Sweet Hope (Sweet Home #4) (25 page)

Managing to gain some sort of composure, I strode across the room to Ally, fighting for breath as she unclasped her bra and it fell to the floor… only her thong remained and those sexy as fuck heels still on her feet.

I froze, completely unable to move. Then Ally turned and faced me. She threw the pins from her hair on the floor to let her long hair fall down her back.

She looked like a damn siren and I was so fucking screwed.

I could see in her eyes that she knew what I was trying to do. She’d clearly anticipated that I was standing here about to push her away. To save her from losing her best friends because she’d fallen for me. But I could also tell by the determined look in those eyes, that she wasn’t gonna let me do shit.

Moving her hands to the hem of my shirt, she lifted it over my head and leaned forward to press her lips against my hot skin. Her soft, swollen lips ran across my pecs and down to my nipple where she sucked it into her mouth. She then continued down until she reached the zipper on my jeans.

Carefully unzipping me, she pushed my jeans down and took tight hold of my solid cock. I breathed through my nostrils as she straightened to whisper in my ear, “Stop trying to run me off. I choose you. I want to be with you, Axel Carillo. And if you keep trying to push me away, I’m gonna unleash the fiery Latina living within me and
make
you friggin’ listen.”

As she drew back her head, her eyebrow was raised in challenge and her natural color was coming back to her cheeks. I couldn’t help but hook my lip up in a smirk, and Ally had to purse her lips to stop from laughing too.

“Unleash the fiery Latina?” I asked in a gruff voice, as that skilled Latina hand of hers began working my dick back and forth.

“
Si
,” she whispered in her cum-worthy Spanish accent and, taking my hand, I pushed it down into the tiny triangle of her thong, slipping my fingers through her wet pussy, eventually finding her clit. Using the pad of my finger, I began moving it in circles, loving hearing her gasp.

As our hands worked each other faster, I pushed her hair aside to hush out, “Don’t forget I’m Latino too. I can give as much as I get.”

Ally’s eyes were hooded with hunger when I moved my head back and met her gaze. “It’s… It’s… why it’s like… this… between us…” she said between shallow breaths.

“Mmm?” was all I could say in question. I held her hair bunched in my hands, my hips beginning to rock as a flush chased up her skin.

“This… explosiveness we have… it’s why we fight… scream… then fuck like we ain’t gonna see tomorrow… fuck with all that fiery passion… it’s the Latin blood… within us… it’s the… Latin fire…” she managed to say, before a cry had her words cutting off as I sunk a finger into her hole.

She was right. We fought with each other, butted heads, screamed… but that only fueled the attraction we had for each other.

We were lighting…

Unable to see anymore through the damn sex fog she’d put me in, I knocked her hand from my cock and, withdrawing my hand from her cunt, ripped her thong in two until all she was wearing was her natural tan and those fucking spiked heels.

Ally’s eyes were wide as I stepped into her, flesh against flesh. “I told you I was gonna fuck you in those heels,” I said in a low voice, and I watched as millions of goose bumps covered her skin.

Ally’s tits heaved with her breathing, and on a sigh, she said, “So fuck me then.”

Smiling at that Latina inside being unleashed, I picked her up by her thighs. Striding across the room, Ally dragged her teeth along my traps making me groan. Hitting my workstation, I used one hand to clear the desk and lowered Ally to the surface, her back immediately spraying up marble dust.

Ally’s brown eyes were glazed with lust as she looked up at me. Unable to not touch her anymore, I sucked her tit, rolling her hard nipple into my mouth.

“Axel…
Mi
Dios
…” she moaned, her pussy grinding against my hard dick. The faster her hips moved, the more I needed in. Breaking from her tit, I took Ally’s thighs in my hands and pulled her to the edge of the countertop. Never taking my eyes off hers, I wrapped her legs around my back, hissing when the spiked heels of her shoes dug in to my flesh. My eyes flared and Ally smiled in victory.

“You said you wanted them digging into your back… well, they’re in your back, now what?”

