Deep (7 page)

“Someone stabbed you,” I murmured, hands clenched tight around a mass of red wipes.

It shocked me to see him like this, vulnerable and so damn human. I had known he was wounded as soon as I opened the door, but there was still a part of me that remembered him from three years ago—larger than life and impossibly powerful. The sight of him laid low made something clench in my chest.

He didn’t answer, and I realized his eyes were closed again. He had passed out.

The tears now couldn’t be blamed on laughter anymore. I wasn’t laughing; I was crying. At being helpless, at being scared. All over again.

The first-aid kit didn’t have a needle or anything like that, which was probably for the best. I was likely to do more damage with it than actually help. Instead I used the healing cream and butterfly bandages to hold the wound closed.

Then I pulled his shirt off—which was harder than the suit jacket somehow. It also opened up his wound again so that fresh blood spilled down his side and onto my sheet. It would soak into the mattress too, the same mattress that so many students before me had slept on. They had worried and dreamed on this mattress. They’d gotten high and gotten laid, but I was pretty sure none of them had ever bled out from a knife wound.

There was a first time for everything.

By the time I’d cleaned his wound again, it was pitch-black outside, and I was exhausted. The lines around his mouth showed how much pain he was in, even while he was unconscious.

I took off his black leather shoes and thin black socks. He looked more vulnerable without them.

The comforter with daisies only covered to his waist, leaving his wound open to heal in the stuffy air. His abs were firm even in sleep, ridges leading to a broad chest covered in ink. It was too dark to see the design clearly, but it was broad and bold—like the man himself.

And he was wearing something. A necklace? No. I looked closer. A ring on a chain, a plain platinum bad with no markings. What did it mean? Who did it belong to? I immediately thought of Shelly, because they’d had a thing. Purely financial, to hear her tell it—but it had always been clear to me, even back then, that there was a connection between them, that the reluctant affection cut both ways. Though this ring looked too plain for Shelly, for anything he might have gifted her. He would have given her diamonds and pearls, the weight and perfection equal to her obligation.

Even unconscious, he looked powerful. Invincible.
An illusion.

There were smears of dried blood on my hands and forearms that proved that wrong.

A quick shower drenched me to the bone. At least I had my own bathroom instead of a communal one. Then I curled up a sweater as a makeshift pillow and lay down beside the bed.

The sofa would have been more comfortable, even if it was tiny, but I couldn’t bear to be that far away from him. His hand hung over the edge, and I held it as sleep claimed me, hard and fierce.

Chapter Twelve

A
SOUND JARRED
me from sleep, something low and resonant, an animal sound of ferocity. The hair was raised on the back of my neck. My eyes snapped open in the dark. Blackness sharpened into shadows, into waves.

The metal tang of blood came back to me first, its echo still hanging in the air.

Memory hit me with a sudden, sharp ache—of finding Philip when I’d thought I’d never see him again.

He was here now, and he was hurting. The sound he made was an animal cornered, a wolf backed into a canyon crevice, snapping and snarling in his final moments. It was the sound of defeat. It was the sound of a man who would never back down, who would fight to the death.

Right now he was fighting in his sleep, head tossing, hands clenched around nothing.

It was still dark outside, still night.

The bandages I had put over his wounds were no replacement for stitches—and he had already ripped them off the way he was moving. I put a hand on his arm to calm him.

“Philip,” I whispered. “Wake up.”

He tossed again, a guttural sound filling the air. A shiver ran over my skin, and I didn’t know if the neighbors would hear him. Didn’t know if they’d call the floor advisor to check on me. Maybe even the police.

“Philip.” The urgency in my voice was real. “It’s me. Ella.”

I shook his shoulder, hoping I didn’t make his injury worse.

A hand clamped around my wrist. Then I was falling, twisting, landing breathlessly on his chest with an
oomph.
“Oh God,” I muttered. “Oh no. Did I hurt you? Are you okay?”

Of course he wasn’t okay. My entire body had just fallen on top of him when he had a gaping wound.

