Filth

by Dakota Gray

  I pass Nate and smile at him on my way to the door. It's a trick. One I've honed because he loves my smile. He chases me out to the car and pins me against the door.

  “Smile at me like that again and I'm ruining your lipstick.”

  “Smear proof. I'm a quick learner.”

  “Robyn,” he says with a straight face then laughs.

  His hands wander and I'm trying to stay focused and un-tempted. “I'm in charge of pictures. My father actually let me borrow his camera. You know how he is about the damn thing.”

  “You’ve left me alone with him enough times I’ve heard about it.”

  I laugh. “Retirement has settled well on him.” He glares at me, and I manage to swallow the rest of my laugh. “I can't leave you alone with Mom. You pull out the southern charm and make my mother giggle and that makes my dad want to choke you. My mother does not giggle.”

  “She takes no shit from anyone. I wonder where you get it from.”

  “My dad because he’s going to choke you if you keep using that charm on her. I mean, how would you feel if a man did that to me, even if it was innocent?”

  “I'd murder him.”

  I shouldn’t smile, but I’ve been learning to tell myself “should” less. So I let the smile fly. “There goes any fantasy of me having a threesome.”

  He nips my bottom lip. “We do anal. I don't need anything else.”

  I manage to keep a straight face, barely. “Only because you're good at it and you say please.”

  “You've tamed me.”

  “Lies.”

  He cups both of my cheeks and dips his head so we're eye-to-eye. “How about this? I'm stupid in love with you. When I think about getting old, it's you I want at my side. When I've thought about kids, they always have your eyes, your wit.”

  I can't breathe. I can't. We've been living with each other since the day I came back to him. We've spent nights talking or fucking—okay, both. It's been wonderful. I'd thought there wasn't anything I didn't know about him now, but this...? “You've thought about kids?”

  “I don't do anything halfway. You should know I'm going to be there for you even when shit gets ugly. I'm a better person since I've met you and I imagine one day I'll deserve you, but that might take four decades. But if you'll have me...will you have me? Will you be my wife?”

  I'm doing my best not to cry. I'm failing horribly. Nate just wipes at the tears while he waits for my answer. “You asked.”

  “Samantha's having her party at Fade, because she came with me to get a ring, and she gave her blessing. She said it was fitting if I ask you there.”

  “What?” Consider my mind blown. Samantha and secrets have a fraught relationship. “Samantha knows?”

  “For about two weeks.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “But this moment felt right.”

  I look into his eyes. He's so open I can see the fear that I'll say no. That I haven't let go enough of my grief to live.

  To love him fully.

  To just be me and him.

  To trust that he'll be there to help me put myself back together if I shatter again. And that I’ll do the same for him.

  “For the last two months I've met your mom. You've met my parents. I've gotten to know your friends. You've gotten to know Samantha. We've had our fights, and they’ve been ugly. I’ve had some shit days. You’ve been you, and that's sometimes frustrating because you're so damn stubborn.” He holds me to him tighter, braced for what I'm about to say. “But every day I wake up in the morning and see you. It's what I want more than anything—I want to wake up with you in my life, being my partner in this crazy shit called living.”

  “Oh, thank God,” he mutters.

  I laugh. “What did you think I was going to say? I pretty much said yes two months ago.”

  “I thought you let common sense in again.”

  “Nate.”

  He grins at me. “What?”

  I lift to the tips of my toes to kiss him, long and slow.

  He breaks away first. “Your ring is at the club with Samantha.”

  “She's going to be pissed if we miss her party.”

  He narrows his eyes. “We can be a little late?”

  “Your mother, mine...planning a wedding. You love me that much. We can be late.”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  I feel light, happy...alive. I still hold grief. So much.

  Yet I like this new Robyn. She's not perfect. Far from a paragon of humanity.

  But she's so in love.

  POSTFACE

  For anyone out there wondering, yes, our wedding was indeed very beautiful.

  BIO

  Dakota Gray is the author of the Filth series. She’s a longtime romance reader and she’s not ashamed to fangirl over heroes with dirty mouths, dirtier minds and a soft heart.

  Gray writes the heroes you shouldn’t take home to mom, sassy heroines and sigh-worthy happily ever afters.

  You find her website HERE. You can LIKE her Facebook page or follower her on TWITTER.

  For updates or sneak peeks on new releases you can subscribe to her newsletter.

  Last but not least, if you liked FILTH, you might also enjoy PERV. Right now you can preorder HARDCORE, the next book in the Filth series.

  EXCERPT

  HARDCORE

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Fucking pathetic,” I mutter and narrow my gaze on the phone.

  A phone I've pulled about six inches closer so I can answer faster. It's almost five at the law firm and that's all I'm doing—glaring at the phone on my desk.

  I'm not enjoying the view my corner office lends me. I'm not strutting around it either. Though my friends call my office the soulless cave they have to save me from, it's... sleek, modern. Black, white, glass and metal makes up most of the room if you discount the bookshelves. Not the point. After the win I had today, I should be walking around like I own the place.

  I'm not.

  I'm a teenage girl waiting on her crush to ask her out to the prom, because the call from Preston Lance hasn't come.

