Broken Rebel: A Lawless Kings Novel

by Sherilee Gray

  “You’re not tired?”

  “No,” he growled.

  I had the towel in front of me, and slowly lowered it, drying my stomach. His lips curled back, revealing gritted teeth. I shrugged, making my boobs jiggle. “I’m just being thoughtful. You’ve had a long day.”

  His chest expanded with his sharp indrawn breath. “I’m not eighty.”

  His eyes had dipped to my breasts, so I reached up and slid the towel over them. “You want to know something crazy?”

  His eyes lifted to mine again. They were darker, sexy as hell. “I don’t know. Will it piss me off?”

  I chuckled, still rubbing the towel over my breasts, paying extra attention to my piercing. “Nah, it’s just a bit of useless Ruby trivia.”

  He licked his lips. “I know everything there is to know about you, baby girl.”

  “Not everything.”

  “If there’s something I don’t know, crazy or not, I want you to tell me. I want to know everything about my girl.”

  My belly swirled when he called me his girl. “Right, well . . .” I shrugged. “I’ve never given anyone head before,” I threw out casually. “Crazy, right?”

  He stilled, like a predator about to pounce. His breathing grew rougher, harsher. “Come here, Ruby.”

  “I mean, I’m sure it doesn’t matter to you? That no other man has felt my lips around his dick, my tongue sliding up his length . . . that you’d be my first?”

  He stepped forward, and I retreated. He stepped forward again, and I retreated again.

  He cursed, stopping where he was, and reached down, wrapped his fingers around his painfully hard length, and stroked it roughly to the tip and back.

  “It will happen. You will suck me off. But if you don’t want to right now? That’s cool. I’m so fucking hard, I think I’ll just jerk off looking at you naked.”

  Bastard!

  This was my game. How dare he turn it around on me like that? Liquid heat coiled low in my belly. The sight of Neco’s ripped, hard body, aroused while he stroked himself, was almost too much. I almost gave in and went to him, but that was the problem, I gave in all the damn time. Not this time. He wanted to turn the tables on me? Screw that, I was going to turn them back.

  “Good idea,” I said, then slid my hand down my belly. Stepping a foot out, I stood wider to give him a better view, then started sliding a finger along my soaked slit, then up to circle my clit.

  We were in some weird, extremely hot, masturbation standoff.

  He growled my name, voice full of warning.

  That just turned me on more. “This was a . . .” My breath hitched. “An excellent idea.”

  “How wet are you?” he choked.

  I dragged one hand up to my breast, and dipped the other lower, over my slick opening. “So wet. God, my thighs are slick.”

  “Show me.” He started pumping his cock faster. “Show me how you fuck yourself when your all alone in your bed.”

  I was turned on, probably more than I ever had been in my life, but I was still aware that he was taking control of the situation. I decided to allow it, since it was crazy hot and, even though he was asking the questions, I felt pretty damned powerful with his eyes on me.

  “For that, I’d have to lie down,” I said.

  “Do it.”

  “Please?”

  “Please,” he said gruffly. “Please, baby, will you show me?”

  I looked around.

  “Couch,” he grunted.

  I did as he asked, lying back on the couch. He was only a few feet away, staring down at me as I dropped my knees wide and started sliding my fingers through my slick lips.

  “Christ.”

  “You like that?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I fucking like it.”

  I spread wider and pushed two fingers inside.

  He groaned, then stilled, his breathing rougher than I’d ever heard it, and squeezed his cock so hard it had to hurt, cursing while he did it. “Who do you think about when you’re pumping those fingers in and out of that pretty pussy, baby? Who do you imagine between your thighs?”

  I bit my lip, pushing my fingers deeper, faster. “You . . . ahhh.”

  “Play with your tit, that sexy as fuck barbell. Tug it. That’s it. Now slide your thumb over your clit, Ruby.”

  I did as he asked, and my back arched, a scream bursting past my lips. Then I was coming. I felt Neco brush my hands away, then his mouth was there, lapping at me, growling as he tasted me, prolonging my orgasm.

