Shadowboxer (27 page)

When my knees threatened to give out, he locked an arm around them and pushed his tongue deep, over and over, commanding me to finally let go. Offering me no choice. I came apart, gasping, and he swallowed everything I gave with low rumbles of pleasure.

I pulled him up and attacked his wet, swollen lips, wanting to taste myself the way he’d tasted me. He wrapped me in his arms, so tight that my head spun from lack of oxygen. Or maybe that was from the aftereffects of my orgasm.

“
You’re so goddamn sexy,” he growled. “I want you so bad I can’t think.”

Mindlessly, I rubbed against his thick, hard length, trying to quench the ache that was already building again. The one only he could soothe. Tonight there wasn’t a single part of me that could say no. My want was too huge.

My hands fanned his face, cupping his jaw. Holding him in place for the kisses he gave back as good as he got. I stroked his cheeks, savoring the rough stubble under my palms, then inched higher to tug at his eye patch.

He jerked back. “Baby, no.” I loved how breathless he was, and even more than he didn’t argue when I went back a second time.

“Let me see.” Heartbeat racing, I tugged off the patch and sucked in a breath. “It doesn’t look that bad,” I hedged, my voice breaking enough to prove me a liar.

He laughed drily. “Next time try not to gasp before you say that.”

I traced the puffiness beneath his thick row of lashes, then carefully explored the cuts that bisected his eyelid. His eye had sunk a little lower than the other one and had swollen so that only a bloodshot strip of aquamarine showed. My own eyes watered and I blinked furiously before he could see. “When’s your surgery?” I whispered.

“Two weeks from Saturday.”

The day after my fight with Giovanni. He didn’t say it and neither did I.

He cleared his throat.
“My dad consulted a friend about my case. Supposedly it’s actually better to do the surgery when as much as of the swelling and inflammation has decreased as possible. Plus with my cold, they couldn’t do it right away.” From his tone, he didn’t appreciate the delay.

I couldn’t claim to be the biggest fan of his dad after he’d dismissed me like some bimbo. His mother wasn’t much better, but I had to think they’d do what was best for their
son, especially in regards to his health. My parents would’ve died for Carly and me.

Actually, my dad kind of had. My being kidnapped had killed him, even if that hadn’t been the official cause of death. I knew it, and I was pretty sure Carly did too. We’d added that to our long list of unspoken topics years ago.

So many secrets. So many things off-limits. God, I was so tired of carrying all that crap around. I wanted to lay all of it down, to trust someone else with the burden.

I wanted to trust Tray.

“Mia?”

Shaking it
off, I pressed my lips to the small bandage above his brow, leaving them there as he shuddered out a breath. “That’s better,” he murmured, and nudged his hips into mine. Reminding me that not all of him was injured.

“Let’s take that shower.” At his relieved nod, I stepped to the door and locked it just in case. My sister didn’t need to walk in on anything R-rated. Maybe X.

When I turned back, he’d already stripped down, hopped in, and turned on the water. His eagerness made me laugh, as did the quizzical look he shot my way. I stepped into the shower and looped my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek to his roped back.

“Hey there.” He gripped my palms against his stomach, so low that his cock bumped our hands. I shivered right on cue. “I can’t wash you like this.”

“But I can wash you.”

He didn’t have a ton of ink like Giovanni but I f
ound his bare skin twice as arousing. He definitely had as many muscles, which I set about to exploring with my tongue. I’d never gotten to examine a man’s body in detail—had never wanted to—and tonight I wanted to rectify that. Every part of him fascinated me, and I planned to indulge my curiosity. In depth.

I spent extra time on the bruises he’d accumulated, all in various stages of healing. A large welt marred his hip and he hissed out a breath when
I grazed the wound with my fingertips. I crouched to kiss it, closing my eyes at his next rapid exhale. Knowing I affected him even a fraction as much as he did me was the biggest aphrodisiac ever.

“Did you forget the soap?”

His choked question made me grin. “Patience, sensei.”

“Yeah, yeah, you won’t be so zen
when your rough ride turns into a puddle on the tiles.”

Still grinning
, I bypassed Carly’s floral body wash and grabbed my unscented bar, taking my sweet time lathering up my hands before I rubbed them over the broad expanse of his back.

