Fighting Fate (20 page)

‘Why not?’ she hissed, trying to keep quiet and assuage her curiosity at the same time.

Dax pressed an ear to the door and held up a finger. His frown deepened then he backed away from the door. ‘If someone walks into a room and shoots you unexpectedly, you don’t usually have time to hunt for your piece before you die.’

‘And that’s a reason?’

With annoyance wringing off him, his attention snapped to her. ‘I don’t need to carry my own gun because if it comes to it, I just take the gun from the guy who brought one along with the trouble.’

Mr. Bigshot fighter was quick and nimble, she knew he had the experience to observe someone’s movements and to assess their weaknesses. He was right in the respect that if someone’s sole purpose was to kill someone else then having a gun wouldn’t save anyone’s life. The hitman could shoot you while you slept and having a house full of guns wouldn’t stop that.

Dax’s logic was strange, yet it made sense to her and as she watched him creep back toward the door she was met by a new invigorating esteem for the man she had married. His background in fighting meant he didn’t need to be capable with weapons, he was one.

Still she was surprised when Dax took hold of the handle and opened the door, maybe he was hoping for the element of surprise. But the man on the other side of the door, in the hallway, wasn’t holding a weapon, he had a phone in his hand. When Dax glared at the man who was only a few inches shorter than him, but far skinnier, the guy paled and his mouth stopped moving.

‘You’re a sonofabitch, Benny,’ Dax said, grabbing the guy by the throat and pulling him into the room.

Slamming the door, Dax thrust the guy against the door and squeezed. The man sputtered and choked and although Dax’s arm was tensed straight, Ivy knew that it wasn’t Dax’s intention to kill this stranger. Sure enough, Dax’s fingers relaxed and Benny wheezed in a breath.

‘You followed me back here?’ Dax asked.

‘There’s big bucks out for you, in the inner circle, you understand.’

‘Mauri’s looking for me?’

Benny nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah, said you went AWOL this afternoon. I was knocked out to see you at Tig’s tonight.’

‘Mauri’s looking for me and you thought that you could bring me in?’ Dax probably would have laughed if he wasn’t in the midst of his intimidating routine. Ivy stayed where she was on the bed, not saying a word.

‘No, no, not me, Ravager, I would never… No, I would never think… I mean I could never—‘

‘Quit stuttering and tell me who you called, Brad or Bruno?’ Benny’s eyes flicked to her then to Dax and back to her. ‘Forget her.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I… never saw nothing, Ravage, nothing.’

This Benny guy was obviously low level and obviously scared of Dax. But he knew Mauri and Brad, so he was in the loop somehow. Ivy had done her best to avoid any interaction with criminal sorts. Just because you were poor didn’t mean you had to be dishonest. The underground circuit of fighting, syndicate drug dealing, and money laundering hadn’t been on her radar, but there was a complex hierarchy that she was just coming to know.

Avoiding criminality didn’t mean that Ivy hadn’t been squeaky clean, but her experiences were petty in comparison to how Dax had grown up. Throughout her life she’d had various associations with people who had addiction issues and criminal records tended to follow when her friends got in too deep. Bearing witness to the repeated downfall of anyone embroiled in that was part of the reason she’d always avoided the slippery slope.

‘Who did you call, Benny?’ Dax asked.

‘Bruno.’

Dax’s head tilted when he inhaled through his nose and even she couldn’t tell if this was a positive reaction or a bad one, and she had no idea what would happen next.

‘We’re going back tomorrow.’

‘Sure,’ Benny said. ‘Sure. Sure.’

‘You think I’m lying to you?’ Dax asked with a thread of disdain that curled his fingers around Benny’s throat again.

‘No! No, you’re not a liar, man. You’re a stand-up guy, yeah, I know that.’

‘You get back on that phone of yours and tell Bruno we’re on our way back. They can call off the dogs.’

‘I… I will…’ Benny said, relieved and grateful that he was making it out of this scenario alive and with all of his teeth.

Dax opened the hotel room door and chucked out the wimp of a man, then he whipped around to glare at her. ‘We have to go now.’

‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘You told me tomorrow, and we were still talking about if we should—‘

‘We have to go back,’ he said. ‘They’re my family and that is my life, my life is there. Mauri has connections all over the country, he would find us if we ran and we have no reason to do that. We’re going to tell him that we got married, that we’re serious, and he’ll get it.’

‘He’ll get it,’ she said, not convinced but beginning to feel that their return to California was inevitable.

