Harlow pushed her shoulders back. “I don’t.”
He set an unenthusiastic gaze on her. “You don’t want to,” Ryske said.
“Maybe she does,” Anwen said, sliding an arm around Harlow’s shoulders.
The half-embrace was odd in itself. The moment only got weirder when Anwen took Harlow’s loose hand from her leg. Harlow was about to ask what was going on when Anwen guided her hand forward onto Ryske’s groin.
The implication was more obvious with actions. “Oh,” she said, glancing at the scowling Ryske who was just standing there while Anwen rubbed Harlow’s palm against his cock through his jeans. “Okay, can I just clarify? Do you want me to get him hard so you can use it or do you want us all to be involved in this?”
“No one’s involved in it,” Ryske said and leaned over her to grab the bag from the counter. “Because it’s not happening.”
Turning around, he left both of them and strode to the closet, which he unlocked before going inside.
“Wait here,” Harlow whispered to Anwen and slid off her stool to go after Ryske.
Closing the closet door behind her, she found Ryske at their closet, putting the bag on one of the higher shelves. Going over to him, she wrapped both arms around him and began to unbuckle his belt.
“Now I don’t know why you’re doing that,” he said, letting his arms fall to his sides. “Is it because you want to use it or are you getting it hard for someone else?”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
He turned so fast that she almost lost a finger in his buckle. “You want a threesome?” he asked like he couldn’t believe it. “With Annie? Fuck, Trink. When you said odd suggestion, I didn’t think you meant—”
“No! What? No. Not about that.” She inhaled. “I wasn’t going to tell you what Ophelia said to me because I was worried you’d do something.” Taking his hand, she pulled him to the couch and sat him down. “But now I think you should.”
“Think I should what?”
“Ophelia wants Anwen in on Pothos.”
His reaction was both angry and surprised. “What? Why wouldn’t you tell me that? You think they’re working together?”
Stroking his thigh, she twisted her whole body toward him. “I don’t know. Ophelia says she hasn’t seen Anwen since the beating. I can’t believe that Anwen would volunteer to get beat up. We’re supposed to be protecting Anwen, so I don’t want to just give her up to Ophelia. But—”
“Anwen can’t stay here forever,” he muttered like he was reading her mind. “She could be a benefit to us… and she gets life beyond here… But, if they’re working together, or make up and decide to screw us…”
“Right,” Harlow said, sinking back for a moment, then rising up to kiss him. “You’re amazing.”
“Thank you,” he said and winked at her. “I already knew that. So, what’s your plan?”
“My plan was to talk to Anwen, to try to get a feel for whether or not she has loyalty to our side or sympathy for the other. But, now I think you should do it. You bring it up, get a feel for her, and if you think it’s okay, invite her on… She’s more likely to be loyal to you than the rest of us. She wants to please you. She trusts you more than she trusts the rest of us too. I think she’ll buy it. Whether you invite her, or warn her to keep her distance, she wants to believe you. That desire is stronger than anything any of the rest of us can cultivate in this short space of time.”
“I don’t know that it’s our choice to make,” he said. “If she finds out Ophelia invited her in and we hid that, it could turn her against us. This is a choice she has to make for herself.”
Nodding, Harlow agreed with the sentiment. “Just like we have the right to make our own choice about how much we trust her.”
His smile was proud. He leaned down to kiss her. “You’re amazing too.”
It seemed she’d read his mind and finished his thought for him. Anwen could pick whether or not to be involved in Pothos. But, as a crew, they had to decide how far they would go, or even what they would do for Anwen, if she did come onboard.
“If we let her stay, we’d have to be careful about what we told her,” Harlow said. “Make sure she only overhears what we want her to overhear.”
She let him consider that for a second and expected a response. Harlow didn’t expect that response to include him curling his finger into the ring on her necklace to haul her mouth up to his. Yanking his mouth from hers as quickly as he’d given it, he picked up her hips and pulled her over to straddle his lap.
“Fuck it,” he said, in a weird kind of booming voice.
