Black (4 page)

Goddamn it. I raged with a slam of the door and tore off my vest, ripping the trousers down my legs and throwing the white shirt off just in time to grasp my thick demanding dick in both palms, squeezing the base tightly. I pumped with my right hand, twisting at the tip as I thought of the taste of her skin, the feel of her tongue against mine, the smell of her fucking pussy pulsing with wetness for me. I came in long pent-up spurts that covered the creamy tile before trailing down the drain.

My chest heaving, cold water pounding my back, I landed against the shower wall, angry that I’d let go with her like that too soon. I’d probably scared her off. I’d probably find her long gone, never to return. Then I’d be left without a librarian’s assistant, and without my beautiful Elle. What a fucking sad case I would be. Just like I was all the days before she’d stepped into my life.

I wound my way back downstairs ten minutes later, feeling more composed but no less at ease than I had before leaving her in a thunderous rage. I was surprised to find the sign flipped to open, and Elle behind the circulation desk, a smile on her face as she helped an elderly woman. “It’s about a billionaire who likes to…” the old woman leaned in to whisper to Elle, embarrassed. I didn’t need to hear her words to know what she wanted. Women came in here multiple times a week looking for the naughty shelf.

I grinned when Elle’s eyes widened for a moment before she blushed and then came around the desk, escorting the woman to the end-cap of books I’d told Elle most of the women came here for.
We should really expand that section
, I thought. Maybe I’d put her on the task of researching some popular independent titles that we could order. Elle turned and her eyes fell on mine, a frown crossing her face before she cut around me and went back to her post at the circulation desk. Fuck. I had messed this up already. Maybe I could get her flowers or some shit. Wasn’t that what a man was supposed to do when he wanted to say sorry? I ran a palm through my hair, feeling so far out of my comfort zone it was ridiculous. I half wanted to give up and fire her just to avoid the anxiety of it all.

But I needed her. And I sensed something in her. Something that needed protecting. I felt it deep in my bones, and my cock didn’t mind having her around either. So it seemed a win-win for all. I wasn’t good at the romantic gestures, but I was willing to give it a try if it meant keeping her around.

Eight

Elle

I snuck out early, before Maxwell could tie me up with his dark gaze and intoxicating tongue. I’d given him a fake address on the application, but I still didn’t put it past him to follow me. He seemed to become almost obsessed; it felt like his desires would consume him. It was like looking at two different beings--the man and the beast. Maxwell Black haunted me in ways I couldn't even describe.
 

I pounded up the steps of the two-story walk-up on the backside of town, only a few blocks from the library but more than a few left and right turns to confuse someone. I didn’t want to be found in this tucked away, tiny upstate town. I needed a break from the crazy I’d left, but here I was jumping into another intense situation with someone.
But it’s just sex,
a little devil in the back of my mind reminded.

We could just be friends who had sex, couldn’t we? I dismissed the idea with a shake of my head, knowing deep down it would never work, especially for a girl like me. I wore my feelings on my sleeve; no way could I be intimate with someone and not allow it to lead to more. My heart was just too big.

My thoughts drifted to a memory of something my mother used to say after my father would turn his sights on my fragile teen ego, calling me a fat, disgusting pig before roaring out of the house in a drunken rage and shacking up with yet another strange woman for a few weeks. Momma would hold me so tightly in those moments I thought my lungs might burst, but as she rocked me against her chest, tears in both our eyes, she promised that I was beautiful. She said I was a strong and beautiful woman and that my heart was so massive that it couldn’t even fit in the bodies of those women my father found desirable. He didn’t see the beauty of hearts. My heart shuddered at the painful words that still resonated
 
in my mind.

I stepped through the door and grabbed the takeout pizza menu from the fridge before dialing and placing an order for delivery. I would have been ridiculed for eating pizza in the past, which was why I loved every single slice that passed my lips. Besides, I was starving. Getting this job with Maxwell at the library meant I could finally afford a proper dinner, and I would make it last a few days.
 
It was either takeout or chips and fruit again and I just wanted a warm meal.

While lunch with Maxwell had been interesting, I hadn’t been able to stomach more than a bite, and after he’d stomped off like I’d burned him with acid, I’d sat in the bathroom for ten minutes, praying he wouldn’t come back down and ask to see me, tears streaming down my face and all. Whatever it was, it’d felt like rejection, and my immediate instinct had been to run and hide. Not let anyone see my pain, keep it strong, internalize. Vulnerability showed weakness, and weakness wasn’t something I could afford at this moment. Not if I was going to keep a low profile and start a new life.

