Lie to Me (25 page)

His eyes come back up to mine while he plays with my breasts, picking up the tempo of the steady rhythm that’s already pulsing between my legs, calling for him again. Needing him.

“Marcus,” I pant. I’m quickly becoming desperate.

He pulls me down against him and kisses me while his hands move around to my back and down to my ass. He grips me there, firmly, his fingers digging in, and his kiss deepens.

Then he begins to lift me up, off of his legs, over his cock. To guide me.

Our wet mouths come apart, only inches away, and I’m breathing hard. I put my hands on his chest just to feel him, and his heart is beating as fast as mine. Marcus locks eyes with me again, not needing to say anything at all, and slowly lowers me onto his pulsing erection.

“I need to see you,” he says.

I nod. I couldn’t put a name to this, but I get it. I need him to see me, too. I need to see him. I need to know that I can make Marcus Roma lose control. I need to feel the ways we make each other whole. I need to feel the exact ways it will hurt when it comes to an end.

Marcus says, “Make yourself come for me.”

And I know he loves me, just like I love him. If only that were enough.

Maybe we’re both doomed.

chapter 15

MARCUS

Lo and I are driving up to see Dill for parents’ weekend at his genius camp, and for the first time in years I’m feeling kinda worried.

I’ve been staying at Lo’s since that night someone tried to break in. Since the night she told me some asshole tried to rape her. Since the night I learned that leaving her was so much worse than I thought it was.

She let me in that night and it’s been touch and go since, but I’m still here. Neither of us knows what the hell she’s doing. And I go back and forth between hating myself in ways I didn’t know were possible because of what I let happen to her, to being so happy that she’s let me back into her life, no matter how long it lasts.

At least I have the comfort of knowing what I want in the end: I want her. Simple. I’ll figure out how that fits into the rest of my life later, and if it needs to, the rest of my life changes.

For her? It’s more complicated. For one thing, there’s Dill. For another, there’s trust. And I can’t even help her by telling her why I broke her heart other than to keep repeating, over and over again, like an idiot, that I did it because I loved her.

It’s not fair to expect her to believe that and I don’t think she does, not all the way. She knows I loved her, knows I still love her. I just don’t think she can make that fit with how I left her.

But I think she’s trying, which is more than I deserve.

That thought brings me a smile. The sex helps, too.

I can’t keep my hands off of her. I can’t get over how good she feels, how perfect she is. I would spend all day, every day, making her come if she’d let me. I look over at her, driving her sexy car in one of those tiny little tank tops, a skirt, and sunglasses, and I think about telling her to pull over, but I decide it’s not the time. I had planned on coming with her to this parent’s day thing just because I’m not comfortable with her going alone, not with the Alex Wolfe situation, and not with what she told me—hell, I never want her to be alone again—but it was nice to be asked. Makes me feel like I have a real shot.

As opposed to the aforementioned Alex Wolfe situation, which makes me feel fucking murderous.

Alex swore to me—swore—that he didn’t have anything to do with the break-in. But I know him. I’ve seen him do worse. I’ve helped him do worse on other deals, in other places. Break into someone’s house, mess it up just to scare the crap out of them, maybe throw them around a little? Par for the course with that man.

It makes me feel sick.

He’s promised me this is different. He understands Harlow is different. I’m starting to understand that she isn’t different, necessarily, she’s just mine. I’m disgusted with the things I’ve done for Alex, even though I had damn good reasons for doing them, and I have no intention of doing them ever again. And that’s something I’ll have to deal with eventually.

I wish Alex wasn’t like this.

And I wish I could believe him. What’s worse is that I want to believe him, and I worry that this makes me weak. And I can’t afford to be weak when Harlow is depending on me, even if she doesn’t know it. Because the fundraiser and lobbying event she’s set up at The Alley is coming up, and I’m maybe the only person in the neighborhood not surprised that Harlow’s pulled it off. Harlow and Shantha have kicked ass, and I know there’ll be members of the zoning board there, the ones Alex couldn’t bribe, and they’ll be receptive.

One of them is even thinking about running for City Council.

