Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4)

by Susan Fanetti

  “Sorry, ma’am. The night’s over for me.”

  Stepping up to the bar, she nodded at the bartender. “Gin and tonic, please.” Then she turned back to Trick. “I think I’ve told you before to call me Dora, yes?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Your woman, she is lovely.”

  Still, he had no answer. This time, though, he gave her a little nod. Did one thank somebody who’d complimented the looks of somebody else?

  “She is your woman?”

  “Yes.” For that he had an answer, and he said it firmly.

  Her drink had arrived; she sipped at it. “You are a remarkable man, Patrick Stavros. I wonder if a woman like that can see all the ways in which you are. People in our world, we do not mate well with people outside it. What they see as danger, we know as power, yes?”

  What she thought she knew of him, he couldn’t say, but the thought that she had dug deeply enough into his life to feel that she did know him—he couldn’t entertain it. He pushed his empty glass away. Dredging up the very last traces of calm he had left, Trick turned and faced La Zorra head on. “Power isn’t something I’m drawn to, Dora. I prefer strength.”

  Her expression held, showing no sign that she had taken offense at the distinction he’d made or the rebuff implied in it. Trick remained likewise still, his eyes on hers.

  Then she smiled and sipped again at her drink. “Your grandfather, he is well? Happy to be back in his home?”

  He heard the fiber of threat laced through that innocent query, saw the way her eyes sparked shrewdly, and he clenched his hands into fists at his side. “He’s well, yes. And yes, very happy. We’re both grateful to you for that.”

  “Well. Good night, then, Trick.” She held out her hand. It took him a beat to unfurl his fist, but then he took her hand in his to shake. She lingered, just enough to be noticeable, before she pulled away.

  He watched her, his heart pounding, as she walked back to her table. Out of the evening gloom, two of her suited men fell in behind her.

  From his periphery, he saw Juliana approaching, both of their backpacks in her hands. “Who was that?”

  “We need to go.” He took her arm, meaning to head to where his bike and her car were parked, but she shook his hand off.

  “Trick, who is she? You look angry. Or freaked again—are you okay?”

  He had nothing left. Nothing. “I need to go,” he revised, and then walked off toward his bike alone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Trick left her behind, marching off so quickly toward his bike that even at a trot, Juliana couldn’t keep up. By the time she had their packs in the back seat, he’d started his bike and pulled away.

  But she was not going to let him get away, not if she could help it. So she slid into her Nissan and followed after him.

  She’d been worried about him all afternoon, since his anxiety attack—and she knew that was what it had been—shortly after they’d arrived at the park. He’d kept telling her that he was okay, but his face and body had that strange, full stillness it got when he was most stressed. They’d only been together a little while, but she knew that about him, and she’d been worried.

  Moreover, he’d been loath to leave her side, and that wasn’t like him. He was usually affectionate, but he’d had a hand on her almost constantly, and he’d kissed and hugged and sometimes practically pawed at her.

  When she’d tried to get him to leave, and again when she’d heard Connor trying to do the same, he’d said that he wasn’t bailing on the toast. So after the toast had been accomplished and he’d leaned over to her, she’d known he was ready to go—and so had she been.

  Except for her concern about Trick, Juliana had enjoyed the day. His family had accepted her readily, and she liked the easy, casual camaraderie everywhere. Almost everywhere, at least. There had been a few tables that sometimes seemed closed off from the party in some way. Club business associates, Trick had said.

  The woman who had so upset him as they’d left had been sitting all afternoon and evening at one of those tables. Until she’d gone up to the bar to talk to Trick.

  Was that woman an ex?

  Whoever she was, she’d really upset him—so much that Juliana was now chasing after him as he fled to the apartment. She’d been worried about him when they’d been sitting between the tents and throughout the day. Now she was afraid.

  He’d lost her on the way, and seeing his bike parked where it belonged, in front of his truck in his space, Juliana let some tension ease off her shoulders. At least he’d come home. But he’d gotten so far ahead of her that he was nowhere to be seen. She parked and collected their bags.

  Past her own apartment and straight up to the second floor she went. The two front windows of his apartment blazed light over the walkway. She didn’t knock; she simply tried the knob and, finding the door unlocked, went in.

  Trick stood in the kitchen, already into the whiskey. He drank often, but she had yet to see him drunk. Or maybe it was simply that he remained quiet even when he was drunk. Watching him take the empty glass from his mouth and immediately pour a refill, and thinking about his drinking through the reception, though, she wondered if he might not be self-medicating.

