by Callie Hart
She grazes her teeth against my knuckles and I can imagine all too well what that would feel like if it were my cock in her mouth. I can’t help but hiss as she sucks harder. “You’re being so good,” I whisper into her hair. I let go of her breast and prop myself up on one elbow so I can slide my fingers from her mouth and place them between her legs, wetting her with her own saliva.
“Fuck, Zeth.” Her head kicks back, rocking to one side as I work my fingertips in small, tight, purposeful circles over her clit. She’s staring at me, beautiful, so turned on I can see it in her eyes, when I lift my fingers to my own mouth and slide them inside. She tastes so fucking good. Guys say that about girls all the time, but I really fucking mean it. The taste of her pussy on my tongue is enough to send the blood roaring through my veins like combustion fuel in a high-powered engine. I feel like I could do zero to a hundred in less than a second.
“Fuck, Sloane. You’re incredible. Lift your knees for me. Now.” She bridges her legs, feet pressed flat against the bed, and holds them there. I know she wants to let her knees fall to the sides, opening herself up for me, but she’s good. She waits.
That clamp from yesterday enters my head, stowed safely back in the black duffel I keep in the bottom of the wardrobe, but I reject that idea. I do want to make her moan. I do want to make her twitch. But I want my head between her legs, too, and I can’t lick her with that thing in the way.
My eyes catch on the plate I brought up here with me and I know what I’m going to do. Reaching over, I pick up a piece of the pineapple and throw it into my mouth. Tastes so sweet it twinges at the sides of my tongue. “Mmm, yeah, baby. You’re gonna like this, and so am I,” I say. Sloane fights back a surprised smile as I take another piece of the pineapple and I head down between her legs.
I’m not in the mood to be careful. Fuck that. Shoving her knees apart myself, I get down there and take hold of her ankles, throwing her legs over my shoulders. “Are you ready, angry girl?”
She bites her lip, her head rolling back. I know she wants to arch her back off the bed again, lift her hips up to meet my mouth, but she knows there’ll be consequences if she does. I’ll tease the fuck out of her for hours and I won’t let her come, and that’s not something she enjoys. Me, on the other hand… torturing her like that gives me a particular thrill that no amount of breakfast making and domesticated life will be able to tamp down.
I bite carefully down on the piece of cold pineapple and press it into her pussy with my mouth. She gasps, hands tightening as I work it up and down, slowly tracing it from the entrance to her pussy all the way up to her clit. I want to pump my fingers inside her. I want to make her fucking scream. I can be patient when the situation calls for it, though. Instead I tease her with the piece of fruit, enjoying the flavor of it mixed in with the slick juices of her tight, amazing pussy.
I can’t help myself. I have to touch myself. Reaching down, I slide my hand inside my boxers and I take hold of my cock, squeezing the tip. Feels fucking amazing, but I know sinking myself balls deep into the woman in this bed is going to be a million times better. I’m already planning where I’m going to come. Over her tits. In her mouth. Her stomach. Her back. I want to mark her all over with my come, rub it into her skin. Into her pussy. Claim her as mine.
I swallow the pineapple, and then I set to working my tongue over Sloane’s clit. The fruit was fun, but I don’t need it anymore. I just need her pussy in my mouth and her come on my tongue. And I’m gonna make it fucking happen right now. Carefully, I push my index finger inside her, teasing myself as much as her with how slowly I do it. She’s trembling violently by the time I’m knuckle deep. She’s so tight. I’ll never get over how incredible her body is. How tightly she squeezes my cock when I’m inside her.
I can’t wait to get to that point. First, I let myself pump her with my fingers, knowing she’s imagining they’re my cock. I go slow at first but then pick up speed, matching the motion with the sweeps of my tongue over her swollen clit. I could suck on the hot bundle of nerves and make her explode, I know I could. But I refrain. This is just too much fucking fun.
