No Mercy: An Everyday Heroes World Novel (The Everyday Heroes World)

by D. M. Davis

  Now, I feel homeless even in his arms—which I rarely find myself in.

  I’m tappin’ out.

  I elbow my way past Gabriel with a terse “Goodnight.” My mind is already moving on from Gabriel’s beatdown to plans to end things with Austin.

  That is, until the voice of the man my heart bleeds for fills my ears, and his hand slips into mine. “Let’s go home.” Austin says it like he knows where home is, like I’m as much his home as he used to be mine.

  “Don’t do me any favors.” The bite of my hurt stings my tongue as it leaves my mouth.

  “Don’t be like that.” He squeezes me from behind, wraps me in his arms. “I’m sorry, Ang.”

  I go weak in the knees at the sound of his love-name for me. Ang. I haven’t heard it in weeks, maybe months.

  He nibbles my ear. “Let me make it up to you.”

  It’s been so long. I don’t even know where to begin.

  Apparently, he does.

  We barely make it through the apartment door before I’m stripped of my clothes, my ass is slapped, and I’m bent over the couch. There are no words of love, only dirty, filthy talk, making me hot and him hard. It’s been too long. His attention has been anything but affectionate, loving, or intimate.

  His moan as he probes my ass has me clenching with want.

  “I want you here, Ang. I need to fill you up. Remind you who you belong to.” His alpha talk has my pussy dripping.

  I’m not ashamed. We’ve been together too long to find much taboo in the bedroom. Am I disappointed he didn’t lay me down on the bed and make tender love to me? Maybe a little. The girly girl in me wants to be worshipped. The dirty girl wants to be ravaged.

  “You want that, don’t you, baby?” His fingers find my arousal coating my thighs as proof enough. “Yeah, you do.” He enters me a digit at a time, warming me up for his cock. “You’re my dirty girl, aren’t you?”

  My head is fuzzy with need, and my body is begging for the only man I’ve ever loved. The only man who’s ever touched me. Easy or hard. It’s only ever been Austin.

  At first, it feels like making love as he enters me slowly, tenderly, waiting for me to adjust, to beg for more.

  “You’re so hot, Ang.” He slaps my butt, gripping my hips, sliding his cock in deeper. “God, I’ve always loved your ass.” He covers my back with kisses, pulls my hair aside to kiss my mouth before standing up straight.

  He rams into me, hard and deep, his hands gripping my hips like handles. His words feel like love, his touch a soothing balm to my cracked heart and broken promises. I want this. This intensity. I want him to love me like he used to—or love me all new. But love me either way.

  Desperate and starving for his attention, I push back, giving as good as I’m getting. His returning groans tingle up my back, making me shudder and my skin prick with goosebumps.

  He plays my clit like a man who knows how to get me off. He does. He’s perfected it. As if his touch wasn’t enough, his command sends me sailing, “Come.”

  I do. Toes curl, eyes shut, back arches, and a scream on my lips as my release shoots through me hard, fast, and devastating with each tremble, each thrust as he continues to move.

  “Fuck, you squeeze me so fucking good,” he growls, pounding into me, grabbing my forearms. He lifts me off the couch, using me as leverage as wordless sounds fly out of his mouth in rapid fire.

  Captured in his grasp, I’m at his mercy, my body wrung out from my orgasm but building again as the recipient of his rapturous enjoyment of our joining. It’s been so long, but it’s so good. He’s close, and I’m not far behind, his cock hitting me in places that drive me wild.

  When I come for the second time, starbursts erupt before my eyes. His cries of pleasure mix with mine as he pounds his release into me. “I’ve had better pussy, but never better ass. One last time.”

  Has he been cheating on me? “One last…better…? Austin—”

  With one last hard thrust, a loud pop fills my ears, pain rips through my shoulder, bile fills my mouth, and darkness threatens.

  “Austin,” I gasp through the pain, falling to the floor in a heap before the couch.

  He steps back, huffing, looking at me with dead eyes. “I’m out.” He wipes the sweat from his face.

  The realization of what his words mean take the last of my breath. Tears blur my vision of him walking away, slowly getting darker and darker until I see nothing and feel just as much.

