Blood & Rust (Lock & Key Book 4)

by Cat Porter

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  We stared at each other across the room in silence.

  “I’d fallen in love for the first time in college,” she said. “I was so in love with him, but it didn’t last, and it took me a long, long time to get over it. That gutting, that sudden void was a shock; a whole new level of loneliness. After that, I hated dating; it seemed so phony to me, and I avoided it. I liked flirting. I liked…I didn’t know what I liked. But I knew I hated the messiness of emotions, the confusion, the crossed wires, and on and on. I hated wanting things that the other person didn’t want, the not being sure they were being honest with me.”

  “You can never be sure,” I said.

  “Do you remember how happy Grace and Dig were together? Remember that?”

  “I remember,” I muttered. “I remember how it changed him.”

  Tania’s eyes watered. “I’d watched her give up all her dreams of going away to school, getting out of Meager to be with him, to live that love. I saw it as her giving things up, but she saw it as gaining something wonderful. She created a new life with him. They did that, and it was…fantastic.” She took in a breath, her eyes piercing mine. “And then it blew up in their faces.

  “At school and after I graduated, I was surrounded by so many mediocre relationships. Ones of convenience, ones based on superficial crap, on ambition, on money. But Grace and Dig? My mom and dad?” Her voice cracked. “No, those, the good ones, the really good ones, the ones on my altar? They were destroyed.

  “After Daddy died, I’d listen to my mother cry every night for over a year, Drew curled up beside me in my bed, and Penny in her teen dream denial. And then, the next morning, my mom would be smiling brightly at the neighbors, carrying on for them, for us. I remember the sudden quiet in the house, and my mother’s new abruptness. That’s what I remember most about the aftereffects of losing dad.

  “Then, there was Dig dead, their baby gone, Grace tied to a hospital bed after trying to kill herself, Ruby screaming in the hospital hallway the next morning. Grace leaving town on her own and trying to lose herself. Literally lose herself. Boner was desperate to find her. He tracked me down in Chicago, threatening me, so sure I was hiding her, lying to him. I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t know.”

  “And Finger was always there if you wanted,” I said.

  “Yes. Yes, he was.”

  My pulse slugged through wet cement all over again. “Shit, who can compete with that?”

  “I’m not asking you to compete. There’s nothing to compete with anyway.”

  “You two haven’t been—”

  “No.” She took in a breath and leveled her dark eyes with mine. “That night at the Jacks’ clubhouse—when Nina and Catch had been caught, and I called Finger, and he and I spent the night together? You were with Nina, upset she’d been having an affair but hanging on to her. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know it was all fake.”

  “You were watching me, trying to crack my code.”

  A small smile lifted her lips. “I was. And there was Finger, pulling on me. It would’ve been very easy to do, to go there with him again. But we didn’t. Almost but no. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.”

  I went to the kitchen sink and jammed the cold water knob to the right. I leaned over and drank from the faucet, like I’d just gotten off my bike after a run through the Salt Flats of Utah. I splashed water on my face and wiped at it with a paper towel.

  “Tonight was not about me and Finger,” Tania said. “He’s not hung up on me or making excuses to see me. He needed my help; it was real.”

  “Why? Why did he need your help? With his gun-running deals? With his meth factory?”

  “No, of course not. I can’t say right now.”

  “Of course you can’t.”

  “You have your club business; this is mine. How’s that? Now, can you please trust me?”

  “And then what? Every time something crawls up Finger’s ass, I’ve got to move to the left and step back, so he can have direct access to you anytime, day or night? I don’t fucking think so.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It was tonight!”

  “Can’t you believe in me?” She swallowed. “I want to be with you, Butler. I like what we have, what’s happening between us.”

  “So did I.”

  Her eyes winced at my use of the past tense. She bit at her lip, her shoulders sinking.

  “There’s more to this than what you’re telling me, Tania.”

  “There is. I’m not denying it. But I can’t tell you any more right now. I’ve been keeping a secret all these years, protecting it, like a frame on a painting. I need to keep it safe a little while longer. I’m asking you to trust me.”

  “I haven’t been able to trust anyone for years, baby. Especially myself. Now, this? This is all kinds of no. And I don’t want to be in Finger’s crosshairs personally as well as professionally.”

  “I’m not worth it?”

  “Goddamn it! You’re worth everything!” I yelled.

  Her eyes blazed, her lips parted, under the force of those words, the emotion in my voice.

  I took in a breath. “But you not being able to share with me, you putting Finger and his club over me and my club? I can’t have that. I can’t live with that, and you can’t expect me to either.”

  “You’re right, but I’m asking anyhow. Because I think what we have is special, and I don’t want to lose it.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it, Tania.” I shook my head. I knew I was right. I was. Everything I’d said to her was logical, practical. “Go home. Get some sleep. It’s late.”

  Her lower lip quivered. “I don’t want to go home.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “I want to be with you,” she whispered. “I want you.”

  “You just want to prove something now.”

  She stepped toward me, her dark eyes flaring. “You and I drove back into the club together that day, and then I heard the words ‘your old lady.’ I swallowed them down and shoved it all away, sealed it up tight—everything I felt, everything I thought, the memories of your every touch, every kiss, every hot breath, every word you whispered on my skin.”

