“Lily,” I rasped, urging her awake when she alternated between tensing and relaxing once more, all her muscles reacting as though they’d been electrocuted before she slumped on me like a vat of goo.
Then, she mumbled, “Link?”
My dick twitched at just how good my name sounded coming out of her when she was half-asleep. She must have felt it, because she sighed, rocked her hips, then muttered, “You feel good.”
I’d have expected her reaction to be negative, especially after last night had shown me she wasn’t ready for more, but instead, she wiggled again until I reached down, clamped my hands on her ass cheeks, pulled them apart, and grumbled, “Stop grinding against me, babe. You ain’t ready for what my cock wants.”
A hum escaped her, but it was in direct contrast to the tensing of her ass cheeks—confirming my theory that she didn’t really like her ass being touched. “Only your cock? Not you?”
My lips curved even as I tilted my head until we were connected again. “My penis has a mind of its own. IQ of one eighty.”
She whistled under her breath. “Yikes. Your cock is smarter than Einstein?”
“Yup. It’s something I’ve had to learn to live with.”
A snicker escaped her. “I’ll bet. Nut.”
“Literally,” I said with a smirk that had her snicker morphing into a chuckle.
She twisted slightly so she could lift her head and look me in the eye. “Hey.” There was a shyness to her tone that amused me, especially in the light of the fact her dried cunt juices were still around my goddamn mouth and my cock was burrowed between her pussy lips, but I let her have it because I liked her like this.
Soft. Playful. Her sense of humor warped—just like mine.
Giving her that phone had changed shit. Not simply because it led us here, to this moment in time, this place. But because it also meant I saw a side of her I wasn’t sure I’d have seen otherwise.
Free from anyone checking her phone, she’d been herself. And that ‘herself’ was someone I liked.
A lot.
“Hey,” I repeated, my lips twitching as she looked at me, her gaze drifting over my features. “You making a map of my face or something?”
“I thought it might be a cool thing to have on my wall.”
“My face or a map of it?”
She snorted. “I dunno. You’re pretty, but a map would be cooler.” She leaned on her hand, which changed the pressure of where our bodies connected, and reached up to rub her fingers over the bump on my nose. “We’ll call this Anger Ridge.”
“How do you know it was made in anger?”
“Who gets their nose broken outside of a fight?”
“Boys.” My tone was dry. “Adrenaline Alley. I fell off a tree.”
She narrowed her eyes. “For fun?”
“Who the fuck climbs a tree if it isn’t for fun?”
“Not girls,” she retorted.
“Well, that’s why you’re all so much fucking smarter than boys.”
“You weren’t being chased?”
“Up a tree? I ain’t a cat, babe.”
“True.” She laughed a little. “I suppose there are girls who like to climb trees. I was never one of them.”
“Were you always playing with dolls and shit?”
She pulled a face. “No! Ew.”
“Dolls trigger an ‘ew?’” I arched a brow at her.
“They sure as hell do. I was never a girly-girl. But I wasn’t a tomboy either. I liked reading, learning. Mostly I liked being inside. I—” Her mouth worked a little and her smile flashed, disappearing in the blink of an eye. “Never mind.”
“Nope. Not never mind. What were you going to say?”
She cringed, then huffed out a breath when I just cocked a brow at her, silently telling her I wasn’t going to let her change the subject without her explaining.
“Luke liked being outside,” she said gruffly.
“And you liked being anywhere he wasn’t?” At her nod, I beamed a smile at her. “There’s my girl. Had taste, even from a young age.”
She snorted, then jolted in surprise when I grabbed her hips and rocked mine up so my dick brushed her pussy. She relaxed, though, when I didn’t make another move, just kept us close.
“Your girl, huh?” she questioned after a few seconds.
I shrugged. “See anyone else in the room?”
“No. I don’t,” she replied dryly.
