by Ace Gray
“Hello?” His husky voice silenced everything.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” I whispered.
He cleared his throat. “Filly?”
“And I was watching the sunrise this morning, and I realized I wished I was watching it with you.”
The faint sounds of movement in the background filled in for his silence, but he didn’t speak. The weight on my chest got heavier and heavier. I pulled the phone from my ear to make sure the connection hadn’t been lost, and the Chicago number was still on my screen, the timer still counting up. If he wasn’t talking back, it meant he didn’t want to. I bit my lip.
And my finger hovered over the red hang up button. My other hand at the ignition.
“I only made it through the night because of you.” His voice was fresh air whooshing into the car and brushing the fear of rejection from my heart.
“Really?”
He groaned, but it wasn’t a sultry sound.
“Are you okay?” My hand flew to my mouth and I found the edge of my fingernail.
“Don’t waste your worry on me.” His voice was warm and low as he avoided the question. “Are you still leaving today?”
I bit my nail again. “I wanted to see you again.”
“Fuck, Filly,” he drew out the curse then his heavy silence pressed on my chest. One, two, three, four, five… I counted his breaths on the other end of the line. And just when I convinced myself that Brye wasn’t really interested, that his confession and last night meant nothing, that his dark heart didn’t have room for me, he asked, “Where can I meet you?”
Something inside me welled up and threatened to burst. “Know anything near The Art Institute?”
“I have just the place.”
My hand ached from how hard I held the pencil, sketching, shading. I’d known I’d have to wait for him, but it was its own special brand of agony. The questions swirled in my head. Of course the ones about my treachery and deception but also the ones about Brye. They all boiled down to, was he worth it?
Honestly, he was a blip in time, a shadow on the sidewalk playing against my fingertips and footsteps, but he felt like a tangible eternity. I couldn’t say unequivocally that he was supposed to be mine but… He felt like the first time I saw my mom complete a sculpture.
He felt like home.
And when I looked down, my detailed drawing was of his lips. A space I’d certainly taken the liberty of inhabiting last night. A landscape I wanted to explore again.
“In real life, they’d be pressed to yours.”
My head snapped up and the fresh breeze that seemed to accompany Brye sucked into my lungs. He looked better than yesterday, today in a fitted t-shirt that threatened to split across his shoulders and chest. Worn denim wrapped his muscled thighs tightly and ended piled at his ankle, showing off flip-flops. Glimpsing his bare feet seemed intimate somehow and my stomach backflipped.
“Hi.” I bit my lip and smiled. “That obvious that I can’t shake you?”
“Wishful thinking.” He smiled his devious smile then started to sit down on the coffee shop couch beside me.
I almost screeched.
His body moved rough and rigid. His pain was obvious in the way he carried himself, in the way he almost crumpled. I shot up and reached for him, but when I grabbed him, he winced. My hands instantly balled back on themselves and my shoulders shot up to my ears.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped.
“Sit down, Filly,” he said smoothly.
I couldn’t help but listen; the man bewitched my body and I was without a choice. I balled my hands between my thighs and twiddled on the fray of my jean shorts while my eyes swept to the tile of the floor, following the design. His thumb came to my bottom lip, the one I hadn’t realized I’d trapped, and pulled it free. The rough pad of his finger skated across my skin.
“I don’t need your pity.” Something smoldered in his voice. “I need your lips.”
He slid his hand behind my neck and pulled me toward him. With that, I fell. Both literally and figuratively. My hands shot to either side of his muscled thighs as I tumbled forward, I tried to stop myself—both literally and figuratively—but he was pulling me under. I craved the man completely, I didn’t even mind if I drowned.
Once or twice Brye winced or grunted, but he didn’t stop kissing me. He moved closer as his lips obliterated mine, as his tongue swept up and swallowed the pieces. My hands stayed balled into the cushions even as my chest pressed closer. His made up for it, clawing at my skin, desperate to know every inch, to reach deeper.
