Scarred Regrets (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 5)

17

SCAR

The front door to her apartment building opened, Irina’s breathtaking figure stepping out under the lights hanging off the awning of the building. She clutched her jacket tighter around herself, disguising whatever she’d worn to impress the bastard of a friend who would never deserve to be more than that.

She stepped forward as a taxi appeared at the curb, the smooth lengths of her legs seeming to gleam in the moonlight. I moved quickly, getting between her and the cab and thrusting a one-hundred-dollar bill into the open window to the waiting driver.

“Sorry to waste your time. Have a good night,” I said in dismissal, turning back to the incredulous face of my butterfly as she glared at me.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she gaped when the cab drove off without her, then unzipped the clutch dangling from her wrist. “You’re an asshole,” she said, shaking her head and pulling her cellphone from the useless purse.

“I told you to stay home,” I said, reaching forward and snapping the phone from her grip. I shoved it into my back pocket, watching her face twist with her rage.

“You are not my boss. You’re not my boyfriend or anything that matters. Go to hell, Scar,” she argued, lunging forward to reach for the phone, even if it meant she had to grab a fistful of my ass. She didn’t seem to have any qualms about doing just that.

I grabbed her wrist out of the air, using it to pull her closer to me, until her body was only a breath from mine and the heat of her broke through the chill of the air around us. “That wasn’t the impression I had when you came on my fingers earlier.”

“Well Scar,” she seethed. “I’m a woman and you made yourself available. Can you blame me for taking advantage of what you offered? That doesn’t make it mean anything.”

The words struck, landing straight in the hollow where my heart should have been. If it hadn’t been for her exact mimicking of what I’d told her, I might have even believed them to be true. But I didn’t, the frustration and sheen of tears in her eyes leaving me with no doubt that she only wanted to hurt me the way I’d hurt her.

Apart, we were two broken people who struggled with our own problems. Together?

We were downright fucking toxic.

“I never thought lies had a taste until you,” I murmured, leaning down to inhale the breath she exhaled. She glared up at me, not daring to contradict my assertion of her lie. “Do you know what yours tastes like?”

She bunched the fabric of my suit in her hands, touching me with a snarl on her face. She probably hoped I would jolt away from her as I had in the past, but without the skin-to-skin contact, I found I could tolerate it with her now.

She'd slowly worked her way inside my defenses, but I didn’t dare to think of what would happen if she ever found the core of who I was. Nobody wanted to deal with that kind of brokenness.

“Hatred?” she asked, pushing against my chest.

“Desire,” I answered, releasing her and watching as she strode past me to head for the road. She strode along the sidewalk, braving the dangers of nighttime in Chicago without so much as a cellphone on her. I stepped in front of her. “Should we find out who is right?”

“Fuck you,” she snapped, moving to step around me. Instead, she soon found my hands on her waist. I lifted her up over my shoulder, getting a perfect view of her tight little ass next to my face. “Put me down!”

The sharp smack to her ass silenced her for a moment until I took my first steps toward the apartment building, then quickened, shifting from a saunter to a stalk. The lights outside the building illuminated us as she kicked her feet in an attempt to catch me in the face with one of her heels, but a firm arm across the backs of her knees made that impossible. She resorted to swinging her arms and hitting me in the back of the thigh with her clutch, the dull thump making my leg muscles twitch as I walked. “Now, you fucking ogre!”

She grabbed a handful of my ass, her perfectly manicured nails digging into my flesh through the fabric of my slacks. The bite of pain there threatened to bring the monster rising to the surface with the memory of things better left in the past, as though emerging from the rippling waves of the ocean.

Irina should always remember not to trust the waters and the beast that lurked in those stormy depths.

I pushed the anxiety aside, using the key card I’d secured from the building owner earlier that day to unlock the door. My butterfly huffed on my shoulder, sending a shrill scream echoing through the clean but dimly lit lobby of her building. There was no one on staff to supervise who could see her tantrum—only the rare person who poked their heads out of their apartments at the top of the stairs.

I stepped up to the elevator, pressing a hand to Irina’s ass as her squirms became more and more aggressive. My fingers sank into the plump flesh, gripping her tightly in a silent warning. I spun, glancing at her over my shoulder with a grin on my face. “Be a good girl and push the call button for me, Butterfly.”

“You know, you really only annoy me when you’re breathing,” she said, twisting to look up at me from where she hung. I chuckled under my breath, all too aware of the way she sighed and dropped back down. “You did it again,” she added for good measure.

Assuming she wasn’t going to be a good girl after all, I jabbed the call button with an elbow, making sure to spin sharply enough that she hissed through her teeth. “Did I make you swoon?” I asked.

“More like vomit,” she snapped, twisting her body as she tried to get free.

“Settle,” I said, accentuating the word with another sharp slap to her ass. I wanted to strip her naked, to watch her body move as I took out my frustration on her.

“I loathe you,” she groaned, lifting my suit and trying to work my shirt out of my pants so she could claw at my bare skin. She’d quickly find that my lower back had very little feeling left, the scar tissue of my childhood having damaged the nerve endings beyond repair.

I stepped into the elevator when the doors opened, turning to press the button for her floor and letting them slide closed before I deposited my butterfly to her feet.

She spat hair out of her mouth, frantically swiping her mass of raven locks away from her face as she leaned against the elevator wall for support and waited for the blood to vacate her head. “You asshole,” she growled, wrapping her hands around the support bar and gripping it tightly.

“You shouldn’t have tested me, cuore mio,” I said, taking that single step closer to her until the space between us was nothing but a memory. Her breasts brushed against my chest as I took her face in both of my hands, the heat of her skin burning like a brand on my soul.

It set the burn scars on my palms alive, reminding me of the agony when the man had held my hands over the flames. I shoved aside the memory of his screams when I’d taken my revenge, focusing on the shock of green staring up at me from wide eyes.

Irina silenced, waiting for the panic in my face to pass or for me to back away, but I didn’t do either, determined to feel her, just this once.

Even if my scarred, tattooed skin against her flawless complexion was seven kinds of wrong, I needed it like the next breath of air in my lungs.

I crashed my lips down on hers, mauling her with absolutely none of the finesse that a man like Grant Dumas would use to seduce her. My kiss was nothing but tongue and teeth, a savage claim over the lips that I bruised with my possession. With my desire to fuse us together until we became one person.

One mind.

One heart.