Steel Lust Page 11

  He put his hands flat on the door. “Joy, I can’t fix this if you don’t talk to me.”

  The door flew open. Her eyes were wild, nostrils flared.

  “That’s the thing,” she breathed, her voice quiet and her eyes wild. “How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t need you to fix every goddamn thing that’s wrong in my life? I do not need a motherfucking hero.”

  He caught the door when she tried to slam it. There was no way she was shutting him out, not now that he was pissed too.

  “And I told you that I am not going to stand by and watch that pompous asshole threaten you and your family. If I don’t make him leave you alone, Joy, who will?”

  “I will,” she screamed. “I can handle myself just fine.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Your powers of evasion are doing the trick quite nicely.” Her mouth dropped open. “And what happens when he gets tired of playing games with you? What happens on the day he finds you by yourself in your studio, or follows you here? He knows where you live, and he knows you live here alone. What happens when he decides he’s finished waiting and tries to take what he wants?”

  She stepped closer, face tilted up to his even though she was pulled up to her full height, seething. “And what if you’re the one who pushes him over the edge? Did you think about that before you got carried away with all your fucking macho posturing?”

  “I can promise you one thing. Any man who would sit at the same table with his wife and the woman he’s relentlessly pursuing without batting an eye is not the kind of man who needs to be pushed into anything.” He leaned close. “It would only have been a matter of time before he hurt you.”

  Her eyes went even more wild and she paled. “What did you do?” she whispered.

  Leo took a deep breath and straightened, willing himself to calm down.

  “Please stop worrying.” He smoothed his hands over her shoulders, hating the way she was looking at him with such disgust. “I never let on that I know about Love and Don, and I never will. To anyone. I told you that.”

  She shrugged out of his hold. “What did you say to him, Leonardo?”

  “I didn’t say anything, Joy. I did make it perfectly clear that you and I have been seeing a whole lot of each other while Jamie and Oscar did what they do best and looked menacing.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he heard the way he sounded like the biggest dick ever.

  “You did what?” she shrieked, backing away from him as though he were the person she should be frightened of, not Bruce. “I knew this was a mistake,” she breathed, a deeper, blacker anger replacing the look of disbelief.

  He took a step toward her. “Joy—”

  “No.” She held up a hand to stop him and backed into the dresser behind her. “You might as well have told him you know about Love. You might as well go tell my sister for that matter. And Deb, and my parents.” She pressed her hands to the side of her face, looking around as though she were looking for an escape route, clearly panicked. “This is going to ruin everything.”

  “Joy, he isn’t going to say anything to anyone.” He was trying to speak to her calmly, but he’d started to see red. “I’m telling you, he got the point tonight.”

  “You had no right telling him anything about us.” Her hands curled into fists. She thumped them against his chest, shoving him backward. “You had no right to stake your claim to me that way.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Oh, so I’m not your boyfriend now? Because I clearly remember hearing you call me that just this evening. Or am I only your boyfriend when it’s convenient for you?”

  “Leo—”

  “Where I come from it’s the boyfriend’s duty to make sure other men back the fuck off and leave their woman alone when they got too pushy.”

  She pushed him again. “Get out.”

  He caught her wrists and pulled her to him. “Goddamn it, Joy, I did it because I love you and I want that cocksucker to stop making your life hell,” he told her through clenched teeth.

  “No.” She shook her head in a crazy, frantic kind of side to side twitch. “I did not ask you to help me with this. I have not asked you to help me with any of this.” She pulled her arms out of his grip with a rough jerk. “Go. Now.”

  He stood his ground. “I’m not leaving you. Not like this.”

  “Yes you are.” She moved around him, snatched his duffel bag off the floor and started shoving his clothes into it before closing it with a decisive zip. “You’re going to get the hell out of my life right now before you fuck things up for good.”

  She shoved his bag at him, but he didn’t take it.

  “I’m not leaving until you listen to me.”

  “There’s nothing else to say.” She pushed the bag into his chest. “Out.”

  “I will not walk out of your life.” He took the bag and threw it aside. “I can not walk away from you, period.”

  “Forcing what you want on me makes you no better than him.”

  She might as well have jammed the pointy toe of her shoe into his balls.

  “You’re not listening to me.” He took a step toward her. “I’m telling you that he’s not going to do anything to you while I’m in your life. Do you hear me?”

  “You don’t know that.” She bit down on every word, teeth bared.

  “Any more than you know that he’s going to follow through with his threats,” he countered, moving toward her until he had her backed against her dresser again.

  She was shaking, but he could see it wasn’t from fear. There was still plenty of fire in those eyes of hers. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?”

  The idea of leaving and never seeing her again made Leo’s stomach tighten with the worst kind of fear. It just wasn’t feasible at this point. Not for him.

  “Can’t you see? There is no leaving you alone. There is no leaving you.” He took her face in his hands and pressed her to the dresser with his body. “I can not physically walk away from you. Not now. Maybe not ever again.”

