DON’T HURT MY BABY Read online

  She fit the description of Toro’s girl, sure. Tess something – some kind of cloth that had made him think of his grandmother. He couldn’t remember right now, not with a gorgeous girl grinding her clit into his fingers. Jesus. But for her to have said something like that, to one of Toro’s own men – he had to assume that, right now, that’s who she thought he was, thus the only reason she hadn’t screamed and raised holy hell – there was something else in that head of hers. Maybe it had been a long time for her, too.

  “Since right now,” he replied. He shoved his jeans farther down his thighs so that his cock wasn’t getting caught on the zipper. He reached down and took her thigh, lifting it up to his waist to open her up, nice and wide. He placed the head of his cock at her entrance and waited. “What’ll it be, sweet thing?”

  She groaned, rolling her hips, trying to pull him in.

  He shifted away from her. “Tell me yes,” he whispered against her chin, teasing her just a tiny bit deeper, hearing the whimper form and bubble away. “Or, fuck, tell me no, and tell me not to listen. I don’t give a shit. But if you don’t want me here, tell me, and I’ll go.”

  Eventually. Eventually, he would go. But telling her, that wouldn’t help a goddamn thing.

  “No,” she whispered, and he was just about to pull away when she continued. “But please, don’t listen. Please. No. Don’t. Don’t do it.”

  He groaned again and sank back into her. “Tess, fuck.” She was warm and wet, and she pulled at him as she rolled her hips, fucking him right back. He gripped her slippery thighs and lifted her up, slamming her back so that he had more leverage to fuck up into her.

  “Sweet thing,” she groaned out into his ear. “Call me sweet thing if you want to be my daddy.”

  He couldn’t manage another word, just slammed into her, focusing as hard as he could on the sweet flesh filling his hands, instead of the feeling of her body split on his cock, because if he thought of that, thought of her calling him Daddy as he wrecked her cunt, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold back.

  She managed to get a hand between them and stroked her clit just enough to send her into spasms around him. She screamed, her head arching back, her body bowing around his cock, and he had to start counting backward by sixes to stay in the game enough to wait her out. He didn’t want to rush her. She seemed so surprised when the orgasm overtook her, like it was something she hadn’t enjoyed in a really long time. Course, he’d seen pictures of Toro. Maybe she hadn’t.

  When he was sure she was done, when every last drop of pleasure had been wrung out of her cunt by his pounding cock, he whispered, “Say it again.”

  She blinked at him, miming innocence. “Say what? Daddy?”

  He made a sound that was entirely feral, even to him. “Again.”

  “Are you fucking me, Daddy? Are you fucking your sweet thing?”

  He exploded, pressing into her as far as he could while his cock pulsed and throbbed up into her, spilling cum so hard that he had to fight to keep his knees strong and not drop both of them onto the floor.

  She crooned to him, her nails tracing down his neck, and it was almost enough to set him off again, like a fucking kid who’d just learned how to jack off. He set her down as gently as he could, pulled free, and then rested for just a moment with his head against the door.

  She passed him a towel, and he wiped off his cock before putting it away and zipping up. And then it was time for business, and it was too bad that she hadn’t gotten a chance to clean up yet; she was just going to have to take him to find Toro with his jizz drying on her thighs.

  He had to bite back an apology as he drew the gun she hadn’t seemed to notice. There would be no apologizing; from here on, this was strictly business. Her eyes went wide as she turned back to him with a lazy smile and found herself staring down the silenced barrel of his weapon. She hid the fear quickly and thoroughly; he only saw it because it flashed through in that first moment.

  “Well, well,” she said. “You’re not one of Toro’s men at all, are you?”

  He was impressed. Not too many people could pull off that level of affected disinterest when they had a gun in their face.

  “I am not,” he agreed. “And while that was a lovely diversion, now I need you to take me to him?”

  She was quiet for just a moment, and he let her have that space to breathe. She deserved the right to decide whether she wanted to die at his hands or die when Toro shot her, if he failed in his mission. Of course, he’d never failed, not in ten years.

  The memory of Bastille tugged at him, and he pushed it sharply away.

  “You understand I can’t promise to behave?”

  He laughed. “Sweet thing, you don’t seem the sort I’d ever rely on to behave.”

  She gave a crisp nod and folded her arms under her breasts in a way that propped them up deliciously. He hadn’t gotten a chance to really get his tongue around the tight brown nubs, and dear God what was he even doing thinking like this on a job?

  “Can I get my robe first?”

  Chapter Three

  Tess was doing her damndest to put off every Don’t-Give-A-Fuck vibe she had to spare, but she was shaking hard inside. This man – she’d taken him inside of her, and he’d been lying the whole time. He had to know what she’d thought, what she’d assumed. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had sex she didn’t really want before, but this was something else. Somehow, the way he hadn’t bothered to even explain who he was seemed worse than anything else.

