“Mic,” he says, looking up from where his mouth is presses against my chest above the swell of my breasts. “I can promise you this. After this shit is over, I’m taking you home.”
Home.
The word rolls around in my brain and in my heart as Pike raises up to kiss the tears from my cheeks. “Let me show you, Mic. I’m not good with words the way you are. I can’t explain how I feel, but I want to show you.”
He kisses me hard, breathing me in. His tongue meats mine and our fingers tangle in one another’s hair. After a minute, he pulls back. His eyes meet mine, posing both a question and a dare.
“Tell me you want me to show you,” he rasps.
“Yes. Show me,” I groan, throwing my head back and closing my eyes as Pike trails his lips across my neck and then down between my breasts. My nipples harden, and he moans as he takes one into his mouth. My back arches into his touch as he licks and sucks until my legs are kicking out beneath my body. He moves to my other nipple, and I rub my legs together, to create friction. Craving more of this. More of him. My thighs are slick with my own wetness as my body is assaulted and cherished in a way I never knew it could be.
He releases my nipple with a pop then presses me back against the bed. He’s both tender and passionate as he licks his down way between my legs, which he tosses over his shoulders. I tug on his hair while he flattens his tongue against my clit, stroking and licking. Teasing and pleasing. The tension in my lower stomach grows and I feel like I’m being wound up from the inside like a spring being pushed into place.
My vision blurs as he uses one and then two fingers to penetrate me. His scruffy face rubs on the inside of my thighs. “I love the way you fucking taste,” he moans against my clit.
What he’s doing to me, for me, the licks the sucks the feeling he’s creating inside of me, these are his words.
I arch up into his face, holding tight onto his hair. He growls and continues to devour me. I feel like I’m going to come, but the way he slows his tongue and the stroke of his finger is sweet agony, the way he brings me to the edge and then holds me there. The best agony.
Just like us. The best agony one can find in another human being.
“Come,” he growls. He grazes his teeth over my clit, and I’m done, breaking apart under his master touch. His hand reaches up and covers my mouth, muting the sound of his name being screamed from my lips. I bite down on his finger and hold it between my teeth until I come back down.
I understand now. My heart swells. Pike understands me. Not just my body.
Me.
Tears pour from my eyes. Pike raises up and straddles my thighs with his muscular legs. He dips down to once more lick them away. I’m sobbing and clenching my legs around him, needing more of whatever this is that came through the floodgates when I opened up my heart to him. More of his feelings. His love.
His fucking cock deep inside of me.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks, looking down at me with lines creasing his forehead.
I sniffle. “Not in the way you think. I’m fine. I’m just taking this all in. You. Us.” I scratch my fingernails over the scruff on his jaw and tuck his hair behind his ear. “I’m yours. I understand what you’re trying to tell me, and you’re right. I’m totally fucking yours.”
“Say that a-fucking-gain.” he orders, biting at my lip.
“I’m yours,” I moan as his lips capture mine, and we speak in his language with our tongues, our mouths, our bodies.
“You need more?” Pike asks, sucking my bottom lip into his mouth, holding my jaw in his hand.
“Yes,” I breathe. He scrapes his jaw against my cheek, and the friction causes me to squirm beneath him.
Pike growls and makes quick work of his jeans, pushing them to the floor, he lifts me off the bed and carries me to the other side of the room, pressing me up against the wall. His cock throbs between us. Moisture drips from the tip, wetting my stomach.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he demands. I comply without question, wrapping my tight core around the hard muscle of his body and shaft.
“You like doing what you’re told,” he muses, teasing my pussy with the head of his thick cock.
I open my mouth to argue, but the words don’t come out because he’s right. In this context, I love doing what I’m told. I love the way he responds to my compliance.
I love that I trust him to do any and all of it.
“I want to take my time with you, but I know we can’t, but I’m going to make the most of this. The most of you,” he promises.
“Yes. Please,” I beg.
