by Meg Jackson
“And if you want me to spill, you’re gonna have to promise to help me,” Jenner said quickly, before Kennick could say anything else.
“Help you? Help you? Motherfucker, I should fucking kill you, after what you did to us, what you did to your own damn people, your familia, you piece of shit, I should…”
“You’re wasting your breath, and my time,” Jenner hissed. At any moment, the phone could run out of minutes, or one of the Steel Dragons could come barging in, as they were wont to do whenever they wanted to remind him who owned his ass. “They’ve got me locked up at their clubhouse, somewhere in Maryland. Near a town called Colony, I think. If I tell you where Damon is, and what they’re planning to do to him, you need to help me get out.”
“Who? Who’s got you locked up?” Kennick asked. “And what the fuck do you know about Damon being in trouble?”
“Who do you think? You’re smarter than this, Kennick,” Jenner said, irritated. “The Steel Dragons. They thought I double-crossed them, and they’ve been holding me here. I don’t know where…”
“Shiiiiiiit,” Kennick said. “I knew we weren’t cleared of those bastards yet. Where is Damon, Jenner?”
“Do I have your word?” Jenner asked. Jenner’s word wasn’t worth shit. But Kennick’s was. Kennick, and his brothers, were cut from a different cloth, and Jenner knew it. Even though Jenner had actively tried to destroy them, once they gave their word, they’d act on it. It was a matter of honor, pride. Jenner had plenty of pride, but not the right kind.
The silence on the other end of the line grew long. Kennick knew that once he promised, he’d have to live up to it. Jenner counted on that.
“Fine,” Kennick said, spitting the word out. “You tell me what’s happened to my brother, and I’ll do my best to get you out. You can’t tell me where you’re at, so I can’t promise we’ll be able to do it, but I’ll try.”
“If you follow them, they’ll take you to me,” Jenner said. “And…I might end up in the same place as you. Where Damon is. I can’t explain it all right now. I’ll need money, once you get me out. I’ll need cash to get away so they can’t follow me.”
“Fine, fine, whatever,” Kennick said, angry. Jenner knew how a gypsy felt, backed into a corner. It’s how he felt every day that he was in the Steel Dragons’ clutches. He felt no pity for the situation Kennick was in.
“He’s in Miami,” Jenner said, speaking quickly now. The sooner he got the words out, the sooner he could hang up and trash the phone and feel safe again. As safe as he could in the Steel Dragons’ lair, anyway. “He’s got some fight up there.”
“Damon’s done with fighting,” Kennick said, distrust sliding into his tone. Fair enough, Jenner thought. Kennick had no reason to trust him, anyway.
“Apparently not,” Jenner retorted. “Because he’s gone up there to fight some gadje, and the Steel Dragons are paying good money for that man to do him dirty.”
“How?” Kennick demanded.
“I don’t know,” Jenner said, telling the truth – a rare occasion. “All I know is that they want revenge, and Damon is walking into a trap.”
“Fuck,” Kennick hissed. “Where’s the fight? Who’s it against?”
“I don’t know – like I said, it’s somewhere in Miami. They don’t exactly tell me the details of their plans, Nick. Everything I’m telling you – I was lucky they told me.”
“Goddammit, Jenner,” Kennick said, sounding suddenly exhausted. “God. Dammit.”
The phone beeped. Jenner’s hand tightened around it; an automated voice came on.
“You have two minutes left on your plan. If you’d like to…”
“Shit,” Jenner said. “Kennick, I’m running out of time. I have to go.”
“Wait…”
“No, I have to fucking go,” Jenner said. “You go find your meathead brother, and then you come find me.”
“I swear, Jenner, if this is some fucking trick, if you’re working with them and…”
“I’m not,” Jenner answered through gritted teeth. If Kennick could see him then – in his little shithole of a room, scarred and lonely and grateful just to be alive – he wouldn’t have any doubts. Jenner wasn’t doing this to make up for his sins. He was doing it to escape his own personal hell. “I know you’ve got no reason to trust me, but this time, you better. For Damon’s sake.”
