by Ace Gray
His hand moved down my hip, my leg. He wrapped around my thigh and slid up and down. Two fingers even worked their way to my clit. He made sure to rub every bit as leisurely as the way his fingers wandered. The slow and soft mixed with the fast and furious epitomized Cole and everything I was becoming ravenous for.
Hip bones hit my backside over and over and I could picture the leaves and panther inked across those bones. I could picture the equally intricate tattoos covering his hands as they explored me. Well not so much explore as dominate. Cole’s grip was getting tighter. I gasped but it choked off partway when his nails dug into the side of my neck. His pussy wasn’t playing with mine this morning but it made me drip all the same.
We rolled together in perfect unison and I melted into his hands. Cole had complete control of me and my body and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. His dick was at the perfect angle and his head was hitting my G-spot every time he pushed in. I couldn’t catch my breath, not even to screech or moan.
“Can I?” Cole asked as his hand drifted back to the flesh of my ass cheek. His hand played at my backside, teasing ever so slightly.
My gasping picked up pace. I couldn’t answer him, I couldn’t even moan or gasp. All I could really do was burn brightly for him. The only sensation I had left was in my fingertips. Those I put them to work, reaching for him. I grabbed his rock hard shaft and pulled him from my sex. He groaned a wholly pained sound into my ear, and he was so close, it reverberated through my bones. When I pushed his shaft toward my ass he groaned again, letting himself nestle between my cheeks.
He started to nudge against me. My face throbbed, my heartbeat thumped against his hand and my breathing was almost nonexistent.
“Relax.” His word tickled my ear.
I couldn’t. The gasping for breath was making it far too hard. My hand flew to his, still wrapped around my neck, and I pulled. He didn’t let me pry his fingers from my flesh but he did loosen his grip the slightest bit. It was enough for my body to mellow and breath to filter into my lungs again.
Cole took advantage. His hand that was on my hip fell away and a moment later the watery slickness of lube slid along the curve of my ass cheek. Then further down, hitting its mark. Cole barely hesitated before the tip of his dick pushed into me.
I screamed, I couldn’t help it. Cole clamped down effectively cutting off my air again, and ending my shriek prematurely. I tried anyway as he nudged further and further into me. The blood rushed in two very different directions, bringing a fevered heat and a ragged beat to both my face and between my thighs.
It took a few rocks of his hips but he finally pressed in fully to sit flush with my backside. I gasped shallow, wild, haggard breaths. His hand moved back between my thighs to flick my clit. My body short-circuited and I bucked against him.
His hand splayed across my stomach to still me. My body had a mind of its own, writhing wildly despite his desire to pin me. He wouldn’t let me move.
When I finally stilled, Cole started hammering into me at a merciless pace. His hands finally moved from my throat to find other real estate. His fingers found my nipple and pulled. Hard. This time I could cry out. My voice echoed off every corner of his loft. He groaned into my ear.
We flowed against each other, perfectly timed and body fitting to body exquisitely. I cried out each time he thrust up into me and he groaned in reply to almost every one. It was my symphony of pleasure; with him providing accompaniment.
Cole threw his leg up and over mine, pulling me back into his body even further. We were a twisted mesh of limbs on the bed. His cock was hellbent on acquainting itself with every inch of my ass. Over and over and over.
I lost myself to the perfect feeling and let tingling spread throughout my body. It wasn’t long before the wave of a perfect orgasm crashed down around me and the world went fuzzy then turned a blinding shade of white.
“Ladyface,” Cole breathed into my hair.
“Umhum?” I questioned back, unable to make sentences with his semi-hard cock still inside me.
“When do you have to get going?” He leaned in a kissed my shoulder. Despite his touch, I felt the suffocating black reaching for me.
“Shhhhh,” I whispered as I closed my eyes, willing the bright light to come back.
As if on cue my phone started ringing. Notorious was back, echoing through the room the way my shrieks had earlier. A giant boulder dropped into my stomach. Jimmy wasn’t giving up today.
