On The Ropes (19 page)

“Mmm.” I cupped her breast through the thin material of her bodice, finding something to knead of my own. “Do you know you got wetter when you said the word
bread
?”

Her laughter was a balm to my soul. “Food is the way to my heart. And apparently my pussy.”

I spun her around and picked her up, setting her on the counter. She looked so small and dainty there, surrounded by all that dark wood and gleaming appliances. But her legs were open for me, and lust burned flame-bright in her eyes.

“You look like an angel, then you say dirty things like that and slay me.” I lifted her chin so I could kiss along her jawline. “Say it again.”

“Food? Heart?” Playfully, she inched open her legs a bit more. “Way?”

“Keep going.” I lowered my head to the plunging neckline of her dress and pulled it down until I could see that she wore the bra I’d given her. Even when we’d been distant, she’d clothed herself in what I’d selected for her. “I love every part of you,” I whispered, scarcely aware of my own voice over the freight-train that was my heartbeat in my ears. “From here,” I trailed my fingers from her breasts, “to here,” to the center of her chest and on down to the now wetter heart of her between her legs, “to here.”

“You’re just trying to get me to talk dirty.”

It was so easy to smile as I fisted my hand in her curls and dragged her mouth to mine. “Mmm-hmm. Is it working?” I asked between kisses.

“I think so.” She kicked off her heels and hooked her leg around the backs of mine. “Get on your knees, and use your mouth on me.” Her lips twitched. “Oops. On my pussy.”

“I think your dirty talk technique needs some work. And lots and lots of practice.”

“You know what? Never mind. Save that for later. I’m too horny right now to wait through the appetizer.” She leaned forward and went to work on my pants. She pulled my belt free of its loops and let it slap to the tile floor. Then she lowered the zipper and slid her hand into my boxers, closing her hand around my cock with a sound that bordered on triumph. “This is what I want in my pussy.” She lifted her head and met my gaze with a glint in her sunset blue eyes. “As hard as you can give it to me. Right now.”

If she’d come at me with both fists, she couldn’t have hit me harder than her words did. Delivered with those guileless eyes riveted on mine, they were a punch straight to the solar plexus.

I pushed her sweater off her shoulders, and stripped her out of her dress and underwear as fast as possible. My hands weren’t steady, and I might’ve felt embarrassed at my lack of control if she hadn’t shivered too when she’d helped me shed my boots and the rest of my clothes. Then we were skin against skin, her bare breasts flush to the hot skin of my chest, and Christ, I groaned like she’d taken my cock into her mouth. Feeling her against me was the most erotic sensation I’d ever encountered.

Until she swung her lithe legs up on the counter and curled her toes over the edge. She spread her knees wide, giving me an intimate view of her glistening dusky pink flesh.

And that won all erotic contests.

“Jesus,” I breathed as she traced a fingertip over her shaved smooth mound and dipped it inside, swirling it over her clit. I watched her, transfixed, leaning forward like a starving man when she offered me her hand. I gripped her wrist and feasted on her fingers, watching her all the while.

She was nothing but hungry eyes and quivering lips. Both sets of them.

I found a condom in my wallet, slicked it on. And entered her with a thrust that would’ve sent her head colliding into the wall if my hands hadn’t been there to cushion it.

“Fucking hell, yes,” I hissed.

The almost week without her had taken its toll, and I wasn’t sure if I’d last half a dozen strokes. Especially when I glanced down and glimpsed the sight of me soaked with her, sliding so deep into her swollen flesh. Watching her open up for me, her body giving way to the minute rocks of my hips.

Her breath stuttered over my forehead as she realized the object of my attention and glanced down herself, letting out a moan that ripped over my shredded nerve endings. It was dirty, indescribable. But it was also unspeakably beautiful, seeing how perfectly we linked up. How if I moved faster, she bowed into my strokes, taking them as if she’d been born for the single task of fucking me. And when she clenched around me, telling me that she was close, I sped up in response, swiveling my hips until I hit that spot inside that made her kiss-swollen lips fall open on a silent moan. My hands roamed her hips, her back, her breasts as I angled up, rubbing her clit with my dick, wanting to touch every part of her inside and out.

Then it was too much, her fractured breaths, her stilted moans, the fluttering of her walls around my pulsing cock. I slammed into her, using her knees for leverage, bending my knees to hit her just right to send her soaring.

