“I was just a kid, too, Bax. I was bound to make mistakes. I was only trying to survive.”
I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe in and out steadily before I chucked my phone into the street. I didn’t want to relate, but here, in the Point, survival was the only language we all spoke fluently.
“Did you take care of the Runner while I was locked up?”
He gave a dry little laugh that held anything but humor. “No, Gus did. I just made sure I paid the storage fees on it.”
“And the apartment?”
“Jesus, Bax. I know you hate my guts, but did you really think I was going to throw your ass behind bars and not make sure you had a place to go when you got out?”
I didn’t know what to say to any of that. Titus and I had never seemed to be on the same block, let alone the same side of the street. I didn’t know how to process all this new information.
“You need to be careful. All of this stuff with Race and Novak isn’t over, and for now they’re leaving the girl alone because they don’t want to tip their hand. But if Race doesn’t show soon, all bets will be off.”
“She stays out of it. Novak can come after me anytime he wants. I welcome the opportunity to let him know what I think of his plans.”
There was another sigh. “Bax, I don’t want to put you back in jail, or worse yet, have to identify you in the morgue.”
Now it was my turn to laugh without any kind of humor. “Funny how those are the same options I see. I never thought we would agree on anything.”
“That girl cares about you, Shane. You really gonna just keep living your life like it doesn’t matter?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut like I could black out all the new insights I was forced to take in tonight.
“I don’t know, Titus, I’m just going to keep living it the only way I know how.”
“Learn from your mistakes, little brother. That’s all you can do. I gotta go, there was an armed robbery at a bar in the District.”
I didn’t bother to say good-bye, I just put the phone back in my pocket and meandered back upstairs. Now I didn’t want her here. Dovie saw too much, got too close to the heart of things. When I pushed open the door, I had to do a double take. In the fifteen minutes I had been outside, she had stripped and remade the bed, vacuumed the floor, wiped down the TV, straightened up the little kitchenette, and piled all the discarded clothes and junk on the floor into one pile by the closet. It looked like a normal person lived there, not like a place that was used primarily for sex and sleep.
I scraped my hands roughly across my head and made my way over to where she was lying on the bed. I sat down on the edge and looked down at her. She shrugged her shoulders and gave me an “oh well” look. I reached out a finger and moved one of her curls away from her face.
“You can clean it up, but that doesn’t change what it is, Dovie.”
“Are we talking about the apartment or you, Bax?”
I moved my finger down so I could run it across the plush pout of her bottom lip. “Either or. I’m not going to ever be a good guy, Copper-Top.”
She caught my hand in her own and it made my blood go hot when she put a soft kiss right in the center of my palm. “No, you’re not, but that doesn’t mean you always have to be a bad guy either. Why can’t you just be a little bit of both?”
Because for me it had always been all or nothing. Just like this situation with her. I could keep tabs on her, make sure everyone knew that I would jack them up if they messed with her and that they’d better not lay a finger on her, but no. Instead I was having a hard time figuring out where she started and I ended, and she was starting to look like a reward for all that I had missed in the last five years. Just like everything else in my life, going all in meant when it went bad, and when it was all over, there was a good chance it would leave me wrecked. I didn’t want to think about it anymore, didn’t want her to keep looking at me like she saw more to me than there was, so l leaned down and kissed her. I didn’t have to think about right or wrong when she made everything better.
CHAPTER 12
Dovie
THIS WASN’T WHAT IT was normally like when we were together like this. There was a level of intensity in him, a strand of danger that would have scared me had I not seen the struggle he was fighting in those fathomless eyes. I didn’t know if it was the location, the chat with his brother, or the idea that Lord Hartman was heartless and all shades of evil that had him so impatient and edgy, but whatever it was, I could feel the lash of it across each part of my flesh that he exposed with rough hands. He was trying to make a point, to teach a lesson. Only I don’t think he knew which one of us was supposed to be learning it, so instead of fighting him, instead of adding fuel to the fire, I just went still. I was n*ked and he was still fully clothed, a position I seemed to find myself in a lot around him.
I laid my hands flat on the clean sheets I had just put on his mattress. I kept my eyes locked on the swirling black void in his eyes and refused to move, to give him any kind of reaction as he moved over me. His mouth was too hard, his hands were too rough, and it was the first time since I decided I could handle the trouble he represented that I actually felt like I was in over my head. I had just learned I had narrowly escaped a professional hit on my life thanks to dear old dad; Bax should be coddling me, trying to soothe me. Instead he was trying to push me, trying to scare me into begging him to stop. I wasn’t going to play his game, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of winning it either.
I felt the scrape of his teeth across the sensitive skin of my neck as he bent over me. He pulled his shirt off by the collar and I fixated my gaze on the pulse thundering at the base of his throat. I wanted to kiss him, to let him know it would all be all right, but I wasn’t going to lie to him. If he kept this up, as soon as it was over, I was leaving this apartment, leaving all the darkness and danger that was Bax and taking my chances on my own. I knew Race wouldn’t let me down. I just had to stay alive long enough for him to let his plans play out.
