Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) (16 page)

J.J. nodded. One of his crew dropped the winch until Stone’s feet were on the floor, and then J.J. put a bullet in the back of his head.

Nick went to a sink against one wall and washed his hands. “Matty—open the box, see if he’s alive.”

Matty opened the foot locker and pulled off Chi-Chi’s hood. “Yeah, boss. Conscious, even.”

Drying his hands with a couple of paper towels, Nick went over to the box. From his tightly folded, excruciating position, Chi-Chi made a silent plea with his eyes. Nick shook his head. “You got Jimmy killed. You got Brian hurt.” At the name, thoughts he’d shoved out of his way crowded in, and Nick paused. “You tried to set us up. If I thought you had anything to do with my father”—Chi-Chi’s eyes went wide and he tried to shake his head—“I know you didn’t. Stone told us when you turned. Stone told us everything we need. So I need only one thing from you. A suffering death.”

He nodded, and Matty closed the lid, dampening Chi-Chi’s already muffled screams. “Chain it up. And wrap up Stone. Time for a boat ride.”

~oOo~

Nick, Matty, J.J., and Sam took Nick’s cruiser far out into the ocean and sent Stone’s naked, weighted dead body overboard. Then the chained box containing the living traitor went over. Nick stood in the moonlight and watched the swirling, bubbling ocean take down yet another batch of secrets, more fodder for the beasts.

Most of his time on the ocean was spent at night, far out, when it was a vast, silent, black void that went on forever in all directions. Nick stared and stared, feeling the old sense of kinship.

“Boss?” Matty’s voice was quiet, hesitant.

Nick looked over his shoulder. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

They headed back for Quiet Cove Harbor. Home. His work tonight was not yet done. He had falsified death records to arrange. And Brian’s mother to inform and console.

And, when he could allow himself the luxury, his best friend to mourn.

~ 10 ~

Beverly woke and opened her eyes. Her bedroom was still dark, so without even bothering to look at her clock, she rolled to her other side—easing herself over in a careful move that had become habit since she’d been hurt and was now, ten days after the bombing, more the need of habit than anything else. She’d been feeling a lot better.

And then she yelped and jumped back, pulling her ribs enough to remind her that, while she felt better, she was not entirely healed.

Nick was sitting on the side of her bed, staring at her. He was shirtless—no, he was naked.

In the five days since he’d told her he wanted to be with her, he’d seen her for at least a couple of hours every day, except the day that had just passed, but they had not been intimate at all. Nothing more than kissing. He was a brilliant kisser, controlling but not overwhelming, rough but not brutal. But he’d insisted that he wanted her healed before they did more, and no matter how she’d cajoled, he wouldn’t go even so far as he had that first afternoon. Which was, even though it had been only high-school-level friskiness, way up on her list of hottest things ever. She was going crazy trying to get into this man’s pants.

And here he was, in the middle of the night, sitting naked on the side of her bed.

God, if this was a dream, she did not want to wake up.

“Nick?”

He said nothing. For another few seconds, he stared, and then he leaned over, tugging the covers out of her hand and throwing them away. Then he kissed her, his mouth crashing down and his hand twisting into her hair, clutching and pulling. The kiss was overwhelming and brutal, and it took her breath away.

Ignoring the pull and pinch in her chest, Bev wrapped her arms around him, feeding her hands into his short, dark hair as she tried to keep up with demands of his mouth, tongue, teeth. His hair was wet, and then she realized that he smelled strongly of soap and shampoo. He’d come to her straight from a shower. Fleetingly, she wondered if something had happened during the day. He’d told her that the day was important and that he would be away—had something gone wrong? But then his hand was out of her hair and moving down to grip her thigh, roughly pulling her legs apart, and she stopped wondering. All she could do was marvel.

She wore a nightgown—nothing fancy, just a little pink cotton thing with spaghetti straps and a big sunflower on the front—and as he moved between her legs, he grabbed a handful of the cotton and yanked it up, baring her breasts and all the rest of her. She didn’t wear underwear to bed.

