Greyson, that skinny guy he called Leon, and the other group of guys who laughed at me when I’d asked for more time; they are the gods and lords of the Underground.
The lanky, ugly one looked at Greyson like he’s a god, and he’s the guy who wanted to fuck me as payment. Payment for my debt. I gasp at the realization and I clutch my stomach as a weakening wave of nausea roils over me.
“Omigod, you’re one of them.”
His eyes flick to the closed door, then to me, and he tells me, “If he sets a finger on you, I’ll cut it off so help me god, I’ll cut off every single one of them—”
“Omigod!”
Cupping my mouth, I sit on the edge of the bed when my legs fail me. I rock myself to and fro, because he’s not just a liar, he’s . . .
He’s . . .
I don’t even know what he is.
Suddenly, I think of how he met me . . . god, was he following me?
The men? Was he the guy . . . the guy who drove me home then left me, drenched with his blood?
I can’t. Can’t. Can’t.
I curl forward and hold my stomach as I try not to get sick.
“Oh god.”
“Princess.” He whispers the word almost reverently as he starts for me.
Motherfucker!
I leap to my feet and whip one hand out to hold him at bay. “No! Stay. Stay there, don’t you touch me. Just tell me one thing . . .” I’m assaulted by my pain as other memories keep piling up in my brain.
Lies . . . lies . . . lies . . .
I can barely make myself speak. “Were you collecting?” My eyes blur with tears when I look at him, as if the bastard hasn’t already made me cry enough today. “Were you collecting from me?”
“Is that what you think?” he asks, softly, standing a few feet away with about a tornado’s worth of energy simmering around him.
A rage unlike any other bubbles within me as I reach for the hem of my T-shirt. “Here we go then!” I jerk it off my head, drop my shorts, kicking them in the air—in his direction. “Let’s collect. Let’s get this bet over with. Surely you’ve received partial payment for all the other times I fucked you?” Then I start slipping off my G-string. “So how many more do we have left? How many? Huh?” I kick my panties aside and stand naked before him. “Huh, Greyson?”
He’s frozen like a statue, his eyes brilliant as I gather my T-shirt in one fist and toss it in his direction. “C’mon—let’s get this over with. Just tell me how many fucks it’s going to take.”
He grabs the shirt and in one lightning-fast second, covers the distance between us, pressing it into my chest, calmly murmuring, “Get dressed. We’ll talk later today. I have one man left to see, and I don’t have much time, Melanie. My father is very ill . . .”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Just put this on please!” he roars.
Angry, but suddenly scared, I start slipping back into my T-shirt as he goes to stand by the window, staring outside in bitter silence at a distant green mountain.
The silence is deafening.
I’m suddenly . . . heartbroken.
Not even angry. I feel like he gathered all my dreams, all my hopes, and all my emotions and put them in a blender, and now they’re pureed into nothing. They’ll never, ever be pieced back together again. Ever.
“Who are you?” I ask dejectedly. A ball of fire is gathering in my throat. “At least tell me that. At least tell me that, Greyson.”
“Zero is an alias. Because I’m . . .” He turns around, spreads the arms that have always made me feel protected out to encompass the room. “Untraceable, supposedly.”
A tense silence settles between us.
His gaze shutters as he murmurs, almost as though he doesn’t want to say it but some decent part of him is forcing him to, “I was retired, but now it seems that I help collect gambling payments owed to my father. Forty-eight collections. That’s all I had to do in order to retire again. I’ve got one more . . . and you . . . and then I’m done with this. And he’ll tell me where my mother is.”
And you, I silently repeat, the blender spinning my emotions again.
“What’s your real name?” I ask thickly.
“You already know my name,” he says, his voice low and gruff as a spark of tenderness steals into his eyes. “You’ve moaned it. Screamed it. Whispered it. It’s Greyson, Melanie.” He starts for me as though he suddenly needs to make some sort of contact, but I can’t bear it if he touches me. I back away, shaking my head from side to side.
“So you’re one of their leaders. Leader of these mafia Underground men,” I say.