So while Maxwell had left my tummy in twists all day, it’d also started to eat itself. I hung up the phone a moment after ordering from the only pizza place in town and stalked to the bathroom, shedding my work clothes on the way in favor of comfy leggings and a tank top. I threw my hair into a ponytail and then stepped up to the bathroom vanity. A plump girl with uneven skin and frizzy hair stared back at me. I frowned, then tried to see what Maxwell might see. He couldn’t seem to keep his hands off me, and while I’d never felt especially pretty before, he made me feel like a goddess. Or maybe he was just a hermit who hadn’t had contact with a woman in decades.

My unruly Italian locks never obeyed and were always getting in my face, but maybe it added to the mystery. I pulled my hair down and flipped it over one shoulder, making a kissy face like Greta Garbo in the mirror. My lips were full, at least there was that. I remembered the bite of his teeth against my bottom lip earlier, shuddering at the release it’d brought.

My eyes fell to the rounded curve of my bust, my nipples hard and pebbled through the thin cotton of my undershirt.

I sighed, pulling my hair back and thinking it wasn’t good for anyone to look at themselves for too long in the mirror, before a loud
rap, rap
pulled me into the living room.

“That was quick,” I said as I opened the door, thrusting money in the stranger’s hands. The stranger without a pizza.

“You always throw money at strange men?” Maxwell Black’s dark eyes danced with mischief.

I huffed in response, turning and tossing the money on the table, already accustomed to the fact that he was here, invading my space and my life, which he’d been doing a lot of lately.

“Why’d you run out so quick?” Maxwell closed the door behind him before following me into the small galley kitchen.

“I just needed to get my thoughts together after you ran out on me and all at lunch.” Oh man, where had that come from?

“Heh.” He laughed awkwardly and put a hand through his hair. “‘Bout that. I should have explained.”

“It’s okay. ‘You’re not pretty enough. It’s too soon. It’s not you, it’s me.’ I’ve heard it all. I don’t need to hear another excuse.”

“Pretty enough? Are you fucking kidding me?” He nearly lunged across the small space and his big hand wrapped around my shoulders as if he was about to shake some sense into me.

I shrugged, avoiding his eyes as tears burned in mine. Rejection took the air out of my lungs as if the ground had fallen out from under me. Like a cold truth biting the face, the wind whispering that I was simply not good enough... That’s why I didn’t do this dating thing well. I remembered it all now.

“You’re fucking gorgeous, Elle. You walk away and I want to sink my hands into that ass and fuck you until neither one of us can see straight,” he finished and swept the air from my lungs.
What?
“I like a woman to look like a woman. Something to hang on to when I fuck. I love your soft curves, the beautiful roundness of your belly. The curves of your body are magical, my own personal roadmap to Heaven. I am a hard man—a rough man. I want a beautiful woman to touch.” He leaned closer. “I want my hardness to become lost in you.” His words sent shudders up my neck and coursed need through my synapses. “So you are more than pretty; you’re perfect, you are everything. I love your body.”

His palm ran up my waist and curved around my breast, lifting its heavy weight in one palm. My breath skipped and my knees wobbled before Maxwell lifted me by my thighs and sat my ass on the edge of the counter. I wrapped my thighs around his hard waist and nestled his straining length between the heat of my legs, only thin cotton separating us. Jesus, he was huge and hard. Every long hard inch pressed the roughened fabric of my clothes against my clit. My breaths grew shorter as I thought about how much I wanted him,
really
wanted him. Taken and owned by him. This ravaged man with the angry scar slashed across his cheek and the words that came out of his mouth in a grizzly tone. A tone that sent lightning bolts straight to my clit.

A bell chimed through my small apartment.

“Jesus Christ,” Maxwell uttered, his heavy hands holding my thighs tightly, his hips rocking just minutely against my body.

“Pizza,” I whispered and laid my forehead on his shoulder in frustration.

“I’m trying to get inside you, but there’s always an interruption.” He dropped his hands from my thighs, pulling me down his body and off the counter. I stalked to the door, prepared to hand the delivery guy a bill and then drop the pizza at the table and go back to having my legs wrapped around Maxwell’s taut physique promptly.

