Dirty.
Taboo.
What he wanted.
She gripped his hair and tugged him back up to her breast, and he obliged, spending a considerable amount of time with them, working her into a frenzy before he looked up at her.
“I need you so badly. I’ve missed you.” The honest urgency in his eyes was something she’d never seen before, and he’d wanted her plenty. She remembered the Caymans, his office, his apartment. This was different though, and she saw the intensity and it took her breath away.
“Then take me,” she mumbled around the panties in her mouth. She wasn’t sure if he understood her or not, but he nodded and entered her in one swift thrust.
He lowered his head to her neck and stilled, panting hard with what seemed like restraint.
Then with a muttered curse, he wrapped his arms around her body, holding her shoulders from behind, and started moving.
His lurches against her were hard, insistent, and his hands pushed her down with every one of his thrusts. It was hard, it was fast, and her headboard groaned and squeaked in protest.
But it felt amazing.
She was gasping and moaning, but everything was muffled around the panties stuffed in her mouth. He’d been thinking on his toes with that one.
But he wasn’t being all that quiet. He was cursing under his breath, the groans of “Christ” and “Fucking hell” getting louder and louder.
She was feeling it too. Amelia was clenching against the building heat inside, afraid if she came as hard as it seemed like she was going to, her gram would hear it no matter what she had stuffed in her mouth.
But the orgasm barreled down on her, and even as Charlie moved in and out, banging her bed around in the tiny room, everything inside her tightened up with a burning intensity and the heat pooled outward, making every single limb convulse with sensation.
Charlie froze, pulling her down by the shoulders as he pulsed up with his cock, and he sucked the skin of her shoulder into his mouth, biting it with a groan.
It hurt, but it was wonderful, and she wanted to do it again and again and again.
And as soon as they recovered, they did.
Chapter Thirty-one
Amelia had stayed silent about whatever secret place Charlie was taking her to. When she’d asked, he’d simply told her curiosity killed the cat, and given her a funny look. She could tell whatever he was about to expose her to was important to him, and not many people knew about it.
She could appreciate that, as well as his effort.
He was stiff and quiet on the drive there, and even Luther kept his eyes to himself, not looking back at them once.
But she couldn’t resist scooching over to his side of the car and wrapping her arm around his middle and resting her head on him.
He reciprocated with a heavy sigh, putting his arm around her.
“This reminds me of the first time you rode in this car with me,” he murmured onto the top of her head.
She looked up at him and saw a soft smile curving the edges of his lips.
“I had the most inappropriate thoughts that night.”
“I was sleeping in your lap,” she reminded him, remembering her own embarrassment at her drool.
“One of these days I’ll let you in on my train of thought that night, and maybe we can fulfill a fantasy of mine.”
She grinned at him saucily, feeling a little tug of playfulness. She’d gotten the impression he wasn’t really in a playful mood, but she wanted him to tell her his fantasies. She wanted to fulfill them for him.
When the car stopped, she was surprised to see a cemetery on the edge of a large pocket of woods.
Amelia looked at Charlie, nothing but questions bouncing around her brain.
“I wanted to introduce you to my mother.” Then he opened the car and got out, holding his hand to help her out of the car.
It had been two weeks since they’d gotten back together. In that time, they’d split their time between his apartment and Gram’s house. They still didn’t have the answers about where they would live permanently, but things seemed to be working themselves out. Luther took her to Adam’s warehouse office, then took Charlie to work, and picked her up at quitting time. Charlie even came by for lunch about twice a week.
And there was lots of sex. Every night. Every morning. And sometimes at lunch.
She blamed pregnancy hormones. Something about an increased blood flow to her nether regions. She was always swollen and ready for him.
But not now. Well, she was ready for him physically, because it was a physiological response. But mentally, she was in a cemetery, about to see where Charlie’s mother was buried. So no. She wasn’t getting ready to drop her pants and let him have his way with her.
He led her to the outskirts of the graves and sat her in a bench that faced the trees, her back to the headstones. It was a weird placement, but she didn’t question it, as Charlie seemed to be working out of habit.
She imagined the names on the headstones and how they marked places for loved ones to visit. Since she and Charlie had been back together, she hadn’t had many more existential crises, but there had been the stray, “What will happen when I die; who will I be then; who will remember me?” thoughts in the middle of the night, like always.
And then she’d turn and snuggle into Charlie, and they’d stop.
He clutched her hand as they settled into the bench, and she looked at him. His strong jaw was clenched, his brows scrunched down over his eyes. He wasn’t wearing a suit today, but had on jeans and a hoodie, and if she hadn’t known it was her Charlie, she probably wouldn’t have recognized him.
They had spent some casual time together the last couple of weeks, but even casual, he still seemed more dressed up than most. This was the most casual she’d ever seen him.
And his eyes were watering.
“Are you okay?”
He was still staring into the trees.
“Talk to me. You’re scaring me.” She’d never seen him like this, not since the night of the party. He looked so frazzled, like he was falling apart.
