Honor

by Jay Crownover

  She pulled back and smiled at me. She was spending too much time with the devil because temptation and promise dripped off every inch of her as she told me, “I sure did.” It was pure wickedness that gleamed out of her eyes as she dropped to her knees in front of me and leaned forward to press the softest, sweetest kiss to the underside of my dick where it jutted up toward my belly. I groaned and she moved to press butterfly-light kisses all along one side and then down the other before pulling the entire length into the enveloping heat of her mouth. It made my eyes roll back in my head and I was pretty sure it was the best kiss I had ever received in my life.

  I already had my hand on the back of her head, so I let her set a pace that worked for her and leaned back so that my back was against the shower wall. It was hot, slippery, and so goddamn sexy I felt my legs shake. She curled one hand around my hip for leverage as she bobbed up and down, going deeper and taking more of me inside with each pass. It made my abs tense up and my balls tighten. It made my spine lock and my skin pebble up in desire. She swirled her tongue around the plump head and I think there was even a gentle scrape of teeth involved at one point. All I knew was that it felt like being worshipped. Like being honored. Like she wanted to be exactly where she was, and when her free hand got creative and disappeared between my legs so that she could caresses and stroke my sensitive sac, I was pretty sure it was the first time this particular devil saw heaven.

  I didn’t last much longer after that. I groaned her name and it echoed off the tiled walls as I emptied myself into the back of her throat. As I leaned limply against the wall, feeling spent, shaky, and determined to be worth all the things this woman gave to me, I pulled her up to her feet and held her as she kissed me under the chin with a sassy grin on her pretty face.

  “Not so soft.”

  That made me bark out a laugh as I wrapped an arm around her and picked her up off her feet. It would only take me a minute to recharge so I could kiss her back.

  “Just enough hard and enough soft to make me the perfect man.” I said it sarcastically because it was no secret that I was as far from perfect as any one man could be. I think that was why I pushed everyone else around me so hard.

  She laughed uncontrollably as I started to tug and pull her wet clothes off of her. It was like pulling a wet suit off of a deep-sea diver. Her eyes darkened to slate and her smile softened as I kissed her and brushed her hair off her face. I wanted inside of her more than I wanted my next breath. There was no wait left in me when it came to her.

  “Perfect for me.”

  Those words had my dick getting hard again and zeroing in on her soft center. I smoothed her wet and tangled hair off of her face and lowered my mouth to hers. When we were in bed together, or really whenever I took her, it felt frantic and rushed, like I was afraid she was going to change her mind on me at any time and disappear out of my life for good. With all her stuff mingled with mine, with her pliant and waiting under me, some of that rush took a backseat for once. I wanted to savor her. I wanted to breathe every sigh, feel every quiver, own every pull of her body as I pushed inside of her. I wanted to simply be with her and appreciate that we both got the opportunity to have each other.

  Her tongue twisted around mine and her fingers dug into my shoulders as she lifted one long leg up to curl around my waist. I felt her heel on my ass urging me to move, but I resisted, content to feel her shift and flutter all along my buried erection.

  I trailed a hand across her chest and cupped her breast in my hand. She arched into my touch and I felt her grinding against where we were joined. Her sharp little teeth nipped at the tip of my tongue and her eyes were all kinds of stormy as she got a fist in my hair and pulled my head up to look at her.

  “Move your ass, Gates.”

  I chuckled and rubbed my chin across her shoulder while tracing the pulse that throbbed in the side of her neck with my tongue.

  “I’m feeling you.”

  “Yeah, I feel you too, but it’s not enough. Put that pretty dick to use.”

  That had me rearing back to loom over her. “You think my dick is pretty?”

  She pushed her hips up against mine and groaned as our pubic bones mashed together, finally giving her the friction she was after.

  “All of you is pretty and all of you feels really good, but I need you to move.” Her other leg joined the first, and all I could do was let her pull me in. Not like I wanted to be anywhere else anyway. I liked that she wanted to take what she needed from me, that she had just as much impatience to be together as I did.

  I braced my hands on the bed above her head and started to really move. I thrust into her hard enough to have her moving up the bed. She gasped in pleasure and her eyes drifted to half-mast as poignant pleasure overtook her pretty face. She clutched at my shoulders and held on as the ride got rougher and fiercer the wetter and hotter she became under me. It was like sinking into fire and heaven at the same time. It was the closest thing to love I had ever felt, and I wanted to be inside that feeling forever.

  I reached for a pillow and shoved it under her already elevated hips as she fucked me back. The added lift let me get deeper, sink in farther, and she mewled at the sensation, which had my balls drawing up tight in pleasure.

  I nibbled on her collarbone. She pulled on my hair and in an instant we broke apart together. She called me her devil and I called her my everything. We clung to each other, sweaty, spent, and forever entwined. My starved heart and soul were gorged to the point of overflowing and every battle I’d ever fought felt like it had been nothing if this was my victory, being here with her.

  Chapter 17

  Keelyn

  “Don’t forget I have to drop all that stuff off at the cleaners sometime this afternoon.”

