Entropy: A Dark Romance (Blood Diamond Disciples Book 1)

by Riley Ashby

  And I always would have gone with him.

  Besides waiting for Gunner, I remained on the lookout for surviving any Disciples looking for my blood. The sting had managed to round up and arrest most of the organization, but plenty of people still wanted Gunner’s head, and they knew I was a way to get him. Occasionally, Parker would tell me about a new kidnapping plot they uncovered and foiled, dropping it into a conversation as easily as if she was telling me about the latest episode of Criminal Minds. Jonah was still running around out there, thirsty for blood, but they couldn’t pin him down. I couldn’t help but think of my sister whenever his name was mentioned. When would he come for her? Did she want him to?

  So when I woke from a dream one night to find my apartment still pitch black save for the streetlights streaming through my windows, I knew right away someone was in my space. Nothing woke me at night; I was always too deep in my dreams to rouse easily. I felt the presence in the room as acutely as any spirit, the way I’d always known when Gunner was watching me through the lens of the camera.

  At Parker’s suggestion, I always kept a knife on me now in case I found myself in trouble. So I barely had to move to grab the blade I kept hidden beneath my mattress, already open and ready for an attack. The floor creaked quietly, and whoever it was set something down. I could hear their breath in the silent night, feel the warmth from their body heating the room by degrees.

  They wouldn’t get a chance to take me. I was done being a victim, and nothing else was going to keep me from Gunner. I would not let him risk his life again to save mine.

  A heavy hand rested on my shoulder.

  I turned and pulled the knife free.

  Six months. For six months, I hid like the rat I was, underground and in tunnels and in the trunks of beat-up cars transporting me back and forth across state lines every time someone got new intel that Jonah or another member of the Disciples was headed my way.

  More than one person was ratting out my location, that much was obvious. A week after the medics dragged me out of The Slaughterhouse, we thought we found him. But then I woke up one night with a bullet lodged in the wall above my head where I was sleeping, and I was on the move again. After that, I never slept in a room with a window. I couldn’t help but think of her, even more than usual, as I went days without seeing the sun or knowing what the weather was like.

  After three weeks, I decided to take my chances and tried to sneak out of the safe house. My stitches tore as I attempted to climb the privacy fence, and I woke up chained to my bed.

  Serves you right, I heard her say. Then my protection detail gave me more drugs, and I didn’t hear anything for a long time.

  They took them all out eventually. Parker came to tell me herself. Six members of the Disciples, all deep undercover in local and regional FBI offices. They found out the undercover identities and sold them off to the highest bidders.

  “Your dad would be proud of you, you know.” We were sharing a beer in the living room, still sitting on the floor as an extra precaution.

  “He never should have lost faith in me in the first place.” All he ever wanted for me was to help people. To him, the life I took was unforgivable even though I did it to save myself. The fact that I felt no remorse over it only made things worse. Well, Dad, I’ve killed a lot more people since then, and not in self defense. “What happened to the house?”

  “We sold off everything, just as you asked.”

  “Except for—”

  “Yes, except for that.”

  She pulled a fabric-wrapped package from her backpack and handed it to me. “The auctioneer was reluctant to let this one go.”

  “Tough shit.” I wished I could have kept more. “Tell me more about her.”

  “I told you everything.” Parker drained her beer and reached for another. “Between the two of you, I barely have time to focus on my job. Always asking about each other.”

  That was good, probably. If she had changed her mind about how she felt about me, she would probably avoid Parker. I’d already had to kidnap her once. I didn’t want to have to do it again.

  “Is my final location secured?”

  She nodded. “You’ll be on your way tomorrow.”

  I smiled as I pretended to sip my beer. She hoped by springing the short timeline on me, I wouldn’t have time to run off again. Too bad for her, I’d been preparing for this day for a long time. And this time, I was healthy, unbroken, strong. The minute Parker was unconscious, it was time.

  “By the way …”

  “What?”

  “Do you remember when you asked me if you were a good man?”

  I nodded, remembering. The night she found me ready to step off the top of a parking garage, hoping to feel something rather than the hole inside me where my remorse should be. I had killed another man, taken a life, and it meant nothing to me. Everyone kept waiting for me to crumple in grief or lash out in anger, but there was nothing. Nothing except for my father’s voice in my head, over and over again—There is no good in you.

  “I was afraid to answer you.”

  Well, that was unexpected. “You were afraid of me?”

  “Gunner, I’m terrified of you. I always thought you were this remorseless monster. I understood why you wanted to join the police, but I couldn’t fathom how you made it past the screenings.”

  I frowned. I never knew Parker felt this way. With her psychology background, she’d always been the person who I thought understood me. Maybe that was why we’d never been closer than friends.

  “But I want to tell you now.”

  “Don’t lie to spare my feelings.”

  “I’m not.” She set the bottle down between us and hugged her knees. “Since I met you, you’ve been full of anger. You were able to do something productive with it, and now we can put away many bad men. But I always worried what putting you in the middle of them would do to what was left of your humanity.”

