by Ace Gray
“Fuck off,” I shot.
“What are you gonna do? Force her?”
His question hung in the air as I thought about it. If he hadn’t walked in, I would have pressed my lips against her skin, my fingers would have played with the edge of her hem, but it wouldn’t have been my fault. Her skin taunted me, the utter silken softness, the luminescence bright from within. She was my beacon. She called to me.
And oh God, how it would be to hear her call my name.
“Holy fuck, you’re thinking about it right now. About raping her.” His voice ticked up with more outrage than someone with his devious tastes had the right to.
“Oh shut the fuck up dude.” I rolled my eyes even though I was thinking about how she’d tremble. About how those tears she liked to cry would be for me. How everything about her would be for me.
I almost purred.
“You can’t force her,” he said soft but stern.
“But—” I mean, I could taste her.
“No. No buts. If you want her—like really want her—you can’t cross that line. Don’t make me tell you all the reasons he never would.”
“We never talk about him,” I sneered, picturing Dantè Rogue’s asshole face. Picturing him touching my girl. If he’d just let me call dibs that day…My blood heated and roared through my veins. I grit my teeth so hard I thought they might shatter.
“I don’t like talking about him anymore than you do, but you need a fucking wake up call.” His eyes narrowed and his face twisted into the epitome of his name.
“What? You’re okay with murder but rape crosses the line?” I shoved my hands on my hips and my face into his. He didn’t scare me, not when Mercy was the prize. Mercy with her long legs that would wrap around me and her full breasts that would press against me. Mercy who would throw her head back when I stroked between her thighs. Mercy who. Would. Be. Mine.
“Listen to yourself, you creep. You said she was your soulmate. You said you wanted forever. You think you get that like this?”
Soulmate was a bucket of cold water dumped over my head. Yes, I wanted her—and to do filthy things to her—but I did want more than that. So much more. Nothing less than soulmate would do. I sucked in a deep breath.
“Yeah,” Danger said, smug as shit. “I thought that might reel you in.”
I blew out the breath I’d been holding and plopped down onto the foot of his bed. “What do I do to make her see? I thought after this much time she just…would.”
Danger sighed then turned to sit beside me. He let the silence hang between us. Long enough that I started to think about her breasts again. About my lips around what had to be pale pink nipples. My dick twitched, drawing my attention to the hardening between my thighs.
“I’ve never been real good at the relationship thing… Hell, I’ve never been real good at anything but fucking drugged up sex, but I can tell you, don’t corner her. Don’t threaten her.”
I nodded aimlessly as I chewed on his words.
“And whatever you do, don’t press that little chub you’re almost always sporting up against her goddamn thigh again.”
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes hard enough that I was sure he heard it but he let me be.
He stood and simply arched his eyebrows waiting for me to follow. And I did, just far enough down the hallway to catch the way Mercy’s dress waved against her skin as she floated around the kitchen. I was a goner. I ducked into my room rather than following Danger. He shot me a look just before I shut my door.
Fuck him.
Maybe he was right about pushing her too hard, too fast, but he couldn’t stop me from fantasizing about her. About what it would be like when. Because it had to be when, not if.
Oh yes, she would be mine.
I flopped back to my bed, shoved down my shorts and fisted on myself, tugging as the vision of the girl just down the hall tightened my balls. The flutter of that fabric on her silky skin made my eyes likewise flutter shut. It was so basic—fabric and a barely there breeze against a thigh—but it was her skin. Her dress.
And it would be her body showing off when I slowly pulled that fabric over her head.
Stroke, stroke, twist, stroke.
It would be her golden hair dancing against the gentle arc of her spine, almost dusting the twin dimples that rode just above her swimsuit bottoms.
Groan. Shiver. Bite my lip to keep from groaning again.
I’d press into her. Hard. Fast. And then I’d fuck her. I’d made that smooth skin my slave. Those noises that she used to make with him, would be mine. That ass she probably gave to him, mine too. I’d slap it to see my fucking handprints on her.
