Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

TRISTAN

S he stands less than a foot from me, close enough for me to feel her heat. Her cheeks have turned that gorgeous shade of red.

“Dated?” I ask.

She glances at me sharply. “It’s not a big deal. It shouldn’t be, I guess. Anyway.” She tightens her fists, but when I try to touch her again, she moves away. It’s not like she doesn’t want my touch. It’s more like she’s experiencing what I am.

If we touch, we won’t be able to stop.

“Growing up, I was always the shy girl who preferred losing herself in books to dealing with real people. Books were my escape, my safe place. I went through phases of reading different genres, but right before Mom got sick, romances were my favorite.”

She gives me one of those tempting looks again. This time, when she goes on, she keeps looking at me. Just like when I told her about the home and all that hell and how quiet she was for me, I sense she wants the same.

“I loved the idea of love—the grand gestures, the heart-fluttering moments, the happily-ever-afters, but it was all just fantasy. Real-life relationships seemed so complicated, so daunting. I couldn’t imagine myself in those situations. I was awkward, unsure, and scared of putting myself out there. It was easier to live through Riley, you know?”

“I know,” I tell her, meaning it. It’s not like I’m some Casanova.

“Then, things changed when my mom got sick. It happened so suddenly, and everything else faded into the background. I stopped thinking about romance, boys, and anything other than caring for her. There wasn’t room for anything else in my life, certainly not for dating or losing my virginity.”

She folds her arms, having no idea how it pushes those perfect tits together. Goddamn, I want to tear her shirt off, suck her nipples. The word virgin triggers something deep and primal in me.

“Do you think this would make me want you less?” I growl.

She gasps. “I didn’t know you wanted me.”

“You have to,” I tell her, “by now.”

When I grab her hips, she makes the sweetest moaning noise, but she doesn’t try to stop me from pulling her right up against me. She wraps her arms around me, and we lose ourselves in the kiss. Her body heats up against me, and then she pulls back, panting.

“Wait,” she whispers. “I know I shouldn’t be like this. You’ve been so?—”

“If you’re doing any of this because of your job, then we need to stop. Now.”

For some twisted reason, Vanessa enters my mind. I push it away. Goddamn it.

“No,” she says quickly, “but I don’t want to string you along or give you false ideas. If you want a fling, I get it.”

“I don’t want a fling,” I snap.

She looks at me with wide, innocent eyes; warmth clashes with the savage heat in me. Being close to her makes my body stiff, ready, and hungry. What do I want from her? That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer since I first saw her at the window, sharing so much love with little Loki.

“A date,” I say suddenly, smirking, trying to make this all feel less intense, which seems impossible.

“Really?”

“A date,” I say, with more certainty this time, “meaning we go someplace, eat, do something, laugh, kiss.”

She moves closer to me. “Just kiss, huh?”

“Maybe more,” I say, my body starting to burn as much as hers looks like it is.

“Uh, okay.” She beams through her nerves. “I mean, hell yeah!”

“How about I text you some dates and times.”

“That sounds great.”

I nod. “I guess I’ll be going, then.”

She nods, too, but then she moves forward and wraps her arms around me. How she does it tells me that this isn’t about that kind of heat. I slowly wrap my arms around her.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“I just delivered some meds.”

“No, for everything. For being cool about Mom. About everything else.”

By everything else , I know she means the fact she can’t give her young, curvy, virgin self to me. Yet .

“We need to stay focused,” Tank says over speakerphone as I drive back toward the sanctuary. After a heavy pause, he says, “You got to let her go.”

That’s when I know he’s been building up to this. I still feel raw after what I shared, but I was smiling before this crap. I need to try and be civil. “It’s not that simple.”

“Damn right, it is. You don’t need her. She’s dragging the business down.”

He’s trying to get in my head. He’s trying to make it about the sanctuary. The truth is, he wants her gone because he needs me cold, just like before. “I hired her for a reason.”

“We got a case to crack. You need to focus.

“I am.”

“No, you’re distracted. I see it. She’s trouble.”

I grind my teeth, working my hand on the steering wheel like a garotte. For a bleak, ugly second, I imagine strangling my old friend, one of the only people who made it out of that ravine with me. Nobody should come between me and Maya; that’s the violent, possessive feeling that grips me.

“She’s not trouble.”

“Then what is she?” It’s like he’s honestly curious. “I want the best for you, man. But from the outside, it doesn’t look great.”

“She’s different,” I snap.

“Different, how?”

“She just is,” I say, not because there isn’t a lot I could say. It’s how she smiles at the dogs and stares intently at everything, her eyes working away as she puzzles something out. It’s the shape of her legs and the taste of her and the feel of her hot, curvy body against mine.

Dammit, it’s the first time I saw her, a silhouette in the night.

“We’ve got the Mob breathing down our necks, and you’re getting sentimental?”

“Breathing down our necks,” I say. “No, Tank. I’m serving them up on a silver damn platter for you. Anyway, it’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?” he says.

