Sweeter Than Sin

by Shiloh Walker

  “Adam.”

  Slowly, he turned his head. The words carried a heavy, tired weight and her eyes were somber when she looked at him. “I am caught up in it.… This is why I came back.”

  * * *

  Prick.

  Layla Chalmers leaned against the crumbling brick wall and watched Adam as he hung a left on Main Street with some chick. The woman had a bag slung over one shoulder, dark hair that hung in a fat braid halfway down her back, and the one glimpse Layla had gotten of her face revealed a pair of glasses.

  She was pretty.

  That smart/sexy kind of pretty that Layla despised. Guys seemed to dig that kind of look. Layla didn’t see why. Uppity bitches like that always thought they were better than everybody else. Whatever.

  Of course, there was Adam, unable to peel his eyes away from her. He’d probably have his dick buried inside her within thirty minutes. If that. Not like he was particularly discriminating. He’d banged everybody from Rita to that gossipy bitch Meg over at the salon. She was in her fifties for fuck’s sake.

  He’d fuck that dried-up hag, but he jerked away from Layla like she had a disease.

  Hypocrite.

  Adam had years lost in a bottle but thought he could get self-righteous on her just because she liked to get high every now and then. It wasn’t like she’d been doing it on the job. She hadn’t even been using when they were fucking. She just kept it on hand when she was around her sister, because nobody could be straight around Sybil.

  “Uptight bitch,” Layla muttered.

  It was Sybil’s fault, really. All of this. If she hadn’t come in and woken Adam up a few weeks back, Layla would have been up and moving, able to get those pills stashed away before Adam noticed.

  Now she was out of work, about to get kicked out of her apartment, which meant she’d have to go back to living in that house with Sybil … and the kid. The kid.

  Because it hurt to think about Drew and the disappointment Layla always saw in his eyes, she chose not to. Turning away from the vague shadows that were Adam and his current fuck buddy, she started down the street, tottering on her heels as she made her way to the apartment she was renting from Bo Grady. She had to pay the rent in another week.

  She’d find a way to come up with the money somehow.

  She didn’t know how, but she always figured it out.

  A familiar rusty laugh caught her ears and she eased into the shadows as Rita Troyer came around the corner.

  Rita. Horse-faced Rita.

  Adam’s favorite fuck buddy … and she wasn’t alone tonight, either.

  The wide-brimmed hat hid his face, but Layla knew those shoulders, knew the way he walked.

  Caine …

  She smiled a little as a tug of heat arrowed straight down her middle to lick at her core.

  Caine was one of those boys she’d just never been able to catch. Nothing made her more determined than that. She’d get him, sooner or later. She’d figured out his poison. She’d already tumbled that sweet kid who followed around in his footsteps—Thomas. He blushed now every time he saw her, but Tommy didn’t need to worry about her. She’d gotten what she wanted and now he’d have a few things to show whatever sweet little Amish girl he married.

  Laya would figure out what button to push with Caine. Sooner or later. Just like she had with Adam. Catch Adam on a day when he was so tired, he could barely see straight. Get him mad. Talk dirty. Anger could flip to lust damn fast, especially once she had her hand on his cock.

  Nobody could make a man burn hot like she could. All she had to do was find Caine’s switch. But right now he was guiding Rita down the street to her pretty little white house with the neat little picket fence.

  He wasn’t into Rita, too, was he? Layla’s gut burned, even thinking about. It was bad enough seeing the way Adam and Rita were in the back room at Shakers, but now, as Layla saw Caine tip his head down to talk to the other woman, something cold and small ripped through her.

  It might have been a stab of rejection, but she wouldn’t let herself acknowledge it as she continued to watch them. Rita leaned, drunkenly, against Caine, and while her voice was loud and raucous, Caine’s was low and steady, too quiet for Layla to follow.

  A few moments later, they were inside the house.