He shuddered
. “Just remember I warned you.”

“I have faith in your control.”
I kneaded his muscles slow and deep, working through the individual kinks I found while the water ran from hot to warm. Occasionally I’d drop kisses in my wake, and I may have nibbled on one or both of his extremely bitable ass cheeks. Accidentally on purpose.

He was so t
aut and tight…all over. I rubbed soap over every inch I could reach until he braced his hands flat against the wall to let me have my way with him. Then I slipped around to the front and took him in my mouth.

His groan echoed in the steamy chamber, reigniting the warmth still burning in my belly. But rather than knotting his fingers in my hair and insisting on more, he stumbled back and held out a hand to ward me off. He shut his eyes as if the sight of me pained him.

“Get off your knees, Mia.”

My name sounded like a slap. A dismissal. I bowed my head under t
he streaming water, closing my eyes, and fought to swallow over the knot in my throat. What had I done wrong?

“Mia.”

Shoulders shaking, I let my hair cover my face. I shut my eyes, tight enough not to feel the sting of the water. Maybe if I concentrated hard enough I’d wake up in my bed alone. The way things were meant to be.

Somehow he knelt in front of me in that tiny space and thumbed my hair back, holding it away from my cheeks
. My eyes opened but I couldn’t make out his features. He’d turned opaque. A shadow of what might have been.

I blinked, over and over, until his face restitched into what I knew. Until he became more real than the haze in my mind that so gleefully wanted to take me under.

That strong, stubborn forehead, the nose he’d broken. His high cheekbones, the slash of his generous mouth.
And the stark fear in his gorgeous, wounded eyes. Even the one that was unharmed reflected pain. I would’ve ached for him too, had I had any reserves left.

“Dammit, Mia.” H
is lips formed words I could barely hear over the roar in my head. “Listen to me.”

“You don’t want me,” I said through chattering teeth. Of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t. I still had bruises all over me, inside and out. One wrong move and they’d start to bleed.

They already were.

He gripped my waist and lifted me on his lap, spreading my legs so that they fell on either side of his hips. Opening me to him so that with a heartbeat, a breath, he was inside me. Filling me up and chasing the darkness away. Mine, his. They were so different, but right then, they were exactly the same.

“Hold onto me,” he rasped near my ear.

I dug my fingers into his shoulders, his arms. Scoring his skin with my nails. Small hurts that he welcomed
with low grunts against my neck. His uneven breaths centered me in the eye of the storm. For once, I wasn’t alone. Warm water poured over us, cocooning us in our need, and together, we rode out the ecstasy. Nothing existed except pleasure. No thought, no regret. Only pure emotion that he gave me with every driving stroke that broke me open and sewed me back up. With him, I became whole.

The hunger built, rising, rising. Crowding out everything until I couldn’t inhale without feeling him in every pore. He took over everything. Became everything. Each sensation piled together, multiplying the intensity of them all.

He slid his hard, thick length so deep that I tipped backward, freefalling with only his strong hands to anchor me. The stream hit me full in the face, and he pressed his open mouth to my throat, sucking, licking, leeching the water from my flesh. Pulling more from me than I’d ever given before, then returning it tenfold.

My shoulders met the shower wall
, and he didn’t stop thrusting, driving me up until I could look down through the spray and meet his hazy blue eyes. So blue. Even the one that was puffy and sore. Focusing on me had to hurt him, but he never looked away as I neared the peak, then shot right over it.

He whispered things, dirty,
muffled ones. Then sweet, loving ones. Mixing them together until his voice and the endless flexing of his hips tripped me into another orgasm, stronger even than the first. I couldn’t keep from crying out—or latching my teeth on his shoulder and biting down, hard.

Quivering, I wrapped mysel
f around him and kissed the closed eyelid of his injured eye. He had wounds too. He’d bled.

I’d
made him bleed, and he hadn’t run yet.

He drew back with a harsh gasp, yanking himself from my body a second before his hot release pulsed over my belly. While I was still recovering, still processing, he cleaned me off wi
th a handful of cool water and gathered me up in his arms. He turned off the water while I stared up at him, stupefied into silence.

