by Ashley Gee
But she is smart enough to anticipate my thoughts, even if she doesn’t realize it.
“Condom,” she gasps against my mouth. “I think I have one in my purse.”
Her hips pull far enough away that I feel a rush of cold.
“Let me get it.”
My toiletry bag is on the counter, totally innocuous. She can’t know that the strip of condoms coiled up in the side pocket have already been prepared with the edge of a safety pin. She won’t know that they won’t provide the protection she thinks.
And I’m not going to tell her.
I hate myself more than a little bit as I sheathe my still cock and step into the shower. She stands there waiting for me, body lushly welcoming and an invitation in her smile.
When my mouth opens again, and I almost tell her the truth. The urge to drop down on my knees and beg forgiveness is overwhelming.
Then her thigh hooks over my hip. She squeezes my cock in her hand and urges my hips forward until I am posed at her entrance.
Any ability for rational thought flees and the words die on my tongue.
Pushing inside of her feels like finally coming home after a lifetime of wandering.
I push her back against the tile wall of the shower. Her passage clenches around my cock, gripping harder than a fist. It only takes a few strokes before I feel the sharp fluttering of her approaching orgasm.
My hands form a shelf under her ass so I can lift her feet off the floor. Using her back against the wall for balance, I slam into her over and over again. Zaya begs me to fuck her harder, faster, fisting my hair and pulling on it hard because she is losing control of herself.
I’m right there with her.
Her eyes roll back into her head and her pussy clamps down on me like a vice when she comes. A silent cry parts her lips. I cover her mouth with my own, taking everything she has to give. Her whimpers, her screams, her very breath.
She is too far gone to tell any difference when I explode inside her.
I’ve always liked watching Zaya sleep. Nobody needs to tell me how weird and creepy that is, but it is what it is. The first few times I climbed into her room, it was just to stare at her sleeping face. I think I hoped that she might whisper her secret into what she thought was empty air and I’d finally get the answer I’ve been waiting for since we were children.
It became something different the first time she woke up to see me sitting there. I had to pretend that I hadn’t climbed up the trellis outside and hung from my fingers until I could level my foot up on the window sill, just because I wanted to study her face in the only moments when she seemed at peace.
So I made it about sex, because that was easier than telling the truth.
We’ve always had everything but truth between us, so what was one more lie.
But I no longer have to think of excuses to watch her sleep. I carry her from the shower to the bed, and she is already asleep by the time I lay her out on the blanket. To be fair, I woke her up in the middle of the night to bring her here, and not everyone needs as little as sleep as I do.
When she rolls over and lets out a little sneeze before burrowing into the downy comforter, I nearly wake her up to fuck her all over again. Instead, I let her rest while she still can.
I don’t bother trying to sleep, because there isn’t any point. Instead, I surf Reddit on my phone and respond to the handful of text messages I’ve been ignoring. The oldest one is from my father:
Is it done?
My response is only one word.
Yes.
He hasn’t asked me for any details about the money I’ve spent or the plans I’ve made to get Zaya’s compliance, and I haven’t offered any. I get the feeling he’d rather not know what I’m doing, because he doesn’t want to feel compelled to get involved. That has always been the way of things. Whenever some uppity administrator at school tried to force me to heel by threatening parental interaction, they quickly learned that for every ten messages they left with my father’s secretary, maybe one would get returned. Even that was a stretch.
We’ll expect you for dinner tonight.
And that’s what I get for not ignoring him. As stupid as it sounds, I had this idea that I could keep these two very different facets of my life completely separate. I doubt she wants to be inside Cortland Manor any more than I do. I angrily push out a reply and close the messaging app. I hate that I’m supposed to be available to everyone in my life at all times. Sometimes, I just want to cut myself off from the world.
The next time I look up from the screen, Zaya is awake and staring at me.
She opens her mouth. Before she can say anything, I hear a loud rumble from under the sheet coming from the general vicinity of her stomach.
Her face flushes with embarrassment.
“I’ve already ordered lunch,” I laugh, thoroughly amused. I keep forgetting how cute she manages to be without trying.
Her shy and grateful smile sends a stab of warmth through my cold heart.
Zaya attacks the tray before the room service guy can even finish setting it down on the small table. The fact that she refused breakfast is a testament to just how annoyed she had been with me earlier.
She eats with a single-minded intensity, systematically demolishing the Montechristo sandwich as I watch in amazement. When I snag a french fry from her plate, she practically slaps my hand away.
“You eat like you’ve spent time in prison.”
“And you eat like someone who always knows the next meal is coming.” The dull point of her butter knife stabs at the back of my hand when I go for another fry. “Steal anything else off my plate, and I’ll shank you.”
“Are you really threatening me over a fry?”
“Five fries. You’ve taken five fries. Keep your hands off.” A small smile teases the corner of her mouth, but her tone brooks no argument. She might just stab me over a side dish. “If you wanted french fries, then you shouldn’t have ordered that sad little salad.”