Without warning, he pulled back. I almost fell into his chest, but my locked arms saved me. When I looked up his eyes were hooded and his chest heaved beneath the paper-thin cotton of his shirt.
“Hi.” He smiled, his beautiful, real smile, the one that had come out when we talked about beer, and suddenly all the reasons I’d stayed sat before me.
“Is this what it’s like to spend a morning with Brye MacCowan?” I bit my lip again and looked him over.
“There was a very specific moment last night when you could have said yes. Then you’d know exactly what it’s like to spend the morning with me.” His hand took the liberty of exploring the shape of my hip and then my rib cage. His thumb skated the underside of my breast.
A distant part of my brain pictured shoving the heel of my hand up into the bridge of his nose, knowing that’s what I should do. Instead, I let my imagination roam. The flashes of us together in a shadowed night then bathing in sunshine and morning sheets filled my thoughts. The sculpt beneath his tight shirt would greet me. Well, whatever was left of me after his kisses laid waste to my body. I blushed at the mere thought of him.
“Well, that look is anything but innocent.” He arched his eyebrow then made a show of wetting his bottom lip.
“I...uh...”
“Was thinking about fucking me.”
Just the word made my cheeks turn a brilliant shade of red.
“So what if I was,” I managed.
“Tell me what you’d do to me. Show me,” he challenged.
“We’re in a coffee shop.” I looked around, wide-eyed at the people paying us absolutely no mind.
“I’m fine with voyeurism,” he said reading my mind. “Tell me how you’d let me fuck you over croissants.” He waved nonchalantly around the room.
“Sounds messy.” I blew out a deep breath.
“If that’s your only complaint…” He let his fingertips grazed the curve of my chest then slid down until they played with the edge of my jean shorts. The feather-light whisper of the denim tails made me shiver until he shoved beneath the fabric curled his hand into my ass.
“Fuck,” I whispered as I pinned myself back to the couch and away from him.
He didn’t lessen his grip as he laughed, low and husky against my neck. I had to press my knees together. He slid his hand along my skin moving from the back of my hip to the front. And then kept going. His fingertips brushed just beside my sex, his rough hands catching on the fine cotton of my thong.
“What do you want?” I screeched as I shot up. “Coffee? Tea? Water? What else do they have here?” My head spun side to side, searching for an answer to my question. To any question. His slight smirk was most definitely of the self-satisfied variety.
I turned without his order, without any answer at all save the whomp of my heart against my chest. He made me feel caged, not just because of my frantic heartbeats prying at ribs, but as if the very presence of him held me captive.
“Iced vanilla latte,” I ordered when I reached the counter.
I shoved one hand through my hair and flipped my long locks to the side, deepening my part, as I pulled out my debit card with my other.
“He seems like fun,” the girl behind the counter said, eyeing Brye’s build where he had draped his arms out along the couch.
“Or trouble.” I gulped in spite of myself.
I turned and rolled my neck side to side as I determin
ed to get my wits about me and speak to him as if he was a normal human. I’d liked those moments last night.
We’d walked past so many art pieces last night in the park. I should have been on edge walking the dark streets with a dark man, but his voice mellowed me. His prowess itself protected me. And the way he watched me as the faces glowed at Crown Fountain was… The world twinkled as if it was alight with fireflies, but it was him. Just that look. Those moments were why I was here, after all, to see if he was worth it or if I’d played up the magic of it all.
I blew out a deep breath, grabbed my waiting coffee and turned back to him, catching his wince as he adjusted on the couch. I wanted to ask him about it, about the ache and the darkness, but I didn’t want to drag us from the bright yellow of the morning and crisp coffee shop white.
“Do you paint, Brye?” I asked as I plopped into the chair across from him, trying to lighten the mood.
He eyed me then the space between us. He seemed to consider the furniture, the distance—or perhaps his words—with great care but then he finally answered, “No.”