  Of course, she could hardly blame a hired gun here to kill the man who was her keeper for being less than scrupulously honest. And she’d hardly stood up out of that tub to ask for his identification. And he’d been good to her, the second time. Even the first time, he hadn’t been bad, just rough. She liked rough, but, well, it didn’t matter now.

  When she raised a sardonic eyebrow, the man rolled his eyes and gestured toward the back of the door with his gun, pointing her towards her silk bathrobe. That was good. Now she wouldn’t have to strut through the penthouse suite naked. She’d done it before, but usually for a much more specific purpose. And definitely not with someone’s cum drying on her thighs. That was going to feel terrible later. It felt bad enough now.

  It had been quite a thing – watching the man shift from a relaxed lover into a trained killer. It was interesting, she thought idly as she put her robe on, trying to think about what in the world she was going to do to maximize her chances of surviving this afternoon, to wonder which had been the mask. Or were they both masks, hiding someone else entirely underneath them?

  “So, you know my name,” she said, turning and giving him a full flash as she settled the robe around her, tying it loosely around her middle. “Do I get to know yours?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said.

  There was something to his voice, but she couldn’t place it. In general, he had a standard American TV accent, just plain and relaxed. But there was something underneath it; she’d bet diamonds that he’d been born somewhere else or traveled somewhere else for a long time. The accent he had was too cultivated.

  “Right after I reveal my master plan to you so that you can foil it like James Bond.”

  Tess shrugged her shoulders. “Suit yourself. I mean, depending on what you are aiming to do, I might be able to get you closer to Toro than you’ll get on your own. But you be petty and fussy if you want, it’s fine with me.”

  She didn’t expect it to work, so when he sighed and scrubbed his hand through his fine auburn hair, she was incredibly surprised.

  “I’m here for Toro. There’s a contract on him. Silk Road wants him dead. He’s intruded on enough territory. You know he’s running out of miles, don’t you?”

  She did indeed. It wasn’t for nothing Tess had started to think about her future once someone took down Toro. She needed to either be gone or claimed by then, and both were dangerous options. She tried to be surreptitious as she looked this man up and down, but she already knew; a man who fucked
that rough but came back to make sure she was taken care of too, that was a man who could protect her. She could trust him. Not far, of course, but at least as far as seeing how his plan unfolded.

  “I’ve heard rumors,” she lied. “Tell me your name, and I’ll take you to him. Through back rooms, ways that are – Well, nothing in this place is unguarded but less guarded.”

  “You were unguarded,” he pointed out.

  She raised an eyebrow again. “There’s a silent alarm. I could have tripped it at any point.”

  That was a blatant lie, but if he was noticing them, he wasn’t giving away his realizations. There wasn’t a silent alarm in this room. In the hallway that she would take him through, however, there absolutely was.

  “Milo,” he said after a moment. “Now move.”

  Milo. Interesting. She gave him a quick jerk of her head and then shifted into motion, leading him carefully through the suite towards the rooms set aside for Toro’s “business” interests. He used them for everything from dealing with employees who stole from him to cute little whores he liked better than her – which she did not mind in the least – to watching sports loudly with his most favored lieutenants. To get to the office, you normally have to go through a long hallway which always had at least two, sometimes four, goons posted along its length. Today, Toro had been entirely clear that Tess was going to spend time on her own because he had important business to conduct with a visitor who didn’t want his face seen by anyone. That worked for her just fine. But it also meant there’d be plenty of goons in the hallway, and probably more inside the office.

  Instead of going down that hallway then, she’d use the panic route Toro had installed a year ago. It wasn’t supposed to work in reverse; the doors were only supposed to work outwards, leading from Toro’s office to the bedroom to a recessed door in his closet. But never hire budget contractors; the idiots hadn’t installed anything right, and if you had a decent nail file, it was an easy thing to get the closet door open. From there, it was just turning doorknobs. Tess had started keeping a decent nail file in all of her outfits, for just such an occasion. She never thought she’d really have to bolt, but if she actually did, she wanted every single option open to her.

  She pried the door open, then gestured for Milo to follow her. He did so, moving fast and shutting the door behind him. In the moment where he closed the door, she nudged the alarm by the closet door.

  There. If Toro managed to take down Milo, she’d be able to argue that she was at gunpoint, tee-hee, what could she possibly have done? And if Milo shot Toro and escaped, she’d be able to swear she did everything to help him, and the alarm must have been triggered accidentally. She had covered as many bases as she could without much in the way of prep time.

  It was kind of shitty – ending things with Toro like this. He’d been good to her, in as much as an emotionally stunted drug kingpin could be good to anyone other than his bank account. He hadn’t made her put up with gross stuff that she didn’t want to do, he’d made sure she got regular testing, visits to doctors when she was sick, and every creature comfort her heart could desire. He treated her well. But if she stayed too long with him, she’d be considered tainted, especially if she was still there when his empire fell. She’d seen it before; the kind of criminal that kept a prostitute as a companion was not the sort who thought rationally about such things. Too many beliefs depended on gut feelings and superstitious omens.

