Cruel Lover

Oh God, what is happening?

It’s just a crazy moment, I tell myself. I’m out of my depth, looking for anyone that seems friendly in this place. And not Dan, who’s friendly for all the wrong reasons.

“Oz, what the fuck, man?” Dan slams the gun down on the desk in front of him. “I could have fucking shot you. We’ve operated side by side for years, why you gonna manhandle my bouncer like that? Where’s that fucking hellhound of yours?”

“Not afraid of dogs are you, Dan? I’m just here for the girl. Any debt she owes you is settled, got it?”

Dan and I answer in unison: “What?”

“You two know each other?” Dan looks at me with his mouth hanging open, bug-eyes bulging. “Jesus, lady, why didn’t you just say so? Hey, I don’t want beef with the Volos family.”

“The…” My mind is racing. It’s too much. The Volos family? I went to high school with… I mean, my first boyfriend—only boyfriend—was…

I turn and look at the man who’s just come in through the door. It can’t be. Can it? Is that why he looked familiar?

No.

No.

Try as I might to fit him with the shy, skinny kid I once knew, it just doesn’t make sense. And it’s not because this compact, confident, irritatingly charming specimen of man meat looks like he just stepped out of the pages of Drool magazine. It’s not because the way he looks at me makes my knees tremble and my pupils dilate. It’s not even because I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life wishing things had gone differently with the only person that’s ever occupied that part of my existence I tentatively call love.

It’s because of one very important, immutable fact.

“He hates me,” I say, shaking my head, tears brimming in my eyes. “Ody Volos hates me.”

Chapter Two

Oz

“Ody? Never heard you called that, Oz. What’s that, like the dog in Garfield?” Dan is chuckling away as he collapses into his seat, Leroy cradling his arm like he almost lost it, but all my attention is on Malta Green.

She hasn’t seen me in eight years. Probably thinks I haven’t seen her either, but she’d be dead wrong.

There hasn’t been a day I didn’t see her beautiful, angelic face. Whether it was on a security camera I had installed so that I could monitor her place while she was at college, or in person when she came back here to Detroit, I had to know where she was, I had to be as near as I could. I knew it was wrong to follow her like that, but that didn’t change anything. She’s been my obsession ever since I met her.

She wipes away tears, dark eyelashes beaded with them, and my heart almost breaks.

“Malta.” The word feels good. I haven’t said it in so long, didn’t know if I’d ever say it again.

“What…what are you even doing here? How did you know I was here?” She bites into her bottom lip, but it’s not sexy, it’s to stop it quivering on every word.

I take a step forward, wanting to gather her soft, delicate body into my arms right here and now, but as soon as I move towards her she cowers back like I might be about to hurt her. She clearly doesn’t know I could never do anything like that. She’s everything to me. Hurting her would be hurting myself.

Worse than hurting myself.

There’s no injury I could suffer that would kill me faster than seeing her in pain.

“I run the bar now,” I tell her, hoping she’ll make an assumption. I don’t want to lie to her, but revealing the depths of my obsession right now would be a bad idea. “I saw you arguing with Leroy and thought you might need some help.”

Not a lie. Just not the whole truth. I do run the Volos Bar. I did wonder what she was doing in this part of town. I also saw her arguing with Leroy, but that’s because I was following her, have been all afternoon since I saw ambulances outside her place.

“Why would you care? I thought you’d be pleased to see me taken down a peg. The Ody I knew thought I was a stuck up little—”

“Never,” I say, shaking my head.

“Your words.”

She folds her arms over her chest, eyes narrowing angrily, and my cock is instantly hard. I can’t help it, the way her tits are pushed up inside that shirt, the way her cleavage comes into sight between the buttons, the outline of her bra beneath the ever-so-slightly transparent fabric. Shit, even the look of annoyance makes me think of angry sex and talons raking down my back. She looks hot as fuck and it’s all aimed at me.

An image pops into my head, of Malta slapping my face as she rides my cock, still mad at me but unable to resist. Ebony flesh of her shapely fucking tits, the curve of her hips, my fingers gripping her tight as I move her up and down.