Hanging in the Stars: A Mafia Romance (Dark Romeo Book 3) Page 17

  “What about you?”

  “Just stick close to me and I’ll stay warm.”

  I take it from him, feeling a prickle at my jaw. This man does one nice thing for me and I’m going soft. Have I been so devoid of simple kindness lately that this one little action has almost reduced me to tears?

  A deep sadness fills me when I realize the answer is yes.

  I turn my back to him and slip on the jacket, transferring my heels from hand to hand. The inside of it is warm and it feels bulletproof. His scent brushes up my neck to my nose and I lose myself for a moment in his smell and this warmth.

  He straddles the motorbike and even it seems to sigh under him. He knocks back the kickstand with his heel and runs his fingers across the controls on the handlebar. The motorbike growls to life. Holding one handlebar to keep it steady, he turns to look at me. “Get on.”

  My limbs work of their own volition, moving me towards him. Before I realize what’s happening I’m seated on the bike in front of him, fitting in the space between his legs. I can feel the length of his hard, wide, muscled body behind me. Once again a sense of security falls over me. I can’t explain it. It doesn’t make sense.

  His arm reaches around me to hold the other handlebar, and this feeling of safety is complete. He revs the engine and pulls out of the parking lot into the Saturday late-night traffic, following my directions towards my place.

  He’s true to his word. I lean back into him and my head falls so comfortably into the crook of his neck. I close my eyes and just breathe as the wind whips around us, and the rumble of the engine causes all my muscles to relax. Within this rush of air I sit balanced, calm, at peace, like the eye of a storm. Even though we’re only touching the earth through two precarious points of the tires beneath us, I feel like I could fall asleep here in his arms.

  A thought forces its way into my peace. What kind of voodoo is this? And… can I trust it?

  He pulls into my driveway before I realize how far we’ve come and shuts off the motorbike’s engine. His boots tap down on the ground and I follow suit. I feel the loss of his body heat as he lifts himself off the seat behind me. He holds out a hand and I take it. The skin on my palm sears and crackles where he touches me as he helps me off the bike. The heat dances like fireflies through my body. Instantly I’m awake like I wouldn’t need to sleep for days. I’m caught in his gaze and I can’t help but just stare.

  He nods at something behind me.

  Oh. The front door. Right.

  I try to compose myself as I pull the key out of the small bag slung over my body. I unlock the door. I almost fall in after it when he reaches past me to push it open for me. My heart is thudding in my ears and my throat is dry as I walk up the stairs, heels still clutched in one hand. Feeling his presence behind me and his eyes on my legs makes me dizzy. I have to concentrate on each step.

  What the hell is wrong with me? I’ve slept with good looking men before. None of them has made me so damn… new and awkward like this.

  On the landing I take the last few shaky steps towards my apartment door. Suddenly my door threshold seems to hold much more meaning than before. If we cross this threshold, if I let him come in... what will this mean? Am I really about to do this?

  I haven’t let a man into my private space since… five years ago. My stomach tightens. I try to push unwanted images away. They disappear of their own accord when I feel his fingers brush at my hair from behind me. All I can think about is this beautiful man and how right it will feel to get very, very naked with him. Every second without him inside me, every inch of air between our bodies is a tragedy.

  I slip my key into my front door and take a deep, calming breath. It almost works until he presses right up against my back. The heat rolling off him is burning me. I love it. I want more.

  “Don’t move.”

  My breath catches in my throat. Don’t move. Even if I wanted to move, I don’t think I could.

  I feel his nose press lightly into my hair and I hear him inhale. He’s smelling me, drawing me in. At the same time, I breathe him in through the scent of him all around me from his jacket. This feels stunningly intimate. More intimate than being naked.

  His fingers trail up my arms and they burn, even through the thickness of the leather. His hands run up my shoulders then trail towards the skin at the base of my neck. I suck in my next breath. I’m already a hot, dirty mess inside, aching to suck those fingers up into my mouth.

