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.