Harlot (Hush #2), page 23
Luca Coppola is the feeling of being watched.
He might even be the gateway to Hell in Grand Haven.
“Did you kill him?” It’s a ridiculous notion, but I mean it. Luca murders people for a living. He isn’t the type of guy who fights fair. If they both walked out of that office alive after a physical altercation, it won’t be long before Luca comes looking for Wilder with weapons.
“Not yet,” he says, meeting my eyes. “We didn’t know what we were walking into, but we couldn’t let that shit go unanswered.”
“We?” I ask.
“Talent and I watched the security footage from the hotel and recognized Vincent right away. We’ve known that little motherfucker since he was two feet tall. He’s Luca’s brother, but he’s not in the family. And I don’t know why he’s doing Luca’s dirty work, but had I seen him at Benny’s office that day, none of this would have happened.” His look is accusatory, but he goes on, saying, “I thought it was best to clear the air right away, and Talent agreed. Luca didn’t appreciate it when I told him I’d cut his brother’s fucking throat if he went near you again, so I busted his mouth open.”
“You hit him? And what did Giovanni think?”
Wilder’s jaw tightens, and he says, “The meeting was over, and he isn’t concerned with what his men do with their own time as long as it doesn’t interfere with business. He’s collecting money from Lydia on principle, but you heard the terms. Until my brother and I are made, Hush is unprotected. You’re unprotected.”
The burden he shoulders has doubled in size since last night, but Wilder is casual, shrugging like signing his life over to the mafia is no bigger deal than signing a cell phone carrier contract. He was brought up with the Coppolas, raised shoulder-to-shoulder with crooks and killers, not only believing that they were a family but his family. It’s not something he survived untouched. Wilder loosely speaks about murder and joining the mafia, not as a result of trauma, but because it’s a way of life.
We’re two people on opposite sides of extreme. I experienced nothing as a child, and Wilder saw too much. But he’s so special. His life should mean more to him than this. I won’t let him give it away. Not for Hush. And not for me.
“Wilder, you can’t do this.” Sitting back on my lower legs, I brace myself as a tidal wave of grief crashes over me. “I’ll go. I’ll leave like you wanted me to. I’d rather sit in my father’s closet for the rest of my life than let you give yours to the Coppolas. You’re not like them. You’re not—”
“I am just like them.” He slides his palm around the back of my neck and pulls me forward, resting his forehead against mine. “It was always going to happen, Camilla.”
“Not like this,” I say. “Not to protect me.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe and happy, but this doesn’t have anything to do with you. This is all me. It’s bad blood.” He captures my jaw between his thumb and index finger to force eye contact. “Gio thinks he’s forcing our hands, and Nicolai is taking the credit, but Talent and I have waited a long time for this to happen. We made a deal to keep our friends close and our enemies closer. We can’t get much closer than joining the fucking family.”
“This is why you tried to push me away?”
“Talent refused to let Lydia go after he found her, but I didn’t want to make that same mistake.” He has the decency to look ashamed. They’ve all treated me like a child, but I’m capable of making my own decisions. “You’re only twenty-one, Camilla. If I do this, there’s no getting out. What kind of man would I be if I asked you to give up your entire life to me when I know what direction mine is headed? I care about you too much to let you do that blindly.”
“But you’d send me away blind,” I say, not as a question. It’s a fact. He would have let me go had I left.
“It’s different. You’re different, and you have options. Go to college. Travel. Do whatever the fuck it is normal people your age do. If you decide right now that this is too much, I’ll give you every cent in my bank account to start a new life somewhere else.” He takes my hands in his, pleading. “Grand Haven and North Carolina are not your only options. There’s an entire world out there you haven’t seen. And I’ve tried to stay away from you, but I am weak. You’re going to have to save yourself.”
“Save myself from you?” I ask incredulously. “You’re not weak. You’re fucking ridiculous.”
Grimacing at my choice of words, he says, “The fact that you’re in my house, dressed in my clothes, on your knees with my cum leaking from your pussy after I fucked you until the sun came up means I’ve failed.”
