Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
ANDIE
“Shit!” I curse, taken by surprise when I look up and see Keane. “I didn’t hear you come back in.”
I stayed behind after the meeting was over, my mind full of what’s to come. I’ve been sitting in Declan’s chair for who the hell knows how long, staring at the Levin crest on the table.
“That’s because I never left.”
I cover my face with my hands. “Seriously?”
He smirks, still sitting in the chair he was in earlier, and I never noticed.
“Well, that’s embarrassing,” I reply.
“You may want to add improving your situational awareness to your to-do list.” He gets up from his chair.
“Ha ha,” I deadpan. “How long was I ‘situationally unaware?’”
He stalks toward me, his hazel eyes full of smug mischief. “Do you mean, how long were you completely oblivious and didn’t notice that a six-foot-two man was five feet from you for over twenty minutes?”
He stops and leans over me in the chair, his thick, muscled arms caging me in. My hands instinctively mold to his biceps and squeeze, just like my pussy does at his nearness as I remember how he held me in his arms and fucked me standing up.
“Yeah, that.”
Keane moves into my personal space, forcing my head to tilt back. His cologne sends my senses into a tizzy. Why does he always have to smell so damn good? His lips hover over mine, and my heart pounds in anticipation. Hazel eyes trace my face, lingering on my mouth for a few seconds before he steps back. I’d be irritated at how easily Keane flusters me with just one look, if I weren’t so attracted to the domineering bastard.
“Do you really think Alejandro will come after you again once he finds out we’re getting married?”
I inspect my nails and the chipped polish. I’ll get Tessa to give me another manicure before we leave tomorrow. I’m going back to the Rossi estate with the guys. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but one I felt was necessary. Unlike here at Falcon Tower, I know every inch of the Rossi mansion—its hiding spots and its secrets. I know every tree and blade of grass that grows within the estate’s walled perimeter.
“Not if, but when. Once he hears the announcement, he won’t wait to make his next move. His ego and his hubris will force his hand. He’ll want to punish me for lying to him. He lost it when I told him we were already married. Destroyed the cage he put me in, then broke my finger and took your rings.”
Keane strangles the back of the chair, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he picked it up and tossed it across the room with me still in it.
“Anyway, we’re not talking about that. I’m actually glad you’re still here. Saves me from tracking you down.”
The anger subsides as desire takes over. “Ready for bed?” He strokes my neck.
“Yes.” I press my legs together. “But also no. I want to talk to you about Liam.”
I’m not amused at the groan he emits. It sounds like something a teenager would make when they’re told to do their homework instead of playing video games.
“Keane, I can’t have you and Liam at each other’s throats all the time.”
He paces a few feet, groans again, then turns around. “I don’t like him,” he says through clenched teeth.
“You don’t have to like him, but you can stop needling and picking fights with him.”
His hands land on the table, and he scorches me with a glare. “It won’t matter once we’re married.”
My jaw drops before I can shut it. Is he implying that I won’t be allowed to see Liam anymore?
“Liam will always matter to me, regardless of whom I’m married to. And if you think for one second that this marriage between us meant to help you solidify your position as don will stop me from being with Liam, Jax, or Rafe, you’re about to find out where you can shove it.”
His glare turns pensive, then solemn. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I call liar, liar, pants on fire.”
My juvenile reply has him snapping, “Now, wait a goddamn minute.”
Not waiting, I continue, “I know this entire thing between me, and you, and the others is not normal. I know that. I also know how selfish it is on my end. How unfair it is to all of you. If the situations were reversed, I would murder you in your sleep if you wanted to bring in another woman and fuck her.”
“You wouldn’t wait for me to be asleep, Tinker Bell.”
His quip takes all the metaphorical air from my sails, and I collapse back into Declan’s chair.
Keane gestures a finger back and forth between us. “This thing between us happened because four men want the same woman, and we’re lucky bastards that she wants us back. I don’t give a shit if it’s normal or not. If they can’t handle it and want out, it’s on them.”
My throat swells with emotion. “Everybody leaves.”
Nothing in my life has ever held permanence. And buried deep underneath the steel walls I was forced to build around my heart in order to survive, still lives a scared little girl who is desperate for someone, anyone, to love her.
Suddenly tired, I rub my temples. “Keane, I don’t want to argue with you anymore.”
Before I can protest further, he lifts me up and deposits me on top of the conference table.
“You love arguing with me, princess. And we’re not arguing. We’re discussing.” I gasp when he roughly rubs between my legs. “I bet you’re soaking wet right now.”
My thighs clench together, locking his hand in place. He’d be absolutely correct.
“And our marriage won’t be fake,” he says, throwing my legs open and jerking me forward to the edge of the table. The long, hard length of him presses against my clit, and I moan.
He flattens a hand on my back to hold me in place and toys with a strand of my hair. “I promised Jax I would never take you away from him. Not after…” He pauses, blowing out a puff of air over my face.
“Not after…” I prod when he doesn’t finish.
He pushes the strand of hair over my shoulder and kisses me behind my ear. “Hopefully one day, he’ll tell you. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. It’s about something he said to me about walking away.”
He pauses again, and my insides twist painfully. “Is that what you want?”
My incessant insecurities I try so hard to hold back, niggle their way forward anyway.
He touches our foreheads together and cups my face. “No, baby. It’s not what I want. What I want is you.”
The painful twist unfurls, and I breathe in deeply, not realizing I’d been holding my breath while waiting for his answer.
“Good. Because as much as I want to strangle you half the time, I do love you. I think I’ve loved you since the moment we met, and you scowled at me.”
His whole body shakes with laughter. “You were such a brat back then.”
“Hey!” I smack his shoulder.
