Lucian (16 page)

She was trying damn hard to keep her noises down given the way her teeth were cutting into her bottom lip. Lucian didn’t like that at all.

“You’re going to draw blood, sweetheart. Stop, or I will.”

Jordyn’s eyes flicked up to meet his, her teeth releasing her bottom lip. “Don’t stop.”

Satisfaction curled through Lucian like a drug. Still, he wanted to see more from her.

“Help me, Jordyn,” Lucian demanded, letting his thumb slide out of her wet sex only long enough to be replaced by two fingers. The way she sunk into the chair, her back arching and heels pressing into his leg said she liked that a lot. “Get your hand down here and show me what you like. Hurry before I change my mind.”

Jordyn mewled, air rushing from her lungs in a whoosh. “Jesus, I—”

“Ah, ah, ah.” Lucian’s fingers stopped their thrusts into her pussy, curling upwards sharply without warning, finding the spot inside her walls that made her gush every time he hit it. Jordyn’s entire body jerked at the rough stimulation to her G-spot. “Help me now, or I stop.”

She didn’t waste any time getting her own hand down under her dress after that. Jordyn lifted her hips off the chair high enough to bunch the lower half of the dress up to her hips. It allowed Lucian a view of her soaked thong and his hand beneath it. Using his thumb, he hooked the silk fabric of her underwear and moved it over, holding it there so he could watch his fingers plunge into her pussy over and over.

“There, that’s better,” Lucian said, leaning back into his chair as Jordyn’s hand skipped between her thighs. Her index finger pushed into her pussy alongside his fingers, gathering wetness to draw up to her clit. Repeatedly, she let her digit roll over her clit before sliding back down to thrust in with his two. The tremors rocking her legs only seemed to increase with every encouraging curl of his fingertips into her clenching walls. “Pink and swollen. Wet and throbbing. Perfect. How long do you think you’ll last, huh?”

“Not long,” Jordyn whined, her palm coming up to her mouth, muffling the throaty moan she released. “Faster, please.”

Lucian gave into her request, thoroughly enjoying the sounds of her pussy sucking in his fingers and the faintest smell of her arousal beginning to saturate the air. He loved fucking her with his fingers, because it only got her raging with desire for more of him later.

Goddamn it, his cock was so hard it hurt. Talk about being swollen.

“Hurry, then,” Lucian said, unable to keep the lustful gruffness from his tenor. “So I can get you in the backseat of my car in five minutes to fuck you properly.”

When the walls of her core began to flutter around his fingers and her teeth bit into her palm, Lucian knew he had her. It didn’t take him five minutes to get her into the car, either.

Chapter Fourteen

“Lucian, just listen to me for—”

“I said no, Jordyn!”

Like his tone, the words were just as sharp and might as well have cracked over Jordyn’s entire body like a slap. The last thing expected to hear from this man was him yelling at her, or being as angry with her as he seemed to be, for that matter.

Still, Jordyn wasn’t about to stand there and take it, either. Especially not about something this stupid.

“You don’t get to tell me what I can or can’t do, or where I can and can’t go. I’m not a child, Lucian.”

“Then stop acting like one,” Lucian growled.

Jordyn’s spine snapped ramrod straight at that statement. “Is that how you see this? Childish? Why, because I’m six years younger than you, so you must be more intelligent than I am when it comes to this? Newsflash, Lucian, I’ve spent just as much time on those streets as you have. The only difference is I’m not wearing two-thousand dollar suits while I do it!”

“Really? Because the clothes you’re wearing right now cost that much at least,” he bit back, eyes blazing into hers with his rage simmering bright. “And don’t think for one second if you waltz your pretty ass down to that side of Brooklyn someone isn’t going to fucking notice it, too. I’d bet every dime I have that cocksucker has eyes all over those streets and you wouldn’t last five minutes back there. What do you think he’d do to you, huh? Tell me, sweetheart. Kill me with it. Come on.”

A noise caught in Jordyn’s throat, harsh and painful. It wasn’t even the threat of Will Vetta and his people that she heard, but the blatant shot at money. Sure, her’s might have come first, but there was a huge difference between Lucian and Jordyn. He wasn’t living off her, and regardless of how vehemently she tried to refuse the things he called necessities, Lucian brushed her rebuttals off and might as well have ignored her when she said no more.

It was just barely a month and a half into their sometimes awkward, but mostly good arrangement. Lucian didn’t talk about The Sons of Hell, or whatever was going on in the regard. Repeatedly, he told her not to worry about it. Fact was, she couldn’t.

Being in his Manhattan condo gave Jordyn a great deal of insight into Lucian’s daily life. He was busy constantly, more so than she really knew before. The two cell phones in his pockets never stopped ringing for more than a few minutes. It was no wonder his office space was in the kind of disarray it was, because he would only start something in there and then have to leave it twenty minutes later.

