Cade Burns
I opened the door, and a smirk pulled at my lips. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to track her down this evening, but it was getting late, and I was beginning to wonder if that was what I’d have to do.
“You know what,” she started. “I’m just going to go and find a couch to stay on.”
I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not how this works, princess,” I told her, gesturing into my room. “There are too many people here tonight, and you’ll be sleeping in here with me.”
She scoffed. “I will be doing no such thing.”
“You will, actually. For appearances, you have to be my wife. And with all these men here, I don’t trust you to be alone in your room. They’re not the most trustworthy when it comes to women, and I would rather not be forced to kill my own men because of their temptations.”
She crossed her arms. “I can sleep in Elizabeth’s room,” she suggested.
“You’re sleeping in here. End of debate.” I could tell that she wanted to continue arguing, so I spoke again. “If you fall asleep anywhere, but in here, I’m going to come and drag you back here. One way or another, you will end up in here tonight.”
She groaned, and I could see how the bags under her eyes intensified with each second we stood here. “I’m too tired to argue with you tonight,” she finally said, “Can we just mutually agree to be civil for one night? I’ll have my energy back after a few hours of sleep, but I can’t deal with this until then.”
I stepped aside and let her enter and look around the room. She seemed to examine each inch of it with scrutiny before finally gathering a quilt from the end of the bed and placing it on the loveseat beneath the window.
“I’m going to shower, too,” she said, examining her hands with disgust.
I only nodded as she walked into my bathroom and immediately turned on the faucet. I moved toward the loveseat and replaced the quilt on my bed. I wouldn’t be sleeping on that small couch, and neither would she. I’d already showered and cleaned myself, but as I glanced down at the gauze around my arm, I found it already stained red again. I’d expected the wound to cauterize by now, but clearly, it hadn’t.
I worked to unravel the gauze from my arm, wincing as I removed the last strip and the cotton came up with it. It looked horrible and gooey, and I wondered if I needed to clean it another time before rewrapping it. I’d already disinfected it twice with warm water and peroxide, but it didn’t seem to do anything.
The bathroom door cracked open, and I realized for the first time that the shower had been turned off.
Aria poked her head from the bathroom, her hair soaked as she began speaking. “I don’t have any clothes. Can I-” She paused, looking at my unwrapped arm. “What the hell?”
She opened the door the rest of the way, and my chest caved in with breathlessness as she strode toward me, wearing nothing but a towel around her midsection. I could see all the way up her legs, stopping a mere two inches from the split of her thighs. Then, above the towel, I couldn’t pull my eyes from the cleavage that she rarely showed off in ordinary clothing.
She broke my focus on her chest as she lifted my arm and turned it over, narrowing her eyes. “Is this a gunshot wound?” she asked.
I winced at the pain that moving it had caused. “Yes.”
“Did you remove the bullet?”
There had been so many other people who needed more urgent help that I hadn’t taken the time to do more than wash and rise it, dump peroxide on it, and then wrap it. I hadn’t considered that the bullet would still be inside of me. It was ridiculously stupid of me not to consider that. I’d fished bullet wounds from myself and others before, but there had been so many severe injuries other than mine. And I’d kept a close eye on Aria as she treated the other men who had been injured.
I hadn’t been given a chance to think about my injury for longer than a few seconds.
“Let me clean it and stitch it up. It won’t stop bleeding without stitches, but it should only take one or two.”
She moved across the room and grabbed a small bag of supplies she’d carried inside with her. It had become filthy from use today, but with one hand, she sifted through the contents and brought out a needle and some thread.
“I need you to get dressed,” I told her as she approached.
She looked down at herself, almost as if forgetting that she’d been wearing nothing but a towel. She pursed her lips and nodded. I gestured to my closet, and she moved around inside, tossing the towel outside the door as I heard her grab something from a hanger and slide it over her head. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until she walked through the door fully dressed, and I released a long exhale.
She wore a long T-shirt that nearly reached her knees, and a pair of my boxers poked out from beneath the shirt. “Don’t say a word. You don’t have many options.” I kept my mouth closed as she came back to my wound and sighed as she looked at it. “I don’t have more numbing cream or lidocaine, so this is going to be a painful process.”
I shrugged. “I can handle it.”
“I have to dig out the bullet before I do anything else, or it won’t heal properly. That’s going to be the most painful part. Then, I have to disinfect the wound and stitch it. That will hurt, too.”
I nodded as she grabbed a pair of tweezers and took a deep breath.
“I just have to warn you that because the bullet stopped in your arm, it likely hit your bone. If that’s what happened, I need to feel around for any bone shards to make sure they don’t enter your bloodstream.”
Despite everything-the exhaustion, the hatred between us, the agreement that we each seemed to hate more than anything-she looked sympathetic for the pain she was about to cause. I allowed her to do what she needed, and as she’d said, the pain was excruciating as she dug into my arm, talking through what she was feeling and doing. I felt the bullet dislodge itself from my bone, and I nearly shouted in agony as she moved her fingers around inside the wound, pulling out a tiny sliver of something covered in my blood.
“Bone shard,” she told me, going back into the arm. “It would be smart to go to the hospital and make sure there are no more, but I don’t feel anything else.”
A fine sheen of sweat covered my body as she finished cleaning, stitching, and dressing the wound. After the stitches, far less blood seeped from my arm than before, and I felt a sense of relief as she wrapped it with clean gauze and leaned back.