The hard planes of Bax’s chest pressed against the soft curves of my own. My body reacted. How could it not? I wanted him, had wanted him from the get-go, and now that I knew the way he used his mouth, the way he used his hands when he wanted to bring pleasure and light instead of pain and darkness, there was no way my ni**les weren’t going to perk up, no way my skin wasn’t going to pebble in arousal, and no way my core wasn’t going to go slick and hot when he gathered both of my lifeless hands in his own and pulled them up above my head.
He used his jean-clad knee to force my legs apart and settled himself in the cradle of my hips. I just stared up at him, pleading with my eyes for him to stop. He wasn’t Shane, he wasn’t Bax, he was just a cold stranger who didn’t care that this was all wrong. I focused on the star on his face. It should be ugly, should make him look ridiculous, but right now I felt like it was my only navigation in a pitch-black sky.
He was waiting for me to stop it, waiting for me to tell him to do the right thing. I could feel him shaking, and not because he was turned on, but because he was forcing himself to hold on to me, to threaten the tenuous threads of the fabric that was holding us together. He was quaking in such a way that had those chains inked around his wrists been real, they would have been rattling and clanking together. I didn’t utter a protest when he pressed his lips to the crest of my cheek and drew them along the ridge until he reached my mouth. I was going to have bruises around my wrists from how hard he was holding me, and I could feel his heart thundering against my own.
His lips settled firmly over mine. It wasn’t a kiss so much as it was an assault. I was pliant. I was still. I refused to give him what he wanted, even when I was tempted, because it felt so good when he ran his tongue along the sealed seam. I wanted him, just not like this.
His chest heaved and billowed against mine, and belatedly I realized the normally insistent erection that was typically trapped between us by this point was missing. He didn’t want to be doing this any more than I did, but I wasn’t going to stop him. He had to stop himself, or really, all there was in Shane Baxter was badness, and whatever part of him I thought I saw when his guard was down, when he kissed me, when he looked at me like I was his reward, was only going to be a figment of my imagination.
He growled against me, his mouth too hard, too fierce, and I couldn’t stop the single tear that slid out of my eye. We were so close together that he felt the tear when it touched his cheek.
“Tell me to stop.” He whispered it against my mouth, the same conversation we had the first night he put those diabolical hands on me.
Last time I had given in to the demand, even though I didn’t mean it.
“No.” I whispered it right back.
“Tell me to stop, Dovie.” His fingers opened and closed in a spasm around my wrists and I had to flinch a little. I saw his reaction flare in the velvet color of his eyes. He didn’t want to hurt me, but he couldn’t stop it either.
“No.”
“You can make everything better.”
He sounded so lost and my heart broke for him. He was a guy who was never going to have a chance at a typical life. There was never going to be a desk job in his future, no simple road with redemption at the end. He was always going to be a guy who had a criminal record, was too wild, too rough not to have a reputation that went along with his ragged persona. He was equal parts Bax and Shane, one was never going to exist without the other, and he was just going to have to find the balance between the two. I didn’t mind helping him figure it out, as long as he didn’t destroy me in the process.
“So can you, Bax, but if you do this, I’m done. There is no going back.”
His eyes flashed at me and my hands were suddenly free and he was levering himself up off of me, the muscles in his arms and shoulders shaking.
“Isn’t that the point?”
He was going to run, I could see it clear as day. He didn’t know what to do next and he was going to bolt. He wanted to make me be the one to do it, so that his conscience was clear, but I hadn’t cooperated and now he was going to go out and unleash all that turbulent emotion on an unsuspecting city. I was tempted to let him.
“Bax . . .”
I thought he was going to get up and head for the door, but he surprised me by twisting at the waist and trapping me back between his stripped torso and the bed. This time when he kissed me, it was for real. His lips moved across mine with force, but not in a way that was punishing. When he demanded entrance this time, I let him have it, and even went as far as to wrap my arms around the strong cords of his neck. His tongue danced with mine, his teeth scraped with the intent to arouse not to punish, and his hands were shaking when he used them to push all my hair back off of my face. His black eyes burned into my own, and I saw an eternity of regret and remorse flood the dark pools.
“You’re a nice girl, Dovie. You should be anywhere but here with anyone but me. This shit with Race and Novak, your old man being the scum of the earth . . . you deserve so much more than all of it. Your life should look different than this, and sooner or later you’re going to hate me.”
I put my thumb on the center of his bottom lip and sucked in a breath when he pulled it into the moist cavern of his mouth.
“Or maybe the opposite of that.” His eyebrows shot up and he used his tongue to swirl around the edge of my thumb before letting it go with a pop.
“Don’t do that, Copper-Top. It would be the worst mistake you ever made.”
He was the second person today to tell me that exact same thing, only I wasn’t sure it wasn’t already too late. There was just something about him, something there that made me want to believe that in the long run, all the bad that made him who he was could be dealt with, could be loved, as long as it came with the fleeting glimpses of good like he was showing me now.