His eyes burn with some unspeakable emotion. “If that’s what you want to call me, yes.”
“My necklace. You didn’t even buy it. Did you?” I can hardly speak, my voice is so pained and raw.
“Some payments are made in substance. And we keep them on hand for bribes—so yes, princess, I didn’t buy your bauble exactly.”
“Wow. My friends were right, it meant nothing to you.”
“Which friend? The one you were kissing last night? Where is that necklace, Melanie?” He stalks toward me faster and I back away until my spine is flat against the wall and he presses into me, a big predator with eyes that somehow own me as they look down at me.
He curls a hand around my neck, and his hunger reaches me, weakens me. I feel my knees wobble at his nearness. His scent. God, I missed him and I hate that I did. That I do.
He’s standing here and I still do.
Miss him.
Want him.
“You kill people,” I rasp.
His hand circles my throat, and the pad of his thumb slowly, sinuously, begins caressing my pulse point as his eyes drop to my lips. “Sometimes.” His voice is a low rasp.
“Do you torture them?”
I’m breathless.
I’m breathless and hurting and why can’t I unlove him? Why can’t I unlove him?
“I do what I have to,” he murmurs as he strokes my neck with his thumb and keeps staring, keeps hungering openly for my mouth, his gaze so powerful I lick my lips nervously, and it only makes his eyes darken even more. He hungers even more.
My breath is no longer mine. But I keep trying to get air into my lungs, because all the emotions in my chest are too painful to hold back. “Stupid little bimbo, is that why you chose me?” I ask thickly.
“Chose you? If I’d chosen a woman, I would never have chosen you.” He rubs the back of one knuckle over my lips as he keeps fucking my lips with his eyes. “You’re a hot mess, Melanie,” he rasps. “You’re a hot, innocent little mess and I would never willingly tie myself by the balls to someone as fun, merry, innocent, and happy-go-lucky as you. I didn’t choose you, but I sure as fuck can’t free myself of you. You’re in my head, you’re like some demon in my fucking heart.”
“Fuck you!” I push him, but he grabs my wrists to halt me and pulls my arms over my head, causing my body to arch instinctively and the tips of my nipples to brush against his hard chest. The instant bolt of arousal I feel sparks my own anger at myself.
“Use me,” I yell, squirming in his hold, “discard me. That was the plan, right? Fuck her and then fuck her over. Get some blonde who doesn’t think too much and won’t ask a lot of questions! One you can get rid of easily!”
“Do I look like someone who’s trying to get rid of you?” he grinds out, tightening his hold on my wrists, pressing his erection against me. “I want you like I want a new life, Melanie,” he grits out. “I have files thick about you and men, I know about your debt. I knew about your twin before you even told me, Melanie.”
I choke when he mentions Lauren. My eyes blur as he softly continues, easing his hold on my wrists and slowly, caressingly, dragging the cup of his hand down the delicate inside skin of my bare arms. “I know your parents lost her, and you blame yourself because you lived. Don’t you?”
I think there’s not only a fireball in my throat, but it’s in
my eyes and in my heart.
“So all your sweet life you’ve tried to make up for what you feel you took from your parents. You’ve tried to make them happy, you’ve tried to make everyone around you happy, because maybe, deep down, you don’t want anyone to believe you didn’t deserve the chance your sister never got.”
“Stop it,” I say quietly, but a stream of tears pours down my face because nobody has ever seen so clearly into me before, and I’m scared, and hurting, and his hazel eyes just won’t let me go.
He tightens his hold on my shoulders now, his gaze fiercely tender and still hungry for me as he adds, “I know you’ve used sex to stop feeling lonely too long, Melanie, and I know you’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen, always trying to make the best of everything. Giving every frog a chance, because you were given that chance, right? So why would you deny a chance to someone? Anyone? Even a fucking asshole like me?”
He slides a hand down my face and caresses my cheek, the kind of caress only he gives me. The one I feel under my skin, down to my nerves, my bones.