  She ought to just go home. Dig up one of her stashes. She still had a few left. That or find one of the bottles she’d bought when she managed to sneak some money off the guy she’d been with a few days ago. What was his name? She couldn’t even remember, but he’d had a fat wad of cash in his pocket and he wasn’t going to miss what she’d taken.

  If it was a problem, then maybe he shouldn’t carry so much and maybe he shouldn’t go to sleep with a strange woman in his bed.

  But instead of doing that, she crossed the street and ducked between the houses, her spiked heels digging into the wet soil. She eyed the windows, all lit up and bright, beckoning to her.

  Rita had one of the older homes, but it was down on the river and with fall coming, she did what a lot of the other people down here did, left the windows open to the breeze. Layla crouched in the shadows, listening to the voices drifting out of the house. Rita’s was thick and slurred, and she wasn’t a happy drunk.

  “I had to tell the cops,” Rita said.

  Layla arched her brows and eased in closer, staring up at the window, but she couldn’t see a damn thing, just that square of light and shadows moving back and forth.

  “It will be okay.” Caine, that voice of his low and steady and soothing.

  “Okay?” Rita, half-shouting. “How can it be okay? You know what he was doing all my life? Raping boys! My father is a monster. I’m going to have to talk to the cops again. I’m going to have to tell them what he said about that club and he’ll call me a liar or say I’m confused … that I’m depressed … and it won’t even be a lie.” She hiccupped and started to sob. “I am confused. I am depressed. Caine … how can I tell them? How can I do this?”

  Their voices went lower, softer.

  And outside the window, Layla muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

  Inside the house, they went quiet.

  Her heart jumped up into her throat and she couldn’t breathe. There was a shift, the floorboards squeaking. “What was—?” Rita’s voice went quiet.

  Instinct kicked in and Layla took off, pausing only long enough to remove her shoes and carry them as she pounded down the street, using the heavy shadows to hide herself as the front door of Rita’s house opened.

  Layla reached her own place, but instead of going inside, she waited.

  Her heart lodged in her throat as Caine moved out onto the porch and looked around.

  Long seconds passed before he went inside.

  Layla could swear she felt his eyes continue to watch.

  So instead of using the front door, she crept, silent as a mouse, along the porch and eased off the side, heading around to the back.

  She didn’t turn on a single light.

  And the entire time, she smirked to herself.

  Rita’s daddy, upright, do-gooding daddy, was one of those perverts.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On the last night of his life, Harlan Troyer sat in his library and smoked one cigarette after another, drinking Crown Royal and trying to figure out just how much trouble this was going to cause him.

  They didn’t understand, none of them.

  They took boys and made them men.

  They took boys and made them theirs, forging a bond that nothing could break.

  The boys became men who understood the value and power of loyalty, respect and family—they were all connected and they understood it. They passed it on and those people who didn’t understand were just sorry, uninformed fools.

  It was their right to do this and nobody understood.

  His hand shook as he reached for the cut-crystal glass at his hand. The fire burned merrily off to his side, never mind that it was still a muggy seventy degrees outside and his wife had alre
ady been in there nagging about how hot it was. He needed the fire. Not just because he was cold, deep down in his bones.

  Everything was falling apart. It had been for some time and he’d seen it coming. He’d just missed his brothers, the boys, all of this, so bad after Pete had disappeared.

  When they’d decided to re-form the group a few years after Pete and David had disappeared, at first Harlan had thought he’d just move on without it. He’d fallen apart away from it and a number of his brothers had died. It had seemed like they were living under a bad star for a time and he’d held his breath, waiting for his turn. But it hadn’t come.

  Now, though … this was worse.

  There was change coming, and none of it good.

  Jeb had killed himself and Jeb had been the one to always make sure all the problems would disappear if anybody tried to look too hard at them. There was always somebody who went into law; they made sure of it. There was usually even a lawyer, but that had been Ham and he’d died in a car wreck a while back.

