by Ace Gray
“Okay, okay.” Dantè held up his hands in surrender. “What do you need from me? How do I help you fix it?”
“I need to bring someone in.” He started rubbing his temples.
“Do you know which someone?”
“Fuck,” he swore in place of an answer.
“I’ll take that as a yes?”
I noticed the tick of his beard again and imagined that hidden wicked smile.
“Yeah.” Danger sighed.
“Okay, how do we get him?” Dantè clapped his hands together and rubbed, every bit the problem solving boss.
“We invent a time machine.” Danger rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling.
“Sounds plausible,” I interjected noticing Dantè’s smile spread.
“Four years ago he could have fixed everything,” Danger continued without acknowledging me.
“And now?” Dantè asked, ruthlessness edging into his voice.
“I wish I’d killed him outright.” Danger’s vicious snarl was back as he spat out the words and stood to barrel out of the office.
Dantè and I watched in silence as he stormed off. We stayed quiet as the grave until I stood and sealed the door shut behind him. Dantè didn’t move, he didn’t even breathe.
“Did he just say he wished he’d killed you?” I tried to hide my shock and failed miserably.
He nodded slowly as he crossed his arms on his chest.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” I searched outside the glass office for the monster masquerading as a man.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, Max,” Dantè answered sharply as he stood and returned to his chair.
“Is the backdoor because of you?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do about it?” I asked.
“Push the app live,” he answered as he opened his computer and started clicking at keys.
“But…”
“We know nothing about app developments, Max.”
“He just—”
“This conversation never happened,” he snapped, and I knew the tone of that’s the end of that but kept pushing.
“Innocent people could get hurt,” I protested.
His shoulders puffed up and menace filtered into his eyes. “You think, after everything, that I’d stoop that low. That I’d be that monster?”
I wanted to say no. That I knew he would only take an eye for an eye, but the way he filled up the room and sucked out the light, the way a chill hung on his words, made me hesitate.
“You’re scaring me,” I managed.
“Maybe you should be scared, Max.” He settled back into his chair and templed his hands in front of his face. “I think it’s time for the reckoning.”
Max was right to look at me with eyes wide. I was vibrating with hate. They had both said how glad they were that I was gone. They’d made me sound like a fly to be swatted or crushed. An annoyance in their eardrum not a life lived side by side. I’d meant nothing to them.
It made my insides churn and my teeth grind against each other. The fact that they felt I was so fucking insignificant was like a dagger to my heart. I just didn’t know if hurt or fury was the blade. I knew I wanted it to be fury but…I almost wanted to seek out Diego just to hear his take—probably the most vicious of all—it would fuel the hellfire.
And what would Mercy say?
That was the question that turned that dagger. Where I was livid with them, a rage built from hurt, she was pain. Pure and simple pain and betrayal. I’d loved her with each crinkle and fold of my heart.
“Promise me you won’t hurt innocent people, Dantè,” Max murmured, her eyes downcast and her fingers fumbling with the pen between them.
“Done.” I softened so she would feel my sincerity. “I mean it, Max.”
“This backdoor?”
I sighed and tried to wrestle my emotion back into my chest. “It’s just there for appearances. Once they know it’s real, they’ll be even more furious when Danger takes their money and doesn’t deliver the goods.” I spat out his name the way they had mine.
She looked up, her face falling into something serious. “They’ll…” she trailed off, but her thoughts were written all across her face.
“Hurt him? Yeah, they will. And he won’t know why,” I answered coldly. “What did you think we were doing, Max?”
She shook her head then couldn’t meet my eyes.
“I can’t just keep him up late worrying then kick mud in his face at the beach.” My voice softened.
“I know.” Her admission trembled.
I saw myself reflected back in Max. Well, the old me anyway. I wouldn’t have had the stomach for this. I would have wanted to tear someone limb from limb for hurting my friends, bruising my family, but when it came time to exact something tangible…
Prison and Priest had changed me.
They had changed me.
Max hadn’t been destroyed like I had. They’d smashed into her but she’d weathered it. Rebuilt herself stronger than before. The pieces that were left of me, didn’t quite make a decent shape anymore. There was concrete and rebar curling out of my blown up chest.
“You always have an out, Max,” I said, not wanting her to end up mangled like me.
“No,” she whispered. “I won’t lose this chance.” She finally looked up at me, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I won’t lose you. You’re the only one that understands.”
“Okay, so what are we looking for?” I asked as I scrolled the computer screen in front of me.
“Any mention of someone wanting to purchase a litter of puppies, all documentation required.” Dantè was similarly absorbed in his screen.
“How do you even know about this?”
“We don’t talk about tea parties in prison.” I arch an eyebrow over my computer and pulled a real laugh from Max.
I blew out a deep breath, feeling an ease wash over me with the notes of that laugh. I hadn’t realized how much I needed her until she wasn’t with me. It was just a heartbeat, a glimmer in her eyes that had told me she was afraid and my chest tightened up. She was the support I hadn’t known I needed. I had her to thank for all of it. My eyes roved over her where she was bent behind her computer. The way she crinkled her nose was adorable, and her long bangs dancing on her eyelashes was a performance I could watch over and over. She’d carved out a place in my crumbling heart, and I made a conscious decision to protect her place in it. I wouldn’t let her think otherwise again.