I glance down at my plate full of freshly-picked arugula and heirloom tomatoes.
“Calm down, Shawshank. The rest is all yours.” Shaking my head, I hold my hands up in surrender. “Though I do feel compelled to point out that bottomless french fries are only a phone call away.”
Zaya starts at that, as if only just realizing there is more food where this came from.
I know she doesn’t want me to pity her, so I keep my face carefully blank.
The tension leaves her expression as she takes a furious bite of her sandwich. “Then leave mine alone and order some for yourself.”
If she eats like this at dinner with my parents, Giselle is going to have a field day. “We’re leaving soon to head back.”
Food gone, she leans back in her chair and just stares at me as I stand up from the table. The robe I wrapped around her after we got out of the shower gapes open in the front, exposing the smooth expanse of her chest. My gaze narrows on one almond-colored nipple just peeking out past the terry cloth.
“We’re not spending the night?” She almost sounds disappointed.
Aside from the dinner date with my damn parents, there is a laundry list of things we need to accomplish for this marriage to hold any water. Our marriage license needs to be filed at the courthouse, and West wants a copy of the prenuptial agreement as soon as possible. Not to mention, I figured she would want to go see her brother as soon as possible.
“Is that a problem?”
“No,” she replies hurriedly. “I just thought…you know what, never mind.”
Her dress is draped across the foot of the bed. I toss it in her general direction without looking at her. “Get dressed. We’re going.”
Her balled up robe hits me hard in the face. With a force of will that almost brings me to my knees, I keep my head turned away.
That lasts for about fifteen and a half seconds.
When I finally chance a look at her, not only is she still naked, but posed with her hips jutting forward so my gaz
e is automatically drawn to the part of her I can’t stop thinking about.
Smirking at whatever look is on my face, she finally pulls the damn dress over her head.
I don’t know how the hell I’m going to make it through the next year without losing my mind. The game has changed, and Zaya just scored another point.
Thirty
“Oh, hell no.”
I hold the dirty receiver away from my face so it won’t touch my skin, but Zion’s voice is still loud enough to practically burst my ear drum.
Visiting Zion at the Justice Center is even less fun than I thought it would be. Luckily, they haven’t transferred him to the county jail because he’s underage, but this place still sucks. I spent an hour in the visitor’s waiting room watching the parade of stricken family members come in and out, trying not to cry from the stress of it all.
My idiot of a brother should be grateful he isn’t completely on his own.
“You really don’t have a choice,” I reply with an aggrieved sigh. “Unless you want to spend all of your best years behind bars.”
“So I should just trade one prison for another?” Zion glares at me through the thick glass separating us, his anger and frustration palpable.
Those are the emotions he uses to hide his fear.
“It’s more like private school than a jail. You’d be able to get your diploma and take some college classes. Might even be the best thing that ever happened to you, if it gets you out of Deception.” I can’t decide which of us I’m trying to convince. The thought of sending him away makes my heart ache, but I can’t consider the alternative. “You might even like it, everyone else there will be a juvenile delinquent.”
He makes a rude sound with his mouth. “You mean the kind who shoplift from fancy department stores to get back at their rich absentee parents? Where do I sign up?”
“If you don’t take the deal, then you’re going to adult prison. You really expect me to believe the people in there are any better?”
Zion shakes his head. “My crew is at county.”
“Your crew is why you’re here in the damn first place.”
“I told you these charges are trumped up. I’m innocent.”
“And since when does that ever matter for people like us?”
I read the whole story on my phone during the ride back to Deception. Three masked men burst into the Gas and Sip, demanding all the cash in the register. One of them pistol-whipped the cashier and the gun went off, killing the poor guy. All three of the suspects fled the scene, but a witness caught the license plate of their getaway car. That car was picked up a few hours later with four people in it, Zion included. My brother swears up and down that he wasn’t in that convenience store and had no idea what they’d done when he hooked up with his friends later in the night. The police maintain that he could have been in the car to act as a getaway driver, which would make him just as culpable.
Someone has to go down for this. The Deception police aren’t exactly motivated to look any further than my brother and his shitty friends. Even I wondered if Zion could have been involved when I read the story. The only thing that makes me believe him is that he has never been able to lie to me, even when we were kids.
Living in a place like the Gulch turns everyone into something dark and twisted eventually. You either become the aggressor or just more collateral damage. If Zion weren’t sitting behind this glass now, something else would have brought him here eventually.
Zion curses into the phone. “This is bullshit.”
“And if your crew is so tight, why aren’t any of them saving you from this? If they know you weren’t there, why not just say so?”
“Because that would mean admitting they were there. Don’t be an idiot.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Which means they’re okay with you going down for a crime that they committed. These definitely sound like true friends to me. Remind me to put them on our Christmas card list this year.”
