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This wasn’t real lovemaking. Just a hard, fast fuck to slake a need and fulfill an unholy obligation.
I held my hand out to Gio and he stared at it as if he didn’t recognize the gesture. I took an unsteady step toward him, and when I tried to right myself, my knees simply buckled.
All at once, he seemed to snap back into himself. In one smooth move, he caught me and tucked himself back into his pants. Hiding away the evidence of what we’d irrevocably changed.
How we’d been irrevocably changed.
“We’re done here.” His voice was every bit as cold as Marco’s eyes.
A new round of shivers seized me and I clung to him, my weakness emerging in the face of his strength.
Then he swept me up in his arms and carted me out of the room where I’d been broken and reborn in one night.
Four
Ignoring the stares, I carried her down the stairs and out the front door of the club. People called out to me and I paid them no mind. They didn’t exist.
There was only the woman in my arms.
God, the girl. Not even a woman. She was a baby. Only eighteen.
Eighteen.
Outside the door of the club, I stopped just beyond the awning and lifted my face to the rain. It washed away some of the heat from my skin, but not nearly
enough. I was on fire inside. For her. Always for her.
Tonight, I’d burned her. I’d taken her choice away. I’d…violated her.
“Let me down.” Her voice intruded in the world I’d disappeared into, and I blinked away the rain, surprised to see her face so close to mine.
In a fingersnap, I’d gone somewhere else. A place where I didn’t even register the insubstantial weight of her in my arms.
She was so small. So easily broken.
“Gio.” Her fist met my chest, cracking open another layer of the ice that encased me. “Put me down. Now.”
I started to obey her, then noticed her bare feet with their sparkly toenails. Somehow the sight sent rage careening through my veins all over again. “Where are your shoes?”
She ducked her head, her damp hair falling down like a curtain to hide her face. “My shoe broke. The heel, I mean. That’s how he got my attention.” She took a quick inhalation of breath. “He took the other…off before we got to the room. Said I’d attract too much attention in only one.”
I faced straight ahead, barely registering the passing people and cars. Rain slanted down, obscuring a lot of the activity. A cab stopped at the curb and a bunch of giggling girls poured out of the back. My gaze dropped to their candy-colored shoes, a fucking rainbow of them.
“Did he touch you?” I wasn’t sure she could even hear me. The question was little more than a rumble of sound.
“He took off my…no,” she said finally, lifting her head again. “No, not like you mean.” Another of those quick, halting breaths. “You were the only one who—”
“Did you come in a car?” I couldn’t bear to hear her describe it. Not even in general terms. I needed to get her home, and safe.
Far away from those men…and me.
“I took the subway.” As I tensed, she sighed. “It’s perfectly safe. I do it twice a week.”
The lecture was right there on the tip of my tongue. Forget a lecture. I wanted to rage at her, to tell her she was insane for taking those kind of chances so late at night in the city. Safe, my ass.
Safe had gotten her what happened tonight. There was no fucking safety to be had in this world, especially when you were beautiful and pure and sweet.
“Is Fox at home?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice even as I started to walk up the street with her in my arms. Weaving through the foot traffic, careful that no one bumped her legs.
