Dark Secrets

by Jessica Gadziala

  So she worked at Lam and she dangled incarceration over their heads for a decade.

  Eventually, whether she liked to admit it or not, they had all become more than a con to her, they had grown on her. It didn't matter that she literally knew where all the bodies were buried. The longer she knew them, the more she realized that shit like what happened with her family didn't happen. It was an isolated incident. And Vin never once questioned her when the price changed for her mother's care or when she demanded a raise. She never again even had to mention that she had the files.

  "You look like shit," she said from behind the bar as the front door opened, bringing in Anthony in a wrinkled suit, turning to lock the door again as he made his way to the bar.

  She wasn't exaggerating either. He was pale and grayish in color. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He seemed sweaty and his clothes looked like he had slept or tossed and turned in them.

  He dropped down on a stool in the corner of the bar. "Two fingers of anything," he said, his voice rough.

  And she got it then.

  He didn't drink the night before.

  She felt like a traitor to recovery as she reached for a rocks glass and poured. But the fact of the matter was, if he didn't get his booze at Lam, he was going to go elsewhere. Besides, she knew enough about addiction to know you couldn't quit booze cold turkey. At least not when your habit was as bad as his. The withdrawal from alcohol, like withdrawal from Benzos or Opiates, could easily kill you if you didn't do it right.

  And Anthony looked like he had one foot in the grave right then.

  He took the glass and brought it to his lips, drinking half of it before setting it down and swirling the liquid around the glass.

  Faith had turned away to go back to slicing fruit when his low, almost inaudible voice stopped her.

  "You were so little then," he said, making her turn and look at him.

  "Anthony, don't," she said, shaking her head.

  "And so much softer. Sweeter. I ruined that. I made you hard and cold," he said, shaking his head at his liquor.

  "This isn't going to do any good for either of us, Ant."

  "I didn't know," he added. "You had to know I didn't know, right? I was just the wheel guy. I didn't know what they were going to do to your dad and your mom and you..."

  "Stop," she demanded, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat.

  They had never talked about it.

  For ten years, she had seen him almost every day. And never once had either of them alluded to that night. Neither had acknowledged the night he walked in on her about to be raped and demanded they all leave right then and, being the son of their boss, they hopped to.

  There were times in the beginning where she wanted to thank him, wanted to say she knew just how easily gang mentality could have won out and he would have went along with the rape, might have participated himself. It happened all the time.

  But he hadn't.

  He had stopped it.

  She had wanted to say something but he always avoided her eye. And then pretty soon after, he fell into a bottle and became a dick.

  "Coulda prevented it," he added, throwing back the rest of his drink and reaching for the bottle she had left on the bar a few inches away.

  "Don't do this, Ant. It won't change anything."

  "Saw that look on your busted face, Faith. Never could get it out. No matter how much of this shit I drank. I still see it at night."

  She never really stopped to think that maybe he had guilt. Quite frankly, the alcohol made him completely intolerable ninety-nine point nine percent of the time so she didn't care to think about what was going on in his head. She certainly never imagined that his drinking was due, in part at least, to that night, to what he had seen, to what he thought he could have stopped.

  Maybe he wasn't an asshole because he was just an asshole.

  Maybe he was an asshole because he drank and he drank because of the fucked up shit he had seen.

  Suddenly, she almost felt sorry for how nasty she had been to him over the years. Even if he totally deserved it.

  "Anthony, it wasn't your fault. You were, what, eighteen at the time? You couldn't have known."

  "Knew enough to know they were drunk as fuck and had no business doing business that way. Should have known to watch them."

  "Again, you were eighteen, Ant. And when you did find out what was going on, you still stopped two grown ass and drunk men. That's no small deal."

  "Yeah but if I was another five minutes later..." he said, shaking his head.

  "But you weren't," she said, leaning down on the bar across from him, trying to catch his eye.

  "He already had his hands..."

  "Anthony, enough," she said, her voice low but firm. "That was ten years ago. I'm fine."

  "You're not fine," he countered, finally making eye-contact and what she saw there for the first time was the truly tortured soul of a man she thought she hated.

  "Yes, I am," she said, a little insulted that he would think, let alone say, any different.

  "You're shut down. Never seen you let anyone in. Not even..."

  "Hey, are these those new self-slicing lemons I heard about?" Daniel's voice called suddenly, making her jolt upward, almost as if she was guilty.

  Anthony stiffened, filling his glass, saluting her with it, and moving away.

  She exhaled a low breath as she felt Daniel move in behind her. "What the heck was that?" he asked.

  "The first honest conversation I think he and I have ever had," she admitted, rolling her shoulders to try to shake the heaviness she felt there.

  He felt guilty because of what happened.

  She felt guilty because he drank because of her.

  And the only people who were actually guilty had execution style bullets in their brains and bodies buried at some undisclosed location.

  "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" he asked, obviously picking up on her mixed emotions.

  "A bit of both, I guess," she said honestly. "Monday," she said when the silence started to feel awkward between them, her watching the bottle Anthony vacated like it might jump at her and Daniel like a personal security guard right behind her shoulder.

