Sneak Attack (10 page)

Just with the therapy of her heartbeat matched to mine.

“The gym.” That’s where all of this had begun. And before that, with my mother. With welts of blood blooming under her skin and gushing freely under mine.

“No,” he said softly.

My gaze lifted to his again. And held. I didn’t understand everything he was trying to nonverbally communicate. Hell, any of it.

“It’s not a good idea for you to go back there tonight. Let me drive you both home. Tomorrow, I’ll pick you up, take you to your car.”

Arguing would take more strength than I had left. I felt drained, as if I’d fought a succession of increasingly larger opponents. Each one escalating the level of pain until it was on scream. Eventually it reached a point where numbness was the only recourse.

I was so fucking there.

“Okay.” I rattled off her address—my address now—and drew her tighter against me. If I could, I’d absorb her tissue and bone into mine, reinforce it until she became whole again.

But I didn’t have that option, and hell, I wasn’t even close to whole myself.

She curled into me, her nose bumping my chin, her ice-cold hands disappearing into the folds of my shirt. It was the closest to a reaction I’d received since getting into the truck with her, and I sighed as I rubbed my cheek over her hair.

And discovered Gio was watching us through the rearview again, his gaze thoughtful.

“What?”

“I never saw it. With you two. I mean, I saw the sparks. Everyone does. But this…I guess I didn’t think it was possible.”

Indignation smothered the crushing weight of…nothing. That blissful beyond that held nothing but dark. If not for my fear for Mia, it would swallow me whole.

“That she could love me?” My lips felt too thick and clumsy, but somehow I formed them around the words. They were important. “That I could love her?”

“That either of you could let anyone in.” His attention returned to the road. “Fighters, we usually do better single file.”

“I’ve spent enough time single fucking file.” I didn’t mean to spit out the words.

To soothe, I smoothed my hand up her back. She didn’t respond.

Neither did Giovanni.

“What about you?” I asked when the silence in the truck became deafening. All the other noises seemed far removed. The distant honking of horns, the clatter of a subway car over the tracks. The endless drone of wheels rolling on the pavement.

“What about me,” he replied after lifetimes passed in the interim.

“You’ve always been single file.” I didn’t know what I was getting at. I certainly didn’t give two shits about Giovanni Costas’s love life. But there was so much more going on tonight than two fighter dudes—one retired—checking out a few undressed girls with some associates. There was a subtext rife with things I couldn’t begin to decipher, especially right now.

But I would. I’d damn well remember all of this tomorrow, and I’d get to the bottom of what that bastard had dragged me and my girl into like fucking unwitting lambs.

Normally I wouldn’t have ever thought of myself or Mia that way. But tonight, yes. I couldn’t even guess at the scope of what we’d stumbled into.

“What else would I be?” he returned, the oncoming headlights illuminating his fingers flexing around the wheel.

“Who are those men?”

“It’s better for you if you don’t know,” he said finally. “Tonight was my mistake. I’ll fix it.” His hands tightened. “Somehow I will fix it.”

I didn’t like how low his voice had gone, or the relentless clench of his fingers around the wheel. So much more was going on here than I could puzzle out, and until I made sense of it, Mia could be in danger.

I glanced at her, at the watery stars the streetlights painted on her ghostly cheeks. Her thick dark lashes lay undisturbed, though I doubted she was asleep. She was drifting, lost to whatever battles she waged in her own head.

“What will they do to her?”

“I won’t allow anything to happen to Mia.” His response was too swift, too loud. Almost as if he was convincing himself as much as me.

“What will they do,” I repeated, needing to hear it. I wouldn’t allow it either. That didn’t mean I was naïve enough to tuck my head under the pillow to block out the sound of slaps hitting skin.

I’d done that too many times.

He fell silent for so long that we’d nearly reached Mia’s apartment before he spoke again.

“They will kill her.”

V
oices spun out around me
, soft, hushed, urgent. Strong arms held me close, maneuvering me out of the vehicle. I wasn’t asleep. I wasn’t unconscious. I was there, except not. If I’d truly wanted, I could’ve demanded to be let down. Of course I could stand on my own two feet. Hadn’t I been doing that all this time? But for once, I didn’t want to.