She met my eyes and held my gaze for a long moment, almost as if she contemplated what to say to me. Finally, she spoke. “Thank you for saving my life back at the fight.”
“It’s my job to protect you as long as you’re here,” I told her honestly. I didn’t tell her about the panic that had filled my chest as I saw her being pulled into a man who wanted to hurt her.
She nodded, saying nothing more as she grabbed the blanket from my bed and moved toward the couch again.
“You’re not sleeping on the couch,” I told her.
“Are you?” she asked, her brow shooting up.
“We’re both sleeping in the bed,” I told her.
Her laugh barreled through the room as she shook her head. “I’m not sleeping in the same bed as you.” She looked me over and found not even a hint of a smile on my face. I lifted my shirt over my head, leaving me in nothing but boxers as I sat back in the center of the bed. “Seriously?”
“I’ve had my cock inside of you,” I reminded her. “Sharing a bed isn’t something that you should be concerned about.”
“It’s because you’ve had your cock inside of me that I’m concerned,” she retorted. “Why are you confident that I won’t try to kill you in your sleep?
You know how I feel about you.”
I shrugged. “I like to gamble.”
She sighed and tossed the quilt back on the bed, climbing over the comforter and using that instead. She turned her back to me and snuggled beneath the thin quilt as I watched her curiously. She breathed deeply, and for a moment, I wondered if she’d already passed out. It took her nearly three minutes before she spoke again.
“Thank you for being chivalrous and sharing your bed.”
I narrowed my eyes. I eased toward her, grabbing her shoulder and flipping her on her back. She looked at me with uncertainty. “I’m not chivalrous, princess. I’m a mafia boss.”
Her breathing grew shallow for a second as she turned the rest of the way and propped herself on an elbow, looking me up and down. I could see the shift in her before she even said the words. The way her eyes went ablaze and her chest rose more quickly than before. “A hardened mafia boss wouldn’t let someone sleep in his bed without taking something in return,” she retorted. “Would he?”
Fuck. I knew what she was doing, and I wanted to shout at her to stop. The last thing I needed was to fuck her again. She had been a virgin before me, but…
She wasn’t a virgin anymore.
“You sound like you’re asking me to take something in return.”
“There’s nothing real between us,” she countered. “But there can be something physical for tonight.”
She didn’t have to ask me twice. I saw the way her cheeks were flushed from talking about it. I looked over her hardened nipples that poked through my T-shirt. I recalled hearing her moans and cries when I’d fucked her before, and that thought alone had me hard beneath the sheets. “If you want me to fuck you, princess, you just have to ask.”
She hesitated for a moment. “I want to see your true colors. Being a nice guy isn’t who you are, and we both know it. I want to see who I’m sharing a bed with.”
She was right. She was so unbelievably correct, so I turned and brought myself atop her, holding the weight of my body with my good arm. I dipped my head until my face hovered barely over hers. “You have no idea what you’re asking for.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking for.”
I sat atop her and slid my hand up the boxers she wore, not hesitating before plunging a finger into her. I’d done nothing more than talk to her, and her moisture dampened my finger as she arched into me with a smirk. She thought she’d won this battle. I thrust another finger into her, massaging her hard with my thumb.
“Jesus,” she groaned, trying to pull away from the array of sensations.
Now I grinned as I continued, working her hard. “Oh, my God.”
But I didn’t let her climax. I pulled away at once, pulling my cock free before sliding the fabric between us down her legs. I gripped one of her ankles and used it to flip her onto her stomach. If she wanted to see me be a bad guy, I’d show her exactly who she wanted to see.
I gripped a handful of her hair and pulled her head back as I plunged my fingers into her from behind. She gasped as I held myself inside of her, grinning at the reaction. I couldn’t use my bad arm for much, but I extended two fingers and continued assaulting the bundle of nerves between her thighs. “It’s too much,” she cried as I felt her pussy tighten around me. She spasmed and shook, and I kept going. “Oh my God, Cade,” she cried out.
I worked her until she could do nothing but pant and cry as the pleasure continued eating at her. When she finally slowed, I thrust hard into her, releasing her hair. Her moans grew more consistent as I went-less hoarse and uncontrollable.
To my surprise, after a minute of thrusting hard into her, I felt her chuckle. “I thought a mafia boss could fuck harder than that.”
Jesus Christ. There was no way this woman was a virgin before me. I’d had women say that I was going too fast or rough, but I had never had someone claim that she wanted it rougher.
If Aria weren’t my enemy, I would say that she was made for me.
I opened my palm and slammed it down on her ass, making a loud slapping noise as I thrust harder. She trembled with each thrust into her. She cried out with each slap to her ass. But she followed it with deep, fulfilled moans that grew louder the harder and faster I went. As I felt my climax coming, I moved my fingers between her thighs once again, flicking my fingers over her hard.
She screamed for me. She shouted my name loudly as she came, and the second I heard it, I found my release, groaning to the ceiling as I shot every ounce of myself into her and collapsed.
We breathed loudly, and rather than removing myself from her, I pulled her closer to my chest, turned on my side, and closed my eyes. I didn’t give a shit if she wanted it or not. While I came down from that, I needed her close. I told myself that it meant nothing as I held her, coming down from the ecstasy of what we’d done together.
It did mean nothing. Fucking her meant nothing. Holding her meant nothing.
Her lack of protest meant nothing, too.