‘I still believe that we can fix this. You have to trust me,’ Dax said. She had asked for his trust, so she couldn’t flout his when he offered it and asked for the same in return. ‘Mauri will be shocked, but he’ll let me talk. He’ll let me fix this.’

‘Fix it how? By running his errands for the rest of your life? What about me?’

‘I’ll look after you. You don’t have to worry about—‘

‘What?’ she snapped. ‘You going to jail for life? Or getting yourself injured in a fight?’

‘Mauri has excellent lawyers, there’s no way that—‘

‘He could ruin us,’ she said, climbing off the bed to cross to him. Ivy squeezed her hands under his arms around his ribs. ‘If he doesn’t understand or let us off the hook with what we’ve done then who is to say he won’t use those lawyers against you?’

‘I trust him,’ Dax said, cradling her head in both hands. ‘He’s gonna understand. You asked me to trust you, and now you’re going to trust me. Get dressed.’

He left her in the bedroom and disappeared into the bathroom. Ivy remained on the spot, listening to him shower. She didn’t know if it was nerves or because he genuinely wanted to get back to the Starks with urgency but he was quick in the bathroom.

When he came back into the room he dressed in clean clothes, ready to get moving. Flinging everything of his into the sports bag, he clicked his fingers at her, which was his way of asking for his tee-shirt back. Whipping it off, she handed it over and he stuffed it into the bag while Ivy put on the dress and shoes she’d been wearing on their arrival.

‘You haven’t slept, will you be ok to drive?’ she asked.

He slung the bag over his head, across his body then tucked her under his arm to hurry her out of the room. ‘I’ve survived on less sleep for longer,’ he said. ‘We check out of here and then we get home, this is gonna work out. We’re gonna be fine.’

But from what she could see of his profile, his iceberg blue eyes were focused straight ahead and his jaw was tight. Ivy knew that he wanted to believe what he was saying, but he didn’t like unknowns and everything in their future was just that, unknown.

The journey back to California was very quiet and the sun was up by the time they got there. People were starting their days when she and Dax hadn’t finished theirs yet. Her offers to do some of the driving were all rebuked and she couldn’t say that she blamed him for it because even she wasn’t sure that if given the chance, she wouldn’t flip a U-turn and haul ass in any direction that didn’t lead them to Maurice Stark. The man had power over Dax that she didn’t understand and she didn’t know why the man would yield it now.

Back in the busy streets of LA, Dax pulled the car into a space on the street and turned off the engine. He left the vehicle and grabbed the sports bag from the trunk. Ivy got out and moved onto the sidewalk, she had no idea where they were going so she just waited until he came over and threw an arm around her.

Dax held her tight into his body, so she looped an arm around his waist and rested her head on him, letting him take her to wherever they needed to go. A few paces down the sidewalk, Dax guided her up the stairs of a stoop and through a communal entrance. The stairway was clean and freshly painted, decent but nothing fancy.

On the first floor, he led her to a door with a number four on it. Fumbling with the keys he still held from opening the downstairs door, he flicked through them to locate the right one without loosening his grasp on her. When he got the correct key, he stuck it into the lock and turned it.

Ivy was eager to see his apartment. Until now she hadn’t realised just how excited about it she was. The increased pulse of her heart made her squeeze closer to his side. She turned her face into his body, to prevent herself from hurrying him.

As ever, Dax was expressionless when he shoved open the door then ushered her inside. The entry way had a couple of closets leading off it, she discerned a bedroom at the end of the hall to the right, but it he took her in the opposite direction.

Left of the front door was the main living space. The first thing in the room was a dining table with a large open plan kitchen on the other side of it. To the right of the table was a huge, light, airy space and she moved into it without noticing where Dax went.

The broad windows drew her closer. She was distracted by the gauze curtains to the left when she noticed that they were over a door. Rushing in that direction, she peeked through the curtains to see a broad deck which hung above the sidewalk below, and the car they’d arrived in was just in view beneath. Grabbing the door handle, she tried to slide the door aside, but it was locked.

Spinning around, she leaned on the glass. ‘Can I go outside?’ she asked, wondering if she would always be asking him for liberty.

‘In a minute,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to shower and change and get over there.’

‘What are you going to say to him?’ she asked. There was no need for build up to this conversation. They had rushed back to this city to face down the demon on their tail, so both knew exactly who she was talking about.