I wouldn’t let Bert either.
He wasn’t involved in this inky black shit, but I needed to sit down and have a talk with him. I needed to hear his intentions with Max. He needed to know the lengths I’d go to put him in his place if he hurt her.
“I think I found it,” Max interrupted my thoughts and spun her laptop toward me.
I smiled at her before I even read the screen.
“Are you having a stroke?” Her face pinched as she studied my face.
“No,” I said with a laugh.
“An hour ago you were ready to go Godzilla and eat a metropolis and there were all these screaming tourists…” Her nose scrunched and she cocked an eyebrow sky high, sending those bangs in a wild arc. I just laughed harder.
“Show me what you found.” My voice was thick and husky when I finally could speak; I felt the laughter still bubbling in my chest.
She rolled her eyes so dramatically I swore I could hear the swivel in her skull but then her delicate, manicured figure pointed at a listing. I read the words I was looking for, then read them again. Priest had confirmed the phrasing the last time I’d gone to visit him.
“That’s it,” I said. “When you get his computer tonight, that’s the post you need to find.”
“Okay.” She blew out a deep breath.
“This is what you type.” I scrawled out the reply for her.
Her eyes darted back and forth on the page at least three times. “And then?”
<
br /> “And then we wait.”
“For what?”
“For a meet.” I shrugged. “A way to get them the information.”
“Who are we talking to?” She bit her lip.
I slowly shook my head. “I don’t think we want to know.”
“But we really won’t give them the user info, right?”
“Swear, Max. That’s what’s gonna send them after Danger.”
She swallowed then smiled at me.
“Will I have to sneak onto his computer again?” I saw the knot she swallowed when she asked.
“Maybe. I’ll monitor as much as I can on my own, but a reply has to come from Danger’s computer or it could be tracked through the IP address. We’re trying to keep our hands clean.” I bit my lip and thought for a moment. “I mean, are you really that opposed to spending more nights with Bert?”
Her eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed scarlet.
“He better not hurt you,” I warned.
“I’d ask you what you’d do about it but I don’t think I can handle the answer.” She shied away from me and splotchy red bloomed up the side of her neck. “I think I’m going to be the one that hurts him anyway…”
I clasped my hand over hers. “It’s gonna work out. All of it.”
“You make it all sound so easy, so innocent.” She twisted her hand and gripped mine.
“As far as you’re concerned it is, okay?” My other hand notched beneath her chin. “Unless we’re talking about the things you’re finally gonna get to do to your boy between the sheets.”
“God you’re sexy.” Bert slid his hand across the table and let his fingers trail up my forearm. Goose bumps bloomed in their wake, and I had to shake off the delicious shiver that shot down my spine and coiled in my belly.
“Stop.” I tried to hide my shy smile from him, but his hand kept moving until it fisted in my hair and pulled me to his lips.
Kissing Bert was like fireworks. It had been since the first time he kissed me when he drove me home. But this time…God, he flamed across my skin—each inch—until I was ready to explode.
“Still want me to stop?” He whispered against my lips as he asked.
“Nope. Never.” I was basically panting.
“I’m thinking that I should pay the tab?” His words turned up to a question as his hand left my hair and skated down my neck. Then along my cleavage.
“Umm, yes,” I breathed.
“Think there will be one stop instead of two on the way home tonight?”
“Yes,” I blurted out.
Sure going home with him was part of the plan but I…Well, I was falling for him. I’d tumbled that first day and I wanted this. I wanted us. I wanted those fireworks to sear my skin and burn me.
“Good.”
He twisted and desperately scanned the room for a server. “Why the fuck don’t I carry cash?” he murmured through gritted teeth before stealing a vicious kiss from my lips.
“I do.” I whipped a bill that Dantè had given me from my wallet and threw it on the table.
It was the bill, a tip and then some but if I was lucky, I’d be getting the tip and then some back in just a little while. Bert looked at the Benjamin on the table with a frown but then let his eyes drift to the swell of my breasts, and the corner of his smile turned up.
He stood and held his hand out for me. My cheeks began to ache as I took it and let him pull me against his chest. Even though both of us bumbled on our feet, he captured my lips, and my smile did what it could to grow.
We were a mess of limbs staggering out of the restaurant and into the Uber. I had to keep myself from crawling beneath his button up shirt with the driver just in front of us. But the moment we were out of the car, the crisp air kissing my skin, the world stopped. We stopped. And we stared at each other from across the space the Uber had left between us.
Anticipation clawed at my stomach. Dread too. I wanted this. Me. Battered, bruised, and broken me, wanted to lose myself in Bert and open myself up to the possibility of a life again. But plunging in, meant with both feet. The one that wanted this for me and the one that needed this revenge.
“You can always say no,” he murmured.
“I don’t want to.” And I didn’t. Even if it was selfish, I wanted to make love to the man that had reminded me of the feeling itself.
