Carnival Hill (The Harlequin Crew Book 3)

by Caroline Peckham

  “Who?” I muttered, playing dumb and he cocked his head to the side, giving me a dry look that was so Chase it made me crack a grin.

  Fox was out for his morning run so it wasn’t like I needed to watch my mouth, and Chase knew about us anyway, I just hadn’t wanted to talk to him about this shit because I knew how he felt about Rogue. And I wasn’t gonna be an asshole and ask his advice on how best to get her back to being with me, not when he was lying in bed here like this.

  “We’re fine. We just had a disagreement.” I shrugged it off, but he caught my arm as I went to get up, making me look back at him.

  “Don’t let her go, JJ,” he growled fiercely, a dark and urgent need in his expression. “She deserves someone like you. You’re the best guy I know, the one of us who kept a piece of the kids we all were. You’re the right choice for her.” He didn’t have to say it, but those words spoke of the thing he wasn’t saying anyway. That he wasn’t the right choice. That he never had been. And I could see plainly that he’d given up on ever claiming her for himself.

  “Don’t say that,” I hissed, aware that Rogue was only downstairs making coffee and she could return at any second. I tried to pull my arm free of his grip, but his fingers tightened to the point of pain as he gazed at me in desperation.

  “I have to say it. And I need you to hear it,” he said, darkness unfolding within his bright blue eye which was pinned on me. “You can give her what she always wanted. She needs a home. This is it.”

  “And what about Fox?” I whispered. “Where does he factor in? Because the last time I checked, he was willing to kill to keep anyone else’s hands off of her. Maybe you were right before, Ace, maybe what I did is gonna destroy us. Or maybe we’re gonna forget we were ever together and she’ll end up in Fox’s arms and he’ll never let go.”

  “Bullshit. She looks at you like you’re breaking her heart. So stop breaking it and just work it out. Find a way, JJ,” he growled. “And make Fox understand.”

  “He’ll shoot me,” I scoffed.

  “He didn’t shoot me,” he tossed back.

  “That’s different,” I murmured, my temple pulsing at the memory of seeing my brother on his knees.

  “Well tell me this, J, are you gonna just let her go? Give her up and forget you ever loved her?” he asked with a razor sharp edge to his tone.

  I was already shaking my head. “You know I can’t forget her.”

  “So take it from someone who knows what regret is, if you love her then find a way to keep her. And if you love Fox, then find a way to keep him too. Clearly I don’t have advice on how to achieve any of that. But I suggest you start by doing the exact opposite of anything I’d do.”

  “Ace…” I sighed, but then the door pushed open and Rogue appeared with a tray of coffees and Mutt bounding along behind her.

  Chase gave me a look that told me to talk to her as she placed the coffees down on the nightstand.

  “I got you a gift,” she said, biting her lip as she looked at Chase and reached into her denim shorts’ pocket. She produced a black eyepatch, dangling it on her finger enticingly.

  “No,” Chase said dismissively as he stared at it and I snorted a laugh.

  “Oh come on, it’ll suit you, Ace, and you can only keep that dressing on like another day anyway,” she insisted. “Ooh unless you wanna go all Scarface on the world?” Her eyes lit up at that idea, biting her bottom lip as if she liked it. He thought on her words before snatching the eyepatch from her and staring at it in his palm with a dark frown.

  My chest tugged at his expression and I hated how he looked so disgusted by it. Then he shoved it under his pillow and looked away from her. She grabbed a glass of milk from her tray along with two pills, moving onto the bed beside him and pushing them between his lips. He didn’t look at her as she poured the milk into his mouth and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. But then she leaned in, pressing her mouth to his cheek and his good eye slid onto her, staring, fucking captivated and shattered at once. Then he looked at me with an expression that told me to fix my shit with her and I couldn’t deny him anything in that moment.

  I took her hand as she leaned back and Mutt jumped up, settling himself in beside Chase and shutting his eyes, not quite touching him as he stacked his little front paws on top of one another.

  “We need to talk,” I told Rogue, tugging her to her feet and she looked about to protest but I just towed her out of the room and didn’t give her the choice.

