Piper
“Remember what I said, Piper. You have nothing to be scared of.”
“Jesus, Vanni, can you stop treating me like some helpless princess? Stop telling me shit even you know isn’t fucking true. I have everything to be scared of…”
“Hey... Hey! Don’t turn your back on me, darlin’, I’m trying to help you here. What the fuck is wrong with you? You got your time of the month going on there, sweetheart? Your hormones turning you all whiny all of a sudden?”
“Fuck you.”
I stride down the hallway to our bedroom, but as I try to slam the door shut he pushes his way inside, grabs my wrist and slams me back against the wall, his eyes burning into mine with an anger I’ve not seen before from him. Oh, I have no doubt it’s a familiar anger, to those who know him, work with him, but for me it’s not an anger I’ve seen him display in front of me. And yet, I’m so consumed with my own fear that this – he isn’t even scaring me.
“You listen to me, Piper, and you listen good. You start showing me some respect or I’ll…”
“You’ll what, Vanni? Dole out the kind of punishment my father left me to suffer at the hands of Marco Vierra? Is that what you’re gonna do?”
He lets go of my wrist, throwing it down like it’s burning hot, and he walks away, pacing the floor, raking a hand back and forth through his short, dark hair. He’s agitated, frustrated, I’ve seen this side of him before, just not when it concerned me.
“I’d never hurt you like that, Piper.”
He turns to face me, his expression calmer now, and I feel a wave of guilt wash over me so fast it almost drags the breath right out of me.
“I know,” I whisper, because I think he’s telling the truth there. I don’t think he’d ever hurt me, despite his reputation, he wouldn’t do that to me. He hurts men, he doesn’t hurt women, so no. He wouldn’t sink as low as my father’s asshole of a lieutenant. Not without good reason. Like finding out I slept with Logan Sandero? “I know, Vanni, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just…”
“Ssh, it’s OK.” He’s back in front of me, his hand in mine, squeezing it tight, and he kisses me slowly, breathes a new strength into me, he’s calming me down. And I remember now every reason why I stayed with this man. Did I actually have an option not to? “Nothing is gonna happen to you, do you understand me?”
“What about you? What if something…?”
“I’m gonna be just fine, baby girl, don’t you worry about me.”
“You’re doing it again, Vanni. Treating me like some naïve princess who doesn’t quite understand the kind of shit she’s messed up in. You can’t hide this from me, you can’t make me believe everything’s going to be just fine because it isn’t, going to be just fine. You’re messing with my family, Vanni. And my family have bred pure evil, they employ pure evil, they don’t give a fuck who they hurt. Even blood isn’t out of bounds, as I found out. And they will stop at nothing until they’ve finished the job.”
“And what the fuck am I? Huh? Chicken-shit?”
“I didn’t say that…”
“I’d take a bullet for you, Piper, but it isn’t gonna come to that, you hear me?”
I walk away, over to the other side of the room, I can’t listen to this. I don’t want to listen to this. Because it scares me? Yeah, it fucking scares me. I’m terrified for so many reasons right now, this is just one of them.
“I hear you, Vanni. I hear everything, every word you’re saying and I trust you, OK? I trust you, because I know that everything you tell me... You don’t lie.”
But I do. I lie. I cheat. I make mistakes and then wish I could take them back. And that’s a lie, too. See? I can’t stop myself.
“You don’t lie. But you’re making it all sound so simple. You take just one of my father’s men down and he will rain shit down on you the likes of which I don’t think even you’ve seen before.”
He laughs quietly, dropping his gaze briefly, shaking his head in disbelief. “And you think, what?” He looks up, his eyes locking on mine. “You think I’m not capable of hitting back harder?”
I don’t know what he’s capable of, not really. But I know what my father’s capable of.
“I know the kind of man your daddy is, Piper. I know what he’s done, what he can do, when pushed, and yeah, we are gonna push him. We are gonna push him so damn hard it’ll make his fucked up head spin. But the one thing he won’t do is win.”
“It’s gonna be that easy, huh?”
“In my world, darlin’, this shit – it really ain’t all that hard.”
I watch him leave the room, and I lean back against the wall and close my eyes, taking a long, deep breath. My heart’s racing so fast, my stomach’s clenched up in a knot of nerves so tight it’s physically painful. I’m in this beautiful place, this sun-filled, blue-skied haven and all I can feel is a descending darkness.
I go into the bathroom and splash my face with cold water before I go back outside, but Vanni’s gone now.
“You weren’t expecting me, huh?”
Logan throws me a smile, well, it’s more of a smirk, and I don’t know whether I’m relieved or irritated that he’s here. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing Vanni’s gone, because I know now I was just looking for a fight as a way of venting my own frustration, but maybe Vanni wasn’t the right opponent. And Logan is? He doesn’t look like he’s come here for a fight. He’s lounging on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table, he looks completely at home. A little too relaxed, considering.