  My phone ringing stops me mid-thrust.

  “Don’t stop, Gabriel,” Blonde Tits begs. At least she’s using my full name. I guess I shouldn’t complain. I don’t even know hers. Obviously.

  I glance at the clock as my phone continues to ring.

  I shouldn’t answer. But what if it’s important?

  “Fuck. Hold on.” I lean over her, slipping my phone out of my jeans pocket to see Austin’s name. “This can’t be good.” I sink in deep to be sure she’s not going anywhere. I’m gonna need to come after this conversation, I can already tell.

  “Tamer,” I grunt.

  “She’s all yours.” He’s out of breath and angry.

  “Who’s all mine?” I don’t dare go where I think he’s heading.

  “Frankie.”

  My hips thrust at the sound of her name and the deceptive hope filling my chest. Tits moans and asks me to do it again. So I do, continually, my cock, getting harder and harder as my mind races to Frankie.

  “I’m done. I’m out of here.” Austin ends the call before I can respond.

  I drop my phone and grip Blondie’s hips like handles and drill her until she’s screaming my name, and I’m moaning for my Angel in my head. My release comes hard and devastating. Tits thinks it’s all her. She’d be livid if she knew it was for a woman who can never be mine. Bro-code aside, I’m no good for my Angel. She’s meant for heaven, and I’m destined for hell.

  My cock still at attention, thoughts of Frankie to blame, I switch out the used condom for a new one. “Hang on. This is gonna be a hard ride.”

  I should feel bad for using Tits, but she knows the score. And it’s not like she’s not getting something out of it. She’s come twice as many times as me, but I’m about to make up for it.

  Hours later, the ringing of my phone has me jackknifing in bed, yanked from a dream so sweet with visions of Frankie sucking my cock. I look down to find myself balls deep in Tits’ mouth. “Fuck.” I fall back on the bed, my phone forgotten, close my eyes, and recreate the vision in my dream as my body fucks Blondie’s mouth like my next MMA fight depends on it.

  Tits has just come all over my hand as my godforsaken phone rings again at two in the morning. “Jesus Christ, did somebody die?” I bark. “Hello!”

  “Man, chill the fuck out.” Grant’s voice has me sitting up straight. Not good.

  I stand and search for my clothes as panic breaches my post-sex haze. “What’s wrong?” It can’t be good if Detective Grant Malone, son of the former Sunnyville Chief of Police, is calling me at this time of day… Morning.

  “You need to get to the hospital.” He’s calm. Too calm. He’s using his detective voice. Not the I’m-your-friend-and-beer-buddy voice I usually hear.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s Frankie.”

  I fall to the bed as the blood drains from my head. Austin, what the fuck did you do? “What. Happened?” I am not calm. I’m in savage mode. Fighting mode.

  “Your boy put her in the ER.”

  My special forces training—the ability to think through the panic, the need to reach my target to save them—kicks in.

  “Ten minutes.” I hang up, pull on the rest of my clothes, and say to Tits over my shoulder, “Be gone by the time I get back.”

  Asshole in full force. Check.

  Grant stops me outside the sliding doors of the ER. His hand on my chest halts my progress. “I need you to hear me.” He pushes, forcing me back a step.

  I’m bigger, stronger, but damn he’s been a good
friend the last few months. And not only because he’s a cop and it’s his job to get to know the new fighters in town. He and Emerson have become family. His brothers are a pain in the ass and funny as fuck. His dad… Well, he’s the retired chief of police—enough said. And his mom, she’s a saint for having put up with them all. And Emerson and her skydiving crew have a special place in my heart—burned and calloused as it is. Once she heard I was an ex-Army Special Forces Combat Medic with parachuting training, she was a force to be reckoned with until she got me jumping with her every few weeks.

  For him, I squelch my bulldozing tendencies with clenched fists and flared nostrils. “I’m listening.” I’m thankful he called. He knows I’m protective of Frankie. I’m an ass to her face, but behind her back, I’d never let anyone treat her like I do. Grant knows it too. The intuitive SOB.

