Read Online On The Ropes by Cari Quinn - Free Book Online Page A

clutching his ropey arms as if he might vanish. And he just might.
    He’d never stuck around long before.
    “What?” Something that might’ve been a laugh rumbled through his chest. “Why?”
    “Rain makes everything clean.” I looked up at him, my lower lip quivering. “Even me.”
    “You listen to me.” He cupped my cheeks in his big hands, his thumbs catching my tears. “You aren’t dirty. You’re perfect. What happened tonight wasn’t your fault. You were caught in something bigger than you—”
    “Don’t you mean caught by something bigger than me?” When I glanced between us, he jerked my face up again. “Sorry. It’s not the time for jokes. I just…I don’t want it to be the only time we have. I want to stamp it out with a better memory.”
    His throat moved. “You’ll regret it in the morning. After you sleep…”
    I reached up to trace his lips. So wide and sensual, so reluctant to smile. “I could never regret you, Giovanni Costas.”
    He shut his eyes. Then he opened them again and smoothed away the last of my tears. “See that lock right there?” He indicated the skylight slanted over the bed. “Go ahead and open it up.”
    It took me a moment to understand. Rain. He was giving me— us —the rain.
    I went to my knees, and he gave me a boost with his arm around my waist. Supporting me while I fumbled with the lever and slid away the glass. Behind it was only screen, and a fine mist of rain squeezed through the specially reinforced weave.
    “The bed,” I asked, looking behind me.
    “It’s fine. The sheets can use a wash.”
    His soothing voice made me laugh, then I stopped, suddenly embarrassed. Though I showed off most of my body nightly, I hadn’t shown him before a little while ago, when I’d been riding the high of adrenaline and the need for distraction. I could pretend with the best of them, but right now, with his thickly muscled arm clasping me close and the rain spritzing down on my bare skin, I felt more exposed than I’d ever been in my life.
    Even earlier tonight couldn’t compare, because they hadn’t seen most of me. Besides, they hadn’t really been paying attention to the details.
    Gio was.
    “Are you sure?” he asked me, brushing a kiss over my hip.
    “Yes. I need it. I need to think about this instead.” I slipped my fingers through his silky, shoulder-length hair. “Give me a better memory. Please.”
    He eased me down to the bed, shifting me on top of him so smoothly I almost wasn’t aware of the movement. His cock pressed against me intimately, reminding me that what I’d taken with haste sure as heck could give me a panic attack if I actually thought about it.
    “I have a condom.” He stuck an arm out, started to drag over the trashcan.
    “You’re not serious. You’re going to use one from the garbage ?”
    “It’s fine,” he snapped. “Not expired or anything. I just threw them out because I wouldn’t be needing them anymore…” He trailed off at my pursed lips. “What?”
    “Miscalculated there, didn’t you?”
    Again, that slight twitch of his mouth. I so wanted to make him smile, almost as much as I wanted to make him come.
    Inside me, with nothing between us. Just like before. I’d already been spoiled by that feeling, only having had it once.
    “Barn door’s already open,” I reminded him softly. “Horse nearly broke the fence, but the fence is willing to try again.” As he started to object, I placed my finger over his lips. “I’m clean. I’m assuming you are too. With fighting, you’d be tested often. Blood and all.”
    “This is underground fighting. Not exactly the same stringent requirements.”
    “So you’re not clean? What did you give me earlier tonight then?”
    “Nothing.” He bit off the word. “Of course I’m clean. It’s just not safe.”
    “We’re covered. I’ve never missed a single pill in three years.”
    “Three years? Did you start having sex in junior high?”
    Ignoring him, I peered