When she finally did, she cried out my name and dragged her nails down the back of her neck, holding my mouth to hers so that I could taste her whimpers as she came and came.

I wasn’t capable of holding out against her wild throb around me, any more than I could resist her begging pleas. I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to shatter like she’d been shattered.

We were each other’s decimation and salvation, all rolled into one.

One more thrust deep and I gave up the fight. My balls drew tight, and the name that was a drumbeat in my head roared from my chest. Hers. Always hers. I kept pumping through it, desperate to make it last. I didn’t want the pleasure to fade. The connection. Because what was behind it was only dark, vast emptiness, just waiting to swallow me whole.

I couldn’t stop fucking her. Once I’d come, it wasn’t enough. Not even close.

I scooped her up and turned her around, slapping her hands to the counter while I tied off the first and fumbled for another condom. She was sobbing, her forehead pressed to her arm, her body one shivering exposed nerve, and I couldn’t get the goddamn rubber on fast enough. Then somehow I was inside her again, my hips hammering hers, my mouth fastened to her shoulder while I fingered her frantically between her sticky thighs. My hand slid over my cock, driving it farther into the recesses of her. Nothing was deep enough.

She bucked against me, hurtling into another orgasm, and I was still working her, fingers and cock both, sweat dripping in my eyes as my pelvis battered her ass. She bowed to me, her back curving, her pussy trembling around me as I drove headfirst into the wall and exploded inside her, so deep that my skull pounded from the force of my orgasm. I was throbbing everywhere. Breathing too hard to hear her, too tuned to her to need breath.

Right now she was my breath, my life. Everything I’d ever need, and nothing I could ever have.

I slid my arms around her waist and clutched her to my chest, letting her heartbeat lull mine into steadying. I brushed my hand over her hair and kissed the back of her neck. “I’m sorry. I lost all control.”

“Don’t apologize. That was…” She sighed and stood up fully, swaying. I caught her and pressed my face to her shoulder, inhaling our combined scents with a relief that bordered on madness. For this instant, she was still here in my arms. Whole, safe, perfect. “Perfect,” she echoed.

I pulled out of her with a grunt and took care of the condom. The moment I moved back to her, she curled against my chest. “I didn’t hurt you?”

“Oh, you did. In all the best ways.” She tipped her head back and showed me her starry eyes. They were like the night sky from the Ferris wheel, reflecting like jewels. “I want to make bread.”

“Okay.”

“Then I want to spoon with you until morning comes. I want you to hold me while I sleep.”

Throat tight, I nodded. “I can do that.”

“And I want you to tell me about Emilia.”

The ground crumbled beneath me, caving under my feet. And I went into freefall.

She gazed up at me without speaking for the longest time, then she nodded and bent to pick up her undergarments. “If I’d had any doubts, that look just erased them.” Crouching, she gathered her clothes with shaking hands. “She was to be your wife. The mother of your baby.”

She wasn’t
to be
the mother of my baby, she
was
the mother of my baby. She’d only carried our child for weeks before she was gunned down. The baby had been tiny, barely visible on a scan. But it had lived.

It lived.

But none of that left my mouth. My vocal cords were frozen, just like the hollow chamber in my chest.

“She was innocent,” Carly said from her position near the floor. “Caught up in something much bigger than she was. A victim of a war she’d never fought.” She lifted eyes brimming with too much knowledge, too much pain. “You watched her die.”

I turned away and braced fists on the counter still warm from her body. From our lovemaking. Now the scent of it stung my nose, as acrid as ozone.

I’d watched Emilia die, and I’d betrayed her by caring for another. It wasn’t enough that she’d died because of me, now I couldn’t even be faithful to her memory.

My body was one thing. Sex was meaningless, a way to fill the gaping hole. But it never touched me. It never meant anything. Until now.

“Did she beg you to turn away from that life, as I’ve begged you? Did she ask you to make a choice?” Carly rose and wrapped her arms around my waist. Now the friction of skin on skin might as well have been chains clinking together. Leg irons binding me to her, no matter how I fought to shake her free. “As I’ve asked you to choose?”

Silence was my only defense. I didn’t pick it willingly. The words inside me had dried up and withered away, leaving behind only ashes.

“She wasn’t enough to make you leave them. Maybe this time it will be different. All you have to do is choose—” She broke off but what she didn’t say echoed in my head just the same.