Confused, she was still trying to catch up when he drove his hands up her thighs, under her dress. Pushing it up over her torso, he kept on going until the fabric was free of her head and tossed it away.
“Fuck what?” she asked when her hair was cascading down her back.
With her still sitting on his thighs, he slouched and opened the fly on his slacks to pull out his dick. Already full and hard, he was prepped for her.
“You started it, baby,” Ryske said in that same voice, swooping an arm around her pelvis to tug her up and closer to him. “Fuck yourself on my cock.” Linking his fingers at the back of his head, he looked like cock of the walk. He winked and whispered the next three words. “And be loud.”
His eyes flashed to the door and she got it. He wanted Anwen to hear them having sex. She wasn’t really sure why, but Ryske had a plan. He always had a plan.
Rising higher on her knees, Harlow brushed her nipple on his lips, coaxing a drowsy feral look to his eyes. “Maybe I don’t want to—”
His arm locked around her. In the same second that he sucked her nipple into his mouth, he fired his hips up while pulling her down. He slammed himself into her so hard that she screamed.
“Fuck! Holy—fuck! Shit,” Harlow called out and punched his shoulder. “Crash!”
His thin smile stretched, but he kept her nipple between his teeth when he spoke. “Yeah, baby,” he growled. “Just like that.”
Ryske did have a way of getting what he wanted no matter what. He wanted sex from her and he was getting it. He used his arm on her hips to start her moving. Once she had her rhythm, he stretched his arms along the back of the couch and tipped his head back to look at her.
“Look at my gorgeous girl go,” he said. “You enjoying yourself?” Holding her lip in her teeth, she nodded, trying to quiet her panting. “Prove it.”
Her mouth opened, but nothing came out until he seized her throat. The possession of his grip bled a desperate yelp of need from her.
“Ryske,” she called. “Oh, fuck! Yes!” Gritting her teeth, Harlow hissed the word out again. “Yes!”
Releasing her throat, he grabbed her ass in both hands, squeezing her, making her work harder and faster. He leaned forward and tongued the ring of her collar into his mouth, catching it in his teeth and pulling her upper body forward when he leaned back. Turning his head, he restricted her breathing with the twist of the chain. His control forced her breasts to rub on his shirt as she rose and fell at this awkward angle.
Being at his mercy, being controlled by him, took her over the edge. It had made her forget herself the previous night and was doing the same there in their closet. Riding him hard, Harlow hit climax so suddenly that she wouldn’t have been able to stay silent or restrained no matter how she tried.
Slumping against him, she felt him release the tension of her chain. It slithered from his mouth and skittered back to its place against the nook of her collarbone.
“I don’t want to move,” she muttered, feeling the thump of his heart on her chest begin to slow. “I’m going to stay right here.”
“Okay,” he said, trailing his fingers up and down her back. “The guys could come walking in any second, but you’ve got a hot body, so…”
“They’ve seen my body before,” she said, sighing and forcing herself to rest her hands on his shoulders to push her body away from his.
Smoot
hing her hands down his chest, she caught the front tails of his shirt and began to unfasten the buttons. “You going to send me out there naked?”
Smiling, she opened his shirt wide and dragged her nails down his torso. “How did you stay fully clothed while I’m completely naked?”
“This is not my first rodeo,” he said, skimming a hand up her back while snagging the ring of her necklace in his forefinger to pull her down for a kiss. “Go downstairs and help the guys… Don’t come back up.”
“You’re going to talk to her?” she asked, her mouth on his.
“Keep the guys downstairs until you see me, okay?”
“Can I tell them why?”
“They’re our crew, right?”
Climbing off him, she went to get a shirt dress from the rack by their dresser. After doing a couple of buttons, she grabbed a pair of skinny jeans from the drawer. Jumping up and down, she pulled them on and turned back to Ryske who was still on the couch with his shirt and slacks open.
Their relationship was moving at a meteoric pace. They hadn’t even been together last week and yet, in this moment, their feelings were the most stable, sure thing in her life.
