Salt Kissed Love (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 1)

by Kailee Reese Samuels

  “My marriage to Kaci is complicated,” he states before his mouth succumbs to the lure of my rose-colored peaks. “It wasn’t a marriage in the true sense of the word. We hinged on our divine union only because I was her lab rat and she was my creator.”

  “You make it sound like Frankenstein,” I propose with a giggle.

  With a look of enlightenment, he lifts his brows and agrees, “It kind of was…”

  “Your allegiance to her is fierce because she saved you from your lineage and reconstructed you into her monster.”

  “But my first love will forever be the cherry girl…”

  Taking a guess, I ask, “Bertrand?”

  “Ya,” he simply responds, rolling us over.

  Straddling his cock, I move ever so slowly, riding him like the air I breathe—desperate and absolute. “And what about Emily?”

  “Em is part of the past,” he says, putting his hands behind his head like a king and giving my eyes a fantastic view of his chiseled, inked biceps.

  Serving the ball back to his court, I say, “But you fucked her.”

  “I fuck lots of girls,” he mumbles with a devious grin.

  Moving faster on his royal cock, I charge, “You’re fucking me.”

  “You are fucking me,” he corrects with a sexy as fuck smirk. “And we will be fucking until our last gasp.”

  “That almost sounds morbid,” I laugh, holding onto his hands. “Am I your new cherry girl?”

  “No, Iris… You are the whole orchard.”

  “You just like my nectar,” I sass with a wink.

  “Baby, you got the juice that feeds my soul.”

  “Tacky bastard,” I play as he springs up quick and wraps his arms around my body. He is in control now, thrusting up into me as his starving lips seek out my sweet flesh.

  “Yours.”

  Rocking into the nether, we hold tight to one another through the passing moon. As the dawn arises, his olive shimmers in the light and I am captivated by our differences. My pale, soft skin molds easily to his rigid structure during our spooning. He conforms to nothing as I bend and contort with the ability of an adept circus performer. I am the puppet and he is my Master.

  And we are sinners in search of salvation.

  SAL

  On the twenty-first night, a phone call from Serene wakes me up. “Hello…”

  “Sally, you need to get out of there,” she informs urgently. “You are no longer safe. They know about La Chiesa. They know you have Iris. Grab your gear and go. I will call Dale in a half-hour to transport Iris home.”

  Getting up out of bed, I walk to the living room and firmly state, “I am not leaving.”

  “You do not get out of that bunker tonight and I guarantee by morning all hell will break loose,” she pleads. “Trust me, Trotter.”

  Fuck.

  How many times have I buckled at those words?

  With my hands turning into violent fists, I suppress the emotion. “You want me to just walk away from my asset?”

  “Yes,” Serene implores with a clear purpose. “Grab your gear and go. The asset will be handled.”

  Shaking my head, I try and wrap my heart around obeying her order, but my whole job is protecting that girl. “Can you promise me nothing will happen to her?”

  With an urgency, she pleads, “The only thing I can promise you is that by tomorrow morning you may be sitting underneath a ticking time bomb. Get the fuck out of there, Trotter.”

  Grabbing my black bag, I push in the code as my jaw clenches and I fight every urge in my body that screams this is the wrong thing to do. I shouldn’t run away, but face the enemy head on. Tears stream down my cheeks as the anger overcomes me. “Where did you get the intel?”

  “Dom.”

  Banging my head against the door, I cannot just leave my angel behind for them to come and pluck her apart. “Dom?”

  “Yes, Salvatore,” Serene cries as her voice cracks with the sounds of sheer terror. “Nico confirmed it. Please, Kid, listen to me. They are coming to kill you. If you stay, they will kill you and she will be dead regardless—after they rape and maim her—it will be torture like you have never known. Please, Lucas… Go.”

  “Who is coming to get her?”

  “Nicki is on the way now,” Serene replies quick, “He is bringing her to me, and I swear to you he will not let anything happen.”