He catches my hand. “It’s hard for me to say those three words, but I do feel them. Damn, do I feel them, Andie.” He places a fingertip below my jugular notch and pushes with gentle pressure. “I’m about to defile you on this table, woman. My dick is aching to be inside of you. If you’re too sore to take me, now’s your chance to say no.”
There is no way in hell I’ll refuse him, and he knows it. I lie back on the hard wooden surface and raise my arms above my head, my back arching slightly, looking like a sacrificial virgin on a stone altar. He licks his lips, his hungry gaze roving over me. His hands slide underneath my shirt and up my stomach.
“There are no cameras in here, and it’s soundproof.” I curl my ankle around his backside and thrust my hips upward, grinding into him.
“Is that a challenge?” he asks, pushing a bra cup up and fondling my breast. “Want to see how loud I can make you scream my name?” He frees my other breast and pinches the nipple. Spikes of pleasure cascade over me like a waterfall.
“Just the opposite. You’ll be screaming my name.”
“Is that right?” he asks, tugging the hem of my shirt.
I sit up so he can peel it off me and am impressed when he easily unhooks my bra with a twist of his hand.
“Fuck, I love your tits.” His large frame towers over me as he looks his fill, his eyes alight with need and want.
He palms the back of my head and brings our mouths together. Keane’s kiss is as controlling and domineering as he is, but his lips are devastating with how soft they are. He owns me with his kiss. Breaks down every single one of my walls and has me forgetting that only a minute ago, we were arguing.
He bends over me, pelvis flush with my core at the edge of the table, his arms propped and braced on either side of my head. I get lost in the depths of his green-browns, as he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth in introspection.
“You are so fucking beautiful, it hurts. I wish I had my camera.”
I haven’t seen him behind a lens yet, so I’m curious. “I saw the picture you took of me hanging in your room at Kellan’s cabin.”
His mouth tips up at the corner. “When I caught you in there, I may have freaked a little.”
“You don’t say.”
I giggle when Keane holds his index finger and thumb slightly apart.
“I haven’t seen you take any photographs. Did you stop?”
He unzips my pants and slides them down my legs. He does it slowly, torturously. Strong, masculine fingers dig into the supple skin under my knee.
“My muse was in Switzerland,” he answers, and something inside me melts at his words.
Gently bending my right leg, he places my foot on the table. My stomach muscles clench when the scruff of his stubble tickles as he roams open-mouthed kisses along my ankle and up my calf. He gives my right leg the same attention.
Stepping back, he examines his handiwork. I’m dripping wet and fully aroused. My clit is pulsing, and my naked breasts quiver with my shallow breaths.
“I need to know your boundaries, baby. If there’s something you don’t like or don’t want me to do, tell me. You’re safe with me, Andie. I swear I will never hurt you.”
He means hurt me like Max did.
“No belts.”
One of my one-night stands in Switzerland made the mistake of trying to bind my hands together to his bedpost with his belt. I broke his nose.
“No belts,” Keane concedes and runs his hands up my arms, loosely circling my wrists. “What about tying you up? Bondage?”
I’m honest when I reply, “You’ll have to ease me into it. I don’t like feeling confined.”
Keane French kisses my breast, his tongue swirling around my areola. God, that feels so good.
“Spankings?” he asks cautiously, wondering if being spanked might be a trigger for me. Rafe slapped my pussy, and I loved it.
“I trust you.” His lips move over to the other breast. When he gently bites down on the taut nipple, the electric zip of pain it causes has me confessing, “I like a little bit of pain with sex.”
Taking me at my word, he bites down harder. Yes, just like that .
He kisses where he bit, soothing the sting. “You liked it when Jax cut you,” he states. Not a question.
“Yes.” Keane saw how I responded to Jax when he nicked my chest with the knife while fucking me on the coffee table.
“Who knew my princess was such a dirty girl?” He lets go of my wrists, his touch creating a trail of goose bumps in their wake as he moves them to my belly button ring. He flicks the amethyst that dangles on the short link chain a few times. “This is incredibly sexy.”
“So are you.”
Keane is still fully clothed. He’s wearing a black dress shirt, the top three buttons undone. The sleeves are rolled up, exposing his full sleeve of ink and the corded muscles in his forearms. His dark brown hair is longer and mussed in a just-rolled-out-of-bed way. But it’s his hazel eyes that pull me in. The forest green flecks intermeshed in the light chocolate brown of his irises.
He dips a finger between my drenched folds, spreading my arousal over my clit, then down farther. His fingertip rubs a circle around my forbidden, puckered hole, and his eyes bore into me. He’s testing my response to being touched back there. He had said he wanted to be the first to take my ass, and I know he must wonder about Max.
I look away, ashamed to tell him that Maximillian Rossi destroyed every part of me.
“I trust you,” I repeat.
His finger stops moving when understanding hits.
“Jesus,” he breathes, removing his hand and gathering me in his arms. He holds my face between his hands and kisses every inch of it. “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry,” he says, over and over. “You are so strong, baby. So fucking strong.”
Then he says the three words he thought he would never be able to voice out loud. “I fucking love you, Andie.”
I turn my face into his neck and laugh. “That’s a lot of ‘fucking.’”
Not letting me go, he leans back, smiling, and it’s a marvelous sight.
We stay wrapped around one another for a while. It’s amazing how life-altering a simple hug can be. How safe I feel. Protected, loved, and cherished. The guys don’t understand how much they’ve healed me and brought me back to life. And it’s not just the incredible, hot, mind-blowing sex. It’s love. Something I thought I didn’t deserve. Something I thought I’d never find or have. And I’ve found it with four dangerous men. I’m a very grateful bitch.
My arms circle his neck. “Now, if you don’t mind, I was guaranteed to be screaming your name by now, and I haven’t said stop, so …”
My giggles turn into full-blown laughter when he rips his clothes off and climbs on top of the table with me underneath him.