  “Sorry I’m all out of cash, JJ, I can’t afford a fuck this morning,” she said bitterly as I walked her straight into her room and kicked the door shut behind us.

  I let her go and strode away to my room, returning a beat later with the cash she’d given me to pay the bill I’d handed her. Fuck, I felt like a cunt for that. I had to try and fix it.

  “Here.” I strode up to her and she folded her arms and glared at me.

  “No thanks,” she said lightly as I held it out to her.

  “It’s yours. I’m not keeping it. I was a fucking piece of shit to you, and I wish I’d never handed you that bill. It was a shitty thing to do.”

  “Yup, it was,” she said and I waved the cash at her again. She turned away from it and I caught her hand, trying to press it into her palm. “No, JJ. I don’t want it.” She smacked it out of my hands and bills cascaded everywhere, raining down on my bed.

  She strode past me, trying to make it to the door but I stepped into her path, barring her way out.

  “Please, just wait. I’m sorry,” I said on a heavy breath, tasting her on the air and instantly hungering for more. “I was an asshole. The biggest fucking asshole in the history of assholes and I’m so damn sorry.”

  “Correction, you are an asshole,” she said, her chin rising.

  “Yeah, but you gotta forgive me, because every day you keep looking at me like that is destroying me and I know you’re hurting too. I know I deserve this pain and I know I have no right to make you stay here and hear me out, but I need you to, pretty girl. Please.”

  I walked towards her so my chest pressed to hers and she moved onto her tiptoes, leaning back as she tried not to stumble from the pressure of my body against hers.

  “Fuck you,” she hissed, a wall in her eyes and frustration raced through me.

  “You know what Rogue?” I stepped forward, making her stumble but she pressed right back against me like she could possibly move me. I was a force driving her toward the bed and unless she could stop me, that was where we were headed.

  “What, Johnny James?” she asked venomously.

  “You and me never made sense back when we were kids,” I growled. “I was the nice one of the group, and you always needed someone edgier than that. But I’m not nice anymore, pretty girl. Haven’t been for a long time. I might joke and laugh with you, but on the inside my soul is painted black. My wings got cut off the first time I sold my body and ever since then I’ve been walking the road to hell. But now I’m bad, I’m not bad enough.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she scoffed.

  “It means you need more than that,” I growled. “Like luring me to Dead Man’s Isle to share you with my enemy.”

  “You seemed pretty happy to play along at the time. I didn’t drag you into the water. You’ve got weird lines, J. Kinda confusing for a girl, wouldn’t you agree?”

  I pressed harder against her, making her stumble again and she slammed her hands to my shoulders, trying to keep me back but she wasn’t really trying all that hard.

  “Sharing you with a guy – who fucking hates me by the way – is far more than confusing. It’s a headfuck.”

  “So you don’t hate him back?” she asked lightly and I bared my teeth.

  “Of course I do,” I growled, but there wasn’t an edge to my voice like there used to be when I said that. Hate was a big word for someone who’d once been like a brother to me. “But we’re getting off topic.”

  “Seems pretty on topic to me. You know this is
a headfuck for me too, right? I’m not exactly Miss Pornstar here shooting Fifty Shades of Cock, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “That’s the problem,” I growled, forcing her back another step and pinning her between me and the bed, the backs of her legs bowing ever so slightly as she fought to stay upright. “We’re all lost again, just like we used to be. Fox tries to control the whole world so he can live under the illusion that he’s in command, Maverick pretends there aren’t any rules except the ones he makes up, Ace fought against every instinct in his body to try and hold onto the only people he was sure would stick around, and I’m here trying to prove to you that I’m a man when inside all I feel like is a stupid boy who didn’t know what to do with you as a kid and still doesn’t know what to do with you as a man. And you,” I snarled, fisting her shirt in my hand and yanking her up so she was on the very tips of her toes. “You’re just trying to find your way back to a home that doesn’t look the way it did when you once lived in it. But it’s still the same home, still the same boys. The problem is, we all put on different kinds of armour that are keeping us from recognising each other. But I see you, Rogue. I see your walls and your damage and I feel the weight of the baggage that ten years gave you. So I’m lenient because maybe you do need Maverick as well as me, and maybe you need Fox and Ace too. But we all know there’s no future that exists where that works, so what are we gonna do about it?”

