On The Ropes (Tapped Out 3)

I nearly trembled again at inside you before I got a hold of myself. “You want to know what’s not fair? Having the kind of sex we did then walking away. That’s not fair.”

“So you want more.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t want more.”

I definitely didn’t say that.

I turned to face him in the small space he’d allotted for me between him and the door and slapped a hand on his chest. Luckily, I picked the one without the Daffy Duck bandage on the pinkie.

I frowned at it. He’d picked out Daffy Duck?

“I can see how you’d be confused, with that other clean-cut guy in your life. I bet he doesn’t have any tattoos or a prison record. I bet he doesn’t fuck you so hard you need help getting into the shower either.” His mouth skimmed my hair, so quickly I didn’t register the gesture until his mouth again hovered near my ear. “Must be a real hard choice.”

He didn’t rock his hard dick into my pelvis when he said the words hard choice. Nah, not smooth enough for him. Instead, he pulled his hips away, so that I throbbed to have that heat and pressure right back where I needed it.

The bastard.

“A prison reco

rd?” I bit my lip as I stared up at him. “For what?”

His mouth curved grimly. “Attempted murder.”

I gasped—I couldn’t help it. He simply reached up, closed my lips with his fingers and spoke against my ear.

“I bet that tight pussy got even hotter and wetter hearing that, didn’t it? You like danger. That’s why you like hanging around the club.”

It was an effort to find my voice, and once found, not to let it wobble. “I don’t hang around there. I have a job. I earn a living.”

“I told you I’d take care of that.”

“Yeah, why? So I can pay you back in a way you decree? Hell no. I won’t be beholden to anyone.”

That included my sister, and the money she wanted to use for my education. The dynamics were much different there of course, but I wanted to pave my own trail. I didn’t want to owe anyone anything.

“You’d rather tempt that danger, even when it hurt you the other night?”

“I’m fine.” I shoved at his shoulders, but he didn’t budge.

He had a prison record for attempted murder, and he was chastising me for courting danger? He hung around with men like Marco and the others, pretending he liked them when hatred gleamed in his eyes as it had the other night in the back room, and I was the foolish one?

Maybe so, but I wasn’t alone.

“You won’t be beholden to me. I’ll give you the check, and it’ll be yours to do with as you wish.”

“How can you have that much money to throw around? You don’t even have a real job. Unless being a thug counts as one.”

His eyes glinted in the near darkness. “You’d be surprised.”

“I don’t even believe you went to prison,” I continued, trying to brazen my way through. Maybe I’d find out something real. Maybe even something I could use to begin to put together the puzzle of Giovanni Costas. “I bet that’s a lie.”

“Oh, it’s no lie. I was booked on attempted murder in Las Vegas. Look it up if you don’t believe me. Giovanni Vincente Costas. Age 19 at the time.” He stroked my cheek with the side of his thumb, another of those fleeting touches that made me yearn for so much more. “Scarcely older than you are now.”

“Did you do it?” I couldn’t quite catch my breath.

He didn’t answer for so long that my head started to pound with my trapped heartbeats. This close to him, there simply wasn’t enough air.