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“Not until you tell me everything.”
“Why do you care?”
The wording wasn’t entirely accurate in my case, but I understood the sentiment. She’d probably run for the hills if she knew I lacked the ability to care about anyone. Where she was concerned, it was all about possession, and even that was new for me. Until I figured it out, I was groping around in the dark for the light switch, hoping I wouldn’t bump into the wall.
“Because you’re mine.”
She turned around and took a tentative step in my direction. This was the second time she’d willingly come to me, despite her uncertainty. The first time bought her a brief reprieve, but this time she wouldn’t be so lucky.
Darkness settled around us like a cloak, cocooning us in our own world. I had difficulty making out her features, but it didn’t matter. The heat of her body called to me like a siren’s song, and I didn’t stop moving until there was only a sliver of space between us.
“I don’t know how my sister ended up on this path, but it will eat her up and spit her back out.” Her chest brushed against mine with each breath she took. “And I’ve been through too much shit to sit back and watch her sweet nature fade away.”
Two words and I’d folded like a cheap suit. I’d made the mistake of saying things I shouldn’t have, and all because he’d seen the broken girl who couldn’t stand for a man to touch her. The girl who covered up the rot that lived inside her with shy smiles and lies. He not only saw her, but he wanted to keep her. My foolish heart wanted to belong to this man because with him I wasn’t broken anymore. At least I didn’t think I was because the last thing I felt around Hunter was revulsion.
He stood a breath away, the rough pads of his fingers lightly gripping my neck just above my pearls. There was no one to hear me scream, no one to save me if he wanted to kill me, yet the only thing I felt was butterflies. This was what the girls in my college dorm had talked about. At the time, I’d been insanely jealous, never believing in a million years that it would ever happen to me.
Was it messed up that my first case of butterflies was in my twenties with a Mafia killer who held me by the throat? Absolutely. Before I ever set foot in The Devil’s Garage, I knew I was no match for Hunter. I just never expected to be facing him in the dark and have my focus be on my wet panties instead of my imminent demise. Maybe I’d finally snapped because I trusted Hunter with my body, at least until he found out why I was here.
His lips hovered over mine as he spoke. “You worry about Cherry, yet it’s you who went to her for help, not the other way around. No one is making your sister stay with us. As for her sweet nature, I assure you, that will never change. A meteorite could hit the clubhouse and she’d still shit rainbows. What I’m more interested in is you.”
Even in my lust filled haze I knew I was in trouble. My sister’s freedom depended on me keeping secrets and I’d already slipped up once. The next time might mean my death, and I couldn’t keep her safe if I was dead.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Tell me what you’re running from.”
Hunter wasn’t stupid or the sort to be easily fooled. He grew up in the Mafia and he’d had yet to get so much as a parking ticket. That wasn’t by accident. He would never be pacified with a lame line like the one I gave my sister. Anything I told him he’d look to corroborate with a paper trail. No doubt by tomorrow morning. It would also have to be something my boss could easily fabricate, because there would be no way for me to sneak away long enough to do it from here.
I might not have ever been a field agent, but I could lie. Lord knows I’d had enough experience to last me a lifetime. That didn’t mean it still didn’t hurt like hell. By the time this was over, the only man who’d ever made my body come alive would hate me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“I lost my job six months ago and haven’t been able to find anything in my field. Now, I have no choice but to stay with Cherry and try to find something here. As soon as I get back on my feet again, I’ll be out of your hair.”
In the dark stillness, all I could hear were crickets. He remained close, his breath against my lips and the heat from his body tempting me to lean in. I kept waiting for that familiar tightness in my chest or difficulty breathing, but it never came.
“There’s no need for you to ever leave, mój aniol.” His gravelly voice sent shivers down my spine and made my toes curl. Another thing I’d heard girls talk about but had never experienced. “You have a job with Stella in the shop for as long as you want it, and a place with me.”
His lips were soft as they ghosted over mine and my eyelashes fluttered shut. No man had ever been this close to me without my fight-or-flight instinct kicking in, and I wanted to savor it. Memorize every detail of my first kiss so I could play it back in my head later, reliving every moment.
He kept a hand around my throat while the other gripped my hip, pulling me closer. The hard ridge of his erection pressed against my stomach, and I tensed, expecting to feel tiny spider legs crawling across my skin. He broke the kiss, but didn’t move away, his lips hovering over mine as he spoke.
“You went stiff for a second. Are you OK?”
“Yes,” I breathed against his lips, shocked that for once it was true. “Kiss me again.”
A lack of fear had me acting bold, reckless even, but I never wanted him to stop kissing me. My body felt warm and heavy, an altogether pleasant change of pace that I could easily become addicted to.
His teeth nipped my lower lip, and they parted, his tongue tangling with mine. A masculine groan joined the cricket’s song, and it was like a shot of adrenaline. Hunter was powerful, cutthroat, and always in control, yet I was the one drawing sounds of pleasure from him. Sounds that only intensified the unfamiliar ache coming from deep within my core. An ache that I knew only he could fill.
My body rubbed against him like a cat, trying to create enough friction to give me a hint of relief. For once, I was itching to get closer, instead of pulling away. It was dizzying and consuming this building need inside me, and Hunter fed it with a rough hand at my throat and the clash of his teeth. He no longer held back the monster that wanted to devour me, to eat me alive, and leave me burning. Nor did I want him to. For once, I wasn’t afraid to be at a man’s mercy.
He used the hand he had wrapped around my throat to control the angle of my head. To place me wherever he wanted me by moving the pads of his fingers and lightly squeezing. It should have sent off alarm bells galore, made me freeze, but instead I found myself leaning into his hand.
His teeth nipped into the cushion of my bottom lip before his tongue laved the sting away, keeping me on the razor’s edge where pleasure met pain. The fire he’d stoked to life was now a full-blown inferno, obliterating everything in its path. Hunter consumed every one of my senses, surrounded me, and I never wanted it to end.
The sound of a doorbell ringing intruded like the gnat you tried to swat away from your picnic. Only that stupid ring, like the gnat, wasn’t so easily put off. It came with an accompanying vibration against the inside of my thigh.
Hunter broke the kiss, spitting out words in a language I didn’t understand as he lowered my leg. When had he wrapped my thigh around his waist? Without his heat, my skin pebbled, and I ran my hands over my arms.
