Deep (Chicago Underground #8)(15)

I could have helped him. I could have touched him.

I could have taken him out and tasted him.

But I wasn’t that forward. I wouldn’t even have known how to be. A hard teenage facade and brief stint in the Chicago underworld hadn’t change me at my core. I was still the innocent girl, the one who didn’t know how to please people, the one who didn’t really belong. I needed the roughness of his grip, the confidence of his tacit commands to tell me what to do.

His hand stroked my hair slowly, and that command at least was clear. Sleep.

I obeyed.





Chapter Thirteen

WATERY LIGHT FILTERED in through the plastic white blinds. Nightmares filled my head—the tang of blood, the taste of fear. I buried my face in the pillow, waiting for the memories to fade. It had been years now, but the dreams still came.

Except as I became fully awake, I realized this wasn’t a dream.

Last night. Philip. That really happened.

The bed was empty. I bolted upright and scanned the room. He wasn’t here. Then I heard the water running. The bathroom door was closed. He must have been in there. Even knowing that, even with the logical answer clear in my head, I knew a moment of pure panic. Someone was in my room, and I couldn’t be sure it was him.

Fear gripped my throat, making it hard to breathe. One day I’d been a sarcastic teenager, my biggest problems in life what lipstick to wear and passing my precalc test. Then men had dragged me out of the back of a club, and just like that, I wasn’t a little girl anymore.

I wasn’t quite a woman either. I had been collateral then.

And I wasn’t sure that had really changed.

Only the courage and kindness of a call girl saved me that day. She took me to the one man who could keep me safe from anyone, from anything. Because every dangerous, bad man in Chicago knew that he was worse.

So who could have hurt a man as powerful as him?

What had happened to him last night?

Shelly had kept in touch with me—with more than anonymous post cards. She had left the life for good and worked with a shelter helping other women do the same. And sometimes she would tell me about her time with Philip. Nothing dirty. The unexpectedly sweet parts. His love for his family. His loyalty. Things I fantasized about almost as much as his hard-packed body.

The bathroom door opened, and I tensed. I hadn’t been able to fully relax for years.

Except for last night, when he held me.

All that strength, wrapped around me. A shield. A shelter.

And so very temporary.

Philip still had his shirt off, exposing broad shoulders and muscled arms to the morning light. That sweeping tattoo across his chest was a gritty counterpoint to the sharp, tailored clothes he usually wore. It was like a secret, this tattoo—something buried beneath the surface of his suits and his guns, something only I could see.

My eyes drank in the secret, the black lines embedded in rough flesh. A strange rhythm beat through my veins—mine. As possessive of his body as his hands had been on me.

His attention was on the towel he still held to his side. When he pulled it away, I winced at the spill of bright red. The strange and unsettling arousal faded away, leaving only urgent concern.

“You need stitches,” I said, already crossing the room.

He reached for the first-aid kit on the counter. “I’m fine. I just need you to do the bandages again so I stop bleeding.”

It was a foreign pleasure that anyone would need me, that this man would need me. Even for something as ridiculous as applying bandages. “They’re not going to help. Not for long.”

“I don’t need them to last long,” he said. “Just until I can get home.”

“You keep a doctor on staff?”

“Still with the attitude, kitten? I thought you’d grown out of that.”

Indignation burned deep in my stomach, eclipsing my concern for him. “You don’t know a damn thing about me or the woman I’ve grown into.”

Heat flared in his dark eyes, and his gaze traveled low, past the neckline of my tank top and the strip of skin exposed at my waist, to the private place between my legs, the one that still throbbed just from looking at him. A pleased light entered his eyes that told me that, despite his pain and delirium, he remembered what had happened last night.

“I know how you sound when you come,” he murmured.

A moan escaped me, half protest, half desire. It probably sounded just like when I came.

“And I know what your hot * feels like when it rides my cock.” He paused, his gaze challenging me to deny it. “Or did I just dream that last night?”

I pressed my lips together. My cheeks burned hot. “You were the one who grabbed me. I didn’t want to hurt you by fighting you off. Now of course I see that you would have deserved it.”

“Probably,” he said, bending his head so we were close—so close. “Dreaming never felt that good. And I have dreamed about you, kitten. Don’t doubt that.”

Surprise flared in my chest—along with a kind of panic. From the first moment we met there had been a connection, a wild recognition from one animal to another. It didn’t need words. We both felt it, even when I was too young to actually do anything about it.

And I was still too young for him.

He was still too dangerous for me.

Nothing could happen between us beyond a rough grope in the dark.