Free Deal with the Devil by Stacia Stone

Seven

Leo
    M ara looks like a ghost when I walk back into the apartment. It's been a couple hours since she left me at the courthouse. She sits abnormally still on the very edge of my couch with her hands clenched tight in her lap. Her face is as white as a bedsheet.
    She almost jumps out of her skin when the front door slams shut behind me. I realize that she didn’t hear me come in.
    “What happened?” She moves quickly around the couch and comes to an abrupt stop in front of me. Her gaze takes in the slight bruise on my cheek and my split lip. Minor wounds compared to the damage that I inflicted. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m good.” The anxious look she’s wearing makes me want to kiss her until the lines of worry fade from her face. After the way she threw herself at me this morning, it’s taking everything I have not to force her down to her knees and shove my dick into that smart mouth.
    At this point, I deserve a fucking medal for my restraint. Vito, you fat fuck, I hope you’re somewhere burning because I sure as hell am.
    I don’t know why I’m even acting like such a fucking saint. I want her and she apparently wants me. I remind myself that the situation is complicated enough as it is, there’s no reason to make it worse.
    But I need to get her out of here and back to that prissy school of hers as soon as possible.
    I go to the kitchen and grab a bottle off the top shelf of the cupboard. I don’t even bother to look at the label before pouring a full glass. Alcohol burns down my throat as I take a healthy swig. I instantly feel a little better.
    Mara is still looking at me like she’s got her heart in her mouth. I feel the perverse need to reassure her, like I fucking care.
    “It’s fine, Mara.”
    “What happened?” she asks again.
    “We took care of it. They’re off your back for now.”
    She raises an eyebrow and gives me that haughty look that I’m coming to realize is just the normal set of her face. “And what about later?”
    “I’m still working on later.”
    Truthfully, I have no idea what we’re going to do. The MC will keep their distance for now. But knocking a few heads together isn’t going to keep them away forever. Short of taking out Mack, a few bikers and probably her mother too, I can’t think of a single thing that will get them off her case forever. That much money on the line is a potent inducement for mayhem. Under other circumstances, I might be tempted myself.
    And I realize that I’ve been thinking in terms of  we,  instead of  she.  Like we’re in this together now, or some shit. Damnit.
    This is what happens when you try to do the right thing.
    Mara turns away from me. She walks back to the couch and sinks slowly into it. Any other woman would be in hysterics, but not this one. You can see it in her eyes. The wheel’s in this girl’s head never stop turning.
    “Would you come sit with me for a minute?”
    I eye her suspiciously. Something in her tone alerts me to the fact that I’m not going to like whatever she’s about to say.
    I don’t move. Whatever she has say, I can hear from here. “What?”
    She turns to look at me over the back of the couch. “Come sit.”
    “No. Talk.” I use that brusque tone that’s convinced every woman I’ve ever known not to push me.
    Of course, it doesn’t work on Mara. She just looks at me with a tiny smile playing at the corner of her mouth.
    “You’re really stubborn, you know that.”
    She’d see stubborn when I put her over my knee, flip up her skirt and spank her bare ass until she bleeds. “Spit it out, woman.”
    Mara lets out a weary sigh like I’m the one who’s impossible to deal with. “Fine. I’ve been thinking about what I can do about all this…well, actually what we can do.”
    “What  we  can do, huh.” My tone is deliberately sardonic. I try to remember when I agreed that this was all also my problem. I’m drawing a blank. “And what’s that?”
    I see the annoyance pass