On The Ropes (15 page)

H
e had a fight tonight
, and I wouldn’t be there to see it. Because we were arguing, and because I had to dance.

Maybe the club owned me, after all.

He’d called me a couple of times, and though I knew it was cowardly, I hadn’t answered. I didn’t know what to say. Worse, I knew whatever he said, I’d be back in his arms before my shift was over unless I practiced strict avoidance.

I’d even gone so far as to give my notice today—two weeks as was standard, but Trina had begged me to stay for three weeks instead. She’d had two girls quit on her in the last week, and I’d be doing her such a huge favor. Pretty please with a cherry between my legs.

It wasn’t like I couldn’t use the money, especially now that I might be going into business with my sister, so I’d agreed. If I picked up an extra shift or two in that time, even better.

In under a month, it would all be over. I wouldn’t need to survey Gio’s activities anymore, or try to recapture my youthful enthusiasm for something that now seemed dirty and fake under the cold light of reality. I wouldn’t have to rationalize the mistakes I’d made. I would move on, a little older, a lot wiser, with my heart and soul mostly intact.

For the last week I’d spent almost every night with Gio. Not the whole night, just stolen hours here and there. Enough to take the edge of the need we had for each other, but not enough to arise suspicion from my sister. Not seeing him again after these next few weeks at the club would hurt like hell, but I didn’t have any choice. I wouldn’t spend my life wondering when he’d end up in jail again, or dead. Or if he’d kill someone at Marco and Lorenzo’s request. I’d always known one day I would have to draw a line in the sand.

Tonight was that night.

When the cage door snapped shut, I spun into gear. Dancing emptied out my mind and made me focus on my movements. I was only heat and motion and energy. There wasn’t any room for worrying, or regret, or fear when the music was pumping and the music was flowing. I wouldn’t allow myself to get scared again. I’d danced the past couple of weeks without incident, and I’d be fine tonight and tomorrow too.

Only a few weeks left.

Within a short time, I was lost to the music. My hands caressed my body like a lover’s, and my feet moved without conscious thought. I stripped off my little handkerchief top and pressed my hands to the cage floor, absorbing the bass’s vibrations as I shook my ass, clad only in booty shorts. It was easy. Effortless. Grabbing my breasts and pinching the nipples, spinning on my towering heels. I could’ve been alone in my room for all the mind I paid the crowd. They didn’t exist for me. Gio wasn’t there yet. He couldn’t be, because of his fight. And if he wasn’t watching, I simply wasn’t interested anymore.

I finished and collected my money, shoving in it my pockets and a handy zippered club wallet. At the end of my first post-back room set a couple of weeks ago, I’d forgotten to collect my cash, on account of running out of the cage like a demon was chasing me. One of the other girls had gathered my money for me, and taken a healthy twenty percent fee.

My mental health breakdowns would wait until between shifts from now on.

I’d almost made it through the throngs of people and back to the dressing room when I heard that voice I’d been waiting for—and dreading.

“
Tesoro
.”

My feet nearly stopped. His voice, deep and rough, could command my body without my help. How many nights had I cause to realize that recently? He’d have me on my back in a minute, and be inside me in twice that. And I’d let him…hell, I’d beg him. Because he was the only one who’d ever made me feel this alive, like my skin and bones weren’t strong enough to hold my heart inside. He was everything.

Too much.

I made it into the dressing room and dropped into the first seat. Blindly, I dug through my makeup bag for my lipstick. Though I couldn’t breathe through the layer of trickery on my skin, I needed that armor. When it came to him, especially.

The door crashed open and then he was in the room with me, taking over the space. By some miracle, no other girls were around. Between shifts, or—

He flipped the door lock, and my throat closed. I tried to keep applying my lipstick, to focus on my face in the water-spotted mirror, haloed by a dozen tiny lights, but when he came up behind me, I dropped the tube. It rolled off the table and disappeared under an old, faded settee that had probably seen its share of action. Not from me. I wouldn’t succumb.

Not again.

A cry left me when he slapped off the lights. The only light that remained came from the mirror, and it left him almost entirely in shadow. All I could see were his huge hands, clenched. His broad body, blocking out the rest of the room.

