by S D Wasley
“I don’t know. Can we just ... agree to love one another and maybe trust one another? Not say we do, but actually trust each other.”
“I do trust you, Francesca.”
“You don’t. You always think I’m going to leave.”
He glanced down, discomfort in his face. “Oh. That.”
“Yeah. And I’ve been just as bad. It could break us, Cain, if we keep on this way.”
“But it’s hard for me to trust you,” he said. “It was like Léon ... like he deserved you so much more than me.”
“Yeah, and look how that turned out.”
Cain gave a reluctant laugh. “It’s not just him. I can’t stop worrying that you deserve better ... than me. I don’t know who or what, but something better than me with my fucked up mistakes and pathetic insecurities and life.” He looked around his dingy trailer hopelessly.
“I don’t see you like that at all. I see someone who’s faced hardship and pain and got through it. You have this power and I know you could use it to control people but you don’t. You’ve never done that to me or anyone. You live here and work around the park for Bernadette because you don’t care about money or having a steady, picket-fence life. You care about helping people who don’t deserve their shitty fates. I love that about you, Cain.”
His face was tight with the emotion my words provoked.
“It’s not that I’m trying to be all pseudo-humble or whatever,” he muttered. “I just feel stupidly lucky sometimes that you agreed to be with me. I feel like if I look away, take my eyes off you for even a moment, you might disappear.”
“Isn’t that exhausting?”
“Sort of,” he admitted. “But worth it.”
“Look away.”
He laughed at me so I took his face in my hands and turned it so he had to look out of his tiny trailer window. I let my hands fall and he turned back to me.
“Still here,” I pointed out.
“So I see.”
“Try it for longer next time. I’ll still be here, promise.” He laughed again and I took his hand. “Cain, the last thing I want is for you to try to change because you think you’re flawed or because bloody Albion thinks we need to go out to dinner more.”
He squeezed my hand. “And the last thing I want to do is hold you back.”
A beautiful knowledge settled upon me. “That’s why you never will. I trust you never to do that, and that means you can trust me to tell you if I ever feel that way.”
He reached for me. “I’m sorry. I wish I was better at accepting you want to be with me. I don’t know why it’s so hard.”
“Same reason it’s been so hard for me to accept I’m enough for you.”
He pulled me to my feet so fast my head spun and moved me a few steps across the trailer until I fell back onto the flimsy foam mattress of his bed. Then Cain was over the top of me, burying his mouth deep into my neck. “You are so much more than enough for me,” he growled against my skin.
I laughed breathlessly. “Okay, I’m convinced.” Desire whirled up inside me as he kissed along the exposed skin above my top, an impatient hand yanking my jacket out of the way. “In future, I’ll slap myself whenever I start to doubt.”
Cain paused long enough to lock his intense, dark-eyed gaze on mine. “Never doubt me, Francesca.”
Libertas
Looking into those dark-water eyes I have to take advantage of his face being so close. I slip my arm around his neck and pull him down so I can touch my lips to his. What starts as a tender kiss turns rapidly into a desperate crashing together of our lips, teeth, tongues. I push my jacket off my shoulders and he practically tears off my top. I fumble with the button on his jeans before shoving him backwards so I can clamber on top of him. He’s much easier to push around now. This could be fun, I think, until he takes hold of me and flips me back so I am once more pinned beneath him, arms held above my head in one of his hands. Okay, so maybe he still has an advantage in the strength department. He looks me up and down, a full body exploration with his eyes, breathing shallowly. It turns me on almost as much as if he’d used his fingers and I get that feeling he always invokes, like I’m slowly unravelling on the inside. He dips his head to kiss me again.
Being with Cain isn’t the safe choice. It’s the right choice.
This time he allows me to push him back so I can get the rest of that annoying clothing off and sink us close together, flesh on flesh. I surrender to the celestial pleasure of him, all the fear and worry of the past few weeks gone, revelling in my new state of being. The only distraction is a fleeting glimpse in my head of Owen arriving at the parking zone in front of the mobile home park. I mentally ignite that slender channel to his consciousness: go out for a while longer please, Owen. I have no idea whether he’s heard me or simply gets the urge to do as I wish, but it works. A moment later I see a flash of him wandering away in the other direction. Triumphant, I return my focus to Cain.
Even preternaturally strong bodies tire eventually. We end up wedged together in an embrace on his thin mattress, which is more than a little worse for wear after our activities. My cheek rests on his chest, meaning I can easily nuzzle and kiss the toned, hard muscle there. He can never keep his hands off me for long either. His fingers traverse my bare back, sliding under my tangle of hair.