  I was sipping on some fancy coffee drink from a café that was most definitely not located in the Point and enjoying not having to navigate the streets as Nassir drove us into town. It had been a battle royal getting him to agree to let me ride along as he went into town to check on the club. He was worried about me being a target now that Tyler had a gun, but I shut him down with the simple statement that I was just as worried about something happening to him. In fact, I reminded him that the safest place for me had always been right by his side and that I had most of my life savings invested in the Lock & Key, so it was just as important to me to see how much damage had been done to the building as it was to him.

  I hadn’t told him about my newly formed idea for creating some kind of system to get people, those who were drowning and flailing, off the streets of our city, but after he unloaded everything he had found out about Tyler and his home life, I was more certain than ever it was something I wanted to make a reality. A kid like that needed a way out so that he didn’t feel like his only option was to pull on the devil’s tail. I wanted to make that kind of difference and I knew Nassir would support me even if his heart wasn’t quite as lenient as mine. People were my thing, after all, and he was all about letting me do my thing.

  I had to ask what he had done to the man that not only attacked me all those years ago but had also tortured his own family. Nassir had looked at me out of the corner of his eye and asked me if I really wanted to know. To my surprise I did.

  I really did.

  I wanted to know what he thought was a fitting punishment for a man that destroyed his children and ruined three young lives. I was expecting to be disgusted, to have my tummy turn and to have to force myself to sit still and not squirm while he recounted his actions. To my relief and surprise, when he explained that he simply knocked over the entertainment center and let the man stay pinned to the floor with very little hope for help coming along to save him, I thought it sounded almost too lenient.

  I was expecting blood and guts. I was expecting horror stories and visions of punishment that would give me nightmares. What I got was a story about retribution for a man that deserved much worse. I wasn’t sure if this leniency was a result of my influence on him but I liked to think s
o. He would always be something sharp and deadly on the inside, something that could be used to destroy, but every blade needs a sheath and every gun needs a holster to protect it. I had no problem offering myself up as the thing that kept this particular weapon secure.

  “Why didn’t Bayla come get that stuff and take it to the cleaners? I called her and told her there was stuff at the house she needed to pick up.”

  I flinched and absently lifted my fingers to touch the lump at the back of my head. If he had felt it when we were messing around, he hadn’t mentioned it, and I wasn’t really sure how to have this conversation with him and not get the jealous housekeeper into trouble.

  I just wanted her gone, not punished. Loving a man like Nassir was already enough of a penance and a wound that would never heal. “I told her I would take care of it. We need to have a conversation about her and what exactly she does for you now that I’m staying with you indefinitely.”

  He made a noise in his throat and cut me a sharp look out of those burning eyes. “You aren’t staying with me. You’re living with me. Big difference, Key. Our lives are wrapped up together in a giant knot and you can’t untie it without both of us unraveling.”

  He was so prickly about things like that. It was actually kind of cute . . . well, as cute as a man that was everything about sex and danger personified could be.

  “You’ve always had me in knots, Nassir. I learned to stop struggling against them all the time because that only made them tighten.”

  One of his dark eyebrows winged upward and the corner of his mouth kicked up in a sexy smirk that had me clenching my thighs.

  “I’ll put you in real knots one day and see how much you enjoy it.”

  Of course that brought to mind all the debauchery and experimentation that played out live and in color on the monitors in his office. Before working at the club, I would’ve told him to go to hell. Giving up that kind of control, especially to him, would’ve sent me into a panic and caused me to flee. Now it seemed intriguing and titillating. I blew out a low breath and reached out to put my hand on his hard thigh.

  “Maybe. You’ll have to work for it, though.”

  He chuckled and turned the SUV into the parking lot in front of the club. He parked next to a nondescript van that looked like it belonged to one of the work crews that were taking care of the drippy mess in the building.

  “What happened with Bayla?” He shut the engine off and turned in his seat so that he was facing me. The look on his face was intense, so I was thinking really hard about the words I wanted to use to explain that I wanted the girl gone without ratting her out. To avoid that probing gaze, I shifted my eyes to the van and frowned a little when I saw the side door begin to open. I hadn’t seen anyone working when we pulled up, so I thought it was weird that someone would be exiting the vehicle as soon as we rolled to a stop next to it. Only the door just rolled open a few inches. There definitely wasn’t enough room for any kind of grown person to come in or out.

  “That’s odd.” I was lifting my hand to point over Nassir’s shoulder at the van when I saw the back end of the gun poke out of the opening. I didn’t have to utter any more words. I frantically reached out and grabbed a fistful of Nassir’s long hair to jerk his head down at the same time as I folded myself over. As soon as both of our heads were dash level, there was a deafening bang followed by the driver’s window of the SUV shattering and covering both of us in a blanket of glass shards. I heard Nassir swear over my own startled scream as I lifted my hands to cover my head. Another blast rang out and I cowered into the smallest ball possible as the window on the passenger side of the car exploded and rained glass down on us.

  Nassir was saying something to me and his eyes were huge in his face, and for the first time ever I could see fear twisting and turning in the molten depths. He leaned over my back, popping the lock on the seat belt and lifting up just enough to push my door open.

