The Kingpin's Weakness

“What?”

“Feel something.”

“And did you?”

“No.” God, my lungs don’t seem to be working right. “But I feel something…now.”

Her eyes are serious, but her lips are teasing. Flirtatious. I want to devour them. I want to devour her. Trap her inside me so she can never leave. “Maybe you should have been ambitious with romance, instead of crime.”

I shake my head. “No. There wouldn’t have been a point until now.” I wrap an arm around her lower back and pull her closer, both of us starting to breathe faster. To say nothing of my heart, which is close to beating out of my chest. “Jesus, Scout. Until…you.”

She just kind of sighs and melts against me and I realize she was right. I could have fucked her on the couch in my private box, but she wouldn’t have been pliant. Trusting. Comfortable. She would have been hesitant. Nervous. Now she knows me. I’ve already let her in more than anyone and she isn’t repulsed or scared. She accepts me.

Thank Christ I did this right.

And then she says, “Take me home, Easton.”

And I realize I was never really at the top at all.

This girl. Scout. She is the top.

4

Scout

Oh dear.

I’m falling in love with a gangster.

I feel as if I’ve unlocked a treasure that has been sitting, cold and unopened, at the bottom of the ocean. Every time he looks at me, more coins and jewels spill out in the forms of secrets and I just want to gather them up, greedily holding them to my chest.

I’m in his lap once again in the back of the SUV, driving toward his home.

No one knows where exactly Easton Brawn lives. And I get the sense that he is trying to distract me now. Every time I try to look out the window, he captures my chin and holds eye contact, slowly leaning in to coax my mouth into a surface level kiss, as if he doesn’t trust himself to take more yet. His fingertips trace up and down my inner thigh, inching the hem of my dress higher until my panties are showing, but he never touches me there. In that place I am practically buzzing, growing more damp by the second.

“I’d like to move you somewhere safer, Scout,” he rasps, massaging my knee and easing it wider in his lap. “Somewhere with security cameras, a doorman…”

“No, Easton.” I battle through the drugging sensation of his kisses, so I can tell him this important thing. Which is…? Oh yes. Right. “No. Whitney has taken care of me for so long. Now you are paying my tuition. This one thing, bringing us somewhere great to live, that is going to be my job. I want that responsibility. As soon as I get my first paycheck from NASA.”

His mouth curls into a smile. “NASA?”

I nod eagerly. “I want to help build the next space shuttle.”

There’s a tinge of sadness to his chuckle. “Well if you can get Easton Brawn on a date, cutie, you can do anything.”

“It was my first date,” I whisper, smiling at him. “And it was a great one. Thank you.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I should be thanking you.”

“Maybe on the next one—”

“Scout.” His jaw hardens to granite, whatever he’s about to say causing him visible pain. “One night, remember?”

Those three words make me flinch, a sharp throb appearing below my throat. “But…I thought you might have changed your mind.”

“I haven’t. If anything, keeping you at a distance is more important than ever. Do you know what I would do if something happened to you? Because of me?” He frames my jaw in his hand. “This city would wake up to rubble and destruction and blood in the streets.”

I search Easton’s eyes and glimpse a certain madness there. And I know that as generous and protective and deep as I’ve found him to be tonight, there is very obviously a little bit of the devil in him. Maybe even a lot. And oh goodness…maybe I’m attracted to that, too. His darkness. His unholy power, how far-reaching it has the potential to be.

“You wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”

He seems to be steeling himself against my words. Against the temptation to agree. “Stop to think about how I’d manage that. Do you think I’d send you to school every day with a kiss on the forehead? No. I wouldn’t. You’d be surrounded by armed bodyguards and I would still—I would still sweat bullets and fear the worst until you were safe at home. I would be jealous of everyone that came near you.” Laughing without humor, he drags a hand down his face. “And I haven’t even been inside you yet, Scout. Jesus Christ. This could be the tip of the iceberg. I know it is.”

Wow. Easton is firm on this. He’s going to let me go to keep me safe. His tone, his body language tells me there will no reasoning with him. I have no choice but to relent for now and pray he changes his mind. Hope he’ll give in to whatever is happening between us and find a way to make it last. Make it work. Because I’m already dreading the sunrise when the spell between us has to be severed.