  “How do you know that?” Thinking about her words, I spin away from the door and look up, wishing Kace would drop down from the heavens and tell me what to do. “How can you be so sure Nico isn’t going to take her out first chance he gets?”

  “… Because I am pregnant with his baby, Sal.”

  “Oh, my fucking god, Steph…why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you didn’t need to know until now,” she boasts amongst the tears. “I would really like you to be a part of this child’s life, so if you could please not get yourself killed—I would appreciate it.”

  “Can you try to find out who is after Iris? Someone got ahold of her at the farm before we left. He hit her face and said, “A night in the den waits for sluts like me.”

  Shocked, she replies, “When did you find this out?”

  Opening the door and heading up the darkened stairwell, I inform, “A couple nights ago.”

  In the darkened tomb, Serene continues, “Sally, Dale’s mom—Virginia Archer—was killed execution style a couple nights ago.”

  “I am aware of this,” I grumble in the pitch-black coffin as I struggle to remove the lid and the light from the moon hits my face.

  She asks, “Did you do it?”

  Heaving the wooden floorboard panel back over, I cannot believe I left my princess in the crypt. “Would it matter if I did?”

  “Oh fuck, Sal!” she exclaims irritated. “Why?”

  Running through the church, I confess my sins, “Because some people need to die.”

  “Yeah, well your little vendetta tipped them off to your whereabouts. Get your ass out of that bunker, Sally, now!” she warns, ending the call.

  At the bottom of the hill, I gaze back up at The Church. The steeple reaches high into the air and from this angle it appears to be amongst the stars, a part of the celestial fabric weaving us together. The good, the bad, the forsaken, and the holy balance on the precipice as I break down and my knees hit the soil.

  “Kace… We need to talk.”

  Pulling open the wooden door and starting up my truck, I rip out of the barn and don’t look back. I have to trust Serene as she is the guiding light in my miserable world and I know she would never put me in danger.

  Pulling up to the first stop sign, I want to hightail it back to Iris, put her in my pickup, and leave it all behind—Juliet, Sibyl, and our past. Nothing can compare to how bad the pain is as the guilt crawls through me.

  Unable to ignore my intuition, I do a U-turn in the middle of the intersection and floor it back to the church. Before I turn in, I cut my lights, flip it into four-wheel drive, and skirt the edge of the rock covered tree line.

  I won’t go back in.

  I will wait until Nico gets here.

  Twenty-four minutes later, a black Escalade pulls close to the church and four men exit the vehicle. “Motherfucker!”

  I grab both the Glocks out of the bag and realize I have no vest. It sucks, but I don’t have time. I scale my way up the hill to The Church as I hear laughter and glass breaking. Two go inside and another two-stand guard at the door.

  Coming up the backside of The Church, I scurry to the corner and pop one in the head. Gun fire erupts in the sanctuary as the ping of bullets zips through the windows and siding. Fear no longer exists as I creep to the front and rage, “No! Iris!”

  Standing in the rubble, she lowers the rifle.

  “Jesus, fuck baby…”

  “I had a good teacher,” she says, running to my arms. I hold her close and kiss her head as my heart threatens to erupt in my chest.

  “What the hell happened?”
Nico shouts, barging in the door. “We gotta go, now!”

  “If they sent one team, I guarantee they will send two,” I warn, clasping my hands around Iris’ rosy hot cheeks. “You will be okay. Go with Nico. Go home.”

  “Sal…”

  “You have to go, babydoll, you cannot stay with me right now.”

  “Sal…I love you,” she cries. Nico grips her hand and pulls us apart until we can no longer touch.

  “I love you, Angel…I will be home soon.”

  I wait until I see their lights upon the road and pull out my phone, snapping pictures of all four thugs. “These aren’t random shots,” I mumble as my boots crunch in the broken glass and debris. “She fuckin’ knew what she was doing.”

  I grab the rifle and step back to the pantry, looking at the floorboard panel. The thing is fucking heavy.

  How the fuck did you lift that?

  Running down into the bunker, I grab some more of our things, shut the panel, and load them up.