I jam my finger into his chest, as angry as he is. “First of all, stop acting like you’re so much older than me. You’re not ancient. You’re thirty years old, get over yourself.” His eyes light up with amusement, and his lips curve into a small smile. I poke my finger into his chest again. “I’ve already started a new life in Grand Haven. I don’t want to go anywhere else or be with anyone else, Wilder. Why can’t I go to college and travel with you? Why can’t we share these experiences together? Isn’t that what people do when they love each other? When they’re dating?”
“Dating?” he asks, chewing on the word like a tough piece of meat. “Is that what this is?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “I’ve never had a boyfriend before.”
“Boy. Friend.” He pronounces the syllables one at a time, wrapping his lips around them. He doesn’t recognize the shape of the brand-new word in his mouth, and I don’t think either one of us likes the fit.
“I saved myself the day I left home, and I continue to do so every single day that I don’t go back. The worst parts—the parts I’m scared of the most, even after all this time and despite everything we’re going through, have already happened.” I rise on my knees, raking my fingers through his hair. He falls into me, and I drag my nose up his neck from his rapid pulse to the soft spot below his ear and say, “I’m a little less afraid of the dark when I’m with you. That isn’t failure. It’s a miracle.”
“I won’t be able to let you go,” he admits. His arms close around me, and the tingling, frantic feeling bubbles under my skin.
“Good,” I say, pressing salty kisses from his jaw to his lips. I whisper into his mouth, “Because the only thing that scares me now is losing you.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Then tell me what happens after they make you a gangster, Wilder.” My hands come to his sides, where muscles move under my palms as his breathing changes from slow and smooth to hurried. I trace his mouth with my tongue, kissing over his stubbled chin, and back down his neck. “Is it like the movies? Will we have to hide cash in the walls and have pet tigers?”
He laughs, following my journey down his body until I’m back on my calves, slipping my fingers under the waistband of his shorts. He says, “None of that is real. We don’t hide cash in walls anymore, we invest in legitimate companies and use offshore accounts. And tigers are on my HOA’s list of banned animals. My neighbors would have a fit.”
I hum, unleashing Wilder’s cock from its confines. Rubbing my cheek along the shaft, I ask, “Then what’s the point?”
The edge of his mouth curves up, and he blinks slowly over eyes that have turned into the color of thunderstorms. He wets his lips, running his thumb under my bottom lip, and we have the same idea. I lick from the base of his length to the head as he says, “I already told you. I’m going to kill them.”
Seconds, minutes, hours later, Wilder’s stretched across the bench press, flat on his back, and I can’t decide if I want him to come on my face or in my mouth. Toes tingling, my knees sink into the floor, and my legs are numb. I take him all the way down my throat as heat blossoms between my thighs, throbbing when Wilder lifts his hips to meet my lips.
His chest expands with breath, and his abs flex upon an exhale. I slide my hand up his body as far as I can reach, grazing his feverish heartbeat with the tips of my fingers before dragging my nails down his stomach. He captures my wrist before I pull away, lacing our fingers together as a stream of cum shoots across my tongue.
Taking him deeper, I close my lips around the thickness of his cock, inhaling through my nose not to choke on the size. The veins that run up and down his length fill up with blood and contract as he comes, coating my tongue, my teeth, and my throat. I swallow every ounce he spills into me, licking the last drop from the tip.
His arms hang from the side of the bench, knees apart, breathless and sated. “You’re fucking amazing, Camilla.”
I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand and say, “I know.”
We eat breakfast at the kitchen table, sharing a bowl of fruit and another pot of coffee before Wilder gives me an official tour of the house. He shares the code to the front door and shows me how to engage and disengage the home security system.
“I’ll add your name to the approved guest list at the gate,” he says. “That way you can come and go as you please.”
I’m sitting at the edge of the pool with my feet in the heated water when Talent calls. Wilder’s laptop is open and multiple files are spread out on a table under the pergola. There’s an ink pen over his ear and a whiskey on the rocks in his hand, still shirtless in his workout clothes. Depending on what job he’s working on from home today, he’s either a business lawyer checking numbers for the clients he represents or a mafioso drawing up a kill list.