His hand went first to her breast, and
sweet Jesus
, he felt good. She remembered the night of the bomb, when he’d helped her undress. She’d felt the weight of his gaze on her like a touch. A few days later, in her kitchen, he’d plucked hard at her nipple through her clothes. Those had been intensely erotic experiences. But this, his large, hot hand on her bare skin, his palm, and then his thumb, massaging her sensitive, zinging nipple until it was a nearly painfully hard knot of pleasure—nothing compared to it.

It was so much more than her breast, too. His long, fantastic, fully naked body was on hers, and he was not still. She could feel the muscles of his thighs flexing between hers as he drove his hips against her, keeping time with his mouth and hand. She could feel his hard length digging into her stomach. In all of it, she could feel his need, strongest of all. This strong, intense man, so dangerous, so full of controlled power, was nearly desperate in his need. Of her. Her clear sense of that truth was the most erotic, overwhelming part of this erotic, overwhelming occurrence. He needed her.

Moaning, she flexed her hips hard, driving herself up against him, trying to let him know, in this silence he clearly needed, that she was in, that she was his, that he could have her, take her, take what he needed. When she did, he grunted and tore his mouth from hers.

And then, staring down at her, he shifted, releasing her breast, reaching down and hooking her leg over his arm, dragging it up high, high enough that her thigh, ten days without yoga or much exercise at all, complained a little. Bev didn’t care. It could join the complaints of her ribs; she was ignoring it all in favor of the other, beautiful feelings filling her. He shifted again and pushed into her with impatient force, still staring into her eyes, his tormented expression illuminated only by the pale light reaching them from the kitchen, where she kept the light over the range on at night.

Nick was big, bigger than she’d been prepared for, and the stretch and sting was at first intense. And then he thrust again, harder, grunting. And then he seemed to lose all control. With one arm around her leg and the other shoved under her back, he dropped his head to her shoulder and just fucked her, wildly, fiercely, rapidly. Punctuating every brutal thrust with a violent, growling grunt in her ear, he slammed into her again and again and again.

At first, Bev was afraid—it was far more intense than any sexual experience she’d ever had, and she could feel that it was more than physical need, somehow. There was something dark and dangerous in his wild abandon, something that she knew, that she could sense, transcended his assertion that he was not a gentle lover.

But her fear was quickly overtaken and silenced by her own need. He felt so
good
. His body on hers, in hers, felt incredible; his need of her, wild and consuming, suffused every physical sensation with emotion and intensified it all. Soon she was grunting with him, bringing her free leg up and around his waist, closing her fists in his hair, biting down on his shoulder as the waves of ecstatic frenzy rose and rose inside her until they crashed, and she threw her head back and cried out.

His thrusts continued their frantic pace for long afterward, extending her release until her body was a quivering, over-stimulated, exhausted mass, and then his pace changed, became syncopated, and he went still, with one last, anguished grunt that went on and on.

All at once, he relaxed, his full weight coming down onto her for the first time. Her need sated, her release achieved—and his, too—the complaints of Bev’s still-healing body began to clamor. She withstood for as long as possible, loving and wanting this supreme closeness, but she couldn’t breathe, and the pain grew until she thought she’d cry.

“Nick,” she whispered, trying not to sound distressed. He didn’t respond. “Nick, my chest.”

Her words took a beat to sink in, but then he said, “Fuck,” and pulled away—and then all the way up, out of her, off the bed. He grabbed his track pants off the floor of her bedroom and pulled them on, then left the room completely.

Bev lay there, stunned. She watched, too shocked to feel anything else, as he walked down her short hallway to the living room. Expecting him to leave, she felt a surge of relief when he went to her sofa and sat down. Then he put his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands.

She sat up and watched him for a minute or two. He didn’t move. So she got up and went to him.

When she sat next to him, one leg tucked under so she could face him, he didn’t react. She scooted closer and kissed his shoulder. Keeping her voice calm and soft, feeling like she was trying to soothe a wild animal, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

He lifted his head and dropped his hands, letting them dangle between his thighs. But he didn’t look at her. “I’ll send someone to the drugstore when it opens.”

She hadn’t expected him to say anything like that. “What?”