“When I was fourteen, my mom disappeared.” He began, his voice sounding thick and a bit choked. “The cops thought she had gone back to her old ways and didn’t pay much attention to her disappearance.” Charlie looked over at her, then down at their still clasped hands. “She’d been in trouble with the law when I was little—drugs. But she’d cleaned up and had a hair studio in our garage. We didn’t have a lot, but we had each other. It wasn’t drugs that made her disappear and I knew it. Since she’d gotten clean when I was around eight, she’d been both a mother and a father to me, since my dad was unknown.”
“I’m so sorry.” And she meant it. What would it have been like to lose her mother at such a young age? To not have anybody?
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t until some guy walking his dog out here found my mom’s skull in those woods that they realized something had happened to her. It was bashed in. Her clothes were stuffed in a tree trunk. They never found all of her. I never got to bury all of her. Any of her really. Some forensics lab somewhere has what’s left of her in case they get a suspect.”
“So they don’t even have a clue who did it?”
He shook his head.
“I can make a ton of excuses, saying this is why I am the way I am, but the truth is I’ve learned to be the way I am, because this is how I’ve needed to be my whole life.” Charlie finally turned to look at her. “Does that make sense?”
“I wouldn’t have you any other way, Charlie. I’m sorry that this has happened to make you this way, but I’m not sure I would love you the same way if you were different.” It was the truth too. If he didn’t have the darkness inside him, would she have ever seen it and been attracted to him?
“I brought you out here for a reason.” Charlie took both her hands in his and then dropped to the ground between her knees. “I’m at your mercy, and probab
ly have been since the first moment I laid eyes on you. I don’t know what our future holds, but I know that I can’t live it without you. I don’t think Gram will like my apartment, and I don’t think I can stuff panties in your mouth every time we fuck. So I want us to all get another place together, and I also know that Gram wouldn’t appreciate it if we lived in sin. So make an honest man out of me, Amelia. I love you. Marry me.”
“I love you too.” She reached out and stroked his cheek, the thick stubble on his cheek testament to the fact he hadn’t shaved this morning. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
He smiled, and as tired as he seemed after baring his mother’s story to her, it dropped ten years off his face. Then he stood, spun around to the trees, and yelled, “She said yes!”
Of course, if some of his mother’s bones were in a lab somewhere, that meant the rest were here. He’d just proposed in front of his family.
The car horn honked short staccato bursts to the tune of “Shave and a Haircut,” showing that Luther had heard too.
Amelia laughed, and Charlie scooped her into his arms.
“Take me home and tell me about this fantasy in your car…” she muttered against his lips as he kissed her.
Epilogue
2 months later…
Charlie gripped Amelia’s thighs on either side of his hips as she moved on top of him. He loved watching her like this, free and uninhibited. She had gotten so much more comfortable with herself and freer than he’d ever imagined with her body. He watched her climax as her fingernails dug into his chest and scraped long gashes of his skin, felt her grip him with her insides, before grabbing her hips and holding her still so he could pound up into her for his own release.
She collapsed on top of him, her breasts pressing into his chest, both of them heaving ragged gulps of air.
“I love you, Charlie.”
“I love you too.” His voice was hoarse with emotion, but it could be the exertion. At any rate, it still brought him to his proverbial knees when she said those words. He would never tire of hearing them. “Speaking of which, would you still love me if I had to use a cane?”
Amelia lifted her head and stared at him with one eyebrow crooked. “What do you have up your sleeve now, meddler?”
“Oh, you know me, always plotting and planning something.”
Charlie rolled her off him and got out of bed. Stretching, he spotted a pair of pajama pants on the floor and put them on before going into the kitchen to make some coffee.
Gram was there already, wearing a housecoat that buttoned up to her neck and pouring two cups of coffee for them. She already had a cup with a tea bag dangling out of it.
“I know this isn’t up to Amelia’s standard, but I’m trying to make myself useful. And make some noise.”
Heat rose to Charlie’s face. He’d tried to make adjustments to his lifestyle out of respect for the old woman suddenly living with him, but she seemed to take it all in stride.
“Will you be here for supper tonight?” Gram asked. She’d been doing much better here. He had Nancy coming in to stay with her during the day, and her lucid days were more and more frequent. He didn’t have nearly as many pickles as he’d expected.
“I will be here for supper, but I can bring takeout so nobody has to cook. Also, I’m leaving for a week tomorrow, so you won’t have to worry about me for a little while.” He grinned before taking a sip of his coffee, stifling a grimace.
Lucid or not, she couldn’t make a cup of coffee to save her soul.
He would need to find a bigger house for them all, but things seemed to be working out anyway. Charlie looked forward to his future, and he couldn’t remember when that had been a thing in his life.
***
Bascom Forrester held his glass of scotch, swirling it around, watching the legs as they trickled down the sides of the glass.
He’d spent years building this empire of his, ever since his father had insisted hard work was the only way to have it. Bascom had proved him wrong by taking over his real estate firm when he wouldn’t give it to him. Hostile takeovers were a lot of work though, and it hadn’t taken him long to realize he could buy what he wanted instead.
In the form of gangs, intimidation, and of course, selling illicit materials on the side, he’d managed to build up a rather large kingdom.