  Her eyes searched mine, her breaths falling heavily against my mouth as I held her almost off her feet. She looked so fucking hot like that, caught in my trap, panting for me. I’d been hard for her the moment I’d walked into this room, but we were teetering on the edge now, either about to fall all the way into this messed up relationship that didn’t look like any other I’d ever known. Or we were going to pull apart and keep moving in opposite directions, ripping out each other’s hearts all over again. And really, it was her choice. Because I may have been angry, but I was still hers to do what she wanted with.

  “I want to tell Fox,” she admitted. “But I can’t lose him.”

  “If we stay together, we lose him, if we don’t, we lose each other,” I said, anger twisting up my insides. It wasn’t fucking fair. Ten years I’d waited for her and now keeping her meant losing my brother. And neither reality was bearable.

  “What’s the answer?” I demanded of her in a snarl, furious at her, at Fox at the whole fucking universe.

  “I don’t have one,” she said, her eyes blazing with emotion. “All I know is I want you, I want you so fucking bad Johnny James, but sometimes I want him too. And it can’t come to me choosing, I won’t. Because if I have to, the choice will come down to it being all of you or none of you. Like it always was.”

  “Goddamn you, pretty girl,” I growled, tugging on her shirt and forcing her lips up against mine. “You know how this ends.” Our lips grazed, tasting like coconut and temptation and as my cock drove against her, I knew where this was headed because I couldn’t resist her. When we were this close, it was like the moon driving the tide. Nothing could stop it crashing against the shore, pulled by forces beyond our control.

  “I can’t keep away,” she croaked, her fingers moving up to knot in my hair and she kissed me, trying to tease my mouth apart, to let her in and I just remained there as I enjoyed her wanting more from me.

  I slid my hand down her spine and squeezed a handful of her ass so tight she gasped, her lips parting and I drove my tongue between them, kissing her with all the blinding fury building in my chest.

  “Maybe Chase was right, maybe you are our downfall,” I sniped at her and she clawed at my arms with a growl.

  “Fuck you,” she snapped. “It takes two to fucking tango.”

  “Not when you tango with me, pretty girl.” I flipped her around by the hips in a dance move that made her suck in a sharp breath, yanking her back against me. I moved my mouth to her ear, rocking her hips in time with mine as I forced her to dance with me, grinding my cock against her and giving her no choice in the matter. “I’m not blaming you, in fact, this is me officially taking the blame from your shoulders. Because I’m no longer offering you a choice in this relationship.”

  “JJ,” she panted and I spun her back around to face me, swinging her low across the bed and yanking her up to meet my mouth.

  She was slack in my arms, letting me move her body how I liked and I fucking loved it. I kept one hand firm on her ass, guiding her hips as I pressed my knee between her thighs and made her grind on me in a rhythm that fit the music in my head. But I needed that music to spill beyond my flesh and fill this room to the brim. So I slid my phone from my pocket, hooking it up to the Bluetooth Beats Pill in her room and playing the song rolling through my mind. I See Red by Everybody Loves an Outlaw.

  I fisted my hand in her hair, tugging backwards and running the tip of my nose up her throat. Then when she was bent backwards to her limit, I let go of her so she fell onto the bed beneath me onto all the cash and it pooled around her like a green sea. I ground over her, rolling my hips in time to the sultry music and she carved the heel of her palm down my spine as I fed on heat of the dance, lost to the beat as I enjoyed my two favourite things in the world.