  Picking up my phone, I click the one person I know I can trust. “Prissy Pants…”

  “I just saw the alert come through,” she says, “Where are you?”

  “I am on the way to Taos.”

  “I’m headed to the air strip now,” she says before I can stop her. “I will bring supplies.”

  “Babe, I need everything…laptop, gear, and a full set-up.”

  “I gotchu…” she assures, laughing, “I’ll be there before you sex machine.”

  Knowing she is right, I snicker. “And Jaid…”

  She chirps back, “Ya?”

  “Be fucking careful.”

  SAL

  “Maybe they opened the door and she came out fighting, Sal,” Jaid says, sitting on the bed in Taos with me. Papers cover the bed like a sheet, half-full ashtrays threaten to spill over, and clusters of bottles and cans—water, Red Bull, Coke, and Jim Beam litter each of the nightstands. “The fact is—you don’t know. You weren’t there. You didn’t see what happened.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense though, Jaid,” I reply, leaning back against the headboard. In loose cotton pants and no shirt, my glasses defy the perception of just another pretty mug.

  Jaid’s dirty blonde hair is tangled up in some sort of clip as she types away into the industrial-cased, bad ass computer. I am certain the thing could be run over by a semi and still make it out alive. Wearing panties, a white tank top, and two-day old makeup, Jaid is a fucking machine. I try and ignore the fact that I can see through her shirt.

  “But what you are saying doesn’t make any sense either, Sal…” Jaid pauses, quitting her pecking to give me her two cents. “You think they let her out, and then she went mad and tapped them off one-by-one.”

  This whole powwow thing isn’t unusual for us. We break every case down like this. The only difference is every case doesn’t typically involve a woman I am in love with. But Jaid is an excellent partner, especially behind closed doors. I know that sounds kinky, but I actually didn’t mean it that way. She is thorough and pragmatic, helping yours truly keep my head out of the fucking clouds.

  My bodyguard and other partner, Dale Archer, is good for street work. Mostly because he’s fucking huge and an intimidating sob. His responsibility, reliability, and loyalty to me are infallible, but his research will never be on par with the mastermind, sitting on the bed.

  Arguing tit for tat, I spar, “I don’t think you are understanding how heavy the door is. It is the original wood from the 1800’s. It is heavy. It is big. With no hinges, I don’t know that she could move the damn thing.”

  Biting the end of her pencil, she assures, “I could move it.”

  “You are a trained ops agent, babe,” I backlash, getting up from the bed. She tilts her head, closes her eyes, and lifts her brows. “And even so, Jaid… Those were fucking pro-shots. She knew what the fuck she was doing. How the fuck do you explain that?”

  “So, break up with her,” she proposes a solution, knowing I will not like it, but she doesn’t stop there. “Stop dating her. Quit protecting her like your life depends on hers. You know she worked for Gennaro. You know she was supposed to come after you and kill you… But you are like a fucking moth to a damn flame on this one and you are going to get burned.”

  In every which direction, my hands fly about on every syllable—I wish I could stop it, but I have better things to do than worry about looking like a daego. “That’s just it…. she had the perfect fucking shot, Jaid. I was standing in the doorway thinking my bitch got blown to bits and she is in there standing barefoot in the rubble holding my rifle like she fucking owns it.”

  With her perfect blend of southern smartassery, Jaid sasses, “She kind of does own your rifle, Sal.”

  I ignore her and push forward, “Kaci wouldn’t have put me with someone who wanted to kill me though.”

  “People change, Raniero!” she hisses back, slamming the computer case and rising up to meet the war that I bring. “The trajectory changes, the map changes, the motivation changes—you know all this,” she declares, tapping on my temple. “Do you need to go back to training 101? You are thinking with the wrong goddamned head, Sal.”

  Turning away, I scoff, “Bullshit, I just don’t understand how it happened.”

  She sits on the edge of the bed as papers tumble onto the ground. “It’s not like there is surveillance footage.”