His hands move to my ass, digging his fingers into my flesh. His lips find mine once more, teasing and licking along the seam. “You taste so fucking sweet.”
I’m lost in his words. I open my mouth to the invasion of his tongue and savor the feeling of his against mine, of our bodies pressed so tightly together.
It’s as if we are in our own bubble, and nothing can touch us here, and I never want to leave if it means leaving his arms, his warmth. He takes one hand off my ass to reach between us, pushing his fingers inside. The moment he reaches the wetness, pooling between my legs, I see stars.
“So fucking wet for me,” he says against my jaw. His voice is raspy and dark. “Tell me what you want me to do to this beautiful body of yours. To this gorgeous pussy.” He hooks his finger and strokes that magical spot within that makes me whimper and my body feel as if he’s set it on fire.
My mouth can’t seem to form words, but I manage a gasp when he strokes me harder. Faster. I cry out and tighten my legs around his waist. “I want you.”
“What do you want me to do to you?”
“I…I want you to fuck me.”
“I’ve never wanted to do anything more in my entire fucking life than fuck you right now.” He unwraps my legs from his waist and sets me on the floor. He kneels to give my clit another slow, languid kiss that renders me unable to stand or see or even breathe.
“Fuck, Mic,” he groans. He doesn’t waste a minute, scooping me back up and setting me on top of the small dresser. My legs take the place they had before around his body. “Do you want me?” he asks, holding my gaze. It’s a different way of phrasing what he’s asked me before, but the way he asks doesn’t hold the same meaning. There’s something more within the question. A fragility I didn’t expect. It’s almost as if he’s asking me if he’s okay. If he’s good enough.
I cup his face in my hands and stare deep into his green eyes. “Pike?”
“Yeah?” he asks, breathing hard, barely holding it together.
“Fuck me. Now.”
With a groan and gritted teeth, he pushes inside me with enough force that I’m surprised we don’t break the dresser or the wall. I’m not even part of the world anymore. The hateful, disappointing, disheartening, broken world. I’m part of Pike. We are one.
I’m being stretched impossibly open as he fills me with every inch of himself. He feels slick and hot as I pulse around his cock.
He pulls back and thrusts in harder, possessively, telling me more than any conversation anyone could have, it doesn’t take me long to lose myself, both in mind and in body. “I want to feel you come around my cock. I want to feel you. All of you. Give it to me, Mic. Give me you.”
I hold on for dear life while I’m consumed with the orgasm that wraps around me like I’m being strangled. I can’t breathe, and just when I think I’m going to pass out, I’m hit with an explosion of pleasure that crashes into me over and over again. Pure bliss that spreads through my entire body before finally weaving its way around my heart. It’s not just a mind-blowing orgasm that makes me forget time, space, science, hatred, loss. It’s the kind that feeds your soul and heals your body.
It’s love.
Pikes face is tight with tension. His neck chorded. His ab muscles constrict. “Mic! Oh, fuck, Mic!” Pike comes with a loud groan. I feel his cock pulsing his release within me, and I gasp at the bolt of pleasure that sizzle
s through my body at the feeling.
I’m in awe of Pike, of his raw power and determination. Of the way he fucks me like he’s a part of my body.
He drops his forehead to mine. “Did you understand what I was trying to tell you this time?”
I nod against him, catching my breath. “I heard every damn word.”
“It’s me and you. Always. Don’t ever forget it. Don’t ever doubt it.”
“I thought you said you weren’t good with words?” I chuckle.
His eyes are dark and serious. “I’m not.”
“So, you’re a liar, then?” I tease.
He shakes his head slowly from side to side. “No, Mic. I’ve just been denying the truth.” Pike pushes the damp hair from my eyes. He presses a kiss to my sweaty forehead. “Until you opened my eyes.”
PIKE
“Why do you wear these?” Mickey asks, turning around one of the broken cuffs I wear on each wrist. “You never told me.”
“It’s a reminder of where I’ve been. Where I never want to go back,” I explain.
“Are these real cuffs?”
