He Comes Back - Raine

By the third voicemail, my voice barely sounds like my own.

There’s too much exhaustion in it. Too many nerves. I can hear myself trying to sound firm and failing anyway, standing outside the motel with cold rain misting over my hoodie while the flickering VACANCY sign hums above my head like it’s laughing at me.

"I’m not taking the job," I say after the beep, gripping the cheap burner phone so tightly my fingers ache. "And I need you to stop following me. Whatever this is, I don’t want any part of it."

I hang up pulse already racing.

The black card with the silver moth had stayed tucked beneath my pillow all night like some cursed thing. Around 4am I finally slipped it over and there was a number and one message.

Call.

No explanation or greeting, just an order I absolutely should have ignored.

Instead, I called him three separate times over the course of the day, leaving increasingly pathetic voicemails explaining why I wasn’t interested in working for a terrifying tattooed gangster, most probably billionaire, who looked at me like he wanted to own my fucking soul.

Now the entire city feels wrong. Every black SUV makes my stomach twist. Every pair of footsteps behind me sends panic skittering up my spine. I shove the phone back into my pocket and look around the motel parking lot. 

Half the lights are dead again, leaving long stretches of cracked pavement swallowed in shadow. Somebody’s TV blares through a second-floor window while a couple screams at each other near the ice machine. Somewhere close by, glass breaks.

Same as always, except now every dark corner feels occupied because I don’t think he ever left. He stayed for hours last night, eyes trained on my room window. I shut the curtains and could still feel him there.

The problem isn’t just Leon Marcello himself. I’ve since learned from Jerry his name is Leon, figures.

It’s the fact that my body remembers him, that’s the part making me sick.

I can still feel the weight of his stare on my skin, still hear that deep voice wrapping around threats. Men like him aren’t supposed to exist this close to people like me. He’s too sharp around the edges, too rich, too controlled. The kind of man who probably owns buildings taller than anything in this neighborhood.

And somehow he walked into my shitty life and already decided it belonged to him. I hate that a part of me keeps replaying it. The way he touched my wrist, the way his thumb dragged over my pulse, the way he called me Bunny in that rough, possessive voice that made heat crawl through me so fast I almost felt ashamed of my own body.

I pull my hood tighter and start walking toward the deli three blocks over because I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon and the ache in my stomach is becoming impossible to ignore.

Cold air cuts through the fabric while traffic hisses past on rain-slick streets. The city glows wet and ugly around me, neon signs reflecting in puddles, cigarette smoke curling from alleyways, strangers moving too fast with their heads down. Nobody looks at me.

Good.

That’s safer.

The deli smells like burnt coffee and old fryer grease. A tired cashier barely glances up when I walk inside. I buy the cheapest sandwich in the refrigerator case and count out coins slowly while pretending not to notice the irritation on his face. By the time I leave, the rain has gotten worse.

I tuck the paper bag under my arm and start hurrying back toward the motel. That horrible feeling hits halfway across the parking lot, the sudden certainty that somebody is behind me.

I stop, turn my head this way and that to pinpoint any sound. Rain patters softly against asphalt while distant traffic hums somewhere beyond the buildings. Nothing.

Slow, deliberate footsteps start up as soon as I make a move, fear slides cold and sharp down my spine. I turn just enough to glance over my shoulder and spot a man step out from between two parked cars. The relief that it’s not the same groping man from the motel room is short lived, different face, same look in his eyes.

"Hey," he calls.

I immediately start walking faster.

"Don’t be fucking rude," he says, matching my pace.

The paper bag crinkles harder beneath my grip, every instinct in my body starts screaming. Not again, please not again, why me, what is it about me that draws these people close to me. I choke back a sob that slips out, as I’m already resigned to what is going to happen, again.

"I’m talking to you."

I don’t answer. The motel entrance suddenly feels impossibly far away as rainwater splashes through the holes in my sneakers as I pick up the pace, shoulders tight, pulse climbing so high I can hear it pounding in my ears. Behind me, the footsteps speed up too.

"Cute little thing," the man mutters.

Panic bursts through me and now I break into a run. The paper bag slips from my fingers, sandwich spilling across wet pavement, but I don’t stop. I hear him swear behind me and give chase. My lungs burn almost immediately. Terror turns my limbs clumsy and weak while the motel doors loom ahead through streaks of rain.

I’m not going to make it. The realization crashes through me just as fingers hook into the back of my hoodie hard enough to jerk me backward.

This time, I scream, until my lungs burn and my throat tears.