  “She’s going to be fine.” His stare is intense, burrowing into mine. I nod and take a breath, which seems to be the answer he was looking for before continuing. “She’s got a dislocated shoulder.”

  My step falters, and I lean against the brick pillar to keep me on my feet. “How the fuck did he dislocate her shoulder?” Austin called me, and I was too busy getting my rocks off to pay him any mind, other than to use his words to fuel thoughts of Frankie now free to be mine.

  Jesus, fuck, my asshole mode was in full force. I die a little thinking of our last interaction, the cruelty of my words. I called her slut meat. Jesus.

  Grant clears his throat, looking over my shoulder. “Jimmy.” He nods.

  I don’t have to look to know the Jimmy he’s referring to. Captain Jimmy Durant, the Black Ops MMA gym owner, my boss and head asshole. I give him a chin nod. He pats my shoulder before grunting, letting me know he’ll be inside.

  I return my attention to Grant, waiting for him to tell me how Austin managed to dislocate her shoulder.

  He puts his hands up. “She’ll have to tell you that.”

  “Fuck.” It can’t be good if he’s not saying. I scrub my face with my hand. “Did he beat her up? Can you at least tell me that?” My heart races, and my anger threatens to tear this place apart to get to her.

  “If you’re asking if he hit her, then, no. He didn’t hit her.” He looks through the doors and back at me. “You want to see her?”

  “You’re seriously asking?” Like he could keep me from her.

  The asshole laughs and claps a hand on my back as we step through the parting doors. “Yeah, I am. She’s scared and won’t let anyone see her.” He stops at the front desk. The lady behind the glassed-in counter buzzes us in with hardly a glance. “You’re not her favorite person, you know. She may not want to see you.”

  “Like she has a choice,” I scoff.

  He scans the hall as we walk past the curtained-off beds of the emergency room, coming to a stop before a closed door. His eyes finally land on me. “Be nice.”

  A smart-ass remark on the tip of my tongue, I simply nod, reach for the door handle and pause. “You sticking around?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be here.”

  “And Austin?” The knob squeaks as I strangle it in my grip, my murderous stare on the door in front of me as I picture my Angel lying in the hospital bed on the other side, banged up by the man who supposedly loves her.

  “He called 9-1-1 and then disappeared. We’re looking for him.”

  “You’d better pray you find him before we do.” Grant doesn’t have to ask who the we I’m referring to is. He knows. I put the word out to the team on my way here, woke up some grumpy-asses, but it had to be done. We take care of our own. Though Austin is one of us, he went rogue on Frankie, who’s also one of us, and a woman. We don’t disrespect women. We may fuck ‘em hard with barely a thank you, and we may fight for a living, but the two don’t mix. Austin forgot that. We’ll be happy to remind him. I’ll be happy to remind him.

  I hear Grant’s silent struggle. He’s a cop, but he’s also a friend.

  “You do what you do. We’ll do what we do.” I meet his gaze over my shoulder. “And hopefully we end up on the same side.”

  I turn the knob and step inside.

  I heard voices in the hall, but when Gabriel steps into the room, he freezes when our eyes lock. I want to run away from him nearly as much as I want to run to him. His blue eyes, normally cold and intense, flash with heat, threatening to burn the flesh from my bones. His clenched jaw could crack diamonds, and his hands fist at his sides. His black hair is a mess, like he just got out of bed. Given the hour, I’m sure that’s exactly where he came from.

  “Angel.” His rasp is so quiet I hardly hear his shocking endearment. He’s never, I mean never called me anything other than Francesca. He’s made it painstakingly clear he views me with little regard. Yet when he moves closer, each step silent and agile as he takes in my pale blue hospital gown, the scorn I’ve come to expect from him is absent.

  Leery of this change in demeanor, using my good arm, I pull the blanket higher, feeling all too naked around a man who exudes testosterone like he drinks it for breakfast, wears it like a suit of armor topped off by a cleft chin to reinforce his masculine genes.