“I know that you quit a semester in college to stand by your best friend when she was injured,” he adds, “and you never told her you postponed the semester because you wanted to keep her company. I know you’re the sort of girl who’d buy a Mustang in a city where it rains almost every day of the year because it’s worth it to ride with the top down for the days where there’s sun. I know you, Melanie. Fuck, I know more about you than I wish I knew because I would not change one thing . . . one thing . . . one word . . . of the ten-inch file I have of you . . . on my fucking desk.”
I drop my gaze from his with a quiet sob, and he tips my head back and forces me to look into his face, which is fierce with conviction, as fierce as his hot, penetrating gaze. “Your saucy ‘I got this’ persona? I like her. I know her, but I see the glimpses of you, Melanie. The real you. The one who’s frightened. The one who doesn’t like being alone. The one who’s vulnerable and makes me want to say I got you. Come here, I fucking got you, princess.”
“You know all this about me and I don’t even know you!” I cry.
“Yeah you do,” he counters, and he cups my head and crushes my mouth with his, and the hunger in the kiss sizzles through my nerve endings, lights me on fire.
Hot lips. Taste. He’s not the only one hungry for the taste. I want it too, badly.
Please, please, be smart, Melanie!
Leave, Melanie!
“God,” he growls when my mouth seems to part of its own will and I somehow find my fingers digging into his biceps. “I’ve been taught to con and blackmail, lie, cheat, anything it takes to get what I want.”
The hot suckling motion of his mouth makes my toes curl, my body burn and arch closer to him as he wraps his arms around my waist.
“And I want you. These sweet little teacup breasts. I want my mouth on them again.” He cups my ass with one hand, and one tit with the other. “I love when your nipples bead for me. They bead at my voice. At a glance from me. I love your ass. I love your fucking mouth.” He seems to be going crazy, doing everything at once. Massaging my ass. Massaging my tit. Gobbling my mouth. Then he kisses my neck, flicking his tongue out to taste me. A shudder rockets through me. God. It’s ecstasy. Agony. Both.
“ ‘Zero’—do you know what he does, princess?” he dares me, taking a hot, sensual bite out of my lower lip before easing back to look at me with hooded eyes. “He looks for a weakness and pounces on it, wrecks the prey, and makes it pay.”
I shudder over the sensual tone of his voice and whisper, “I’m sorry for them.”
“Hmm. You should be.” He heads to my ear, his breath hot as he grinds his erection against me. “I think I know your weakness, Melanie. I know your weakness. Your weakness . . . is me.”
“Stop.”
“I’d stop it if you meant it. Mean it,” he commands, then cups my face and looks at me, waiting for me to mean what I say, his eyes electric. “Right now. Mean it,” he whispers seductively, his breath hot on my face. “Tears?” He edges back, his eyes sober and yet relentless. “Tears . . . why? I haven’t made you come yet.”
I want to pull free.
But I’m shaking and craving and wanting. It’s true that I want his body, every hot, delicious inch, but more than anything I want to know who he is—who the man who has this effect on me is.
He. Is not. Real, MELANIE!
He is a liar, a player, a fucking scoundrel and a rogue. You don’t need him! You don’t want him!
“Tell me who you are!” Suddenly my voice rises with my bewilderment.
He looks at me, dark shadows crossing over his eyes, then he surprises me when he leaves me and sits on the bed. Setting his elbows on his knees, he leans over, looking at me, every inch of him tormented. He runs his hand through his hair and, slowly, I watch as each copper-streaked strand falls into place one by one. Silence drags on, the tension palpable until he breaks the silence, a low, hard bitterness spilling into his voice.
“I was raised by my mother, Lana King. She left my dad when she got pregnant, to protect me. One day when I was thirteen I came home and she was tied up in a chair, gagged, among a group of men—among them my father. He offered . . .” He trails off, then smirks coldly. “He told me if I killed one of his men, she’d be untied and set free. I didn’t know he had a deal with her, that she’d told him I wasn’t a killer like him—that he’d promised to let me go if that was true. I didn’t know about that fucking deal when I took the gun he offered, aimed it, fired it, and killed him. And I never saw her again.”
