Max
“Please tell me you’re not fucking around with Layla.” Nico leads the way to the private elevator in his very exclusive, very private, and very kinky sex club in lower Manhattan a week after Shaye’s party.
“I already told you that nothing happened.” I rub the back of my neck, trying really hard to erase the images that have been plaguing me all week…Sloane lying naked on my bed, her long, lean legs falling open for me, giving me a half-hooded stare while she flicks her—
“How’d she end up at Shaye’s party, then?”
“I have no idea. I’ve tried to avoid her since Thanksgiving. I guess someone could have told her it was happening. She knows everyone at Culaccino, so she’d have been able to get in that night.” I stifle a groan, recalling how I’d wished it was the booze making me hallucinate, that it wasn’t really Layla scouting the crowd at the club, for me, no doubt. That was a shit show just waiting to happen. It’s why I forced myself away from Sloane. Layla can be a vindictive bitch when she wants to be. The last thing I wanted her to see was me kissing Sloane, even though it’s what I wanted more than anything. I’m pretty sure Sloane wanted it, too, but I managed to fuck things up again. I’ve sent her a bunch of texts this week, but I get one-word answers. Never a hey, wanna come over? Fuck it. I screwed myself pretty badly, and the irony that I haven’t actually gotten laid in what feels like forever doesn’t escape me.
Dammit, I miss her. I need her in my life. But she’s smart not to need me….smarter to stay away.
I follow Nico into the dimly lit elevator. The inside of the car is covered in dark-colored fabric, and leather benches line each wall, not that I’d never sit on any one of them. Christ only knows how many women he fucked in this elevator before he started dating my sister. I don’t even want to think about what he’s done to her in here. There’s already way too much that I’ve seen that I can’t ever unsee.
“Have you spoken to Sloane?”
“Nah. I think she’s had enough of me. Besides, she deserves someone who she can count on, not someone who is barely holding his own shit together.”
Nico narrows his eyes at me. “You will never move up in this family if you don’t show everyone that your strength doesn’t just come from baseball bats and bullets. You earned your title as a capo, and now you have a team of people who do the low-level shit and the skull smashing. Don’t get mixed up in it again. I won’t be able to pull you out of it next time.”
Shit, if I go down that path again, who even knows if there will be a next time? But my mind wanders back to her, always back to her.
I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many times a day I fantasize about fucking Sloane senseless. But she’s a good girl, someone who has her whole life ahead of her. She actually does good things for people.
I do bad things to people.
And she has no idea about any of it. My past is a taboo topic. Never discussed. Never fucking ever.
I risked too much on Thanksgiving, and she may never let me back inside. I may not have had her exactly the way I wanted her, but it’s better than nothing. Being with her calms me. It settles the rage, makes me forget the anger.
Even that night in the club…being so close to Sloane is hypnotic. She tempers the fury inside of me. God, how I wanted to taste those lips, and dammit, if Layla hadn’t been watching, I would have devoured them.
She makes me sane. I didn’t think anything could accomplish that.
And I’m sure everyone else I know shares that opinion.
Ding!
The elevator doors open. Electronica blares through the speakers on the lower level, the area of Club Culaccino reserved for the kinkiest fuckers in the tri-state area. Red, pink, and purple lights flash over the naked bodies writhing and grinding on the floor, against walls, and on couches.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve been back down here,” Nico says, guiding me out of the elevator.
“Yeah, well, you did fire me. I had to save face with the other guys.”
Nico pops me in the shoulder. “I apologized for that little misunderstanding, didn’t I?’
“Uh, no, actually, you didn’t.” I cock an eyebrow and lean back against the elevator door. “I’m ready now, if you can say the words without choking on them. I mean, you’ve had enough time to practice them over the past month and a half.”
Nico grins. “I’m sorry for attacking you like that. It was wrong.”
“It was also fucking stupid. I could have pounded your ass into dog meat in seconds, Mr. CEO.”
“Well, in my defense, I was dealing with a fucking lunatic who was trying to kill me. It might have stressed me out a little bit.”
“You’re just lucky I showed you some mercy.”
“I’m just glad that whole thing is behind us. I’ll never forget everything you, Rocco, and Kat did for us that day. If things had gone differently, if you guys didn’t show up when we went after Luca…” He shakes his head. “Shit, I don’t even want to think about what could have happened to Shaye and Lily when that sicko showed up.”
“That’s what you do for family.”