  I sink back as he steps closer. Raw and scared is not the right frame of mind to deal with the larger-than-life presence Gabriel exudes like breathing. His shockingly tender eyes, which deeply contrast the coolness I found in Austin’s as he left me broken on our living room floor, take me in. I gasp when Gabriel runs the back of his hand down my tearstained cheek.

  I tried to be brave, holding in my screams when they popped my shoulder back into place, but I failed horribly. The doctor wanted to sedate me, but I refused. I need to keep my wits about me, especially if Austin comes for me. I’ve never been afraid of him, but I saw a different side of him tonight. If I ever doubted his love, his faithfulness, he shattered everything the moment he fucked me hard enough to tear my arm out of its socket and left me broken, naked, and passed out, only coming to when the EMTs rolled me onto the backboard to place me on the stretcher.

  “I’ll kill him.” Gabriel’s intensity has never scared me, not even his asshole ways, but I flinch at his murderous tone. I don’t doubt him.

  “Don’t. He’s not worth your future.” I’m done with Austin. I don’t know the logistics of how I’ll untangle my life from his, given I work for the company he fights for, but I’m determined to do it—even if it means I’ll lose everything.

  “What happened?” Gabriel shakes with rage, trying to keep it in check. I nearly feel sorry for him. Nearly. I’m sure his asshole—his natural state—is gonna show up at any second to taunt me, call me a slut, stupid for putting up with Austin’s philandering.

  There’s nothing he can say I’m not already saying to myself. Even his words of hate can’t hurt me today.

  I roll to my side—away from him—as best I can, ignoring the pain that has my eyes watering. I’m not going to cry in front of him of all people. “Like I’d tell you.” I close my eyes, praying for sleep, for peace, a way out of this situation that doesn’t include more humiliation at the hands of Austin or Gabriel.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?” The heat of Gabriel’s attention sends a chill across my skin, making me tremble, setting off a new wave of pain in my shoulder. “Why the fuck aren’t you medicated?” He presses the call button before I can stop him.

  “Don’t,” I grit through the pain. “Why are you even here?” Grant already told me Austin is gone, but finding Gabriel rushing to my side is unexpected. But surprisingly not unwelcomed. As much of an asshole as he can be, I know if Austin did show up, Gabriel wouldn’t let him touch me. I’ve seen Gabriel with his mom and sister. He doesn’t stand for men disrespecting women, unless, of course, it’s him doing it to me.

  “I needed to check on you, be sure you’re okay.” He walks to the other side of the bed so I’m facing him again.

  I close my eyes to avoid the concern in his. He doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t give a shit about you.

  When the nurse’s voice
comes over the intercom, he insists they give me meds even though I tell him I won’t take them. He growls his discontent. The patter of his lighter-than-air steps as he moves around and the scrape of a chair on the linoleum floor fill the silent room. A whoosh of air hits me a second before his large, deadly weapon of a hand encompasses mine.

  I frown, determined not to look at him. It doesn’t mean anything.

  “Frown at me all you want, Angel. You’re taking whatever painkiller the nurse brings.”

  My eyes fly open at the sound of his gruff voice using that endearment again. Angel. WTF? Austin went rogue, and the biggest pain in my ass just went soft. It must be the apocalypse.

  “I won’t watch you suffer any more than you already have.” He reconfirms his intentions with a tender gleam in his blue eyes sparkling with stardust.

  Stardust? I must be delirious from the pain. “Then leave.”

  He chuckles. “Feisty as ever.” He brushes his hand across my forehead and down my cheek. “That’s a good sign.”

  I’ve never seen him so affectionate or tender. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “That list is too fucking long to get into now.”

  “I mean, why are you being nice to me?”

  “I have no reason to be mean to you.”

  “You had reason before?” What the hell is he talking about?

  He nods.

  I scrutinize him, looking for some secret I know I’ll never find the key to. “You need to leave.”

  His lips touch our joined hands. “I’m not going anywhere.” He nods to the door. “Take your meds, Frankie. I’ll be here watching over you, keeping you safe.”

  The tenderness in his voice and the fact he knows why I wouldn’t take any painkillers has my damn eyes leaking again. For fuck’s sake!

  The nurse shoots something into my IV, telling me to rest, and I should be released in a few hours.