Mentally, I’d checked out.

He carted me upstairs, into my apartment. I heard my sister gasp, and that more than anything roused me to try to open my eyes. But as soon as I had, the harsh sting of reality had me scuttling right back into my shell.

I’m sorry, Carly.

Tray’s gentle voice eased over Carly’s frantic whispers, until she grew tearfully quiet. Beyond both their familiar beloved voices, there was one more. Deeper, more intonation than emotion. Giovanni. Some small part of me rebelled at him being there in my apartment with my sister, but the rest accepted that knowledge with the same dull finality as I’d accepted all the rest.

It was so much easier to just float away. In this space, I wasn’t hurting or struggling or fighting to remain upright. I’d ceded all control, finally.

This day had been a long time in coming.

The voices buzzed around me for hours. Carly’s anxious tone, Gio’s richer, calming one. And Tray, sweet Tray, who kissed me with words on his lips that somehow pierced the haze and sated my only remaining need.

Love. Somehow he loved me, even still.

Long after Carly and Giovanni’s voices faded away, Tray’s remained. He spoke to my hair, to my cheeks, right next to my ear so that his messages flowed through me like honey injected straight into my veins. His hands never left my skin.

When I finally opened my eyes again, the pale rose gold light of morning had broken over the room. I wasn’t in my bed, but on Carly’s couch, stretched out fully dressed with a blanket tucked carefully around my legs. A pressure on my stomach had me lifting my head. Tray was asleep sitting on the floor, his head on my belly, his fingers loosely entwined with mine.

Tentatively, I touched the silken gold of his hair, marveling that this prince from a fairy tale had picked me. Me, the scrappy, scrawny girl who bore scars inside and out, and chose them willingly over silk and lace. I rubbed my thumb over the crease in his forehead, traced the sharp lines of his brow. Such a serious face he was making in sleep. His mouth was pulled tight, his eyes squeezed shut, long gold-tipped lashes still.

My fingers drifted downward to the slope of his nose. Patrician, I think it was called. Aristocratic. Then those full lips, normally stretched in a smile. He grinned as easily as he breathed.

At least until he’d met me.

My hand hovered over his mouth. Those lush, sensual lips didn’t belong on a fighter. The pads of my fingers grazed the lower, then the upper, learning him in a way I’d never fully allowed myself before. It wasn’t enough to see. I need to absorb each molecule of him into my skin.

I’d just reached his stubbled chin when his eyes finally opened. Slowly, sleepy at first before full wakefulness snapped him all the way back. He stared up at me incredulously, his Adam’s apple bobbing, but I gently closed his lips before he could speak. It wasn’t the time for that.

I wasn’t sure what it was the time for. I just knew words weren’t the answer.

He rose up on his knees and stroked my hair, his touch reverent. The blunt tip of his thumb skimmed my lower lip and I bit it, more to watch the flare of surprise in his aquamarine eyes than out of any sexual appetite. I only had one speed when it came to sex. Hard and harder.

This wasn’t even close.

But my mouth closed around his thumb just the same, and sucking on his flesh pulled the slowly growing ache from my core into my belly. Heat spread, flames flickering where there had only been scorched earth before.

Lost in his eyes, I kissed my way down his hand, nipping the scars, licking the salt, tasting the flavor of who he was. I’d never bothered before. All I’d ever wanted was below his waist. A quick release, a fast hit of connection. Anything more would kill me. I didn’t know how to take pleasure that wasn’t laced with pain. Life, woven with death.

Once I reached the base of his hand, I shifted until he was cupping my cheek. Until my hand covered his, holding him in place. He lowered his head and I lifted mine, needing to see him when our mouths touched. The barest of contacts, an exchange of breath.

This was the point where we’d jump at each other like animals, dragging off clothes, tearing flesh and sanity.

Not this time.

