Darker: The Inquirer

by M. S. Parker

  “Since I didn’t protect you then, I tried to do everythin’ I could to protect you after. Kept tabs on where you were and what you were doin’, even after you changed your name. I worked on gettin’ you let out early and made sure you could leave Rochester even though you’d technically been on parole.”

  My stomach churned, making me regret having breakfast this morning. This was so much worse than I’d thought. He hadn’t just sent Min to me. He’d had his hand in everything that had happened to me from the moment I’d made the accusations about Art. Ambrose had claimed to be my lawyer back then, but I hadn’t wanted him anywhere near me. I’d thought he’d wanted to protect his brother by getting me in trouble. Now, I saw it was guilt.

  It didn’t make things better.

  I lifted my chin. “If you’re expecting me to thank you, you’ll be waiting until hell freezes over.”

  He shook his head. “No, that’s not…no, I’m not expecting anything from you. I never wanted you to know I was doing any of this.”

  “Now that I know, what happens?”

  His hands were shaking as he pressed his palms to the top of his desk. “Whatever you want. I just want to help you. Money. More cases. I can put you on retainer for the firm. Or I can write a check.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want your fucking money, Ambrose. I never did, no matter what your family’s always thought.”

  He opened his mouth, and the expression on his face made me think he was going to apologize again. I didn’t want to hear it. In fact, I was just about ready to walk out. This wasn’t helping me at all.

  “Just tell me one more thing,” I said. “If you’re so hellbent on helping me, why the fuck would you send me a case that would take me to Savannah and to your family’s fucking firm?”

  He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “The case you gave Min to hire me for, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about the case itself. I simply told her to take whatever case needed the most research done and hire you for it.”

  “So, you had no idea that one of the families I was looking into has had Check & Sons as their lawyers for generations?”

  His jaw dropped, and I didn’t think he was a good enough actor to pretend to be that surprised. “I swear, I didn’t know. I never would’ve sent you anywhere near my family.”

  I wanted to believe him simply because it would make things easier for me, but he’d hidden his interference in my life for more than a decade. I didn’t think I could believe anything he said.

  And where that left me, I didn’t know.

  Twenty-Five

  Bradyn

  I didn’t like this.

  I tossed the remote on the table and pushed to my feet. I understood Nyx needing to do this herself, but that didn’t mean I liked the idea of her going through this alone.

  My instincts were to protect her, always and from everything, but when I’d agreed to submit to her that first time, I’d seen the need she had for independence, for control. If I tried to hold her too tight, I’d lose her, and it was that thought that kept going through my mind as I waited in our hotel room.

  Still, I needed to be ready for however she came back. Depending on how things went, she could be furious or crying or dealing with flashbacks or any number of other things. She hadn’t wanted me to go with her to confront Ambrose, but she had wanted me here with her, and I was determined to show her that it hadn’t been a mistake.

  She needed familiarity, but not here in Rochester. She needed to be around the people and places that had helped her work through her trauma the first time around. I didn’t have the financial resources to do something like rent a private plane, but I’d always been wise with how I spent my money, which meant I had enough to do this for her.

  We’d do some sightseeing, go to dinner wherever she wanted, even if it was just to stay here and get room service, and then tomorrow morning, we’d go to New York City so she could spend some time with Kaimi and Rose. I was pretty sure that between our tickets, my connections, and some money, I could make it happen.

  It was almost noon when the lock in the door clicked, and I immediately leaned against the arm of the chair in an attempt to look casual, though I suspected I just looked like an idiot.

  One look at Nyx’s face had me straightening and forgetting about how I appeared. Her face was blank, and it was worse than if she’d come in scowling or even crying. Those normally bright green eyes were dull and empty, almost as if she was in shock.

  “Nyx?” I took her hand and held it between mine. Her fingers were cold.

  “I’m okay.”

  If her voice had been stronger, I might’ve believed it. “What do you need me to do?”

  She didn’t answer, her eyes unfocused at a spot on my shoulder.

  “Nyx, what do you need me to do?” I repeated my question, and she blinked, shook her head, then seemed to see me.

  “Sorry.” She gave me a twisted sort of smile. “Seeing Ambrose was easier than I’d thought it’d be, but it wasn’t easy.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. Maybe not at all.”

  “Whatever you need,” I promised. I raised her hand and kissed it. “What do you want to do now? We can stay in if you like or maybe do some sightseeing. Do the touristy stuff that non-natives would do.”

  “I think I’d like that.” She blinked a few times and seemed to come out of the fog that had been shrouding her. “Sightseeing.”

  A rush of relief went through me. I knew her as well as I thought I did. Now for her surprise.

  “I planned something for us tomorrow,” I said. “A flight to New York City where we can spend a few days together, away from all of this mess.”

  She threw her arms around my neck. “Thank you.”

  I hadn’t expected the embrace, but I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight. I pressed my face against her hair and breathed in the subtle scent of her white tea shampoo and body wash. Without any effort on my part beyond breathing, my body responded, my cock thickening. It wasn’t surprising. I’d gotten a hard-on in the shower just from it still smelling like her after her shower.