  "Monday?" he repeated.

  "Vin wants you on your own on Monday. He would have said tomorrow, but Wednesday through Sunday are my shifts. So Monday you're on your own."

  That was the first thing Vin said to her when she showed up at work that afternoon. He asked if the count was alright and if Danny was able to pull a shift on his own. He was and she wasn't going to lie just because a part of her wanted him on her shift with her. So the decision was made.

  "Don't worry, baby," he said, his lips close to her ear. "Still plan on fucking you seven ways to Sunday. We'll just have to get creative on the timeframe."

  "Yeah, I wasn't worried about that," she said with a wry smile as she turned to face him.

  "Oh no?" he asked, lips twitching. "Why's that?"

  "Because I know you would fuck me in the back alley on my break if I asked you to."

  "Well," he said, trying to hold back the smile and losing the fight. "You're not wrong about that."

  She felt her belly go warm and liquid at the masculine satisfaction on his face and she wondered how long it would be. Days, weeks. How long would it take for them to find time to finally give in.

  "Are you teaching a class tomorrow?" he asked unexpectedly.

  "Oh, um," she stalled, caught off guard, mentally flicking through her calendar. "Yeah. Tomorrow I have the women's shelter."

  "When?"

  She felt her brows drawing together, finding herself a little suspicious in his interest in her schedule. "At eleven-thirty."

  "Eleven-thirty, huh?" he asked, a wicked little grin teasing at his lips. "So that means I have from when we get out of here at around four until, let's say... eleven-twenty to see how many times I can make you come before your neighbors start banging on the walls."

  Well
then.

  She had her answer, didn't she?

  "I take your silence as tacit agreement," he said and when she looked at him, he was in no way hiding his devilish smirk as he wiped down the bar.

  So then they worked their shift and Faith found herself even more hyper-aware of each of his movements, each of his chaste touches, each of his promising smiles than ever before.

  By the time she was doing the count for the day, she was an absolute mess of sexual frustration and a small touch of nerves. Not usually to be one who got nervous over silly things like sex, she was also annoyed at herself for being so high school-ish about the whole thing.

  Sex was sex- no big deal.

  But there was a small, niggling little voice in the back of her head that said it wasn't just sex and that it was a big deal.

  But she blocked that voice out as she walked into the bar and found Daniel already gone.

  "What the..." she trailed off, a heady mixture of surprise and disappointment flooding her system.

  After checking around just to make sure, she shrugged off the feeling, locked up, made her way home, and attempted to wash the day and especially, the night, away.

  She was just wrapping the towel around her when there was a knock at the door.

  "Xander, seriously, you should call if you have information about..." she was saying as she pulled the door open and found not Xander, but Daniel.

  His clothes were changed and his hair was still damp from the shower.

  "Looks like we both had the same idea."

  "The same idea?" she asked, blocking his way inside.

  "Shower before sex."

  And that was why he cut out before her- so he could run home and shower.

  "You know, we could have saved water..." she said, giving him a small smile, a little too relieved than she cared to admit that he hadn't suddenly changed his mind about the whole thing.

  "Could have," he agreed, moving forward, backing her into her apartment and slamming the door closed behind him. He didn't stop there though, right inside the door. He kept advancing her until the backs of her legs hit the foot of her bed. "But what I have in mind wouldn't work in the shower. Too slippery," he told her as he kicked out of his shoes and socks. As he moved toward the side of the bed, she started to follow. "Nope," he said, shaking his head at her. "You stay there," he added as he sat up against the headboard. His eyes moved slowly over her from the still-dripping ends of her hair to the tops of her feet, then up again until his eyes pinned hers. "Take off that towel," he demanded, his voice a low, rumbling, sexy growl.

  Faith sucked in a breath as her hands moved up the rough material to where it was tucked to the side of her breast. There was the barest of hesitations before her finger slid in and unhooked it, the material pausing for a second before falling to the floor in one swift motion, leaving her completely naked.

  A rumbling sound came from somewhere deep in Daniel's chest and Faith found herself pressing her thighs together in response to the chaos that sound caused between her legs. Desire was a live wire in her system, sparking off uncontrollably, moving outward from its origins low in her belly and overtaking everywhere from her feet to the very top of her scalp, leaving everything feeling tingly and electric.

  Daniel's eyes stayed on her face for long enough for her to be impressed by his willpower before they slowly started moving downward, over her breasts, her stomach, her hips, legs.

  She wasn't shy about her body. First because it was simply never something she was raised to believe was shameful and second because she worked long hours every week in training sessions so she felt confident that she was tight and toned in the right places and soft and feminine in the other right places.

  "Fuck," he said finally when he finished his inspection and his eyes once again found hers. She felt her belly flutter with the feeling put behind that one word, knowing that in man-speak that was just about the best compliment he could give her. "Get your ass over here," he demanded, eyes burning as she moved across the floor toward him and stood at the side of the bed. He reached down and patted his lap and she felt her lips curve as she moved to straddle him.