“Oh, Brye, why not?” I could picture him, his big beautiful body arched over a canvas, letting some of his complexity seep out. I got swept up in the picture. “I can see you standing at an easel, your eyes all narrow the way they get, your face intense and critical as you figure out the lighting,” I barreled into my fantasy. “These hands,” I set my coffee down and scooped one up from his thigh in a simple, swift movement. “Would look beautiful wrapped around a palette with colors splashed all over.”
“That’s rather vivid.” His husky laugh would be my undoing.
“If you couldn’t get it just right, I know you’d rub your head that way you do.” I reached over and gently ran my hand across his buzzed hair, slow as I relished the tickle of it against my hand. I didn’t realize how close I’d pressed to him until he wetted his lips, barely an inch from mine.
“You pay awful close attention, don’t you?”
Heat bloomed across my cheeks. “A habit I picked up growing up.”
“I don’t mind being on your mind.” He sighed and tucked an errant hair behind my ear. “But you see an artist in this as a city of ethereal art, Filly, when I don’t create, I destroy. Any of my masterpieces are carved in flesh and painted with hues of blood. What I do, what I am, doesn’t leave time for things like painting.”
I sat studying him, my chest open and raw. Not because of his words but what whispered beneath them. Brye admitting his truths was like staring at the great works. He was fragile whether he saw it or not.
“And just what is it that you imagine you are?” I asked softly.
“I don’t imagine. I know I’m something wrong, someone demonic.”
His free hand found my body, once again greedy as it traveled skin and denim and cotton. Until he found my face. Then his hands became hesitant, gentle, and he pulled my face toward his.
“I don’t believe you,” I murmured against his lips.
“Believe me, I’d do wicked, evil things to you.” He grazed my lip with his teeth then let his warmth skate down my neck.
“Good Christ, I may just let you.” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it was true. My body was basically screaming it, anyway.
“What a difference a day makes.” He locked his lips on the curve of my neck and his tongue found the curve of my collarbone.
I wrapped my arms under his and gently clung to the sculpt of his back as my head rolled back in pleasure.
“I’ve never been more proud of you, lad.” A new rough voice slid over my shoulder and reached for my throat.
“Dad.” Brye hardened immediately and pulled away from me, doing what he could to hide the pain I’d seen plainly color his features. I turned and followed his lethal glare.
Brye’s father was still an attractive man despite his broken body. Like his son, he moved with an ache to his bones. Unlike Brye, his was all-consuming, like his very soul thrummed with the wound. His eyes were dead behind the sparkle of a color and something soulless seeped out of his pores. I shivered on the July day, recalling Brye’s words. And the bartender’s from yesterday.
And my parents…
I swallowed as I shrunk back into my chair.
“Why are you here?” Brye’s voice was the harsh snap of a whip against his father’s skin. “What do you want?”
His answering and utterly wicked laugh seemed a dare for Brye to speak like that again. The way he stared at me, studied each of my features and let his smile grow, peppered my skin with goosebumps. His hatred was alive and hungry as he devoured me.
“A credit card alert,” he started. “A snare I’ve been waiting to snap for years.”
His father paid no attention to Brye, instead he looked at me. No, through me. His smile started to pull up on his lips, making them waxen and rough where they hadn’t been before.
“Another bird-boned girl with sunshine hair and eyes the color of heartless.”
I couldn’t speak. Not with my blood turning to ice and freezing me in place. Freezing me in terror.
“Another?” Brye asked, his tone plummeting to match my insides.
“I once knew a girl like you.” He didn’t even turn toward Brye, he just kept staring into me. “I wanted to break her, too.” His words were still laced with a chuckle that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “I almost did.”
My body unlocked on instinct alone. I shot up knocking over my coffee as I took two steps toward the door. Brye’s dad’s hand locked around my forearm like an iron vise and kept me rooted. His very touch turned my stomach.
“Get your hands off her.” Brye’s voice swam behind me, muddied by the waters of fate and the rough touch I knew wanted to hold me under.