Something about their bliss unnerved her. In the past whenever they managed to find happiness, something would change, and it wasn’t usually something for the better. Harlow loved that man; there was no way to deny it anymore. But, keeping him had always been harder than falling under his spell.
20
“This is sort of exciting and terrifying at the same time,” Anwen said.
Sitting in the back of Noon’s car with Ryske in the front, Harlow and Anwen were due to meet Ophelia in the Pothos venue.
All Ryske had told her about his conversation with Anwen was that he hadn’t needed to persuade her. Harlow didn’t know exactly what he’d said to her. Though it had to have been more than just a question and answer.
The pair had spent a lot of time upstairs in the apartment alone after Harlow went down to help with the cleanup operation. Long enough that Dover called time and sent everyone from the neighborhood home with the promise of free drinks on the night Floyd’s re-opened. At a loose end, because they couldn’t go upstairs to the apartment, Maze had taken her and the other guys out for Chinese food and cocktails.
They’d been rowdy when they got back. Despite the late hour, Ryske had been working out, while Anwen was already asleep on his bed. He’d been kind of grumpy about being ditched. The rule that Anwen couldn’t be left alone in the apartment was still in effect meaning he’d had to stay and babysit.
Somehow the conversation came around to the Anwen and Ophelia predicament. Over dinner, Harlow had filled them in. When the guys got together, they began to speculate and plan. She was sort of done talking about it. So, without permission, she’d kicked off her shoes, slipped out of her jeans, and gone to sleep on the couch in the closet. It was leather and the only piece of padded furniture that had been spared water damage.
The next morning, that morning, after sharing the shower with Ryske, Harlow had called Ophelia to tell her that Anwen was in. That was when the female Hagan asked for the two to meet her at the club.
Anwen was edgy and anxious. In contrast, Harlow was curious enough about what Ophelia wanted to say that she was sort of excited.
The energy in the car was such a mixture of different feelings that Harlow couldn’t really blame Anwen for being unsure about what to expect.
“Swear,” Harlow said, reaching down to fix the back of her pump.
“Ah, excuse me?” Anwen asked, on a whisper of a snicker.
Sitting back in a twist so she could see Anwen’s face, Harlow nodded. “Swear. It helps. I don’t know why, but it does. Come on try it. Fuck. Fuck. Tits. Ass. Cock. Fuck.”
She said the words in quick succession, so they almost blended into one. Anwen was stunned.
Ryske addressed Noon. “That turned me on. You?” Noon flashed him an amused smirk. “I thought she reserved her potty mouth for me. I’m hurting, baby.”
“Everything turns you on, smarty-pants… And you know I do this,” she said, tossing him the stink eye in the far edge of the mirror.
“Yeah, and I know what else you like to do before.”
He blew a quick puff of air onto his fingertips and wiggled them in front of his face, eyeing her with a salacious purpose.
Noon pulled the car to a stop in a wedge of shadow behind the club.
“Wave at yourself all you like, Crash,” Harlow said. “Those aren’t coming near me today.”
“For the whole day?” he asked, snaking his arm into the back to reach for her knees.
Squealing, she slapped at his hand and flipped her knees the other way. “You’re a sexual predator, you know that?”
“The one in your dreams, babydoll,” he said, taking his hand back and slouching down in his chair.
“Come on,” Harlow said, sliding on her pointed ring and opening her door to slip out.
Anwen took her time about getting out and coming around the car. In that time, Ryske had put his window down. She only discovered that after he stroked her ass under her skirt. Smacking his hand away, Harlow spun to glare at him.
Her love was the picture of innocence. “Just checking you’re sticking to the rules.” That wasn’t what he was doing; she could read the swagger bleeding into his expression. “Come down here.”
Anwen was at her side and ready to go inside. Assuming he had some last minute advice, Harlow didn’t object when he reached out of the window to snag the ring on her necklace. He gave it a tug, so she bent over to rest a forearm on the door sill to look inside.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Ryske said.