  And honestly? While she’d slap anyone in the outside world who called her “older” at twenty-three years old, the fact was that for men in Toro’s position, she was practically decrepit. There were so many girls who were eager to take over spots like hers – the younger model that was traded in for. She’d been one of those girls once, dancing her ass off to impress Toro and get kept. She remembered the cold, angry eyes of the woman she’d been replacing.

  Milo came up behind her, stepping carefully through the mess of the walk-in closet. Toro was a lot of things, and none of them were neat. It was one of the things about him that put her absolutely through the roof. He used to come into her room, drop his crap everywhere, poke her for a little while, and then disappear naked into the suite, leaving all his junk behind. He expected her to pick up and keep her room pin-neat, but, well, it was typical anyway of that sort of self-centered person.

  “Let’s go,” Milo said.

  Tess nodded, taking a long, deep breath.

  Chapter Four

  Tess expected the bedroom to be empty, even though she’d tapped the alarm. When she slowly opened the door and found it yanked out of her hand, she gave a little shriek. She wasn’t proud of it, but she couldn’t contain the sound. Or the horrible little jump, as if she was a goddamn rabbit and not a woman in charge of her fate. At least she wasn’t wearing heels; if she’d been wearing heels, she was pretty sure she’d have ended up right on her nicely shaped ass.

  Milo didn’t scream, shriek, or jump. He moved quickly into the doorway, pushing past her and shoving her back into the closet in one swift movement. She grabbed onto one of Toro’s hanging suits to try and keep from falling to the floor, so her angle on what exactly Milo was doing wasn’t great. But she could see enough. She saw him yank one man in close, punch him in the stomach, and then pull him down onto his knee, knocking him to the ground in just a few moments. Somehow, he then had a knife in his hand, flipped to an attack position, and within just a few seconds, he’d slit the second man’s throat, cutting deep enough that he couldn’t make a sound as he fell to the floor.

  Tess felt a scream bubbling up in her throat and swallowed hard. The man she’d just fucked twice was covered in arterial spray, and the contrast was more than she could handle. But something inside her wasn’t afraid; there was something incredible about how quickly he’d dispatched those two men. She’d heard stories of Toro’s monstrous temper when he was younger, but the entire time she’d known him he’d had someone else around to do his dirty work for him. She’d seen men dead at his command, but never at his hands.

  She shouldn’t have found the display of raw power sexy, but she did. She absolutely did. And the way he took control of her before, owning her body the way he did… it just made her even more intrigued by this man. She found herself hoping that he did manage to take down Toro. Maybe she could convince him to take her with him at the same time. She’d come up with something. Surviving was basically what she did.

  The door from the bedroom into the office was open. The goons must have come in that way. She didn’t need to point it out to Milo. Odds were that if she stepped into that doorway, Toro would be able to see her, and that would be the end of her playing both sides of the fence. So, she did the most sensible thing she could think of.

  She took a deep breath and screamed as loud as she could.

  Chapter Five

  Milo would never allow himself something so amateur as a flinch at a sharp sound, like a woman screaming her throat out, but if pressed later, he might have admitted that the sound surprised him. He glanced up and surveyed all corners; for the most part, he assumed he would see another woman who had come in from another location. But no, there was no one in his visual range except for Tess. The look on her face was almost apologetic; he could see the moment when she dropped into a mask of total fear, as if she’d found him there when she was on her way to see Toro. He could understand why she needed to do that. She had to look out for herself. Playing both sides until there was a clear victor was annoying, but he could understand why she’d do it.

  Kept women in this world rarely ended up in good situations when their keeper was overthrown. She’d need to demonstrate that she’d tried to help Toro, that she hadn’t been disloyal, if she didn’t want to end up in some low-end bar bending too far over the table to try and get tips. It made sense.

  It was annoying as fuck, but it made sense.

  Well, he could play along. And if his instincts were on at all, he could get her all hot and bothered again.

  He reache
d into the closet and grabbed her wrist, yanking her out and close to him. She screamed again, but he wondered if that flash in her eyes was anger or appreciation. He spun her, twisting her arm up behind her back as he had in the bathroom. She leaned into him, letting him shove her along in front of him, his weapon showily brandished in front of them. He had to admit, he wasn’t entirely sure that a shithead drug dealer like Toro wouldn’t shoot the woman just to hit him, but, well, it gave her a chance. That was better than nothing.

  He pushed her into the office where everyone had guns pointed at him and Tess. Except Toro. Toro lounged behind his desk, fingers steepled, his eyes fastened on the doorway. There were goons watching, their guns generally pointed in his direction. None of that surprised him.

  The man standing in front of Toro’s desk, however – that man surprised him. He had to stop himself from hissing Bastille’s name like some kind of bad movie villain. He hadn’t seen the other man since they’d both been young men, learning their trade and struggling to find companionship in a profession that discouraged any kind of connection whatsoever. And then Bastille had destroyed everything that had ever given Milo an identity that he understood, and Milo had spent the intervening years chasing the other hitter’s shadow.