“Then why are you standing all the way over there?”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said honestly.
“You into kinky stuff, Jordan?” Bert asked with a laugh. My sister’s name rather than mine at the end of that sentence was a poignant punctuation mark on the situation.
“No,” I said softly and something about the tone brought Bert to me, his hands at my elbows, his thumbs circling on my skin.
“Hey, sweetheart, talk to me.” The way he bent made his glasses slip down his nose but he managed to look past them with an earnestness that called to me.
“The last boy I loved…” I sucked in a deep breath. Jessie would kill me. For being with Bert, for wavering on my mission. “Things didn’t end well. For him, I mean. And now…” I couldn’t find the words. “I’m worried…”
“I’m not him, Jordan.” He pressed himself against me. “All I need to know is whether you want this. If it’s even half as much as I do, we’ll figure it all out. I swear.”
“You’d say anything to get into my pants right now.” I nudged his erection beneath his denim fly.
“I’ll wait. I swear. Just tell me that’s what you want.”
I looked up at him. At the way the moonlight kissed his skin, but also at the way he lit up my darkness just the same. At the quivering want behind his eyes and the restraint he practiced to hold it all in.
“I want you,” I whispered.
His hand answered for him, sliding along my leg, beneath the flounce of my skirt, and he cupped the curve of my ass. He used his grip and his long, lean frame to push me toward the house. One hand kneaded at my flesh while the other came to my chin and kept my eyes locked on the lust almost bleeding out of Bert, his thumb traced my bottom lip.
When we hit the front door, he let me crash into the wood, shaking it on its hinges. He bent down and took my lips, my breath, and kept them for himself. His fingers slipped around my backside and flirted with the lace of my thong. Then lower.
I gasped into his open mouth, and he took that breath from me too as his fingers ran over top of the thin fabric between my thighs. His kiss fell into a rhythm that matched his strokes, both fully hypnotizing me. I could have been pinned against that wood for a heartbeat or eternity itself. I could have disintegrated into nothing but the feeling of my lips against his. If that was all that remained for the rest of measurable—or immeasurable for that matter—time, I was more than fine.
My lips were raw and my lungs burned when he pulled back just enough to gather me into his arms, my legs wrapping easily around his hips. His hands fumbled for a second behind me but when he managed to get the door open and kick it shut behind us, I moaned.
“Oh God, what do I have to do to get you to make that sound again?” His voice was a matching groan in the dark of their living room.
“Get me into your bed.”
“Done.”
He walked strong and proud down his hallway, and I lost myself in that overwhelming confidence. And manliness. I let myself feel the delicious fire of lust as it built up and burned between us.
I didn’t feel much else until Bert set me down and the soft fabric of a comforter pressed against the back of my calves. My heart slammed inside me, almost like it was going to lodge in the back of my throat. Bert pulled away, and after a quick glance and a barely there nod of my chin, his eyes devoured my body.
His fingers shook as he reached for the tie of my dress, and I still couldn’t swallow or breathe or feel the space between my heartbeats.
“I dreamt of this the first time I saw you. My angel haloed by the sun, barely covered in white.” He fumbled with the knot. “
I’ve been craving what was underneath.”
I sucked in a deep breath just as he managed to get the knot undone. I held that breath, feeling everything about a first time, all at once. What would he see? What would he feel like? How would our bodies meld? Would I disappoint? Would he? Could a mind shattering orgasm be on the horizon? Could I shatter even more?
The slip of my dress from my shoulders silenced everything.
I watched Bert’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks in the moonlight. They echoed the heave of his chest as his hands reached for my stomach. His fingertips brushed along my ribs and then the hollow between my hip bones. He ran the length of my panties, and just when I thought he’d pull them down, he slid back over my hips and then up my spine.
To my bra.
Bert fumbled for a second then I felt the pop of the fabric. I squeezed my arms to trap the straps subconsciously. His hands slid back along my skin, his thumbs brushing the underside of my breasts before he reached for the straps and slid them down. I blew out a deep breath just as he sucked his in. And then there I was, topless in front of him.
“Fuck,” he swore just before he bent down and took my nipple into his mouth.
I shoved my hands into his hair as my head rolled back, and I felt his glasses fall down his nose, a new, cold shock to my sensitive skin. He sucked on me at first then barred his teeth against my breast. I whimpered.
When he switched nipples, his arm snaked around my back. The pressure behind me matched the pressure in front and I surrendered to him. All too quickly, he laid me out on the bed beneath him, then stood to look me over once again like I was his last meal.
“Please,” I begged as I twisted against his sheets, only to find the bat signal printed on the sheets beneath my cheek.
I laughed, low and full of lust—that was Bert’s undoing.
His fingers started at his buttons, bumbling with the fabric until he got frustrated, snarled, and only managed the first two. He fisted between his shoulder blades and pulled the button up over his head.
Bert had been right. I’d seen his shirtless torso—his sculpted swimmer build, wide but with a wiry frame—but it was never mine before. This was something just for each other. I felt the want and the tears ball in my throat with the intimacy of that moment. That moment when I knew we wanted everything from each other. When we couldn’t live without it.