  Should have known better than to get my hopes up. Hope is a heartless bitch. She makes me fall for her again and again. And hope rose in my chest when Preston personally gave me Logan Merch's case. A senator's son literally got caught with his pants down in public and was slapped with a lewd conduct in public charge.

  This case wasn't just important to the firm, but I had got the distinct impression it was the case that would decide whether or not I became senior partner to Lance and Chase.

  Merch's case was an impossible win, but I came out the courtroom victorious. Yet the likelihood of the call happening today is slim to none as the hour grows older. I have to let it go. If I keep sitting here waiting in hopes...

  I stop fighting the frustration and let it dig at me. The emotion is wasteful. The energy I expend being annoyed I could be doing something productive. I have a preliminary hearing next week. I have witness statements to go over. I can nap.

  But it's better to indulge the wave of irritation than take the elevator to Preston's office. I count to ten while I curl and uncurl my fingers against my desk as the aggravation slides in deeper.

  Wallowing isn't going to help. I have to leave the office. I scoop up the stack of manila folders on my desk and push out from the chair. My paralegal is nothing short of a goddess. Gwen can cover for me for the next thirty minutes and deal with these files.

  I stalk down the short hallway to her. When I'm standing in front of her desk, I smile.

  She frowns at me. “What do you want?”

  She can see my bullshit from a mile away. This is why we work well together. Still, I put a bit of gravel in my tone. “I can't greet you happily, Gwen?”

  Gwen is about five-three, weighs nothing, is maybe around thirty-six and a natural blond. She's sturdy, mentally, which is why she's survived working for me for so long, but at the moment she's glaring at me like she's the Incredible Hulk.

  I don't let my smile wav
er. “Gwen.”

  “Don't use that voice on me.”

  She caught that. “What voice?” I'm still using it.

  “The one you use on all the female legal secretaries, especially when you're asking them for favors.”

  I think back to the last time I asked the Sec for anything. I'm that whole tall, dark and handsome thing. Not my words, theirs. I had on a three-piece suit. Some of the Sec played with the buttons on my vest and I let them. Fuck, I think I even used charm. Having sex the night before helped too. My mood had been upbeat and patient with the pointless flirting, because no matter how tempting, one does not fuck members of the Sec.

  The fresh-faced co-eds in calendaring? Go for it. Anyone in accounting? Have goddamn field day. Other attorneys? Fuck until you're half dead. The Sec, and hell the paralegals, are off-limits. You never know when you'll need someone who can type one-hundred and twenty-five wpm or more. Women are less likely to do you a favor if you fucked them over.

  Now the favor at the time? I'd needed them dig up some dirt on a sweet, little old school teacher. She'd ID'd my client as the armed robber at a Mom and Pop store. I needed her to have a dark past and cast some doubt on her character.

  I'll just say the '80s were interesting and cocaine is a helluva drug.

  Beside the point. Gwen knows the real me, sort of. Charm and the voice is a wasted effort.

  I drop the manila folders on her desk. “I'm leaving. Deal with this.”

  “Now did that hurt?”

  I smile despite the shit mood brewing under the surface. “Yes. For a second I almost said 'please.'”

  She pushes her bangs out of her eyes. “Your mother called again.”

  Carefully, I say, “I'll reach out tomorrow.”

  “She sounded...urgent.”

  “I will call her when I can.” I stare at Gwen until her gaze skates away from mine.

  I let the quiet say everything. A moment passes then she sits up a little. I can practically hear her sigh of relief as interest lights in her brown eyes.

  “Kennedy,” she whispers low enough only I can hear.

  Fuck.

  Gwen pulls the files closer and does her best to appear uninterested with our unexpected guest. I brace myself.

  “Duke, you're going to hell.” Her husky, feminine voice slides into me, warms me and reminds me I haven't had sex in a while. “You know that, right?”

  “Get the Anderson file for me,” I say to Gwen.

  I don't need to look at the Anderson case for at least a month. I just don't want her here for this conversation. She's nosy and she meddles. Gwen doesn't understand Kennedy is off-limits for so many goddamn reasons, and it takes all my concentration to keep it that way.

  Gwen mouth pinches, but she nods. “I'll get the file, boss.”

  I give her a four second leeway before I reply to Kennedy. “Are you here to pick up something? Or have you missed giving me unsolicited life advice?”

  I finally face Kennedy.

  Two red spots paint her pale cheekbones and makes the freckles that decorate the tip of her nose stand out. Today she's dragging a dolly and that means she's delivering on several floors. She's wrangled her hair into a bun for the hard work.

  She still prefers to wear jeans, novelty shirts and scruffy tennis shoes. She's more of a knock-out, if that's even possible. I want to devour everything about her. You are what you eat, right? I'm curious to see what I'd be after.

  She rests her hand on the dolly's handle. “I came by to drop off some stuff.” She pauses. “And to let you know I'm your court runner for the next month or so.”

  Hell. “Why? Don't you have more than one employee?” I bite out.

  “I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Marlene is nine months pregnant.”