Grunting as she tensed her legs, the sharp sting of pain from her heels shooting straight to my dick, I braced at her entrance and pushed straight inside.

“Christ!”
Ally screamed as her hands raked at my biceps, but I was too gone, too fucking wrapped up in this chick beneath me, the only chick to ever have been standing proudly at my side.

I pounded into her, my stomach clenching and thighs tensing as her head thrashed around in the dust. Her dark hair was lapping up white dust, smudges paling out her flushed face. But the more she thrashed, the more I stared. She looked like a living sculpture. She looked like the best sculpture I’d ever seen.

Back arching, Ally’s moans came longer and her arms fell from my bicep and lay across her head. Dust settled on her flat, toned stomach, and unable to resist, I spread my palm over her covered skin, pumping harder and harder with every stroke. Ally’s eyes were closed as I felt her pussy tighten and start to contract. Then, her whole body tensing, her mouth dropped open as she screamed out her release. Unable to take the sight of her beneath me, and my dick unable to take the pressure of her tight pussy, I came harder than I ever had done in my life, Ally’s eyes shooting open to watch me.

Gasping for breath in the aftermath, I lifted my hand and, using my thumb, lightly traced the dust covering most of Ally’s face with my fingertips, and I knew, without a shadow of doubt that I’d be adding one final piece to the exhibit.

Ally let me touch her face, she let me shift her head from side to side as I studied her angles and features. And I knew right then, that this piece would change it all. This piece would be the first one to break the mold.

It would be the one to set me free.

When my hand dropped from her face, my heart began to race in excitement for what I was going to create, Ally moved her heels from my back. I immediately felt blood drip down the back of my thighs.

I hissed and Ally’s eyes widened. “Shit… Axel, I’m so sorry.”

Lowering my head to take her full bottom lip between my teeth, I pushed into her one last time and dropped her lip from my teeth to say, “Don’t be. That was fucking incredible.”

Ally’s returning smile almost knocked me on my ass. Picking her up again, I walked us to the bed, but not before Ally grabbed the new bottle of whiskey I’d just brought from my table and took it with us.

She held it tightly in her arms. Ally shrugged. “I think we need it after tonight.”

As I lowered us to the bed and we crawled under the covers, dawn began to break. Ally waited until I sat against the headboard, then reached over me to the bedside table. She took a smoke from my nearly empty packet, placed it between her lips and lit it. As the end burned orange, Ally took in a drag, only to blow it out of her lips and place the smoke between my lips. As she hovered above me on all fours and I took a long drag, her eyebrow raised. “They’re real bad for you, you know.”

Taking the smoke from between my lips with my finger and thumb, I exhaled. “Yeah, I heard that once.”

Ally started laughing harder this time, but stopped to press kisses down my stomach. I ran my hand through her hair and Ally lifted her head to say, “I can never get enough of you. It’s impossible.”

My heart beat faster and I reached for the bottle of whiskey. As Ally’s head tilted to the side to gaze at me, I said, “I’m real bad for you, you know.”

Ally held her breath for a moment, losing her smile. She lowered her mouth to my chest and moved up to my lips, only to whisper back, “Yeah, I heard that once.”

I huffed a laugh as Ally sat back, eyeing me playfully. “Just once?” I asked.

She pretended to think, her finger to her lips. “Or twice, or three times…” she laughed, but quickly lost her humor, “or a million.”

My stomach tensed at the sad tone in her voice. I balanced the smoke between my lips and took the bottle of Tennessee heaven from her hands. I unscrewed the cap and, moving the smoke from my lips, took a swig of the whiskey and handed it to Ally. She took three long swallows before tearing it from her mouth to gasp at the burn in her throat and chest.

As she lay back on her ankles after drinking down the whiskey, her eyes scanned around the room. When she saw the state of the workstation, she looked down at her hair and lifted it in her hands. She laughed.

“I’m a mess,” she said, trying to swat the dust off her hair and skin.

She wasn’t a mess. In fact, if she wasn’t here right now, I’d be taking a new slab of marble, beginning to sculpt the image already haunting my damn head.