He turned his head slightly, but still not enough to make eye contact. “I didn’t use a condom.”

“Oh!” She let that sink in some more. “Oh! No—it’s okay. I’m on the Pill. And I’m healthy. If you are, then it’s okay.” She had no concerns about his health. Maybe that was stupidly trusting, but she simply felt sure he was healthy.

Now he looked at her. “You didn’t think that was something I should know?”

“Well, yeah. Of course. But I don’t know…it’s a weird thing to just bring up out of the blue, you know? Usually I use condoms anyway until I’m serious with a guy. When I know it’s safe. But it’s okay—I’m not worried.” A tiny nit of worry goosed her then. “Should I be?”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a barely-smile. “No.” Now that his eyes were on her, he studied her, that small smile gone. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

She smiled brightly, teasing, trying to lighten his mood a little. “I thought you didn’t have regrets.”

His only answer was a short, audible exhale, the stunted syllable of a mirthless laugh.

She kissed his shoulder again. “That was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life. My ribs happily suffered a moment’s discomfort for it. But something’s wrong, Nick. Will you tell me? Can you?”

He pushed his hand into her hair, cradling the side of her head. His eyes, once they’d met hers, had not left. “Brian died today.”

“Oh, no. Oh, my God.” He hadn’t told her much about his life yet, but he’d talked about Brian several times. She’d met him at Neon, of course. He had saved her and Nick both that night. He was Nick’s best friend. “I’m so sorry.”

She rose onto her knees on the sofa and encircled him in her arms, his head tucked to her chest. He resisted at first, holding his body rigid, and then he gave in, resting against her, but only lightly, his hands going around her waist. They sat like that, silently, for a long time. Bev felt even closer to Nick like this, giving him comfort, than she had earlier, in her bed, though she understood that she’d been giving him comfort then, too.

She knew not to ask what had happened; he would tell her if he wanted to, and she had no need to know. In the time she’d known more than simply his name and face, two people close to him had died. Maybe more than that, for all she knew. She and he had almost been killed by a bomb. In the time she’d known Nick Pagano even existed, others had been killed, including his father. That story, and the events at his funeral, had made the news. She’d been online, too, in the past week and a half, and she had a fuller understanding of Nick’s own reputation.

He had not exaggerated when he’d told her that he and his life were dark and violent.

Chris was right: she was making a dangerous choice. Maybe even a foolhardy choice. But it didn’t matter. If this was the latest incarnation of her bad-boy fetish, then so be it. But she didn’t think it was that. She’d seen his eyes when he’d told her that he treasured what was his. Nick was usually inscrutable, his face a dark mask, but that day, when he’d come in to know why she’d been crying, she’d seen past his controlled exterior, and she had seen his regard for her. Since that day, he had been more open to her. She knew it; she trusted in it. He was dangerous, but not to her.

She kissed his still-damp head and dropped a hand to his back, rubbing over that broad expanse of muscle and skin. And that amazing tattoo. Sitting back on her heels, she kissed the top of one wing. “You have feathers, too.”

He chuckled a little. “Mine are a lot different from yours.”

Realizing that this was the first chance she’d ever had to get a really good look at his back, she turned a little to study the artwork.

His feathers really were a lot different from the light, downy puffs on her wrist. His made up enormous angel’s wings that seemed to have burst painfully from his shoulder blades. They arced over the curve of his shoulders and swept down his sides, trailing off below his waistband. The wings, the feathers, seemed to be made of steel and were inked with so much talent and precision they seemed to have actual weight.

The sword that spanned the length of his spine, from the grip, beginning at the base of his neck, to the point, again below his waistband, was intricately detailed. The metal seemed to be etched with ancient runes and symbols, and the grip was like carved, grained wood. The barbed wire that wound around it all made Bev ache a little in its brutality. And then she noticed that some of the barbs had been made to look as if they’d pierced his skin.

His ink was the opposite of hers in every way. Hers was meant to remind her of lightness and freedom. His was weight and pain.

She kissed the wing on his shoulder again. “What’s the story of your ink?”

He smiled a little at that and then reached across his body, took her hand from his shoulder, and held it. “What do you know about the archangels?”