  She dug her nails into his wrists and her face fell. “Just leave,” she whispered.

  The tears welling up in her eyes were going to kill him.

  “Is that what you really want?” he asked gently, face angled close to hers.

  One of her hands swung around to hit him hard on the arm, then the other.

  “Goddamn you,” she snarled, right before she gripped his hair painfully and brought his mouth to hers in a crushing kiss.

  His head reeled from with the heat that burned through his body. Her mouth scorched him. Her hands in his hair were pulling hard, but he wanted, no needed, the pain. His heart hammered erratically in his chest.

  The buttons on his shirt went flying as she ripped it open. Her nails scraped across his skin as she shoved his undershirt up high and went for his piercings. Leo gripped her wrists and stopped her before she got there, because if she touched him there, he was going to lose it before he could get his dick out of his pants.

  The fight in her eyes and her mouth, wide open and panting, as he pinned both of her hands to the dresser top behind her only fueled the inferno raging through his bloodstream. He jerked her skirt up around her hips with one hand, ripped off her thong panties with an easy snap, and freed his cock.

  She was whispering “Oh fuck” and “Oh God yes” when he kicked her legs open wider and pushed into her with a growl that came up from deep within his core.

  Fucking hell. Her cunt was as soaking wet as he was rock-hard from the fight.

  He let go of her hands and her arms flew around his neck, holding him tight as he lifted her onto the dresser. He got his arms behind her knees and braced his hands on top of her dresser, spreading her open wide. Her head fell back and she moaned deeply as he thrust into her ruthlessly.

  The pain as she dug her nails into his scalp and assaulted his mouth with hers only spurred him on to fuck her harder, faster. Bottles of perfume rattled together, then fell. A lamp went toppling to the floor, landing on its shade
with a sickening crunch. The mirror banged dangerously against the wall, but he kept pounding into her.

  She bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, then broke free with a deep intake of breath as the strong muscles of her thighs started to shiver and shake. Her hips bucked, her pussy began to throb around him. Her head fell back and the wail that poured out of her sent a chill down his spine.

  Leo drew in deep, ragged breaths as he waited, so close to coming himself but nowhere near ready to be finished. She felt too good, and he needed her too much.

  He slipped out of her carefully when she started to go limp and got his arms around her, picked her up and carried her to the bed. The fight was out of her eyes, replaced by something distant and almost dreamy. She didn’t help him undress her, simply lay there watching him from beneath heavy eyelids as he peeled off first her clothes, then his. She said nothing when he got a condom from the nightstand, but she wrapped herself around him when he stretched his body over hers.

  “I’m yours, you know,” he whispered, connecting their bodies more gently this time, finding her almost unbearably hot from what they’d just done. He kissed her swollen lips gently. “Whether you like it or not, I’m yours.”

  She nodded but didn’t answer, simply closed her eyes and brought his head back down to hers for a kiss. Her body was so right with his, her hands on his skin gentle instead of demanding as they found an easy rhythm together. He couldn’t get enough of the way she sighed against his neck, punctuating her moans with kisses to his skin as the pressure built to a delicious ache.

  It didn’t matter how deeply he tried to push inside her—she took him. All of him. She spread her legs wider, rocked her hips in time with his, squeezed him tight when he seated himself deep and reduced him to a shuddering, moaning heap of bones and flesh when his orgasm finally poured out of him in long, pulsing waves.

  As they lay entwined afterward, he found himself wanting to tell her he loved her again, make sure she heard it, but the timing felt incredibly wrong.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you’re going on the road?” she asked quietly.

  She was lying with her head on his shoulder, one leg draped over his with her fingers tracing a lazy circle around his bellybutton. He couldn’t see her face.

  “Why did I have to hear it from Leni when she announced it at the table tonight instead of from you?”

  “I meant to tell you yesterday, but you were so upset when I got here that I forgot.” He stopped her hand on his stomach and laced his fingers with hers. “Then there was the hip roll thing, and then we were eating and watching a movie.” When she said nothing else he gave her hand a little squeeze. “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet.”

  She pulled her hand free, laid it over his chest and propped her chin on it.

  “How long will you be on the road?”

  “For most of July and half of August.”

  Her eyes closed. “That’ll be great,” she said, not sounding pleased at all.

  He got his arms around her and rolled, pinning her to the bed when she started to move away from him. “Come with me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I can’t just drop everything to go with you.”

  “Why not? Have camera, will travel.”

  He had no idea what it would be like to be on the road for more than a few days, but the idea of having her with him sounded ideal. Grind’s drummer Kenton always brought his wife whenever they went on the road and she had a great time.

  “I have a book to work on this summer,” she protested.

  “Think of all the tattooed people you would meet on the road, the musicians and the roadies. The fans. I’m telling you coming with me would be a goldmine of material.” He turned to kiss her palm when she laid her hand on his cheek. “You’d have all those hours when we’re travelling and rehearsing and doing sound checks. And you would be with me at night.”

  She smoothed his hair back from his face and said nothing. There was a sadness in her eyes he didn’t understand. “Make love to me again,” she whispered.