All of which means my girl has actually managed to fight the man no one else has been able to fight, and she’s even shown that she might be able to hurt him. So she’s a threat to Alex Wolfe. And that is fucking dangerous.

So yeah, I was going to tag along today even if she didn’t ask. But it’s nice to know she wants me here, nice to think about how she wants me to spend time with Dill. But a little scary for a man like me, too, because if there’s one thing I don’t know about, it’s being a good father.

So. Like I said, worried.

But willing to overlook it while we purr up the highway in this fantastic ride. For some reason Harlow has a recent Challenger, black, tricked out, sexy as hell. And the woman has learned how to drive stick.

Yeah, I’m thinking about telling her to pull over again.

“Baby, where the hell did you get this car?” I ask her.

Funny, I’m not even expecting a real answer. You know, something like, “A dealership, same as anyone.” I just didn’t really think she had a thing for muscle cars.

But then she looks at me and gives me this flirtatious little smile with those beautiful red lips, and says, “A rock star gave it to me as a special thank you present.”

What the actual fuck?

Look, I’m a man. I’m a certain kind of man. I hired a private investigator to check up on Harlow for years, and specifically told him not to tell me about any men in her life because I didn’t want to commit any crimes and screw up her life any more than I already had. And I’m eventually going to find a way to track down the piece of garbage who hurt her, and hurt him right back. So she tells me she did something for a rock star to get this car as a goddamn thank you present, sitting there in that skirt with her thighs that I want so badly showing, and the words just bypass my rational mind and go straight to whatever the hell it is that makes men do stupid things.

“Pull over,” I say.

She smiles wider. “No.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“Declan Donovan.”

“Why?”

Man, why do I even ask that question? What am I going to do if the answer is that they used to screw around? All it will accomplish is that I’ll have an aneurysm, and then I’ll have to buy her a new car, because she sure as hell won’t be driving this one around anymore. And then I’ll have to go hunt down a famous rock star, which sounds like a pain in the ass. But I still have to know.

Harlow actually holds out a few more seconds before she starts laughing. She looks at me kind of slyly, and I know she’s been messing with me.

“Relax, caveman,” she says. “I lent his girlfriend my parents’ old car one night when she needed it, and this was his thank you.”

Fun fact: The word ‘relax’ doesn’t actually lower the levels of testosterone in my blood that are now sky high and telling me to do all kinds of dumb shit.

I say, “All you did was lend a friend your car, and he bought you this?”

“She wasn’t a friend,” Harlow says sharply. I know she’d kick my ass if was any more of a jerk, and I love that about her. “I’d only met her that night.”

“And you lent her your car?”

Even through all my possessiveness I can feel Harlow’s mood change a little bit, get a little somber, maybe. Now I’m worried about her.

“Tell me what happened,” I say.

“No, it’s nothing like that,” she says, looking at me with this soft expression on her face, the kind of thing that makes me want to do things for her. “It’s not anything bad. It’s just… Your boss Mr. Wolfe did something incredible for me once for no reason. So I try to do that for other people when I can. That’s all.”

I turn to stone. I don’t want her to say the rest even though I know what it’s going to be, because when I hear it out loud, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep quiet. And I have to keep my mouth shut, for Harlow’s sake. This is exactly what I can’t tell her about.

Harlow takes a deep breath and says, “Mr. Wolfe got me Dill. He was at the custody hearing, and I think… I mean, you know the kind of influence he has. He’s the only reason I have custody. He did that for me.”

Dear God, please let me hold this in.

I have to squeeze my hands into fists and concentrate on the road ahead, trying to let the anger and unfairness of the whole situation go. I have to remind myself that it’s good that she has Dill, no matter how it happened. It’s good that Alex saw to it himself. And of course Harlow would show gratitude; that’s how she’s built.

She’s watching the road, but she steals a look at me. It’s a love note and an apology all wrapped up in one. Like she’s trying to tell me she understands about feeling indebted to Alex Wolfe. Like she thinks that’s what’s going on with me and she understands. I hate to see her feel guilty about anything.