  They were careful, so careful, and none of it mattered now.

  Change was coming.

  And Harlan had to be ready.

  He’d gone through his file cabinet the one he kept locked—business material, Business … and personal.

  The club was personal.

  Nobody but a Cronus could understand just how deeply ingrained it was.

  The knock at the door made him jump and it pissed him off that he was nervous in his own home.

  Had one of them talked?

  He tossed back the whiskey and hissed as it burned a path down his throat. Then he reached for the gun he kept in the top right drawer of his desk. Most of the young idiots running the club now had forgotten about him. Every now and then he’d join them, but always under certain conditions, and Jeb had understood his desire for caution.

  Of course, Jeb was dead now. Not good, Harlan thought. Not good at all that Jeb had decided to just put a bullet in his brain. Things had to be bad for Jeb to make that decision.

  If it got to that point as far as Harlan was concerned, he’d be doing the same, but he wasn’t ready to do that just yet. If the cops were at his door, he might have to adjust that line of thinking, because he was not going to let others judge what they didn’t understand.

  If it came to that, he’d control his own fate, as Jeb had.

  The knock came again and Harlan moved down the hall, glancing up the stairs. The light to the bedroom was off, Margaret up there, sleeping most likely. Sleeping with the help of a few Xanax and probably some wine. She’d started taking the pills after he’d stopped sleeping with her, but she didn’t understand how hard it was for him to touch that body of hers. She’d put on weight and her flabby, soft body wasn’t appealing for him. His mind fuzzed out on him as he recalled young, limber bodies, but he had to force his thoughts under control as he peeked through the Judas hole.

  The man standing there made Harlan frown.

  Even as relief crashed into him. Not the cops. No reason to make that decision yet. If it had been the cops … “It wasn’t,” he muttered, wiping a damp hand across his brow. “So stop thinking on it.”

  He slid the gun into his pocket and pasted a smile on his face. Opening the door with a smile, he said, “Well, this is a surprise.”

  “Harlan. Can I come in? I’ve got a bit of a problem.” The man Harlan called a friend looked worried. Very worried. He darted a look around him and then leaned in, said softly, “I need some help.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The walk to his place was long and silent, a cool breeze coming off the river. She was acutely aware of Adam, that long, rangy body prowling at her side, the heat of him warming her even though inches separated them. Tension practically emanated from his pores and she could all but feel the words he had trapped inside him.

  This is a bad idea, she thought, but she didn’t know what else to do. She was tired. Going back to the river wasn’t going to work. He’d just follow her again, and how was she supposed to avoid being noticed if the two of them were traipsing around well after midnight?

  Besides, at some point she had to trust somebody, had to reach out to somebody.

  She couldn’t get a hotel, not without ID. She had a fake one, a damned good one that she had managed to obtain years ago, but it might not hold up if somebody really, really looked at her. She looked different than she used to look but not different enough.

  After all, Adam had recognized her.

  There were exactly three people in this town she trusted implicitly. Her father was in a nursing home. Noah … her heart wrenched just thinking about him. The only real option paced along at her side, his anger all but beating against her skin.

  Her heart swelled in her throat as they turned down the street where she’d spent the first seventeen years of her life. She stopped for a minute, staring at the house where she’d lived with her dad. The new owner had put landscape lights down, the bright beams falling on the flowers and rosebushes. Tears burned her eyes and she had to turn away before she gave into the years’ worth of tears trapped inside her.

  She nearly crashed into Adam, his hands coming up to grip her arms. Through the thin material of her long-sleeved T-shirt she felt the strength of him, his fingers pressing into her flesh, solid and real. “Sorry,” she said, forcing the rasp out through her tight throat.

  “He’s not there,” Adam said, his voice brusque.

  She jerked her head in a nod. She knew that. She knew exactly when he’d left. She knew why. She knew where he was. But she couldn’t talk about that now, not if she wanted to make it through the next five minutes—the next five seconds—without crying.