I wonder if I should make up some lie and dodge the question somehow, but Tank deserves the truth. “I can’t stop thinking about her. I mean, literally, Tank. I mean, all damn day. I made an excuse to go around there, and …”

I’m not sure I know how to explain what happened during that short time at her house.

“I just don’t want this to fail,” Tank says, sounding on edge. “We need to get these guys.”

“Well, I can’t fire her, and it wouldn’t change shit about Friday anyway.”

“I’m worried about you, too. You need that place.”

I don’t say anything. He’s right. We both know it. When we bled, when I held my boy, my Odin, I knew I had to do something. “I can pay her. I’ve got the funds. As for the next few months, I don’t know. If we’re doing this thing, let’s do it. I can’t afford to think about the future.”

“So you’ll be ready for Thursday. That’s when Carlo wants to do it, right?”

“Friday,” I tell him. “I’ve got other plans on Thursday.”

“With your lady, I guess, right?” Tank sighs. “Man, I’m sorry for how I was and how I’m being. This shit’s got me on edge. I want to make some headway with these monsters. The stuff they do …”

“I know,” I tell him coldly. “I ran guns for them. I worked security. I even did some irreversible things to men who deserved it, but I ignored the rest. I pretended it made me better than them.”

“T,” Tank mutters. “You know I can’t hear this stuff.”

“You going to arrest me?” I say, laughing darkly.

“Have fun Thursday, okay?”

“Pfft. I thought she was going to be the end of me.”

“I know you. You’re not going to change your mind. Hell, what you said about thinking about her, I’ve never heard you like that. What are you doing for the date?”

Driving through the city, I drum my fingers on my knees. “I don’t even know,” I say. “I didn’t even think. I just want to see her.”

I wonder if Tank will make another buzzkill comment that will sour the whole thought, but thankfully, he keeps his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself, but he laughs. “You got to think of something. Just try to make it so it doesn’t include alcohol. We need to be fresh on Friday.”

I rarely drink, but he already knows that. Drinking was often a rite of passage in the corps, but I limited it in my civilian life. Soon, I’m back at the sanctuary, back in the regular work cycle. Carlo has agreed for me to be at the meet, but that doesn’t mean we’ll get anything.

That doesn’t mean the Mob will quit. A sick image hits me as I clean the kennel walls for the rest of the day. Men in leather jackets smoking cigarettes, pulling Maya and her mother across the front lawn of their home, toward vans and cars, nowhere pretty. But why would the Mob target them?

Dumbass, if you go on a date with her…

Right now, the Mob thinks I’m learning my lesson. I’m working with Carlo. I’m being a so-called good boy. They’ve got no reason to know I’ve asked her on a date, and even if they did, they’ve got no leverage. As far as they know, she’s just some woman I’m helping.

Yeah, that sounds lame. If they find out I’m paying her and taking her out, I’m suddenly the stoic, badass Marine with a romantic side. Fuck it. It’s too much to think about, but I have to.

Before, it was easy to avoid this issue. She was just another employee. But asking her on that date felt so natural somehow. Something must’ve gotten hold of me when I was with her, some wildness I’ve tried to tame. It’s only now, driving home, it hits me.

If Raffie or anybody else tries to hurt Maya, we wouldn’t be playing with Tank’s deck of guards anymore. It’ll be mine. I’ll club the bastards to death, slit their throats, and dig them cold holes with a spade as they bleed out.

They shouldn’t wake the goddamn beast.

Later, I try to sleep, but my cell rings the second I drift off. It’s Raffie.

“Hey, T. Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” I mutter groggily.

“You got a minute, bro?”

I grind my teeth, thinking about what I might have to do to him. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know where else to go. The fellas would laugh at me, but we’re old friends, right? I mean, shit, lately, but we are, yeah?”

He sounds so desperate to believe this advertisement of Mob life, whining down the phone because your only real friend is somebody you knew as a kid.

“Hmm,” I say, thinking about those scared kids, Raffie yelling at me to hurt them. My pity dies.

“I need somebody to help me with this coke shit. I need it off my hands. I want it gone.”

“I can’t come and pick up?—”

“I’ve got your fight purse, okay, T? More for you, twenty K on top. Please, man. I don’t need it moved. No deals. Just make it disappear. A favor. Please?”

I hate the desperation in his voice, but the truth is, mostly, I need the money. “Swear, Raffie,” I tell him.

“Honest to God. They were always going to pay you. After what you did, do you think anyone wants to fight you? Plus, you’re a good worker, T. Everyone knows that.”

Translated, he thinks I’m going to let Carlo turn the sanctuary into some shit show.

“Thanks, Raffie,” I tell him. “That means a lot coming from you.”

“So you’ll come?”

I sigh. “Yeah.”

This is the line I walk. I’m working with Tank. I’m going to sell this man out. They’ve gone too far, but I need the cash, and the world’s a better place with a less coked-up Raffie, so what harm can it do? The dogs need beds, crates, heating pads, cooling mats, food, bowls, treats, first aid supplies, emergency meds, etc.

They deserve it. That’s the justification I give myself as I get out of bed.