  I had the same unspoken fear. That was, until …

  “Until she showed up. And it’s not like she fixed you. I don’t even think you’re broken. But you’re more like the man I met all those years ago than you ever have been.

  “So no, I don’t think you’re a nice person. But what you did for her, and what the two of you have done for each other…” She finally met my eyes for the first time since she’d started spilling her guts. “There may still be some good in you yet.”

  I watched her apartment for hours before I went in. We knew Jonah was out of state at the moment, trying to evade his own capture, so I wasn’t overly concerned about him showing up. Still, better safe than sorry. Killing someone in Quinn’s home would put a damper on everything, not to mention the unacceptable risk to her life. But somewhere around two o’clock, I was tired of waiting. I had to get her and get out, and we’d be on the road.

  Getting into her apartment was harder than I expected. Good girl, I thought to myself as I encountered block after block, various locks and alarms on every window and the balcony door. But I was prepared, and nothing was keeping me from her. In the end, it only slowed me down by a few minutes.

  She breathed softly across the room in her bed, and I took a few moments to examine her space. See how she lived when she was on her own, not housed by her parents or the university. Crawling plants trailed down the walls, reflecting moonlight onto the red brick walls. A bowl of fruit sat on the kitchen table. There was a pile of dirty laundry on one chair.

  The silence in the room was sudden and deafening. I whipped my head toward the bed, but she hadn’t moved. She wasn’t moving at all—her breath had stopped.

  I crossed the room in three steps and knelt on the bed softly. My mouth opened to whisper her name as I placed one hand on her shoulder. But nothing got a chance to leave my mouth before she whirled on me, screaming, the silver blade of a knife glinting off the same moonlight that kissed her plants.

  I very nearly didn’t jump back in time. Damn, she was fast. Parker said she’d been training,
but I didn’t realize she was taking it so seriously. Even still, a hot, searing pain opened up in my shoulder as she caught me with the blade.

  “It’s me!” I pressed my hand over the wound and backed up even farther. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s me.”

  The knife landed on the ground with a thump. “Gunner!” Her arms were around my neck before she was even done saying my name. “Oh my God. I could have killed you. Why did you creep up on me like that? What are you doing here?” Before I could answer a single question, she was pulling my hand away from my shoulder to examine what damage she’d done. “Oh, my God. I think this is going to need stitches. Oh, my God.”

  She was panicking. I pulled her against me with both arms, ignoring the rushing blood that ran down my shoulder. “I’m okay. I can fix it up. It didn’t hurt me.”

  “You’re bleeding! I thought I was never going to see you again, and now ...” She shuddered as she breathed. “I can’t think about this right now. We have to stop you from bleeding.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not enough to worry me.”

  She wiggled away from me and turned on a light next to her bed, then came back to look at the cut. “After the last time we saw each other, I have a strong aversion to seeing any blood on the outside of your body.”

  “We’ll be okay.” I pulled the shirt over my head and pressed it on my shoulder. “Can you get me some ice? I’m going to work on it in the bathroom here.”

  She nodded but didn’t move. I raised my free hand to her face. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I can’t believe you’re here.” She choked on the last word.

  I pulled her to me and kissed her, long and slow, the way I’d meant to greet her. “Go get the ice. I’ll be right here.”

  It didn’t need stitches, thanks to the butterfly bandages I brought along with me. I only got one on before she reappeared, breathless and red-faced as if she’d run the whole time. “Is it okay? Does it hurt?”

  “It’s fine, baby. Let me finish bandaging this up.” I thought sending her for the ice would give her some time to calm down, but she looked even more worked up.

  “I wasn’t sure how much you need, so I brought a bunch, but I figure we can throw some of it in the sink if you don’t need that much, or I can—”

  I fastened the final bandage and washed my hands as she rambled, scrubbing all the blood from the crevices of my palms, then grabbed her upper arms and pulled her toward me. All the ice clattered to the ground as I kissed her again, even deeper this time, exploring her mouth with my tongue and tasting every part of her that I’d missed for so many months. It chased away all the nights I’d spent imagining, trying not to touch myself while I remembered the feel of her mouth because any release I brought to myself would only leave me disappointed when it failed to compare to her in any way. My hands roamed her endlessly, trying to find every curve I’d missed, all the smooth and rough parts of her skin, the swell of her ass and how it fit into my palms so perfectly. One hand found her breast, kneading, pulling at the nipple until she whimpered in my mouth. I broke away and stared at her, seeing my reflection in her eyes, the mirrored parting of our lips and flushed red cheeks.

  I nudged her nose with mine. “Hi.”

  She smiled. “Hi.”

  “I missed you.”

  “Me too.”

  I brush the hair back from her face. “You’ve been crying.”

  “I cry every night.” Her voice broke again, and I ducked to kiss her lips, the apple of her cheek, the tender spot below her earlobe at her neck. “I wanted to believe you’d come, I did, but everyone told me to let you go. Even Parker.”

  I rolled my eyes. Bitch. “I was always going to come for you. Don’t ever doubt that. If I’m breathing, I’m here.”