“I didn’t know Vanni was going out.”
“Well, now you do know.”
“Where’s he gone.”
“Wow. You two really don’t talk, do you? Just fucking, is it? That all you do, when you’re together?”
I narrow my eyes as I stare at him, why’s he talking like that? I ignore him anyway and head into the kitchen for a glass of water. My throat’s way too dry right now.
“He’s out on a job, with Bullet. Gone to round up a few favors on the old weapon front, y’know?”
“No, Logan, I don’t know.” I lean back against the counter and look at him. I don’t need to know, actually, so I don’t push that.
“So, you got me, for a couple of hours.”
“OK.”
He frowns. “OK? Is that it?”
“What do you want me to say?”
He hauls himself up from the couch and comes over to me, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “I don’t know. I just assumed you’d be at least a little bit pleased to see me.”
I gently push his hand away. “This isn’t a game, Logan.”
I walk over to the window and look outside, out at a world I can’t be a part of, not yet. Maybe not ever, I don’t how the fuck this is going to turn out.
“Hey. Can I just say something here?”
I turn around and look at him, crossing my arms as I lean back against the window. “It’s a free country.” Even if it doesn’t feel much like one to me right now. I feel anything but free.
“Can you stop acting like you don’t want this…”
“This?”
“Us, Piper. Stop pretending you don’t want us to happen.”
“I don’t, want us to happen.”
He throws his head back in an obvious sign of exasperation. “Jesus fucking Christ…”
I drop my gaze, focusing on my bare feet, the black nail polish I’m wearing dark and harsh against the white tiled floor.
“It scares me, Logan.” I slowly look up and his eyes meet mine. “This, whatever it is; us. It scares me.”
He moves closer, rests a hand on my hip, leans right in until his mouth lightly brushes the side of my neck. “I can smell him on you, Piper,” he whispers, his hand moving around until it cups my ass. “He just fucked you, huh?”
“He’s my husband, Logan. He has every right to fuck me. You have none.”
He pulls back slightly, looks right into my eyes and I have to take a deep breath to steady the rush of adrenaline now coursing through my veins. “Do you really want to live with his twisted shit forever, Piper?”
“You know nothing about our life, Logan.”
“I know enough, we all do. I know he likes to show you off like some prized toy, parade you around like a piece of meat we can all look at but, Jesus, we touch you…”
He drops his head and steps back from me, sliding his hands into his pockets.
“Logan?”
He turns and walks away, I’m confused. And then he stops, turns around and comes back over to me, takes my hand and pushes me gently back against the wall, his eyes staring deep into mine. “I need you, Piper. Right now, I need you.”
“Why?”
“We talking reasons now?”
His behavior’s a little strange this morning, and I’m still confused.
“Y’see, it doesn’t matter whether we’ve fucked once or a hundred times, we stepped over that line. We’re over it, so let’s just…”
I let go of his hand and push him away, he doesn’t get to call the shots. “You’re here to do a job, Logan. Just concentrate on that, OK?”
“No. No, sweetheart, you don’t get to walk away from me, you don’t get to pretend that this isn’t real…”
“This isn’t real, Logan! This, us, whatever the hell it is, it isn’t real. My marriage to Vanni is real, this shit with my father is real but us – that isn’t real.”
“Jesus…”
He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes, a deep, heavy sigh wracking his entire body and I watch as his shoulders sag and his head drops forward.
“What’s happened, Logan?”
He slowly shakes his head, keeping his eyes to the floor, his hands back in his pockets.
“Logan?”
I walk back over to him, gently cupping his cheek as I raise his head up, right up until his eyes meet mine.
“She’s back, Piper.”
I frown, because I’m still confused. “Who’s back?”
“She just called, out of the blue, like she has every right to walk back into my life – like she never tore me apart…”
He tries to drop his head again but I’m not letting him do that. “What did she want?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t give her a chance to say much… She needs my help, that’s all I let her get out before I hung up.” His eyes suddenly harden, a coldness taking over that startles me a little. “Whatever she wants, Piper, it isn’t gonna happen. She has no right to ask me for shit, after what she did. I went through fucking hell to forget her, and I’m not going back there. I’m not doing that.”
“OK… then you need to tell her that.”
He shakes his head and takes my hand and gently backs me up against the counter, his forehead resting against mine. “I don’t need to tell her shit, Piper. I just need you.”
“As what, Logan? A distraction?”
“Yes, Piper, as a fucking distraction, I think we’ve already established that’s about as far as this is gonna go. I don’t want anything more than that, and you’re married to a man who’d cut my balls off with a blunt knife if he knew what we’d done. So a distraction is just fine by me.”