He smiled to himself. It was like an alternate reality just under the surface of everyone else’s world. His brother ruled the law-abiding one, from his perch in the police station, but he helped Bascom with his own lawless domain, by turning a blind eye to his actions.
But this Charlie Delmonico character was a force. He couldn’t figure the man out; he didn’t seem to want in on his dealings personally. Except that woman. He’d almost cracked the man with that. Bascom had done research on the man. He was a fixer and didn’t do stuff for personal glory.
Pussy.
No. He did shit for money, which wasn’t unadmirable, but was certainly not as passionate as Bascom.
“Hey, brother. Got another one of those?” He looked up to see Bentley standing at the doorway. His brother was older by three years, but looked younger, dammit. Trimmer, his hair had stayed salt and pepper, instead of the silver that his own had. His paunch was smaller, he was taller, and by comparison, Bascom looked … old.
He sighed. “Help yourself,” he said, gesturing toward the bar in the corner.
“How are the shipments?”
“One was hijacked last night.” Bascom wondered if Charlie had anything to do with that. He used truckers, always had. They were good for a lot of things: drugs, guns, women, fenced goods. Nobody looked twice at them. Freight trucks were everywhere.
He couldn’t exactly report the hijackings.
“I’ll look into it. What was it?”
“Just grass. Not as much money as other stuff.”
“You sound like a fucking hippie when you call it that.”
“Dope?”
His brother shook his head at him, smiling ruefully before gulping his drink down. “I was just coming in to check on you.”
“Check on Charlie Delmonico, why don’t you? I’m fine. I think Charlie’s making trouble.” He had royally pissed the guy off by messing with his woman.
Why men let women hold on to their junk so hard, Bascom would never understand. They were a means to an end, a warm hole to find pleasure in, but never, ever one to hold your testicles in their purse.
Charlie had shown his hand by letting that little pixy hold his.
Bascom wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.
***
The next week…
“I’m going to get some wood. If I’m not back in ten minutes, come after me.” Charlie seemed to be joking, but the guys had been making jokes about wild animals in this wilderness for so long, the jokes had lost their humor.
Luca could only nod his agreement.
He was hot, dirty, and really fucking tired. He’d been following Mack and Charlie for two days, through the woods, across a river, under barbed wire, and up at least two fucking walls.
Team building my ass.
This was torture, pure and simple.
Luca wasn’t a metrosexual, by any stretch of the imagination, but this shit was for cavemen and barbarians. If he had to eat another MRE in his life, he would just shoot himself. Bland, tasteless packets of starch was what those were.
When Charlie had first come to them with the idea that they needed to work as a unit to take Bascom Forrester down, therefore, they needed to become a brotherhood, Luca had imagined a camping trip, with fireside cooking, fishing, and drinking.
Not some Crucible-type thing that Mack and Dean had dreamed up from their service days.
They’d been at this for forty-eight hours, with no end in sight.
Luca was ready for his bed, and really wasn’t having brotherly thoughts about any of these men.
It was Charlie’s idea, so he was the most g
ung ho. Mack was the hard-ass, yelling at them all like a drill sergeant. Dean was quietly bringing up the rear, helping them when things got really tough. In fact, he was carrying most of Luca and Adam’s shit.
Adam was in the same boat as Luca, but he was being quiet about it all. He was definitely the closest to Charlie and had clearly been privy to harebrained plans of his in the past. But Luca could tell the dude wasn’t happy about it.
They’d stopped for the night, and the guys were sitting around in a clearing, getting their beds ready and those gross MREs out for dinner.
Carb-coma was more like it.
“Where’s Charlie?” Adam asked as he took off his boots. Luca wasn’t taking shit off. If something came at him in the night, he wanted to be able to run.
“Went looking for wood.” Luca checked his watch. Shit. “Fifteen minutes ago. I’ll go check.”
Standing, every muscle in his body protested. Who the hell needed to carry a thousand-pound log with four other guys on a daily basis? He was fucking over this shit.
He eased his way down the path Charlie had disappeared down, until he heard a groan. Then he picked up the pace.
Dammit.
Charlie was leaning against a tree, his ankle at an unnatural angle. It wasn’t twisted. It was broken. His face was ashy gray, and he looked up at Luca with a pitiful look.
“Oops.”
“Stay still. I got you.” He turned and hollered, “Dean! Mack! He’s wounded!” The trees and brush around him seemed to come alive as the rest of the guys came bumbling through it to get to them.
Dean took charge, which was unusual. Apparently, he had some experience with this shit.
“Mack, get me a splint. Adam and Luca, go back and start getting all the FRH’s from the MREs. He’s going into shock. And a fire. We’ll need a fire.” Dean went to work, ripping the bottom of his t-shirt, and Luca spun to go back to camp. He didn’t want to see what happened next, although he could hear the crack of bone and Charlie’s agonized cry.
The next hour was spent getting enough wood for a fire, while Adam gathered all the flameless heating things from the disgusting MREs. Luca didn’t even want to know what sort of chemicals those gave off, but he was thankful for them, as they wrapped them in fabric and settled them around Charlie in various places. They were designed to heat food to edible temperature, not warm people, but whatever.
Perfect Drug Page 17