  “Trick.” She sat the backpacks on the floor, near the chair at his dining table over which he’d draped his kutte, and she stepped to the kitchen.

  “You should stay away.” He poured the whiskey in his glass down his throat in one move.

  “Why?”

  Instead of answering, he picked up the bottle for another pour. Juliana came to him and put her hand around the neck of the bottle. “Trick, I’m not leaving.”

  He stared at her hand around the bottle, and Juliana watched the emotions churn under that stoic exterior. His jaw clenched and unclenched, making his beard seem to roll on his cheeks. His eyes glittered and flared as they stayed fixed on her hand. “You need to get away.”

  “No.”

  His eyes came up and met hers. “What about Lucie?”

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on, Trick. But I think about Lucie every second of every day. What Lucie needs of you is your love. She needs to know that you will take care of her. She needs to be able to trust you, that you will do everything you can to keep her safe and make her happy. That’s what I need, too. Love and trust. Nothing else matters.”

  A harsh breath that wasn’t quite a scoff, then: “If you knew the things I’ve done.” He set the whiskey bottle down. “What about security? I thought that was important.”

  It was. Or it had been. The things she wanted for her and Lucie were the same, but the details, the picture of what that looked like, had changed since she’d met Trick. She wanted what she’d seen today. There was security in that, stability, in all those people calling each other family and meaning it. The vision she’d had before had been of her and her daughter. No one else, just they two alone. When her parents had been taken away, she’d stopped thinking about family as something she could have. She’d never even thought of Mark as her family, not really. Only her daughter.

  But now, she could feel the chance to be part of a big family, something real and encompassing. People who’d be there for her and Lucie.

  And a man like Trick at her side. She wasn’t afraid of ‘the things’ he’d done. Whatever they were, she trusted that he’d needed to do them.

  She stepped close, between Trick and the counter, and pushed her hands around his waist. “I’m defining security differently now. Lucie and I are secure with you.”

  He pushed her away. “You’re not.”

  Resolute, she lifted her hands and threaded them into his hair, knowing that that touch soothed him. Indeed, he closed his eyes and sighed shakily.

  “You can talk to me. Whatever you need to say to find some peace, you can say it to me.”

  His eyes still closed, he shook his head.

  “Trick—” she stopped short when his hands came up and grabbed her wrists to pull them away. His
eyes opened and fired with blue light.

  “I can’t. I can’t say it to you or anybody. That’s not how this works.”

  “How what works?”

  “My life.”

  “Okay.” It was all she could think of to say. She had no control over what he could say, and she knew she didn’t know enough to argue about it.

  “Okay? Okay what?”

  She turned her arms, twisting them out of his hold. “Okay. You can’t talk. I understand. I’m sorry. Whatever you can say, though, you can say to me. Anything.” Stepping even closer, pressing her body to his, she slid her arms over his shoulders and put her hands back in his thick hair. “I can still give you some peace.”

  She kissed the notch at the bottom of his throat, then trailed up, her lips and tongue dancing lightly over his skin, her nose nuzzling his beard. He groaned quietly and tipped his head down, closer. Holding his head in her hands, her fingers tangling in his hair, Juliana brushed her cheek over his. She sucked lightly on his earlobe, pulling his earring into her mouth. Then she drew kisses across his cheek again and kissed the corner of his closed eye.

  He put his hand on her face and pushed her back. “What are you doing, Jules?”

  “Loving you.”

  A spasm of something dark—regret?—crossed his face, and his eyes dropped from her face to her chest. He shoved his hand around to the back of her head, took a fistful of hair in his grip, and dragged her head to the side. Then, his brow creased as if his effort took all his concentration, he brought his other hand to her exposed shoulder and hooked his fingers around the thin strap of her black halter top. Leaning in, he placed a kiss above her collarbone, his tongue laving at the hollow there.

  As he kissed her, his hand moved over her shoulder, bringing the strap of her top along. Then he laid his palm on her chest and leaned back to study his hand as he drew it down, pushing her top away, exposing her breast. She watched him, saw his intent gaze on her as he traced circles around her nipple. As that touch made her shiver and her tender skin tighten, she leaned forward and up, and she kissed his creased forehead.

  At her touch, as her lips still lingered on his furrowed skin, he froze.

  “Trick?”

  “I’m so fucked up.”

  “Shhh.” She released his hair and cupped his face in her hands. “If you can’t talk, then just feel.” He closed his eyes again, and Juliana brushed her lips over his, nuzzling her nose into his beard. “I love you, Trick. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. I love who you are.”