  Tugging out of his grip, she brushed past him and headed up the drive toward Adam’s house. It wasn’t much easier. She had made this trip so many times, she could have done it in her sleep. She paused at the sight of the car in the driveway. Even in the darkness, it gleamed, drawing the eye like magic. She hummed a little, unable to stop herself from reaching out and drawing a finger across the elegant curves. “The Corvette,” she murmured. “It’s finally done.”

  “Yeah.” Adam’s voice was brusque to the point of rudeness and she curled her fingers into a fist, pulled it back to her side as she turned to look at him.

  “Is it a problem, me being here?”

  “You don’t have any place else to go.” He shrugged and reached into his pocket, pulling out the keys and heading toward the steps.

  She paused, her gut twisting. She was ready to trust Adam, yes. But as much as she loved his folks, she didn’t know if she was ready to take that step yet. “Ah, you’re back to living in the house?”

  “Yes.”

  Licking her lips, she said, “What about your parents?”

  “Don’t worry about anybody spilling your secrets, Lana.” He shot her a glittering look. “It’s just us. Now get your ass in here.”

  She stared at him, fighting the urge to flip him off. She’d take the surly shit for a while. It was more than deserved, after all. But the snarling was getting on her nerves. Struggling to find some middle ground that wasn’t going to result in him biting her head off, she asked, “Since when did you move back in here?”

  His voice was flat as he answered, “Since my parents died.”

  Those words hit her like a punch, right to the heart. She all but went to her knees while he calmly unlocked the door and went inside, ignoring the fact that he’d just blindsided her.

  Slumping against the wooden railing, she pulled her glasses off and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Melanie and Chuck … Setting her jaw, she tipped her head back and stared up at the sky until the urge to cry had faded. The need to sob, the need to give in to the ache that lived inside her, sometimes it was overwhelming, but she coped by shoving it all off into some part that almost felt separate. Sooner or later, that other part was going to get too full and it might overtake her. She might cease to exist and that other part would take over everythi
ng.

  But not tonight.

  Slowly, feeling like she’d aged a year in the span of five minutes, she shoved off the railing and eyed the door. In the void where she’d held the pain there was now just a hollow sensation. Sooner or later, those bits and pieces of pain that she refused to deal with were going to come chasing after her, determined to have their merry way with her.

  But not tonight.

  Her boots echoed hollowly on the wooden floor as she moved to go inside. The broad, muscled plane of Adam’s back was the first thing she saw. He stood at the sink, staring out over the dark backyard.

  Her throat went tight and she was overcome by the urge to move to him, press her lips to his shoulder and just slip her arms around him, hug him. Kiss away the misery she sensed lay inside him.

  Twenty years ago, she could have gone to him easily. Maybe she wouldn’t have felt the urge to go kissing on the man—but well. Twenty years ago, things had been different. With that span of years between them and so many secrets, she was frozen, though. Unable to go to him, unable to stay silent, she forced herself to say the only thing there was to say. Trite, empty words.

  “I’m sorry, Adam.”

  Adam turned to look at her, his velvety brown eyes narrowed. Seconds ticked by and then he shrugged. Her mouth went a little dry as the movement had the muscles bared by his tank top doing all sorts of lovely, wonderful things, the tattoos rippling.

  Her belly clenched as the image of her going to him danced in her mind. This time, though, it wasn’t comfort she had in mind. She wanted to press her lips against his skin, yeah. Learn his taste, though. Maybe she could comfort him, but she wanted a lot more than that. She wanted to feel him, skin to skin, study each of those tattoos and then learn the feel of his muscles, his body, as he moved above her.

  She couldn’t remember the last time a guy’s body had fascinated like this.

  Maybe never.

  And it was utterly impossible.

  Adam looked at her like he didn’t want to be within ten feet of her, and the more she thought about this, about him, the worse her headache got.