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I nod. “After my run-in with Malik at the restaurant, followed by that argument we had outside on the sidewalk, I was angry and shitfaced. Feeling rejected and confused. So, I went back to my hotel room and punched a hole in the wall.”
Laila presses her lips together. “I’m going to need you to promise not to do that sort of thing while we’re living here together, no matter how much I might annoy or anger you.”
“Of course, I won’t. Ask Mimi or Sasha or Ruby. I’m not violent.” I grab her hand. “I’d never hurt you. I’d protect you, yes. But I’d never hurt you.”
“I don’t think you’d hurt me. I’m just telling you that holes punched in walls and plates being smashed . . . those are the kinds of things that are triggering for me.”
“I understand. You have my word.”
Laila squeezes my hand. “How did you wind up living with Mimi at age twelve, given that you hardly ever saw your asshole father?”
I pause to gather my thoughts. To steady my racing heart. “When I lived with my mom, she used to run off with different guys for days at a time. She’d leave me with a few basic groceries and say, ‘I’ll be back soon.’ So, this one time, right after I’d turned twelve, she was gone on one of her trips, and I wanted to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich on the stove. I don’t know how it happened, since I’d made the same thing before, lots of times, but I somehow started a fire in the kitchen. I got it out, pretty quickly, without it spreading too much, thank God, but the fire department was called by a neighbor. And that’s when they found out a twelve-year-old had been living alone in the apartment with no parent in sight for days and days—and that it was a common occurrence in my house. They sent me off to Child Protective Services while they looked for my mom. And when they couldn’t find her, they contacted my dad, who was in prison at the time for assaulting someone. And that’s when they found out my next of kin was one Maria Savage Wilkes of Chicago, Illinois. They called and dropped the bomb on Mimi that she had a twelve-year-old grandson in Phoenix she’d never known about. She came and got me and brought me back to her little shoebox apartment, where I slept on the couch and acted like a raving asshole for almost three years, until I finally decided to give her a chance.”
“Did your mother get in trouble for leaving you alone?”
I nod. “She got charged with reckless endangerment of a child after the fire, but she only got probation. To this day, she thinks I intentionally set that fire to get her into trouble.”
“Oh my gosh.”
“Maybe I did, subconsciously. I’ve certainly amassed a long track record since then of doing toxic, stupid shit as a backwards means of getting something I don’t even know I want.” I clamp my lips together, so I don’t say something I’ll regret. Something like, “Look at the way I treated you during the tour. Perfect example.”
Laila knits her brows together. “I just realized . . . you go by Mimi’s maiden name?”
“Yeah.”
“So, your name is a stage name, after all.”
“No, Savage has been my legal name since age fifteen. My mother gave me her name when I was born—Carter. But once I decided Mimi was my mother, I asked to change my name to hers. I didn’t want Mimi’s married name—Wilkes—since that’s my father’s name. Plus, Savage is a badass name.”
“You’re such a liar. You said you were ‘born Savage.’”
I smile. “I was using a lower case ‘s.’”
Laila flashes me an adorable grin that sends a flock of butterflies into my stomach, and I can’t help returning her smile with an even bigger one.
“You should copyright that smile, Fitzy,” I say softly. “You’d make a mint.”
She flushes. “There are no cameras here. We don’t have to pretend anything.”
“I’m not pretending a goddamned thing.”
Laila’s chest heaves. “Neither am I.”
It’s too much excitement for my body to handle gracefully. Physically twitching with arousal and excitement, relief that she’s clearly beginning to trust me, I get up from my seat at the table, pull Laila up, and kiss her passionately. “Come on, beautiful,” I whisper. “It’s time for me to finally get to fuck you in a bed.”
Ten
Savage
As Laila rides my cock, I admire the curves of her body in the moonlight streaming through the bedroom window.
“You’re gorgeous,” I whisper, my pleasure ramping up and up. But I can’t find the right words to convey how stunning she is to me. How perfect and addicting. Or, hell, maybe I do know the right words, but I’m too chicken to say them out loud to her. The only thing I’m sure about is that fucking Laila in this bed, in this moment, is a new level of rapture for me. I’ve never bared myself to a woman the way I did downstairs to Laila in the dining room. And somehow, knowing she knows all that shit about me, and is now riding my cock like none of it dampens her desire for me in the least, feels even hotter than the hottest hate sex.