“And if I don’t want that anymore?”
“Thing is though, darlin’, you do. You want it, just as much as I do. We both got shit we need to forget, and we both got a way we can make that happen.”
He slides a hand up under my skirt and tugs at the sides of my panties.
“Now take ‘em off, baby.”
I reach down and cover my hand with his, both of us pulling them down and I’ve stepped across that line again. Because he’s right. I need a distraction, too, from the fact I’m piling more complications on top of the ones that already exist. My world is becoming less and less stable, more dangerous by the day, and yet, all I want to do, right now, is let this man inside me. Let him take me away from everything I’m scared of; let him find his own escape, from the woman he really loves. I’m actually happy with him using me like this? Yeah, I am. ‘Cause I think I’m just using him, too.
He lifts me up onto the counter and steps between my legs, and he’s in me in a heartbeat, every inch of him, filling me with his dangerous poison, and I’m taking him. I wrap my legs around him and I lean back, letting him fall even deeper into me as he tears off my T-shirt and bites on a nipple, causing me to cry out, but the pain is beautiful. It’s twisted and wrong but it’s beautiful.
And then he pulls out of me, and that shocks me slightly, but it takes just a second for him to yank me down from the counter, turn me around and ram back into me from behind, his thrusts harsher and faster now. I grip the countertop and push my ass back against him as he pounds into me, his fingers digging into my flesh, his cries merging with mine as we both feel that climax start to creep its way in. And when it comes it’s brutal, intense, sweeping through my body with a white-hot force that fills my veins, warms my belly, it hurts. And even when it’s done he stays inside me, his fingers still gripping my hips as he pulls me up, both of us struggling to catch our breath, I feel like the whole room’s spinning.
“We could run, Piper. Me and you, we could just run, get outta here, leave all this shit behind…”
I let go of him and turn around to face him. “Don’t, Logan. Don’t do that.”
He drags a hand back through his hair, and his expression tells me that, OK, yeah, what he said just then, he said it without even thinking. But now – now he’s thinking about it.
“You’re reacting to a situation… it’s a knee-jerk reaction, that’s all it is, and it’s crazy.”
“We could run, Piper. And now I’m serious. I’m fucking serious.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind, that’s what you are.”
I pull my T-shirt back on and head over to the French doors, yanking them open and walking out onto the terrace. And he follows, of course he does, he’s not going to let this drop now.
“We’ve got ourselves into so much shit here, Piper, and if we…”
“You scared, huh? All of a sudden you’re worried about what Vanni would do if he found out? So, what? You want to run, like a coward…?”
He grabs my arm and pushes me back against the wall, and his eyes, the coldness is back, the hardness has taken over. “Don’t ever call me a coward, Piper, don’t fucking do that, because I have seen shit that will never leave me. Shit that haunts me every day and I didn’t run from that. I don’t run from anything.”
“But you want to run from this.”
He closes his eyes and lets go of my wrist, his head dropping as he steps back. It’s like someone flicked a switch, his whole demeanor’s changed in an instant.
“We can’t go anywhere, Logan. We can’t. And I’ve run far enough, I can’t do it anymore, and besides, we both know what we have here. And it isn’t something worth taking that risk for.”
He slowly raises his gaze, his eyes locking on mine. “Isn’t it?”
Logan
I can’t even explain the crap that’s coming out of my mouth right now, what the hell am I talking about? But the more I look at her, standing there, all fucked up and beautiful – a beautiful mess, that’s what she is. A beautiful, dangerous, fucked up mess and I need her, for so many reasons I need her. And the look in her eyes – she wants me to go, I can see that so clearly, it’s written all over her face, but she knows I can’t go anywhere. I have to stay here, and that scares her, because I’ve just confused this messed-up scenario even more now.
“You’re reacting to the fact your ex-girlfriend’s back, Logan…”
“No, Piper, she isn’t back. She isn’t, her chances are all used up, honey, she’s done.”
“No.” She shakes her head as she backs away, back inside. “No, she isn’t. You can’t see the look on your face, Logan, your eyes – they’re saying something completely different.”
I frown, what the fuck is she talking about?”
“You’ll see her. You’ll talk to her. And if she wants your help you’ll give it to her, because that’s the kind of man you are. Deep down inside you’re a good man, you just hide behind all this alpha male shit…”
“Jesus…”
“I’m a distraction, that’s all. You’re a distraction. But I’m not sure we should be distracted anymore, not right now, it’s too dangerous. We need to be focused, both of us. And this…” She drops her gaze, her body language almost defeated, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m feeling now. Before that bitch came back on the scene I thought – yeah. Maybe she’s right. Maybe this is something neither of us needs right now.
“You’re wrong.”
She lifts her head and looks at me. “Am I?”
“I’m not a good man, Piper. Not anymore.”