  His fingers curl into the collar of his jacket and continue to trace my skin. In one liquid movement he pulls the jacket off my shoulders. I shiver. He’s going to strip me right outside my door. And I’m going to let him. Suddenly there’s no question whether or not I’ll let him inside. He has already found his way in.

  His fingers brush aside my hair and drape it down over one shoulder leaving the other side of my neck and shoulder exposed. He grips the front of my throat with his large hand. The choke is firm but gentle and I can feel my pulse beating against his palm.

  His lips find the back of my neck. First in a soft teasing kiss which I feel as tingles in the tips of my fingers. Then his lips part and I feel his wet tongue press against my skin as his hand tightens around my neck. I feel this kiss deep in my aching core. My back arches and my ass presses into his hips where I feel his hardness through his jeans. A noise like a pleading groan slips out from my mouth.

  He pulls his lips off me and moves my hair so it falls down my back.

  “Be good, kitten. I’ll be in touch.” He releases me and walks to the stairs.

  I’m so stunned that all I can do for about two seconds is gape. I feel the itchy fear clinging to me again like static. It had disappeared completely just by being near him. I stare wide-eyed at this man who’s disappearing down my stairs. No one has been able to take away my emptiness like this. No one.

  I catch one last look from him before he disappears down the stairwell. He can’t leave. He can’t. I let go of my key still in the door. I drop my heels and run down the stairs after him.

  The concrete stairs are cold and gritty under my feet, but I barely notice. I catch up to him at the ground floor just as he’s stepping outside, door closing behind him. I rush out after him. “Wait? You’re just leaving me here?”

  “Consider this rule number one,” he calls over his shoulder.

  The first rule. This causes an instinctive flare of defiance in me. I almost retort back, but as I watch him straddle that bike with his thick powerful legs I imagine how he would use those legs to drive into me and I forget to breathe.

  When he looks back at me I remember myself. I cross my arms and try to pin him with a glare. He merely looks amused, infuriating me even more. I fantasize about slapping him. The fantasy turns as he grabs my wrist and pulls me against him. I grab his hair, his locks feeling like silk between my fingers, and kiss the hell out of that incredible mouth until his smirk is reduced to a quiver between my lips.

  I hear the growl of the bike as it comes to life, snapping me out of this fantasy. He’s sitting on his bike staring at me with a knowing look as if he just read my mind. I flush from my cheeks to between my thighs.

  “Wait,” I manage to call out before he pulls away. “What’s rule number one?”

  “Patience.” As he rides away I feel the rumble of his engine all the way through my body.

  2

  It’s easy to remain hidden in a large city. That’s why I picked this one. With a population of just over two million, people are too busy to care. Nobody knows their neighbors. I can go several days without speaking to anyone if I want. Even the local cafes are too packed and stressed and the staff turnover is too frequent for me to ever become a “regular”. There are plenty of cafes to choose from to make sure I don’t ever fall into too much of a routine. It’s perfect.

  It’s the sixth city in five years. They’re beginning to all look the same to me. High-rise buildings in the city center, dropping down to suburbia further out. Grey concrete, grey s
idewalks, small splashes of green in the form of parks or the slip of nature along a river. As I walk the short distance between my apartment and my job, I barely notice these things anymore. But my eyes snap to everyone’s face as they pass me, searching for anything familiar. This has become habit.

  This morning, I enter the boxing room of my gym and wave to my kickboxing trainer, Mick. He heads over to me and greets me with a nod. “You look like shit, kid.”

  “So do you, old man.”

  I started kickboxing almost five years ago after watching two guys go at it in a gym. I tried it and loved it. It became my way of taking my power back. Back into my own hands and elbows and knees. Now it’s one of the only constants in my life. When you have moved around like I have and may need to move again at any minute, trust me, you need constants. You need anchors. I have always been able to find a gym to train in wherever I go. I don’t need special equipment, just me, my fists and my knees and my legs. It’s one of the few things I can take with me anywhere, and no one – no one – can take it away from me. It’s mine.