  I hooked her legs around my waist, rocking my hips as her back arched and her tits were pressed to my face. I forced her sports bra over them, sucking her left nipple into my mouth before dragging the thing over her head and tossing it away. Her thighs locked around me and I stood up as I held onto her, pressing her to me with a hand on her spine and spinning her around as she clung to me. The bass of the music pounded in my skull so loud it was all I could hear and as she dropped to her feet, I caught her hand and spun her in a pirouette, grabbing hold of her little denim shorts in the same movement and ripping them clean from her body, making her breath hitch. She didn’t have any panties underneath them and I growled my approval as I spun her back into my chest and her hand fell against my shoulder as she looked up at me. I ran two fingers down her spine, her naked flesh hot and perfectly silken against mine.

  We both stopped moving and she reached for my shorts, unthreading the drawstring while our eyes remained locked and my heart hammered just for her. I couldn’t look away, falling so deep into the blues of her irises I didn’t think I’d ever get out. And suddenly I was moving, shoving her back onto the bed and climbing on top of her as I claimed her mouth with a dirty, desperate kiss. I was lost, my mind a haze of her and nothing else as I pushed my shorts down and slammed into her in one furious drive of my hips.

  A gasp escaped me as I fisted my hand in the pillow above her head along with several fifty dollar bills, realising way too fucking late that I’d forgotten a condom for the first time in my life. She was so wet, so tight, so hot.

  “Oh fuck,” I groaned.

  “Don’t stop,” she demanded, her mouth finding mine and I automatically obeyed, my hips rocking as I groaned at the sensation of her pussy around me, flesh on flesh.

  Screw condoms. Screw every fucking condom in the world. I was never, ever using one again with this girl.

  “Fuck, Rogue, oh fuck my fucking life,” I cursed as I moved faster, gripping the backs of her thighs and driving so deep into her that she started screaming. She was so slick and silky and clenching me so fucking sweetly. I wasn’t gonna last, I was a goner already.

  Sweat beaded on my brow as I clung to the backs of her legs and fucked her brutally while she met every thrust with cries of encouragement, the headboard smacking against the wall and making sure Chase knew exactly what we were doing even if her cries hadn’t given us away already.

  Her nails tore into my back and my forehead fell to hers as we just became this one, perfect creature made of nothing but pleasure. The cash stuck to our flesh, getting everywhere and this was one fantasy I’d never realised I’d had as Rogue lay on a small mountain of money while we fucked like animals.

  I needed to stop. I had to fucking stop. But I couldn’t, she was too wet, too good and I was gonna go mad if I di
dn’t finish inside her. I had to know what it felt like to do that, I just couldn’t stop myself. I’d thought sex was amazing, but I’d been fucking delusional my whole life. Because without that sheath of latex between me and her, sex wasn’t amazing it was everything. It was one helluva reason to fucking exist.

  “Oh fuck, you feel so good,” she moaned, her head falling back and rainbow hair spilling everywhere.

  “I’m gonna come,” I growled, my fingers clawing into the pillows as I tried to slow down, tried to force myself to pull out. But then she dug her heels into my ass, making me sink into her even deeper and my cock nearly burst with how perfect that felt.

  “Rogue,” I warned, but her lips met mine and I upped my pace, losing my mind and giving no fucks if I got committed after this. She was my reason for insanity and I fucking pleaded it.

  Her pussy clenched my cock so hard, I knew she was coming before she even started moaning and fisting her own hair. I grabbed the headboard, rearing above her and finishing with a firm thrust that blew my fucking mind and my cum spilled deep into her pussy without anything to stop it.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I panted, my eyes scrunching up as the best orgasm of my life ripped through my cock.

  I held my weight off of her as I just felt the hot, sticky mess between us and my face split into a wicked grin as I stared down at her. “We should have done that sooner.”

  She nodded mutely, pushing locks of hair out of her eyes. “Fuck me, Johnny James. I think your cock’s been a prisoner to rubber for too many years and now it’s a free man making up for lost time. And do you dip it in honey every morning because damn it’s fucking smooth.”

  I pulled out of her, rolling onto my back beside her as I started laughing, plucking a hundred dollar bill off my pec and tossing it away so it fluttered down to land on her thigh. “No more condoms. I’m gonna burn them all.”

  She laughed, slapping my chest. “And what if I get pregnant?”

  “You like kids, right?” I said and she slapped me again with a snort laugh.