And my own decimation, a breath away.

“You ran from me.” His guttural words scraped over nerve endings already rubbed raw.

I shut my eyes. “You’re supposed to be at your fight. I heard them talking. How you were going to win. Make them all kinds of money.” My eyes flashed open and locked on his, scalding blue in the dim light. “Isn’t that all that matters?”

“You want to know what matters?” His big hand wrapped around my throat, and for a moment, panic seized me. Dense and unrelenting, there was no escaping it. My eyes widened and he immediately eased up the pressure as he dragged me back against him. He spoke close to my ear so that my hair fluttered over my mouth. “What I’m about to do to you.
That’s
what matters. Nothing else.” His fingers squeezed, but by then, the fear had disappeared in a rush of heat that blew through me from head to toe. “No one else.”

“Now,” I whispered. “Now, I’m your focus, because I’m pulling away.”

“Is that what you call it? Because to me, it looks like bailing.” He turned his head and bit my earlobe, sending a shockwave of pleasure through my system. “And I can’t even decide if it’s the best thing or the worst. If you’re safer away from me, than with.”

The automatic protests sounded in my head and nearly erupted from my mouth before I stifled them.
Safer with you always. Everything is better when you’re there. I can sleep again. I can breathe. I can laugh.

That one night might’ve changed my outlook, darkened it permanently, had I not found peace—and so much more—with him. But he wasn’t the keeper of my sanity…or my safety. I had to stand on my own two feet, and make better decisions.

I didn’t want to mindlessly rebel anymore. I didn’t want to wonder if the company I was keeping would find me wearing bulletholes for breakfast some morning.

I wanted to be a chef, and own my own café/bakery/whatever with my sister, and be a young woman who didn’t need to grow up any faster than she already was.

That was enough.

“If that’s all it is with us, safety and…and
this
,” I gestured to his mouth on my ear, and his hand at my throat, “then yeah, I’m safer away from you. Because you’re worried about protecting my body, and in here, I’m a mess.” I rubbed my fist over my chest. “I don’t want to be a mess over you, Giovanni Costas. It was one thing when all I had to think about was if you liked me back. Now I’m wondering if the company you keep will end up hurting you…or me. Or my sister.” His hand dropped from my neck, yet the pressure there only grew. “I don’t want to care about you, if I’m only meant to lose you. Can’t you understand that?”

He shut his eyes and stepped away, and the loss of his body heat made me shiver. There were only a few days left in October, and the chilly nights were setting in. Soon it would be winter.

Soon I’d be back to being alone.

“I understand,
tesoro
. What do you think made me stay away from you all those months?” When I swiveled on my stool to face him, he shook his head and drove his fingers though his hair, ripping apart the stubby ponytail at his nape. “Not only that. There’s so much you don’t know about me. Things that would change your view of me, of who you think I am.”

“Like your attempted murder rap? You saw how that dissuaded me, right?”

“You see the best in me. Why, I don’t know. If you knew—”

I rose and went to him, because I couldn’t stand to see him in pain and not attempt to alleviate it. Anyone but him, this man who made me feel so much. From the first, he’d been capable of arousing such strong emotions in me.

Lust. Anger. Arousal. Fear.

More.

God, more.

“Then tell me.” I gripped the front of his jersey, and realized it was soaked through. From a shower? From sweating during the fight? Perhaps it was raining again. It didn’t matter. His sweat put me off about as much as all the rest. “Trust me to hear the truth and stick around, just like you’ve expected me to trust you.”

A vein throbbed in his temple. For a moment, just one, I thought maybe he might tell me something. Not everything. But some-damn-thing that might explain why he was spending so much time with men he clearly felt contempt toward.

As quickly as it came, that instant of openness in his eyes shut down.

“I can’t.”

“Won’t,” I corrected. I turned back to the dressing table and dug another lipstick out of my stash. The other was lost to the perils of a grungy floor.

“Won’t,” he agreed softly, coming closer again. Somehow I didn’t bristle as he set his hands on my shoulders. Not because I wanted him to let go, but because I ached to beg him to hold on. “Give me a few more days. Please. I need…it’s selfish, baby, but I can’t let you go like this. I need you too much.”

