Page 38

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SADIE

Instead of fleeing with the crowd, Aubry takes us up another staircase.

The screams of panicking people fade as he kicks open a service door and leads me down a cement hallway.

Every door is a uniform gray with no hint to what’s back there, but Aubry stops before one, grabs the handle, and shoves me inside.

I rebound into darkness. Cloying dust races to suffocate my lungs, and I lift my head higher. Light seeps in from the far end of the room, but it can barely cut through the boxes teetering around the place. They’re covered in tarps, some of them spotted with dark stains.

“Is that chocolate sauce?” I babble, resting my palm on the tarp. Dust leaps off before raining down on me and Aubry. He leans against the closed door, one ear to it while staring through space.

“I bet they get messy,” I say to myself.

“What does?” he asks, not listening.

“Chocolate. The fountains. Casinos have those, right? At their famous buffets.” My stomach growls. I haven’t had so much as a Kiss since they abducted me somewhere in the day to day and a half range.

The sound of my angry belly cranes Aubry’s head around. His look pierces through me, and I want to say a million things at once. How I’m starving. That my back hurts. Did mobsters really kidnap me? He came back! Why did he come back? Why did he leave me?

Feet echo down the hallway. I slam a hand under my jaw, keeping all my rambling thoughts pinched between my teeth.

Aubry presses a finger to his lips as he listens. Centuries crawl by. I can’t hear any footsteps outside, but I don’t dare breathe until he lowers his finger. With a quick glance to the tarp I’m leaning against, he says, “That’s not chocolate.”

“It’s not… Then what…?”

It’s a mob casino. Where they do mob things. Like wrap up bodies and carry them to the desert. It’s blood. That’s a bloody tarp. That they put on a box. Lots of boxes. That could be full of dangerous things like guns.

I shot a gun?!

“Hydrogen peroxide could get that out,” I babble. “Or bleach, maybe. I haven’t really worn canvas panties before. But if I did, I bet that would be very uncomfortable in the downstairs region. Lots of chaffing. Cause things aren’t—”

Aubry lowers the gun he’s holding. The one he took from me. That I fired. I stare at the metal that burned my stomach as we ran through the casino floor. The top part that sliced back and bit into my hand. The way it jumped so hard I thought it was going to break my wrist.

“Are you okay?” His voice that was commando meets ninja assassin while we were running shatters in half. Aubry strains a quivering hand out toward me. He’s my naked golden prince who came for me. Who saved me when bad people abducted me out of my townhouse tower.

I can’t believe he’s here.

I wanted. I hoped.

I didn’t think…

“You left,” I sputter, stepping back. The crates creak from my spine pushing into them. “You left me.”

“I know—”

“I told you to not do that. That I don’t like that. One day you’re there, the next you sold your house that you didn’t even own! I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!”

“Well, I’m here. Now.” He keeps reaching for me as if I’m going to leap into his quivering, muscled arms and press my bra-less chest to his bare one. Grab his naked ass in my palms and kiss him as his cock—

No!

I take another step back, my shoulder scraping along the boxes. The bloody tarp snaps against its rubber straps and threatens to tumble. Aubry catches it before it does and notches it back in place without taking his eyes off of me.

“I was kidnapped. By men who threatened to…” I gulp, shoving all of that to the far back of my mind.

They’re scary, and I’m scared. But I’m also angry, and being angry at Aubry is easy because he’s not so scary.

Right? “And for what? Some guy I don’t know.

Some Talong? Who the fuck is that? Do you know? ”

He swallows so hard his Adam’s apple dives.

“Why is kidnapping me supposed to find some guy? It’s called Google, or Facebook, or… I don’t know. Hiring a bounty hunter. It doesn’t make any damn sense.”

“Sadie…”

“I don’t understand. What do I have to do with a mob that lives in a casino in fucking Vegas? Or this guy they’re looking for? Or…?”

Time stops dead. The air scratches at my skin as I swivel my head up to him.

“I’m…”

“You’re…”

“Talong.”

Holy shit.

My giant, rich boyfriend is with the mob.

Holy fuck . He does look hot in a suit and with some sunglasses… But he’s killed people. Probably. Definitely broken laws. That’s what they do, they’re lawbreakers. And that’s bad.

A ridiculously hot bad boy…who lied to me.

“Who are you?” I sputter, trying to stuff my libido into the same box as my trauma. I hope that doesn’t cause any problems for future me.

Aubry takes a deep breath. “I am Talong—”

“Yeah, we established that. What else? Who are they? Are you related to them? Is that your mob family out there? Did you steal from them? Is that why you were running away?”