How did he keep doing this to me? He unraveled me with
a look, a touch. Turned me into this trembling,
feeling
creature who not only craved pleasure, she even believed she deserved it.

H
e stepped out of the shower and let my feet lower to the floor. But he didn’t let me go. “You never have to get on your knees for me. I’m not like those other men. But want you?
Want
you?” Pressing his forehead to mine, he gripped my chin with shaking fingers. “Jesus Christ, Mia, if I wanted you any more, I wouldn’t be able to breathe.”

Before I could fumble through
a response, he bundled us both in towels, then swept me up in his arms and carried me out the door. Past my wide-eyed, gap-mouthed sister, who still had her arm raised as if she’d been about to knock. Past his dog, who trotted toward us until he caught Tray’s beady-eyed stare and plopped his butt on the rug.

“We’re going to bed,” he said over his shoulder, presumably to Carly. She might’ve answered, but I was too busy burying my flushed face between his shoulder and neck to hear. “Goodnight.”

Without another word, he carted me, towel and all, to my tiny ass twin bed and hauled me so close that his heart beat a steady rhythm against my back. I still hadn’t wiped the dazed smile off my face when he softly started to snore.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Tray

I woke to the smells of sausage, eggs
, and various baked goods. Rolling over, I pressed my cheek into a pillow that smelled like Mia and savored the heavenly scents wafting over me.

Then the arguing began.

At first it was a low hum, like a hive of bees exiting their nest. It rose steadily, punctuated by an occasional expletive-rich outburst. I already had a headache, and their shrieking didn’t help. Then came an unholy screech and “I’ll screw him if I want to and you can’t stop me!” followed by the vicious slamming of pots and pans and the incessant
beep
-
beep
-
beep
of a smoke alarm.

I figured that must be the crescendo.

Eyes still closed, I fumbled on the floor for my pants. They weren’t there. I opened my one functional eye and peered around, searching for something that resembled my clothes. No dice. They must still be in the bathroom. Or else Mia had burned them in effigy during her war with her sister.

At least I still had my towel. I got up and hitched it around my waist, deciding to skip a bathroom run until I ascertained no one was dead and the place wasn’t actually on fire.

Yawning, I headed down the hall and stopped dead on the threshold to the small kitchen. It looked like it had been attacked. Smoke curled up lazily toward the ceiling from a simmering pot on the burner. Flour and other powders spilled over the counter and littered the floor. On every surface were open boxes and bags of ingredients, most of them erupting their guts. Even my dog lay atop a pile of cornflakes, happily gnawing on a bone I hadn’t given him.

In the center of chaos stood Mia and Carly, both of them covered in substances I couldn’t identify.

And they were staring at
me
.

“Where are your clothes?” Mia snapped.

“Don’t get dressed on my account. Really.”

Mia slapped her hand over Carly’s eyes, which earned a high-pitched squeal any weasel would’ve been proud to call his own. So that sound Mia made when she was pissed wa
s a family trait. Good to know.

“Fox, at least put on your damn pants.”

So we were back to Fox. Figured. It had been nice while it lasted.

I strolled over to the stove and leaned up to fumble with the still screeching smoke alarm. Once I’d silenced the noise, I snatched a coo
ked sausage link and turned to face the frowning women. “This is great,” I said, chewing.

“Glad your stom
ach’s satisfied.” Though Mia didn’t sound glad at all.

“Not all he got satisfied,” Carly muttered, earning a sharp side-eye from Mia. “Nice to see you’re allowed to have sex and I’m not.”

“Carly Ann, you’re being disrespectful. We have a guest.”

Even I had to laugh at that. “Yes, I’m company. I expected a spot of
tea and look what I got.” I gestured to the messy floor.

Neither of them seemed amused.

I took another sausage link and bit in. Delicious. “So who do you want to screw?” I smiled when Mia turned her death glare my way. “Just making conversation.”

“You really don’t want to know.”

“Oh yes, I do. Especially now that you’re so sure I don’t.”

Carly clamped her arms over her egg-smeared chest and cocked a hip in a gesture identical to Mia’s current stance.
“Giovanni. I don’t want to screw him, necessarily. I just want a chance to get to know him without your freaking girlfriend snarling and slobbering all over him.”