Ally’s shoulders slumped. Running her finger round and round the top of the bottle, she said, “The exhibit is almost done, Axel.”

That sadness was back in her voice and she couldn’t lift her eyes to me.

“Yeah?”

Ally nodded her head, her eyes downcast. She lifted her head and, looking at me, said, “I’ll get another commission after this one is done.”

Realization hit… she’d be leaving Seattle.

“Where will you go?” I asked.

“Wherever I get a job.” I nodded, unable speak, feeling like a thousand daggers were cracking open my chest. I really didn’t want her to leave.

“And you, Axel? Where will you go?”

My back stiffened and I stilled. I hadn’t even given it any thought. I only ever thought of the here and now. That I needed to be in Seattle…

“Don’t know,” I replied.

Ally regarded me. “You won’t go back to Bama?”

I firmly shook my head.

Ally frowned. “Why?”

I glanced away, not wanting to talk about it, but Ally crawled forward and straddled my waist, pushing the hair back from my face with her hands. “Axel, tell me why. For God’s sake, you have to start sharing things with me. Tell me about your life. What’s going on in that complex head of yours?”

Sighing, I lay my hand on Ally’s soft thigh and said, “I’ll be killed.”

Ally’s hand topped stroking my hair and the color drained from her face. “You’ll be…”

“Killed,” I finished for her and sucked in another smoke. Ally watched me. I could see her hand begin to tremble. “Hey,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “Don’t—”

“Who will kill you?” she interrupted. I could see the fear in her face.

I hesitated, not wanting her to be dragged into anything, but she leaned forward and pressed her forehead to mine. “Tell me… share this with me. Don’t deal with it on your own. I’m here… I’m right here... with you…
for
you.”

My fingers tightened on her thigh and I realized that I finally wanted to tell her what I’d always kept to myself.

“Axel, please,” she begged and, not wanting to be alone no more, I looked her in the eye.

“You know how many years I got, Ally?”

“Ten,” she said.

“But I only served five,” I added.

Ally’s eyebrows pulled down. “I assumed you got out for good behavior.”

“Part of it was,” I said. “I kept my head down, tried to stay out of everyone’s way.”

“Then what else? What else got you out early?”

“I gave up names.”

Ally’s forehead pulled down in confusion. “What names?”

Running my hand down my face, I said, “Drug dealers that supplied to the Heighters. Feds knew I could give them the names and addresses of the big coke hitters and where they kept their stash. I had nothing to lose in giving them up. The feds promised me a half sentence if I did, so I agreed. The suppliers were the ones that gave us the messed up coke that made Porter OD. Those fuckers deserved to go down.”

“And that’s who wants you dead?”

I laughed without humor. “Probably, but that’s not who I know is fucking
intent
on it. If the feds did their jobs right, the dealers won’t know it was me that gave them up. They’ll be serving life now anyway.”

“Then who…?” Ally trailed off.

“Remo. Gio’s older cousin, the old Heighter leader. He was as close to Gio as Austin and Lev are to me, so he’s pissed. He had to move up state years ago when a beef with the Kings got outta hand. He needed to lay low for a while. That’s where he was when all the shit went down with the Heighter deal and Porter’s overdose. Gio told me I had to get out of town for a while, lay low too. So I went and stayed with Remo. He was real good to me. Helped me hide out undetected. But when Lev called me and said that Mamma had died, Lexi was suffering from anorexia and in hospital, and Austin had been arrested, I knew I had to come home. I should never have fucking run away like a pussy anyhow.

“When I said I was going back home, Remo tried to stop me, he knew Gio needed me to keep the crew strong. I was the main reason most of our rivals left us alone. He knew they’d be vulnerable without me around. So I knocked him the fuck out to get away, came back to Tuscaloosa and handed myself in. I knew Remo would be after me. No one fucked with Remo. Then after I organized for Gio… to be taken down, Remo made sure I got a message inside that if I got out, I was as good as dead. I fucking ruined them all. They’d saved me from my papa, from that shit life, and now Remo was gonna make me pay for fucking everything up.”