Choose me over them.

Choose me over your need for vengeance.

Choose me over Emilia.

“I will never choose you.” I fisted my hands until my knuckles sang with pain. “
Never
.”

Her arms fell away from my waist. In their place, all I felt was cold. Sinking through the skin, permeating organ and bone. Numbing me to all that I couldn’t survive.

When the door shut behind her a moment later, I went to my knees and fumbled for the rosary around my neck. And prayed.

I
took the subway home
. At almost three a.m.

The man who’d supposedly been so worried about my safety didn’t chase after me. Not that I would have responded if he had. I would’ve walked home on bloody hands before I sat beside him in a vehicle.

Before I let him touch me again.

The short trip home was still long enough for me to replay every moment of the night. The magic of the carnival, the joy at finding his kitchen fully stocked for me. The wildness of our lovemaking.

I was only eighteen. Too young to be truly in love. That’s what I told myself as the subway train chugged through the dark, and I sat on the edge of a seat, almost hoping someone would make me hurt on the outside like I hurt on the in.

Maybe I was more like my sister than I’d ever guessed.

I let myself in the apartment, and curled up on the couch without undressing. I didn’t get a blanket. Didn’t wash my hands or my face. I didn’t have the strength to move.

Morning came, and Mia and Fox went to work. I huddled into the cushions and mumbled that I wasn’t feeling well. Nothing to worry about. Just a bug.

I wasn’t truly sick. I was broken.

Later in the day, when Mrs. Knox had gone off to visit with friends and the apartment was blissfully quiet, I dragged myself into the kitchen and drank two glasses of wine on an empty stomach.

And promptly fell to my hands and knees in the bathroom and tossed it all back up.

After that humiliation—luckily witnessed by no one—I curled up on the couch and watched about thirty-two episodes of
Bridezillas
. I didn’t cry once.

The next morning, I went to school like normal. I laughed with my fellow students, took notes, and made one hell of a consommé. After that, I went to the Salad Hut for my normal shift. In short, I rocked the “act normal and no one will know your heart has been filleted like a day-old tuna” portion of the program.

After work, Kirk asked me if I wanted to go out to eat, which was code for
come over to my place and play video games then give me a blowjob
. Normally, I would’ve said no, as I had several times over the past month I’d been…engaged with he who shall not be named.

That night, I said yes, though we actually ate at a sandwich place. I skipped going home with him, and I definitely skipped the blowjob. I didn’t even kiss him goodnight.

So much for the sparks I’d once thought we had. Now they were kaput.

Tuesday, I went to school and then to the doctor’s, as planned. My finger was doing okay, so I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d even bothered to keep the appointment.

Until Dr. Sherman walked in and asked me her typical barrage of questions before we actually got to the point of why I was there. All the usuals—trouble sleeping, any unusual symptoms, when was your last menstrual cycle.

And I didn’t have an answer.

I flipped through and tried to remember. After school had started, definitely. After Mia’s fight…the end of September? Maybe. It was now early November, so I was late. Weeks late.

I was never late.

“Carly? Do you know the date of your last cycle or…” She trailed off, looking grave.

“Oh, sorry. I have a lot on my mind.” I gave her a big, wide smile. “Actually, I just had it two weeks ago. Sorry. I didn’t mean to space out like that.”

“You’re sure?” Dr. Sherman leaned a hip against the gurney I was seated on. “Because antibiotics can alter cycles and efficacy of birth control, so it’s important to—”

Efficacy of birth control
. Right. Because now was the time for me to find out about that. Or else I’d just glossed over that information like I’d tried to gloss over so much with Giovanni.

“I’m good,” I said, cutting her off. “Can you just look at my finger?”

“Of course. Just wanted to make sure everything else was in order as well.”

Everything was fine. Just peachy.

I walked out of there a short while later with a clean bill of health for my pinkie, and a baby in my belly.

The baby wasn’t guaranteed, of course. And I refused to take a test to find out. I didn’t want to know.

I’d just…wait. Surely if there was one in there, eventually it would make its presence known. In the meantime, I would stick my head in the sand and pretend it didn’t exist because I didn’t want my life to change.

I didn’t want to be having a baby with a man who had skewered my heart.