His teeth grazed my lower lip, a sweet pinch. I curled my tongue and invited him inside, my free hand trailing over the bones and sinew that made up his shoulder to the strong column of his neck. Then upward, to buzz over his scalp and tug lightly on his hair. He gasped into my mouth and I fed on that burst of breath, swallowing it down and seeking more. I sucked on his tongue and then he sucked on mine, our kisses slippery, wet, unhurried. The pressure built, growing more intense with each second. I squirmed against the couch, my clothes already an annoyance against my oversensitized skin, but he made no move to ease my discomfort.

One of his hands finally closed around my breast, and by then I was on the verge. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there, only that the heavy drumbeat between my legs was nearly unbearable. His long fingers plucked at my nipple, circling as slowly as a bee picking the perfect petal to drink from. My breasts felt heavy, full. Like all the want in my body had centered there, and at the apex of my thighs.

His fingers wandered to my other nipple, and he moved even slower, turning time into molasses that he dripped drop by drop on my parched skin. I leaned up into him, opening up, greedy for every sensation.

I’d never felt this much before. Never allowed myself.

I’d closed myself off to so much. Afraid that blows wouldn’t kill me, but being loved like this surely would.

He slanted his head and licked a path from my collarbone up my throat, pushing my head back into the cushion. His teeth scraped my pulsepoint and all I could do was breathe faster, knowing he’d read my arousal in the primitive throb beneath my skin. His breath shuddered out, cooling the trail he’d left behind, and I shivered beneath him, exposed completely though I still wore every stitch of clothes.

Finally, he could see me.

The more sinister meaning of that phrase tried to hammer through the cotton clouds of lust, but I refused to let it. There was only Tray, and me, and a lumpy couch with a spring that hovered beneath the threadbare fabric. If I shifted, I could have that intrusive bolt of pain that would keep this pleasure from being too drugging and deep, and he would never even know.

I stayed still.

My fingers wound tighter in his hair, pulling his mouth back to mine. Our lips brushed. Once, twice. A hundred times. Each moment lasting longer than the one that came before. His hands spanned my cheeks as he explored me thoroughly, every lick of his tongue resonating far inside me.

This couldn’t last forever, but God, I didn’t want it to stop.

I gasped when he picked me up and settled me across his lap. He draped the blanket over us, then drew my head against his shoulder. Holding me there, he rocked, just rocked until the storm of desire grew into an ache so powerful that I panted against the side of his neck.

He flicked open the button of my jeans and dragged down the zipper. I was squirming again, incapable of remaining motionless. He eased his hand into my panties to skim over my mound. So close to what I needed that I trembled. He brushed the thin strip of hair before delving lower and separating my swollen lips. The tip of one finger slipped inside and I threw my head back, so grateful to have even that slight pressure on my clit.

Sliding lower, he spread the wetness we’d made, increasing it while I whimpered against his throat. There weren’t words for the depth of my need for him. I didn’t understand where it had come from, or how I walked around each day with this vast well of it inside me. Nothing ever quenched my thirst.

His fingers weren’t enough. As much as I loved them, and the way he plucked at my clit with such patience, extending the moment until I was shaking in his arms, I had to have more. There was only one thing that could feed this insatiable hunger.

I lifted my head and pressed my quivering hand to his cheek, pulling his mesmerizing gaze to mine. I knew he’d understand what I wanted without me having to ask.

His throat moved and his eyes brightened, flashing like wet jewels. Then he removed his hand from my panties and slowly, carefully, tugged them and my jeans off. He shifted me on his lap, and I straddled his knees while he fought with belt, buckle and zipper to get down his jeans and boxers.

With the blanket still shrouding us, he positioned me, drawing me over him in a fluid motion that was as effortless as sinking into a warm swimming pool. The ripple on my hips belonged to his hands pulling me down.

Taking him in, I inhaled and savored the burn of the air expanding my lungs.

I could breathe again.

His hands, the wonder and magic of them, slipped under my shirt to close over my breasts through my thin bra. Using them as anchors, he nudged me up and back down, the tempo of his thrusts matching the staccato pattern of his breaths. They exploded against my throat, against the underside of my chin. My knees dug into his hips and my fingers clamped on his shoulders as I used their strength to propel myself higher, faster. Knowing he raced with me, his heart surging in time with mine.