  “I didn’t just sit around waiting.” Her voice was defensive as if she’d given this speech several times before. She wiped her face with one hand, keeping the other on my chest, holding tight to my shirt. “I graduated school early. I wanted to be able to run if I had to. I talk to Esther. I go to yoga. I—”

  “I know it all. Parker told me everything she knew.”

  “Where were you? Tell me everything.”

  “There’s time for that later. When did you eat last?”

  We ate together in her tiny kitchen, next to each other instead of across the table, knees and shoulders pressed together as we devoured fruits and cheeses and slices of meat without bothering to assemble any kind of plate or sandwich. She rested her head on my shoulder while she talked, telling me about her meetings with Esther at the coffee shop, how it was still hard to look her father in the face, how she learned to dress up microwave ramen so that she felt like she wasn’t completely living from paycheck to paycheck. I filled her in on the time I’d spent alone, pulling my hair out as I climbed the walls ready to put my life at risk to get back to her. The only thing that held me back was knowing that I’d be putting her in danger too.

  “They should have let me go with you from the beginning.” She threw a piece of cheese down onto the table. “It wasn’t right to keep us apart.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you, even if you wanted to.” That was a lie, but I didn’t want her to regret our time spent apart anymore than either of us already did. “You had things to do. A life. And I couldn’t have asked you to walk away from that so suddenly.”

  “You were going to originally.”

  Well, she had me there. I hugged her against my shoulder and kissed the top of her head. “We’re together now.”

  Her lips smacked as she opened her mouth to ask the question I knew was weighing on her mind.

  “Do you know where we’re going? Are we going to be safe now?”

  “Boring questions.” I stood and brought her with me and walked us over to the couch, where she curled against my chest as I lay back. “But the answer to both is yes.”

  “Where will we live?”

  “You’ll find out when we arrive.” I liked keeping some secrets from her, enjoyed the power trip it gave me to know something she didn’t. At least this secret was relatively harmless.

  She shifted in my lap. I’d been barely in control of myself since I arrived, even when she attacked me. I had to touch her. “Why aren’t you naked?” I grabbed her hips and held her in place while I pushed against her.

  “I’m afraid,” she whispered.

  I froze. “Of what?”

  “That you’re still trying to tell me goodbye.”

  I sat up, the two of us together, my hands around her back holding us together. She didn’t have on a bra. “I’m not leaving you again unless you send me away.” I kissed her once, twice, bit her bottom lip on the third kiss, my cock stirring as she whimpered. “Actually, not even then. You belong to me, Quinn. I knew it from the moment we got the job. I fought to keep you to myself because I could not stand another man laying his eyes on you. Couldn’t handle someone else getting to see the rise and fall of your breasts as you breathe, the way you cross your legs at the ankle before tucking them under you while you read, the way your lips slide along silverware as you eat. Every inch of you belongs to me. And I’m going to prove it to you. Going to take every part of you.” She was panting now, eyes closed, fingers touching my cheeks, my hair, my ears. “I’m going to put you in that bed and fuck you until you scream my name while you come. I’ll hold your hair while you suck my cock, and then I’ll blow my load all over your chest.”

  She squirmed and moaned. My groin ached. My dick pressed against the zipper of my jeans, wanting to be closer to her, as close as we could be. But I had to be in control because watching her lose her restraint was every bit as delicious as I’d hoped. I trailed my lips along her neck, the curve of her shoulder, then back to her ear, where she shuddered as I licked her. “I’ll tie you down so you can’t move while I eat you out until you cry. And once your little cunt is too raw to take anymore …” I slid my hand down the back of her pants and ran my fingers over the top of her ass, spreading
her just slightly, letting my finger slide between the cleft. “I’ll fuck this tight little asshole until you don’t know which way is up.” I grabbed her breasts with both hands and squeezed them as her head dropped back, and she bit her lip so deep I thought she would break the skin. Had she always looked like this? Sex and beauty and love personified, and all for me. No wonder everyone seemed to want her. But she was here. She was mine. “And then when all that is over, I’ll lay next to you and make love to you soft and slow until your whole body shakes and is silent while you fall apart completely.”

  “I’m hot,” she whispered and moved my hand to her front, between her legs, as if I couldn’t feel her heat burning me. As if the wetness from her cunt wasn’t about to soak through her pants and mine. “Keep talking.”

  “I’m done talking.” She wrapped her legs around me as I stood, never sliding an inch down me, biting my neck to hold herself together as I walked us toward the bed. “We both are.”

  Had his hands always been like this, so sure with their pressure and precision? Had they always left trails of fire in their wake, lighting up every inch of my body like wildfire?

  I nearly blacked out as he spoke to me, filthy promises I wanted to beg him to keep. But I didn’t have to because the second he placed me on the bed, he began to unbutton my shirt.

  “Does that sound good to you, my girl?”

  “Tell me more.”

  He pushed my shirt off my shoulders and tossed it to the side of the room, then knelt before me. “What do you want to hear?” He licked my nipple, slicking it with his tongue until it ached as if I could come from him licking me there. “Did you like me telling you how I’m going to fuck every hole in your body?”

  I gulped. “Yes.”