Honor

by Jay Crownover

  “Tell your guard dog to let me in the gate.” He sounded as annoyed as I felt about receiving the early-morning call. I didn’t bother to respond, but I did call down to the guardhouse by the gate and tell them to let him in. Within minutes, the younger blond man was strolling through the front door without bothering to knock.

  “You don’t lock your front door? You have someone messing with your new club and someone trying to run you off the road, and you leave your fortress unsecured?”

  My head still hurt but it was more of a dull throb than the sharp slashes of pain from yesterday. The stitches felt itchy and tight on my scalp and my shoulder and upper chest were a delightful shade of purple from where the seat belt had kept me in the car at the moment of impact. I ignored Race and made my way into the kitchen to scrounge up a bottle of water and maybe something for breakfast. He followed me still looking put out.

  I chugged the entire bottle and put my hands on the island and stared at him.

  “What are you doing here, Race?”

  He adopted a similar pose on the opposite side of the island and met me glare for glare. “I want to know what you’re going to do about someone messing with the club. It hasn’t even been open for two weeks and you’re already losing money.”

  “We’re losing money.”

  Race nodded. “Exactly. As much as it galls me to admit it, we are in this together, Nassir. If things are going south I need to know, and maybe I can help stop the slide. If you fail, I fail, and if I fail, this city fails, and I won’t let that happen.”

  I lifted a hand and rubbed it across the back of my neck to see if I could release some of the tension there.

  “I’m sure Chuck told you about the stuff happening at the club, but how did you know about the car accident last night?”

  He snorted and lifted his gold-colored eyebrows up to his hairline. “All the cops were talking about the Bentley getting totaled and how you looked like hammered dog shit but refused medical treatment. Titus overheard and mentioned it to Reeve. Reeve told Booker, and since I can’t keep Karsen away from that guy no matter how hard I try, she overheard it and told me. Which pisses me off. I should’ve heard it from you, asshole.”

  Karsen was Race’s girlfriend’s little sister. She was seventeen going on thirty. He had taken them both in, built them an impenetrable castle right in the center of the Point, and was doing his damnedest to keep the teenager from getting her heart broken by the rough ex-con we had put in charge of security at the strip club. The pretty young thing had a crush on the scarred man that wouldn’t seem to quit even though Race did everything in his power to squash it.

  “I kicked a couple out of the club and the wife took exception. The Bentley is worse off than I am, and all I wanted to do after the crash was come home and clean myself up. I was asleep when you called, but I would’ve touched base with you when I got up and moving for the day.”

  He looked skeptical but relaxed some of the tension in his stance.

  “I don’t have the time or the patience to break in a new partner.” He said it flippantly, but underneath his easy charm I could see that he was actually worried about me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  “I’m going over every inch of surveillance I can find on the club. I don’t know how the person is getting away with all these little acts of sabotage, but I’ll find out.” I didn’t share my feeling that it all felt like some kind of twisted juvenile retaliation for something.

  “It has to be someone on the inside. One of the club members or one of the new staff.”

  I nodded a little bit in agreement. “Yeah. But I ran background checks on all of them and nothing popped up.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Want me to have Stark dig a little deeper? His time isn’t cheap, but if there’s anything hiding anywhere, he’ll find it.”

  I knew he would. The computer hacker was the one who had tracked Key down in Denver for me after Titus refused to help me pinpoint her exact location. Stark looked like a biker or a professional cage fighter, but he really was just a bulked-up and heavily tattooed computer nerd. He’d ended up on my payroll more than once.

  “Yeah. That might be a good place to start. Maybe he can find some kind of connection I missed.” I pushed off the counter and turned to the fridge. My stomach growled at me, letting me know that man could not live on water and mind-blowing sex alone. “You want something to eat?”

  Race shook his head. “No. I’m picking the girls up and taking them to look at a couple of colleges out of town. Karsen graduates at the end of the school year and I want her out of this hellhole. I want her to have a shot at a normal life.”