She’s begging me to let her come by the time I give in. And she really does fucking explode. I lick and suck at her, groaning like a goddamn savage as she comes all over my tongue. So. Fucking. Hot. She buries her hands in my hair and grinds up against me, her body shaking, falling apart as she climaxes.
I have absolutely no self-control after that. As soon as the tension falls out of her body, her muscles sinking heavy into the mattress, I grab hold of her hips and spin her over, throwing her onto her front and then lifting her hips so that her ass is in the air. “We’re not done yet, angry girl.” I lay my hand against her skin, making a sharp cracking sound as my palm connects with the soft curve of her ass.
“Fuck!” she gasps out, instinctively grabbing hold of the bed sheets, like she knows how hard I’m about to fuck her. Like she knows she’s about to be seeing stars. I lose the boxers, and then there’s nothing between me and my angry girl. I trace my cock from her clit upward, gauging her reaction, seeing where she wants me to stop…where she wants me the most. I don’t even make it to her ass. She’s pushing back against me, panting hard as I tease the tip of my dick against the opening of her pussy.
“You want me, Sloane? How bad do you want me inside you right now?”
“Fuck. Please. Please… please… I need you,” she moans.
I could wait, I could play with her some more, but my balls feel like they’re going to burst. I slam myself home, not holding back, fire singing through my veins as Sloane screams out my name.
My fingers dig into her hips as I pull her back against me. She doesn’t resist. She moves with me, sighing and melting against me as I thrust so hard I’m seeing stars myself. When we come, we come together, and we’re both incoherent.
Just. Too. Good.
We collapse together onto the bed as one, me still inside her, my body angled slightly to the side to keep my weight off her. When we’ve both regained our breath, I begin tracing my fingers absentmindedly up and down her side. Her skin is soft as silk. “You bought weird fruit,” I whisper into her hair.
She laughs, and the feel of it travels through her and into me, spreading some deep, strange contentment down into my bones. This woman is going to be the end of me. “Yeah, well, I need vitamins so I can get better. But I also did it for you,” she says.
“Oh? How d’you figure that?”
“They say…” She seems bemused. “They say that if you eat lots of pineapple, it makes you taste good.”
The irony of what she’s said hits me full on, given that I’ve just used a piece of it between her legs. I bite down lightly on her shoulder, growling. “You don’t need to eat anything to taste good, Sloane. I’m addicted to how you taste, just as you are.”
She laughs. “Well, since you spend about ninety percent of your day with your head between my legs, I just wanted to make sure you enjo—” The sound of my burner ringing on the bedside table cuts her off. We both just look at it. Before earlier this morning when the Barbieri brothers called me, the thing hasn’t rung in…in fucking forever. Since shit went down with my ex-employer and everything changed. And now it’s ringing again? Bets are on it being Theo again. I do not want to talk to him. I don’t want to talk to anyone who might be asking me to beat the everloving shit out of anyone, or worse. It’s not as though I’ve gone soft. I’ll still tear anyone limb from limb should the situation require it, but it’s more on an as needed basis. For protection and defense as opposed to for money.
Sloane presses her face into the pillow, and a muffled, “You’d better get that,” reaches my ears. I do answer, but only because the people who are likely to call my burner aren’t the kind of people who give up after calling once.
When I hear the voice on the other end of the line, I find that the Barbieri situation has been escalated up the ranks. Typical. First Lowell’s trying to ruin my fucking day, and now more
of this shit. “Zeth,” Roberto Barbieri, the Barber of Brooklyn himself, says. “I hear you didn’t much like talking to my sons?”
“I’m more of an email kind of guy these days.”
“Good to know. I’ll make sure to forward you the details of our arrangement in a message once our conversation is over, then. Does that suit you?”