“You’re not coming back here,” Kennick said. “I hope you know that.”
“I know,” Jenner said, mentally counting down the seconds before his only lifeline cut off.
“Oh,” Kennick said. “And your grandmother died. You weren’t there for her funeral. No one missed you.”
Jenner felt a stabbing pain in his heart. For all his dirty deeds, all his little acts of evil, he still had people he loved. His grandmother was one of them. So was his mother, and, to a much lesser degree, his cousins. He never let himself linger on the memory of how he’d lost them, lost everything that mattered to him, in a foolish quest for power. It hurt too much. And now…
The phone cut off before Jenner could respond. He kept it pressed to his ear long after the automated voice told him he was all out of time.
My only chance, he thought, again and again, like a mantra. Kennick, you’re my only chance.
The irony of that didn’t escape him. Fate could be unbearably cruel. He’d had enough good things once, but didn’t realize it, only wanted more. And now the rest of his life depended on a man who he’d tried to destroy.
28
“He’s going to Miami,” Kennick said, staring at the face of his phone. “The motherfucker is going to Miami…”
“Who is?” Cristov asked, looking up from the sketch he was working on. Kennick had stopped in to see Cristov at the tattoo parlor when the call came in. Cristov had been too absorbed in his doodles to pay attention to the call.
“Damon,” Kennick said, and that was enough to get Cristov’s full attention. He dropped the pen he’d been scratching across the paper, stared up at his older brother.
“What the fuck is he doing in Miami? Was that him on the phone? You should have let me talk to him…”
“It wasn’t Damon,” Kennick said, and realized how tightly he was holding the phone when his hand started to ache. “It was Jenner.”
“Jenner Surry?” Cristov spat, standing up even straighter.
“The one and the same,” Kennick grumbled.
“What the fuck…”
Kennick explained everything Jenner had told him, and watched Cristov’s face darken with each slow reveal. Kennick was worried about Damon. He was also worried about Cristov. He had hoped his younger brother’s relationship with Ricky would give him some balance, and in some ways it had; in other ways, mainly ways involving Damon, Cristov was still as volatile as live TNT.
“Jesus Christ,” Cristov said. “Damon…”
A vein pulsed above Cristov’s right eye.
“Do we know anyone down in Miami? From when Damon was still in the scene? I don’t remember him fighting down there before,” Kennick said, looking through his contacts for any name that stuck out as potentially helpful.
“It sounds like he is still in the scene,” Cristov hissed, and pulled out his own phone to do the same. “What was that guy’s name…the one with the shitty axe tattoo on his neck…”
“Vano?” Kennick asked, glancing up. “Vano lives in Maine.”
“He used to,” Cristov said. “Not anymore. He moved to Florida a few years ago, remember.”
“I guess it’s a place to start,” Kennick said. “At least he might have some lead on other guys in the rings down there. Cristov…you’re taking this really well.”
It was true; despite his red face and throbbing forehead vein, Cristov was at least thinking clearly. He wasn’t cursing every other word, and he wasn’t screaming.
“We need to find him, Nick,” Cristov said, looking up from his phone for a minute. “I’m going to find him. And then I’m going to slam him into eve
ry wall from here to Miami, until he owns up to what he’s doing to this family. To us.”
Kennick wanted to say something. Wanted to tell Cristov that Damon would never change unless it was by his own will. But Cristov was just as stubborn as Damon in his own way. Cristov pressed a button on his phone, and brought it up to his ear, keeping his eyes fixed on Kennick the whole time.
“Vano,” Cristov said. “It’s Cristov. Yeah, Volanis. Good, good, man. Yeah, right. No – I got some questions for you…”
29
Damon didn’t return that night until Tricia had fallen asleep. When she woke up in her bed, feeling more alone than she had in years, she just blinked at him in the opposite bed. He had his back turned to her. He was just a rigid lump.
