He patted the space behind him in a silent demand. I climbed up, the place between my legs raw and throbbing, reminding me how rough he was when he took me on the plane.
“Heading home?” Jeremie asked, a skull bandanna tugged up his nose to protect himself from the fumes he was about to breathe. He was already pouring detergent over the bloodied concrete. Another soldier was wheeling in an electric pressure washer.
“Hotel. Gonna drop her off, then we’ll head downtown for our first meeting. Stay close.” Achilles flipped down his helmet visor. “I want six men patrolling her floor at any given time when she’s out of my sight, armed to the fucking heavens.”
“Yup.” Jeremie tossed the empty detergent tank against a wall, fishing a blue Bic from his pocket. “She’ll be in good hands.”
“No one’s allowed to touch her but me,” Achilles growled.
“It’s a figure of speech, Scarface.”
“Don’t like you saying the wordfigurewhen speaking about her, either.”
How this jackass thought he was capable of handing me over to another man was a case for the FBI. I was surprised he let me get a manicure without killing my nail technician.
We took off, with me hugging Achilles’s torso from behind. Because of the anatomy of the motorcycle, I was perched slightly above him, almost on top of him, and could feel every individual muscle in his back and stomach. His scent drifted into my system, mixing with the heady smells of summer and beach and mouthwatering dishes as we wove into the narrow cobblestone streets of the city. My hips involuntarily clasped around him, enjoying the heat of his body, the sturdiness of it, and every time we reached a traffic light, Achilles dropped one hand from the throttle, casually stroking the sensitive spot behind my knee.
We rode for a while, with him taking small side streets and hidden pathways of the city. I had a feeling he was throwing any Coppola people following us off our scent. If so, he’d succeeded because, by the time he merged onto a turnpike curving away from the city and onto a mountain, we were alone on the road.
He parked on top of a cliff overlooking the city. Killing the engine, he didn’t take off his helmet or flick open the dark visor, which mirrored whatever he was looking at.
“Are you going to hurl me off a cliff ?” I reached to unclip my helmet, pinning it between my arm and waist. “Because I’m sure open to it if it means not having to fuck you again.”
He dismounted, turned around, and climbed back on the bike so we were facing each other. He grabbed my ass through my dress and slid me down so I landed in his lap. He was hard as a rock.
His thick shaft pressed against my panties.
“Why’d you do it?” His tone threw me off. It was soft but still deadly. Another hint of the old Achilles I used to love.
“Why did I do what?” I playfully curled a piece of hair over my finger.
“You know what.”
I did. I had tried to explain myself to him countless times, though I knew nothing would justify my behavior. It’d been over a decade, and I still mourned ruining the only good thing that’d ever happened to me.
I regretted what I’d done to him every moment of every day of every year of my existence.
But telling him that after he screwed me roughly just because he could and came in my hair was beyond the scope of my abilities. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much betraying him destroyed me.
I shrugged. “I didn’t want you, and you didn’t get the hint.”
My throat burned with the lie. I knew I’d hurt him. Moreover, I knew the only reason he asked was because I couldn’t see his face and what was written on it.
“Did you ever fucking care?” His voice was thick, muffled by the helmet and something else I didn’t want to think about.
“No,” I said coldly, pushing the word out to hurt him like he’d hurt me for the past few years.
“Not really. At first, I was lonely, and you were a nice distraction. But afterward? You were
deadweight. I needed to get rid of you. But you were so damn persistent.” I rolled my eyes.
Another loaded silence and one with enough tension to be cut with a knife.
“Well. Didn’t work quite as well as you hoped, did it?” he said, reaching between my open thighs and tugging my underwear to one side. “Take out my cock.”
I looked around with uncertainty. “Here?”
“We’re alone. Even if we weren’t, it’s not like you have a reputation to uphold.”