“From the first moment I saw you I’ve been trying to think of ways to make you stay,” he murmurs, tightening his hold for a moment. “I’ll try not to do that anymore. I’ll show you more trust, like you want. Staying ... it’s your choice.”
The warmth that glows inside me isn’t only a response to his touch. I hold on tight and lift my head to look him in the eye. “Uh-huh. Yeah. Like there’s a choice, really.”
Preview of Unforgivable – The Incorruptibles Book 3
Another Grace Creek media statement hit her inbox. Piper scowled. Those bastards had cost her the job she’d fought so hard to get at the Revel City Review.
When Frankie Carver promised her that big toxic waste story six months ago, they both knew it might mean Piper would get fired―but they also expected it would make her career. What neither remembered at the time was that every major newspaper in the state was owned by the same company. And Leviathan Corporation (seriously, thought Piper, Leviathan?) had close ties with Grace Creek Property Company. This meant Piper was currently all but unemployable in her home state.
Piper’s eyes glazed over as she scrolled through the automated emails from Media Sourcable, scanning media statement after fluffy media statement, trying to find anything worth writing about. There had to be something in this load of bullshit that would make her new job as a ‘freelance reporter’ pay. She could still sell stories to the handful of independent newspapers and news sites that had not yet been swallowed by the all-encompassing Leviathan, but this meant feature articles, not news. Piper wished she had a beer in her hand. Writing stories from company-issued media statements and pitching them to disinterested editors was soul-destroying. It also meant she had completely run out of money, which led to no beer, another late rent payment, and another goddamn instant noodle dinner.
One of the emails caught her eye. Don Carver. She clicked. It was an announcement about Don Carver’s next tour and included the usual cheesy book release family photo.
No Frankie.
Interesting. Don, his new wife Starr―visibly pregnant―and the older daughter Vanessa. But no Francesca.
That moment from several months before, etched into her memory, came back in a rush and Piper repressed a shudder. It took a lot to spook her but seeing an apparently normal, straight-laced preacher’s daughter put on a preternatural burst of speed and scale a six-foot ring-lock fence in the blink of an eye had been unsettling, to say the least. Piper was bound by her promise never to write about Frankie, but that didn’t stop her wondering. And by wondering, she meant going to sleep every single night thinking about what the hell kind of secret was being concealed out in Augur’s Well.
S
he often thought about him, too. The guy who picked Frankie up in the van that night at the opening of the Marie Celeste. Léon, Frankie had called him. He’d been panicking; that much was obvious. Piper replayed the moment when Léon and Frankie talked together urgently through the van window before Frankie jumped in and he drove off at about a thousand miles an hour. It had been sunset but not so dark she couldn’t see there was something different about the guy. She’d heard his accent. French. And she saw how hot the guy was. Like, out of this world hot. Whatever Frankie Carver had going on, she sure knew how to attract hot guys. The other one she’d been with, Cain, was jaw-droppingly gorgeous, too. Not quite as sexy as green-eyed Léon, but close.
Piper had questions. She didn’t cope well when her questions went unanswered.
Maybe it was time to visit Augur’s Well again. It wasn’t like she had much of a life in Revel City right now. Augur’s Well was probably much cheaper. There was a mobile home park there and her parents might cough up for the deposit on a trailer if she committed to paying the weekly lease. They might even permit her to borrow her brother’s car, seeing as he would be deployed for at least six months. The more Piper thought about it, the more sense it made. She wouldn’t break her promise to Frankie, but she needed to know what was going on out there, for God’s sake. Perhaps she could even seek a little work at the local community paper. It was hard to get cadet journalists out to places like Augur’s Well; they’d rather wait for the city journalist jobs ... which was probably why so many of them ended up stepping sideways into PR. All Piper needed was enough to live on. Even a cadetship in the farming town of Augur’s Well would pay better than what she was earning doing this freelancing.
A knock on the door broke her reverie. The landlady, Mrs. Stonewall, peered through the glass panel of the door. Dammit. Time to think up another excuse to avoid paying rent this week. Piper answered the door reluctantly.
“Hey, Mrs. S.,” she said, her voice somewhere between enthusiastic and apologetic. “I was hoping you’d call by. I wanted to talk to you about―” She stopped when the woman placed an envelope in her hand. “What’s this?”
Mrs. Stonewall’s face was somehow more haggard and grumpy than usual. “An eviction notice.”
Okay. Yep, Augur’s Well sure sounded like a fine place to live right about now.
Unforgivable – The Incorruptibles Book 3
OUT JUNE 16, 2016
Pre-order here
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