I got the feeling she wanted me to say more, to add something, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what. But what could I say? We’d been texting for a while, petting like we were horny high schoolers for the past couple days…barely any time at all in the grand scheme of things. Even if I was going to admit to feeling possessive of her, there was too much shit I didn’t know about her and that she didn’t know about me for us to think about anything deeper.
Plus, I was an MC brother. Rough and ready. Raw and crude. She was the exact opposite. Every part of her was refined. Every part of her elegant. Even her workout gear was smart and snazzy. She oozed money from her fucking pores. We couldn’t have been more opposite, yet here she was. Her virgin cunt inches away from my anything but virgin dick.
I’d admit…I liked that she wanted deeper. Even if it was way too soon for that shit. She wasn’t like the prissy country clubbers I’d come across in the past. Didn’t want a hard fuck on the wild side to rebel against a snooty father. In truth, I didn’t know what she wanted.
Maybe I didn’t know what I wanted either.
Except for…well, knowing more about her.
With that in mind, I asked, “What did he do to you?”
Her brows rose. “My father?”
“The cunt.”
She tensed a little. “Nothing.”
“Liar,” I challenged softly. When her gaze darted away, she compounded the irritation I felt at her lying. My hand snapped up to grab the back of her neck. One hand on her ass, the other on her neck, I hauled her up so we were nose to fucking nose. “Don’t. Lie. To. Me.”
Her eyes went wide, like saucers, and she rasped, “I won’t.” I heard the arousal melded with the shock in her words and had to hide a smirk, even as I took a mental note that she liked me being rough with her.
I rubbed where my thumbs had dug in around her neck, and demanded, “What did he do to you?”
Her lashes fluttered. “It wasn’t to me.”
My brow puckered. “Huh?”
She dropped her gaze to my lips and, focusing on my mouth, whispered, “H-He used to rape the maids.”
I tensed. “You’re shitting me?”
“N-No. I wish I was.” She blew out a breath. “First time I heard…what he was doing, I was five.”
My body jolted in rejection of her words. “Five?” I breathed.
Lily dipped her chin. “Yeah.” I let her burrow away, let her hide, because although this wasn’t as bad as I expected—the fucker hadn’t raped her after all—what he’d put her through was something no one should have to endure. Psychological torture…fuck. She put her forehead to my stubbled jaw and whispered, “I didn’t understand. Not at first.”
“Why would you? You were a baby.”
She shivered. “Not for long in my house.”
“He didn’t do it to you?”
“It’s difficult to explain,” she muttered, her forehead rocking against my jaw.
I moved my hands again, this time settling them around her waist, holding her against me as I told her, “You’re safe now, Lily. Not only because he’s dead, but because I will kill any fucker who tries to hurt you. Hear me?”
“I hear you.” The words were dull. Wooden.
“You’re not hearing me,” I retorted, then, in her ear, I whispered, “I’ve killed men, Lily. I know what it is to take a life. You’re safe when you’re with me.”
“You can’t always be with me,” she rasped. “Nor would I expect you to be.” She squeezed my bicep. “I’ll only be safe when my father’s
dead. He’s as much of a threat to me as Luke was.”
Because I was floating through a puddle of shit, I requested, “Explain, please?”
She released a shaky breath. “Luke was ten years older than me, but worse, he was the only son Mom managed to have. There were two kids between me and Luke, both girls. One she lost in a miscarriage, and I’m pretty damn certain my father beat her while she was pregnant and that was why she lost my sister. The other died of meningitis. Lissa was only three at the time.” She bit her lip. “Father thought the sun rose and set on Luke. Always did. He could do nothing wrong, and because he’s as warped as Luke, it made sense that he turned a blind eye to whatever he did.
“I mean, I know Father has a few mistresses dotted around the place, but the maids have never been safe from either of them.” She blew out a breath. “When I had to start hiring people, I always tried to get men, because I knew what they were both like. But Father would just get his secretary to hire some poor woman and—” She gulped. “I knew what they’d do to her. Knew it and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. It was made very clear what would happen to me if I—”
“If you what?” I demanded, repulsed and disgusted by what she was saying.
