Delta: Rescue: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) (7 page)

“Right. So was I the other day. Then you were shaking like a leaf. Now you’re hanging on me to stay.” That facet of her didn’t make sense either. “You stalked me? Tracked me?” However, that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t been followed, hadn’t had a tail.

The corners of her mouth quirked up. “This is my world. These are my fights. You think you know Mercier, but you have no idea about me.”

With that, she let go of his bicep, then turned. The crowd parted to her, an obvious sign of respect. They knew her, moved for her, gave her room, not just standing shoulder to shoulder. And as his gaze followed theirs, it became clear they feared her.

“What don’t you own?” he shouted after her. “The girls. The models. The fighters. Your fancy cars.”

Slowly, she glanced over her shoulder. “Come and find out.”

CHAPTER SIX

Maddy controlled every detail in her life—who worked for her, how they behaved, what they said, and what they did. She helped the girls. She gained traction in her father’s world.
Everything
was controlled. Until she’d met the man following her.

His footsteps trailed away, and her ears ached to hear him in the crowd. His fast breaths, that sculpted, inked chest rising and falling, and his powerful legs swishing in the mesh shorts hanging low on his hips were almost all she could think about. When she’d heard they had a new fighter asking for the best on the streets, her curiosity was piqued. But when she saw him, the same physical and mental reactions as before nearly brought her to her knees.

Her confident stride was a farce as she shook inside.
Her
chest rose and fell as quickly as his. Maddy was more turned on and distracted than the last time they’d been together.

They abandoned the crowded warehouse, still without another word exchanged. The power pulsed in the air. Luke wasn’t a follower. He had dominated her in Love’s office before, which she replayed over and over, deciding that fight for control of the conversation was intense
and
enjoyable.

Sex was business. Attraction was effortlessly decipherable, and domination was an easy sell, but this was personal. She looked over her shoulder, watching him stalk and scowl. Her Lotus waited outside the warehouse doors. The night was warm as she threw them open, but it was still cooler than inside, and the air wasn’t sweaty and musky. It was almost sweet.

She slowed even as she knew he wouldn’t. Behind her, his hard-muscled, sweat-slicked body pressed her against the car. Simply reacting, her back arched against him as he covered her. Maddy swayed, letting the cool window glass tease her hypersensitive skin.

Hot breath burned through the hair against her neck. “I don’t play games.”

“I do, so we have a problem.” Her eyes closed and her belly tightened when his teeth scraped her skin. She was getting herself into a situation she wouldn’t know how to handle. Of course she was playing games. She was pretending to be who he thought she was.

“Get over yourself, beautiful.”

His attitude did bad things for her, and Maddy moaned as his teeth repeated the sensual scrape.

Luke spun her and pressed her back against the car. “Your fights?”

Breathless, she nodded. “I was told a new fighter started asking around. He wanted the best, the worst, all rolled into one.
That
, I have.” She’d put her best against Luke and watched her fighter go down in the bare-knuckle bout.

Maddy knew pain.

She knew torment.

She’d never known a man wrecked with both more completely than this one.

They were made from the same fabric even if they were in different sexual universes. Something had happened to him that made him want to hurt. Somewhere along life’s ugly path, he’d been destroyed, only to come back invincible. And knowing all that, she embraced her short, choppy breaths and encompassing arousal.

“Give me your keys,” he growled quietly. The wave of his words swam over her, amplifying her want.

She swallowed, drunk on the moment. “No.”

He pressed his hips to hers, flexing his thick erection between them. His masculine scent and sweat-dampened hair intoxicated her. She was almost ashamed.

“Keys, woman.”

Her eyes sliced to challenge him, hoping another
no
would bring more of his weight against her. She shook her head.

“Now.”

“Why?” Her bottom lip hung open. She could almost taste his skin on her tongue. Could almost feel his kiss when she’d never had that type of touch before—fascinating and terrifying.

Another hard hip flex. “I’m not doing you here.”

“Didn’t ask you to.” Though she would have to run from sex against a car as her first time, even if she couldn’t keep her hands off him, because it would hurt. Guilt flooded her, that she hadn’t been able to save more girls. The wicked wants of arousal disappeared, freezing in place despite Luke surrounding her.

