by K. S. Adkins
Copyright © 2016 K.S. ADKINS
Published by K.S. Adkins
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Published: K.S. Adkins 2016
Other works by K.S. Adkins:
The Detroit After Dark Series
Brutal
Brawler
Berserk
Ballistic
8 Mile & Rion
Convincing Bet
When Time Stood Still
Motown Throwdown (Motown Down #1)
Motown Showdown (Motown Down #2)
Motown Takedown (Motown Down #3)
Motown Breakdown (Motown Down #4 & 5)
Mercy F*ck
I'm currently accepting passengers to climb aboard my fuck train.
Never met a problem my fists can't fix.
The first night I saw him it was game over.
He’d come into the bar, took one look at me and winked.
After his introduction, I lost my ability to speak for a full hour.
An unimaginable feat for me since most words out of my mouth began and ended with fuck.
Strangely enough, my foul mouth didn’t detour him. Because night after night, he came back.
Not once did he engage the openly desperate girls begging for his notice.
And believe me, they came a-beggin’.
This guy, a random gorgeous stranger seemed to only have eyes for me.
I deduced he must have poor vision or perhaps he wanted to slum it, but it wasn’t either.
He truly enjoyed my company.
Quickly, easily, we’d connected over music, cars, and bar brawls.
His smile, his laugh, his protective stance, intrigued me.
This guy saw me as more than a public servant or piece of ass which I’ll admit, threw me.
No matter how hard I tried to find his angle, I never could.
I wasn’t a student like he was, working toward a future in corporate America and a pension.
I was a bartender, nothing more and I didn’t pretend otherwise.
From the start, he accepted me as I was.
He dug every nuance that made me different from the others.
So for him I let my guard down, I let him in and he stayed there, burrowed deep in my heart.
He was the first guy to give me butterflies and hope.
Every spare moment for nearly two years was spent with him.
For us to be apart was rare.
Even his friends and our own families knew where one went the other followed.
The two of us finished each other’s sentences and had our own inside jokes.
I was young, but I knew connections like this didn’t happen to everyone.
For me, it surpassed friendship.
For me, it felt like the beginning to forever.
I tuned the world out for him.
With summer coming before his senior year, I worried I’d see him less.
My fear was if he went home, that I wouldn’t see him until Fall.
While his parents liked me, they didn’t approve of our bond.
He was destined for bigger things and I was trash.
It may not have been voiced but it was implied and sadly, I didn’t disagree.
Even so, I couldn’t go from seeing him every day to waiting weeks.
I couldn’t risk him losing interest or his parents driving a wedge.
I especially refused to surrender him to another girl.
An idea formed.
It was risky, yet genius.
I had my own apartment, I lived alone.
He resided in a dorm during the school year but would be forced to go home unless…
I invited him to stay with me.
This seemed like the best possible chance for us.
Because there had to be an us.
While I couldn’t express in words why this idea was crucial, I just knew that it was.
All signs pointed to happily ever after and I needed to follow them.
Because we fit.
He knew everything about me and I him.
But I saw how other girls watched him, wanted him, waited for me to fuck up so they could swoop in.
I also knew the only thing keeping them from attacking en masse was my presence.
Yes, I was territorial and no, I didn’t hide it.
We may not have a label, but people had suspicions and neither of us bothered denying it.
He didn’t want guys around me any more than I wanted skanks around him.
However, I had to know. Had to see where this could go. I couldn’t let another day go by wondering if he felt the same about me as I did about him.
So I made an offer hoping, praying, that he would choose me.
And he did.
I had to be dreaming.
Moments like this didn’t happen to me.
But when he pressed our palms together, his larger to my smaller, before linking our fingers, I sucked in a breath.
Real, it was real.
With a growl, he covered me with his body, buried his nose in my neck and inhaled. I responded in kind because I wanted to be close to him in every way. Wrapping my legs as far around him as I could, I place a kiss over the skin covering his heart and sink my fingers into his thick hair. Pleased by this he raises up, looks down at me and grins.
That grin was my undoing. That grin meant the world to me because I was the only one who was on the receiving end of it. I may not know much about males and what made them tick, but I did know last night had been the best decision I had ever made.
“I can’t believe we did it,” he says kissing my neck tenderly. “I never thought it’d be me.”
Waking up in his arms after losing my virginity hours before, I said nothing. Because honestly, I never thought it would be him either. Guys like him don’t notice roughneck girls like me. But he did, always had and waiting had been worth it. I had taken a chance and it had paid off. I was feeling confident and bold.