Darkness took my heart back swiftly and squeezed. I sat still for a moment, hoping Cole would start his hypnotic roll again. When he didn’t, I shimmied against him, desperate to provoke round two. He just laughed then blew out a low whistle.
My phone started ringing again.
I sighed and pressed away from Cole, letting him unceremoniously fall from me. I grabbed the phone in one swift movement and headed to the bathroom. Gently, I pushed the door shut and leaned against it without a word of explanation to Cole.
“What?” I answered sharply.
“Why didn’t you check in?” My stepdad’s oily voice rolled across the line.
“What do you mean why didn’t I check in? Are you having me watched?” I shouted far too loudly.
“No,” he snapped at me the way he used to snap at my mom and it made my blood boil. “But they are. They wanna know where you are.”
My legs gave out and just barely managed to find a perch on the ledge of the tub. Everything in me was bottoming out, completely erasing my orgasm. Hell, completely erasing Cole. There was only one they in my family’s life. They’d been there since my stepfather came into the picture. I was sure they’d be involved today but I didn’t think they’d be interested in me. I’d kept my distance from day one. I’d run across the country at sixteen when they stole my mom from me the first time. They were nothing but bringers of doom and death.
Mom’s death.
The thought popped into my head automatically. The truth of it resonated in my bones.
“What have you done? What did they do?” My voice went low, raspy, barely able to sneak out.
But I couldn’t listen to my stepdad’s answer. A perfectly sculpted Cole stood in the doorframe, his semi swinging squarely between artfully etched tattoos and even more skillfully sculpted muscles. His head was cocked as he watched me, his eyes cutting through me once again.
I tried to swallow the lump of glass in my throat. Part of me wanted to believe the anxiety was from my stepdad, or even them but I knew deep down it was because right here, right now, I was going to have to answer for it.
Sure enough, just a weak heartbeat later, clear, concise and sharp over the jibber in my ear on the phone, Cole asked, “Ladyface, what the hell is going on?”
6.
Cole
I’d made her cry. Tears pooled so quickly in the corners of Elle’s eyes that they spilled over her plump cheeks and danced on her cherry lips.
Of all the filthy, nasty things I’d seen and done on this earth, Elle crying was the one that gutted me. I hadn’t had the heart to question her after that. Matter of fact, I hadn’t been able to do anything but kiss her until I swallowed all her tears and replaced them with the warm water of a shower.
And the sight of water dripping down the perfect curves of her pale body was the reason I agreed to come. Well, begged to stay by her side was more like it.
Now here I was, shutting off my Charger in the parking lot of a church. A Catholic church I knew all too well. I would have done anything for the teary Elle of this morning—more than just attraction had tethered me to her—but in hindsight, I don’t know that I would have willingly agreed come here.
Years ago when my life had been different, I’d been here too many times to count. During the thick of the turf war, almost every week. The stones of this building reminded me that my foundation was built on death and destruction. The Reaper himself would have found this place too thickly coated with blood to come in.
Of all the churches in Chicag
o, why were we here?
“You really didn’t have to come, Cole.” Elle’s voice was small from the passenger’s seat.
When I swept my eyes over her, my response came easy. “Yeah, I did.”
The confident temptress from the plane had disappeared. The woman beside me seemed thinner, small somehow. Her skin was waxy rather than peaches and cream. Mischief didn’t light a single one of her features. I wanted to protect this woman every bit as much as I wanted to fuck the other side of Elle.
Without hesitating, I grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her violently to my lips. I kissed her as if it would breathe the missing life back into her. My fingers squeezed her flesh, my tongue lapped every inch of hers, I even felt myself shoving over the console and stick shift to get at her. If I didn’t stop…
I dropped my hold and plopped back against my seat, blowing out a deep breath as I went. If I was honest, I didn’t care that I was here. I cared that I was with her. She’d become heroin in my veins in a matter of minutes, and I was making bad decisions all over again because of drugs.