A black SUV suddenly swings in beside us and the passenger door flies open, one massive arm wraps around my waist and drags me violently sideways before I can even process what’s happening. I collide with a hard chest that smells like expensive cologne, smoke, and rain.

"Quiet," a deep voice growls directly against my ear.

Leon.

Relief hits so hard it nearly knocks the breath out of me. Which is insane. Absolutely fucking insane. Because I should not feel relieved seeing a man who casually threatens to murder people.

The SUV door slams shut behind us and everything happens too fast after that.

Leon pushes me down across the leather seat with one arm while reaching back for the handle with the other.

"Stay inside the fucking car, Bunny," he says roughly. Then he’s gone.

I scramble upright in time to see him grab the other man by the throat.

Jesus Christ.

Leon moves like violence belongs to him. There’s no hesitation in him. No uncertainty. He doesn’t posture or shout or waste time trying to look intimidating because he already is. One second the guy is cursing at him, and the next Leon slams him face-first into the side of the SUV hard enough to dent metal.

The sound makes me flinch violently. Rain pours over both of them while the man stumbles backward, clutching his face, Leon barely reacts. His dark coat hangs open now, exposing more black ink curling over his throat and chest beneath the collar of his shirt. Water drips from his hair while his huge tattooed hands flex at his sides.

He looks less like a man and more like something dragged out of a nightmare. Beautiful. Terrifying.

The attacker swings first, Leon catches the punch with frightening ease and breaks the man’s wrist with a simple flick, the crack echoes through the parking lot.

I jerk backward against the seat, breath catching painfully in my chest. The scream that follows barely sounds human. Leon says something low I can’t hear before punching the man directly in the mouth hard enough to spray blood across the pavement.

My entire body shakes. I should be horrified. I am horrified. But underneath the fear, something else coils low in my stomach.Heat.

Raw and confusing and humiliating. Because Leon looks at violence the same way other men look at sex. Possessive and hungry.

The man tries to crawl away, Leon grabs him by the back of his jacket and drags him upright again like he weighs nothing.

"You touch her again," Leon says, loud enough this time for me to hear through the rain, "and I’ll cut your shrivelled balls off myself."

The man whimpers through smashed teeth, he crashes to the pavement with a crunch and starts dragging himself away on his none shattered arm. Blood oozing from his mouth in clumps.

Then those pale eyes lift toward the SUV.

Toward me.

Everything inside me tightens as his pale eyes lift toward the SUV, toward me. The rage fades and something darker replaces it.

He climbs back into the backseat with me, slamming the door behind him. Wipes his knuckles slowly with a cloth from the center console. Blood streaks across the tattoos covering his hands.

"You hurt?" The question comes out rough.

I shake my head automatically. He studies me for a long moment before grabbing my jaw without warning. His huge hand wraps around the lower half of my face while he turns my head side to side beneath the dim interior lighting.

Checking me, iInspecting every inch. The roughness of his palm against my skin sends heat flashing through my body so suddenly I almost hate myself for it.

"I told you to scream next time," he mutters.

"I did."

"I heard. So you can do as you're told." His thumb drags briefly across my lower lip.

The silence inside the SUV stretches. Rain hammers steadily against the roof while city lights blur gold and red across the windshield.

Leon’s gaze drifts slowly over my face. I suddenly become painfully aware of my body beneath the damp hoodie, of my nipples tightening from cold and nerves and the way he’s looking at me.

Mortification crashes through me.

His eyes darken slightly, somehow, some way, he can tell. Holy shit.

"You called me," he says eventually.

"To say no."

"Still called."

I glare at him weakly, which only seems to amuse him.

"You’re fucking insane," I whisper.

One corner of his mouth twitches.

"Probably," he says.

Then he reaches over suddenly, grips the back of my neck, and drags me closer, his nose brushes slowly against the side of my throat. The sound he makes when he inhales is low and rough enough to make my entire body lock up.

Heat explodes low in my stomach.

"You smell terrified all the time," he murmurs against my skin.

I swallow hard, shifting as a small squeak escapes my throat.

"Stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Acting like..." He pulls back just enough to look at me.

"Like you want belong to me."

"I don’t belong to anybody," I say quickly.

"That’s where you’re wrong, Bunny." Something dangerous settles across his expression.

Outside, the injured man groans somewhere on the pavement. Neither of us even glances toward the sound, his focus stays entirely on me.

"I tried to give you a choice," he says quietly. “You chose wrong.”