I wanted him to spend the summer with me, just us, no distractions.
Axle had been to my place hundreds of times and if he crashed, he slept on the couch.
But he already had clothes there, CDs and his travel kit.
In my mind he was half-way moved in.
The million-dollar question was, would he want more? Because I wanted more, I wanted Axle to myself.
I had waited forever to be sure that telling him how I felt wouldn’t alter our friendship.
Tossing my feelings out seemed like a risk yesterday. But now after the most amazing night of my life, the sweetest things he’d said to me, the beautiful things he’d done to me, not telling seemed criminal.
Three words.
I love you should be the easiest words you ever say.
As far as timing went, it would never be better than this.
With his messy hair, cocky grin, and possessive grip on my hips, I rolle
d myself on top of him and cupped his face in my hands. It was time.
“Axle,” I whispered tracing his stubble with my fingertips. “I need to tell you something and ask you something.”
“You can tell me anything,” he said and I could feel his anticipation because it mirrored my own. “Ask me anything, you know that.”
“Last night,” I stumbled to say. “You—us. It was perfect.”
“Yeah, it was,” he said taking my hand to kiss the top, which melted me. No one else saw this side of him but me, just me. “You were perfect, Drew, then again everything about you is.”
“We were in synch,” I smiled lovingly. “Like we’ve done it a thousand times before.”
“Believe me,” he grinned again. “I know.”
“I want to be in synch again, like as much as possible, with you. Twenty-four-seven, with a key and your boots by the door,” God, I was babbling. “Because you’re not just my best friend.”
“Hey,” he said softly. “You’re not just my best friend either.”
Elated about that, I kiss him once and said, “Axle, I—,” when someone knocked on his door. College dorms had paper thin walls and the knock sounded like an explosion. I was kicking myself for not doing this at my place. Where we could make noise and not be interrupted. However, there was nothing to be done about that now.
Kissing me on the nose and rolling me gently to my back, he whispers, “Whoever it is, I’ll get rid of them. We’re not done yet.”
“Okay,” I sighed dreamily up at him and groan when I catch sight of his bare ass.
So fucking beautiful…
My place, his, it didn’t matter, I decided. Not as long as he was there.
Smiling into the pillow that held his scent, I hear laughter followed by words that would change the course of my life.
Two words specifically.
“No shit?” the voice I recognized as annoying asshole, Mike, roared in laughter. “Drew was a mercy fuck?”
“Keep your voice down,” he said angrily but it was too late, the damage had been done.
“Mercy fuck?” he roared again digging the blade in deeper. “Priceless man, fucking priceless!”
I knew exactly what it meant to be a mercy fuck. The stigma behind it, the fucking ridicule that would now follow.
Naked in his bed I felt my trust shatter, my hope being crushed and the very essence of me being ruined.
Hollow, vulnerable, and cold. So cold my teeth began to chatter, followed by my stomach bottoming out.
Nausea was swift, the room began to pitch and my nose was burning too.
Indescribable pain.
I even clutched my chest wondering if my heart had been cleaved in half.
It hadn’t. It still beat, just differently now.
Everything was different now.
Evidently, I was the girl he didn’t actually want to fuck but he did it anyway because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
Oh yeah, Axle scored big, huge even.
He tagged the bartending virgin.
Since the day I started slinging drinks the pervs brought their A games.
I literally lost count of how times men tried to ‘tap my ass’.
Never, not once, did I play into it.
No, I waited. Fucking waited!
All I could think was, how? How did I not know? Nearly two years of non-stop friendship, brutal honesty and that’s what he thought of me? The humiliation was complete when I heard Mike, the narcissistic fuckstick, telling other people in the hallway and Axle threatening to kill him if he didn’t shut his mouth.
I wasn’t stupid.
I’ve heard guys talk about mercy fucks for years. Even as horny as college guys were, they drew the line at tagging another guy’s mistake. It was like some frat boy fucking code or something. I’ve seen how mercy fucks were treated and it wasn’t kindly. The poor girls were campus jokes and they didn’t deserve that. No one fucking deserved that.
I refused to be brought low.
I refused to be the campus cautionary tale.
The second Axle and I started hanging out together people had talked. Now the gossiping assholes had an actual reason to talk.
There was no more speculation. They’d know the second I walked out the door and commenced my walk of shame.
I set myself up for an epic fall and the fault lied with me. I broke my rule and fraternized with a customer.
Wrong!
I fell in love with a customer.
Had I kept to myself no one would have shit to say because there was no shit.