I leaned forward to apply my lipstick, then capped the tube with shaking hands. “You need me for what, exactly? To get your dick wet? Because that’s not enough anymore. I thought it was. But as insane as it is, I’m already halfway—”

“No.” Our gazes connected in the glass. “You’re not halfway anything. What we are is what we agreed to.” His hands on my shoulders felt like clamps, desperately holding me still. “A few more days. If it’s going to end, let me give you what I wish I could for real.”

Looking into his painfully direct eyes hurt, so I glanced away. If only it was so easy to deny my emotions.

I knew the crazy situation probably had something to do with my sudden onslaught of feelings. Throw in some danger, a healthy dash of hormones, toss in a bit of illicit behavior, and pow, you had the recipe for a hell of a problem. But it wasn’t just that. I’d had feelings for him all along. Ones I couldn’t entirely explain. Probably a lot of it had to do with the whole forbidden aspect. At least that’s what I told myself when I sneaked home at night, frustrated and lonely at the prospect of crawling into my bed alone.

Scratch that. Crawling into my sleeping bag. On the floor.

Oh yeah, I was having an adult affair, all right, in the center of a very high school-equivalent life.

“What is that?” I had to ask. Had to know. “What do you wish?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his hold on my shoulders gentled. Even when he was gripped by his darkest urges, he never lost control with me. He might offer a rough touch now and then, but he never crossed the line. And the next touch he’d give me would be ten times as sweet.

“Most of all, I’d wish for time.”

I blinked, not understanding. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

“Come home with me tonight.” He fingercombed the long dark hair I’d chosen for this evening away from my face, following the long wavy strands to the tips before starting from the top again.

My mind told me to say no. But my gut, my body, and the part of my heart that wasn’t worried about getting trampled were all much more agreeable.

“Are you going to rip my clothes off again?”

A muscle ticked in his cheek, then he surprised the hell out of me by smiling. Sort of. It was a pained expression, but the effect was there. “That was the intention when I came in this room.”

My breath caught. “So what stopped you?”

“It occurred to me I’d never done anything else.”

The sadness I heard in his voice pulled at me, causing a pang in my chest. “Did you hear me complaining?”

“Actually, yeah, I did.”

“I wasn’t complaining about the sex, you jerkoff. The sex is perfect. Magical. Damn near a transcendent experience, with a side of fairy tale orgasms.”

Now he smiled for real, long enough for me to rise and trace the curve of his mouth. “What’re you doing?” he asked against my fingertip.

“Memorizing this moment. I don’t see this smile nearly enough, and it’s beautiful.” I pretended to click a camera with my other hand and stepped back, giving him a smile of my own. “There. Saved it. I have proof.”

He ducked his head, and for a second, I had no idea if that was a good sign or bad. Then I realized I’d embarrassed my big, brawny, badass fighter and nearly made him blush.

“Aww, so cute,” I teased, playfully nudging his arm. “I should take a mental picture of that expression too.”

“Go ahead. I’ve taken mental pictures of all your expressions—and more than a few of your positions.”

“Hmm. Guess it’s a good thing these mental picture reels will never end up on the internet then.” Lightly, I shoved him toward the door as someone knocked. Probably another one of the dancers who, you know, actually wanted to change in the dressing room. “I’ll see you after my next set.”

“Okay.” He turned, appeared as if he was on the verge of saying something. Then his mouth was on mine, and I was on my tiptoes, pressed against his massive chest. Such strength there, and in his powerful hands, but he touched me with such tenderness in spite of the hunger emanating from every pore of his body. In the center of the storm, he treated me like a precious thing, even as our tongues tangled and our breaths came short.

When we pulled apart, the knocking had become thunderous, and my reservations had dwindled away.

Tomorrow would take care of itself. Tonight, I needed him.

“Wait,” I said, suddenly not wanting to let him out of my sight. In this room, he was safe. We were safe. Out there, that could change in an instant. “You didn’t tell me if you won tonight.”

“What do you think?”

The cocky Gio I knew was back. I’d missed him, though I had to admit I enjoyed knocking him down a peg or two. But only for fun. Not when his eyes were so grim and desolate.