  Now it was my turn to shake my head. “You really think she’s going to leave the Point? Her sister is here. Her life is here . . .” I trailed off and he narrowed his eyes at me until they were nothing more than green slits.

  “Booker is here.”

  I shrugged. “She’s had her sights on him for a long time.”

  “He’s too old for her. He’s too hard for her. He’s too deep into this life for her. He’s too fucked up for her. He’s too . . . everything for her. She can go to college and meet a nice kid that plays lacrosse or digs comic books or something. She deserves better than what she can get here. She’s young enough to have a shot at something better than what’s waiting for her here.”

  I pulled out a cast-iron skillet and some bacon and eggs and set them next to the stove. Key’s words about making choices for her floated around in my head.

  “You can force her to go, but you can’t ever change her mind about who or what she wants. If you push her too hard you’ll lose her altogether, and I bet you can figure out right where she’ll run.”

  He swore under his breath. “She has a little while until she turns eighteen. Maybe I can change her mind before then.”

  “What does Booker have to say about it?” The big man wasn’t exactly talkative, and since I let Reeve take over the reins at the strip club, I hardly saw either of them anymore except for brief moments when I stuck my head in to check on business.

  “Booker wants to keep his job and wants to keep breathing, so he keeps his distance from her. But he knows she has a thing for him, and he went out of his way to risk his own neck to try to keep that creep Roark from hurting her. It’s a nightmare is what it is.”

  He sounded so much like a disgruntled parent that it made me chuckle. “She’s a sharp girl, and she got thrown into the deep end really young. Maybe she knows more about what’s best for her than you give her credit for. I’m sure any responsible person out there would advise Brysen that you aren’t exactly a knight in shining armor and yet you take care of her like she’s some kind of precious jewel. No one is going to love her better than you, and you’re a criminal, Race. We are no better or worse than Booker.” That wasn’t really true—I knew for a fact I was way worse than the scarred ex-con—but I didn’t need to share that with the man I needed to run my enterprise with. He already didn’t trust me. I didn’t want him to be too scared of me and my past, just cautiously leery like he already was.

  I thought maybe he needed a reminder that just because we were bad men and did business with bad men, it didn’t mean we weren’t capable of taking care of the good in our lives when we got our hands on it.

  “Whatever. There is nothing wrong with wanting something more for those we care about. Isn’t that why you let Keelyn run from you? You’ve always been twisted up about her, but you gave her a shot at something more.”

  I looked over his shoulder because I heard movement from the other side of the house. It was like he had summoned her from her slumber by saying her name. I tossed the bacon into the pan so I could feed her and take her back to bed when she finally decided to make an appearance.

  “I knew there was nothing out there that was better for her than me. She just had to figure it out on her own.”

  He snorted. “You are such an arrogant bastard, Gates. I’m outta here. Keep me post
ed on what’s happening with the club. I’ll call Stark and have him swing by and grab all the files you have on the club members and the employees from Chuck. I’m just a little bit glad you aren’t dead.” He turned to leave the kitchen and called over his shoulder when I could no longer see him, “And I’m locking your goddamn door for you on my way out.”

  His spot across the island was taken up by a much prettier sight. She was wearing one of my shirts and nothing else, and even though her bright red hair was standing up all over her head like artificial flames, she was still the most beautiful thing in the world.

  “You want to eat?”

  She nodded sleepily and yawned. When she stretched her arms up above her head, I wanted to pull the island out of the ground with my bare hands to get a glimpse of how high the shirt rode up on her legs.

  “How’s your head?” Her voice was still thick with sleep and it made my dick twitch and my skin get tight.

  “It was doing okay until Race started complaining about the trials and tribulations of raising a teenager.”

  She laughed a little and I felt it all the way in my gut. I decided maybe man could live on mind-blowing sex alone because I was far hungrier for her than I was for food. I moved the pan off the heat and prowled toward her.

