Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dav

It took every ounce of self-control I’d built up over the years to let her walk out of the bathroom, inching her way toward the living room.

As soon as I was alone, I reached into my pants, freeing my cock and giving in to the need that had become actual pain as I finally got to see her, touch her, taste her in the ways I’d been imagining for so long.

It was a hollow sort of release, though, leaving me antsy and unsatisfied since what I really wanted was the woman flicking through the channels on the TV in my living room.

On a frustrated sigh, I switched the bedding to the dryer, then gathered the brush and detangler before making my way back out to the living room, standing behind Cinna as she picked at yogurt and watched some reality show about home renovations.

“Didn’t have you pegged for a DIYer,” I said, wanting to break the chilled silence that had grown between us as I carefully brushed the knots out of her hair.

To that, she snorted, the edges of her lips tipped up. “I’ve never even painted the walls in my apartment,” she admitted. “I don’t even have a dining table,” she added. “But I like seeing other people, you know, make a home.”

There was something pointed in her words.

Like maybe she didn’t see her apartment as a home.

I guess that made sense, since she likely never spent more than five or six hours a day there, just long enough to catch some sleep and shower before heading back out to work.

“How come I’ve never been invited to your place?” I asked, wincing as I worked at a particularly big tangle.

“No one’s ever been to my place,” she admitted, shrugging. “You don’t need to be gentle with me, by the way. I can take it.”

“Your ability to handle the pain isn’t really the point, love,” I told her, redoubling my efforts to make sure I didn’t so much as pull at her scalp.

“Stop calling me that,” she said a moment later, voice low.

“Why?” I asked, running the brush through her knot-free strands, satisfied that I’d gotten them all. “Because you don’t like it?” I added. Then, leaning down near her ear, “Or because you like it too much?”

With that, I turned and walked away from her, busying myself with answering some texts from my soldiers and associates.

I wasn’t a workaholic like Cinna, but being a capo came with responsibilities that you really couldn’t shirk, lest your men get the idea that they don’t have to answer to you anymore.

Across the room, Cinna was doing the same, typing away with one hand, getting more and more frustrated by each passing moment as she took twice as long to answer as usual.

She was a terrible patient.

She had no patience with her own body, wanting things to work like they were supposed to, injuries be damned. Which was exactly why she tried to use the fingers of her braced wrist, only to break off on a groan, cradling the wrist to her chest for a moment.

And her frustration made her prickly and snippy at times.

Most men would likely get sick of it really fast. The thing was, though, I was used to the prickly and snippy and borderline nasty sides of Cinna. What I hadn’t really ever gotten to see before, though, were the sides of her I was seeing in between her bursts of anger.

The softer, the sweeter.

The parts of her that I’d been insisting for years to her and anyone else around I knew existed. Getting nothing but eye rolls and head shakes from them.

The thing was, I understood her in ways she couldn’t even wrap her head around yet.

While she’d never told me her story, I knew how a rough childhood made you really fucking good at playing at personas, at putting on masks to hide what was truly underneath.

For me, it was the jovial and easy-going. A light people—especially women—leaned into.

But I knew what was hiding beneath. A darkness that ran deep, a penchant for violence and pain I had little control over when it showed up.

That was how I knew that this face Cinna wore for the world—cold and hard and compulsively independent—hid the exact opposite underneath. Warm and soft and desperate to be taken care of.

Maybe it was that true darkness inside of me that sought out the light in her. The hard longing for soft. My strength begging for someone to look after, to unburden.

“What?” Cinna snapped, making me realize I’d been staring at her again.

“Your eye looks a little better,” I declared for something to say. Because there was no way to tell a woman like Cinna —so closed off and repressed—that I had a feeling there was something, I don’t know, kismet between us.

“It’s almost worse that it’s partially open,” she admitted, tossing her phone onto the coffee table, giving up on texting for the moment. “It’s messing with my vision.”

“We could get you an eye patch.”

“So you can make endless pirate jokes?” she asked, smirking. “I don’t think so. Ugh,” she grumbled when her phone started to ring. “They’re like children,” she mumbled to herself, snatching up her phone and bringing it to her ear. “What now?” she said by way of greeting, making me shake my head.

I couldn’t imagine working for Cinna. Her men must piss their pants at the idea of coming to her and telling her that they’d fucked up something.

