Breathless & Bloodstained (The Chicago War #4) (7 page)

Abriella blinked,
a wetness coating her bottom lashes. “I’m so angry with you.”

Her voice was
nothing more than a whisper. Pained, filled to the brim with longing, and so
tired, but it was still just a breath of air whispering to him.

“I’m not going to
keep apologizing,” Tommas said.

“Why not? Don’t I
matter enough for you to want to keep apologizing until I forgive you for being
such an asshole?”

“You know you
matter. You don’t need me to tell you how much you mean to me, Ella. I’ve told
you for years in a hundred different ways. I won’t keep apologizing to you
because it won’t make a difference. Your stubbornness won’t allow you to let
your anger go enough that you can see beyond it all. Your bitterness is bred
too deep. It’s your only fucking flaw, but I never cared until you turned it on
me.”

“I—”

“Don’t bother,”
Tommas interrupted sharply. “We both know it’s true. So I hurt you, Ella. I
hurt you because I’d hoped that what I was trying to do with Riley and Evelina
would outweigh your anger about it all in the end when you were free of your
brother to do what you wished. I did it for you and you know it. I can’t help that
it didn’t go according to plan.”

“I just wanted you
to tell me,” Abriella said, anger heating her eyes when she turned back on him.
“And what you did instead was prove to me everything that I already knew.”

Tommas barked out
a laugh and took a step forward. “Exactly, Ella. You’ve been waiting for four
years just to see me fuck something up. You’ve been waiting for me to prove how
little I care about you. You want me to be just like everybody else because
that would be so much fucking easier for you than admitting that you might
actually give a shit about us, or that you might love me. Right?”

Abriella’s lips
drew thin. “You don’t know a thing.”

“I know everything
that’s important about you. I know why it hurt when I didn’t tell you about the
fake engagement to Evelina, because you’ve never been able to be even close to
the same thing with me publically. We’ve had to hide it. Privately, you’ve
always been mine, but you always felt that if people knew the truth, they would
compare you to your mother. And when someone else had to stand at my side, even
if it was just for show, it made you feel like exactly what you were trying to
hide: my whore.

“I know you’re
lonely as hell; I know that you miss me like nothing else, and that’s why you
came here tonight.” Tommas moved forward until he was close enough to Abriella
that he could see the flecks of navy in her sky blue irises. Tears welled in
her eyes, threatening to fall. He wouldn’t relent, he refused to. “I know that,
as much as you want to pretend differently, you
care
. Tell me I’m wrong
about any of it, Ella. Go on ahead and do it.”

Abriella glanced
away. Tommas wouldn’t allow her to hide her truths simply because she was
stubborn as hell. He was close enough to touch her, and he did, reaching out to
grab her chin and tilt her face back so he could see her.

Her tears streaked
down to trembling lips.

Tommas held her
chin tighter when she tried to move away. “Don’t, Ella.”

“I hate this.”

Well, at least she
hadn’t said that she hated him.

“Hate what?” Tommas
asked.

“
This
,”
Abriella whispered, her hand coming up to lie flat to his chest. “I don’t want
to depend on you, but I can’t even stay away from you long enough to stand on
my own. I’m so fucked up around you.”

Tommas moved
closer to Abriella until she was parting her thighs to let him stand between
her legs. Her hand slid up from his chest to his neck, stopping briefly over
his pulse point before moving to his jaw.

“Don’t say that,”
Tommas murmured. “You can’t hate us, Ella.”

“It’s not the same
thing.”

“Isn’t it? All the
things you just said make exactly what we are, babe.”

Abriella’s thumb
swept a tender line over his cheek. “I miss you.”

Tommas’ tension
drifted away with those words. “The apartment feels empty.”

He released her
chin to grab onto her wrist. His fingers curled around hers, stopping the
stroking motion to his cheek. Holding her hand tight to keep her still, Tommas
used his free hand to ghost the tips of his fingers over her frowning lips.

“I wish you
wouldn’t do that,” Tommas said.

“I don’t know what
you’re talking about.”

“Frown, Ella. When
you’re with me, you should never be sad or angry.”

Abriella sighed
shakily. “Why do you do that, Tommy? Why do you have to say things like that
when I’m sad and angry with you? It’s not fair.”

She batted his
hand away from her face.

“And that, too,”
Abriella added, forcing his hand down between them and not allowing him to
touch her.

“What?”

“When you touch
me, I go fucking stupid. I want more. I want you to keep touching me. I forget
about all the reasons why I don’t want you to touch me, and everything you did
that made me so angry with you. I didn’t come here tonight for this, Tommy.
It’s not fair at all because you know what you do.”

Tommas chuckled.
“You’ve never played fair with me, babe. What makes you think I won’t play
dirty with you to get what I want?”

He tugged his hand
free from her grasp and quickly intertwined their fingers tightly together. For
any other couple, an action like holding hands was innocent. A fairly easy way
of showing affection and support.

For Tommas and
Abriella, something as simple as holding hands was sacred and rare. An action
that they could only do in private. Affection they couldn’t give freely. As
much as their sex could be rough, dirty, and dangerous, something like holding
hands could be the exact same thing but in a different way.

Abriella swallowed
thickly, her tongue peeking out to wet her bottom lip. “I do miss you. That’s
why I came tonight, but if you keep this up, it might turn into something else,
Tommy.”

Despite her words,
Tommas felt the tug on his arm when Abriella pulled on his hand. He moved
closer until her thighs were closing around his waist and locking him in. The
wool dress hugging Abriella’s curves slid up her hips, letting him feel the
heat of her sex beneath the cotton panties she wore.

There were no keys
to her prison.

Tommas didn’t
mind.