  “I thought we were gonna eat.”

  I grinned at her and made sure it showed all of my teeth. “Oh, we are.” After all, I had been starving for her for years. Now it was time to have my fill.

  Chapter 11

  Keelyn

  Every dirty thing we’d long denied each other was alive in his smile as he started toward me. Stripped of his armor of typically fancy duds and broken down to his most basic parts, Nassir was so much more dangerous. This was real. The man underneath the artifice—he was beautiful and ferocious. Raw, open, and completely unpolished.

  Maybe it was the scars that liberally dotted every inch of his exposed chest. Maybe it was the sprawling canvas of black ink that covered his back from the base of his neck to the top of his perfectly sculpted ass. Maybe it was the ripple of muscle as he prowled toward me like a big, uncaged predator. Maybe it was the way his odd-colored eyes sparked and popped at me like hot embers. Maybe it was his too long hair and the way it contrasted with the stark white bandage still taped on the side of his neck. Really I knew it was all those things that made Nassir who he was, and they had my skin pebbling up and anxiety mixing with leftover and lazy desire in my blood. I sucked in a breath and did what I always did when I wasn’t sure how to handle everything he was throwing my way.

  I ran.

  I pushed away from the kitchen counter and bolted toward the living room and the stairway that led up to the side of the house that was opposite his room. It was always fight or flight with him, not that it mattered which option I went with. Fight led to exhausting myself trying to wear him down while he stayed impenetrable, and flight led to him chasing after me until I was caught and had nowhere else to go. I wasn’t sure I ever really wanted to win or get away from him in the first place, at least not anymore, but that didn’t mean I was ever going to make him stop working to have any part of me.

  I was almost to the top of the stairs when his hands landed on my hips and his hold sent me to my knees on the hard wooden surface. I put my hands out to catch myself from falling forward, which left me on my hands and knees in front of him as he leaned forward and coiled his hand in the fire-colored hair at the back of my head. He was gentle about it, and that had my tummy twisting up and my breath rushing out of my lungs.

  His lips were soft when they landed near my cheek as he growled at me, “I’m always going to come after you, Key. It doesn’t matter how fast you run or how far you go. I’m always going to be right behind you.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was a threat or a promise, but hearing him say he would never stop coming after me was more of a turn-on than the fact that he worked his hands around to the shirt I had borrowed from his ridiculously massive closet and tore the front of it open, sending buttons bouncing all over the place and sailing down to the first floor.

  I looked over my shoulder at him with a lifted eyebrow. “That’s going to piss your bitchy housekeeper off.”

  He grunted a response, pulling the fabric off of me, leaving me naked and prone before him as he worked his hands around the front of me so that each of my breasts was trapped in his callused palms. The rough brush of his skin across my sensitive nipples had me drawing in a sharp breath and curling my hands around the edge of the step in front of me. It wasn’t the most comfortable position to be in—the stairs were hard under my knees and I was arched at an awkward angle—but with him standing a few steps below me and looking at me like he was going to devour me in one gulp, I wasn’t in any hurry to ask him to let me up.

  He squeezed each breast and shifted his hands so that each nipple was trapped between his index and middle fingers. He pinched the puckered peaks with enough force that it had me sucking in air between my teeth in a mixture of pleasure and pain that was strong enough to make my head spin. His lips landed on the back of my neck and the scrape of his stubble across my skin had my spine bowing up in response. That was a hot spot for me and he was taking full advantage of the fact that I was immobile and pliant in front of him. His talented tongue dragged a wet path all the way to the center of my spine, which had me shivering in delight and mewling in almost protest as his hands got even more impatient on my breasts. It was a fine line between too much and just enough to make it hurt so good, and Nassir was walking it like a pro.