He just shakes his head, looking defeated. “You just don’t understand how this works.”
My brother looks like shit, though I don’t tell him that. His eyes are bloodshot with dark circles underneath, like he hasn’t slept at all since he got here. Maybe he hasn’t. A splash of blood stains his beige jumpsuit right on the chest, like drips from a nosebleed. It makes me wonder if someone has roughed him up, which might explain why he doesn’t want to talk.
“I understand that you have a chance to save yourself. And nobody else is stepping up to do it.”
His fist grips the receiver on his end, so hard that I wonder if the plastic will crack. He slumps against the wall beside him. “You don’t know what they’ll do to me if I talk.”
“I know what will happen if you don’t. According to Vin’s uncle, they have enough evidence to nail you to the wall. There won’t be any walking away from this, no matter what happens.”
“Vin, huh?” Zion’s glare is strong enough to peel the paint from the walls. “He already managed to worm his way into this, I see. Guy works fast.”
I haven’t told him about the marriage, mostly hoping it never comes up at all. By the time his sentence is served, a year will be long past and I can pretend that Vin Cortland never existed.
“Without Vin, there wouldn’t be any deal at all. Don’t be stupid about this.”
My brother doesn’t know that Vin is waiting for me outside. I managed to convince my new husband not to come in with me, but that means he planted himself in the coffee shop across the street, watching the door of the Justice Center like a hawk so he’ll know the moment I walk back out. He told me that if I tried to take the bus home, he’d put me over his knee and spank my bare ass.
I can’t decide if I want that to be a real threat or not.
When I showed him the article, pointing out that I could have been the one working at the Gas and Sip that night, his only response was, “Good thing you don’t work there anymore.”
Vin is still the same autocratic asshole he’s always been, but I don’t understand this sudden desire to protect me. Obviously, he doesn’t want me dying before he gets his inheritance, but my reputation seems to matter to him as much as my safety does. I don’t get the impulse that has him suddenly acting like the hero in a romance novel. Although I have to admit it feels nice to have someone looking out for me, instead of the other way around. But I shouldn’t let him lull me into a false sense of security. He might be on his best behavior right now, but it won’t last.
It never does.
Vin is truly a force to be reckoned with when he deigns to turn on the charm, but eventually something will piss him off and we’ll end up back where we started.
His whims are too unpredictable to trust.
As if reading my mind, Zion murmurs. “I don’t trust the fucking Cortlands, and you shouldn’t either.”
“Trust has nothing to do with it,” I snap. “Look, your lawyer is going to meet with you this week with the paperwork ready to sign. You have until then to decide. But your only choices are to rot in prison until you’re forty, or testify and go to this cushy diversion program. The judge has already said that you’ll be transferred on the same day you testify so the assholes here won’t get a chance to touch you.”
“Fuck.” His head drops against the glass. “This is too much.”
“Nothing is ever easy. Not for us.”
One of the guards raps his knuckles against the door, letting me know we have less than a minute left. “I have to go soon. I put some money on your commissary and you need to call me if you need anything else.”
His gaze narrows on my face. “Where are you getting the money for all this? Lawyers aren’t cheap, and I already heard it isn’t a public defender on my case.”
Zion is not going to want to hear where the money came from or why it’s coming. “We can fight about the details later. Just focus on getting through this.”
“Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
He thinks
I’m whoring myself out to save him. Maybe I am, even if we’ve put a prettier label on it. “You made the front page of the paper, so I suggest you hold on to whatever stones you’re planning to throw. We’ll talk about everything later. I love you.”
“Love you, too,” he says with a sigh. “Even though I don’t want you fucking up your life to save mine.”
“No need. I fuck my life up all on my own for no good reason at all.”
I put down the receiver without waiting for a response, because I don’t really want to hear whatever he would have said next. Zion has always let his frustration at our circumstances get the best of him, like railing against the universe is going to change anything. He thought that acting out would show the world how much he doesn’t care, but that just has him facing a possible life sentence for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit.
Life isn’t fair. And sometimes you have to deal with the devil to get your due.
The ride back to Deception with Vin is quiet, but not exactly awkward.
Neither of us talk much, probably because anything else we say might break the strange spell that has been cast over us. Knowing that I’m his wife, even though it’s temporary, has changed things. Kissing him changed things.
Throwing myself at him, initiating sex for the first time ever, has changed things.
I know Vin has to feel it, too, even if I’m not stupid enough to ask him. We’re at a place where we can actually enjoy some aspects of each other’s company. That’s the most we’ve had between us in years.
I’m not going to ruin it with talk.
My elbow is on the arm rest, which puts my arm close to his when he grips the shifter to switch gears. Every so often his fingers gently stroke the back of my hand, smoothing along my skin.
He seems lost in his own thoughts, making me wonder if he even realizes he’s doing it.