“Like I said, I was five when I saw Luke that first time. He was only fifteen. He was weird back then too. It wasn’t like it happened overnight, or some trauma made him that way.” She grunted. “He had the strangest eyes. It was like he knew everything. He could look at me and he’d know if I was lying, or if I was sad, or scared. And if I was happy, he’d know, and he’d do whatever he could to make me unhappy.
“I knew to avoid him, knew it and worked hard to stay out of his way, but he wouldn’t always let me. I knew, too, that if I didn’t do what Luke wanted, he’d tell Father and Father would punish me.”
“Used his hands on you?”
“Hands. Belt. Brush. Shoe, one time.” She shrugged. “He’s better now. Mostly just his hands.”
Rage unfurled inside me like a black rose. It surged to the surface and I struggled to keep it under wraps. “He violate you?”
“Yes,” she said simply, making me close my eyes to process that answer.
But she was a virgin… “How?” Then I cursed myself for being a dumbass because I knew.
Motherfucker.
“Fucked you in the ass?”
That was why she’d jolted last night and this morning when I gave her butt some loving.
“Yes. My cunt is for sale,” she rasped, making me jerk beneath her. “He’s always been waiting for the right deal where he can use me as leverage.”
As a lot of things slotted into place, I whispered, “He found someone?”
“Before Luke died, there was talk between them.”
I sucked in a breath. “Why didn’t you run away?”
“I did. Twice.”
I fucking hated this dead tone of voice of hers, even as I understood it, I loathed it. I tightened my arms around her and questioned, “What happened?”
“Beatings. Thought he was going to kill me the second time. Almost wished he had.” She laughed, but it was mirthless. “The rapes hurt, but it was watching what Luke did to the maids that messed with my head. Sometimes he made me—”
“Made you what, sugar tits?”
She jerked at the nickname, then laughed a little again. Only this time, it was warmer. “I like that name.”
“Know you do.”
“It’s disrespectful, but I like it.”
I squeezed her. “No disrespect between you and me. Everything we do is with the other’s permission.”
“I know.”
“What did Luke make you do?”
“He’d cuff me to a chair and tell me that if I wasn’t looking at the maid he was hurting, if I looked away for a second, he’d slit her throat.”
“He did it, didn’t he?”
“I looked away. Once. Never again.”
Sometimes, there were answers to questions you wished you’d never asked and while that was the case here, now it was more than that. I wished I’d never asked, because Luke Lancaster was already dead. I’d already wished I could torture the bastard because of what he’d done to Giulia. Then with Ghost, Tatána, and Amara, I’d wanted to castrate him and make him eat his dick. Now? I wanted to rip out his veins and choke him with them.
I’d never been a religious man. Never believed in God or the Devil, no matter how hard Grandma tried to instill those values and morals in me, but now? Now I did. Now I wanted to believe that some demon was making Luke Lancaster suffer. That he was reaping the years of suffering he’d forced on others. Because if that wasn’t happening, then there was no justice. No justice at all.
I cupped the back of Lily’s head, gently played with her hair, and inquired, “Does your father still—”
“He stopped punishing me that way a while ago.”
Punishing?
Fuck.
“Why?”
“I have no idea.” She wriggled her shoulders. “Didn’t stop to ask him why, was just grateful he did.”
I squeezed her again. “Sorry. Stupid question.”
“Yes,” she said dryly. “It was. But it’s okay.” She bit her lip. “It might be to do with the man he selected for me.”
“Why?”
“My future husband—” Now, didn’t those words fill me with fucking rage. “—has bought me. Why would he want a frigid wife who’s terrified of sex? Maybe Father is giving me time to get over it.”
To get over it?
“It isn’t a hill to get over on a bike, babe.”
She snorted. “You don’t have to tell me that. I know. Anyway…I’m surprised you haven’t gone running for the hills.”