  He bent forward again and I felt his heat envelop me. The shirt I had on was suddenly too much and I wanted it out of the way so I could feel all his smooth skin and hard physique pressed along me. “I like you like this.” He let go of one of my nipples and the sudden blood flow into the previously trapped peak made my eyes slam shut. He brushed his thumb along the underside of my breast and let his fingers dance and skip across my quivering stomach toward my already slick and wanting center.

  “On my hands and knees? Who doesn’t want a girl in that position for them?” I meant to ask it sarcastically but he stopped to trace my belly button with his finger and my words came out sounding thin and breathy instead. Just that simple little caress had passion sparking white-hot inside me. I’d never experienced anything like it. My sexual experience was vast and varied. There wasn’t much I hadn’t tried or been interested in at one time or another, but nothing and no one came close to igniting the kind of response this man did. It was like my entire being had been waiting for him to come along and show me what it really meant to want, to need.

  He kissed me on the shoulder and chuckled against my skin. “No not on your hands and knees. I don’t care about the position, I care about the fact that you aren’t trying to get away from me anymore. I like you caught, Key.”

  I whimpered a little as he stopped playing with my belly button and detoured to that part of my body that was anxiously waiting for him.

  I was caught. I was trapped by his power and ensnared in his complex personality.

  I gasped out his name and let my forehead fall forward to rest on the edge of the stair as he tapped my clit with his thumb and pumped his other digits in and out of the soaked opening of my sex. I couldn’t stop my hips from moving back toward him, and over my shoulder I watched his eyes flare up like a wildfire at the motion. That golden caramel color was always so pretty and bright in his striking and harshly hewn face, but as he watched his fingers disappear inside me and the way I couldn’t help but move on him, they bled fire and so much passion they looked almost too hot to be human.

  His muscles were tense and his gaze was centered on where I was riding his hand; the raw desire etched on his features was enough to have me on the brink of an orgasm as he continued to circle that tight bundle of nerves at the heart of me with unrelenting pressure and unparalleled skill. He let go of the other breast, and when blood rushed back into that point, it hurt enough that I cried out and turned around to gla
re at him.

  He just gave me a wicked grin and moved his unoccupied hand to stroke soothingly up and down my spine. I arched into the touch, let my eyes flutter closed at the dual stimulation, one naughty and one so sweet that it had my throat clogging with emotion. It was a lot to take in. I wondered if sex with him was always going to be something that felt like it was ripping my soul and heart apart and then putting them back together with him firmly in the places that had always been broken and torn.

  He twisted his wrist and reached down to squeeze my ass as I bucked against him. I was so close to coming I could feel myself getting tighter around his playing fingers and moisture starting to slick around his motions. I groaned and forced my heavy head up off the stair so that I could look at him over my shoulder.

  “I want you inside of me.” There had been too much time wasted keeping him at an arm’s length for self-preservation. Now that I was caught, I wanted every part of what caught meant. I wanted him to know I was willingly giving this to him and would give it to him any chance I got.

  One of his dark eyebrows shot up and I thought he was going to argue or say something that would undoubtedly piss me off, but he just pulled my hips closer, yanking my knees closer to the edge of the step, and started to work his black sleep pants down around his lean hips. When his cock sprang free it made my mouth water. I had seen plenty of dick in my life and had intimate knowledge of enough of them to know that no cock should ever be considered beautiful, but Nassir’s was. Like the rest of him, it sort of had a brutal elegance with its dusky color and eager head already leaking a drop of precome. It was long and just thick enough to make things interesting, and when he used his thumb to bend the rigid length down so that he could line himself up with my entrance, I couldn’t hold back a sigh of satisfaction.

  Unlike last night, he took his time as he slid inside my waiting folds. My body stretched, quaked, heated up, and wept for him as he slowly and achingly set himself all the way inside of me. It felt like being branded from the inside out. It felt like he was making a place for himself inside my body that no one else would ever be able to fill. It felt like he was showing me some hidden secret about sex and togetherness I had missed along the way. It felt deep and dangerous.