  “Go!” He had his hands on my shoulder and was trying to push me out of the car, but I was too busy pulling on the front of his shirt to get him to come with me. I couldn’t let him go. “Get out of here! Go find Chuck!”

  Even if I didn’t want to cooperate, there was no way Nassir was going to let me remain in the line of fire. In fact, as soon as I slid out of the car, with the help of a mighty shove from him, another shot rang out and I heard it thump into the metal on the opposite side of the Range Rover. I was gasping for air and trying to reach back into the car and blindly grab for Nassir so I could pull him out with me but my hands came up empty. It took every iota of courage I possessed to get on my knees and peek back inside the car. I was terrified I was going to find Nassir bloody and filled with holes, but instead he was sitting up straight behind the wheel of the SUV and looking directly into the barrel of the gun that was pointed at him.

  I whispered his name and his eyes shifted to me, but they were wrong. The fire that usually lit them up was gone and in its place was a cool bronze that looked like it had been molded and crafted into some ancient weapon. He waved a hand at me and told me to get myself safe and then he pushed open the door of the car and stepped right into the line of fire. The barrel of the gun couldn’t have been more than two feet away from the center of his chest. I screamed his name but he wouldn’t look back at me. I frantically scrambled for my phone so I could call 911 and Chuck.

  “I know why you want to hurt me, I understand why you think you want me dead, and I can’t say I blame you.”

  Nassir’s voice was calm. Too calm.

  “I recognize that I made you into what you are, and that you think the only way to change your circumstances and to have a better life is to kill your creator. I grew up thinking the same thing.”

  I watched through the opening of the doors as the van door slid open a fraction more to show the entire pistol and the shaky arm of the kid holding it. It was obvious he wasn’t familiar with the weapon and one of his hands was still all messed up, and that made me think Nassir might end up taking a bullet even if the kid didn’t mean to fire one.

  “The thing is, it doesn’t matter where you go or who you punish or what kind of life you make for yourself, you’ll always be that thing that was molded, crafted, formed. You will always be the product of the things you have done and the things that were done to you, but if you want a chance at any kind of life, if you want to be worthy of anything, you have to be more than what you were made to be. You have to break that creation apart and make something new.”

  The gun dipped down for a second and I saw the kid poke his head out. He looked so young, so untried, that I couldn’t imagine him being the one that was behind all the things that had been happening at the club. I couldn’t fathom that he was the one that might very well give my devil hell. I couldn’t sit there and do nothing while the man I loved had a gun pointed at him. All this time I was determined to be by his side and that included when he was facing something that might end it all for both of us.

  “You have no idea what he put us through.” The kid sounded like he was going to cry.

  I saw Nassir nod his head and looked down at the buzzing phone in my lap. I knew that Chuck was making his way around the back of the club and the cops were on their way. Chuck had heard the gunshots from inside. I crept around the fender and poked my head around the side. Both Nassir and the kid turned to look at me, and before I could say anything, Nassir took a step closer to the end of the gun so that now, if the kid did pull the trigger, there was nowhere for the bullet to go but right into the center of his chest.

  “I do know and it isn’t right. You didn’t deserve it.”

  The kid snarled something low and furious as Nassir lifted his hands up and away from his chest. The kid slowly moved to exit the van, the gun only inches from the center of Nassir’s chest. It was almost touching him. The kid wiped his free hand over his mouth and his eyes started to dart around the parking lot.

  “He was always an asshole. He liked to use his fists on all of us. He drank too much
, cheated on my mom, and there was never any money, but he was gone most of the time, so we just sort of weathered the storm when he was home.”

  I heard Nassir heave a sigh and I rose to my feet so that I was standing behind him. “Please don’t do this.” There was a quiver in my voice but my heart made me sound stronger than I was feeling. I touched my face, surprised to find a steady stream of silent tears running across my cheeks.

  Nassir spared me a hard glance over his shoulder and turned back around to focus all his attention on the armed teenager. “Until I got my hands on the old man and you were trapped in a house with him.” Nassir sounded resigned and regretful. His words were heavy and his posture was repentant. He was actually sorry for what had happened to the kid because of his actions, even if they had been done to save me.

  “I could take the beatings because eventually I got big enough to fight back. The filth, and the abuse, meant nothing because all along the worst thing he was doing was touching my sisters. He couldn’t go out after you crippled him, wouldn’t leave the house because of his fucked-up face, so instead of being his kids, my sisters became his new targets. Their childhood, their innocence, was stolen because of you. At first I thought I could just ruin your business, make you mad, and force you to spend all your precious money, but then I realized it wasn’t enough. You had to pay like we did. You should have your life, your future, taken away just like my sisters did.”

  Nassir made another noise low in his throat and I saw him wave his hand. A slight movement caught my eye and I saw Chuck and a couple of the other security staff creeping around the side of the building with their own guns drawn.

  “I understand why you feel that way, I really do, but if you kill me, if you pull that trigger, you are making a choice that you can’t unmake. You are doing exactly what your old man set you up to do. You are acting like nothing more than the monster I started to build all those years ago.”