Oddly enough, I’m at ease with both.
He puts the call on speaker, and Talent apologizes immediately. He knows Wilder wanted the day off, but John Michael Lucky III has requested dinner before his flight back to New York this evening. “To thank us for our hospitality,” Talent says with a laugh. “Mom’s rolling in her fucking grave.”
Wilder’s eyes shift from his laptop to his phone, frowning disapprovingly. “No.”
“Is Camilla there?” Talent asks. My heart rate quickens, and I kick my feet, stirring waves across the water. A non-answer is confirmation enough, and Talent adds, “You never stood a chance, Wild. I hope you now understand why I didn’t either.”
Another frown, another non-answer. Wilder only says, “I’m not leaving her.”
Today feels more like spring than winter. It’s an unseasonably warm December day, weeks away from Christmas. I’ve noticed the holiday decorations popping up around the city, strings of lights nailed around rooflines, and the rotation of Christmas songs on the radio. Television shows are broken up by commercials selling everything from new cars with big red bows on the hoods to Santa’s choice of soft drink. But Christmas is just another holiday I can easily forget, made easier by the sun perched high in the bleached sky. I turn my face toward the fireball, and everything behind my closed eyelids turns red.
“Trust me, I know,” Talent says. “It’s really fucking hard to leave them, especially during a time like this. But Lucky is one less thing we’ll have to worry about once he leaves. Get through this dinner and take the rest of the week off. Come back Monday, but I need you tonight. I can’t do this without you.”
I open my eyes one at a time, squinting against the glaring sunlight and hold my hand at my brow like a visor. “Take me back to the apartment.” Wilder turns his frustrated scowl on me, and Talent knows better than to interfere. “Drop me off and have dinner with your brother. I’ll pack some things to stay the weekend, and you can pick me back up on your way home. I don’t even have shoes here, Wilder,” I say when his frown deepens. “And Lydia’s mad at me. It’ll give me a chance to talk to her.”
“She’s so fucking pissed,” Talent says, adding fuel to the fire.
“Oh, shut up.” I laugh.
As if the entire conversation hasn’t happened, Wilder ends the call and goes back to his work. But his conscience gets the best of him, and it’s not long before the loyalty he carries for his brother and his obligation to Ridge & Sons triumph. He plucks the pen from over his ear and tosses it end over end across the table, slamming his laptop closed.
Wilder drops me off at the apartment a few hours later. We’re quite the pair, a spectacle that blogs, vlogs, and social media rags could have a field day with.
Wilder Ridge in Versace Spotted with Unknown Blonde in Boxer Shorts.
That would be the caption before I trip in a pair of slippers that are four sizes too big for me because I didn’t want to go barefoot. These boxer shorts are held up by a safety pin, and I didn’t bother to comb the tangles from the ends of my hair.
None of this makes a difference to Wilder, who would have preferred we stayed at his place with no clothes on at all. He walks me all the way to the front door with his arm slung protectively over my shoulders, murmuring a long list of rules I’m to follow.
Don’t leave the apartment.
Don’t go near the windows.
Don’t leave the fucking apartment.
“I’m serious, Camilla. Don’t leave this apartment. Pack your things. I won’t be long.” He’s hesitant to let me go, turning to face me outside the apartment door. Wilder stands with his feet shoulder-width apart, lowering his head to look me in the eyes. “Unless you want to keep wearing mine. I’ve grown partial to seeing you in them.”
I pull his shirt away from my body. It hangs off me in sheets. “This isn’t sexy. I’m drowning in your clothes.”
New caption:
Wilder Ridge in Versace Kisses Unknown Blonde in Boxer Shorts.
“You’re sexy in anything you wear.” He presses a small kiss at the corner of my mouth. “You could wear a trash bag and I’d still want to fuck you.”
“I must be good at my job if you’d still want to sleep with me in a trash bag,” I say playfully.
“That’s not your job anymore.” Wilder’s posture straightens, and he pulls his lapels tight. “The only person who’s ever going to experience you like that again is me.”
