“You mean Tino Morelli?”
I gave a curt nod and put the half-eaten egg roll back on my plate.
Bax put his carton of noodles down as well. “Villiers told me to turn myself in. Told me he’d pay my freaking bail. And when I refused…” He shook his head like he could shake away the words, never have to hear them again. “And then he said you—” He bit his lower lip. “He said you were just using me.”
I clenched my teeth. “I’m not—that’s not what—” I cleared my throat. “Listen, maybe youshouldthink about it again. Turning yourself in.”
I got a glare for that. “You want to get rid of me, too?” He kicked off the stool and stepped away, running hands through his hair, then turned back, regret clear on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That wasn’t fair. I’m hurt, so I’m, you know. Lashing out. The way Villiers looked at me back there…” He put his hands over his face, so that his next words were muffled. “Everything’s so messed up. I don’t even know how I got here.”
Seeing him in such pain triggered something inside me. I crossed the room to him at once and turned him to face me, pulling down his hands from his eyes. “You got here because you were trying to do the right thing,” I said roughly. “And because you’re a good guy. And fuck Ethan Villiers if he can’t see that.” His shocked eyes stared into mine, and he swayed towards me. “Everything will be okay. I promise you.”
“Really?” he whispered. “I don’t see how.”
“Trust me,” I said, confidence filling my voice. “It’s my job to solve problems. Right?” I took his hands in mine and squeezed them. “Itwillbe okay.”
Those whiskey-colored eyes glowed, flicking back and forth between mine, and I saw his pupils blow wide, actually saw them darkening the amber of his eyes. My face was so close to his that I felt his warm breath flutter across my lips as he murmured, “Angelo, I…”
I couldn’t speak, even his name stuck in my throat. His face, so close and so honest, was like looking into the sun—beautiful but blinding. But someone like me couldn’t survive in the sunshine. I existed in shadows and darkness, and it was the only way I knew to live.
I ducked my head, closing my eyes, and dropped his hands—but he took my face in them instead and make me look at him.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “Angelo, thank you. You make me feel safe in a way I haven’t for…for a very long time. Since before my family…”
The pain shot through his eyes again, disturbing the dark pools, and without thinking about it I kissed him, swallowing his gasp, wrapping my arms around him to protect him from the world. He gave a little moan as I pulled my mouth from his to kiss his jaw, to work down his neck, bury my face in him and breathe him in. Only then did I realize he was clinging to me just as tightly, crushing me to him just as hard and desperately as I was.
We shuffled across the small floor, making for the bed, and when we got there we fell sideways, clutching each other still, into the softness of feather down and silk sheets as white as clouds.
Chapter Thirty-One
Angelo
We writhed around together, kicking off shoes, pulling at zippers, growling at buttons, until Baxter pushed me onto my back, his jeans open but still on, his chest bare, and threw his leg over my thighs to straddle me. “Let me,” he begged, grabbing at my hands. “Please.”
I let my arms fall back on the bed, a silent surrender, and he grinned down at me before slowly unbuttoning my shirt, taking his time to run his hands over my chest as it appeared. He traced across a long, thin scar that ran across my chest. “What happened here?”
“Knife fight with a Giuliano.”
“And here?” He touched another place that had once been a gunshot wound and was now just a knot of scar tissue.
“A Clemenza’s Glock G19.”
He opened the shirt wider, touched the twisted scar at the side of my hip with a pained frown. “And this?”
“That one? That one I got when I fell out of a tree and onto a fence. Seven years old.”
He glanced back up to my eyes. “Before you came to the States?”
I grinned. “Sure, it’s a genuine Sicilian scar. My Nonna stitched me up after I sliced myself open on the metal fence. She did a good job, eh?”
He pushed each side of the shirt back, laying my whole chest bare, and gave a light tug at my pelt of hair. “You’re amazing,” he said, his eyes roaming over me still. “God. Just—just gorgeous.”
Plenty of men had called me gorgeous over the years. Not a single one of them had made me feel like Baxter Flynn did when he said it.
He moved further down and bent forward, pressing his lips first to the knife blade scar, the gunshot tangle, the cicatrix along my side—and then he kept going. He kissed his way across every reminder of violence and battle on my chest, while I ran my hands into his hair and focused on the feel of his mouth. Some of the scar tissue lacked feeling, but I could still feel his hot mouth around it, the press of his tongue against the raised, bumpy flesh.
And then he silently helped me turn over, pulled my shirt right off, and traced his way through my history once more. His hair brushed between my shoulder blades as I relaxed under him, under his hands as they massaged over my skin, then deeper, working my muscles in a way I had never felt before. He squeezed at my shoulders, worked up my neck, ran his knuckles down the sides of my spine—and then stopped.
“Gorgeous,” he said again, and rolled off me. I gave a groan of protest. “Take off your pants,” he said. “I want your dick in my mouth.”
