Ryan (Mallick Brothers #2)(26)

My fingers slid up his arm, the side of his neck, resting just under his jaw, as his cock pressed against me and did a stroke.

Then, before I even felt him pull back and away, his cock slid inside me in one long, thick, slow stroke.

There was a slight burning pinch as he stretched me, unused to the invasion after so long, but when he pressed in to the hilt and stilled, his eyes on mine, bodies connected, nothing had ever felt more right, more perfect.

I had expected soft and sweet, like everything else had been between us.

But the second he was inside me and our eyes held each others- something seemed to overtake us at the same time. It was something wild, primal, desperate.

He pulled out and slammed back into me and my hips rose to meet him. Just hard at first, then both hard and fast. Our breathing went shallow, our bodies seemed to battle, both desperate for victory. My whimpers became moans that were loud to even my own ears and his silence became hisses and grunts of need as I started to tighten around him, as he got impossibly harder inside me.

He slammed forward one more time and the world went white for a second as an orgasm more intense than I knew was possible started where we met and exploded outward until it seemed to encompass my entire body. His name screamed from my lips and mine hissed from his as he buried deep, jerking upward as he came with me.

Again, perfect.

His head tucked into my neck, staying there for a long time while his breathing evened out. He pressed a kiss there before pushing up, eyes heavy, but assessing. "Okay?" he asked, balancing on one arm so he could brush a strand of my hair out of my face.

"No," I said shaking my head, watching as his whole face tensed. "Not okay. That's not even close to how good I feel right now," I admitted, smile as I watched him exhale hard and relax again.

"Let me up for a minute, honey," he demanded and it was about then that I realized my legs were crossed around his hips and my arms over his upper back.

I loosened my grip and he slid out of me, planting a kiss to my forehead before taking his feet and walking to the bathroom.

Alone, I scooted up the bed and slid under the sheets and comforter, rolling onto my side facing the bathroom door to shamelessly watch him walk back out a moment later, completely, gloriously naked toward me. 

He got to the side of the bed, lifted the sheets, slid in, and propped up against the pillows. His arm slid beneath me. "Come here, Dusty," he said, his voice soft.

And, well, when a hot as all sin man went down on you, screwed you blind, deaf, and dumb, and then demanded you cuddle up with him, you cuddled up with him.

I practically flew at him and his arm wrapped around my lower back, holding tight as the other hand sifted through my hair and drifted lazily up and down my back.

"Alright, I think it's time," he said oddly, pulling me out of a dreamy, almost sleepy haze.

"Time?" I repeated, running my fingers over his coat of arms again, tracing the letters of his last name.

"Told you I would tell you about my scars and my past and my family," he went on, making me snap fully awake.

"Oh, right," I said, placing a kiss to his chest. "Okay. Lay it on me," I said, trying to be light because he had tensed a bit under me.

Whatever I might have been expecting, though, didn't even come close to the truth.





THIRTEEN





Ryan





I never had to have the 'talk' before.

I didn't mean the relationship talk or the 'we're only fucking each other and you're on the Pill' talk or even the 'this isn't going to work out' talk.

I meant the truth about my lifestyle talk.

Because fact of the matter was, I either never had a woman around long enough that I needed to explain it to her or she just knew from the jump. My family's reputation wasn't exactly secret around Navesink Bank. And while we all did have legitimate businesses, had reputations other than the family business, fact of the matter was, we would always be seen as loansharks and loanshark enforcers before we would be seen as gym owners or jewelry store owners or tattoo artists.

"Whatever it is can't be quite as nuts as being an agoraphobic involved with drug dealers," she went on when I didn't immediately speak.

I wasn't ashamed of my life, my family, how we made our money. Far from actually. But I was finding the words hard to bring forth.

And, I realized with an almost blinding clarity, it was because it mattered this time. She mattered this time.

Getting involved with Bry and his problems aside, she wasn't the type of girl who ended up with a fucking loanshark enforcer. She taught kindergarten. I had hardly heard her even fucking curse. She was good and sweet and clean.

All the things my life wasn't.

