“Don’t, then.”
Roughly, he shoves away my hand, like it was too much for him to watch me touch myself for even a second more. He’s over me, so gorgeous. I feel his fat, hard head between my legs.
He’s pushing into me, shoving into me, looming over me.
He presses my arms over my head and slides in.
I look into his eyes as he fills me. He’s impossibly thick inside me. Us together feels real and forever. The most honesty there can ever be in this world of lies.
“You feel better than I ever dreamed.” He moves in and out of me, harder and harder.
“You do, too.”
I’m on the knife edge of another orgasm, trying to make it last, but the way he’s panting, just gone, gone, gone, sends me over the edge, screaming his name.
And then he comes with a shout, clutching me, crushing me. I love the way he feels, the way he hurts.
After he comes, he stills, fully sheathed in me. It’s a long time before he pulls out.
I lie there boneless while he limps over to the wet bar. He grabs a bright blue towel and limps back.
“Your ankle.”
His lips quirk. “My ankle.” Like it’s so funny. “Lie the fuck still. This pussy is mine, and I plan to take perfect care of it.” He wipes between my legs—gently, thoroughly, gazing into my eyes.
I can feel myself getting addicted to his edge, to his possessiveness. Part of me wants to lie there and be his thing forever, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
Except it does exist.
When he decides my pussy is back to its perfect, pristine condition, he tosses the towel and lies down next to me on the desk, clothes half-off. He pushes my hair off my shoulder. “You look sad.”
I am sad. I’m sad for him. For us. “Our worlds are so different. You see darkness everywhere. Happy baby animals make you think of death and blood.”
“Yeah, I definitely ruined happy baby animals for you.”
“You didn’t ruin them for me. You showed me your heart.”
He traces the line of my cheekbone.
“Be better than him, Aleksio. Be better than your enemies.”
“It’s too late.”
“Fuck you,” I say. “You think I don’t know what you are, what you can be? I remember you as a kid. Maybe you don’t remember, but I do. I remember when you were good. I knew your heart, and yeah, you kicked down a few sandcastles, but you had a good heart. I remember.”
“Are we back to this again?”
“You have a good heart. And if you would just let yourself feel anything, feel just one thing, you would feel your good heart, and you would know you were better than all of this animal shit.”
“Do I need to fuck you senseless again?”
“Aleksio. You can make me want to fuck dirty and be talked to…dirty. But you won’t make me forget your beautiful heart. Why not leave all this? You could go away with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? You’re alive. Screw the crime empire. Your father left you and your brothers huge amounts of money. You can do what you want.”
“It’s not that simple. I can’t just turn and run.”
“You won’t, you mean.”
He slides a knuckle over my lower lip. “Can’t.”
“I need to go back to my life,” I say. “In the Bronx. You can’t stop me.”
His phone rings. He watches my eyes.
“Your crime empire awaits.”
“Ignore it,” he says.
It rings again.
I slide off the desk and hand it to him. I need space. He takes it, not moving his gaze from mine. “Yeah.” Then he looks away. His brows furrow. “Who is this?”
I hear a woman’s voice.
“Hold on.” He passes it to me. “Lila.”
I take it and sit up. “Lila?”
“Mira,” she says.
He jerks the phone out of my hand and puts it on speaker so that he can listen, too.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Fine,” she says. “Donald and Shauna Knutson are in the hospital—they’re badly beaten, but they’re going to live.”
“I’m glad,” I say. “Will they let you see them?”
“Soon.” She pauses. “Ronson’s out there pulling in their boat.” I get the feeling this is why she called—she can finally speak now that Ronson’s not there. Even with Ronson gone, she sounds furtive, like she’s imagining she might be overheard if she’s not careful. “I wanted to tell you something about Keith. But I want your word…I don’t want the Knutsons to get in trouble. But if Keith has brothers…”
I shoot a look at Aleksio. I’m ready to give my word, but is he? He understands. He gives me a nod. “I give you my word,” I say. “Whatever you have to say, the Knutsons will not be hurt by this.”
“That little boy, Keith, he was wild, like we said,” she says. “The Knutsons adopted a number of children. They opened their home. They were good people. But not with Keith. He would fight, and it was bad between him and Donald. It wasn’t a legal adoption, you see. Things weren’t right.”
Aleksio’s face has gone stony. I can practically read his mind: What the fuck did they do? I give him a warning look.
He twirls his finger in a circle, eager to get the story.
“What happened?” I say. “You can trust me.”
“It’s true, the story Ronson told. Donald Knutson and the boys went up to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, but the story always felt a bit off to me, in terms of how deep they went. They went so deep in—you don’t bring kids that deep in for that length of trip.” She pauses.
My interview skills kick in. Long hours with scared people. “So the story sounded odd to you. Something not right,” I coax.
“Don Knutson always did say Keith belonged with the animals. Keith liked to wander off, you see. He was smart, curious, and constantly wandering off. And Donald Knutson, he’d had it with Keith.”
I look at Aleksio. This is sounding bad.
“The place they camped that year, they went far up into a remote area. This area, it’s wilderness as vast as the Sahara. Do you know it?”
“No.”
“There are places inside that wilderness area nobody goes. It’s not easy to search.”
“Very remote,” I say.
“I always wondered about the drowning story. Could Keith have wandered off? Or been left? There was so much trouble with him. And because they believed him drowned, they didn’t search for him as thoroughly as they would have, had he been lost.”
Aleksio looks like he wants to kill somebody. I put my finger to my lips as she goes on.
“I put my questions out of my mind, having nothing but speculation, but then two years ago, a private investigator came to visit the Knutsons. The Knutsons were on a cruise at the time, so he came to our house to ask about Keith. Keith had been gone ten years by then. He told me that a wild boy had been found by campers—”
“Wait. What?” I widen my eyes at Aleksio.
“A savage boy, maybe eighteen years old, a boy who seemed to have grown up in the woods. Found by campers, half-dead from a wounded leg. The years lined up. If Keith was lost at eight, and this was ten years later, he would be eighteen. It could’ve been Keith.”