Brutally Beautiful (18 page)

“Mmm.” Anything, as long as he carried on holding her. Oh yes, he promised to take her home and do it some more. Nothing else mattered right now, although she could sleep first. It had worked; he wanted her.

Odell broke into their reverie by stepping into the room after rattling the door handle. Nick didn’t turn around but cinched her closer. “Get out.”

“Nope, you’ve had enough time.” He tossed her clothes on to the desk. “Get dressed and then tell me who let you do this, because I am so firing her ass.” He sounded pissed.

“No,” she said.

Odell shrugged. “I’ll find out.”

“No,” she repeated. “It’s all my fault.”

Nick, however, was smiling slightly as he helped her dress. Odell had found some underwear to replace the set she’d left on stage, but she didn’t want them. She put on her jeans and T-shirt commando. She felt sleepy and dreamy, ready to relax, but she couldn’t do that, not now.

Nick caught her hand and squeezed it hard, making her gaze fly to his face. “What the fuck was that?”

“That was me, showing you in the only way I know how that I believe you, not my boss. I want you, not him. And I want to help, not be pushed to the sidelines.”

Odell’s chuckle surprised her. “You’ve been outmaneuvered, my man.”

She nodded, keeping her attention on Nick. He still looked angry as hell, and she was beginning to realize she’d never seen him quite this unguarded, this dangerous. “There’s a cab outside,” Odell said helpfully.

“Come on.” Nick took her hand and led her outside. The short journey to his apartment was accomplished in silence. He took her into his bedroom and stripped her before undressing himself, letting the garments fall unceremoniously to the floor. In the bathroom he hit the faucet in the big walk-in shower. Urging her under the flow, he turned her to face him. She stood there, water pouring down her face, not knowing if she was crying or not. Not caring. He washed her, and his silence was far more oppressive than shouting. She wanted to talk to him, but he was so contained, his face so shut down that she didn’t know if he’d ever talk again.

So she spoke instead. “I wanted to show you that I believe in you. I wanted to say that I’d do anything for you, anything at all.” She’d reached rock bottom, she could say no more to plead her case. If she hadn’t acted fast, Nick would have done something to make sure she wasn’t in any danger. “I can’t let you cut me out, Nick. I’m the only person with the kind of access you need at the immigration. You’ve got to get into those records, suppress them if you can.”

He stared at her, listening but not responding. He washed her quickly, not lingering, cut the water, dried them both, and led her into the bedroom. When he drew back the covers, she climbed into bed, but he didn’t join her, as she’d expected. Instead, he wrapped himself in his navy-blue robe and sat on the bed, not touching her. Then he spoke.

“The name I used for most of my life is Mick O’Donnell. I lived in Liverpool 8 with my little brother, and after our mother dumped us, we stole and worked and sagged off school. I was a big boy, grew fast, so I started young.” He glared at her. “We were good-looking, my brother and me, so we sold what we had. Us. The women we made happy sometimes posed as responsible relatives when the welfare people came around. The only thing we did right was use condoms. The customers usually insisted. Not for us, but for them. I was a prostitute, get that? That’s how I can fuck a woman like I did you tonight. I used to charge for it. I did you tonight for free.”

She kept her expression carefully blank.

“Then I started running a few girls. It paid better, so I did it more. As I said, I was big, and that worked as well for pimping as it did fucking. I made Larry stay at school until he’d finished, because he was good at it, but we still tag-teamed at weekends. We stopped about the time Larry turned sixteen. Oh, did I forget that bit? Our customers liked boys, young ’uns. As long as we could get it up, they liked it. When you have money, you can have morals and a conscience. When you’re starving and sleeping on the streets, you can’t afford them.”

He watched her. There was no breaking through his shield of iron, no relenting.

“Then we had our first challenge. Before then we’d run under the radar, but the gangs wanted a piece. So I started a gang. We carved out a territory we could call our own. They didn’t expect two kids, two unaffiliated kids at that, to be such a problem. In that world you live or die. We lived. Other people died.” He paused. “The police did nothing. They couldn’t, and in time, we bought them.
I
bought them. Because by then Larry had what he wanted, and we kept out of contact for years. He went straight, turned into a fine man. I don’t see him these days.” This time she heard the eons of longing in his voice. He’d loved one person, at least.