  I'd noticed and even sent a sizeable gift card from Babies R Us to her but this is our game. She needs me to be the bad guy, and it's too easy for me to play him. “Which one is Marlene?”

  She shakes her head as though I've disappointed her. Again. “She's been your court runner for a year.”

  Fourteen months if she wants to be technical. “Oh.”

  “Just when I think you can be a decent human being...”

  And therein lies the reason we've only circled each other for three years. Kennedy keeps expecting me to be a better man, a kinder one. Then I'll be safe. Then she can fuck me to her heart's content. I realized that five minutes after I stopped being irritated about the brush-off.

  I'm never going to be safe. I will respect the boundary she put between us and play within those confines. But were she to lose her head again, get close enough for me to put my mouth on her, I'm going to swallow her whole without remorse.

  I clasp my hands in front of my cock as a reminder that she hasn't yet. “What have I told you about hope?”

  “It's a bitch that will nut punch if you let it.”

  “Maybe one day you'll believe me. Now what are you dropping off?”

  She asks me to sign at least five papers before setting a box of documents on Gwen's desk. Technically our exchange is over. We should go our separate ways, but she leans against the desk and pushes her dolly upright.

  “I hear congratulations are in order. You freed two criminals this week—one being a soul-sucking piece of shit.”

  I scoff. She's not talking about the senator's son. Calling Darren Loweski a criminal is like believing you can survive a voyage to the sun—it's a dangerous understatement. “What do you know about Darren?”

  “He's a kingpin. A real one. If I see him anywhere I should run in the other direction.”

  As she should. “He had his day in court and walked away a free man.”

  “It's bullshit. We both know he belongs beneath the jail.”

  I tilt my head at her vehemence. Times like this I wish I had her investigated. Maybe she'd make more sense to me. “I was supposed to let my client go to jail because he's a bad guy?”

  “You're supposed to have some kind of...guilt that he's going to go back out there and do real harm.”

  “Supposed to” lives in the same place as “should” and “hope” as far as I'm concerned. What's right and fair has very little to do with reality. “As a freelancer you can sit on a high horse and mete out feel-good justice that doesn't have any real world ramifications.”

  She puts her hands on her hips and steps into me. “What I do is equally important. The wheels of justice can't turn if there's no one to file your paperwork. I'm pretty sure there was someone like me who taught you how to fill out a subpoena.”

  That's a valid dig. I spent three years of my life learning about legal theories. I had the loan payments to prove it. Being able to argue a case of facts doesn't necessarily help you fill out a TRO or teach you how to navigate the local courts website to download the paperwork.

  “Never said what you did wasn't important. I'm saying your argument is a cop-out.” I hold up my finger and stretch to my full height. “You worked for Lance and Chase. Then you left to start your own legal courier service. How long did you go without benefits or security while your lofty ideals kept you fed?”

  She stuffs her hands into her back pockets then shrugs. “Not that long.”

  Probably. She left with a shitload of connections and well-wishers who put their money where their mouth was and invested. “Last question.”

  She's close enough I can breath her in. Lilacs instead of lavender, but still the spice of cinnamon lingers in the space she stole from me.

  “Most important.” My voice is gruff.

  “Shoot.”

  “Where's the challenge?”

  She makes a face, because we both know how smart she is. Her work keeps the wheels turning. She's damn good at it, but she can be an attorney, a paralegal. She has the grit and the anal-retentive attention to detail.

  “Running my own business so that it doesn't tank into the ground is the challenge.”

  I tsk at the bullshit answer. “You do it so you never have to swallo
w your pride if someone is actually guilty. You stay on the fringes to keep your hands clean.”

  Her chin drops and I know my words have hit their mark. “Then what is it you do?”

  “I defend my clients to the best of my ability.” I raise a brow at her. “But, thank you, for congratulations. A jury of my client's peers found him not guilty.”

  “I see you didn't say he's innocent.”

  'Cause he's not. He did every vile thing they charged him with. All I had to do was look the man in his eyes to know that. “I find that innocent is a debatable word with anyone.”

  “And I'm a virgin.”

  My gaze drops to her mouth. Full, pink and sometimes I can't help but remember how soft they felt around my cock. “Could have fooled me.”

  I know. I said all that shit about respecting her boundaries. I didn't say I was perfect.

  She blushes again, pulling her hands from her pockets to re-situate her dolly. “I'm going to say this and I know you're not going to listen.”

  I roll with the obvious change of subject. “I'm all ears with you.”

  “I hear everything that is going on in the office. It's the whole be seen and not heard thing.”

  “Okay,” I say now wary where this conversation is going.

  “Everything.”

  I narrow my gaze. “And what have you heard?”

  “I'll just say you should keep your hands to yourself when it comes to Sheila.”

  I go cold.

  Who is Sheila?

  She is Preston Lance's legal secretary. He corrals everyone in the criminal department. She helps him to do that. She's usually dressed like a school marm—the bun, the glasses, the demure pants suit sketches out that image. All she needs is a brooch and a purity ring to round out her appearance as wholesome. I know she's not.

  We ran into each other at my favorite nightclub a few weeks ago. Fade is where pussy seems to rain from the ceiling if you bother to look up.