He touches my arm. It’s barely a clasp compared to the bruises I have bursting under my skin from all the manhandling for the past two days. But I gasp as if he’s cut me.

Aubry… Talong looks at his hand and lets go. “I’ll explain it all later. For now—”

“For now, you’re going to tell me if anything you said was real. The banana sauce, the island, your Lolo… Are you even filipino?”

“Yes, everything I told you is real.”

“Except the part about your name, and you being on the run from the mob… Is Astin even your cat?”

“Of course, he is. I saved him. He was nothing but skin and bones, his fur matted with blood when I fished him out of that shipping container!” Instead of rage, he unleashes a mournful howl at me.

Shaking his head, he grabs onto the top box and digs in.

“We ran together. He’s all I had in this world. ”

“Had?” I gulp. “What happened?”

It’s Aubry’s eyes that stare into mine not this Talong mobster.

His lips twitch as if he’s trying to reel back in what he said.

With a sigh, he turns away again. “Astin’s fine.

Angry, but fine. Look. The short, short version.

My grandfather’s farm burned down, I had nowhere to go, and Mr. Ato took me in. ”

“I met him.”

His face plummets, and he grabs my shoulders. “You did?” he panics, staring at my chest again.

“He’s an asshole.”

Panting, Aubry stares at my body like he’s checking every inch for something. “But…you’re alive.”

There were some threats to the contrary, but I don’t need to share those now. “What’s happened to your other girlfriends?” I ask.

I don’t expect his laugh. “What other girlfriends?”

“Sorry, you don’t expect me to believe you were a vir—?”

“What? Of course not. I just… I never wanted anyone in my life. Until…”

The murderous mobster on the run from his boss had a closed-off heart until he met me? A likely story. He’s just trying to get in my panties again.

Damn. Did he always look that tan and ripped?

No! I’m mad at him. Even if our angry sex would probably cause a nuclear explosion, I have to be strong.

“Until what?” I thunder and smack my palm against his chest. His pec doesn’t even move. It’s like slapping hard steel. “Huh?” I do it again. “Until you found some stupid girl.”

“You’re not stupid,” he says.

“Some stupid local girl who’ll get you off for a few weeks before you’re on the lam again.”

“What lamb?”

Enraged, I rap my palms twice against his chest. It’s starting to turn red just like my hives. “You left me! You saved my life—” My hands curl into fists that bounce against him like a drum. “—then you left me.”

“Sadie…”

“Why?” I wind up for another hit, trying to break through his damn ice. Get him to tell me the truth.

I know why. I know the reason he fled after he saw me gasping for air on the floor, hooked up to tubes in the hospital. I’m too much fucking work for a man and he ran. “Tell. Me. The—”

Fists wrap around my wrists. He wrenches my arms straight up until I’m almost dangling on my tiptoes. A whimper falls from my lips as I stare at the dangerous mobster. “Talong.”

His mouth plunges over mine. I’m a burning stick of dynamite with a short wick. I want to kick him away, to dash into the hall. Scream for help and keep running until I’m home under the covers.

I kiss him back.

And I bite his lip. Hard. Make him hurt. “You hurt me,” I moan.

The gun clatters to the ground with a loud thunk then a warm hand digs under my panties to massage my ass. “You think I wasn’t in pain?”

My teeth scrape up his jaw. I delight in the red line tearing through his light stubble before I lick his ear. “I don’t fucking care.”

Aubry roars. Feral hands pry at my buttocks, spreading them. Fingers press anywhere they can up to my soaked pussy and back to my unexplored anus.

“You son of a bitch,” I cry out and leap. In the split second, my plan is to ram my feet onto his thighs, as if I can make him whimper and fall to his knees. Then his thumb thrusts inside of me—hard and fast. My legs curl around his waist and I fuck his hand.

The motion sends Aubry’s cock sweeping up my wet panties. He moans as my knees slam into the crates. “It killed me to leave you,” he pants, struggling to tear my panties to the side. His fingers keep puncturing through the lace which he drags across my vulva while finger banging me.

“You’re lying,” I sneer. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care. He… “Fuck!”

The hand releases my wrists and clamps to my mouth. Aubry stares to the door. But even if he fears someone hearing us, he doesn’t stop.

“I had to leave you,” he whispers. I clamp my nails to his back, digging in with all my might. A whimpering, “To protect you,” falls from his lips.

Bullshit. He’s lying. He…

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I sputter against his palm, the curses flying free as he swirls the tip of his cock over me. My arms lock, pressing my cheek to his chest as I gird myself. “From the mob. You were trying to save me from them?”

“No,” Aubry says, and he thrusts inside of me.