She says, “I’m just saying, I know stuff with Alex Wolfe is complicated.”

Lo doesn’t know the half of it.

***

Going to see Dill, talking about Alex Wolfe, has me thinking about my family. About fathers. I lost one father and got a new one in the space of a week, and they were both pretty crappy at the job.

Let me explain.

My dad died. About a year and half after Harlow’s parents were killed. I don’t talk about him much, or at least not more than I have to, for reasons that will be obvious. His name was Juan Roma, and he hated me. I’d figured that much out by the time he passed, but I never knew why he hated me, and I figured I might never know. It was one of those things that just was, but that I would never stop trying to change. That was how I got into boxing in the first place, because Juan Roma loved it, and even as a little boy I knew things weren’t quite right with him and me, but I thought that maybe, maybe if I learned to fight, he’d respect me like he respected the fighters on TV.

Didn’t quite work out like that, but luckily I was a natural. I probably needed the outlet anyway.

Now, it wasn’t just Juan that didn’t like me. My moms wasn’t such a big fan either. My mother was different about it, though. Juan actively hated me; you could see it in his face when he looked at me, this contempt, like he was look at something the dog dragged in. My moms? She would just prefer not to look at me at all, like it hurt her when she did.

I probably should have been more fucked up in the head than I was. Finding Harlow when I did saved my ass, made me into a real person. Gave me a purpose.

And by the time my dad died, Harlow wasn’t over what happened to her parents or anything, not by a long shot, but she wasn’t broken anymore, either. She’d come back alive, and now it wasn’t the end of her, it was just something that hurt a whole hell of a lot. But Harlow was strong, Harlow could handle it by then. And Harlow had me.

And then Juan died, and I was confused as hell.

Weird, right? You watch someone go through what Harlow went through, and you can’t help but think about what you would do in that situation. And I was so confident, like I’d learned from her or something, like I knew I’d be just fine.

Let me tell you, that is not how it works. I found out Juan died of a heart attack at work in the auto shop, just keeled over, dead before the ambulance even got there, and my reaction?

I was pissed off.

I was beyond pissed off. It was like all the anger at him over all those years finally ripened inside me, because now I was never going to get to tell him myself. He was never going to explain to me why he hated me. He was never going to give me a goddamned reason.

My mom couldn’t look at me at all. She had family come in to help her with the arrangements, wouldn’t even talk to me. They even sent my cousin Petey to tell me that the life insurance wouldn’t cover the funeral and ask if I could I kick in.

Which is how I ended up fighting in an underground ring out in Queens for decent money. Seemed like killing two birds with one stone: fight, make the money, work off that anger. Get out of the house where I wasn’t wanted.

Harlow wasn’t at the first fight. And she got pissed when she found out where I’d been, like I didn’t have a right to put my body at risk without her say-so, or at least without her being there. So after that I let her come. And knowing she was there, in the crowd, watching me?

That made me deadly.

So the day of the wake, I was set to fight later in the evening. I didn’t let Harlow come to the wake with me, because I thought it would remind her too much of her parents. She put up a little argument, but in the end she agreed, which is how I knew I was right. Yeah, my dad dying wasn’t a walk in the park, but it was nothing like what she went through. No sense in making it harder on her.

The wake was a total shitshow. You’d think the son would be welcome at his father’s wake, but damn, I was like a leper. It had never been so obvious to me how much I wasn’t wanted around these people. I don’t know, maybe I just stopped covering up for them, or maybe I just stopped making excuses.

But none of it made sense until I talked to Alex Wolfe.

I thought I knew why he was there. He was my godfather, after all, even if I’d never understood why. He just waited in the back, not talking to anyone, which was weird for him, being the guy who knew everyone, the guy who was in business with everyone somehow. This time he just stood there, looking at me. Waiting for me.

So after I got tired of being the odd man out at my own father’s funeral, I confronted Mr. Wolfe, as I still called him then. Remember, I was pissed off. Normal people, if they talked to Alex Wolfe like I talked to him, they’d have reason to be scared about what might happen to them after they got done talking.