  I wasn’t going to act on it, though.

  If she initiated sex, I wouldn’t say no, but I didn’t want that to be the only way we knew how to deal with problems together. I wanted something real, something lasting with her, and I refused to let ill-timed arousal screw that up.

  Fortunately, another part of my body seemed to agree with my common sense because my stomach growled so loud, we both laughed. She took a step back, her cheeks flushed.

  “Lunch?” I asked.

  She nodded. “There’s a pizza place a couple blocks over.”

  “Sounds good to me.” I patted my growling belly. “We can make plans while we eat.”

  “I told you that you’d need a jacket.” Nyx laughed as I glared at her.

  “It’s not even Halloween,” I complained, rubbing my arms. “How the hell do kids go trick-or-treating without freezing their asses off?”

  Her laughter just got louder, and right then, I knew that I was so far gone on her that I’d have walked around for hours without a jacket, complaining about the cold, if it meant I could hear her laugh like that.

  “Haven’t you ever been outside Georgia?” she asked.

  “I have,” I said indignantly. After a pause, I added the rest of the truth, “Just not when it’s cold.”

  She shook her head, a grin stretched from ear-to-ear. “If you think this is cold, you ain’t seen nothing yet. We’ve had snow for Halloween.”

  “No shit.”

  “No shit.” She reached out and took my hand, pulling it around her body and into her pocket with her hand.

  Her body warmth did more to heat me up than any jacket I could’ve worn.

  “Thank you for today,” she said as she leaned against me. “I mean it, Bradyn. Yo
u being here is important, but you taking care of me…” She turned her face into my arm, but I didn’t need to see her expression to know how hard it was for her to admit any of this. “I can’t tell you how long it’s been since anyone’s taken care of me.”

  I had to restrain myself from doing something stupid, like telling her that I’d always take care of her if she let me. That we could take the dynamic that we’d touched on a couple times and move it from sex into real life. Not like a ‘call me master and walk behind me’ sort of thing, but more like her letting me take care of her whenever she needed it.

  She was twenty-six, and she’d been on her own since that first night Art came into her room and drove a wedge between her and the rest of her family. That was fifteen years of never having anyone else to lean on, never being able to completely trust another person.

  This wasn’t the time to try to scale the walls she’d build up.

  I could, however, offer her this one thing. I leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Whatever you need.”

  I reached out with my free hand to open the door for us both, and we made our way to the elevator and then up to our room. The quiet between us was a pleasant one. Not sexually charged, but more like a level of comfortable that we hadn’t had before. Something that made me feel like, even though we hadn’t put a label on what we were to each other, we were really together, a couple.

  The two of us chatted about the things we’d seen today, how good the food had been, what time our flight left tomorrow. What we didn’t talk about was sex. In fact, the thought barely crossed my mind, even as we got into the same bed.

  I was a straight man, so of course, I noticed how cute she was in her shorts and teddy bear t-shirt, but when she curled her body to match mine, all I could think of was how good she felt in my arms. How right.

  I wanted this every night, and the thought didn’t scare me as much as it should have.

  Twenty-Six

  Nyx

  Falling asleep next to someone I hadn’t just fucked was strange, and waking up next to that same person was even weirder. Not bad weird, though. I liked it. I liked having Bradyn next to me, his body warm and comfortable. I liked the weight of his arm across my body and the steady thud of his heart under my ear.

  I’d liked all of it so much that I was still thinking about it on the flight from Rochester to New York.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with me staying at your place?” Bradyn asked as we walked through JFK. “I don’t have a problem getting a hotel room.”

  “No, I want you to stay with me.” I glanced at him and added, “If you’re okay with it. I mean, I won’t be offended if you’d rather stay in a hotel.”

  He laughed. “Nope. I’m looking forward to seeing where you live.”

  I flushed, strangely pleased. I’d never considered bringing a guy into my home, but then again, I’d never had a relationship like this with anyone else. The only thing that worried me was knowing that he’d come from money.

  My apartment wasn’t some rattrap or anything like that, but it was definitely not what he’d been used to most of his life. Sure, he lived in a cabin on a horse ranch now, but for all I knew, he thought of it more like a temporary vacation home. I was proud of my place, and if he didn’t like it…I wasn’t sure how well I’d take it.

  But I wasn’t going to think about that. No assumptions. The same Bradyn who’d bailed me out of jail was the same one whose parents’ house was probably bigger than the entire floor my apartment was on. And he was the same man who’d allowed himself to be disinherited rather than compromise his principles.

  Since we had luggage, we took a cab instead of the subway, but thanks to traffic, it wasn’t any quicker. I had to admit, though, that I was glad to not be packed into a subway car with my stuff. That would’ve been a pain in the ass.

  “Here we are,” the driver said as he pulled over in front of my building.

  I paid for the ride while Bradyn got the bags – a compromise we’d worked out on the way over – and then we went inside.

  “This is my office.” I gestured for him to follow me. “And the stairs to my apartment are right back this way.”