His father pulled me in, his eyes met mine again, and hellfire burned inside him. I felt the heat of it on my face. “It’s funny how fate is cyclical. Your parents slipped through my fingers, but you won’t.” He squeezed tighter.
“Get off me,” I whimpered as I tried to yank my arm from him.
“You know her parents?” Brye spoke over top of me.
He let out a wicked laugh that had the patrons of the coffee shop looking over and likely feeling the same shiver that rattled my spine.
“Oh m’boy, you don’t even know what kind of a prize you’ve won.” He snapped my body, turning me so that I landed with my back flush to his front. Brye’s shoulders heaved and his nostrils flared as his father pressed his open hand below my bellybutton to hold me still. “Allow me to introduce the daughter of Cole Ryan and Elle Laroux.”
I needed an explanation. Right. Fucking. Now.
Seeing my father’s hand on Filly churned a rage so brilliantly crimson, so depthless and unending, inside me. Hearing him say she was a Ryan stilled me. The war between both sides threatened to split me in two.
“How do you know my parents?”
Parents.
Her voice quivered, real fear making it shake. The way she cowered in on herself made her seem even smaller and naive then normal. But any defense of her, any consolation stuck in my throat.
My jaw clenched as my eyes scanned from Filly Ryan to my father and back again. If this was real, her family had almost ruined everything. Cole Ryan was notorious for his ruthlessness and his recklessness. Elle Laroux had been the first strand cut in my father’s unraveling. They had destroyed my father. He’d drug himself out of the shallow grave they tried to put him in. He’d built something despite them. And he’d told me over and over again that the Ryans deserved to burn somewhere deeper than hell for what they’d done.
But Filly...
“It’s the doe eyes, big and beautiful, round with wonder,” my dad described her features, detached as if he was evaluating a painting, and finding it lacking. “And those dick sucking lips…Your mother had them too. I always envied your dad when she blew him in front of us.”
Filly went sheet white. “Excuse me?” she managed. “My parents would
never—”
“They did filthy things all the time. Filthy, disgusting, awful, nasty things.”
“No,” she whimpered.
“You were going to do them to my son on that couch.” His voice got low as he nuzzled almost tenderly against her hair. Bright red flashed before my eyes, harsh and dark against the white snow. My mouth went dry.
She was going to die. She deserved it. Maybe. Regardless it was going to kill whatever small bit of my soul might have survived Rosalyn.
“Stop. No.” She was near tears.
“You don’t know anything about the devil your dad was, the smothering Satan your uncle could be, and the whore your mother played between them both, do you?”
Filly tried to shrink away from my father, but he wound like a snake around her. His hands digging farther into her flesh.
“Please let me go.” Her voice was weak as she tried to break free again. My heartbeat was stronger than usual, pummeling my chest in time with her struggles against my dad’s ruthless grip. “Brye,” she pleaded.
My father’s eyes found mine. The void of feeling I always found in him was usually reflected back in me. Today it felt like I wasn’t absent, but rather everything, all at once. He arched an eyebrow at me, probably seeing that tumult inside. His smile grew when I didn’t say anything. When I didn’t stop him.
“Brye?” he asked, wicked laughter laying right beneath his words.
They both waited, watching me. Filly’s chest shook and a single tear ran down her cheek. I watched it until it dangled off her jaw then released and splattered on the exposed skin beside her spaghetti strap. I wanted to wipe it up. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to watch her cry so very many more of those little tears.
I turned away from them. My side made me wince, the perfectly timed reminder that Emmett had told me this would happen. That I should have listened.
“That’s m’boy.” My father’s laughter filled the coffee shop and I glanced around to see how very many eyes were fixed on us.
“Don’t make a scene,” I warned lowly.
“Brye,” Filly cried loud enough that my heart cracked. I had to swallow down the desire to go to her all over again. A few people stood, but whether they knew my father or not, they stayed rooted.