“Jesus Christ,” she sighed, tapping her fingers on her leg.

Cinna was a pacer when she was on the phone. She was always on the move, never sitting still. She must have been going half crazy that her ribs were keeping her ass on the couch right then.

“Yeah, fine. Go help him out. But let him get a little scared first,” she said. “He’s never gonna fucking learn if he doesn’t almost die a time or two,” she declared.

“Soldier acting up?” I asked when she hung up.

“I’m starting to regret being nice and letting him climb up from associate just because he’s the brother of one of my most dependable men.”

“We all had to get our young and stupid out,” I said. At her raised brow, mine scrunched. “So that wasn’t you that I saw walk into the restaurant run by the Yakuza and start yelling at the first fucking lieutenant that he better get his operation off of your turf before you cut off his balls, bronze them, and wear them as earrings?”

“I still get random deliveries of Chinese food I didn’t order,” she admitted. “It’s probably poisoned.”

“He probably wants to fuck you.”

“He’s eighty if he’s a day,” she said, wrinkling up her nose.

“They’ve got pills to keep things working. Come on, you don’t want to be a first lieutenant’s wife?”

“I don’t want to be anyone’s wife,” she said, and there was no logical explanation for the pang those words caused me.

“He’s married anyway,” I said, turning to make a pot of coffee. “So, you’d have to be his mistress.”

“Don’t you have to, you know, work?” Cinna asked as I brought her a cup of coffee. Black, like she claimed to like it, but I couldn’t help but wonder if that was something she’d taught herself to avoid having the men around her comment on a ‘girly’ drink.

“I’m not quite as dedicated as you are,” I told her. “Sorry this is not the toxic sludge you usually drink, but it will have to do.”

“My coffee is not that strong,” she insisted in an exasperated way that suggested more than a few people had complained about it.

“I could use it to fuel my car,” I shot back, getting a little laugh out of her. It was a rare sound. But, fuck, was it worth it when you did get to hear it.

“This isn’t bad,” she declared after taking a sip. “I needed it. The meds are making me want to crawl right back into bed.”

“Which is exactly where you can go after I make the bed. You need to take it easy to recover. What?” I asked at the narrowed look she shot me.

“I didn’t peg you for someone who makes their own bed,” she admitted.

“That’s fair,” I agreed. “I do have a cleaning lady who does… all the things,” I said, waving toward my clean apartment. “But I can’t call her up each time I need to strip the bed, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Gross,” she said, face scrunching up. “Though I guess it’s refreshing that you actually do clean them after your… extracurriculars. Or, you know, at all. I once knew a guy who had towels on his bare mattress. Towels,” she said, shuddering.

“You’ve got to raise your standards there, killer.”

“I wasn’t fucking him!” she said, mouth falling open in outrage. “I was actually there to bust a kneecap. But I would assume that at some point, he would try to bring a woman home to that. Gross.”

“Most of the women I’ve brought home have marveled at the fact that I have a headboard,” I admitted. “The bar is on the floor. What?” I asked as she looked at me, something odd in her gaze.

“I don’t have a headboard,” she admitted.

“So your head is just raw-dogging the wall when you’re getting fucked? You know, continuous brain damage might explain your surly personality,” I teased.

“Dick,” she said, but she was smiling. “But I thought I told you… no one comes to my apartment.”

I assumed she meant just guys from our organization. I didn’t think she meant… all men.

“Not even pretty girls in slinky lingerie?” I asked.

“I am forever going to regret telling you I banged a woman when I was fresh out of high school, aren’t I?”

“And I will be forever grateful to have that information,” I admitted.

“Typical guy,” she said, shaking her head at me. “And it was once,” she added. “Just to see if it was for me or not. Turns out, no matter what the homophobes try to say, it’s really not a choice.”

“Didn’t like eating pussy, Cin?” I asked, tilting my head to watch her. “I want to die buried between a gorgeous woman’s thighs.”

If I hadn’t been looking so closely, I might have missed the way desire burned in her eyes. Because it was gone before you could even blink. But it had been there.

No matter how much she was trying to act otherwise, Cinna wanted me as much as I wanted her.

With her recovering in my place for the foreseeable future, I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take before the powder keg of our mutual desire finally exploded.

And what might be left in the wreckage.