She sat up, hugging her knees.

“I did well. I got bigger, spread tentacles, as you do, made alliances. Got very rich on the girls and the drugs and the knockoffs and any other racket that came into my manor.”

“But you left.” She hated how quiet her voice sounded, but she couldn’t do anything about it.

“Not because I saw the error of my ways.” He smiled, a flash of white teeth. “I ran the previous gangs out, and I got run out in my turn. The East Europeans moved in. They undercut me. They used girls they bought, and they paid them nothing. They got drugs from the cheap places, the new places. If I hadn’t left, I’d have died. Gang leaders don’t last much longer than forty, not unless they’re amazingly lucky. By that time they’re dead or they’re grassed-up, or they just lose it. I died. I had another ID ready. I’d already bought papers and stuff for a couple of people, but I picked Nicholas Taylor because I could be Nick. Near enough to Mick. Not sentimental, practical. I’m going to respond to Nick well.”

She reached out and before he could withdraw, grabbed his hand, drew it close. Grim-faced, he came closer. At least he hadn’t pulled away.

“You want a man like that? No sentiment, no excuses.”

“Is that why you can’t sleep nights?” She wouldn’t let him drive her away.

He nodded and stared at the blanket instead of at her. She didn’t like that. She’d rather face his fearsome gaze than have him avoid meeting her eyes.

“You remember at night?”

“Some things. I’ve never slept well.”

“You did with me.” The nights they’d spent together he might have got up early, but when she’d awoken in the night, he’d been next to her, sleeping peacefully.

He nodded again. “You brought something to me. I can’t call it peace. Maybe reconciliation.” He lifted his head. “I’ve killed people, directly or indirectly. The man the police ID’d as Mick O’Donnell was one of those. He idolized me, shaved his head, even got the same tattoos I had. Most of them. Somebody knifed him, thinking he was me, so I torched the place to make it a bit harder for them. Easy to bung a few officials to make sure they identified him right. Easy to make sure he was cremated, so nobody could do anything.”

“Bung…bribe?”

“Yeah.” He toyed with the sheet, threatening to pull it down. She did the first thing she thought of. She let it drop, baring her breasts. He looked, taking his time, letting his gaze wander over her until her nipples sensitized, crinkled into hard points. “Want me to do you again? Another freebie?”

“Only if you want to.”

He leaned back, letting the robe fall open to show his erection. He flicked it as if it meant nothing. “I can get this hard for anybody, you know? It means nothing.”

“And the poetry? Does that mean nothing?”

He remained completely still, staring at his cock as if he’d frozen. She’d hit something, a sore point. A way in. Triumph surged through her. “You did it because nobody would expect it? You spent five years studying poetry and now you teach it with such passion because it was convenient? Or what?”

“Something like that.”

He got to his feet with a sudden, violent motion and strode around the room. His robe flapped around his thighs, hiding nothing. “You can’t do this, Gen. He might kill you. You can’t.”

“If I don’t do it with you, I’ll do it without you.”

He turned to face her, the mask gone, but she could feel no triumph. Not when she saw the devastation that lay inside. There were no words. She threw back the covers and held out her arms.

He came to her as if he couldn’t help himself, impelled by something outside his control. He lay over her, kissed her so delicately, like she’d break, then touched his lips to her neck, her nipples, one after the other, paying homage to them. He kissed her navel, feathered kisses over her stomach, down to her bare pussy, and leaned up, watching her. She almost came for him on the spot, she felt such heat from his stare. When he kissed her, he took her clit into his mouth and sucked, but gently, not with the fierceness he’d shown her before. Her arousal rose but didn’t peak as he ran his tongue over her slit, dipping inside her channel, and back to her clit. He tongued it, kissed it, and then came back up the bed to her, reaching out to the bedside table and grabbing a condom without taking his attention away from her.