“These are the first handcuffs that were ever wrapped around my wrists when I was arrested for the first time. I think I was fifteen or sixteen at the time,” I reply.
Mickey continues to mindlessly spin them around, her naked body pressed up against mine. Her softness against my hardness. It’s the first time I’ve felt any sort of peace in years.
I prop myself up on my elbow, facing her on the bed. “You know, I’ve been having these crazy dreams since the night you left. Every night, I dream of the town, of Logan’s Beach, but what it would have looked like before there were houses or people here. Barren, like it would be in a drought. Not a drop of green. Not a blade of grass. Just dust and dirt and dead trees as far as the eye can see, and then, I wake up, and I wonder what the fuck I’m eating before bed that’s making me dreaming about fucking trees and dirt.”
Mickey mirrors my position, facing me. “When I was working on my doctorate, I wrote a paper on dream analysis. It’s not a perfect science, but some images reoccurred in enough subjects’ dreams to be able to analyze them based on the subjects’ current life and emotional status. From there we were able to determine and assign those images meaning. For example, a barren landscape often means dissatisfaction, in particular dissatisfaction with one’s love life.”
Her cheeks burn as she speaks, and I can’t help wanting to lick the blush from them all over again.
She catches me staring then clears her throat and continues. “It can also represent needing someone who isn’t there or wanting someone who doesn’t want you back.” Her eyes meet mine, and I pull her closer into my body, inhaling the smell of her shampoo and relishing the feel of her little body against mine, her perfect tits crushed up against my chest. “But, the last thing can’t be true, because if the dream was about me…I’ve always wanted you back. I’ll always want you back.”
“God, you’re fucking sexy when you’re talking all your smart shit.” I groan, and I press my lips to hers. What started as a kitchen fire I could put out with a safety blanket, has erupted into a fire that can’t be contained. Fuck it, let the place burn around us. Mickey is in my arms, and her lips are on mine. The entire fucking world could burn down, and I would die content for the first time in my life.
I chuckle, and she pulls back, searching my face. “What’s so funny?” she asks with an adorable grin.
“Nothing,” I say, diving back into the kiss, parting her lips with my tongue until she’s moaning into my mouth, making my cock stir back to life once again.
It is funny, though.
I’ve collected a lot of shit over the years, plastering the walls of the pawn shop with it, but now, I have something that truly completes me. When I have Mickey, I have everything. Content in the chaos she brings into my life.
“Do you love me?” Mickey asks. She then shakes her head and drops her face into her hand. “Nevermind. That was a stupid question. It just kind of came out.”
I pull her hand from her eyes. “Look at me, Mic.”
She slowly lifts her gaze to mine. “I’m not good with the whole love thing, but I have this feeling that I want to protect you and strangle you all at the same time, the same one that tells me that we’re linked by an invisible rope that can’t be cut. The one that brings with it a pain I’ve never felt when we ain’t together.”
She sucks in a deep breath. “That’s a much better explanation than pheromones and hormones, and yeah, I think that’s love.”
I take one of the broken cuffs off my wrist and clink it around hers. “Then yeah, Mic. I fucking love you.”
I’m so wrapped up in the moment that I almost forget what I wanted to give her. “Here,” I offer, reaching to the floor I pick up my jeans and pull out a note from the pocket. On it is a name and an address. “Tomorrow at noon. Don’t be late.”
“Who is this person?” she asks, reading the name on the note. “What is this for?”
“It’s to help you with your plan.” I tap a finger on the note. “If you want to take down Darius for good, this is who you need to talk to. It’s his supplier. You are going to go there, and pitch them a deal. While you’re there you’re going to find out everything you can about Darius. Who knows, maybe you’ll discover something we didn’t know before. Something that can help take him down.”
“You’re not going with me?” she asks.
“I can’t. I don’t do business with them, The Reich does. And you’re…”
“Part of The Reich,” she finishes, her shoulders slumping.