‘I’ll tell him the truth,’ Dax said and tossed the keys on the table. ‘I don’t want you letting anyone in here while I’m not here.’

‘Ok,’ she said, believing that was a sensible request when they didn’t know who was on their side yet. Having never lived in LA herself, Ivy didn’t know anyone. She had no plans to call up a posse of friends and have a rave while he was absent. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘It doesn’t feel right, sending you over there to deal with this alone. We’re as responsible as each other, I mean… I fell in love with you first… I kissed you first too, so I guess you could argue that this is all my fault.’

‘If things start to go south I’ll tell Mauri that,’ he said, and while he remained aloof his smile slipped up.

Moving across the room, she got back to his side and it felt right to encircle him in her arms. He edged back to perch on the dining table and nestled her in the vee of his thighs just holding her. ‘Should we have a contingency plan?’ she asked.

‘In case I don’t come back?’ he asked. ‘I’m not going to get hurt.’

‘I don’t trust these people as much as you do.’

‘These people,’ he said. ‘Are the closest thing that I’ve ever had to family.’

‘I’m your family and I love you,’ she said, leaning back to look up at him. ‘I would never make you come to me and grovel.’

‘I’m never gonna steal your girl, am I?’

‘I was never his and you know it. This… it’s all a power play and I don’t understand why—‘

‘Don’t start again,’ he said, nudging her away so that he could slip out and head toward the bedroom she’d glanced.

Ivy followed on in his wake, through the entryway. She expected him to go into the bedroom she’d seen before, but he didn’t. Perpendicular to that bedroom door was another bedroom door that she hadn’t noticed.

When they entered she might have spent time exploring the room with its large bed and closed doors, which she guessed led to a bathroom and maybe a closet. But Dax started to strip off and she was distracted by his sculpted body.

‘Are we going to have sex?’ she asked, not meaning to sound quite as formal as she had.

‘No,’ he said, entering the bathroom. ‘Let me fix this mess with Mauri and then we can think about the honeymoon.’

Somehow she knew that a honeymoon wasn’t anywhere on the agenda for them, Dax had already said that traditional wasn’t his style. Now Ivy had all the time in the world ahead of her to establish just what his style was. Fixing the problem with Mauri would just be the start, even if he accepted what Dax told him, they would still be a part of each other’s lives.

While Dax showered she snooped around the bedroom a bit. Ivy found no indication that he’d had women here recently and there were no women’s clothes left in the closet, which gave her some relief.

Turning to depart the closet, she was barricaded in the room when Dax materialised. Filling the door, he was still naked except for a small black towel around his hips. The combination of that, his black hair, tanned skin, and the noir ink on his arms made her shiver. The bruise on his cheek only added to the danger that he exuded.

For a second all of her apprehension fled, it was still incomprehensible that this man was her husband, he belonged to her. The reminder of that truth made her smile.

‘Are you sure you don’t have time?’ she asked, slinking toward him, but he took her shoulders and moved her out of his way.

‘If we get into bed I’m never going to get to the mansion tonight. Let me get this out of the way, babygirl, and then I’ll take care of you.’

‘You should sleep,’ she said, concerned for his wellbeing. ‘You’ve been on the go all night.’

‘I slept a bit, I’ll be fine.’

He slept a bit after they consummated their marriage and before they went down to the casino, a lot had happened since then. ‘You’d be better if you rested before you went over there.’

‘If I drop the towel and get into that bed, are you gonna let me sleep?’

She couldn’t make any promises and chewing on her bottom lip was enough to convey this to him. ‘I said rest, not sleep,’ she said. ‘I could climb on board, take on some of that tension you’re carrying.’

Passing her, he retrieved clothes and began to get dressed. ‘If I have to leave you in bed without fucking you raw then I’ll be carrying more tension, babygirl… You’re just trying to keep me here. If you’ve got plans to keep me under your thumb, you’re gonna be disappointed.’

Slipping out of her own dress, she accepted that he wasn’t going to be delayed. Subconsciously, her greatest goal was to keep him here where she could keep an eye on him and know that he would be safe. Long term, she knew that he wasn’t ever going to be under her thumb, but there was one thing she was sure of.

Naked and happy that he was admiring her figure with a satisfying bulge in his jeans, Ivy pushed out her chest and crept toward him. ‘You would do anything to keep my pussy happy,’ she said. ‘If you want guaranteed entry any minute of any day then you’re going to have to make sure that the rest of me is smiling too.’