He growled. “A trafficker who plays hard to get? Hot and cold?”

“Call me what you want.” She tilted away from him. “I’m the only chance to change that.”

“Change what?” Disbelief brooded angrily in his black eyes.

“You don’t know what or why things happen. Certainly not in my world.”

He scoffed, but he didn’t back away as a glint flashed in his eyes. His jaw’s hard line was inches from her face. His throat bobbed. The tattoos on his skin were scorched into her memory. Angels and demons. Tribal designs and beautiful words. Some scripts swirled while others were blocked and blacked, harshly contrasting the ornate ones.

“You and I. We’re one and the same,” she whispered.

His dark eyebrows bit together. “What is it that you think you see?”

“Everything.” The pain. The distrust. The hunt for something out of reach.

“No.” He shook his head. “I hate that I want to fuck you, fuck evil. We are
nothing
the same.”

Her right hand swung to slap his face. He caught it, his strong hand wrapping around her wrist. His grip flexed, and electricity mixed with the discomfort, shooting all the way to her spine. Her left hand swung for him. His grip met that one, too.

“You’re looking for a fight?” he asked incredulously.

Wrists in his grip, she had no idea what she was doing. Her head spun, reason and reality slipping away. “I don’t know.”

He backed an inch. “What’s with that?”

“What?”

“The out-of-nowhere quiet response.”

She shrugged, hating that he saw something vulnerable that she never should have shown.

His lips turned into a wary grin. “There’s more than one side to you.”

“I already told you that.”

“Give me your keys.”

Somehow, when Luke saw her defenseless side, it was a mental go-ahead to leave with him,
driving
. “They’re in the ignition.”

His brows went up. “Trusting, are we?”

“In this neighborhood?”

He nodded.

“More than trusting.”

As his mind worked that over, Luke wrapped his hands around her, lifted her as if she were air, and seconds later, planted her in the passenger seat.

“This is all about sex?” he asked.

Her eyes jumped to his. “Yes.”
Right?
Because if a sexual urge existed once in her life, she should move forward. Even if her nerves were flooding in a way she’d never experienced
and
her mind was making calculated mistakes.

* * * *

Dropping the super sports car into gear, Luke could have blamed his heavy erection on the horsepower under his control. But that wasn’t it. The woman he couldn’t keep his mind from had her soulful eyes on him, and her skirt drifted up as she repositioned in her seat. She was soft, too soft for the world she seemed content to carouse in, and her delicate fingers slid on her legs like in some subconscious boudoir striptease.

“Nice ride,” he said.

“Thanks. It’s just a car, though. I didn’t pick it. But it fits the part.”

“If you picked your own ride?”

“What would it be?”

He nodded, more curious than he should’ve been.

Her eyes closed, and she leaned back, humming to herself as though she’d never wondered exactly what kind of car she would want. “Oh!” She smiled then tried to hide it. “A convertible. A silver one.”

“Make or model?”

“Doesn’t matter. So long as the top goes down.”

Interesting.
Her semi-hidden smile bloomed from sweet to sinful. “What about you?”

“I have a truck.”

“No name or model,” she teased.

“You’ve got jokes.” Luke watched her out the corner of his eye, caught off guard by this very normal side of her, sweet, almost flirting in a shy way—not the aggressive, in-control woman in the middle of an underground fight club.

“I guess maybe I do.”

“You guess?”

“Yes, I guess.”

“Like you’re trying to figure out the world or something, huh, beautiful?”

“Seems like that’s my new favorite thing.
Oui.
”

That made his lips twitch, a hint of a smile, and he couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. Luke turned a corner, having no idea where to go.

“Mira House Hotel.”

He knew where that was and dropped the gear, surging through traffic toward a hotel that was only blocks away.

Music played from top-of-the-line speakers, and they stayed silent until he pulled into the hotel’s driveway. “You live here?”

“I have a penthouse suite on standby.”

A swanky hotel room waited for her? His eyes cut to hers. “Do this often?”

