“Yeah, you are.”
“I’m not going unless you are.”
He suppressed a hard sigh. Yeah, he was probably like Mount Vesuvius about to blow, but she was already at the eruption point. She wasn’t going to be shut down. Before she could say anything further, she was yanked through the door, and they were out on the sidewalk on the west side of the building. He was crossing the street, taking her toward a K&A limo.
“I’m…not…going.” She planted her feet this time, yanked hard, and got away from him, though she almost tripped herself doing so. She kicked the shoes away, faced him on the balls of her feet.
When he turned toward her, she didn’t give herself time to register his expression or anything else. She led with her emotions, did something she knew was wrong, on so many levels. She punched him dead in the mouth with all the strength she had.
Ben was pissed, torn up in twelve different ways. The guy he’d been a lifetime ago knew only one way to respond to a physical attack. Catching her arm and her hair, he twisted her around, slammed her against the side of the limo. He pulled his strength back at the last moment, he wasn’t that crazed, but it wasn’t that which could harm her. It was what was raging out of control in him, what had goaded him to get her out of there and into a limo, out of his sight. Now.
He hadn’t restrained himself as much as he’d thought. She stumbled, hit her face on the metal corner of the rear window, letting out a surprised yelp of pain. When she managed to turn toward him, trying to regain her feet, he saw the bloom of blood. Worse, he saw her recognize the boiling, deadly rage pouring out of him. Every animal knew when they’d pushed a predator too far. The heart would leap into the throat, and the feet would automatically try to get into motion, to run, even as the mind’s fear would slow them down, just as the predator got faster, calmer, colder.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t run. She wasn’t that smart. She was trying to take another aggressive, fuck-you stance, and say something that would be entirely unwise.
He spun her back toward the limo before she could do it, startling another surprised cry out of her. “This is done,” he said against her ear, pushing himself hard against her body, trapping her against the car. He could hear that pulse rabbiting beneath his grip. “We’re not friends, we’re not lovers. You don’t know a fucking thing about me. You don’t have what I need, you’ll never have it. All your fucking useless dreams about me are just bullshit little-girl fantasies. That’s it. We’re done.”
He was hot and hard, a rutting monster fueled by watching Frank study her, Master L’s hands touching her skin, their eyes calculating how she would surrender to them.
“Let go of me,” she said. Her voice was a shaky whisper that would have wrung mercy out of a stone. He felt nothing. He knew how to be mean, so mean that nothing in the world would fuck with him. When she tried to break free, he twisted her arm higher behind her back. Sliding his other hand around, he squeezed her breasts with no finesse, pure brutal possession, intending for it to be uncomfortable, to take only his pleasure and give her none. She struggled, but that just increased the pain to her arm, a deterrent. A sob caught in her throat.
“I’m not the prince in your Beauty and the Beast fairy tale.” He wanted to die right now, because this was all wrong, but it had to be done. He had to do it. “You’re going home, and this is over. You take that job in Milan, and you don’t look back.”
Suddenly, he knew he wasn’t alone. Max stood to his left, just behind him. Tossing dark hair out of his eyes, Ben cocked his head. He gave Max a dangerous fuck-off look, but Max met it head on, his eyes cool. In control in a way Ben wasn’t. “It’s time to let her go, Mr. O’Callahan,” he said. “Right now.”
“Yeah. You’re right about that.” Ben released her, stepped back. He didn’t watch her sag against the limo. He pivoted, was walking away when Max caught her. She would push away from Max immediately, would try to stand on her own. He knew that about her. It would have made him smile if a rusty knife wasn’t cutting into his chest. He didn’t see the tears or the broken look on her face, but he didn’t need to do so. It was branded on his fucking black heart. He hadn’t needed to remove her mask to see every terrible emotion go through those beautiful brown eyes.
You can take shit off the street, dress it up, but it’s still shit. It stains everything eventually.
He didn’t look back, his feet pointed toward the darkest hole of night.
* * * * *
Max didn’t try to touch her again, but he did stay close. “Miss Marcie? Are you all right?”
Marcie stared at the shadowed edge of the parking lot where Ben had disappeared. “Isn’t that a funny thing to say?” she said, her voice high and strange. “When everything is obviously not all right.”
Max took a cautious step closer. Her legs were shaking hard. She had that lovely ass of hers pressed against the car door for support, but her wrist was red where Ben had gripped her, and she’d apparently hit her lip when he slammed her against the car. Jesus Christ, what was going on here? None of the guys had ever treated a woman like this. They’d kill any man who did. Yeah, Ben was into handing out the