She slipped into the bathroom to shower; returning, she found him dressed and ready to go, with no explanation as to where he’d been the night before. Not that he owes me one, I guess, she thought. We only slept together once…
The thoughts hurt, but not as much as the silence between them. The drive to Miami was short, but felt longer than all their previous days of driving combined. Both Tricia and Damon would open their mouths to say something, then turn to the other, see that they weren’t looking, and close their mouths again.
Tricia, for her part, was trying to batten down the hatches on a rising anger inside her.
How dare he treat her like this?
How dare he act like a sweet, sensitive man, and then become this…ogre. This silent-treatment-giving, white-knuckling, rough-man-smelling, still-sexy-as-hell asshole.
In Charleston, she’d had a taste of what he could give her. And now, before they’d even begun, he was saying it was over. No, that’s not what he said – not at all, some part of her thought. He just thinks…he thinks that doing something very stupid will make him ready to love you right.
He doesn’t get to decide what it means to love me right, she thought, turning to him as they pulled off the highway. His fight, which was scheduled for the next day, was actually in a community known as Carol City, but he’d booked them a hotel in the city proper. Carol City was not, apparently, a very good neighborhood.
“I’ll leave the car with you tomorrow so you can, you know, go out and do stuff,” he said as he pulled into a parking spot. It was the longest sentence Tricia had heard him say all day. “I wouldn’t trust it out there, anyway.”
“Thanks,” she barked back. The tone of her voice wasn’t lost on him, and his shoulders slumped as they sat listening to the engine cool down.
“I wanted to take you to this really nice…”
“Just go check-in,” Tricia spat, not wanting to hear it. It was a bit late to try and make nice. He’d brought her. He’d made all the first moves. And now he’d decided that it wasn’t the right time for them to – to do whatever the hell Tricia had thought they were doing.
He gritted his teeth as he left her alone in the car to stew. She watched him walk away, caught by the way his shirt framed his statuesque body, his tight jeans glued to his thighs in the heat…
Tricia narrowed her eyes and made a decision.
She wasn’t just along for the ride anymore.
And she was going to make sure he knew that.
Once they were in the hotel room, another double bed deal, Tricia turned to Damon, catching a glimpse of his rippling muscles as he set a bag down on the carpeting. When he straightened up and saw her eyes, he stiffened all over and put up one hand, as though anticipating what was to come. She moved in quickly, swatting his hand away.
“Damon,” she said, rising onto her toes to grab his face in her hands. She hoped he saw the anger in her eyes. She hoped he saw that all she wanted to do was help him, and that he’d spit on those efforts. He’d hurt her. She wanted him to understand that. “I don’t want you to take me out to fancy dinners or on elaborate trips or pay for luxurious hotel rooms.”
He looked down at her, eyebrows slightly raised. He glanced away long enough to look over the room. It was definitely not a luxurious hotel room. She pressed her hands tighter on his cheeks, frustrated with the joke she saw dancing on the tip of his tongue.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I don’t care about what kind of nice time you can show me. If you want me, you have to want all of me. Even the parts of me that say things you don’t agree with.”
He pursed his lips together, breathing in deeply. He lifted his hands to cover hers, his eyes soft but unyielding. She nearly cried out in frustration.
“You have to trust me, and talk to me,” she said, hearing the waver in her voice even as she felt her core temperature rising from the mere proximity of him. “You don’t have to do what I say. But you can’t shut me out. You can’t…you can’t just walk away, Damon. You can’t just…”
“I don’t want to do any of those things, Tricia,” he said, voice soft. For a moment, she thought he might be willing to let her in. “But this time…”
That was it. He wasn’t budging. Anger like lightning snapped through her body. And anger felt so much like lust that she acted on it. She dragged his head down, pulled his lips against hers, silencing the denial that he’d been so close to repeating. She wasn’t going to let him say it. And this was how she knew to keep him from smashing her heart open again. And this was what she wanted. So badly that she shook with it.
Her lips parted when his tongue touched them; gentle, now, gentle. He probed her mouth, felt her tongue against his, giving and taking in equal measure. His hand on her waist pulled her in to him while her arms wrapped around his neck, the sensation almost instinctual. Her soft moan, swallowed by his mouth, made the kiss hot, her humming lips against his.