The black Range Rover that pulled into the lot and sat in the back row of cars said just how piss poor this decision actually was. For the first time in years, fear, real guttural fear, socked my insides. I knew that driver. I knew who he drove. And I knew why we were at this particular chapel.
“Cole,” Elle’s voice pulled me from my spiral, “that’s my stepdad. He’s… not a good man.” She leveled her finger at a tall but slightly tubby man with greased back black hair pacing behind the church—a man better known as Jimmy Ponies—and the havoc churning through me broke loose into full chaos. “I need to talk to him alone.”
Before I had a chance to respond, she pushed out of the car door and was gone.
I couldn’t appreciate the way the black fabric of her skirt danced across her legs, or that she reminded me of a beautiful black swan. Three years as a law-abiding citizen, a business and an honest living had been thrown out the window for electric attraction. For fate.
Maloneys and the fucked up family business surrounded me.
I’d clawed my way out. The price I paid still felt sticky on my skin some days. I scrubbed too hard in the shower too many mornings to count. It had taken too long to look myself in the mirror again, too long to feel like I had a future. A future I might share. With someone like Elle.
Fuck.
My blood was boiling, my bones vibrating as I shoved out of the car and stalked toward Elle. Fury and fear had awakened the primal beast in me. The monster fed on Elle’s shrieks and whimpers, both broken terrified, as they drifted on the wind.
The closer I got the tighter my fists balled.
“What did you do? Tell me! What kind of trouble are you in?” Elle was blubbering through tears.
“Nothing your mother didn't know about. Nothing she wasn’t riding shotgun for.”
“You ruined everything.” Elle’s voice was as sharp as nails on a blackboard.
The body I’d become intimately acquainted with told me what it was doing a split-second before Elle launched herself at her stepdad. I caught her mid-pounce and hauled her into my chest. My internal chaos made me squeeze a little too tight. She didn’t seem to mind when she slumped into my chest, a snarling wildcat and a mewling kitten all at once. Her tears were warm through the fabric of my button up shirt.
“Well look who the cat dragged in.” Jimmy was coolly detached as he met my gaze head on. “Cole.” He nodded with a bastard-ass smirk playing on his lips.
“You two know each other?” Elle questioned me, her voice muffled in my suit.
“I could say the same for you, Ponies, though I pity the cat that had to drag your ass anywhere.” My fingers dug into Elle as I glowered at him over her golden hair.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Jimmy shook his head side to side as he spoke.
“I wasn’t gonna let her come alone. And that was long before I knew she was walking into the killing fields.”
“She’s not innocent. This family as a whole is in as deep. Six feet under whether we like it or not.”
The very thought of Elle six feet under had fury unhinging me. I was seeing red when I let go of Elle and swung at Jimmy. I caught his shoulder but he ducked before I could land another blow.
“Cole!” Elle was right behind me, her slight but determined hands yanking at my shoulders but she couldn’t move me. Not with Jimmy and his threats square in my sights.
I lunged at him, balling my hands into his lapels and pulled the slimy rat inches from my nose. “Don’t you dare threaten her. Ever.” I shook him with each word, unconcerned that speckles of spit were flying into his face. Honestly, I wanted something far more disgusting, maybe even something deadly to fly in his face.
“Cole, you know how I feel about people touching my things.” A new but all too familiar voice complete with Irish accent crawled up my spine and made me shiver.
“He’s yours Mick? I had no idea.” My voice was icy as I turned toward Mickey, Jimmy still in my clutches.
When I laid eyes on Mickey Maloney, I wished it were Elle beneath my fingers. Why I’d let her go, I had no idea. Her skin would soothe me, her heartbeat would reassure me, her cherry smell would ground me; she’d keep me anchored in the sea of terrifying memories.
Mickey was a little more salt and pepper then the last time I saw him and the creases around his pale green eyes had gotten deeper. His five o’clock shadow was a little closer to six and his lips were thinner than I remembered. The only thing that didn’t look older was his body, which despite his age, was honed tight enough to perfectly fill out the suit her wore. He was still a formidable wall.