  My heart thudded in my chest.

  “I wanted more,” she continued. “But, suddenly, you were taken. You hadn’t been honest with me. The night before that, you’d had your hand between my legs, your mouth on mine, and suddenly, you were off-limits. You belonged to someone else. Any possibilities were crushed.” Her voice shook, her words burning a hole right through me. “So, I was respectful. I kept away. But, now, you’re free, and so am I. Can’t we just start again?” She swallowed hard, her eyes searching mine.

  Tania emotional, Tania needy, Tania vulnerable.

  Tania wanting me like I wanted her.

  “Butler,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’m trying to claw my way into your heart here.”

  I grabbed her and crashed my mouth down over hers. She shuddered in my tight hold, and I fucking liked it.

  I ripped off her wet coat and tossed it to the floor. I quickly unfastened her jeans and shoved them down her hips. “Off. Now.”

  Our breathing grew harder and shorter.

  She toed off her high heeled sandals. She pushed her jeans down her legs and yanked them off her body, losing her balance as she went. I gripped her arm, and she glanced up at me.

  Fear of the unknown, and challenge accepted.

  That’s right.

  She lifted her blouse, her hair flying around her face, through my hands.

  I whipped her around in my arms and pressed her back against me. I ripped down her panties and sank my hand in between her legs. She jumped forward like a skittish deer, gasping loudly. I gripped her hips and shoved her back against my dick.

  “What’s this pussy gonna feel like, taking my cock?” I whispered. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about since I first touched it.” I dragged my fingers through her we
t heat. “You’re gonna fucking take it now.”

  “Am I?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “Give me your best, blondie.”

  “Your sweet talk is only making me harder, Scarlett.”

  “I fucking hope so.”

  I shoved her facedown on the sofa and got rid of my jeans. I nabbed a condom from the drawer in my coffee table, put it on, and grabbed her again, adjusting her back at an angle. I slicked her wetness over the tip of my cock, and her whimpers and squirming at my touch drove my lust higher. I thrust inside her, keeping it short and shallow. She gasped.

  “This is just the beginning. Can you take it?” I said.

  “Fuck you!”

  I pounded into her, thrusting deep this time.

  Her body tensed around me, her sobs satisfying the animal in me.

  Yes.

  Her head rose up, her neck straining, her shoulders tightening under my onslaught.

  “That’s it,” I spit out through gritted teeth, clenching her incredible ass.

  She flinched in my hold, and I shoved her back down and rammed into her, my fingers clamping on her flesh. She grunted loudly, gasping, with every hard thrust. I smacked an ass cheek and stroked it, her skin hot under my hand.

  “Your husband give it to you like this?”

  “No-no—”

  But I bet Finger did. Motherfucker.

  I did battle to get images of him fucking Tania every which way from Sunday out from behind my eyes. I wanted to annihilate them forever from her memory.

  I fucked her harder, faster, and she let out a low cry.

  Tilting my hips, I hit her from a different angle, grunting with the effort. Her cunt fisted around my cock.

  “Oh, damn, oh, damn!”

  “Got you right where I want you,” I said.

  “Under you?”

  “Yes.” I let out a hiss. “And all fucking mine.”

  I leaned over her and burrowed deeper, rolling my hips, screwing into her. She moaned loudly, and I slowed my pace, dragging out my dick.

  “What are you—ah!” Her back arched as I rocked back in, feeling her settle and tighten around me once again. Her back relaxed.

  “Don’t get comfortable, Scarlett.”

  I licked my thumb and gently teased her asshole, and it puckered, tensed.

  “You like that, don’t you? You want that?”

  Her muscles relaxed with my words, and she pushed back against me. Her gasps and whimpers made me high, the sound of our fucking sending me soaring. I let go of her ass, dug my hands into her hips, and jackhammered inside her pussy.

  No fucking prisoners.

  The need to see her, to experience her coming apart in my hands, surged inside me. I pulled out and flipped her over on her back. With one knee on the sofa, holding her legs apart, I drove inside her again, leaning over her.

  Her dark eyes were wild now, pulling me in.

  “I see you”—my voice was all rough edges—“Fuck, baby.”

  “Yes, yes.” She clutched my arms, her back arching. She shouted something unintelligible, shuddering in my tight grip, throbbing around my cock.

  “Tania!” I exploded.

  Everything blanked.

  Everything.

  My resentment, my petty jealousy, my fear.

  And only Tania remained.

  I collapsed onto her on the couch. She moved to the side and curled into me.

  My hand slid over her hip. “For all your bitch sass, you like me taking the lead, don’t you, Scarlett?”

  Her tongue flicked out to swipe the side of her mouth, her chest rising and falling quickly. “That was cathartic.”

  I stroked the smooth skin along her lower back and back down her ass. She squirmed against me.

  “I think that’s the most intriguing compliment I’ve ever gotten after a round.”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me about going rounds with other women when you have your cock inside me.”

  “Absolutely right.” I took her mouth, my hand stroking a breast. “And my cock loves being inside you.”

  She laughed, burying her face in my chest.