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”

  But she didn’t answer. She wrapped herself around him, rolled him onto his back and started touching him in places she knew would drive him to distraction.

  And when they were once again lying breathless but still, tangled together with their heads at the foot of her bed, he lay awake for a long time wondering just how wrong a turn he’d taken with her earlier that night.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was fitting that it rained the entire week after Leonardo went home.

  Joy knew she needed to get her ass out of the chair she’d been sitting in for hours, staring out her window at Lake Michigan—which looked as sad and gray as she’d been feeling all week—but couldn’t motivate herself to move.

  She couldn’t shake the funk that had settled deep into her bones. She’d loved having him there day and night, but she hadn’t been able to shake her anger over what he’d done that night at the bar and it had put a damper on the entire rest of the week.

  Leonardo didn’t understand that Bruce was not the kind of man who was going to be deterred just because Leonardo had taken the kill-it-with-kindness approach to putting an end to Bruce’s relentless bullying. To Bruce business was separate from family and his recreational life had nothing to do with either of the first two. Joy was a recreational pastime to him, and Leonardo staking his claim to her was just going to heighten the thrill of the chase.

  As much as the strong, independent woman in her wanted to deny it, she loved him for staking that claim, and that was what bothered her the most.

  Yes, he’d said he loved her, but it had been in the heat of the moment. Yes, he’d taken possession of more than her body when he’d refused to leave the night they’d fought. And yes, the declaration that she loved him back had been dangling precariously off the tip of her tongue that night, but they wouldn’t last. They couldn’t.

  She’d been working hard to reach the point where she was in her career and she couldn’t put her life on hold to go on the road with him, not matter how tempting the idea. His band was about to find a much broader audience and throw him, rightfully, into the national spotlight and expose him to hordes of other women.

  Faster, tempting, countless numbers of younger women. Joy’s whole life was filled with stories and accounts and her own personal experiences of how so many musicians saw groupies as just one of the perks of being famous. Leonardo had already admitted to enjoying his share of them, and that was basically on a local level.

  Joy pulled her blanket tighter around herself and swallowed back the wave of nausea that rose every time she thought about him with someone else.

  She jumped and cried out in surprise when her doorbell sounded. She blinked and looked around, realizing it had grown dark outside. Smoothing her hair back from her face, she padded to the door in the thick socks she was wearing, turning on lights as she went, and put her eye to the peephole.

  “I have been trying to call you for two days,” Mama said, pulling Joy into her arms the second Joy closed the door behind her. After a moment she held Joy at arm’s length. “You look like your best friend died. What happened?”

  Joy fell into her mother’s arms, pushed the anger and worry aside and cried. Mama held her through it, smoothing her hand over her back, muttering comforting words in a mix of Spanish and English. When she was finished she sent Joy to wash her face and went to start a pot of tea—her cure-all.

  “Did the week with your young man not go well?” Angelina asked, pouring hot tea from Joy’s favorite Japanese pot into tiny matching cups.

  Joy cupped her hands around her mug and breathed in the strong, fragrant oolong.

  She shook her head. “I just miss him.”

  Which was not a lie. It just wasn’t the complete truth either.

  And her mother didn’t miss it. “But?”

  She brought her legs up, heels hooked on t
he edge of the seat.

  “I have something to tell you about Bruce,” she started. It was time.

  Joy couldn’t fight him on her own any longer, and Mama would know just how she should handle him. She told her that he’d been pursuing her to become his mistress, but when it came to the part about blackmailing her with what he knew about Love, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Mama that one very important detail.

  When she was finished her mother muttered a string of expletives in Spanish.

  “Do you want your father to talk to him about this?”

  Joy covered her face with her hands and drew in a steadying breath.

  “I would be mortified if Daddy knew.” She dropped her hands. “And I don’t want you to go to Don either. It will end. I just need to figure out how to make him listen.”

  “Go to Debbie,” her mother suggested with a casual shrug, as though ruining the life and marriage of a woman Joy adored would be no big deal.

  “Mama, I couldn’t. I love her too much.”

  “Which is why you should tell her. She deserves to know.”

  “You and I both know he would deny it.”

  “And she’s smart enough to know the truth. A wife knows her husband. She knows what he’s capable of doing. Even if she gets angry with you at first, deep in her heart, she will know the truth and she will do the right thing.”

  “Which would be what? Never speak to me again?” The idea of never having the ease she’d always had with Deb made her stomach turn. “I couldn’t bear it.”

  “She will do what is right for her and her marriage. And you have to do what is right for you.” She sipped her tea and narrowed her eyes. “Does Leonardo know?”

  She nodded.

  Her mother’s eyebrows went up. “And what has he done?”

  She put her feet back on the floor. “I don’t need him to do anything.”

  “So he’s done nothing?”

  “It’s not that he hasn’t wanted to. I asked him to leave Bruce alone.”

  Mama tsked. “Joy, when are you ever going to learn to let the man be the man?”