“Let him go, Cole. He’s valuable.” Mickey sneered when he said valuable and my back bristled. “You’re lucky I let you touch Elle.”
My switch flipped. I dropped Jimmy and wheeled on Mickey despite the reputation, despite the people I’d seen him murder, despite the things he’d made me do. I would have taken on him and the whole of his hierarchy if it meant getting Elle’s name off his lips.
“What did you say?” I snarled, my nails digging into my fists.
“Jimmy has forty-eight hours to come up with one of my prized possessions. I’m guessing we’ll need to make alternative arrangements. And since he’s worn out his usefulness and his collateral up and died…” Mickey jerked his head toward the church. “He’s gonna have to get creative this time around.”
My stomach rolled then I heaved.
I knew why Elle’s mom laid in a coffin just behind me in Satan’s chapel. The story was as familiar as my nightmares. I’d lived it. No, this story was worse. It was very, very real and revolved around my Elle.
“What do you mean?” I asked even though I knew. And Mickey knew that I knew. His eyebrow twitch said everything. He took a step toward Elle and gave her the once over.
God love Elle for pulling her shoulders back and narrowing her eyes at him. She may not have understood the severity of what was happening but she sensed a fight and was rising to it.
It was the worst time imaginable to get semi-hard.
But that’s what she did to me. Her gorgeous dress and golden hair rustled in the wind. Her long legs disappeared beneath that deceptively innocent skirt. Those plump lips she was trying to thin into a straight line. She was everything. And everything worth fighting for.
“Jimmy’s a worthless, gutless fish. He’s worth nothing but the cash he can scrape up. But the lasses he keeps ‘round? We’ll see how this one does at fulfilling his debts.” The corner of his smile cricked up.
I swung at Mickey before I thought about it. The sound of shoes scuffing on the pavement and the grunts of a few men were punctuated by Elle’s shout then the crunch of a crushing hand wrapping around my fist. It stopped me faster than a brick wall.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you, Cole.” Another familiar, though far softer and friendlier voice accompanied the sickening splinter of my bones.
I turned t
o find the dark brown eyes of my best friend staring back at me. Or former best friend. Or my fuck if I knew. Horse and I gotten caught stealing cars and started doing Mickey’s dirty work to cover our asses and pay our debts. Somehow the debts never went away and the list of sins just got longer. His hulking hand was wrapped around my trembling fist.
“It’s all right, Horse. Let the lad go. We’re all having an emotional day,” Mickey said without taking his eyes off Elle.
The Hulk that was Horse pushed my hand down by my hip then smoothed my jacket.
“How you doing, Cupcake?”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t make my jaw unclench. When he slapped me on the shoulder, I made a point to stay rooted and glare past Mickey. Siobhan stood behind him with her familiar wry and evil smirk hanging below her freckles. Her copper red hair swirled in the wind around her emerald green eyes and danced on her ample cleavage. When she winked at me then licked her dark lips, I shifted my eyes back to Mickey only to find him measuring me up.
“Cole always was a hot head. Let’s go pay our respects and give him a minute.”
Mickey held my gaze, waiting for my eyes to fall away, to show my deference. For years I’d nodded and let Mickey walk out of the room with my eyes downcast, but for Elle, he was getting a big fuck off.
To my surprise, he laughed. Loud.
“You always were my most rebellious. I think it’s why I considered you a son. I know it’s why you’re still alive.” The crunch of the gravel beneath his feet echoed deep inside my soul. “It’s probably best you try and stay that way,” Mickey added the last bit under his breath and in a tone only a handful of people had lived to recall. “Jimmy, are ya coming?”
I watched the men walk away until they disappeared into the church. Horse led the way, glancing back once or twice to check on me, Jimmy slunk a few feet behind. Mickey adjusted his suit, he nodded to the people filtering in, he hugged a few of the wives that walked up. At the last minute, he turned back toward us and a wicked smile split his face, a smile that was meant for me, one that threatened to split the earth beneath me if I let it.