I’d started to believe there would never be a last time with Izzy.
I’d watched her all day instead of working. I’d tried to call my brother so he could talk me off the ledge and get me back to work. Instead, he’d told me to go mingle with the damn employees. No one understood I was trying to remain the last single Armanelli. I was trying to do us a favor.
Because I wasn’t a good man unleashed.
Rodney had looked her way more than once that afternoon. I’d peeked out of the window to see her sucking on candy canes with her best friend, whom I also envied, even though I could tell their relationship was only friendly. I didn’t want any man around her now.
Especially not one who’d put his sweatshirt on her. Fuck me.
She’d sat there in another man’s dark hoodie, and I knew right then and there I’d destroy it. I ripped it from her body and threw it into the dirt.
“I want to see that green on you while I fuck you next to this fire,” I murmured, trying to cover up that I hated his clothes on her. It was more than obvious, though. She knew that. It was fucking personal and sexual and territorial when you slipped your clothing on someone else. I was also aware that another woman wearing jewelry around her that I’d bought was unacceptable if she felt for me how I felt for her. It’d be something I’d have to remedy later.
“Cade, if someone comes out here—”
“They’ll know you belong to me on this retreat. They need to know that anyway.” I wiggled her ass so that my cock was between her cheeks and took my time dragging my knife over her bikini. “As a matter of fact, maybe we lose the bikini, huh?”
Her skin was damp, and so close to the fire, she glowed with a sheen of sweat. I watched goose bumps form on her skin as I trailed my knife to the edge of her green bottoms.
“You lose my bikini, I walk back to the cabin nude,” she pointed out.
“Good point,” I murmured before I slid the tip of the knife along her bikini line before pushing the fabric to the side, letting the metal come to rest right next to her clit. My blade was sharp, the point dangerous. I made sure to sharpen it every year, not because I ever thought I would need it, but because I liked it.
It was even more rewarding seeing the use I had for it here and now. The metal glinted in the moonlight as I moved it inch by inch back up her stomach to her bikini top and then I moved those little triangles to the sides too, letting her nipples pop out, erect, ready to be pinched and sucked by only me.
“Perfect,” I murmured before dragging the knife to her neck. Her hazel eyes held fire as she glanced up at me. “Now, you’re at my complete mercy.”
She smiled, and it reached all the way to her eyes, like this was where she belonged, and she’d never say otherwise. “Do you like what you see, Cade? Feel free to enjoy the view. If someone comes out here, though, everyone’s going to enjoy the view of my pussy too.”
She thought I cared about my job, about our reputations, as I growled and stuck my knife in the dirt next to us. I only cared that people would get to see her vulnerable, see what I was starting to think was mine.
I ran my hands up to her breasts. Then I pulled her back into my chest so she could rest her body over me while I took in the woman who was on the cusp of bringing me to my knees. “Why did you share that story with everyone tonight?”
“My tattoo story?” She shrugged like she didn’t want to talk about it, a nonverbal indicator that she wanted to indulge in an easy fuck with me again. Then her hands were over mine, kneading her tits through them. “I don’t know, Cade. Who cares?”
This one wouldn’t be as easy.
I’d listened to her honest answer as I walked toward the fire, and it stopped me cold in my tracks. God himself couldn’t have made me move as I listened, as I heard she’d tattooed my callous words on her ribs. Didn’t she know I’d said them to protect her? And now, she must have realized I respected her work ethic and who she was more than I did most. Right?
Getting lost in the trance of my words on her skin, I sought out the writing. My hand dragged to her side to find the ink, and I rubbed back and forth over the lettering. “I didn’t say it to hurt you, Izzy.”
She sighed. “Yes you did. You wanted me off the team. And it’s fine—”
“It was true I wanted you off the team because I wanted you safe. You were young. And you were getting involved with people who didn’t value a fucking life.” I tried to explain it.
