His strong hands warm my sides, his hips smacking into me, owning me with every shattered moan.
“I’m going to?—”
“I’m there,” he grits out. “Come with me, my angel.”
And I’m floating, only just conscious of his fingers anchoring me as he pumps me full, and his triumphant moan as I grip him tight, automatically, without conscious thought. It’s purely my body’s instinct—needing to keep the friction until I’ve ridden it out, but only from him.
It feels otherworldly, like nothing I’ve ever known, and like something only a small percentage of the human race will ever experience.
It knocks the wind out of me and I collapse to the bed, with this beautiful, wonderfully heavy man coming down on my back. It doesn’t matter that my breaths can only be shallow with him draped over me. The only thing that matters is, it’s him.
My mind drifts in and out of consciousness. My head is resting on his salt and pepper chest hair, his heart thumping softly beneath my ear. His large, inked arm is curled around me, holding me close, and I have a leg thrown across his body as if that might ever stop him from escaping.
I can’t remember ever feeling so sated, relaxed and protected. My body is floating on a soft cloud of post-coital bliss—the kind I assume one feels only after being thoroughly gripped and fondled and explored with a mouth, a tongue and a deliciously perfect dick for several hours.
“If you want to leave, I understand.”
Augusto’s solemn words shock me back to earth.
I gaze up at him, taking in his beautiful, warm eyes, soft lips darkened from hours of kissing mine. I don’t want to leave.
But then my thoughts fill with Paige. My baby. My purpose. My reason for living. I have one job in this life and that is tokeep my daughter safe. She’s the reason I moved us to New York. I could have moved down the street or to another part of California, but as her mother, I can’t risk her physically abusive father having easy access to her. As hard as it is to see her adjust to a new life that she never asked for, I know it was absolutely the right thing to do.
The thought that she’s going through that alone—albeit with my mother close by—while I’m having a pretty amazing time with a hardened criminal on a spa retreat, makes my heart hurt with guilt.
I should leave. I should go back to her, to where it’s safe and where I can keep her safe. Is it even sane that I’m debating staying here with a sworn criminal? With a bunch of sworn criminals?
His eyes warm me, hazel and green, and I’m reminded of what Mallorie told me.
Take what he offers you, Erin. If only for a week. Enjoy yourself.
I wonder if she’d give me the same advice knowing who August really is. Probably not.
I have to make this decision for myself, on my own.
Thinking rationally, my daughter is safe. She’s with my mom and Mal and no one here knows who I am. I’m here to make money for us both to live a better life. The fact I’m now overdelivering on my contracted obligations makes things a little complicated, but it doesn’t change the reason I’m here.
I’ve been at risk all along—I simply wasn’t aware of it before.
Maybe I should be mad at Augusto for lying to me. But if he’d told me the truth, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be due two hundred thousand dollars and I wouldn’t have had hands down the best sex of my life with a man who’s killed for me, demanded I be his and admitted to being unable to stay away.
Six months ago I thought I was happily married, living in the suburbs and spending my time between grocery stores and dry cleaners. If someone had told me back then I would be beaten by my husband, seeking a divorce, living with my mother and cavorting with the mafia, I’d have laughed in their face.
But of Gerard and Augusto, which one is better? A man who was absent for most of our marriage, choosing his career over his family every time, then laying his hands on me to cause unfathomable pain? Or a man who commits crimes for a living, hurls men across bars for touching me, yet treats me with a softness I’ve never felt before?
As if sensing my answer, he brushes his fingertips down my arm, then leans down to place a chaste kiss on the tip of my nose.
“I’ll keep you safe, Erin. If it’s the last thing I do.”
Augusto
There’s a predictable tension in the air when we enter the lobby. Waiters are already clearing away the breakfast plates, and guests are heading in different directions to start their day. A scene unfolding at the welcome desk catches my attention. The Russian’s wife is trying to speak to the hotel staff, but they’re not understanding her. She’s gesticulating wildly, her face getting redder and redder.
She’s panicking because her husband hasn’t shown up for hours. A memory of the way he held Erin with a gun to her head fills me with resolve. Sure, it’s going to make the negotiations tense and even more dangerous than they were, but he fucking deserved to die. Feeling the tension in her arm, I bend to her ear.
“It’s better that people don’t know about your hidden skill,” I murmur.
“Right.” Her reply is stoic but I can sense the underlying guilt. She knows she can help the woman, but she also knows what’s at stake now. And who that woman is.