She wasn’t going to be satisfied with a kiss.
Her hands moved down, began to roam over his body, caressing the hard plane of his chest, the ropy muscles of his arms, the tender slope of his jaw underneath the bristly beard. She reached down, made quick work of his jeans and plunged her hand downward, curling her fingers around his hardening cock. She felt like her hand was so small in comparison, and so cold; her fingers warmed, thrumming blood to the tips, as she stroked him and felt his groan against her tongue.
He wouldn’t be satisfied that easily, either. His hand found her mound, pushing her dress up to her hips and yanking roughly at her panties until he could part her lips, brush her clit with his knuckle, feel her wetness against the back of his hand. He turned his hand over, palm up, and ground it against her, forcing two fingers into her slit, rewarded by the buckle of her knees, the thrust of her hips.
He pressed his palm against her clit. She pulled away just slightly, taking his bottom lip between her teeth and sucking it in, her eyes meeting his, a challenge lurking behind the molten gold. It incited something inside him, sparked a feral desire to take her any way he wanted to, without asking her permission, without waiting for her to be ready. He stamped it down, but it was too late. She’d seen it in his eyes. And her body responded in kind.
Her skin, flushed and hot, felt like it would burn anyone who tried to touch her. Greedy, mindlessly, she ground against his hand, forcing his fingers deeper into her wet slit, her clit throbbing into the course flesh of his palm. Her own fingers stroked him from base to tip and back again, squeezing lightly, then gently, then lightly again, a torturous rhythm that only made him press harder with his fingers, to torture her the same way.
Tricia realized, suddenly, that they weren’t making love. They weren’t even fucking. They were fighting. There was struggle in their kiss. There was ownership in their hands. She tugged at his cock while she pulled away, her free hand yanking at his wrist until he was forced to release his hold on her sex. She growled, moving past him, still holding him tight.
She climbed onto the bed, on all fours, stretching out like a cat with her elbows on the mattress and her ass in the air. With her dress rucked up around her hips and her panties around her knees, she stared back at him, daring him to deny her, daring him to take her, daring him to please her.
“Why are we doing…” he started to say, even though his own jeans had hitched low enough that the evidence of his desire was undeniably.
“Don’t,” Tricia whispered, rolling her hips slightly so that he could see her glistening slit. “Just…just come here.”
He growled low in his throat, his body taking over. Grabbing her hips, he forced a gasp from her lips when he yanked back on her body. But he wasn’t going to just give her what she was demanding. He let one hand skirt upward, taunting her through the fabric of her dress, to her breast, clutching it from below and kneading hard until she moaned and arched her back, pressing against him. Her nipple was hard even through her bra and dress, the hint of her arousal just a nub against Damon’s thumb.
She heard the jingle of metal, the sound of denim against flesh, as Damon released himself fully, the head of his cock pressing against her slit. She bit her lip, her flesh anticipating the pleasure of his fullness, her pussy clenching prematurely, wanting him deep. He felt her and couldn’t suppress his own groan, the heat of her radiating, beckoning him in.
He took a deep breath, knowing that this wasn’t right, that this wasn’t how he wanted her. But then she pressed backwards, impaling herself on him, and he was lost in her wetness, her tender sex sucking him in – where he belonged. He reached around her supple waist, found her clit between the folds of her sex, and stroked it.
Tricia felt him submerged inside her, felt his fingers playing her like an instrument, and clutched the sheets in her hands, bit down to keep from screaming her ecstasy. He started to take her, slow and steady, drawing her body against his and pushing it away to match his strokes. The way he filled her, pressing the head of his cock into wells of maddening pleasure in her womb, was too much, his finger on her clit just toying with her limits.
“Fuck,” he growled from behind her, trying to hold back from fucking her too fast too soon – she was still tight, and it might hurt. But he felt her struggling to set her own pace. Faster, harder. “Slow down…”