  When I went into the apartment, I flipped on the light and carried my bag back to my bedroom, hoping the short distance would help take care of the nerves I couldn’t quite get rid of.

  He was looking at a couple pictures when I came back out, his bag on the floor next to the door. “How old are you in this one?”

  I came over to his side and looked where he was pointing, even though I already knew which picture he was asking about. The connection that had drawn me to him in Georgia kept getting stronger, and I just wanted to be near him.

  “I’m eighteen there.” I tried to see my younger self the way he would see me, not the way I saw myself.

  Isis had taken this picture a couple days after I’d moved in with Kaimi and Rose. I was the same height back then as I was now, but not quite as curvy. I hadn’t been starved in juvie, but for a lot of reasons, I’d been a little underweight.

  The t-shirt and jeans I’d been wearing were from a thrift store, and neither of them really fit me that well, which didn’t help how I looked. I’d kept my hair short while I’d been in juvie, both because it’d been easier to take care of and because it was one less thing another girl could grab in a fight. I didn’t really look younger though, I didn’t think. It was the eyes. They hadn’t been innocent for a long time.

  “Is it a bad thing if I say you look younger now?” Bradyn glanced at me, his eyes twinkling.

  “Depends,” I answered, keeping my tone playful. “If you’re going to start calling me jailbait, I’ll have to knock you on your ass.”

  He laughed. “Not that young. Give me some credit here.”

  “I’d only been out of juvie for a couple weeks.” I didn’t look at him as I said it. “I was a little shell-shocked.”

  “How long were you there?”

  Giving him the answer might lead to him asking what I’d done to get arrested, and I wasn’t ready for that conversation yet. But I was fairly confident that if I told him I didn’t want to talk about it, he’d accept it. I took the risk.

  “Five years.”

  “Going from being barely a teenager to an adult out in the real world would be more than a little shocking.”

  I appreciated the comment but waited for the question. When it didn’t come, I turned back to the pictures on the wall. All of them were from the last eight years, and none were of any of my biological family. Instead, they were of members of my real family.

  “That Rose looks like she’s been a handful from moment one.” He gestured toward another picture, that one of her on her tenth birthday when she’d asked for a tiara she could wear all the time.

  “She has been,” I agreed. “Kaimi’s just hoping that she doesn’t go through a rebellious phase.”

  “Speaking of Kaimi, what do you say we pick up some lunch and take it to her and Sitara?”

  “I like that idea.”

  I’d already called to let them know we were coming, and they’d told us to stop by the tattoo shop when we got in so we could touch base about what we wanted to do. Bringing them lunch would be a nice surprise.

  Which was exactly what they said when, forty minutes later, Bradyn and I walked into Polliver’s Ink with two bags from Kaimi and Sitara’s favorite Indian restaurant.

  “Hey! Look who’s back!” Kaimi came out from behind the counter, practically bouncing across the floor, and threw her arms around me.

  She wasn’t even five feet tall, but she was strong enough that her hugs almost hurt, which she always thought was hilarious. Her normally golden skin had darkened while she and Sitara were on their honeymoon, and she looked good. Me giving her an all-over drew my attention to new ink on her ankle.

  “Did you get another tattoo?” I asked, leaning down to peer at what she’d added.

  “I did.” She snatched the food from my hand. “You
brought me Tandoori Chicken!”

  And then she was off with the bag I’d carried in. I didn’t need to ask what ink she’d gotten, though. I’d seen enough to know it was a date, so I felt safe in assuming it was her anniversary.

  “Some of that’s for Sitara too,” I called after Kaimi. “You have to share yours ‘cuz I’m not sharing mine.”

  “Hey, Nyx.” Liesel Canon greeted me from behind the counter. She was tall like me, but thinner. Henna red hair with black streaks, multiple piercings, and several tattoos went with her smart mouth and tough personality. Basically, she was a badass.

  Maybe she and I could eventually become friends.

  Damn. I was actually thinking about making friends. What was next? Voluntarily hugging people?

  “I’m guessing Sitara’s in her office.”

  “Yeah. She has an appointment in half an hour. Kaimi’s next one isn’t for an hour.”

  “Thanks,” I said as Bradyn and I walked past the desk toward the office.

  The four of us talked as we ate, but we stayed away from any serious topics, including my case. It was nice to not feel that pressure, especially after how stressful my conversation with Ambrose had been yesterday. I’d talk to Kaimi about that at some point, but not right now. I just wanted to enjoy the day.

  Besides, Bradyn was going to get a tattoo, and I had a feeling it would be entertaining.

  “I want to see it.” Rose tugged at Bradyn’s sleeve. “Please.”

  “You know that it’s covered, right?” I asked, leaning up so I could see around Bradyn.

  Rose had insisted on sitting on his other side during dinner, and I was starting to think she had a crush on my boy…my friend…with benefits? Shit. This should have been easier to figure out.

  “I know.” She gave me a duh look. “That clear tape stuff that goes over it helps it heal and keeps out moisture.”