“Right. Well.” She sighed. “What you said is true. I’m an addict. I’d just never heard it before, and I’d dealt with so much . . .” She stopped like she had more to share but didn’t want to.
“Tell me.”
Instead, she rolled her hips. “There’s nothing to tell. I fucked up when I was a kid, and I’ll pay for the consequences the rest of my life. I’ve tried to keep it together since then, and I’m proud that I have.”
“Keeping it together like you do, dollface, it’s a waste.” I leaned in and angled her rib cage close to me so I could graze my teeth over that tattoo. “I should carve this tattoo out of you.”
“Why?” She was breathless as I rubbed it and sucked my way to her back, up her shoulder blade and then to her neck. “I like it now. It reminds me of how far I’ve come.”
“How far you’ve come from what?”
“I used to indulge in my emotions, Cade. I used to dwell on every stupid thing. It’s what got me to where I was. The dwelling, only focusing on my pain.”
“Pain from what?” I slid a hand from her tattoo down to her pussy. I needed to work her, to feel her, to know that her arousal was mine to drown in as she shared herself with me.
She paused and then her words came out painfully. “I lost someone.”
“Who?” How had I not known this?
“Why do you have to know, Cade? It doesn’t matter.”
Everything about her mattered to me; I’d just started to see that. “Maybe it matters to me.”
“I was just young and dumb. Drop it.” Her voice cracked, and I filed it away to explore later. I wasn’t going to drop anything about Izzy Hardy any time soon.
It was a filler answer. And suddenly I wanted to decode her. I wanted it all. I rubbed her clit as I massaged one of her breasts and murmured, “You’re not telling me the whole truth.”
She rolled into me and whimpered. “What do you need my whole truth for when we’re not doing anything after this re—”
I curled my fingers into her to stop her words. I didn’t want to hear them anymore. “You want to get rid of me so badly, huh?”
Instead of answering, she gripped my wrists for leverage to ride my hand. She was so wet, it sounded like my own little personal waterfall instead of her denying that we had something outside of fucking on this trip. That’s what I wanted to hear, all I wanted to hear.
“Knees, baby doll. Right in front of the fire.”
She was so close she couldn’t deny me as she slid to the ground and kneeled before it. I stood, shoving the chair back, and then stepped between her calves, spreading her knees farther into the dirt. Instead of telling her how good her ass looked or how someone could paint a damn masterpiece of her back alone, I took one step back, kneeled behind her, and yanked her ass back against my sweatpants.
She yelped and fell forward, catching herself just inches from the flame, her hands in the dirt now too. “Cade, this is too close.”
She was talking about the fire, but I wanted her dripping sweat, so hot and close to burning up inside that she’d never forget who put her there. I pulled my sweatpants down and didn’t hesitate as I said, “Make sure you brace, then, baby. Or the fire will get you.”
It wasn’t a real threat. I grabbed her hair to pull her back when I thrust in. Hard. Her whole body, the curves, the ass, the tits, moved in perfection. I let my cock rail her, and she met me thrust for thrust. The fire danced around us, the only light of the night, with the moon and the smoke curled around her body like she was fucking the devil.
Maybe I was him.
I felt like the devil as I held her so close to the fire’s edge and fucked her with all my might. It was a damn beautiful sight, the green of the bikini on her almost luminescent skin, the way her dark waves fell over her shoulder, and the way her muscles flexed to meet with mine.
“Nobody gets me but me,” she murmured into the fire, and I was unsure whether she was talking to it or to me. I always knew Izzy struggled with something, she fought with letting go like she had to keep herself bottled up for the rest of her life. But she was wrong, because I was coming for her. I wouldn’t stop until I got her either.
“I get the real you, baby doll. Me. Because I fuck it out of you every chance I get.” My cock hardened more at the words. The world faded away around us. All I saw was her. All I wanted and needed was her.
And she must have felt it too because her pussy clenched, and she screamed my name into the fire like I owned her. I truly wanted to believe I did.