  His eyes moved over her face again, completely devoid of makeup, her usual war paint, the realization making her feel just slightly more vulnerable than she usually felt about sex. His eyes slid lower as a bead of water dripped from her hair and slid down her chest then over her breast. His hand moved out, his finger tracing the line from where it originated to where it slid off her nipple, his thumb gliding over the hardened peak as his breathing got slower, deeper. He arched to lean forward, to take her breast into his mouth. But her hands went to his shoulders, stopping him.

  When he looked up with a raised brow, she smiled and ran her hands down his chest, his stomach, to the hem of his shirt. "This is uneven," she informed him.

  To that, his lips twitched up. "So you don't want to be submissive," he observed. "You want to fight for power." There was no disappointment in his tone. If anything, she was sure she heard excitement.

  "Something like that," she agreed.

  "Tell you what," he said, eyes dancing, "every time you best me, you can demand I take off a piece of clothing."

  "Well, to make this fair, maybe I should put on," she started to say, thrilled at the idea, wanting to go grab a shirt and some panties at least.

  But suddenly she felt herself flying through the air for a split second, making her belly drop, before she felt her body bounce off the bed that she was suddenly lying across sideways.

  Daniel's hands grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head as his knees straddled her waist, his smile wicked. "I never said this was going to be fair, baby."

  With that, he leaned down, sucking one of her nipples into his mouth, making her back arch up off the mattress as she let out a loud moan, her thighs pressing together until they shook to try to ease the chaos there. His teeth took the sensitive flesh next, nothing grazing or teasing about it- he bit into her nipple, his eyes raising to meet hers, a challenge clear in them as her body jolted back against the pain/pleasure mix.

  Beneath him, her body twisted fast and her one wrist found itself free for one blissfully victorious moment before he recaptured it, wrapping it across the upper part of her chest and holding it there as he dipped his head again to torture the other nipple.

  The red-hot pain sent a surge of desire so strong to her sex that she did the unthinkable- she rolled onto her stomach.

  Daniel's low, darkly amused chuckle was all she needed to know she was going to pay for that stupidity. "Giving up your back, huh?" he asked, his body slowly moving downward in a way that, as he moved over her ass, she could feel his hard cock press into her for a moment before his knees came down on the backs of her thighs.

  His hands moved slowly down her spine to cup her ass, squeezing hard for a second and her hips rose up off the bed into the sensation. He was so close to touching her where she needed him most, where he seemed to purposely be avoiding.

  "Nope," he said, his voice sounding amused. "You don't get that yet. You're pretty squarely in the 'loser' category right now. Maybe I should see what I can do about making you a sore loser, huh?" he asked, and a split second afterward, his hands released her and one came down with a hard, audible, bitingly painful whack to the left side of her ass. Her breath hissed out of her, but before she could even drawn in another one, his hand slammed down on the right side, evening it out so that her entire behind felt like it was on fire, promising a twinge of pain anytime she tried to sit down for the rest of the night.

  But Daniel wasn't done.

  He wanted her sore for the whole next day as his hands kept landing into the pained flesh, as her breathing got faster, her desire even more acute.

  Just when she was sure she was about to cry uncle, his hand slid up her spine instead, sinking into the wet hair at the base of her skull, curling in, then yanking hard as his body moved over her, his cock grinding into her pussy. She let out a long, loud mo
an as his head turned inward and he nipped her ear.

  "Ready to give up yet?" he asked, his voice purposely teasing.

  She slid her leg between both of his, hooking it around the lower one, then throwing every bit of force she had into his shoulder as her leg twisted his.

  And they rolled.

  That had her back to his chest, his back to the mattress. He could throw her off in a second, but she technically bested him.

  "Shirt," she demanded, breathing heavily as his hand released her hair and she moved to turn, straddling him as he folded up slightly and yanked the shirt off his head.

  "I expected you to go for the groin," he admitted with a smile as he moved back down on the mattress, his hands settling on her hips.

  She held his eyes as a wicked smile teased her lips. "Didn't want to do any damage. I have use for that later."

  He chuckled and the deep, masculine sound sent another rush of wet between her thighs as her eyes moved down to his chest. She felt herself stiffen, her lips parting, her brows drawing together.

  Because his torso, yeah, it was all the proof she needed that he wasn't just some alpha, cocksure, charming bartender. Alpha, cocksure, charming bartenders didn't have bodies that were criss-crossed in scars- most of them deep, the kind that required hospital visits and stitches and recovery time. And they were everywhere. Each was in a varying stage of healing- some white and old, some pink, some still reddish.

  But what got her most wasn't the long straight or jagged marks, but the ugly pink one on the right side of his body just under his right clavicle.

  You didn't have to know what that scar was. You knew it when you saw it.

  It was a gunshot wound.

  He had a gunshot wound to the chest.

  And, judging by the color, it was maybe from a couple years ago.

  Without her realizing she had done it, she felt her fingers trace over the oddly smooth surface of it. "Daniel, what the hell?" she asked, looking up into his face, catching a dark and almost worried look there for a moment before it was completely wiped away by what she could only call cockiness.