Twice earlier in the week, Jordyn awoke to find him gone with nothing but a note on the bedside table to say he’d be back soon. There was no other explanation. It was disconcerting and worrying.

Lucian didn’t owe her anything, and Jordyn knew that. Even still, Jordyn wanted to do something. Normal things. Have a job. Go outside for a walk. Be able to have a conversation with this man about her apartment in Brooklyn without it turning into World War Three. After his comment about her clothes, Jordyn’s irritation blew to a level she couldn’t handle.

“Go to hell,” Jordyn spat. “I won’t do this with you, Lucian. Not sleep in your bed, and be your paid whore. I don’t give a fuck who you are, I’d rather be dead.”

Lucian froze in his trek towards the elevator. It allowed him in and out of his condo without a hallway that connected to a floor with other apartments. He spun on his heel so fast Jordyn didn’t even have time to blink.

“What did you just say to me?” he asked, a choked echo following his words.

Then, she stepped back further from him, needing to move away. Maybe it was out of an old instinct, but using disrespect like that towards the men that surrounded her daily before would earn her nothing less than a hard slap.

“Is that what you think you are to me, my whore?”

Jordyn swallowed the lump forming so she could talk and moved another step back. “I—”

“Stop moving away from me like I’m going to attack you! I haven’t once touched you to hurt you!”

Beating down the urge to get away from his anger was easier said than done. Somehow, Jordyn did it. “I know, I’m so—”

“Save it,” Lucian cut in, sounding cruel. “If that’s how you feel about this, like you’re my live-in, paid and kept whore, then that can be fixed, sweetheart. Real fucking fast.”

Jordyn tipped her chin up, staring him straight on. “Threats don’t scare me, Lucian.”

“That’s not a threat. If you haven’t figured out how much I need you around me, you are never going to. Or maybe I took a wrong turn somewhere over the last month and a half and got your signals and mine mixed up somehow. What a goddamn shame. We were doing so well, too.”

“You’re the one who felt the need to remind me of how much money you spent on my clothes,” Jordyn replied, heat rising in her cheeks and voice. She brought up his first, but Jordyn didn’t feel like it was the same thing. Maybe it was, she didn’t know. “Do you think I need that reminder?”

Lucian’s jaw clenched. “Is that what this is about right now? Because if it is, I don’t have time for it.”

“No, of course you don’t,” Jordyn muttered, laughing bitterly. “Heaven forbid something important to me that I’ve tried talking to you about over and over again be overlooked because your schedule can’t fit it in.”

“We’re fighting about the
clothes
?”

“No, Lucian! Where have you been for the last ten minutes? We’re talking about my
life
.”

“Jordyn—”

Lucian was interrupted by a vibrating coming from his left pocket. Another call. Jordyn wasn’t surprised. The defeat in his eyes as he sighed harshly and shoved a fisted hand into his pocket to silence the call said a great deal.

“I really can’t do this right now,” Lucian said, almost pleadingly.

“Just go. I need five minutes to breathe and think alone.”

“I need you to listen to me first, Jordyn. If I wanted a whore, I’d have one. If all I needed was a good fuck, I’d have it. She wouldn’t be sleeping in my bed, meeting my family, attending my church, or mixing in with my business. Frankly, she probably wouldn’t even know my name. Do you know what she’d be? Some back alley screw, quick and fast. Maybe I would pick her up in a club and forget about her before I even left. Or maybe, if she was lucky, she’d make it to the backseat of my car.

“You asked me to give you something,” Lucian continued, not taking his frustrated gaze off hers for a moment. “You needed to be safe, and I’ve done that. That meant to me I needed to make sure you didn’t have to go back to that life at all. You wouldn’t have to walk into that apartment again and see your blood in the bathtub, or your vomit on the floor. You wouldn’t have to be hurt by those things. So if that meant replacing what I took you from, that’s exactly what it meant. I’m sorry if my wealth offends you, but it doesn’t bother me a bit. And I will spend it on whatever I want, whether you like it or not. If I want to spend it all on you, I will do just that.”

“It isn’t about the money,” Jordyn tried to say.

“Oh, I figured that out. Don’t worry.”

“No, you don’t understand at all, Lucian.”

A hurt expression marred his handsome features, drawing his mouth that kissed and loved her body so well into a frown. It pained Jordyn to know she was the cause, but he still wasn’t listening.

“Take your time, sweetheart. Figure out what you need. Isn’t that what I told you from the start?”

It was. That’s what was the most difficult.

“I can’t be someone different for you, Lucian. I can’t just leave me behind. Playing dress up and having sleepovers doesn’t make a new woman. I need you to hear me right now.”

Again, the phone in his pocket vibrated.

“I have to go,” Lucian said quietly. “When I get back, if you need something different, we can work that out, too.”