It’d have been a lie, though. When she flipped that dark hair over her shoulder and stared at me with a glint in her eye and said, “Anybody can fuck an orgasm out of someone, Cade. Doesn’t mean you’re getting a damn thing other than that,” I knew she owned me.
My blood pressure rose, and the need to control her for a moment, to make her see that she was mine, took over. I grabbed the front of her neck and flipped her so she lay on her back in the dirt, hair spread in the dust. Her hands went to my wrists, and her eyes sparkled like she didn’t fear me at all. I held her down and pumped my cock above her body with the other. “I’m marking the you that you think no one wants to see, Izzy. It’s mine, right here, right now.”
With my words, I came over her breasts and stomach. We both watched my cum shoot out in ribbons over her, marking her for me alone.
She let me pump myself until every last drop was gone, and she held my gaze the whole time. When I was spent and breathing hard over her, she smiled up at me softly and said, “Happy with yourself, Cade?”
I cataloged her under me, the dirt in her hair, the rumpled bikini, the way her sweat beaded randomly over her beautiful skin and mixed with my cum. “You’re damn near perfect in the dirt, Izzy Hardy. I’m struggling not to take a picture of you.”
“I’m an absolute mess.”
“And that’s exactly how I want you,” I murmured to her as I rolled from her body to sit next to her. She moved to get up, but I stopped her. “Give me a second.”
She lifted a brow like she was going to argue.
“Please.” I didn’t beg, but I would with her. I’d have done just about anything to have her there with me for another moment. I reached for Rodney’s sweatshirt and took my time wiping myself from her body. “I used to clean up a lot of messes back in the day, but this one I’m enjoying cleaning up most.”
I smiled to myself as I threw that sweatshirt into the fire.
“You’re ridiculous if that brings you joy, Cade,” she mumbled as she pushed her bikini back into the right position and sat up, dusting the dirt from herself. “And I’m sure the messes you cleaned up were much worse than this.”
I hummed. “If you’re talking about my days as a part of the old Armanelli family, sure.” I shrugged, thinking about that part of my life, how I suddenly wanted her to understand. “We’ve tried to be a cleaner, more productive family.”
She picked at nothing on the ground, avoiding eye contact. “I know that. The world knows that. Even Heather is proud of your accolades.” She sighed. “Everyone has embraced and accepted who you are.”
I thought about my life. Growing up a son to a powerful mafia boss had shown me a lot of the ugly world. Not that my brother, who was first born, didn’t see more. “They’ve either embraced who I am or learned to fear who I am.”
“Do you get tired of people fearing you?”
“No,” I answered honestly, “because they should. If anything, I get tired of acting as if I’m not a threat, like I enjoy mingling with all of you for the sake of whatever this retreat is.”
She laughed. “It’s called building trust. Team building.”
“I don’t work well with others.”
“Probably because you don’t care if people fear you rather than respect you. And I think everyone wants to. You’re a freaking god when it comes to hacking.”
“Is that all I’m a god at?” I threw a small joke her way.
She rewarded me with a genuine smile. “So Cade has a sense of humor. Maybe you should show your team that more often.”
I tugged on a strand of her hair. “Maybe you should show your fire, your emotion, and the real you more too.”
Narrowing her eyes, she argued. “Nobody likes all that. That’s like saying you want to show the world the Armanelli mobster in you.”
“Sometimes I do.” I shrugged and threw a small piece of a twig from the ground into the fire. “But I save that for the days the world really needs a reminder.” She rolled her eyes like I didn’t make any sense. “You realize I gave the go-ahead to have my father killed, right?” I blurted, like she needed to know that the man she’d just fucked was essentially a murderer.
My father deserved his fate, and my brother and I had taken him down. He’d been a ruthless killer that hurt the nation over and over. Still, losing a father and being the one to cause that loss made many wary of me. She had to understand I’d be ruthless, that I wasn’t just a sweet man who delved into cybersecurity. I did it for the country, for my family.