When I fell, he would too.

The need wound tighter and tighter in my belly, a tornado turned inward. It touched down everywhere, flattening everything in its path. I couldn’t think past the swamping urgency to take more, to bring him farther inside my body. Him filling me made the world bearable. Made
me
bearable.

I gasped as I clenched him, savoring the pressure of him opening me so fully. Of him stroking upward into me to warm all the spots that had gone dormant and cold. Nerves and needs flared to life, and my heavy breasts dragged over his chest with the rise and fall of my body. The blanket hung around my shoulders, and my shirt billowed around his hands kneading my flesh, and somehow even that increased the intensity.

We had to be quiet. Carly was sleeping. And yet screams were shrieking in my head, a silent accompaniment to the furor in my core.

Bending over him, my long hair streaming down to shelter us both, I shattered. Exploded into a billion glittery pieces. My cries burst against his neck, his cheek, his hair.

I went on autopilot, mindlessly driven to keep the sensations coming. I’d waited so long for them. For him.

For this version of
me
.

One of his hands streaked down my damp torso to clutch my hip as he groaned against my throat. The raw, ragged sound shot me over again, and I was still quaking from the aftershocks when he let go deep inside me. Drenching waves of heat scorched me from the inside out, extending my pleasure until I grew too sensitive to endure another second.

Replete, I slumped against his chest and curled around him with his still half hard cock pulsing gently inside me. I didn’t want to let that link go.

His big hand came up to cradle the back of my neck while we drifted together. I could’ve fallen asleep just like that.

If the buzzer hadn’t rung.

His low groan broke the sex trance, and I lifted my head to find him watching me with such worry and love that my throat constricted. How had I gotten so lucky? Surely there would be a price to pay for getting to be with someone so beautiful and perfect, even for a short time.

You already paid it. With interest.

I doubted that could be true. The debt kept mounting. All I could do was hope I’d still have something left in my account when I had to balance the scales for being with Tray.

The buzzer rang again.

“I’ll get it,” he said quietly.

I nodded, rising off his lap. The sigh that escaped as he left my body couldn’t be helped, and from his wince, he didn’t enjoy the feeling any more than I did.

Sinking onto the couch, I drew the blanket around me, huddling as if it wasn’t a sticky-hot September morning.

Tray tugged up his boxers and jeans and yanked up the zipper before moving to the window to open it. A warm breeze filtered into the room, lifting the ends of my hair. Clearly, he wasn’t chilled like me.

He cast me another quick glance before he went to the intercom. “Yeah?”

“It’s Gio.”

Normally that voice would’ve made me groan. Now I only watched Tray with a distant fascination, as if I’d never quite seen him before. Barefoot, he prowled across the room, his jeans hanging low on his hips. He opened the door and propped his arm on the jamb, waiting for Gio to arrive.

“This is getting to be a habit with you,” Tray said, stepping aside to let him in.

Giovanni glanced from Tray to me, his shock evident. He strode into the apartment and crouched in front of the sofa, his blue-black eyes filled with a concern I didn’t know he possessed. Not for me. Maybe not for anyone. “Are you okay?”

I waited a moment, expecting Tray to interject that I was fine. But he was waiting too.

“Yes. I’m…”
What?
Alive? Breathing? Maybe I should focus on what I was just this very moment, and let the rest come as it would. “I’m good,” I said, returning Tray’s stare until his lips curled at the corners and he looked down, his version of a blush.

God, I loved that man.

Giovanni rested his hands on his thighs and shifted his gaze between us, shaking his head. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all…”

“Keep interrupting us at the wrong time and you just might,” Tray said darkly, and I muffled a laugh into the blanket.

Giovanni surprised me by chuckling. “Yeah, well, stop doing it so damn much.”

“When I’m dead.” Tray crossed his arms and lifted a brow. “Whatcha want this time?”

“I assumed you’d want to go get your car.” Gio rattled his keys and Tray blinked as if he’d just remembered he didn’t have his ‘Vette.