In love, freedom
was a myth.

Abriella’s hand
still hadn’t left his cheek. With her warm, smooth palm pressed tight to his
skin, and her other tangled up with his, Tommas was grounded.

“You’re crazy
coming here tonight,” Tommas said.

Abriella bit the
inside of her cheek and replied, “I know.”

“I am sorry, Ella.
I lied. I’ll keep saying it until you don’t need or want me to anymore. You
know I will.”

“Of course, you
will.”

Tommas smiled.
“There’s no hiding anything from you, is there?”

“Well, you can’t.”

“I wish you would
let me know when you’re coming. I could meet you somewhere safer. I don’t know
on any given night if someone is watching this place, Ella.”

“I was careful. I
snuck in through the back alley and used the keys for the emergency door like you
showed me.”

Tommas’ fingers
tightened with Abriella’s. “That’s not the point. Nothing is safe right now,
Ella. I have no idea what your brother is planning, or rather, what he might
already have planned. I don’t want you in the middle of anything that might get
you hurt.”

“Tommas—”

“Hush, and
listen.”

Abriella’s mouth
snapped shut. “Fine.”

“I fucked up the
first time around with the engagement and the boss, Ella. I thought for sure
that Riley would take out Joel, and that would leave you free to do what you
wanted.”

“With you,” she
said softly.

Tommas had never
been a liar. “Yes.”

“All you had to do
was tell me and not let me find out in a room full of people, Tommy.”

“You wouldn’t have
listened no matter when I told you.”

Abriella opened
her mouth to argue, but Tommas wasn’t in the mood to fight with his lover. They
had done enough of that over the last couple of months. The worst kind of
fighting was the kind that was silent and non-verbal, separated by people and
space. He preferred Abriella’s anger, even violence, over her silence and
distance.

Instead of
allowing her to argue the point with him, Tommas leaned forward and caught her
opened mouth with his own. Her silky lips pressed back to his, returning the
kiss, and almost instantly, their softness was gone. Abriella’s fingernails dug
into Tommas’ cheek the second his tongue found hers when he deepened the kiss.
He fisted her dress and pulled her closer, wanting her to feel the hardness
growing under his slacks.

Simply being close
and touching Abriella was enough to make Tommas harder than steel and fucking
stupid in the head.

Tommas caught
Abriella’s bottom lip and bit down hard enough to leave the imprints of his
teeth behind. She gasped the sweetest sound, a high whine following right behind.
The spikes of her leather high-heeled boots dug into the small of his back,
stinging in the best way when she left her own mark on his cheek with her
nails.

“You wouldn’t have
listened,” Tommas breathed against her trembling lips. “No matter what I said
or how I told you, Ella, you wouldn’t have heard a thing I said. All you would
have heard was that someone else would stand with me, and not you. Someone else
would be thought of as mine, and not you. Someone else who wasn’t you, Ella. It
wouldn’t have made a difference how fake it was, and that I never intended to
follow it through, because it wasn’t
you
.”

Abriella’s lashes
fanned her cheeks, and more tears escaped the corners of her eyes. “You’re
right, but it still hurt me, Tommy.”

“Hurting you kills
me, babe. You know it does. It was easier for me to do it the way I did. I knew
you would be forced to control your reaction and …”

“Keep going,” she
demanded.

“And I didn’t want
to see your face when you heard about the engagement.”

Abriella didn’t
even seem surprised. “That was selfish of you.”

“The word you used
was cowardly, actually.”

“You’re not a
coward, Tommy, but you are terribly selfish.”

“When it comes to
you, yes. I’ll always be that way. You’ve made me like this, Ella.”

“And what about
the monster you turned me into, huh?”

Tommas leaned
down, nose to nose with his lover. “I adore the monster in you.”

The sadness in
Abriella’s gaze was replaced by a feisty fire. This was the woman Tommas loved;
she was the woman that he wouldn’t trade for anything. There was no one on
earth like Abriella Trentini. She was fucking gorgeous, as sharp as a razor’s
edge, and smarter than most men in the Outfit.

She was perfect.

Crazy wonderful.

Abriella bent
forward and kissed Tommas hard, driving her booted heels into his lower back
and pushing him into her body. His tongue tangled with hers, their familiar
dance falling in tune like it always did between them.

There was nothing
like this.

No one else but
Ella.

“Goddamn,” Tommas
groaned into her mouth. “I thought you said that you hadn’t come here tonight
for this.”

Abriella’s laugh
was high and airless. “Should I go somewhere else for it?”

Tommas let loose a
sound that came off a hell of a lot like a growl. He grabbed her waist with enough
force to leave his fingerprints behind, but he knew she liked it. Abriella
preferred him rough and dirty, not soft and sweet.

“Excuse me?”
Tommas asked. “Do you want to repeat that a little louder, babe?”

“Is that a no?”

“That. Is. A.
Fucking. No.”

Abriella flashed a
wicked grin. “You’re so jealous.”

He was.

He was damned
awful.

“You love it.”

Abriella’s smile
fell. Tommas’ frustration skyrocketed at the sight. All it took was one word
for his girl’s walls to climb back up high.

In typical Abriella
fashion, she went for a deflection. Tommas decided to let her.

“You weren’t the
only one who lied tonight,” Abriella said.

“Oh?”

“No. I didn’t
actually sneak out. Joel’s been in his office for a couple of days. He barely
comes out of it. I don’t know what is up with him, and he’s not that important
anyway.”

“Hey,” Tommas said
quickly, quieting Abriella instantly. “Don’t underestimate your brother. Too
many other people have done exactly that and they’ve ended up in a grave
because of it, Ella. Joel is an asshole, but he is not a stupid man.”