  Kickboxing keeps me fit, and I feel stronger for it. This feeling of strength has grown thick enough to almost cover up my ever-present fear. Almost.

  Mick holds up a thick rectangular pad about the length of his torso for me to hit and knee. I start out light with a few warm-up rounds of well-worn combinations. Left-left-right.

  “Elbows in. Guard up, you stinkin’ pansy.” Oh, yeah. Everyone, meet Michael O’Leary, or Mick for short.

  Mick is an Irish immigrant, tall, thick and pale with a reddish hue to his brown hair. He’s an ex-cop who spends his time between kickboxing and boxing coaching. Sometimes he moonlights as a private investigator for one of his other ex-cop buddies. Usually I’d be a bit wary of spending time with a PI, but Mick stays out of my shit and I stay out of his. I’m pretty sure he’s got problems at home with his wife, or ex-wife, or something. I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell.

  Besides, I doubt that he would find much on me anyway even if he did decide to look. I officially dropped off the face of this planet five years ago.

  We move on. Left-right-left-right-uppercut.

  “Jesus, is that all you got? My eighty-year-old grandma can hit harder than you.”

  Then to elbows.

  “Drive from the hip. From the hip. This isn’t the fucking ballet, God damn it.”

  I sometimes wonder if he practices his insults at home. I swear they get more creative the more I train with him. Some days, when I’m having bad days, his insults make me angry. I hit harder and soon I feel better.

  Finally we move on to knees then kicks. My two favorites. I love kickboxing because it lets me use my legs and knees in a fight. A woman’s strongest part of her body is her legs. I love my legs for this reason. In five years my soft twiggy legs have grown toned, curvy and powerful. I’d like to think that anyone I knew from back then wouldn’t recognize me now.

  At the end of our session I’m sweaty and grunting with a kind of happiness as the adrenaline swims through my bloodstream. Mick grunts and throws a towel at me. “You did alright, kid.”

  I nod. In Mick-speak, he means he’s happy with my efforts.

  That afternoon I slip into a low-ceilinged bar to start my shift at Dixie’s. Dixie’s is like a well-used sofa, warm and welcoming with bottle-green windows, exposed beams and generous booths that curl around tables like sets of fleshy arms. It has a basic food menu: pies, sausages and mash, steak and chips – all the things you would get at home. It doesn’t serve cocktails and only offers house wine, but it has more than twenty varieties of whiskeys, rums and bourbons.

  No sooner am I behind the counter then I hear a whip of cloth and feel a sharp sting on my ass. I whirl around.

  “Dixie!” I scold.

  My forty-something-going-on-twelve red-headed boss is standing there, all five-foot-nothing of her, snapping gum between her teeth, holding the offending dishrag in her fingers and grinning at me. “I couldn’t help it, honey. You have the cutest little tush packed up in them shorts.” She winks before throwing the dishrag at me and pointing to a tray of glasses fresh from the dishwasher that are sitting on the counter.

  Our “uniform” is a black “Dixie’s does it better” t-shirt paired with any kind of denim bottoms. Today I am wearing denim cut-offs because it gets hot running around orders. Dixie’s is a small bar, but it gets busy.

  I roll my eyes and start to dry and reshelf the damp glasses with the dishrag. I mutter something about sexual harassment. Inside I like the way she’s so comfortable around me. She’s been like that from the moment she hired me on the spot, cash in hand, without a reference or ID check, after I had fallen into the bar drenched from a storm outside in answer to a handwritten ad in the window.

  Jeff, the other bartender sharing my shift, walks out of the back area with a tray of napkins and cutlery, eyes my denim shorts and makes a noise of agreeance before he begins to restock the tables.

  Dixie narrows her eyes at him then points a finger his way. “Hey, you are not allowed to ogle her ass. Rein it in, buster.”

  He splutters. “But−”

  “But nothing.” Dixie strides towards the kitchen to prep for the Friday after work crowd.

  “How come you’re allowed to, then?” Jeff yells after her.

