Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(56)
“What did she say?”
“She was in the hospital. Near the end. She told me that she forgave you that I needed to forgive you, that if I went and saw you and gave you a chance I’d understand, but then she was gone and I was alone with him. He hit me, Victor. After the meeting he was there when I got home and he hit me.”
I break down in sobs. Victor is still as stone, but his embrace is warm and firm. Slowly, he lays down, pulling me with him so I’m curled up to his side and tucked up under his arm. He reaches over and grabs a fistful of the dry, scratchy hotel room tissues and dabs the tears from my face.
“You’re melting,” he says.
I snort. “I hate that f*cking article. Ice Queen? Really?”
“I think it’s cute. You do look like some sort of ice fairy princess.”
I laugh softly. Can it be this easy?
“What kind of a deal did you make? Are you in trouble?”
“Yeah,” he says, softly, “I’m in trouble. I’ll probably never be safe. I did it for you.”
“Don’t throw that at me,” I say, bitterly. “I can’t take that, too. God, Victor, what was wrong with me? I shouldn’t have believed…”
He cuts me off and squeezes my arm. “Eve, I think if I was in the gallery I would have believed it. They played me hard, like a sucker. I should have known when she propositioned me. Twice. Fucking bitch.”
He sits up and leaves me lying on the bed. I run my hands up his back.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t stop what I’m doing now. I work for Vitali. You know why the call him the hammer? He told me when you smash a guy’s toes with a hammer, they look like grapes. Jesus.”
“What exactly is it you’re supposed to do?”
“Run a bust out on Amsel. Destroy my own company. I get a cut of the proceeds. He keeps the rest. If the company was public I could move on it when the stock price goes down, but it’s still privately held. I was going to try and force Martin to take the company public, spread out the debts before it came down on him. On you.”
“Can I give it to you?”
“What?”
I sit up next to him. “I know when you were convicted, you were automatically disinherited. Then it passed to your mother, then when she died, to me, per her will. Some of your distant relatives tried to sue but it went nowhere.”
He sighed. “I don’t care about the company, or the money. I want you, Eve. I want you by my side.”
I squeeze his hand.
“What do we do?”
He squeezes back. “You go back to work. We start working together to put your father away.”
I tense, and suck in a sharp breath. “Victor, I can’t. He’ll know, he…”
“He won’t. We have to play pretend. You have to make him think you still hate me. I have a plan of my own. Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Good. We’ll talk about this later. Does your father know where you are?”
“No.”
“Would he have any reason to look here?”
“No.”
“Good,” he says.
He turns, quick and lithe, and his arms are around me, all at once, then his lips on mine as he pushes me down into the bed. I slide my arms around his neck and my legs spread around his sides. It’s been so long, I’m aching for it. He kisses me hungrily, aggressively, like he doesn’t want to stop but he can’t wait any longer to attack my throat. It’s cold in the room but I don’t care. His hands are cold on my skin when the slip up under my sweatshirt. He unhooks my bra as deftly as he always did, like it was yesterday the last time we did this. Once it’s loose I’m shedding my clothes, t-shirt and hoodie and underwear and loose pants, and tugging the sheets down. Victor looks at me body like he’s never seen me before. He looks at me like he’s never seen a woman before. I pull on his shirt. It’s only fair.
He peels off the damp t-shirt, stands up and gets out of his jeans, yanks off his socks. He’s rock hard and just as big as I remember. Victor dives into the bed, skimming lightly over me as he kisses me again. The heater blasts warm air into the room, but I shiver at every touch, at his lips on my throat, his hands on my breasts, the feel of his erection pressed against my stomach. I want him inside me now. I want to feel again. He cradles my head in my hands and kisses me forever, until it burns. The heat between my thighs is a furnace. I writhe under him, naked and wanting, urge him on but he refuses to indulge me, instead tortures me by savoring me. His lips on my throat now, his hands moving slowly down my sides, turning each beat of my heart into a drum beat, faster, faster, faster, now, but it’s not now, I have to wait.
Victor honestly enjoys going down on me, I think. He does it whenever he can. His touch is hesitant. I only feel his breath at first, then it’s like he remembers. His hands slide under my butt and squeeze and my stomach flexes as I angle my hips, and press my legs around his head and pull him in, one hand knotted in his hair. Then his mouth, hot on my skin, working up the inside of my thigh to my throbbing sex. Suddenly I was happy he was taking his time. I spent so long trying to please myself with my own hands, imagining Victor down there, and now he’s real again. I know he’s real because I feel the heat of his breath, the warm wet touch of his tongue, and I hear the little noise he makes when he tastes me, so much like hunger. I look down and see the lust in his eyes and heat spread through my chest, like a deep breath of hot air. I need this so badly it hurts. I feel alive again. Please, please, please.