As much as I’d hoped for this, Wilder had me convinced our relationship wouldn’t evolve past casual. But Lydia has firsthand experience falling in love with a Ridge and saw this coming from a mile away. She knew my days as a Hush escort were coming to an end, and she prepared. Vera may have been hired to service half of my clientele, but the entire roster is hers now.
I’m done selling my body.
Daddy would be so proud.
The door suddenly swings open, and Lydia appears brandishing her cell phone toward Wilder like a weapon. “You’re late for dinner. Talent says to hurry.”
Wilder cracks a smile, and he hooks his arm around the back of my neck, tucking me into his side. Lydia crosses her arms over her chest, unmoving and unwilling to stand down. This feels like the part in the movie when the bad boy shows up to take the sweet, innocent girl to prom. An instrumental rock ballad plays, and the camera zooms in first on Lydia’s face, and then Wilder’s, who’s dressed the part, but despite how luxurious these slippers are, they’re not prom appropriate and I’m not innocent.
And this is real life.
Eyes more gold than green look me up and down from the oversized slippers to the tangles in my hair, and she snorts, but there’s something besides boredom in her expression. It’s in the way her jaw tightens and her eyebrow arches. There’s a little twitch in her nose, and a single hair out of place at her temple, a rare imperfection.
Might she feel… jealous? Possessive? Resistant?
“I’m coming back for her,” Wilder says.
“Naturally,” she drawls in her typical indifferent tone, but it curls around the tail of the Y a little too sharply.
There’s no denying the pull in the pit of my stomach, luring me toward Lydia. I’m tied to her as strongly as I am to Wilder. The reasons differ, but the ache around my heart is just as powerful and impossible to ignore. She’s ice-cold, he’s white-hot, and I exist somewhere in the middle, tepid and calm.
It was a year ago when I arrived alone in Grand Haven with a backpack full of candles and no direction. The front page of a newspaper reeled me in, Inez introduced me to the lifestyle, but Lydia Montgomery gave me a home and all the intimacy she could afford. She was the first person in my entire life who thought I deserved more, and she gave me options and a chance to decide for myself without casting me off.
Words aren’t her strong suit, so she speaks grand gestures.
Whenever I find a fresh box of matches on my dresser, I know she was thinking about me. On the nights when my candles go out and she rushes in to save me from my nightmares, Lydia sits at the end of my bed until I stop crying. And when she thinks I’m asleep, she tucks my blankets under my chin and dries cooling tears from my face.
She’s added candles to her office décor for the evenings when we stay past sunset. There’s an entire jar of Nutella hidden in her desk drawer next to a pack of plastic spoons in case I get hungry, and she doesn’t complain when I take her chair and roll it against the window to watch the dolphins in the bay.
We hold hands on occasion, but we don’t hug or kiss like some sisters do. But sometimes we sit knee to knee at the vanity when she does my makeup, and Lydia grazes my cheek with the back of her knuckles or pets my hair even after the curl is perfect. There’re times when her foot finds mine under the dinner table, or we gravitate toward each other on the couch and our elbows touch—small points of contact that mean everything after so much time spent alone.
It’s human connection that says, I need you as much as you need me.
It says, I waited a long time for you.
It says, you’re important.
Wilder only spent two years on this planet without his brother. Once he was born, they were constant companions. Lydia and I have just found each other, and we have a lot of catching up to do.
And I owe her an apology.
“So, was I right about him? Does he have a sex dungeon in the basement?” Lydia asks after Wilder has left and we’re back inside.
His kiss is still warm on my lips, and I brush my fingers across them, saying, “I didn’t find one.”
She opens the refrigerator, and the white interior light illuminates her face. She’s less protective of her expressions now that we’re alone. Pursing her lips, Lydia bites the inside of her cheek and taps her foot on the tile floor, staring absentmindedly at the empty carton of orange juice I should have thrown away. There’s nothing she wants or needs inside the fridge, but that doesn’t stop her from reaching in to move the condiments around.