“And what arrangement might that be? I already told Theo, I’m not working for anyone else anymore.” I don’t like this guy’s tone of voice. I sure as fuck don’t like how he’s ruining my post-orgasm glow. Sloane’s watching me with wide eyes, clearly able to hear what’s being said. There’s a time not too long ago when I would have left the room, but not anymore. I don’t hide anything from her these days. She knows all about the fights, the underground gambling and the occasional gun deal that goes down at the fighting gym I run. She knows me, knows who I am, and knows I will never live on the straight and narrow like other, normal people. She can handle fights and dirty money so long as I’m not getting hurt. And she can handle the guns so long as I don’t get my ass shot.
I doubt very much she’d handle me going out on task for the Barber of Brooklyn, though.
“Zeth, you and I both know this sedentary life you’re leading isn’t what you were built for. You’re a cutthroat, just like I am. I’m coming for Seattle. You must have known someone would eventually. I’m laying out my cards here and now. New York is where the throne of my empire rests. I can’t be in two places at once. I need someone to run my west coast operations, and I want that someone to be you.”
“I have no interest in being your understudy, Roberto. Absolutely no fucking interest whatsoever.” The guy is crazy if he thinks I’m putting myself into yet another position like I was in with Charlie. You don’t climb out from underneath the shit heap only to voluntarily climb back under again.
“I can understand your reluctance, Zeth, I really can. But you are a very dangerous individual. If I place someone else in charge over there, I wouldn’t be able to allow a man like you to be operating in the same district. It wouldn’t be smart business.”
“I’m not operating. I run a few fights and broker a few deals. You don’t need to concern yourself with what I’m doing, Roberto. I’m none of your fucking business.”
“And what about the lovely young Ms. Romera? Will she end up being my business? I fear she will if we can’t find a way to make both of us happy right now.”
Sloane sits up, clearly having heard her name. She looks mildly concerned, which makes my blood boil. Who does this guy think he fucking is, threatening her to get his own way? I won’t allow it. I will burn down his whole fucking New York empire before I let that happen. “You don’t say her name. You don’t ever say her name,” I growl.
“Don’t forget who you’re talking to right now, boy. I’m bigger and I’m badder than Charlie Holsan ever was. When I offer someone a title within my organization, they fucking jump,” he spits. “And this isn’t just any old title. I’m offering to make you the motherfucking king of the west coast. You’d be answerable to no one but me. You need to think about this for a couple of hours, Zeth. Bear in mind, I don’t make these kinds of calls personally very often. It’s unlikely I’ll be making another one. You should also bear in mind that I am not someone to be fucked with.”
I laugh, and it feels raw in my throat. Caustic, poisonous laughter that gives away what I think of his threats before I can put my thoughts into words. “I vowed after Charlie that I would never be answerable to anyone ever again. And I won’t. I don’t want to be the king of the west coast or anywhere else for that matter. And something you should bear in mind, Roberto? I am a dangerous individual. And people don’t usually live to tell the tale after fucking with me either.”
Chapter Thirteen
Mason
Wanda wouldn’t let me take Millie to school this morning. Said I’d terrify the poor kid if I showed up bloodied and bruised the way I am. I don’t know what she thinks I’m going to do between now and the end of the day to fix the problem—as far as I know, cuts and scrapes take a little longer than an afternoon to heal—but there you go. She sent me on my way, and a part of me felt guilty about heading straight to work. I felt even guiltier when I realized I was singing in the car.
Mac nearly drops his coffee when he sees me. “Holy fucking hell, boy, what happened to your face?”
“Fought at French’s,” I mumble through my split lip. No point in lying to him. Mac knows everything, has his finger in so many pies. Wouldn’t surprise me if he actually made some money off my ass last night somehow.
“So you’ll fight in a stinking basement but you won’t earn three times the money driving a car across the city for me, is that it?” he says.
“Pretty much.”
“Well, whatever. I hope the other guy looks worse, I guess. Though, I don’t see how that would be possible.”
The morning goes fast. I can’t wait to head over to the gym after work and train. I need to stretch out my muscles, make sure I don’t completely lock up. If I want to fight again in six days, I have to make sure my whole body isn’t completely jacked from not doing anything with it.