Somehow I found myself at The Cage, without any conscious knowledge of how I got there. I knew Giovanni worked at the Boys and Girls Club on Tuesday nights, and I also knew that Fox would be training tonight, since he’d had an earlier shift at the bar. I needed to talk to someone, and he was my best choice.

I’d been tempted to call Jenna, but I didn’t want her to freak out on me. Jenna was as level-headed as they came most of the time, except in a crisis. Then she went postal in two point one seconds flat.

I could do that all on my own, thanks.

On the way across the room to where he was doing pull-ups on a bar on the wall, I worked out different scenarios for how I could feel him out without telling him about my exact situation. Not that I had an exact situation to tell. As of right now, as far as I knew, I was
un
pregnant. Blissfully so. Until I saw that telltale word on a stick, I had nothing to be concerned about.

And since I never intended to buy a pregnancy test, ever, I was golden.

I stopped beside him and smiled back automatically at his grin.

“Hey squirt. Whatcha doin’ here? Mia’s not arou—”

“What would you do if Mia told you she was pregnant?”

Yeah, okay, so that wasn’t one of the scenarios I’d played out in my head. Probably a good thing, because from the way he reacted—dropping down from the bar as if his hands had run out of strength, then promptly clasping his knees like he couldn’t catch his breath—my casual-pregnancy-talk technique could use some work.

Just like my dirty talking one, evidently.

“What did you say?” he panted.

I was already turning away. I needed to take a walk. Right out of the city. Maybe I’d walk to Mexico. That’d keep me busy for a while, right?

“Carly. Jesus, Car, wait up.” Fox grabbed my shoulder and I stopped, mainly because his spinning me around made my head whirl too.

You didn’t eat lunch.

Or breakfast.

Actually, I wasn’t sure when I’d last eaten a full meal. I’d been living on snacks the last couple of days, other than the sandwich I’d picked at with Kirk last night. Even that I’d barely nibbled.

“Let’s go sit down in my office.” Fox mopped at his brow with a towel, and I realized he looked as shaky as I felt. “It’s private in there. And we can have privacy to…talk, privately.”

I frowned. “That’s a whole lot of privacy, bub.”

“I think that’s a smart idea, don’t you?” He gave a distracted, annoyed glance at all the other people working out before pulling me toward the exit.

“No, I think you’re busy. This isn’t a good time.”

“Who cares if it’s a good time? It’s happening. Oh God, it’s happening.”

“What?” I followed him through the door and let him tug me up the hall, though I wasn’t real keen on having a sit-down with him right now. He was acting more than a little wacked out.

I hoped he hadn’t resorted to steroids for his fight with Gio. Maybe he wanted to win badly enough to take the risk.

“Drugs are bad,” I told him. “Seriously bad news.”

At his office door, he glanced back at me, lines forming between his brows. “What did you—”

The door flew open, and the person on the other side was not Mia. It was Vanity, the chick who’d spent a while last spring playing tongue twister with the father of my nonexistent baby.

“Oh hell no,” she snarled, her gaze drifting from Fox to me and back again. He still had his hand on my wrist, which was
almost
my hand if you were blind and stupid. “So
this
is why he’s fucking that cuntcake now? Because you’ve taken up with her sister? Foxy, you have no taste.” She shoved him back out of the doorway. “Less than none.”

All at once, I had a pretty good idea who the knife impaler was, and it wasn’t the woman who I was still sort of half-assedly trying to obtain the location of, amidst the many other things on my overflowing plate.

Slater was right. Olivia wasn’t the one currently hassling my sister. It was this crazy bitch.

“What the hell are you doing in my office?”

“
Pendejo
, shut your face.” Vanity didn’t seem up for answering questions. She had some of her own to ask, however. “Who does she think she is, sleeping with every guy in this place?”

“Who you calling a cuntcake?” I asked, stepping forward. I might spend most of my time wearing an apron, but I could fucking throw down if I had to.

Plus I still had that pepper spray in my purse, and I’d blast the shit out of this chick.

“You,
punta
, you! You and your cheap tramp sister.”

“You need to be quiet. Now.” Fox grabbed her flailing arms and pinned them behind her back, immobilizing her faster than I would’ve given him credit for. Maybe it was good he’d gone on steroids, if only because he could calm this lunatic down without much bloodshed. “I asked you a question and I’m still waiting for an answer. What were you doing in my office?”