It wasn’t until the hot spurt of my suds strung across my stomach that I realized I’d been picturing Mercy with tears puddled in her perfect eyes.
H. O. Mutha fucking T.
Dantè Rogue’s case wasn’t the only thing that was appealing. I mean, it was one I could fix, one that could keep the past from repeating itself. The evidence was circumstantial—just like before—and, without an alternative, they’d left the kid to hang. But Dantè himself…
Kid? I laughed to myself as I popped my Lean Cuisine in the microwave. He was fine with a capital F, I, N, and E. I’d expected a twenty-five year old entitled surfer kid. I’d gotten a beautiful beefcake of a man that had wisdom and hurt in his eyes. I knew he’d learned things the hard way. The scar marring his brow wasn’t the only thing that spoke to it.
And speaking of hard…
I’d imagined that prison jumpsuit tented the first second he walked up. Me ripping it off and riding him the next. Something straight out of the romance novels that kept me company.
Beep, beep, beep.
The microwave startled me from my thoughts. My very dirty, filthy thoughts.
“Ouch, shit. Shit, ouch,” I swore, pulling my dinner out of my microwave and dropping it on a plate. I let the plastic keep the first few layers of my skin.
I grabbed it and a bottle of wine then left the kitchen in favor of my workspace. Every detail of Dantè’s case was spread out on my coffee table, and Game of Thrones was on in the background. I flipped pages until the testimony transcripts were on top and started reading.
The entire case seemed to rest on the shoulders of four people—Danger, Diego, Rousse, and Mercy—and whether it was the number, the names or just a hunch, something seemed off. Murder cases should have days filled with witnesses, especially if none of the key witnesses saw him do it. Where were the testimonies of the other kids? Of the police team? Of drug experts?
“What happened that night…?” I mused as I stabbed a piece of chicken and swirled it in sauce before going back to the transcripts.
In between fiesta bowl bites, I started making a list. Things to check on, people to go back and interview. Steps to take. The first of which was a phone call. I grabbed the phone and clicked on the text thread. Her cell rang to voicemail so I pulled up her emails and dial her home number.
“Yo,” a male voice answered.
“Is Mercy Graves there?”
“Not right now, can I scribble down your digits?”
“Sure.” I sighed and added follow up interview with Mercy to my list. “I’m Mackenzie Relle, the advocacy lawyer in charge of her boyfriend’s appeal.”
“Wait, what?” The voice straightened up, suddenly professional. “Dantè’s got an appeal?”
“With a little bit of luck.” I smiled at the mental image of Dantè free—free and gorgeous—and having a beer. I prayed his laughter would be frequent enough he didn’t find the sound foreign or frightening.
“I’ll get the message to her right away.”
“Thanks, I’ll give you my numb—” The beep, beep, beep of a hang up cut me off. “Rude,” I murmured to no one in particular then returned to my stacks.
I pulled one of Mercy’s emails out and set them on the floor. One hundred and twenty-seven requests for help over two years. One hundred and twenty-seven ways she told me that s
he loved him. One hundred and twenty-seven reasons I’d finally agreed to take the case despite my all too heavy workload. I loved advocacy work but it didn’t pay the bills—a fact that didn’t stop me, it just slowed me down a little.
When I remembered how he reacted to her name I quirked my eyebrow. There was more than one story with holes in this case. Maybe I hadn’t been right to call her—his reaction certainly said don’t talk to her—but she was paying me.
The vibration of my phone against my plate interrupted my questions. “One thing after another tonight.” I sighed and flipped it over to see my sister’s name in big bold letters at the top of the screen.
“Hey, Jordan,” I answered.
“Baker tells me you’re bailing?” She was yelling into the line in between sets, completely oblivious to her volume.
“Work,” I shouted back as way of an answer.
“It’s Saturday night Max, you need to go out. Meet someone.”
“I met someone.” I smiled as I thought about him, even if he’d never be mine. Even if it wasn’t exactly what Jordan meant.