When he didn’t follow the word with anything else, she sought his eyes only to find them staring down her dress.
“Geez, Crash,” she said, shoving his face to point it the other way.
He laughed and caught the ring again so she couldn’t stand up. “Seriously, babe…”
Harlow didn’t know why he was in such a playful mood. If they were in a different place, doing a different thing, she might embrace it. But, there, she had to be in the right frame of mind to react to anything unexpected that may happen.
“We’re right out here,” Noon said, leaning forward to look past Ryske at her. “If you need us, holler or scream and we’ll get in there, whatever it takes.”
“Thank you, Noon,” she said, opening her hand to present it his way. “See, that’s what a real man does in this scenario. He reassures, he comforts.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ryske said. “ ‘Cept I have full faith you can handle anything that’s thrown at you. And, if you didn’t already know that I’d raise hell to get to you if you needed me, then you haven’t been paying attention.”
Damn him for reaching into her and giving her heart a squeeze just a moment before kickoff. “Come here.”
Sliding her hand onto his cheek, she brought him closer and parted her lips to enjoy his. Leaning further into the car, her tongue slipped into his mouth, and was ready to push further when she felt his fingers slide down the front of her dress.
Pulling back, she shoved his hand away.
Ryske laughed and leaned back to talk to Noon. “Always get my hands on them one way or another.”
“Just wait ‘til I get my hands on your balls again,” she hissed.
Ryske just grinned and winked. “Look forward to it, Trink.”
Standing up, Harlow looked at the building they were about to enter and tried to get herself into the zone. “Let’s go,” she said to Anwen and strode away from the car.
Ophelia had told them to use the employee door in the alley. She went inside and found herself in a well-lit wooden stairwell that had ornate carvings in the coving. Her interest in the décor lessened when she noticed the man descending the stairs to meet them.
“Brash,” she said, aware of Anwen just behind her shoulder.
“Harlow,” he said, and his attention shif
ted. “Miss Windsor.”
“Brash,” Anwen said. “Didn’t imagine you’d ever be running errands for Ophelia.”
The way his jaw shifted was curious. Was he irritated that she’d impugned Ophelia or… something else?
“My loyalty to Mr. Hagan extends even beyond his death.”
That made Harlow smile. It was such an inappropriate affect that it startled Brash. “I just… I think that’s great,” she said, putting a hand over her mouth to disguise her laugh as a cough.
Loyalty to Jarvis Hagan? Yeah, okay, she could buy that. It was impressive that Ophelia had recruited a man so vehement to stand by his ex-boss when she, in fact, was the one who’d erased said boss from the planet.
With gritted teeth, he leaned in. “You’re lucky she told me not to tear your head off with my bare hands.”
Pushing out her lips, Harlow bobbed her head. “Yeah, lucky me.” She let her finger leave her mouth to drift around. “Are we going to shoot the shit here all day, or…”
Hissing out, Brash didn’t like her attitude. Shame he was under orders to take it. Spinning around, he began to march up the stairs. So, looping her arm through Anwen’s, Harlow followed on.
At the top of the stairs, Brash opened a door and held it for them. The first thing Harlow thought when she stepped into the vast space of the club’s main floor was that Ophelia had spared no expense. With a thick carpet, recessed lighting and expensive furniture, the place was fully kitted out for a high-caliber crowd.
A walled-off area toward the back of the room meant she couldn’t see the full room. Harlow guessed it could be another stairwell or enclosed elevator bank. With plenty of space surrounding the booths and tables, this club had been custom designed for drinking and gambling.
Low music came from the speakers hidden in the coving; there wasn’t a space for a stage or a DJ booth. The fully-stocked bar to the left was backed by pristine mirrors and glass bricks above. No painted wood or neon signs in sight, but she still preferred Floyd’s.
What made the room peculiar, she noticed as Brash led them to the largest central booth were the doors that lined the walls. They alternated between obvious and hidden, presumably to prevent the place from looking cluttered.
Go All In (A Go Novel Book 4) Page 16