“Giovanni,” I said. “You can’t mean—”

“It’s him, Fox.” Mia looked like she was ready to club her sister with the nearest object. In this case, the industrial-sized box of pumpkin bread mix that appeared to have been gnawed open by giant rats. “She’s got the hots for the guy who did
that
to your eye.” Marching forward, she grabbed me by the head and dragged me toward her sister, skirting the lump of dog on the way. “Look at his eye, Carly. The poor man’s practically blind because of that Neanderthal and you want to have sex with him?”

Carly shrank away as if Mia had presented her wit
h a bloody carcass. “Owie. I’m sorry, Fox.”

“Thanks.” I twisted out of Mia’s hold. “Cool the show and tell, Dr. Science.”

“I don’t see how you can be mad at me when I’m only going out with him to help you and your boyfriend out. He never would’ve agreed to fight you otherwise.”

“Carly, can it.”

“You had us both dress up like freaking
hookers
and now you’re acting all high and mighty just because he might like me and I might like him. Frigging hypocrite.”

I swallowed the last of my sausage and propped a hi
p on the table. The support would probably come in handy. Or I could always slam it against the wall. “You dressed like hookers, huh? Tell me more.”

“It’s nothing.” Mia developed a sudden fascination with her nails. “I knew he’d need persuading since he wasn’t answering my calls so we—”

“
Persuaded
him?” I interrupted pleasantly, cracking my knuckles. “What exactly did that entail? Be specific.”

“She had us get dressed up in titty tops and short skirts.”

For a second I had no voice. Literally none. “Titty tops?”

Mia cursed under her breath. “Don’t be stupid. It wasn’t anything. I didn’t touch him and he didn’t touch me.”

“I have a picture!” Mia made a grab for Carly but she was too fast. Carly tapped buttons on her phone and tossed it to me just as Mia snatched her arms. “Look, Fox. See?”

Oh, I saw. Mia looked
luscious in a low-cut shirt—titty top seemed like an accurate description—and a skirt that barely covered what I’d had my mouth on last night. And again this morning when she’d woken to find me between her legs.

Lifting a brow, I opened Carly’s email program and attached the picture, sending a copy to myself before returning her cell. “So you dress up for him in a way you wouldn’t for me. Correct?”

Mia pushed her hands through her sexy bedhead hair. “I did it for you, you jackass.”

“Is that so?” I didn’t know if I believed that, not with her need for money and notoriety on the line. But part of me ached to believe. A very large part.

Not the one beneath my waist either. I’d call that medium-large, with occasional reaches for greatness.

“It’s so.”

I stepped forward and grabbed her waist, pulling her close. “For the record, I prefer you without clothes.” I bit her earlobe. “And that part of you is all mine.”

“Now who’s a Neanderthal?” She elbowed me back, but there was no missing her smile. Carly clearly didn’t, because she looked between us as if she couldn’t quite trust what she was seeing.

I knew the feeling. Ever since I’d walked into Mark’s last night, I’d been waiting to wake up and return to the way things were before my injury. I’d caged all the elephants in the room—her nearly telling me about her past, her upcoming fight with that bastard—just to live in denial a little longer. It was worth it.

“So what does the dress-up thing have to do with Costas and Carly?”

Mia averted her gaze. “She offered to go out with him if he fought me.”

“No,” I said immediately. “Not happening. Off the table.”

“Excuse me?” Carly pushed Mia aside and got in my face. Like sister, like sister. “Balling Ame doesn’t mean you have any right to say what I do.”

“You’re about to step on my toe.” I kept my voice mild as I glanced down at Carly’s sharp-heeled boots. “I wouldn’t advise that. I also wouldn’t advise you to insult my relationship with your sister, which isn’t your concern if I’m not allowed to be worried about your welfare.”

She stepped back and angled her head. “I’m not a child.”

“No one said you were.” I gentled my tone. “He’s a prick, Carly, and not because he beat me. I’ve heard some stuff that would change your mind about him.”

“Like what?”

“For one thing, he’s been in prison.” For petty shit, best as I remembered, but I didn’t elaborate. In my mind, being in prison for something small was similar to being a little bit pregnant. Neither status existed.