  “You must be really overwhelmed right now by all the pressure, huh? The store, your mom, the divorce. Me.”

  “Kyle’s daughter calling this morning,” she added.

  “Ah, shit.” I pulled out of her and got rid of the rubber.

  She turned in my arms and faced me more fully, a leg hitching over my hip. “You took all that away just now. I didn’t have to make a decision. I didn’t have a chance to analyze. You made me let it all go.”

  “I have to make you?”

  “Sometimes.” She curled into me further, her face in my throat. “I think I need that,” she whispered, her fingertips tracing a line along my jaw. “I liked that with you. Safe and wild at the same time.”

  She was being shy, vulnerable, telling me what she needed. Beautiful. Priceless. Heat swirled in my chest.

  “If you want to come, baby, you’ve got to let that shit go.”

  “I definitely want to come. I came right now in a big way, and I want to keep coming."

  “I can help you with that.” I nipped her bottom lip with my teeth.

  She let out an almost inaudible cry. “Yes, yes, you can.”

  Tania nestled her pelvis against mine, and I chuckled softly, as she released a drawn out sigh at the sensations.

  “Secret is, you trusting me to give it to you.”

  And I so wanted to give it to her. Everything she wanted. Over and over again.

  “Interesting.” Her lips brushed over my chest. “There’s that word again—trust.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence.

  She brushed her hair from her face and pushed back from me to sit up. “I need to get home. I can’t leave my mother alone at night when she’s sleeping. She gets up sometimes and—”

  “Right. Of course.”

  She stood up and found her clothes and got dressed as I watched her from the sofa.

  I grabbed my boxer briefs from the floor and slid them on. “You okay to drive? Let me take you.”

  “No. I’m good. I had lots of coffee before.”

  Coffee with Finger.

  I went to my door, holding it open for her. I followed her down the stairs and outside to the porch. The rain had stopped, the porch steps, the cracked cement walkway glistened in the light of the street lamp.

  She raised up and kissed me softly. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Tania got in her car. She pulled out of the road, and her red taillights were swallowed up in the darkness as she drove away. But the sweet press of her lips on mine remained.

  I HATED THREE O’CLOCK in the afternoon with a passion.

  Every day without fail three o'clock came, and all I ever wanted to do was close my eyes and lose consciousness. All I needed was a five or ten minute snooze to reboot, but today, stealing a quick nap was impossible. No, I’d gone to the bank to apply for a small business loan. Yippee, oh, what fun it was. Now, I had to get back to the store and tackle the long list of phone calls I needed to make.

  First, however, I stopped in at the Meager Grand Cafe, owned by Erica, an old friend from high school, to get one of her mega-size gourmet coffees to get me in gear. Erica’s family had once run a restaurant, Drake’s Cafe, on the very same spot, a family favorite for generations. Dad would treat us there for dinner on his rare free Saturdays before planting season. Erica had taken over the aging restaurant about six years ago and had transformed it into a coffeehouse extraordinaire.

  I stirred the thick dribbles of half-and-half in my steaming hot very tall cup of Tanzania at the condiment counter. The creamy swirls I created on the surface of the black brew were pretty. I took a sip. So good.

  I chewed on the wooden stir stick. My mind went back to me and Butler at his apartment. He hadn’t answered my question of him trusting me. No, that particular thorny issue had not been resolved, had it? The
following day he had texted me that he had to go out of town on business, and I hadn’t heard from him in three days.

  Good sex can either bring people together, or it can cause mighty doses of confusion and awkwardness. I figured he’d call me or come see me when he was ready.

  My phone dinged. I put the coffee down and reached into my bag. A text from Grace.

  Are u going to answer my calls? :( :( :( Or do u not have cell service in Nebraska???

  Cute.

  I hadn’t spoken with Grace since I’d left Dead Ringer’s with Finger. Did she really think I’d ridden off with him into the Nebraska sunset? I owed her an explanation.

  I tapped on her name, putting a phone call through. She immediately picked up.

  “Hey.”

  “Tania! Finally. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I replied.

  “There she goes again with the fine.”

  “Grace—”

  “Where are you?”

  “Not in Nebraska, that’s for sure. I’m at Meager Grand.”

  “I’d stop by, but I’m on my way to a Mommy and Me class with Thunder. God, I haven’t been to the Grand in so long.”

  “We’ll make a coffee date for another time. I can’t stay anyway. I’m procrastinating. I have to get to the store and—”

  “Don’t do this to him.”

  My neck stiffened. “What?”

  “To Butler. Don’t lead him on. Don’t be with him if it’s really someone else you’re obsessing over.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “That’s what it looked like the other night at Dead Ringer’s, Tania. To all of us.”

  “Well, that’s wrong.”

  “I already did that to him.” Her voice lowered. “So, please, please don’t you do it, too. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  My breath caught at Grace’s confession of her sins.

  I turned toward the wall, hunching over my coffee. “I agree. He doesn’t deserve that. But I’m not obsessing over anyone else. I’ve been obsessing over him for a long time, in fact.”

  “Over who? You’re confusing me, damn it!”

  “Butler, damn it!” I whispered loudly into my phone.