Vanity smirked. “Why don’t you go see for yourself? Stupid pussywhipped bastard.”

Fox pushed his way into his office, still maintaining his hold on a struggling Vanity, and I followed, making sure to keep my distance from her kicking legs. I’d never liked her, and it wasn’t only because she had obvious contempt for my sister. Her brief thing with Giovanni had nailed that coffin shut.

Now apparently she’d added breaking and entering and vandalism to her list of attractive qualities. And once again, the target of her frustrations was the newly replaced heavy bag in the corner, spilling out its guts like a chewed up scarecrow.

“Christ almighty, woman, what is wrong with you?” Fox asked, nudging her none too gently over the desk. I half expected him to whip out the cuffs. “Call the police,” he said over his shoulder to me, indicating the phone on the desk.

I blinked at it. I didn’t even realize they had a phone in here. With cell phones, landlines were harder to find. But I wasn’t going to look a handy horse in the mouth. I picked it up, and started to dial, then glanced back at the sound of footsteps. A guy with super short dark hair and shrewd blue eyes appeared in the doorway, his toothpaste-commercial smile disappearing as he took in the scene before him. “Hey Fox, sorry I had to—what the hell’s going on in here?” he asked, rushing forward to help Fox restrain Vanity.

“We need the cops,” Fox managed through gritted teeth, trying unsuccessfully to pin Vanity in place.

“I’ve got her,” the other guy said, pulling her to a standing position and shooting me a distracted smile. “Hey. I’m Emerson.”

“Hi.” I tried to smile. Normally, I’d be all up in my flirt game with him, because he was super cute. Now that I’d been infected with the love plague, men equaled nothing but trouble. “I’m calling the cops.”

He reached out and one-handed, put the phone receiver down. “What happened?” he asked gently, still helping Fox while he spoke to me. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

Maybe they were
all
on steroids in this joint.

“Take a look at the bag in the corner,” Fox panted, twisting Vanity’s wrists up to the center of her back and yet again bending her over the desk with his knee against her ass. Bent over like that was the only safe position for her.

Heat rushed into my cheeks. The same position I’d been in Saturday night, for much different reasons.

“Holy shit,” Emerson said under his breath. “You did that, Van?”

Breathing hard, she craned her neck to look back at him. “Who wants to know?”

“Me. And I think we’ll go have a little chat, you and me, if you want to avoid the cops. Because you do want to avoid the cops, right?”

“I don’t think we should avoid anything,” Fox began. “She has a history of hassling Mia, and she needs to be stopped.”

“Tell her to stop fucking with my man, and I will stop.”

“What man?” Fox and I asked at the same time. Then the
duh
stick smacked me in the forehead.

She was doing all this because of Giovanni, and his penis. And I hated that we both knew the wonders of it, and the resulting madness that arose when denied.

Not that all my madness had to do with sex. As if. He’d made me fall for him, all the while holding back the truth from me. Claiming he cared, that he wanted me safe, then ditching me the second I asked him for anything more complicated than wheat flour.

Tears sprang into my eyes, and I turned away, wishing I’d never come here. Yeah, at least we’d found out the office vandalism culprit was Vanity rather than Olivia, who very well may have led a path right back to Giovanni’s cohorts.

One more chance for him to show that he put me and my sister’s welfare last.

I will never choose you. Never.

“I’ll handle this,” Emerson said, getting a hold on Vanity and muscling her to the door. “If we need to bring in the cops, I’ll take care of it.” His voice dipped and I figured he’d gotten a good look at my face. In a minute, I’d be blotchier than a chicken pox sufferer. Damn red hair. “You take care of things here,” he added to Fox.

The door shut on Vanity’s threats a moment later.

I paced to the window near the violated heavy bag, and drew up the blinds to let the gloomy afternoon light into the room. The small desk lamp offered the only other illumination, but I still felt exposed. I might as well have been standing under a spotlight.

I heard Fox drop into the chair behind the desk. Pictured him raking a hand through his sweaty, spiky blond hair. “I suppose we know now who’s been screwing with Mia, huh?” He sighed. “Jesus, what if Slater was right? What if Olivia wasn’t full batshit, only partial?”

It made me laugh, and bury my face in my hands. The tears came before I could check them, spilling out of my eyes and through my clenched fingers. In a second, my face was soaked.