“Not some charity case,” she whined as someone started tuning a bass in the background.
“Jordan, the guys you take home are charity cases too. They just haven’t been caught committing the crimes yet.” On more than one occasion, she’d had her guitars and TV stolen from her apartment mid-tour. “Face it, the Relle girls like bad men.”
“Yes, but I get to sleep with mine.”
Touché I thought, my lady bits agreeing, but I wouldn’t dare admit it to my sister. “Say goodbye, Jordan.”
“Hey, hey, hey.” She kept me from clicking the little red button. “I just mean someday you have to stop living in the past. You have to let Jessie go.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear, clicked the red button, and tossed the phone into the couch cushions. It was my automatic reaction at the mention of his name. She should have known.
“Dream on, wench,” I murmured under my breath when she called back not once, but twice.
I returned to my food. After her words, it wasn’t a party on a plate but rather bland and basic, just like my life had become since Jessie.
God, his name cut like a knife.
I shoved my food aside and picked back up Dantè’s case file. I leaned back and read the text for what seemed like the ten thousandth time. Only this time the words started to swirl and go to mush. It wasn’t Dantè’s name on the page, it was Jessie’s. It was his trial transcripts, and I was reading them until my eyes went bleary.
He’d been my bad boy with a good heart. I didn’t love the motorcycle “club” he belonged to, but damn, did the rumble of those engines get my blood boiling. It wasn’t until he was framed for a bloodbath of murders that my mishmash of feelings turned to a solidified hate. And my hate turned into this.
I shook my head, trying to clear the desperation I’d felt in the end. The unending panic and pain when I knew he’d die for what he did. What they thought he did. It wasn’t until the paper crinkled in my hands that I realized my whole body had tensed and I hadn’t been breathing.
“Never again,” I said to myself as I sucked in a deep breath.
I made myself read the same sentence over and over until I forgot the past and stayed in the present. It wasn’t until three in the morning that I realized I’d camped out. My neck and shoulders creaked as I rolled them, and my spine cracked when I straightened it. I watched Jon Snow for a minute, enjoying his own brand of brooding in thick fur before he brought up betrayal.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and my fingers drifted to a section of testimony all on their own. I reread it. Again. There was nothing there. Nothing concrete anyway. But maybe that was why it tickled the pit of my stomach. Court was nerve wracking, especially when saying the wrong thing might lose a life. When testimony was smooth as butter, it’s usually because someone was trying to spread it on too thick.
I scribbled notes on a different sheet of paper. The one that held questions for Dantè. The one that had started with what’s your shoe size? and do you have nerdy girl fantasies? only for me to scribble them both out with too-hard pen squiggles and start into a real list.
A real list capped off with the question buzzing in my ears.
What do you really know about Danger Reed?
David Gandy stood over my kneeling body, every rigid muscle taut and tense as he stroked himself just above my waiting lips. My whole body quivered, still clinging to the book he’d sprung out of in my dream. His whole body trembled as his mustachioed face hung slack.
He moaned, deep and guttural before splattering my glasses with cum. Each burst shook my body as he slowly stroked his dick empty onto my face. His whole body slackened and he slumped over me. I earned a crooked smile as he tried to catch his breath. I almost vibrated in anticipation for whatever his husky voice would say to break the silence—Dream Gandy was a dirty boy after all. When he opened his mouth, I was transfixed by the shape of his lips and damn near salivated.
“Ring, ring,” he said.
“What?”
“Ring, ring.” This time it was less his raspy voice and more reminiscent of my cellphone.
“Wha…?” I patted around trying to find the source of Gandy’s odd sounds. “What is happening?”
I hit the vibrating little box amidst the fluffy down of my comforter and slid it open.
“Is this a phone call?” I asked in lieu of a hello.
“Are you willing to accept a phone call from an inmate in the California state penitentiary system? Press one for yes, two for no.”
“Who the hell calls this early?” I shoved up to find how completely tangled in my comforter I was. And that it was ten in the morning. “Shit,” I swore as I hit number one. “Hello?”