  He ate at me until the last ripple of pleasure moved though me. Then he was . . . gone. I blinked my eyes open. He was standing beside me, fingers still gripping his length, stroking slowly. I looked up at him, at the fierce expression on his face.

  “No more games. Time for your first taste of cock,” he rasped.

  It didn’t occur to me to refuse. Why would I? He was right, no more games. I wanted him as much as he wanted me.

  I sat up and dropped to my knees in front of him, eyes on his the whole time. Too much, too intense. I swallowed audibly. “R-remember this is my first time, so you know . . . don’t expect any deep throat, yeah?”

  He chuckled, the sound pained, but also dark and sexy as fuck. He threaded his fingers though my damp hair, fisting it lightly. “At this point you could blow on my dick and I’d come like a fucking freight train. This isn’t going to last long, not after that show.”

  I leaned forward, my lips a breath from the swollen head. “Okay, here goes,” I whispered, then darted my tongue out, tasting him.

  He groaned, fingers getting tighter. “Fuck, Ruby.”

  “More?”

  He tilted his hips, pushing the tip past my lips, giving me an answer without words. Yep, he was done with the teasing. I moaned at the taste of him. It was dark and sexy and as he slid deeper, I had to squeeze my legs together.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” he snarled.

  He was right; he was wound tight, already past the point of no return. I only got to suck him to the back of my throat a few times, reveling in the rough, hungry sounds coming from him, before he dragged me to my feet and spun, lifting me as he went, wrapping my legs around his hips. My back slammed against the wall, and he filled me a second later hard and fast, fucking into me without mercy. I screamed, coming again almost instantly as he hammered into me, chanting my name over again as he joined me.

  I pressed my lips to his shoulder, dragging in one breath after another, trying to get my heart rate under control. The intensity of Neco’s desire for me was almost more than I knew what to do with. I was stupid, naïve to think I had any kind of control over this man. He was a force of nature, a raging storm that, if I weren’t careful, would blow me right over and swallow me whole.

  I’d never been wanted like this, needed, and now that he’d allowed himself to finally have me, the intensity of that need threatened to burst me into flames, turn me to ash.

  And, if I weren’t careful, lose myself all over again.

  Later that night, when we were settling into bed, and he’d curled me into his side, pressing his lips to my hair, I asked quietly. “Any idea who killed Scott?”

  He was quiet for several seconds, then, “No.”

  “Neco . . . you . . . you didn’t . . . ?” I held my breath.

  Now it was his turn to still. “You sound like Hunter.” He relaxed against me. “I didn’t kill Scott.”

  “I didn’t really think you would . . . but, you were just so . . . so angry . . .”

  “It’s okay, Ruby,” he said cutting me off. “The truth is, I would have . . . I would have ended that fucker if I’d found him first.” He rolled me to my back. “Does that scare you?” he said. “That I’d kill for you?”

  I shook my head, didn’t even have to think about it. “No.”

  Maybe that made me a bad person, or messed up. But I understood the world he grew up in. I’d lived there as well. He was made different than other men, all the guys at the agency were. Each one
of them would die . . . would kill, for the people they loved most. Neco loved me. He hadn’t said those exact words, but that’s what it amounted to.

  How could I condemn him for loving me like that, when I loved him the same?

  When I would do the same for him, if the tables were turned?

  Instead of telling him that, though, I curled my fingers around the side of his neck, over that sexy skull tattoo, and pulled him down for a soft kiss, showing him how I felt instead. When we finally came up for air, I smiled. “With Scott out of the picture, we can all breathe easier.”

  “Yeah,” he said, not looking at me.

  Something was definitely bothering him, and not just what happened tonight. But if I asked, I knew he’d deny it, like he had all the other times I’d tried to get him to talk about whatever it was on his mind.

  I closed my eyes and an image of Scott’s lifeless body was all I could see. Someone had wanted to shut him up. I’d had a quick look at the note I’d found on him before I got in the shower. There was a date, time, and the word Falcon, which I assumed was code for something, written on it. I wasn’t sure what it all meant, but I’d show Harry in the morning. I hated keeping it from Neco, but I knew if I shared it with him, he’d shut me out of it.

