by M. S. Parker
I didn’t tease her or make her wait. I didn’t know what had happened to her tonight, and she might tell me later, but right now, I needed to make her feel better. She was wound so tight that, at first, I didn’t think I could get her out of her head enough to come, but after drawing a few circles, her breathing quickened, each exhale becoming a whimper.
“It’s okay, Chey,” I said quietly. “Let yourself go. I’ve got you.”
She came with a small cry, slumping against my chest, her entire body shuddering. I ran my hand up and down her spine, whispering nonsense words against her hair, simply holding her until she stopped trembling.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“Look at me.” She tilted her head back until I could see her face. “You never have to thank me for taking care of you.”
She held my gaze as she climbed off my lap, breaking it only when she pulled her shirt over her head.
I tucked her hair behind her ear. “You don’t need to do this.”
“Take off your clothes,” she said, leaving her skirt on the floor as well.
I undressed, barely thinking about what I was doing until I was laying on the bed and Cheyenne was crawling over me, her hair brushing against my skin. She put her hand on my stomach, balancing as she lowered herself down on my cock. I reached for her free hand, threading her fingers between mine. After a moment, she began to rock back and forth, setting a rhythm and pace that I matched. I’d make sure we both got there, but I’d let her lead the way.
Neither one of us spoke as we moved together, but I didn’t feel the need to say a word. Whatever the two of us were doing, we didn’t need to talk about it right now. This was about a different kind of connection, something I’d never had with anyone else.
But it wasn’t until she was falling asleep in my arms, her head on my chest, that I realized – admitted – what had happened.
I didn’t know how it had happened, or even when, but I’d fallen in love with Cheyenne Lamont.
Twenty-Six
Cheyenne
Why was I doing this, especially after what happened earlier this week? Fernando hadn’t said a word to me yesterday. In fact, I hadn’t seen him at all, so I wasn’t even sure he’d been at the club. He was there today though. It’d taken him approximately five minutes to call me into his office and tell me that if I ever took off on a job half-finished again, I’d be working in the house instead of delivering to it.
And now I was heading back there again. With another bag of drugs. And explicit instructions to get the package from Seleste that I’d failed to get two nights ago.
I knew that I dug myself into a deeper hole each time I did what Fernando told me to do, but I couldn’t see any way out that didn’t involve me losing Austin. If I quit, we’d have no money, which meant I’d lose our home and him. If I refused to do what Fernando said, he’d either fire me or hurt me, both of which would result in either me losing Austin or doing what I was told. If I told Slade what was going on, I’d get arrested and lose my brother.
Slade made me feel safe…and made me feel things I wasn’t sure I wanted to name. But he couldn’t save me, not without destroying me at the same time.
I swiped at my cheeks and told myself to pull it together. If Seleste saw that I’d been crying, she’d sense how weak I was and exploit it. Fernando was dangerous, but Seleste wasn’t exactly a victim in this situation. Sure, I didn’t know her backstory, and it could have been something horrible…but she was still selling girls for sex instead of helping them escape a life that she’d probably lived herself.
Not that I had any room to judge. I knew what was going on there and I wasn’t doing anything to stop it. If Seleste was using the drugs for what I thought, I was helping to keep the girls addicted and compliant.
My guilt wasn’t the only thing that had been getting worse. My self-loathing was at an all-time high. Austin was a reason, not an excuse, but it didn’t make me feel any less like shit.
When I knocked on the door, the girl from the other night answered. Lacey. If that was her real name. My mom had always called herself Lita for a reason she’d never explained.
“Miss Seleste is with someone,” Lacey said as she stepped aside to let me come inside. “You’re supposed to wait for her.”
She didn’t bother telling me where I was supposed to wait, so I didn’t follow her into the front room. I wasn’t going back there unless someone forced me to. I also wasn’t going to sit out in the open where anyone could see me and assume I was one of the prostitutes again. I couldn’t count on people coming to my rescue all the time.
I found a space tucked out of the way enough that most people wouldn’t notice me but where I wasn’t exactly hiding. I kept the bag over my shoulder, between me and the wall, not because I valued what was inside, but because if I lost the bag, I’d be beyond fucked.
And then the door to what I assumed was Seleste’s office opened. I had my foot in the air, ready to step out and tell her I was there when I saw that she wasn’t alone.
My mind flashed back to earlier that week, the man who hadn’t taken no for an answer. Had he come back to complain to her? Could guys even do that here? Complain that someone who didn’t work here wouldn’t fuck him? Would he have waited two days? Was I just being paranoid? That could be anyone in her office.
Right?
I heard the low sound of a man’s voice, and then caught a glimpse of light-colored hair. It wasn’t him. The guy from the other night had dark hair.
“Fernando won’t go for it,” Seleste said. “He doesn’t like people telling him what to do.”
I stepped back, frowning. Something didn’t feel right.
“Yeah, but I’m not just anyone,” the man said. “I’m the one who’s keeping your asses out of jail. Don’t forget that.”
