Page 50 of Eye Candy

Moving without a sound, I pushed into the room, finding Mike was sitting on his bed with the lamp on the nightstand on,reading a book. A smile grew on my face when I saw, and that smile only broadened when Mike’s eyes glanced up.

“What are you reading?” I asked, quietly closing the door behind me and moseying over to his bed. It was a rather large book with a picture of some kind of food dish on the front.

“Oh, uh, a cookbook,” he muttered, closing it as he coughed. He sounded a bit awkward, almost like he was embarrassed to be caught reading a cookbook, especially so late at night. Hey, at least it wasn’t a spicy romance. Then I’d have some questions.

Like, where the heck did he find a spicy romance book in this house, and could I borrow it when he was done?

I sat on the edge of the bed, fiddling with the hem of my shorts. “Do people normally read cookbooks so late at night?” I grinned as I watched him set the book on his nightstand and run a hand through his hair.

“Probably not. I… couldn’t sleep.”

“I can’t sleep either,” I told him. For a few moments after that, we stared at each other, neither one of us saying anything more. It was like we both had other things on our minds, but nothing we wanted to admit to out loud.

Mike’s long legs were beneath the sheets, his upper half propped up by a pillow. His shirt was off, and I did my best not to stare at the muscles on him, but it was a losing battle. He was a very muscular man, let’s just say. Very tall, very wide, and very, very strong.

I noticed a scar on his torso, and I pointed to it. “What’s that?”

He looked down at himself, running a finger along the white, risen skin. “I got shot a while back.” His mouth thinned into a line, his eyes back on me, as if sensing my mind had goneto Kieran when he’d said that. “It was touch and go for a while, although I wasn’t taken to a hospital.”

I scooted closer to him, eyes on the scar still as I asked, “Why not?”

“Long story.”

“I have time.” Time was all I had tonight, apparently, because I sure as hell didn’t have sleep. Listening to the story of how Mike was shot would at least help me pass the time—and the mere fact that he was here now, fine, might help me believe the same could be said for Kieran soon enough.

Mike swallowed, and his gaze shifted toward the door, like he half-expected someone else to walk in and catch us. I thought he might tell me to go back to my own room, but in the end, he surprised me by saying, “All right.”

I couldn’t fight the smile that grew, and I hopped off the bed and tugged down the sheets so I could crawl under the covers and sit beside him. The bed was a king, so even with his large frame, there was enough room.

“What are you doing?” he asked with quiet urgency, apparently shocked at the fact that I wanted to get cozy next to him.

“I’m getting ready for story time,” I said, scooting to his side. My leg touched his beneath the sheets, finding he was wearing sweats. No shirt with his sweatpants. Huh. Too bad the big light wasn’t on in the room, so I could get a nice, long look.

Mike mumbled, “You don’t have to be this close.”

“No, but I want to.” I nudged his left arm so I could lean against his side with that arm draped over my shoulder. Mike let out a grumbling breath, but he said nothing else, letting me cuddle against his body as he lowered his arm around me. I wasstill smiling as I leaned my cheek against his chest. “So, start from the beginning.”

Mike did just that. To my surprise, the story involved Lola. It was the story of how Lola had gotten herself caught up with the Luciano crime family by killing its youngest son, how she soon enough found herself embroiled in a turf war with another high-profile mobster family, the DeLucas.

I half-listened to the story, mostly because with my head on his chest, it was all too easy to lose myself to the warmth seeping from his skin into mine. Even though I wasn’t above his heart, I still swore I could hear it beating, too.

Carl DeLuca had been overthrown by his own daughter, who wanted to use Lola as a weapon. She’d had some of her guys shoot up Mike’s and Viper’s place, and that had been when Mike got hit. Other places got hit too, not just their apartment. They had to flee out of the city to regroup, because a lot of hirelings had betrayed them to side with the family they thought would win this mafia war.

So that was why Mike didn’t go to the hospital. He couldn’t. They were too nervous that the DeLuca woman would have her men go and finish the job.

As the story went on, as Mike told me about how Lola fought the DeLuca woman one-on-one, we both drifted down. We’d started sitting up against his bedframe, but by the end of the story, we were laying down. I cuddled against his side, my head resting on his arm, while Mike lay on his back, dividing his time between staring at the ceiling and looking at me.

Once the story was finished, I smiled and said, “Wow, you can talk a lot when you want to.”

He grumbled out, “I don’t see the point of talking when nothing’s really being said.”

“I like your voice though. It’s low, deep, soothing.” My right hand rested on the side of his chest. “I like listening to you talk, even if you’re not talking about anything.” I angled my head up to look at him, my hand finding the scar from the bullet and tracing circled around it.

His other hand came down upon mine, flattening it and stopping me from drawing shapes on his skin. “Stop,” he breathed out.

“Stop what? I’m not doing anything.”

“You should go back to bed.”

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