She wanted him bare, wanted to show him how much she trusted him not to hurt her, but a smile flickered across his lips as he shook his head when she clasped his wrist, and she let go. She’d never known a man who could sheathe himself as efficiently as Nick, and he proved it again now, smoothing the latex over his cock. She watched, waited, and when he entered her, she hugged his sides with her legs. Full missionary. That was what they needed now. She held him, flattened her palms over his back as he moved rhythmically inside her, felt every stroke as if it were her last. Or her first. He gazed into her eyes, watched her, and then gave her a kiss that, out of all the kisses they’d shared, she knew she’d never forget. He tasted her, savored it, and she licked at his lips, took her own flavor back and gave him another.

He tasted of sin and her…and love.

They made love without haste, and she responded to him, feeling that he’d woken her from a dream, shown her the possibilities of life instead of the limitations. It was all there for the taking, and all she had to do was reach out.

She tunneled her fingers into his hair, loving the dark abundance, the softness, remembering that picture of him bald. Badass and sexy. Nothing to hide his raw, masculine appeal, nothing to soften the savagery of a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it. She loved all of him, everything he was and would be.

She caught her breath, a tiny sound low in her throat, as he found her sweet spot and worked it. Nobody had done that so well before, and she was sure mechanical expertise was only part of the reason. But she didn’t close her eyes as she usually did at the point of orgasm. She watched him, let him see her as she came, opening everything up to him—the way she felt about him, her vulnerabilities, her strengths, and the way he ripped her apart from the inside out.

With a strangled sound, he dropped his head and buried his forehead against her neck. The first pulse of his orgasm throbbed inside her, but he lifted his head again and gave her back what she’d given to him. She saw everything, and she watched him come, that moment when he dropped all his barriers, all his conflicting emotions there for her to see.

She swallowed and realized what courage he was asking for, to accept everything he was, but she had that for him. He muttered something against her lips, and then he was kissing her and coming and she was coming again.

He kissed away her tears, left her for the thirty seconds it took him to dispose of the condom, and then came back to bed. She’d been half afraid that he wouldn’t, that he’d leave her there, and she wasn’t sure what she’d have done in that situation. Followed him, probably, because she didn’t plan to let up now.

But she went to him, sliding across the sheets in the big bed to nestle in his arms and to put hers around him, his big, hard warmth a vital presence against her. “Tell me the rest,” she murmured. “The truth.”

He sighed, but he didn’t ask her what she meant. He knew. “When Mum left us, I was terrified. They’d take us into care, and I might never see Larry again. Those places had a reputation. And we were Irish, Catholics, so I knew where they’d send him. Larry was tough, but he didn’t grow big like I did, not until he was older. He wouldn’t have stood a chance. I had to do something.”

He shook his head and closed his eyes, but she wouldn’t flinch from this. He needed to tell her, and she needed to hear it. She kissed him. “All of it.”

“We stole shit, but we got caught shoplifting, and only begging and crying saved us. We weren’t good at it. We went to school enough to sign in occasionally, but the teachers didn’t care. Larry liked it, even the shit school we went to, so I gave up, and sent him whenever I could.” He paused, smiled. “I had a book.
Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of Verse
. The cover was missing, and some of the pages too, so it wouldn’t have fetched anything if Mum had sold it. So I got to keep it. The only book I had. I read it to pieces, and then I could afford another one. I had a lot of poetry books, but what would that have done to my rep? So I didn’t tell anybody, not even Larry.” Another grin, a wry one but it was there. “That’s the truth.”

“I know it is.”

“Of course you do.” He claimed a kiss, traced her lips with his tongue, and tasted her, but didn’t take it any further. Already his cock had risen again, a hard ridge against her thigh. “I didn’t kill the guy in the drug house, but he didn’t have family. Nobody to care. I felt bad, you know? I actually felt bad about what I did. That was when I knew I was losing it. You can’t feel bad about shit like that. You just use it. Every situation you have to use, or somebody else will. Before that happened, I told Larry he had to leave. He was clever, always, and he deserved his chance. Book smart. He did it.” He smiled with pride.

“But you’re a professor now, or nearly one.”

“I bought my passport, bought my GCSEs and A-levels, didn’t work for any of them. Took the university entrance they wanted at DUNY, though, and passed it. But I earned my degree, and they transferred me to the doctoral course from the master’s program. Proudest moment of my life.”