I needed to stay put. Whoever this guy was, he was clearly someone I needed to avoid at all cost. Even if he barely paid any attention to me, I didn’t like the idea of someone with the power he claimed to have connecting me to any sort of illegal business.
“I will not be a part of this,” Seleste said. “I have girls to look after, and if I take this shit to Fernando…” She made a snorting sound. “Let’s just say he’s actually been known to shoot messengers.”
He laughed, a rough, gravely sound. “I don’t believe that shit for a minute. You don’t give a damn about these girls.”
“How dare you!” Her voice was shaking, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she was pissed about his accusation because it was true or because she really did care.
“You mean to tell me that if some guy gets rough with one of ‘your girls’ you wouldn’t still take his money?” He took a step closer to Seleste. “You wouldn’t let him come back?”
“N-no. I wouldn’t let anything happen to my girls.”
A small dart of sympathy struck me for this woman. Maybe she was more like me than I thought. Caught in a situation she couldn’t get out of but trying to make the best of it. Trying to protect the people she cared about as best as she could within the limits of what was available to her.
“What did Fernando tell you about me? About my ‘payments?’” His voice was low, dangerous.
There was a pause before Seleste spoke. “Give you what you want.”
“Let me tell you what I want tonight–”
“You said you were just here to talk to me–”
“Listen, bitch, I changed my mind. I’m thinking that I might need some stress relief after all. I want Lacey, Tamara, and Amy.”
“Amy’s with a client.”
“Then I want Mary. She’s got a nice rack.”
Another long pause. “All right. The room at the end of the hall on the right is open.”
“I’m not done,” he growled. “I want the key to the trunk.”
I had no clue what that meant, but Seleste shifted, and I could see that her face had gone white.
“I can’t do that,” she whispered. “That’s only for…
special clients, and only for girls who aren’t…who are…I…no…”
She winced as the guy grabbed her arm and got in her face. “I. Want. The. Key.”
“Fernando won’t let you take three girls out of commission at the same time,” she said, looking away from him. “It’s too many.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“I need his permission,” she said. “Or you can pick just one. I can let you have one.”
Even though I couldn’t see the guy, I could tell he was smiling. “There’s the cold-hearted bitch I was looking for.” He took a step back. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not in the mood for a fuck.”
He let go of Seleste’s arm and turned away, giving me a full view of the man who’d scared the shit out of her by asking to do something I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about. I watched him walk by, trying to figure out what was so scary about the sandy-haired man who started whistling as he passed me.
And then I realized that I’d seen him before.
With Slade.
At the club the night we’d first met.
I stayed where I was, letting Seleste disappear back into her office. Slade knew a guy who’d just threatened to do something so awful that a woman who forced other women to have sex for money didn’t want to consider it.
Except she had considered it. And as I remembered everything she said, I realized that she’d done it before. She’d given one of her girls over to a man who’d done something so awful to them that it made her face go white.
This was what Fernando and Seleste did together. What I was helping them do. What the drugs I brought to Seleste helped her do.
I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to get out, even if I needed to ask Slade for help to do it.
Slade.
Shit.
The horrible man talking to Seleste. As I thought of him harder, I remembered that Slade had mentioned that they were work buddies. Slade worked at the DEA. Fernando had known that Slade was in the DEA. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put the pieces together.
Slade’s friend was in Fernando’s pocket.
Which meant Fernando could know just how much time Slade and I had spent together, how much Slade meant to me.
Austin and I weren’t the only ones in danger from Fernando. Slade needed to know, but now I had a new problem.
How to explain to Slade that I’d seen his friend at a whorehouse, threatening the madam, and bragging about how he could do anything he wanted.
Twenty-Seven
Slade
I should’ve made plans with Cheyenne instead of vaguely texting her to make sure things between us were okay. I’d stayed with her Wednesday night, but I’d left before she’d woken up. I’d left her a note explaining that I’d assumed she wouldn’t want Austin to see me coming out of her bedroom first thing in the morning. Granted, he was four years old and probably wouldn’t know what it meant, but I wasn’t going to let him think anything negative about his sister. He’d only ever know that his sister loved him more than anything.
Love.
That’d happened Wednesday night too, and if I was being completely honest, it was another reason I’d left early yesterday morning. I hadn’t even slept that night. Figuring out that I loved Cheyenne had thrown me for a loop. I’d known that I cared about her, different than I’d ever felt for anyone, but I hadn’t even considered the l-word.
Unless my subconscious had known it, and that was why I’d called Jax. He’d told me about how it’d been for him and Syll. Maybe he’d known then that I loved her, but he hadn’t shared it with me.
Then again, maybe this was one of those things I had to learn for myself.
I looked at my phone again even though I knew she hadn’t texted or called. She was working. At DDD with that asshole Fernando.
My hands curled into fists. She hadn’t told me what happened the other night, but I knew it had to do with her fucking job.
I needed to get her out of there. Away from Fernando.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that without either compromising my job, or getting Cheyenne into trouble, but I knew I had to do something.