“Why would I?”
“It’s fucked up. Everything is fucked up.”
“Maybe. Makes sense though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Takes a lot of hate to want your father dead. Takes even more to want to kill him yourself. Now I understand why.”
“I wanted him dead because of what he did to my mom.” She shrugged. “The rest…”
“The rest what?”
She sighed. “The rest doesn’t compare. I’m alive. She isn’t.”
My eyes widened at that, but I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything. I mean, that was the worst case of survivor’s guilt I’d ever heard, and in the past ten minutes, I’d heard some pretty fucked up stuff. Plus Mav was my goddamn brother. He was the King of the Land of Survivor’s Guilt.
I rubbed my chin over her hair, aware that the stubble caught on a few of the silk strands but that wasn’t going to stop me from comforting her or vice versa.
Fuck.
Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t this whole clusterfuck, and my biggest concern of all? Not the other shit she’d said, not the crap about her cunt of a brother even if that was beyond horrendous, not what he’d done to her, or even the clusterfuck that was her father punishing her by raping her…it was why he’d stopped doing that.
I didn’t know Donavan Lancaster, didn’t want to know him either, but a man like that? He didn’t just stop doing something without there being a reason why, and giving Lily time wasn’t enough of a justification. Not for a man like that. So her reasoning had me staring up at the ceiling as the birds fucking twittered through the rising dawn like there was something to be happy about.
See, the world I lived in was fucked up, and the one Lily lived in was too, but they were two separate spheres. She came from a wealthy family. Not her fucking father’s, but her mom’s. And though my bank account was beyond stuffed, it wasn’t from stocks and shares and ownership of a goddamn railroad. It was from the illegal shit the MC did.
So, with that in mind, with the knowledge I had of my corrupt world, I knew virginity wasn’t important to the businessmen of Lily’s world.
They wanted their wives to be good at sucking cock, not innocent and naïve between the sheets. Only a certain kind of ‘busi
nessman,’ and I said that loosely, would be interested in a virgin for a wife… And there was the fact that Lancaster knew about our dealings with the Five Points. Plus the fact that he’d stopped punishing her that way…well, it had to be because he was frightened of whoever he was intending on marrying her off to. And who would someone like him be scared of? The bastard, with all his power and influence?
The Famiglia.
That had to be it.
Sure, there was a whole lot of guesswork and supposition there, but it was plausible. No one except for the competition and the cops would know about our runs for the Irish Mob, and even though he had the cops in his pocket, I highly doubted he was involved with the task forces that would be monitoring our business.
And the Famiglia were evil bastards. Everyone knew that.
A wave of protectiveness flooded through me the more I thought about it. Thought about the why and the how. More importantly, the when. That was what scared the living shit out of me.
“Why me?” Of all the things I could have asked, I wasn’t sure why that was the first question to pop out. Still, I wanted an answer.
She tensed. “You mean, why did I tell you all that?”
“No. Why do you want me to be your first?” For some fucked up reason, that mattered to me. I wanted to know her answer. Needed to know it.
“You know when I told you where Luke was keeping the women?”
Gruffly, I said, “Yeah.” That moment was probably written in my DNA now. That whole fucking night was.
“I was terrified. It was the first step toward changing my life. Toward…” She released a breath. “Luke’s death made him vulnerable for the first time ever. Not only because Luke and he made tormenting me a hobby, but because he was mourning. He grieved the sick bastard, and he’s willing to do anything, and I mean anything, to make someone pay for his passing.
“That meant I had a window of opportunity, but I was still terrified. Still scared that I was going to mess up beyond repair. And I was one hundred percent aware that I only had so much leeway for error.
“You didn’t know me, you just knew that I’d asked your bartender to spike my security’s drinks, but you calmed me down. You helped me breathe.” She peeked up at me. “That meant more than you know. Then…after everything else? Why wouldn’t I want you?”
Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset Page 45