“Did you mean what you said?” The sin on a stick voice made my nipples perk up, as I tried to orient myself to Sunday morning.
“Huh? Who is this?” I tried to flip through the conversations this dreamboat could be referring to but no matter how I tried to add two and two, I kept coming up with seven.
“Dantè Rogue.”
Well that did nothing for my lady boner…
“Of…of course I meant it,” I stuttered.
“Good.” He blew out an answering deep breath. “Because I remembered something.”
I chewed on the words. An appeal. Dantè had a fucking appeal. That meant they’d found something. But what? I went back over that night. Every detail. I went back to the notes I’d scribbled during the hearings. We’d left nothing unaccounted for.
Hadn’t we?
“Come on, Mercy,” Diego whined. “Go to dinner with me.”
He was begging in the hallway, interrupting my methodical search.
“Diego, please,” she begged. “Don’t ask me.”
I rolled my eyes and shoved away from my desk. I couldn’t deal with Diego’s bullshit on top of the pile that fucking phone call had already delivered.
“What’s going on out here?” I asked as I whipped open the door; Diego jumped, and Mercy cowered back into her doorway.
“I’d like to take Merce to dinner.” Diego’s whine reminded me of the one the other day. The one that I told him to knock the fuck off before he ruined his goddamned chances.
The one he needed to knock off more than ever if there was a chance that Dantè might go free.
I noticed the wild, unkempt tumult of his hair, the flash behind his eyes, his bold and brazen movements with her and wondered just how close to falling off the edge he was. He seemed close. Too close. And I couldn’t have that. I needed him on my side now more than ever. And the best way to keep him there was using Mercy.
“Merce, why wouldn’t you want to move on? Why wouldn’t you want some sort of happiness.”
The fury in Diego’s eyes cooled a little when I took his side. Mercy shoved herself up against the door a little harder.
“I’m not ready,” she said softly.
“He’s not coming back.” It was an automatic reaction, I didn’t realize that he might until I’d already said it. I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep myself from snarling at the thought.
“He might.” Her voice found a little strength. “You never know if he might.”
“He better fucking not,” Diego interjected, his voice a little too strained.
“I have to hope that he might.” She almost choked on her words and damn if I didn’t too. I’d been so focused on Dantè getting the appeal that I’d forgotten to figure out who’d started it. My temper curdled in my chest.
Damn her. Damn Mercy Graves and the way she felt about Dantè Rogue.
We’d been fine, Dantè was in the rearview, then she’d brought this on us. She’d pick him again and again and again and was set to ruin us because of it. My fists balled, my nails just digging in further to keep from choking her. Though she deserved it. She deserved being knocked down a peg or two. A blow for the one she’d unknowingly dealt me. And I knew exactly how to do it.
“Mercy,” I lifted my hand with a sigh to rub my temples. “Dantè put you on this pedestal, he built you up, but it’s all bullshit. Dantè is bullshit.” The vehemence of my words spattered spit on her cheeks, and she jerked back, cracking her head on the door. The sound pulled me from my exasperation. My brow folded in on itself and I reached up to rub the back of her head. “He fucking killed someone—”
“Don’t.” She swatted at my hands but I didn’t budge.
“Not just a simple gunshot either, Merce. There was blood everywhere—"
“Stop, Danger—”
“It was brutal. It was coldblooded. You can’t possibly forgive that. You can’t possibly want that. Leave him in the past and in jail where he belongs—”
“I won’t,” she bit back.
“If you don’t, if you don’t get over this woe is me trash, you’re going to die alone!”
“Dude, stop,” Diego muttered behind me, and I could tell by the way Mercy cringed and trembled I’d crossed the line.
I sighed and used the grip I had on the back of her head to pull her into my chest. Soft sobs shook her shoulders against my ribs, and each one made me feel like an ass. Sort of. I’d meant every single word I’d said—Dantè Rogue was a cancer that she needed to kick or let kill her already—but I should have been softer.