Which means I fucked up and I could never show my face around here again.
Hardening what was left of my heart, I looked around his room and debated ripping it apart with my bare hands. The only reason I didn’t was because the need to escape was more powerful than the need for destruction.
By the time he came back in, I was already dressed and sliding my flats on.
“You’re leaving?” he asked reaching for me and I couldn’t stop myself. With every ounce of strength, I had, I cock-punched him and when he hit the floor, I stepped over him, snagging my bag on the way out. I was extremely proud of myself for not looking back or worse, begging him to love me even a fraction of how I loved him.
My heart urged me to fucking stop, turn back around and ask him why?
But I no longer listened to the useless, deceptive organ. Instead, I tuned out his voice roaring for me to come back. The second I hit the steps and the sun hit my skin, I tuned everything out.
Because of those two words I vowed to spend my future making certain I was never a mercy fuck again.
I sure as hell wouldn’t be foolish enough to ever fall in love twice either.
Feelings and romance were for pussies.
The very next day, I moved to a new apartment, quit my job at the bar, and relocated deeper into the city. I found work at a menacing establishment off the grid. A place where college assholes dare not come. It was here I would find the means to explore men on my own terms, where I could fuck them and leave them because that’s what people like me did. It’s what I would continue to do too.
No guy would ever hold that power over me again.
I held the power now.
Therefore, I became the mercy fuck master.
It’s like the man held no regard for money.
Considering that’s what we needed to make a living, I had been spending all my time sorting through old files he had ‘forgotten’ were in his basement.
While he may not care about paying his bills, I did and I considered this unfinished business. The boxes held forgotten bounties or as he called them, ‘favors’. Here I’d worked for the man for years and had no idea these boxes even existed or that he even did favors.
Six months ago, I bought Foxy’s Bail Bonds from him when he mentioned retirement. The problem was, taking over a business took a lot of man-hours and I had yet to take on any new business because I needed to close out the old first. Between improvements to the building, transferring licenses, and buying a computer to store shit electronically, meant I was just now able to find the time to sort through. Creating files were the God damn bane of my existence and it wasn’t the first time I wondered if buying him out was a mistake. I enjoyed field work, not desk work and my headache agreed with me.
Finally, to the bottom of the last box, I tore open the file never in a million fucking years expecting to see her face. Every emotion I had buried, every memory of her, of us, pummeled me. It was a swift and brutal assault and I planted my hands on my chair to hold me upright. Not only was it excruciating, it was a motherfucker of a reminder of what I’d lost too.
I scanned the pages quickly but found myself going back to her picture. There was no taking my eyes from it, no stopping my fingers from tracing it. Drew was even more beautiful now than she was the one night I had her in my arms. And believe me, she was a thing of beauty. A woman that I could never, even nine years later, forget.
> Foxy and I established a simple relationship early on. I busted my ass making us both money and in return he refused to speak of Drew. He’d made it clear from the get she was not a topic he’d discuss and in nine years, he never did. Even when Drew’s dad stopped in he spoke of everything but his oldest daughter. Behind these walls, she did not exist and in the beginning, it grated but after a while, I had been grateful. Because I associated Drew with pain, unspeakable pain.
Dialing him, I ask why he never mentioned this to me. Then I asked him why he didn’t let me handle it and in his usual gruff way, he simply said, “Drew pistol whips a motherfucker, Drew has reason. Which is why I left her the fuck alone.” I didn’t like this at all. I’d been with Foxy for years and he never kept business to himself before, it’s not how we operated. He should have trusted me to handle her like I’d handle any other bond.
“Care to tell me why I wasn’t brought in on this?” I asked and at his silence, I pointed out, “She pistol whipped a cop’s kid, Foxy. No way Drake was cool with that.”
“Drake knows his daughter and raised a fine woman. A cop’s kid should know better than to put his hands on a woman, Axle. A woman who don’t like kids, cop’s spawn or not, putting their hands on people; so she taught him a lesson. That lesson ended nine months ago. So do what I did, stuff it back in that God damn box.”
“Can’t,” I said tracing her mugshot with my finger again. Her mugshot with her rolling her pretty eyes at the camera. Still fucking sassy as ever, clearly time and arrests hadn’t altered that.
“Drake asked me to handle it personally, not you, for good reason. Nine years is a long time, son, people change. She’s different now. Not as soft and sweet, but hardened. I promise you, she is not the Drew you know anymore…” he said with a sigh.
“Actually old man,” I said tracing her photo again while ignoring his warning. “No one knows her better than I do.”