  “No, it was all turned off,” I rebuke, irritated and frustrated. There are no easy answers.

  Her brow furrows as her face lights up. “Who turned it off?”

  “I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. “Dale maybe?”

  “Why would a security expert turn off the cameras?” Jaid darts up and reopens her super machine as she whispers defiantly, “You are making excuses because you don’t want to see the simplest of reasoning and it’s going to fucking get your ass killed, babe.”

  I mumble, “What would you do?”

  Pecking away, Jaid ignores my question, focusing on her screen. “Is the feed linked on your internal files?”

  “Should be,” I say, moving closer and squatting low by the bed as I look on.

  Clicking between the screens, she says, “Here is the loft in Houston, the apartment in Sugargrove, and outside of here—but those are the only three that are online.”

  Glancing at her ingénue-like face, I bark back panic-stricken, “…Where the fuck is The Doll House?”

  “Looks like,” she says, pulling up the backend files, “the house in New Orleans has been offline since before Valentines…”

  “What about La Chiesa?”

  “Been offline since your birthday—April 29.”

  “Who the fuck is disabling the cams?” I grip the edge of the bed tightly, trying to comprehend the depth of someone’s desperation. “Why aren’t my notifications going off?”

  “The notifications as you say, or alarms won’t go off if they are disabled internally within the system and according to this—you killed them both.”

  “I did no such thing,” I assure. “I spent weeks wiring up every single place HR Holdings owns, the last thing I would do would be to turn it all off.”

  “Except one…” Jaid points out.

  “Chance Ballister’s old house.”

  “Fuck,” I remember, closing my eyes.

  “Have you been there recently?”

  “I haven’t been to Iris’ house in months.”

  Rubbing her lips together, she coaxes, “Maybe you should start there.”

  “I can’t go back,” I reluctantly reply. “If I go back, I am a dead man according to Serene.”

  “Seems likely says the Agent Prissy Pants Magic Ball,” she humors, and I shoot a rapid grin which falls to a stern scowl.

  Laying my head down on her thigh, I am fraught with the shrapnel raining down around me. Her hand ruffles my hair relaxing me as her words attempt to soothe. “I will go take a gander.”

  “You can’t…” I mumble with my face pressed into the blanket.
>
  “I can because I love you, Sal. Kaci put you and I together to work through the tangled mess of research that she found but could never act upon. She knew everything, but she couldn’t prove it. By the time, she had intel in hand, she was too weak. So, you and I are in this––as a Team––until one of us says no.”

  Lifting up, I ask, “Does that make us Team SaJa?”

  “I prefer JaSa,” she corrects with a serious expression morphing into a playful smile. “But sure.”

  Her hand runs over my cheek as I admit the truth, “I don’t know where I would be right now without you.”

  “I know that, Sal,” she says, kissing my forehead. “So, you play it cool and watch your back and let me worry about the footwork. But you better ask yourself how much you trust the asset.”

  “Serene is pregnant.”

  “Is it yours?”

  “Fuck no,” I say. “We had sex one time back in January.”

  “Don’t worry. Iris won’t kill Serene, but she might kill you.”

  Closing my eyes, I pray to whatever God will listen that our suspicions are wrong about Iris being a black widow, waiting for the right time to consume her prey.

  SAL

  Three days later, I am watching a ballgame when the phone rings. Accepting the call, Jaid wants to video chat.

  “Where are you?”

  “Iris’ house,” she says, moving hastily through the place and scanning her phone across the rooms. “Does anything look different?”

  “Nah…” I say, “Go upstairs.”

  Walking through the home, she opens closets, drawers, and moves furniture. Nothing is obvious. “When was the last time she was here?”

  I have to think about this as so much has happened in the last year. “… Christmas maybe?”

  She continues through the house and I see a door off to the side, but Jaid is distracted by the bedroom. “Back up babe, what is that?”

  “A locked door?”

  “Crack it,” I request.

  “Ok, give me a second,” she says as her face fills the screen. “I have to set you down. I didn’t bring picks.”