Could they really?

Jordyn said nothing as he stepped into the waiting elevator and the doors closed behind him. She didn’t think it over very well when she grabbed enough money from his desk for a taxi and left ten minutes later, either.

• • •

Lucian’s distraction was not going unnoticed.

Once a month, Lucian had to act like nothing more than the capo he was for a few hours and say to hell with the rest of the world, but he wasn’t able to do that today. Tribute was usually his favorite time in any given month. All nineteen of the Marcello family capos gathered to make their payments to his father at a club they always used for this purpose.

Usually business was talked, issues noted, drinks were had, and so forth. It was, essentially, the mafia at its oldest form. For decades upon decades, this one event and the tradition it held in the Cosa Nostra never changed. Giving proper due to the boss.

Lucian was somewhere else entirely.

“Where in the fuck is Gio?” Antony asked from the other end of the booth.

Lucian shrugged, not caring. “Busy, maybe.”

“He doesn’t get to be busy today, Lucian.”

Dante shot his brother a pointed look mixed with concern. Maybe it was his blatant disregard for the men around him, or the conversations some tried to strike with him, but Lucian couldn’t do it.

“Have you made anymore decisions towards The Sons of Hell?” someone asked.

That perked Lucian up, briefly.

Antony said nothing right away, letting the question hang while everyone waited. “Their captains aren’t working with my capos, or paying for their place, at the very least. I’ve been told by a few people it’s a hostile environment trying to deal with them. Police and media attention is finally starting to wane from their direction after the mess with my casino.”

“That’s what you’ve been waiting for,” Lucian said, feeling ridiculous that he hadn’t realized it before.

His father repeatedly brushed off Lucian’s attempts to discuss what needed to be done about Will Vetta and his men. Mostly, he just wanted his retribution for what they had done to Jordyn. Plus, with Will gone, or at the very least, disabled to the point he didn’t have enough power to come back on Jordyn again, she would be safe.

Lucian scowled and tipped up his drink for a long, burning swig at the thought of her name alone. Clearly he still wasn’t over their earlier fight.

“Yes,” Antony confirmed. “I couldn’t very well send in any of my guys to make a point while attention was still hot and heavy on them.”

“Not anyone,” Lucian said, glancing over at his father. “It needs to be me.”

“It wouldn’t have looked good. Attention might have turned to us. That’s an issue we don’t need.”

“And now?” Lucian asked.

“Where is Gio?” Antony asked again, deflecting the question. “
Mio Dio
, Lucian. I swear I will shove my foot so far up his ass he’ll taste my boots for the next month if he shuns me today. I am not in the mood to deal with him acting like a fucking
cafone
.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Lucian snapped. “I’m not his babysitter.”

“But he is your younger brother.”

Lucian glared at his father. “And so is Dante, but no one needs to keep tabs on him.”

Frankly, Lucian had been far too busy with life, his work, and Jordyn to be running after Gio. At some point, it had to be a sink or swim situation. Gio would clean his act up and do what needed to be done, or he wouldn’t and he’d drown.

“That’s my job,” Antony replied. “Dante’s my underboss. I expect you to keep an eye out for Gio, just like you always have.
Vaffanculo
and go find out where your brother is.”

Lucian was aware all of the eyes in the room had turned to him. There was a line between respect and disrespect when it came to Antony being the boss and his father. He’d missed it completely and jumped right over it with a bang and a mighty fuck you.

“Sorry, Boss,” Lucian said quietly. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Do that. And quickly before what little patience I have for you runs out as well.”

Lucian climbed out of the booth and weaved around the men until he was at the back end of the club where there was privacy. Pulling out his phone from his pocket, Lucian quickly realized he hadn’t turned the ringer or vibrating back on the cell when he silenced it earlier. Just his home screen alone told him he’d missed several calls and texts from Gio, some that very morning when Lucian was arguing with Jordyn.

He cussed low, dialing Gio’s number. Gio picked up in two rings.

“Yeah, I know, I’m on my way. Tell him not to have a fit about it,” Gio ranted the moment he answered. “Today is not my day, man.”

Lucian sighed. “What the hell happened?”

“I left you a bunch of messages!”

“I haven’t checked them. I’m an idiot. I get it. You’re one more person who doesn’t need to tell me that this morning, Gio.”

The younger man went quiet before he asked, “What? Hey, did something happen I don’t know about?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. Anyway, what happened with you?”

Gio barked a laugh. “I grabbed some chicken wings last night from the place down the street. I gave Cain the leftovers this morning, and what’d he do? Choked on a bone because he eats like he’s never been fed! Inhale and swallow, he doesn’t even chew. It got stuck in his throat. Scared the shit out of me. I love that dog like nobody knows. Nearly killed someone trying to get him to the vet. I’ve been here all morning. I’m just leaving.”