But fact of the matter was, there was no putting it off. Dusty wasn't some one night thing. She wasn't a fling. She wasn't even in the same ballpark as those women.

She mattered.

I wanted her.

I wanted her in a more permanent way.

And she had given me her story and she had given me her body.

It was time for me to give her my story.

Whatever the consequences.

I took a deep breath and gave her a squeeze.

"My father, brothers, and I all own businesses. We are legitimate businessmen. But that isn't all we are."

"Okay," she said, not sounding as nervous as I thought she might, especially given the tension in my voice.

"My father is and has always been a loanshark."

Right then, she did the damnedest thing. She fucking snorted.

When I didn't say I was kidding, she pushed up, big smile in place, her hair falling forward. "You're serious? A loanshark? Like a 'you give me your money or I break your kneecaps' kind of loanshark?"

Her smile was so infectious that my own lips twitched. But it was serious and I needed her to understand. "That's exactly what I mean, honey," I agreed. "And all my brothers and I, except Hunt, all work for him."



       
         
       
        

The smile slipped as her eyes went thoughtful, her brows drawing together so two little lines formed above her nose. "Work for him how?"

"We're enforcers," I admitted.

There it was out there.

She paused for a long second, searching my face, looking for humor, but finding none. "So an enforcer..."

"Does the kneecap breaking," I filled in for her.

Her tongue moved out, wetting her lips, and it took a fuckuva lot of self-control to not throw her back onto the bed and fuck her until she forgot I said anything about my family.

"Seriously?"

"Well, not exactly. There really isn't a whole helluva lot of kneecap breaking these days. I won't say it never happens, but it's rare."

"You beat people up?" she asked. I could see the gears turning, could see her putting the pieces together- my scars, the way I fought, my knowing about patching up injuries.

"On occasion. It's usually not me doing much of the beating, but it happens."

"Who does then?" she asked, not sounding horrified. If anything, she just seemed... curious. "I can't picture Mark hitting people. He's so... laid back."

"He does more of it than I do, but not by much."

She paused then, shaking her head. "Not Eli. Come on! He bonded with my cat! He gave him food off of his plate."

"Remember when Eli first walked in, when he got a look at your face and he froze and went all creepy and silent?"

She pressed her lips together slightly at that and nodded. "Yeah, that was a little weird."

"Eli was never meant to be violent. But we were raised to know that our family business involved violence, that we were all expected to follow in our father's footsteps. So Eli was, in a way, forced to be something he wasn't. And because of that, when he gets angry, it's nothing like you've ever seen before. It's brutal and primal and freaky as all hell to see. Eli is the last resort, when we've exhausted all other efforts."

"These other efforts would include your other brother, right? Shane? He's the one who does most of the... enforcing?"

"For the most part, yeah. He's good at it. He can keep control but still do damage without losing his fucking mind." She watched me for a long minute, a sort of mask down over her face, making her unreadable for a long time. "Tell me what's going on in there," I demanded, tapping her temple.

She shrugged a little at that. "I'm just wrapping my head around it. Have you ever been arrested?"

"No, honey."

"But I assume the cops around here know about what you guys do..."

"For the most part, yeah." 

"None of your brothers have been..."

"No," I cut her off. "Well, not for business reasons anyway."

Despite the heavy situation, her lips tipped up at the side. "What for then?"

"Drunk and disorderly mostly. Shane and Mark used to yuck it up something fierce and one of us would have to haul it down to the station and pull then out of the drunk tank and bring them home. Hasn't happened since they were in their twenties, but it happened. More than once. More than half a dozen times actually."

"If you all have other businesses and you are doing well, then why do you guys still do the loanshark thing?"

That was a valid question and one I didn't really have a satisfactory answer to. Why? Tradition, maybe might be appropriate to say. It was something my father built from the ground up. The only reason we could all eventually have things like our own businesses was because of all the work he put into it, the money that was every penny he had in the world that he loaned out with interest and then collected on. It hadn't always been easy. In those early days, he was pinching pennies. He and my mom struggled. Then the five of us came and added to the strain. But he finally started to do well, hired others to help him, and when we were old enough, we all wanted in.