  “‘Cause when I do it, it’s funny. If you do it, it’s harassment.” She disappears through the swinging kitchen doors.

  Jeff shakes his head.

  I pick up another glass, still warm from the dishwasher. I can sense his eyes still on me, so I look up and arch an eyebrow at him. Jeff doesn’t flinch at being caught staring.

  “You got plans after work?” he asks after a short pause.

  “Nope.”

  “Rest of the weekend?”

  I shake my head.

  “Been waiting for me to ask you out, huh?”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Am I that transparent?”

  He grins. Jeff is a cutie, a baby face with light brown hair and a smattering of freckles but with a burgeoning man’s body, wide shouldered and coming to terms with a growth spurt that has put him just over six-foot-two. I’m guessing by the way he curls his shoulders in and hunches over slightly that this growth spurt has been recent and none too welcome. The way he moves is still all boy and he seems awkward in his freshly grown man’s body, like he isn’t used to it yet.

  From the little things I have heard here and there, I understand that he left home over a year ago when it became too rough to handle. Sometimes I hear him making snarky remarks about his new stepdad. They don’t get along. Nothing violent or anything like that, all verbal. Sometimes the verbal stuff can cut deep, too.

  Dixie took him into her spare room above this bar, and this job is paying his way through a part-time graphics design course. He’s always sketching something in his black art pad during breaks.

  He’s way too young for me, barely out of school. His flirting is harmless and we both know it. I can’t help but enjoy his little attentions. It’s…nice.

  A box is delivered to my home the next day, a white box tied with a single pale blue bow.

  I sit on my floor against the front of my bed with the box placed between my legs. I stare at it for the longest time, suspicious. There’s no return address, no note on the front, no indication that it’s even meant for me. Except that the delivery man insisted that this was the right address when he dropped it off.

  I pull at the ties and the pale blue silk comes apart in my hands and tumbles down over the sides of the box. With trembling fingers I lift the lid.

  The inside is swathed in pale blue tissue paper. I brush it aside and frown when the light shines against green silk. On top of the material is a small envelope with the words “For kitten”. I swear my heart stops for a moment. This is from him.

  “Be good, kitten. I’ll be in touch.”

  I open the envelope and pull out the note. The first note. Plain white paper, written in black ink.
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  Hotel deCrystal bar. Sunday 9pm.

  A date? I don’t do dates. I won’t go.

  I shouldn’t go.

  Damn it, I’ve been thinking about his voice and his tongue against my neck and his hot breath rumbling across my skin since he left me standing outside my apartment. My hand rises to my neck where his hand held me so firmly, and it presses into the invisible handprint that he left behind like a depression in wet sand.

  I snatch my hand away from my neck. No. I’m not going. I can’t.

  I turn back to the box and finger the emerald silk material. I pull it out, the green silk cascading out in front of me into the form of a dress. A gorgeous dress that will match his eyes when I stand next to him wearing it. I rub the note again with my fingers.

  Hotel deCrystal is a swanky bar and this is a swanky dress, both more than I can afford. My eyes wander to the tag at the neckline. Holy Hell. The designer name on the dress makes my eyes water. I already know that this dress costs more than I make per month.

  I’m not even going to try it on. I’m just going to put it back in the box and return it, thank you very much. Except there’s no return address on the box. I’ll have to take it with me and return it to him. I guess it wouldn’t hurt just to go if only to return the dress. Nothing to do with the fact that I want to see him again. No, nothing to do with that.

  I lower the dress into my lap. I run my fingers across the silky fabric and across the hand-stitched detailing under the bust. It’s so beautiful. When would I ever get to wear something so beautiful?

  Maybe I’ll just try it on. Then I’ll pack it away and forget about the Hotel deCrystal.

  I undress and stand naked, holding the dress out in front of me. I undo the zipper and the dress peels apart like an elegant waterfall. I step into the swathes of material and pull it up over my hips. When I pull up the zipper the bodice closes around me as if it was tailored for me.