“Ella.” The word was grated out, rocks sliding against each other, a rumble in the hard body beneath me. I pressed up, trying to back off him—but his hands held me down. They did more than that. They shifted me, adjusted me so that my legs slung on either side of him.

“Let me go. You’re going to hurt yourself. You’re going to—”
Bleed.
He was going to bleed. He was probably already bleeding, dying on my dorm-room bed. My eyes pricked with a surge of emotion. “You need to rest.”

“Like that,” he said so low that it took me a minute to understand. He was hard everywhere—the chest beneath my palms, the hands around my arms. The hips that pushed my legs wide as I straddled him. He was so hard that only when I took a deep breath did I feel the ridge, thick and hot, beneath his slacks.

“Now?” I said, more from shock than refusal. He was losing blood. He was weak from injury.

Except he didn’t feel weak, throbbing beneath me. He felt strong, virile. He felt powerful despite his injury. Or maybe because of it, as if the cut in his skin had broken through his careful, civilized veneer. This was the real man underneath, the one with his large hands on my hips, rocking me against his erection.

There was something animalistic about the way he moved, something instinctive about the way he used me. The cut on his side must have hurt him. It must have been agony. And we didn’t have any painkillers—we only had this, the slide of my body over his cock, the
stroke stroke stroke
until he groaned with pleasure.

The sound touched something deep inside me, and I twisted my hips to ease the ache. Except the movement, the friction only made it worse. Soon I was moving to the rhythm he gave me.

“Yes,” he whispered, dark satisfaction thick in his voice. “Take what you need, kitten.”

Oh God, the word
kitten
was like a tongue against my clit. I moaned, a loud sound in the room.

He gave me more. “Yeah, yeah. Fuck yourself with my cock. Make yourself come.”

It was like I had turned to liquid, and I swayed with him, rode with him, just a conduit for his heat. My head fell back, and pleasure turned into sparks behind my closed eyes. I’d had boys kiss me and grope me. I even had one unfortunate incident during the dark times, before Shelly—and Philip—saved me. But through all of that, I’d never felt as controlled as I did now, as under his thumb, not from the strength of his body but the force of his will. He could tell me to do anything in that low, pleased tone: to undress, to suck his cock.

What he told me instead was somehow more humiliating. “I can feel how wet you are,” he said. “Give me more, kitten. Come for me.”

My whole body tightened at his words, my secret muscles clenching around nothing. I could feel him there, stiff and throbbing even through his suit pants and my jeans. I could feel him, and he could feel me, even though we were completely clothed. And the more I pressed against him, the harder it was to resist.

The climax didn’t come in a rush. It came inch by inch, vines wrapping around my ankles and dragging me down, scraping my nails along the ground in a desperate bid for freedom. It came with the breath squeezed out of me, every nerve ending attuned to the darkness beneath me.

And when I hit the bottom, it was a sweet relief. I didn’t have a choice. Couldn’t fight him, fight this.

My body knew who it belonged to, and its master groaned in dark satisfaction.

He was still hard between my legs. He hadn’t climaxed yet, but I had. With a gentle shove he rolled me to his side—barely a foot of space on the bed by his uninjured side. I curled up there instinctively, my mind already hazy, drifting back to sleep.

“That’s good,” he murmured, his voice thick. “You’re perfect.”

Even with my cheek tucked against his chest, I could see the broad plane of him—and the erection that hadn’t subsided, barely contained by the fabric of his slacks. He must have been aching. He must have wanted to come.

I could have helped him. I could have
touched
him.

I could have taken him out and tasted him.

But I wasn’t that forward. I wouldn’t even have known how to be. A hard teenage facade and brief stint in the Chicago underworld hadn’t change me at my core. I was still the innocent girl, the one who didn’t know how to please people, the one who didn’t really belong. I needed the roughness of his grip, the confidence of his tacit commands to tell me what to do.

His hand stroked my hair slowly, and that command at least was clear.
Sleep.

I obeyed.