She laughed, quickly tamping down her reaction. “Never.”

“Right.” What to believe and what to call her on was always a question.

Bellhops stood by their doors, and as if on cue, her door was opened, as was his, and she was greeted by name. “Ms. Mercier, good evening. Will anyone else from Love join us tonight?”

Love… Ironic. Nothing about someone like Maddy could love. She was depraved. Yet he was following her, ready to take her body the second he could.

Leaving the Lotus, Luke powered around the hood, catching glimpses from people nearby. He was still bare chested, with a bruise swelling one cheek. He walked past the moneyed guests, watching them stare at his tattoos and mesh shorts. On his face, they surely saw the demons of a lust-fueled, angry man. A dangerous predator. No one saw the trafficker who pimped women as she stood awaiting him.

Luke stopped and towered above her. “Your company, Love. Is it real?”

“Most things
are
actually what they seem. Unless you’re not looking correctly.”

“Playing games again,” he mumbled.

“Then again, there are apparently shades of real, of right and wrong. The DEA agent and the trafficker, as you keep reminding me, heading to the penthouse?”

“I’m not on DEA’s payroll.”

“That’s right. You’re a hunter.”

The way she said it made him want to grin, as though she didn’t feel endangered, and he knew she shouldn’t. Luke wanted more from her than an arrest, and that was clouding his judgment and blurring his goal. “Let’s go.”

She nodded, and he fell in step beside her. They passed the concierge, who subtly nodded to her as they headed to the elevators. Everyone knew her. He missed nothing, not the looks and glances, but he couldn’t read minds, and his interest was stoked.

An elevator arrived immediately, and still in silence, they boarded. She took out a card and scanned it, then hit the P button. He turned, curious about how she had everything from the suite to the attention of all who worked there. “Do you own the hotel?”

“No.” Again, she gave a careful smile.

“There’s a first.”

The corners of her mouth twitched, broadening her grin.

The elevator opened into a gorgeous hallway that ended at one door.

“It’s open,” she said.

He tried the handle, and the door opened easily. “You keep yourself a room on the ready, unlocked. Trusting…”

“Pays to have a place you can go without question.”

“No one is paying you tonight, beautiful.” He took in the opulence.
Holy shit.
The suite had to be packed with a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of furnishing.

“Not every transaction is about money.”

“Yes—”

“There’s beauty…” Her gaze fell across his chest. “There’s pleasure. There are new experiences.”

They walked into the bedroom, not touching, still flirting, and he needed to run away from her but couldn’t. “A dirty game of cops and robbers.”

She opened her mouth to speak but instead nodded.

Everything inside him burned hot. His chest was tight, and his muscles ached.

A hunger, a curiosity, and a shyness surfaced when he least expected it, making him want to stroke her cheek, to ask her questions to figure out their undeniable draw. “Why do you trust me, Maddy?”

She blinked. “I have no idea.”

“You said you were my prey. What do you want? To hurt? Be saved? What is this?” Because whatever it was, it was addictive. He was running on a high that he couldn’t explain.

“I’m a businesswoman, except that I’ve been put into a world that I hate.
I have to survive.
I didn’t have the luxury of growing up with crushes and loves. For the first time, I see the possibility of something that changes me, and I
want—
deeply, badly, terribly—I
want
someone to…make me.”

“Make you what?”

A challenge broadcasted on her face as she lifted her chin. “Make me feel.”

Needing to feel? That was his problem, his need—to feel pain to feel better. “You want what?”

“Just…”

“What, Maddy? Say it.”

“I don’t know! Maybe I’m as screwed up as—” She pinched her eyes, shaking her hair as she stepped close to the bed. “Dominate me. Make me feel it. You. This. Us.”

His eyes narrowed, assessing her request. It was almost as though she didn’t know what else to ask for, what else to like. But coming from her world, domination was probably what she knew. She wanted to feel, she was asking for it the way she’d experienced, and fuck it all, but there was something about her that he couldn’t say no to. It wasn’t the sex. He had no idea what it was, just that vibe that there was more. “That’s what you want, beautiful?”