Propping a hand on the shelf behind her, he created a barrier around her, crowding her into the restricted space. ‘I put a ring on it, babygirl. It’s mine whenever I want it. I own you.’

‘And I own you right back,’ she said, raising her arms in a round sweeping motion to hang them around his neck. ‘If I demand your cock then you better give it to me.’

‘I’ll give it to you good, on my own terms,’ he said.

When he moved fast, snatching her hips and whirling her around, she gasped at the sudden change in position. He bent her over and began grinding her ass on his groin. ‘This better be a prelude to something.’

‘To making you wait,’ he said. ‘Get yourself into that bed and sleep. When I get back here we’re gonna be consummating all over the apartment.’

When he got back here Ivy was going to make him sleep, she might even make him something to eat. But for now she was happy with the illusion. ‘You’re going to let me sleep in your bed while you’re not here? Should I expect a zip tie around my ankle?’

‘No foot post on the marital bed, I’ll fix that soon.’

‘I’m not calling the bed you slept in with god knows how many harlots our marital bed.’

‘No harlots, just you.’

Maybe that meant he hadn’t lived here long, or that he never had women back here. But knowing she was unique in this setting gave her the drive to push back into his crushing caress. The line of his dick nudged her ass cheeks as he rolled her hips back, squashing their pelvises together.

‘You could fuck me fast, right here, tough guy,’ she panted hanging onto the closet shelf for support.

‘Yeah, I could,’ he said, giving her ass a hard smack then backing away.

She still couldn’t breathe, so when she turned to seek him out she leaned against the shelf. Her hands were still in need of the support, her hair hung over her face, and her chest heaved as she tried to pull in oxygen. He’d got her riled into one hot mess and now he was going to walk out the door.

‘Dax,’ she whispered and he glanced back with a satisfied smile spread across his face.

‘But think about how crazy you’re gonna be for me by the time I get back.’

With nothing to think about except the arousal he’d sparked in her, yeah, she’d be hornier then than she was now, which meant she might ask fewer questions. But all of that logic seemed too complicated in the face of her need to be united with him.

He came back to her and tipped up her chin to kiss her lips and graze her hair away from her cheeks. ‘You think about my dick, babygirl. Just keep thinking about it, about how bad you want it rammed up inside that snatch I put my brand on. You think of that and nothing else, you’ll do just fine.’

He kissed her again then left, still wearing that smug smile on his face. But she couldn’t be angry. The distraction would be enough to make her forget her concern about what Dax was walking into, at least for a while. But if he thought she was going to sit here in this state and delay her own gratification then he was mistaken.

The front door banged shut and she closed her eyes, thinking of exactly what he’d told her to. Then when she was panting and ready to explore she left the closet and went into the shower. Dax hadn’t told her to wait for him and pleasuring herself now didn’t mean she wouldn’t be up for some collaborative fun when he got back. She needed the distraction, she just wished that he was here to deliver it to her in person. 

Dax tried to focus on the image of his wife undone, hanging on that shelving unit like she might melt to the floor if she even considered taking her own weight. But he couldn’t think about that bliss forever, he needed to get his game face on. Talking to Maurice was going to be tough and he hoped they’d talk alone instead of with Brad or Bruno present. No matter how it worked out, the time was here. Now he had to confess all because there was no going back.

Trystan couldn’t marry Ivy because she was already married. But Dax knew that Trystan wouldn’t take kindly to that news, not at all. It would be better if the brat was still an ocean away, in Europe, because then Dax could deal with one problem at a time. But Trystan would be back today and if he didn’t know already that his apparent bride was AWOL then he would very soon.

Dax didn’t fear Trystan and he would bet that the squirt wouldn’t take the chance of raising his fists to him. Everyone in their circles knew about Dax’s hobby, and how long he’d been doing it. If Trystan wanted to challenge him to a dual then Dax would accept, that would be one fight he might just let his female tag along to.

Usually he went everywhere on his motorcycle, so driving up to the mansion was a novelty in itself. But as he pulled up close to the back entrance he knew that he’d have to get used to using the car now that he had Ivy in permanent tow.

Marrying her had been the only thing that made sense to him and the minute he’d had the idea, nothing would have deterred him from following through. What he’d said to her about there being no tradition, or white picket-fence in their future was true, but he knew that Ivy wasn’t interested in that. Yes, things were going to be bumpy but they would find their rhythm, as long as he could get Mauri to accept the situation, if he didn’t… Dax had no idea what would come next.