Chapter Thirteen

W
ATERY LIGHT FILTERED
in through the plastic white blinds. Nightmares filled my head—the tang of blood, the taste of fear. I buried my face in the pillow, waiting for the memories to fade. It had been years now, but the dreams still came.

Except as I became fully awake, I realized this wasn’t a dream.

Last night. Philip. That really happened.

The bed was empty. I bolted upright and scanned the room. He wasn’t here. Then I heard the water running. The bathroom door was closed. He must have been in there. Even knowing that, even with the logical answer clear in my head, I knew a moment of pure panic. Someone was in my room, and I couldn’t be sure it was him.

Fear gripped my throat, making it hard to breathe. One day I’d been a sarcastic teenager, my biggest problems in life what lipstick to wear and passing my precalc test. Then men had dragged me out of the back of a club, and just like that, I wasn’t a little girl anymore.

I wasn’t quite a woman either. I had been collateral then.

And I wasn’t sure that had really changed.

Only the courage and kindness of a call girl saved me that day. She took me to the one man who could keep me safe from anyone, from anything. Because every dangerous, bad man in Chicago knew that he was worse.

So who could have hurt a man as powerful as him?

What had happened to him last night?

Shelly had kept in touch with me—with more than anonymous post cards. She had left the life for good and worked with a shelter helping other women do the same. And sometimes she would tell me about her time with Philip. Nothing dirty. The unexpectedly sweet parts. His love for his family. His loyalty. Things I fantasized about almost as much as his hard-packed body.

The bathroom door opened, and I tensed. I hadn’t been able to fully relax for years.

Except for last night, when he held me.

All that strength, wrapped around me. A shield. A shelter.

And so very temporary.

Philip still had his shirt off, exposing broad shoulders and muscled arms to the morning light. That sweeping tattoo across his chest was a gritty counterpoint to the sharp, tailored clothes he usually wore. It was like a secret, this tattoo—something buried beneath the surface of his suits and his guns, something only I could see.

My eyes drank in the secret, the black lines embedded in rough flesh. A strange rhythm beat through my veins—
mine.
As possessive of his body as his hands had been on me.

His attention was on the towel he still held to his side. When he pulled it away, I winced at the spill of bright red. The strange and unsettling arousal faded away, leaving only urgent concern.

“You need stitches,” I said, already crossing the room.

He reached for the first-aid kit on the counter. “I’m fine. I just need you to do the bandages again so I stop bleeding.”

It was a foreign pleasure that anyone would need me, that
this man
would need me. Even for something as ridiculous as applying bandages. “They’re not going to help. Not for long.”

“I don’t need them to last long,” he said. “Just until I can get home.”

“You keep a doctor on staff?”

“Still with the attitude, kitten? I thought you’d grown out of that.”

Indignation burned deep in my stomach, eclipsing my concern for him. “You don’t know a damn thing about me or the woman I’ve grown into.”

Heat flared in his dark eyes, and his gaze traveled low, past the neckline of my tank top and the strip of skin exposed at my waist, to the private place between my legs, the one that still throbbed just from looking at him. A pleased light entered his eyes that told me that, despite his pain and delirium, he remembered what had happened last night.

“I know how you sound when you come,” he murmured.

A moan escaped me, half protest, half desire. It probably sounded just like when I came.

“And I know what your hot pussy feels like when it rides my cock.” He paused, his gaze challenging me to deny it. “Or did I just dream that last night?”

I pressed my lips together. My cheeks burned hot. “You were the one who grabbed me. I didn’t want to hurt you by fighting you off. Now of course I see that you would have deserved it.”

“Probably,” he said, bending his head so we were close—so close. “Dreaming never felt that good. And I have dreamed about you, kitten. Don’t doubt that.”

Surprise flared in my chest—along with a kind of panic. From the first moment we met there had been a connection, a wild recognition from one animal to another. It didn’t need words. We both felt it, even when I was too young to actually do anything about it.

And I was still too young for him.

He was still too dangerous for me.

Nothing could happen between us beyond a rough grope in the dark.