Page 174 of Love Me in the Dark

6

QUINN

Her mouth on mine is a fucking revelation. Soft, warm, and wickedly tempting.

Hellie left the room a pretty girl that knows how to set things off balance. She came back a siren in red that explodes my world into smithereens, and now…

I push her back. “What are you doing?”

There’s no apology in those glimmering caramel eyes that captivated me the moment I saw her. But there is a sliver of doubt hidden deep and fuck me if the doubt doesn’t undo me even further. Her tits brush against my chest, her sweet spiced scent makes my cock hard.

“What do you think, Cal?”

“That you’re playing with fire.”

“I’m not playing.”

“Do you know what will happen to me if I touch you?”

She sucks in a breath and backs away. “I’m sorry, Cal, I…”

The uncertainty in her voice makes my balls ache. Fuck, I want her. But this is bad…wrong. It could get me killed.

I don’t even know Hellie.

Except…I do.

She lifts her face to mine again, her eyes desperately reading me. “I think you’re too clever to get caught. And I think you want me as badly as I want you. It doesn’t make sense. I just met you. But I saw your eyes and…” She stops and steps back. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

Her lips tremble a little. “No, I’m not. I just wanted something of my own, something good.”

“I’m not a good man.”

“I think you might be,” she says. “For me.”

“Hellie…”

“You’ll deliver me. I know that. But we both know what my future holds. It’ll be empty, totally and completely. And I want…something, that’s all. Something good. Something to call mine.”

Thing is, in a different world I’d get her out of the situation. But her father wouldn’t stop chasing me down if I interfered with the plan. Dowd, either. It’s not a matter of the two of them just forming an alliance. It isn’t how things are done in their fucked up world.

No one trusts anyone. And me? The two of them owing me makes things worse. I know beneath her snarky and sassy words, she’s scared of a bleak future, one where she’ll be forced into a role of mafia princess forever with no escape. Kept under lock and key, used as Dowd’s plaything whenever he wants.

He’s got women, but he’ll use his wife.

Not my problem.

It’s the same mantra that’s been in the back of my head, down under the surface since I first saw her.

Some of the mafia princesses want the life, the trappings, the dubious prestige.

Hellie calls herself Hellie, not Hellena. Hellie. A nickname no one else will ever call her after I deliver her.

Dowd wants the package, the pretty princess, the bird in the cage, the slave in the bed, clipped wings and crushed dreams.

Something inside me crumbles. And I take hold of her face, smoothing her hair back. “Hellie…”