My phone rang, and I answered it without looking at it, my pulse racing. “Chey?”
“Slade?”
It was a woman’s voice, but it wasn’t Cheyenne’s. Still, it was familiar enough to give me pause. I glanced at my screen, but it just had unknown.
“Are you there?” she asked. “Hello?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“It’s Lizann.”
Well, damn.
No wonder she sounded familiar. Lizann Raiser had been my high school sweetheart. We’d been together for nearly three years, and it’d been an amicable break-up. I’d been in basic training, and she’d gone to Vassar for a political science degree. We’d both agreed that we were better off apart. We’d kept in touch for a couple years before fading out of each other’s lives.
“Is everything okay?”
She laughed, that full, rich laugh that I’d always loved, and I found myself smiling at the sound.
“Such a worrywart, Slade. Nothing’s wrong.”
“You looked up my number after all these years because nothing’s wrong? Way to make a guy feel special, Lizzy.”
I could almost hear her roll her eyes.
“You know I don’t like being called Lizzy.”
“I know,” I said with a grin. “And we both know that’s why I do it.”
“You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
She had no idea.
“Not that it isn’t great to hear from you, Lizann, but did you really call just to shoot the breeze?”
“Actually, I called because I’m in Texas.”
“Seriously?”
She laughed again. “I don’t know if you heard that I moved to Michigan a few years ago, but my family moved back to Boston a couple months ago.”
I still didn’t see what this had to do with her being in Texas, but I knew Lizann. She might take the long way to get there, but she eventually got to the point.
Besides, she was giving my mind a much-needed break from thinking about Cheyenne.
“I saw your brother, Jax, last week, and he said your grandfather passed,” she continued. “I’m sorry to hear that. I know you two didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but I also know you loved him.”
I swallowed hard. I’d forgotten just how much Lizann had always seen, especially when it came to me. “Thank you.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to bring you down. This was supposed to be me convincing you to have lunch with me tomorrow.”
“You still haven’t told me how you got to Texas.”
“Right. I was talking to Jax, and he told me you were working for the DEA in El Paso. Well, you know my brain. I just squirrel away all that stuff. I didn’t think about it again until Beth-Ann, my roommate from college, called me to tell me that she was getting married to a boy from El Paso in some sort of shot-gun wedding thing. So now I’m in El Paso, and she’s getting married next week.”
And we’d arrived at our destination.
“I’m guessing Jax gave you my number too?”
“He did.” Suddenly, the tone of her voice shifted. “Shit, Slade, I’m sorry. Was that okay? He seemed to think it’d be all right for me to call you.”
“No, no, it’s fine. Things with my brothers are just…strange right now.”
“You guys were always strange,” she pointed out.
“How about I tell you about it over some lunch tomorrow?” I asked. “There’s a sushi place nearby that I think you’d like.”
“You remembered.”
I laughed. “Of course, I remembered. You only made me go to every sushi restaurant in Boston.”
“It was good to broaden your horizons.”
“Consider them broadened.”
“So, where’s this wonderful sushi place you’re taking me tomorrow?”
I hadn’t seen Lizann since s
he was eighteen, but I recognized her right away. She’d cut her blue-black curls short, but she still had the same dimples and sense of style. She’d always been one of those girls in school who didn’t care that she was a few pounds overweight, even when the snotty girls made fun of her for it. She’d used it to make a statement with every outfit she wore, and I’d found that confidence as sexy as I’d found the rest of her. Even though I wasn’t attracted to her now, I could still see the beauty of the woman she’d become.
“You look amazing,” I said as I bent down to kiss her cheek. She was even shorter than Cheyenne, I realized suddenly.
“Thanks,” she said. “You’ve still got your Boston accent. And here I was, ready to tease you for a Texas drawl.”
“You should never count yer chicken’s ‘fore they’re hatched.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That was awful. How in the world haven’t you been shot by an angry Texan?”
I shrugged and grinned as I led her to a table. “I guess I’m still charming.”
“You were never as charming as you thought you were.”
“Yes, I was,” I said with a laugh. “You haven’t changed a bit. What’ve you been up to?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” She pulled out her phone, tapped the screen a couple times, and then slid it across the table. “That’s what I’ve been up to.”
On the screen was one of the cutest families I’d ever seen. And I didn’t generally think of families in terms like cute.
Lizann stood next to a dark-haired man who looked absolutely thrilled with his life, and he had every reason to be. Aside from his wife, he had three kids – a boy, a girl, and a baby of unknown sex – a nice car, and a split-level house with an actual white picket fence.
“Donny is a city planner. Our oldest, Adam, is six, and then Chloe is four, and the baby, Skylar, is four months.”
“You have a beautiful family,” I said sincerely.
The longer I looked at the picture, the more I wondered what it would look like if it was me standing there. Not with Lizann, but with Cheyenne. To have her standing next to me, looking at me the way Lizann was looking at Donny. To have kids with her. A house. A real home.