  As we settled down, his arm slid around my waist, his hold possessive. We both lay in the dark, me staring up at the ceiling, neither one speaking—clinging to our secrets.

  It was a long time before I drifted off.

  CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN

  Ruby

  Harry stared across his desk at me while I paced his office.

  “Sit down before you wear a hole in the carpet,” he said in that deep, calm voice of his.

  “I’m fine standing.” I stopped and turned to face him. “So, did your contact come through?”

  He tapped his pen on the desk. I’d given him the note as soon as I got to work this morning and he’d taken it to a guy he knew, an ex-con who’d been involved with a lot of the heavy hitters in this city before he was locked up. Harry paid him well for the information he gave us, and the guy usually had a lot to give.

  “Falcon is a meeting place. The Falcon is an old hotel in Hell’s Kitchen. It’s run down, been empty for years. The owner of this place, one Colin Edwards, uses it to conduct business, the kind he doesn’t want the authorities getting wind of. Edwards has links to drug and arms dealers, but enough legitimate businesses, highly successful businesses, to hide behind, and a good way to clean that dirty money. Besides being loaded, and powerful, he’s known to have a . . . thing for brunettes.”

  I stopped and stared at Harry across his desk, an unsettling feeling in my belly. “Define thing.”

  “He’s known by police, not for his dodgy business practices, but for the complaints filed against him, restraining orders, harassment, that kind of thing. Nothing has come of it, he’s never been charged. My guess, money was exchanged to keep this shit quiet, to keep these women quiet. No one would want to go up against this guy. Men like Edwards get away with whatever the fuck they want. When I say this guy is rich, I mean this guy is fucking loaded.”

  “What does he have to do with Scott?”

  Harry sat back in his chair. “You think Scott was trying to warn you, protect you from something . . . someone?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Harry stared at me, an expression on his face that sent chills down my spine.

  “You think this Edwards was watching me on that fucking site?”

  Harry shook his head. “I don’t know; at this point we’re only speculating. But yeah, my guess, this guy saw you, took an unhealthy interest in you. This meeting, the info Scott had, what it all means, I have no idea, but it can’t be anything good. If this guy is trying to track you down, that tweaked out piece of shit was right, you are in danger.”

  “But how did Scott know about this meeting? Whoever he was working for before he ran isn’t going to hand him fresh information. And if it was Scott that set this meeting up, why would he try and protect me, if he planned to sell me out to this guy? It doesn’t add up.”

  “Agreed, which means we don’t really know shit and we need to be careful. You need to be careful.”

  Shit.

  This was getting complicated, but I wasn’t prepared to give this to Neco and get shut out of my own case. If this guy wanted something from me, I wanted to know what, and I wanted to be the one to take him down. I wasn’t going to sit back and let Neco play hero, while I played the victim. I wasn’t going to do that anymore.

  I was capable, I knew my stuff, and I had excellent, highly skilled backup. Neco wouldn’t see it that way, though. There was nothing I could do about that, he had to find a way to deal with his fears and let me live my own life—and occasionally, that would mean separate from him.

  I got that he was scared for me, but I needed him to give me that freedom, to stay sane.

  We’d both been shaped by our childhoods. Neco clung tighter as a result of his, and I . . . I needed to be given the room to be me. The Ruby I’d worked so hard to find, the broken girl I’d pulled from the rubble, who’d been buried under layers of insults and harsh words, of fear and sadness. I’d worked so damn hard to find her.

  We were like magnets, two negative sides pushing against each other.

  Somehow, we had to make that work.

  “I think we need to go check this place out.”

  He tilted his head to the side, studying me. “You planning on telling the boys at the King Agency about this?”

  “Not yet. Not unless we need them.”

  Harry was in his early forties, solid, ex-military, and from what I’d seen, not afraid of anyone or anything. He knew his stuff, had contacts everywhere, and I liked him. He was a good guy.