His voice turns empty and cold, like an echo of an old tomb.
I’m not sure if it’s the tone he uses, the words he tells me, or the lack of sparkle in his usually brilliant, beautiful eyes. “My uncle Eric told me my father had made a deal with my mother. He would take me if I proved to be his son. My mother promised him that I was nothing like him. And then I shot a man. I didn’t hesitate. I shot him.”
A war of emotions rages in me, my feelings toward him becoming confusing and as painful as anything in my life has ever been.
“I doomed myself to a life of this.” He signals around him. “Maybe I should’ve shot my father. It could’ve been over, right then and there. But blood is a curious thing.” He looks at me, a slight confusion in his hawklike eyes. “It ties you. Even when you loathe your kind, something here . . .” He puts his fists to his chest. “Somewhere here you’re still loyal. I spent eight years with him, believing he’d let me see her. Until I realized he wasn’t ever letting me see her so long as he knew I didn’t really give a shit about him. So I went rogue, dropped him, and tried to find her, doing little jobs in between. I followed every trail I could find. Nothing. She vanished without a trace.”
His bearing is stiff and proud, but I can finally see the chaos in his eyes. I imagine him, a young teenager, torn in two. Using his smarts to survive, while still trying to find and protect his mother.
His every disquieting word races through my mind, his childhood so different from mine that I don’t understand it, almost.
“He’s summoned me back now that he’s dying. He’s got leukemia and he wants me to take the reins of the Underground.” He laughs sadly. “A man like him, I can’t even imagine him sick. But he needs to pass on his torch. Wyatt—I know he’s been more of a son to him than I have. But he wants the alpha.” He pulls out a piece of paper. “When I saw you on this list, you were supposed to be something I worked out of my system. That blonde in my dreams. Then there you were. There you were in the fucking bar with that fucking asshole trying to take you home—and then there you were, a fucking devil of an angel in the rain.”
“Don’t even talk to me about the rain!”
“You wanted to talk, so I’m talking to you now.” He walks forward, stopping in front of me, the faint smile tugging his lips holding an infinite amount of sadness. “This isn’t how I wanted to spend your birthday, Melanie.” His voice is a tender murmur, squeezi
ng my heart.
I won’t cry, I won’t fucking cry. I blink and swallow.
“All I ask is that you let me celebrate you when I get back. If I only get to spend one day with you, I want to spend this day. With you.”
I can’t stand the way he knows me. The way he understands me. The way he makes my every dream come true and breaks my every fantasy. If there were a day I’d need him in a year, it would be my birthday. But suddenly I desperately need to go home.
“You’re leaving right now?” I whisper.
His eyebrows rise inquiringly. “I have to. Just one more mark. I owe it to my mother.”
He comes over and wraps me in his arms. I close my eyes as his heat envelops me, his scent, him. When he tries to pull away, I pull his arms closer, suddenly just needing this a minute longer. “Why do you want my arms?” he whispers in my ear. “I just told you they’ve done more harm than good.”
“Not to me.”
“Because you fell for me, you fell for me and all my bullshit, and even with everything I just said, you’re still falling, aren’t you,” he rasps. He kisses the back of my ear. “I’m right here to catch you.” He kisses the back of my ear, harder. “Let me catch you.”
I duck my head to compose myself.
He ducks his dark head too and glances at my toes. On each foot, my toenails spell, in perfect blue and hot pink all the way around, GREY ♥
“Nice toes.”
I curl and tuck them into the rug. “I got a pedicure. At the best place in Seattle.”
All for you . . . I think miserably.
His grin gives me butterflies in my stomach, and I wish I had an ax and I could literally kill them. “That someone could get you to sit your restless little ass for a while to get to do that is a testament to their abilities.” He looks at me with those eyes that reach strange little places inside me, and my stomach starts to feel heavy from the complete overload of my emotions. “Or to your conviction to wear my name on your feet?”
He kneels, and I hold my breath as he takes my toe and kisses it.
“Grey, you’re kissing my toe,” I say, voice thick and cottony.