Instead, when I opened the door, a pair of familiar eyes met mine. My heart thudded in my chest cavity and echoed in my ears. “What are you doing here?” I whispered, then chanced a glance behind me to catch Maxwell digging in my sparse fridge. I slipped out into the hallway and pulled the warm box of pizza from the man’s hand. A man I’d grown up with who’d always taken an unnatural interest in me and my father’s affairs. Exactly the problem I’d been trying to escape.

“He needs you.” Tony Scardelli’s gruff voice brought me right back to the outskirts of Boston, where Italian accents prevailed, a gleam in the eye and scars on fists the norm.

“I can’t help him, not anymore. I don’t have anything.” I gestured to the dingy living arrangements I’d found myself in, not that it was much nicer than where I’d come from.

“You’ve got to find it, Sweetie, or Jax will have his other eye.” Tony’s rough palm cupped my jaw, the sinister tone lacing through his words shooting fear from my head to the tips of my toes.

“His other…?” I’d left weeks ago. Dropped everything I owned and walked away after my father’s most recent gang of thugs had shown up on my doorstep, robbing me of the few valuable things I’d owned, including a diamond and pearl necklace from my mother. The only thing I had left of hers since she’d died. In short, my father had run our family into the ground on numerous occasions, to the tune of hundreds upon thousands of dollars over the years. He’d made his money, overspent with luxury homes and yachts, only to have it all repossessed only a few years later, on more than one occasion. And here he was, my mother long gone, and I meant to take her place, getting roughed up to pay his debts.

“They took his eye last Friday night. I guess I thought you knew. Had a bitch of a time finding ya, until your dad said you went to college up around here, then I figured it was as good a shot as any. Point is...” His gaze settled on mine just as I heard a chair scrape across the floor from my apartment, reminding me of the big man that stood eating up all the sexual energy in my place.

“Look, I’m sorry. You know I am. If I had it, I’m sure I would make the foolish decision and give it all to him, but I don’t have a cent. I’m working part time at the library just to make rent here. You have to leave.” I pushed at his big chest just as the door swung open and Maxwell stepped into the hallway, a piercing look in his eyes.

“Got another friend?” His dark gaze turned to mine and nearly shook me to my core.
 
He was scary, like really scary when he gave that look. I was learning that quick.

“Just leaving,” Tony muttered, not breaking eye contact with me. “Two weeks, Sweetie. They’re giving him two weeks to make it right.” His eyes flashed to Maxwell’s. “I’ll be in touch.” He murmured, “Enjoy the pizza,” before tramping back down the stairs.

“Wait!” I called and thrust the pizza box into Maxwell’s hands before running down the stairs after Tony.

“Elle!” Maxwell’s deep boom sounded behind me and nearly rooted me to my spot. My eyes froze on Tony’s, and with my hands trembling I begged, “Please don’t tell him where I am. Please,” I pleaded just as Maxwell’s palm gripped at my elbow and pulled me back against his chest.

“Time for you to go,” he growled at Tony before slamming the entry door and hauling me back up the stairs to my apartment. When I reached the landing, I saw the box of pizza lying in the corner on the floor where he’d dropped it to chase me down the stairs. He really did care about me. The thought warmed the chilled chambers of my heart.

“What the fuck was that about?” Maxwell yanked me into my space before I pulled from his grip and darted for the pizza box.

“I’m hungry.” I shrugged when I sauntered back in, determined to stay levelheaded. He might be my new employer, but that did not give him the right to nose around in my business. “And those are family matters.” I tossed the box on the counter and opened it then thought better when I saw the cheesy ooze had stuck across the top of the box. “You ruined my pizza!” I turned on him, prepared to read him my own mini riot act when his expression stopped me in my tracks.

“Fuck the pizza.” He looked furiously angry, raging mad, and barely containable. His fist clenched at his sides, shoulders bunched and tight with anxiety, the hard set of his shadowed jaw line and the clean cut of his dark hair, in contrast to that angry slash of scar tissue decorating his cheekbone. “I’ll take you out for a proper dinner once you tell me what the fuck is going on. No more bullshit.” He advanced a few steps, closing the space between us, his jaw twisting with anger and having that effect down low in my belly that’d only ever been born of him.