  He chuckled in a way that didn’t really hold any humor, then muttered, “Okay then, let’s do this.”

  “I thought you’d give me more resistance on this.” Honestly, I thought he’d want someone who had been in this business longer than me taking his back.

  The guy was obviously a mind reader because he said, “You’re smart, quick, and know how to handle a weapon.” He shrugged. “I trust you, Ruby. You’ve proved yourself to me on more than one occasion. If I didn’t think you could handle this job, I wouldn’t have hired you.”

  I was dumbfounded. Flattered. And also feeling a little vindicated. Harry, a professional, a tough SOB, thought I had what it took. I stood. “Right, let’s get to work.”

  His mouth straightened into a flat line and he stood as well, sliding on his sports coat. “Think you can handle a visit to your old apartment first?”

  I slung my bag over my shoulder. “I can handle it, but the cops have been through it, I doubt there’ll be anything there.”

  He opened the door for me. “Probably not, but I want to check it out anyway. Things get missed, overlooked all the time.”

  We headed out, taking Harry’s car, and arrived at my old place a short time later. I had a weird feeling; not fear exactly, just a ghost, a shadow hanging around me, filling my head with Scott’s face, the way he’d been when he came after me that night, like he was a completely different person. And I guess that was true. I’d never known him at all.

  But I was okay; more than okay, as I tore away the police cordon tape and unlocked the door.

  Harry stepped past me and took in the living room. Furniture was still knocked over, the bills I’d had on the table scattered across the floor.

  “Looks like you put up one hell of a fight.” Harry’s words shook me back the present.

  I glanced over at him. “Would you expect anything less?”

  “Nope.” He turned away and started searching the bookshelf.

  I headed down the hall, walking into my room. I wasn’t sure how I expected to feel walking back in there, nervous, tense, maybe even a little fear—what I hadn’t expected to feel was . . . anger. No, white-hot rage. Scott had done this to me. He’d come into my life, invaded my privac
y, treated me like an object to be exploited. It fueled me, drove me, made me more determined to find out who was behind that sick website, what this Colin Edwards had to do with any of it—to bring them down in a crashing heap.

  “I’m going to check out Scott’s room,” I called to Harry.

  I heard a grunt over the shuffling of papers and thump of books as I strode to the room at the end of the hall and pushed the door open. I hadn’t been in his room for a long time, not since the night I’d slept with him and he’d videoed it for posterity.

  I stood in the doorway and took in the room. It was sparse, nothing on the walls. He had a double bed and a dresser. A small TV sat on top with his porn collection stacked up beside it. We’d lived together for two years and it was like he hadn’t fully moved in, like this wasn’t his home, but just somewhere he crashed now and again.

  I opened the top drawer. Boxers and socks. I grabbed a pen, sitting on top of the dresser, and used it to moved things around. No way I was putting my hand on this asshole’s underwear. Nothing. I checked the other drawers, coming up empty as well.

  The only other piece of furniture was the bed. I dropped to my knees and checked underneath. Nothing but dust bunnies and a couple suspicious-looking socks. I stood and looked around, this niggling feeling in my gut that I was missing something. I thought about all the conversations between the guys at the agency I’d overheard, what they said about the jobs they’d been on, the places they always searched first. Floorboards?

  I took my time feeling for loose ones, going as far as dragging the dresser out from the wall to check the ones under it, as well as behind it. I turned back to the bed. One time Jude told Hunter he’d found what he’d been looking for inside someone’s mattress. A long shot, and yeah, touching that thing was not an appealing thought whatsoever, but I wasn’t leaving here until I turned over every damn piece of furniture. Going by the thumps and bumps coming from the living room, neither was Harry.

  Dragging off the covers, I stripped off the bottom sheet and threw it all aside. The top was in good condition, no cuts—and thankfully, no weird stains either. I shoved it up onto its side. Underneath looked okay as well, so I felt around the sides, working my way around the whole thing. I was working my fingers along the top . . .