I lift her chin. “You can do this, and you will. You’re not one of them. Never were. Remember that. Besides, they are going to love the deal you’re going to pitch them. Trust me.”
“What kind of deal?” she asks, sitting up straight with her shoulders back once again. She cocks her head to the side, looking very much intrigued by this new possibility.
I kiss the corner of her lips. Her body arches toward me on instinct as my lips trail further down her beautiful body. The party is still raging downstairs. We have a little more time.
I chuckle at her response to my touch.
“The kind of deal they can’t fucking refuse.”
13
Mickey
Meeting with a cartel boss, wait, cartel leader, cartel grand wizard, whatever they are called, meeting the leader of a drug cartel isn’t exactly how I saw any part of this plan going.
But here, I fucking am.
The hotel is on the affluent side of town. The side that puts the ‘beach’ in Logan’s Beach. It’s not far from the townhouse my family used every summer. I wonder what has happened to that place since then and remind myself to take Mickey there when all of this is over and she’s feeling up to it.
Pike told me before he left that Mindy is happy and getting healthier by the day. She spends all of her time hanging out with Thorne in the Pawn Shop and loves greeting the customers silently since her damaged voice box still hasn’t recovered. I also remind myself to take her to see a specialist when all of this is over.
I’m eager to see it for myself. To see my sister smiling and very much healthy and alive. It’s what fuels me through my fears regarding this meeting that’s about to take place and pushes me forward. Because I’m not just doing this for myself anymore. I’m doing it for Pike, for Mindy, and even though I never thought I’d even think it before, for Percy.
I park down the street so the van isn’t caught on the security cameras and sneak my way inside the towering hotel through the staff entrance, passing large washers and dryers, a kitchen bigger than I’ve ever seen before, stretching down an entire corridor the length of a football field. There’re dozens of staff members in varying uniforms and chef’s coats shouting at one another and rushing about. Pots and pans clamor. Bells ring. A rolling car whizzes by me, almost running over my foot. It’s being pushed by a man who looks like a fireman who is running toward a rag
ing blaze and not like a waiter with a cartful of room service trays.
I find the staff elevator. The doors are about to close, but I manage to run and turn sideways, fitting in just before they shut. I find myself standing next to a man in a tuxedo holding onto the handle of a three-tiered room service tray.
When the doors open at the ninth floor, I get out and find suite 720 at the very end of the hallway. The only room with a solid oak double door entrance. The entire hotel smells like lavender, vanilla, and fresh laundry. I inhale deeply before raising my knuckles to knock .
It opens before I have a chance and I stumble as I’m caught off guard. A man wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a gold front tooth waves me inside. “Señora Lovejoy, right this way,” he says.
My heart races as I follow him through a spacious bright living room to a sitting area bigger than Pike’s entire apartment.
The man extends his hand toward a set of closed doors and opens them for me. I step inside, but he doesn’t follow, shutting the doors behind me.
This room is even bigger. Decorated with a modern grey and white pallet with a touch of silver and light wood accents scattered over shiny white tables and cabinetry. Floor to ceiling windows bath the room in bright light with dark blue sheer curtains tied on each side of the wall.
There’s a painting leaning up against the wall opposite two plush white chairs. A sheet is pushed over the top as if it’s new and recently unwrapped. The image of a woman standing in the center of what appears to be a rocky battlefield catches my eye. I walk over and crouch down to inspect it further. The painting itself was created in varying shades of grey, green, and muted gold. The only pop of color is where the artist used white to create light where they would otherwise be done.
The woman appears to be a warrior with long flowing red hair. Her fitted armor is ornate, but laughable since it doesn’t cover her shoulders or chest and has that Wonder Woman heart affect around her ample breasts. One arm is raised, pointing a massive sword toward the sky. There’s a halo effect around her head as the clouds above her open up, bathing her in light. She’s not just a warrior though, a large pair of white wings takes up the majority of the painting’s background.
Pawn (The Pawn Duet, Book Two): A King Series Spinoff Page 13