I spend the day working on Kaya’s beater of a car. The old Chevy is fucked, needs scrapping entirely, but I just do what I’m told and go about fixing the damn thing. Late in the afternoon, when I jump in to turn the engine over, the interior smells just like she did yesterday—like flowers and jasmine. My dick stirs in my pants at the scent. So fucking inappropriate. I’m not supposed to be thinking about her let alone fantasizing what it would be like to be on top of her, to feel like I’m wrapping myself around her, slowly pushing myself deeper and deeper inside of her.
I have to sit in the car for an extra five minutes before my hard on eventually goes away.
Mac, the asshole, keeps me back half an hour to finish up a rushed job that comes in late. That cuts into my gym time before I need to collect Millie, but whatever. Something is better than nothing. I’m jogging across the street, gym bag in hand, when a sleek black Audi rolls up out the front of the gym. The window buzzes down and a stern looking woman with bright blonde hair and cold blue eyes is staring straight at me. For a moment I think she’s about to ask for directions out of this sketchy part of town—people get lost here all the time—but then she does something that makes my stomach drop through the floor. She pulls out a badge.
“Agent Lowell,” she says. “DEA. You’re Mason Reeves, right? Got time to have a little chat?”
A million things immediately flash through my head, paralysing me. I manage to keep my face a mask of calm, however. “Not really. I kind of have somewhere I need to be.”
“That’s a pity. See my colleague here was just telling me that we should come over to your place, investigate a tip off we had.”
“What kind of tip off?”
“Apparently, you’re involved in a little drug running for your boss there.” Agent Lowell gestures to Mac, who is just pulling down the roller shutter on the building behind me. Mac sees Lowell and his eyes go wide. Slowly, carefully, he lifts his right hand and flips her off. “Awww. Mac remembers me,” Agent Lowell says, smiling.
“I don’t run drugs for him. I work on the cars, and then I go home. End of story.”
“Oh?” The woman frowns up at me, tilting her head to one side. “And what’s with the face, then? You get those bruises from fixing cars?”
“No. I was in a fight.
“French’s, right?” Lowell grins. “Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about the place. That’s Seattle PD’s domain normally, but could be there are drugs there, too, right, Agent Cooper?”
The guy next to her sitting at the wheel grunts, squinting at me from inside the car. “Could be.”
“And even if there aren’t any drugs, participating in an underground fighting ring’s pretty dangerous, wouldn’t you say? Not to mention illegal. Would CPS consider a young guy involved in blood sports is a fit role model for a little girl?”
My blood runs ice-cold in my veins. “Don’t fucking threaten me.”
“Oh, come on, now. I’m not threatening you. I just want to ask you a few questions. Won’t take a moment of your time.”
“What about? I’ve told you, I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“It’s not you we’re interested in, Mr. Reeves. I can promise you that. We’re actually more interested in what you know about Zeth Mayfair.”
Zeth? Well, now that makes a little more sense. I’m not completely stupid, though. I talk to this woman about Zeth Mayfair and I’m going to end up in a ditch somewhere, missing body parts. “Look, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what you heard but I don’t know anything about Mayfair. I go to his gym sometimes. That’s it.”
Lowell shakes her head, her lips pulling into a taut line. “Don’t be foolish, Mason. Everyone in Seattle knows something about Zeth. You want to know what I know?”
“Not particularly.” I look away, toward the gym, hoping against hope that the man himself hasn’t seen me out here talking to a federal agent. I’m shit out of luck, though. He’s leaning against the wall inside the gym, arms folded across his chest, eyes fixed solely on me as I shift from foot to foot.
“Don’t worry about him,” Lowell says. “Zeth’s headed back to Chino any day now. He just doesn’t know it yet. See, we found a body last week up in the mountains. The body of a young woman. Gun shot wound.” Lowell glances over at Zeth, still leaning against the wall. She shoots him an unbearably sweet smile, and then waves.
“The girl was murdered, Mr. Reeves,” she says, still smiling. “And guess who’s DNA was all over her.”