I told her—sincerely—that I wanted to know her. That I yearned to be a part of her life and make room for her in mine.
I couldn’t. Not when she wouldn’t be upfront with me. Not when she’d hide and stay in this layer of deception.
It served as further proof that this was wrong. That we had no business messing around at all. We could want each other. We could lust for one another. It no longer felt like a base, physical desire. The moment I feared I couldn’t find her in that party house, the more I realized how much she mattered in my heart.
You stupid, fucking moron. I had to fall for a woman who couldn’t belong in my life. She had no place for me in her life if she refused to explain it all.
“I’m not connected to Antonio,” she repeated. “I wish I’d never met him. Never knew of him.”
But she did. “You seemed awfully familiar when I walked in that room.”
“We’ve known of each other for a long time.”
“How?”
“Through...”
She hedged, and I pounced, too furious to play games. “If you say you know him through a friend of a friend, or some vague shit like that...”
“No. He’s not a friend.”
“Antonio Marchese isn’t anyone’s fucking friend,” I replied hotly.
“Right. He isn’t.”
“Then, why,” I repeated, feeling like a broken record, “do you know him?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
I grunted, shaking my head. “Oh, so when the going gets tough, you’re suddenly a coward?” I parked, shoving the gear stick roughly before I wrenched the keys out of the ignition. I tossed them to her as I got out.
She hurried to exit as I opened the back door to get Krista out. She remained unconscious, but sleeping peacefully. This could’ve been Emma. How could she be so collected with this danger?
“You persist and stay in my face, tempting me,” I groused as I lifted Krista into my arms. “You tag after me and make me start to feel like we—” I bit back the rest of my words as she tailed me to Krista’s condo.
I wasn’t going to spill my heart now. The threat of the Marcheses and the disappointment that Emma would keep secrets battered at the thing that beat in my chest.
She seemed to understand that now wasn’t the moment. We couldn’t have a shouting match out here this late. Other condos remained nearby, and I had to be careful with bothering others. We sure didn’t need any witnesses to this anyway.
Instead, she hurried ahead of me to open Krista’s door. She held it open for me as I carried the sleeping woman in.
“I think she was roofied.”
She nodded. “I agree.”
“She should sleep it off, but maybe stick close if she doesn’t.”
She nodded again, not making eye contact as I set Krista on the bed. “This... this isn’t my first experience with a woman being drugged.”
I rolled my eyes. So much for thinking I knew her. “You? You’ve been roofied?”
She pointed at her friend. “Krista likes to party. Sometimes hard.”
I shook my head, backing out of there.
“Luke, wait.”
“I’ll see you to your condo.” It seemed pointless now. She wasn’t mine to protect if she had friends—or enemies—like Antonio Marchese. Everyone had skeletons in their closets. I did, too. But hers seemed like the sort of deal breaker that I couldn’t handle.
If she’d just come clean and explain why she associated with the Marcheses, I could plan and think it all through. But I was in the dark. She kept hedging and evading, and I was sick of it.
If she cared half as much as I did for her, then she’d come clean.
It was as simple as that.
The longer she tried to stay quiet and string me along, the faster my patience died out. The quicker my disappointment grew, too.
Emma was the kind of woman I could bring home and love. The “nice, decent good girl” my mother wanted me to settle down with. I just knew it. Soul to soul, we made sense.
As I walked her to her condo, I hated that I’d severely misjudged her.
Emma wasn’t nice. She could be mean and give as good as she got, defensive and bold.
She wasn’t decent. No one could associate with the mafia and claim to be on the right side of any moral compass.
And she sure as fuck wasn’t a good girl, looking at me with such desire and forbidden yearning burning in her bright, blue-green eyes that captivated me still.
She was wrong for me, so damn wrong, but I wasn’t strong enough to flinch when she took my hand at her door. I was weak, addicted to wanting to be near her when she tugged on my fingers to urge me to come in with her.
Just over a month ago, I crossed this threshold and entered this very condo. I got my first glimpse of her here, and since then, I’d come to lust for her in a way I doubted I ever would for anyone else again.
“No, Emma.” I shook my head as she closed the door. I’d stay here to hear her out of she was ready to give me some damn answers. But I had to shut the other door, the one on anything wicked and sensual happening between us.
“I can’t.” I sighed, hating the longing in her eyes. “I can’t stay. We can’t be together.”
“I—” She cut herself off as she lowered her gaze. She slid her palm over mine, teasing me with the caress of her smooth, soft skin. Once she entwined our finger, she looked up at me and seared me with her soulful gaze.
“I won’t agree to that.”
I growled, aggravated that she’d make this difficult. “Nothing can happen between us. I told you before and I’ll remind you again. I don’t have time for this kind of trouble. We’re too different. In different places in our lives.” I was a weak fool, unable to drop her hand. I used my free one to drag over my head. “You’ve got...who the fuck knows what kind of issues going on. I’m trying my best to keep my mom and me alive and surviving. We don’t make sense.”
“That’s all that makes sense to me anymore.” She stepped closer, lifting our joined hands until they rested over her chest. Her heart thumped so fast, racing beneath our hands.
“I can’t be with you.”
She furrowed her brow. “Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Either. Both.” I grunted. “It doesn’t matter. It was stupid of us to think this could go anywhere.”
“I never thought it would. I never planned to meet you or to feel like...” She licked her lips and glanced away. “Like you’re all I want to live for.”
“Fuck. Emma.” She couldn’t say shit like that and tease me. She couldn’t lead me on like this. It wasn’t fucking fair. Because the second I convinced myself that she felt the same about me that I did for her, there would be no stopping my devotion to her. All or nothing. That was how I ruled with my heart. That was why I never let anyone in. The selection process was tight for this reason.
I didn’t do anything half-ass. I was either out or in.
“I never thought you , of all men, would be the one to make me wonder if love can exist out there.”
Love? Now she was playing dirty. I was deluded to believe that I could love her—if she’d be honest. That was simply how my heart beat, for her. But I couldn’t admit it.
“This doesn’t have to go anywhere beyond fooling around on your vacation. All right?” I sighed and cupped her face, stroking my thumb over the silky curve of her high cheekbone. Her skin was so smooth, so delicate. “I won’t take back anything that we’d done, but that’s it. I can be the fling you think back to after you leave.”
“No.” She stepped closer, into my space.
Dammit. She had no clue how much she turned me on when she talked back. I dipped my head to hers, stealing a kiss. One last kiss.
“No,” she argued. “I won’t agree with that.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Are you trying to tell me how it is, then?” she challenged.
“Emma, we can’t work.”
“Yes, we can.” Bold determination glittered in her gaze. “We do work. We make sense. We fit.”
She leaned up to kiss me, so hungrily like she’d pass out without a hit of this desire sizzling between us. Each one of her ragged breaths chipped at my resistance. Seeing and hearing her so driven to have me, on the cusp of electric lust, weakened my argument.
Fuck, I wanted her. I wanted her like it’d be the last important choice I’d ever make in my life.
“I want you, Luke.”
I groaned, kissing her again. Slipping my hand into her hair, I held her in place to steal another drugging taste of her. Sweet and tart. Open and sassy.
“I want you , Luke.” She stared up into my eyes, begging and wishing. “And no one will talk me out of wanting you. Nothing will stop me from feeling like this.”
Not even me. I covered her lips with mine, giving in and surrendering to the biggest mistake of my life.