  “You don’t know who I am.”

  “I do. I know who you are to me. And to Lucie. I’ve seen who you are to Connor, and your family. I know all I need to know. You’re a good people.”

  Again, he shook his head, and Juliana grabbed his beard.

  “Yes. What can I do, Trick? You hurt too much.”

  He stared, and then she saw it—he gave up. Whatever battle he’d been waging in his head, he’d lost. And she was glad, because his arms went around her, and he brought her close. With his mouth at her chin, her cheek, her jaw, he slid his hands under her top and up her back.

  Reaching back, she untied the laces of the halter top, and lifted her arms so that he could pull it up and off of her. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and he quickly bent to take a nipple into his mouth. As he sucked, drawing it sharply against his teeth, Juliana cried out and buried her hands in his hair again, this time to hold him close. Her nerves and muscles danced in time with the rhythm of his mouth on her.

  He fell to his knees before her, his hands and mouth still lavishing her breasts and belly. Breathless and quivering, she curled forward, keeping as close as she could, and plucked at his t-shirt. She wanted to see him, touch him.

  He ignored that for a moment, his attention devoted to his mouth on her body, but then he tore himself away from her and stood up again. He pulled his shirt off and dropped it in a wad to the floor. Before she could put her arms out to reach for him, he grabbed her and turned her briskly around to face the counter and cabinets.

  His hands slid over her hips and up her sides, and then lifted her arms up over her head, pushing her forward until her hands were flat on the upper cabinet doors. Covering her hands with his, he leaned against her, his bare chest over her back, and tucked his face into the crook of her shoulder. For a moment, he was still, his breath heavy, his chest moving her body with every inhale.

  Then, his face still nestled against her neck, he eased his hands down her arms, over her shoulders, down her back, his coarse fingertips light over her skin. When he reached her waist, he traced the edge of her jeans to the front and then unfastened her fly. He pushed a hand into her open fly, under her panties, and between her legs. Fingering her clit, sending whip-lashes of pleasure through her body, he flexed his hips, rocking their bodies together in time to the movement of his fingers on her, inside her.

  “Trick, God!”

  All at once, he was gone, his hand torn from between her legs, his body touching hers no longer. Before she could protest, he put his hands on her again, this time around her calf, and Juliana realized that he had crouched behind her. He unzipped one boot and pulled it off, then the other. And then he jerked her jeans and panties down from her hips and helped her step out of them.

  As he stood back up, she tried to turn around, but again, he put his hands over hers and pushed them high, flat on the cabinet doors. Once assured of her compliance, he let his hands fall, caressing her body on the way down again. She felt him open his jeans, and she felt his knee between her legs, widening her stance.

  Trick hadn’t spoken since before this encounter had become sexual, and Juliana understood that he needed the silence. She didn’t understand why, but she knew it was true. So she bit her lip and stayed quiet, too. Even when she felt the metal ball of his piercing slide between her cheeks, even when Trick placed a firm, warm hand on her lower back, encouraging her to bend over more, she took a breath and quieted the needy moan that clawed at her throat.

  He slid his cock back and forth, wetting himself with her arousal, letting his piercing flick over her clit again and again until her eyes rolled up, and then he drove into her with an animal grunt. His entry was forceful and abrupt, balls deep all at once, and she prepared herself for a rough fuck.

  Trick had never yet been rough with her. He’d been passionate and enthusiastic, but he’d been gentle and attentive, too. Tonight, though, after so many strange moments for him and between them, Juliana grew worried.

  She reminded herself that she trusted him, and she made herself relax.

  But after that first push, Trick became still. Deep inside her, he stood behind her, bent over her back, and held her. She felt his forehead on her shoulder blade; she felt his hot breath over her skin. He wrapped his arms around her and simply held her, like he was holding on for dear life.

  Unable to hold him, but needing to connect with him in a way deeper than his body inside hers, Juliana whispered, “I love you.”

  In response, Trick began to move. And he wasn’t rough. He was slow and gentle, rocking quietly inside her, back and forth, his arms holding her, his hands moving over her breasts and belly, his mouth sucking on her shoulder.

  Though he was gentle, there was something deeper between them this time. Something so deep it was painful, a sharp blade of need, more than physical, more than sexual. As his body brought her greater pleasure, his flesh sunk in hers, his piercing striking deeply, pushing again and again over the one intimately buried spot in her body where feeling was so profound that pleasure and pain became one and the same, Juliana’s throat thickened with welling tears.