I could wait, I could play with her some more, but my balls feel like they’re going to burst. I slam myself home, not holding back, fire singing through my veins as Sloane screams out my name.
My fingers dig into her hips as I pull her back against me. She doesn’t resist. She moves with me, sighing and melting against me as I thrust so hard I’m seeing stars myself. When we come, we come together, and we’re both incoherent.
Just. Too. Good.
We collapse together onto the bed as one, me still inside her, my body angled slightly to the side to keep my weight off her. When we’ve both regained our breath, I begin tracing my fingers absentmindedly up and down her side. Her skin is soft as silk. “You bought weird fruit,” I whisper into her hair.
She laughs, and the feel of it travels through her and into me, spreading some deep, strange contentment down into my bones. This woman is going to be the end of me. “I did it for you,” she says.
“Oh? How d’you figure that?”
“They say…” She seems bemused. “They say that if you eat lots of pineapple, it makes you taste good.”
The irony of what she’s said hits me full on, given that I’ve just used a piece of it between her legs. I bite down lightly on her shoulder, growling. “You don’t need to eat anything to taste good, Sloane. I’m addicted to how you taste, just as you are.”
She laughs. “Well, since you spend about ninety per cent of your day with your head between my legs, I just wanted to make sure you enjo—” The sound of my burner ringing on the bedside table cuts her off. We both just look at it. Before earlier this morning when the Barbieri brothers called me, the thing hasn’t rung in…in fucking forever. Since shit went down with my ex-employer and everything changed. And now it’s ringing again? Bets are on it being Theo again. I do not want to talk to him. I don’t want to talk to anyone who might be asking me to beat the ever loving shit out of anyone, or worse. It’s not as though I’ve gone soft. I’ll still tear anyone limb from limb should the situation require it, but it’s more on an as needed basis. For protection and defense as apposed to for money.
Sloane presses her face into the pillow, and a muffled, “You’d better get that,” reaches my ears. I do answer, but only because the people who are likely to call my burner aren’t the kind of people who give up after calling once.
When I hear the voice on the other end of the line, I find that the Barbieri situation has been escalated up the ranks. “Zeth,” Roberto Barbieri, the Barber of Brooklyn himself, says. “I hear you didn’t much like talking to my sons?”
“I’m more of an email kind of guy these days.”
“Good to know. I’ll make sure to forward you the details of our arrangement in a message once our conversation is over, then. Does that suit you?”
“And what arrangement might that be? I already told Theo, I’m not working for anyone else anymore.” I don’t like this guy’s tone of voice. I sure as fuck don’t like how he’s ruining my post orgasm glow. Sloane’s watching me with wide eyes, clearly able to hear what’s being said. There’s a time not too long ago when I would have left the room, but not anymore. I don’t hide anything from her these days. She knows all about the fights, the underground gambling, and the occasional gun deal that goes down at the fighting gym I run. She knows me, knows who I am, and knows I will never live on the straight and narrow like other, normal people. She can handle fights and dirty money so long as I’m not getting hurt. And she can handle the guns so long as I don’t get my ass shot.
I doubt very much she’d handle me going out on task for the Barber of Brooklyn, though.
“Zeth, you and I both know this sedentary life you’re leading isn’t what you were built for. You’re a cutthroat, just like I am. I’m coming for Seattle. You must have known someone would eventually. I’m laying out my cards here and now. New York is where the throne of my empire rests. I can’t be in two places at once. I need someone to run my west coast operations, and I want that someone to be you.”
“I have no interest in being your understudy, Roberto. Absolutely no fucking interest whatsoever.” The guy is crazy if he thinks I’m putting myself into yet another position like I was in with Charlie. You don’t climb out from underneath the shit heap only to voluntarily climb back under again.
“I can understand your reluctance, Zeth, I really can. But you are a very dangerous individual. If I place someone else in charge over there, I wouldn’t be able to allow a man like you to be operating in the same district. It wouldn’t be smart business.”
“I’m not operating. I run a few fights and broker a few deals. You don’t need to concern yourself with what I’m doing, Roberto. I’m none of your fucking business.”