And I’d kill again for them too if need be.
“I’m aware that it was rumored, yes.” She nodded, not recoiling at all. “But according to your fans, like Heather, it was for the greater good.”
I dug the heel of my shoe in the dirt, trying to play off her explanation. It was a good one. “I’ll admit it’s a brilliant twist on the story. My mother was an Italian woman with a lot of love in her heart. She told us to make decisions with love. I made the decision to have him killed for the greater good, sure, but I was also angry. I acted in anger. And I’d act in anger again if I felt a man took his power too far.”
“You have a lot of power too,” she reminded me quietly.
“Yep, and I’m happy to piss off, rile up, and fuck with anyone in the world, Izzy. I enjoy doing it. I like the control and believe I’m capable of handling how far I push everyone. My father liked it too, but I never thought he was capable of handling it.”
She considered that for a moment as we stared at the fire that was slowly dying in the cool air. “I bet your mother would have been proud of you then.”
“My mom would have been proud of a serial killer.” I laughed thinking back to her making cannoli for my father even after he came home from getting rid of a few guys. “Quite frankly, she married one. My father was a mean son of a bitch who trafficked women and drugs and laundered money.”
“Then you did the good the world claims by getting rid of him,” she murmured, and for some reason, her acceptance lifted a weight from my shoulders that I didn’t know I’d been carrying.
“Maybe. Or maybe I did it to piss some people off,” I countered. “It’s what I enjoy most, right?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never felt riled by you at all,” she said with mock certainty. Then she leaned in and bumped my shoulder, a sparkle in her eyes as she smiled at me.
I hummed low, just imagining the way her body vibrated when she wanted to lash out at me. “You, I might enjoy riling most, Ms. Hardy.” I saw goose bumps rise on her skin and pulled my sweatshirt over my head. “Why the hell you’d go to a damn campfire in a bikini is beyond me.”
“I didn’t,” she huffed, but she snuggled into my sweatshirt like she was trying to absorb my warmth. “I said I would go back to the cabin to get into some warmer clothes, and Rodney offered his hoodie instead.”
“Next time another man tries to put their clothing on you, consider that I’m going to cut it off and burn it. Got it, dollface?”
“I’m not really sure I do get it.” She tapped her chin.
Fuck, that woman had a knack for aggravating me too. “What’s not to get?”
“I can’t be in any sort of relationship with my boss, Cade. And quite frankly, we don’t like each other enough to be in one.” She always said that like it was some mutual thing.
“I like you just fine. I especially enjoy your pussy—”
“No.” She cut me off with a hand in the air and then stood up from the ground. “Aside from sleeping together, this isn’t a match made in heaven. And we don’t need the drama right now.”
I stood up too and dusted off my pants before pulling her close and starting the walk back to our cabin. “I’d argue that it’s less drama to fuck you silent when you’re bickering with me about something ridiculous.”
“I really don’t bicker. You haven’t been around me long enough to say that I do.”
I chuckled at the fact that she couldn’t see she was doing exactly that. “So, what? You want us to stay on our sides and work real nice without me bending you over the counter to fuck you while you’re walking around in your baggy T-shirts?”
“I can get a pencil skirt out if that helps,” she offered.
“I’ll take fucking you in either.”
She slid a hand over her face as she tried to act unaffected. Yet I felt her body heat against mine and noted how her breathing had picked up. Izzy Hardy was just as obsessed with screwing me as I was with screwing her. “If we sleep together again—and that’s a big if—we don’t tell anyone and it ends after the freaking retreat. And we need to get JUNIPER squared away first, which means you need to team build with us.”
“I don’t need to team build—”
“Team build or no cabin fucking, Cade,” she ground out.
I mumbled, “Like you make all the rules . . .”
I was starting to think she did.