She tossed a quick glance at Mia. “You’re sure about that?”

“I’m as certain as I can be without seeing his arrest record. He’s also been with a lot of women. He’s not nice about it when he’s done with them either.”

Whether I tacked on that last bit for Carly’s benefit or mine, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t exactly a saint when it came to women myself. In fact, my relationship with Mia—if it could be called that—was probably the longest I’d ever had.

Forget probably.

“What else?” Carly demanded. “He kicks puppies and robs grannies of their lunch money?”

“Isn’t that enough?
You don’t want to get mixed up with him. If you don’t trust your sister’s opinion, trust mine. I know his type.”

“That’s all people are to you? A type?” She looke
d back and forth between Mia and me. “You don’t think people can change?”

This shit was getting way too deep for this early in the morning. I rubbed my aching sinuses. I’d need another hot shower just to breathe. “I’
m giving it to you straight. You do with my advice what you want.”

I wasn’t about to tell her that I didn’t much
care if she heeded my warning since I’d be delivering a much stronger version of my speech to Costas very soon.

“Does it hurt a lot?” Carly asked in a small voice. “Your eye?”

I dropped my hand from my head. “Well, it’s not—”

“Yes, it hurts a lot,” Mia interjected. “If I stuck my fist in your eye, would it hurt?”

“I don’t know. How about if I put my fist in your mouth and we’ll see?”

“Ladies—”

They edged toward each other, fists up. If this had been a porno, it might’ve been hot. In real life, I really didn’t relish trying to separate these two, especially since I only had one intact eye left.

Mia lowered her arms and let them hang at her sides.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

With obvious reluctance, Carly did the same. “You’re worrying for nothing.”

“You’re all I have,” Mia whispered, her voice thick. “I won’t let anyone harm you, ever. If that makes me a horrible big sister because I love you so much, well then, fine.”

Tears welled in Carly’s eyes. “I love you too. You know that.”

“Yeah.” A tear rolled down Mia’s cheek. “I do.”

Carly rushed into Mia’s arms and they started doing the same rocking/dancing/sobbing thing they had the first night Mia had brought me home. That lasted about five minutes. Then they pulled apart and with mutual water-logged grins, started cleaning up the mess they’d made.

“Man, I’m glad I was an only child.” I stepped over my dog to go look for my clothes.

When I returned wearing my jeans—and only my jeans—the kitchen was back to rights. Mia stood at the counter, chopping vegetables. Carly manned the oven, using oversized mitts to lift out something in a big casserole dish.

They were cooking for an army. Not that I minded. I was hungry enough to do a decent imitation of one.

Carly glanced up at me and grinned. “Hey good-lookin’.”

Mia sighed. “Fox, why are you still half naked?”

Still Fox. I might never be Tray again. “You owe me a rub down, which I sorely need.” I returned Carly’s grin and sauntered over to Mia. Sliding my arm around her waist, I pressed a kiss to her hair. “I wanted to make it easier for you.”

“You’re worried about
me
, Sis?” Carly snorted. “This dude’s asking you for sexual favors right in the middle of breakfast. Actually,
before
breakfast.”

“We covered that hours ago. Catch up, squirt.” I laughed as Carly stuck her tongue out at me.

“I have to finish these vegetables for our omelets. I’m due at work soon.”

“Okay. I’ll go ha
ng upside down and hope the mucus drains out on its own. Since I can’t blow my nose and all.”

Carly transferred her casserole dish back to the oven. It looked like a quiche, only thicker and fluffier. “What happens when you blow your nose?”

“You don’t want to know.” Mia reached in the cabinet above her head for a small jar. “Go on and sit in the living room. I’ll be right in.”

Shaking her head, Carly took over on the vegetables. “Kinky bitches.”

I walked into the living room and stretched—Mia’s twin bed hadn’t done much for my back—before perching on the arm of the sofa. “What time do you get off?”

Mia tapped her chin as she came toward me. “I think it was arou
nd ten, ten thirty and four a.m.?”

Her grin caught me complete
ly off-guard. I liked it a lot. Hell, I loved it.

“You forgot four thirty and four forty-five,” I murmured, tugging her between
my legs.