“Don't wait,” she whispered, her body trembling against mine as she strained closer, popping her hip to the side to grind against me. “Please.”
She didn't need to tell me twice. I yanked her skirt up over her hips and yanked her underwear to the side this time, groaning when the dampness there coated my fingers. Blood rushed to my head, addling my senses as everything seemed to move in slow motion. I didn't bother to take my pants off. With a yank of a button and tug of my zipper, I freed my cock, and took it in my hand, hissing as it jerked and leapt.
“Ah, fuck, Red,” I growled, pressing my palm against the flat of her back and urging her forward until she was bent at the waist, leaving her pert ass bare and high in the air. The view was everything I'd hoped it would be and I had to close my eyes to get control of myself.
With one hand gripping my throbbing cock and the other palming her ass, I slipped between her thighs, rubbing the thick head against her slick opening.
“That feels soo...” She swallowed her words as I drove home, sliding deep into her grasping heat.
What the fuck was wrong with me? We just did it not a half an hour ago, and here I was ready to shoot off like a roman candle just from being inside her.
After a few more Saturdays, it would be different. We’d get used to each other and this impossible to fight attraction would soften to something more manageable.
It had to.
Because, if not, we were both in for some serious heartache.
Chapter Six
Matty
“Okay, so where do we start?” Reid rubbed his hands together, a determined light in his eyes.
Guilt pricked at me hard and I scrubbed the stubble on my jaw without answering.
It was fucked up. It had been three weeks since that first “sex date” with Kayla. We’d had three more and each at least as intense as the last, if not more so, and here I was digging through old newspapers online to try to find out some dirt on her father.
Even though my intentions were good, though, it was still a tough pill. If feeling bad about something lessened the heinousness of the crime, then I was nearly an innocent man, because I felt like total shit about it. But it needed to be done.
Ever since Olivia had mentioned it, the thought had been dogging me. At first it had seemed like a pipe dream. Something I considered and then rejected over and over at various points in my day. But with every passing week, I found myself more and more entangled in Kayla. It had gotten to the point that, as much as I was looking forward to my next bout, it wasn’t half as much as I looked forward to my Saturdays with her.
It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t smart. But those were the facts.
And it was exactly those feelings that made me decide to pull the trigger.
I was through with Mickey Flynn and the only way to get him out of my life for good and still make sure my family was protected was to make sure I got enough dirt on him to pull him up short. I needed to escape his snare, that was for sure. And even though she didn’t realize it, Kayla needed to escape him just as badly.
As much as we all tried to pretend otherwise, she was in constant danger. Everyone from rival mobsters looking for revenge to disgruntled gamblers desperate for a way out could show up at that warehouse and pepper the place with bullets or toss a Molotov cocktail through the window and she’d be a fucking memory. Not to mention she was an accessory to dozens of crimes. If Mick went down in some kind of bust, she was going down with him. Suddenly that mattered to me. A lot. If he loved her the way she thought he did, he wouldn’t be so cavalier about her safety.
Surely she'd understand if I told her why I had to do it.
Then why aren't you telling her?
I pushed the question that had been rearing up over and over in my head aside and turned to face Reid, who was staring at the computer screen from over my shoulder.
“I think we should divide and conquer,” I said, finally. “You take over the research part. You're smarter than I am and can figure a way to find the information we need faster.”
Plus, that would leave me to take a walkabout through Southie and ask around without risking my little brother's pretty face in the process. I grew up here, but even in an area where people knew me, asking around about a guy like Mickey could mean trouble. I was going to have to pick my targets very carefully. Reid was bright. Always did better in school than me and Bash. What he wasn't, was street smart. He was too trusting. Too open. I knew exactly the guys and gals I wanted to talk to, whereas Reid would go in gums flapping and who knows what he might say to the wrong person? Still, I knew he wanted to help and the fact was, I needed him.
“What I'm looking for are newspaper articles, blogs, any sort of chatter linking Mickey to any crimes. Even if the links are dicey, take down the information. We all know what a slippery fucker he can be, and it's going to be the ‘alleged’ stuff that's going to matter. The stuff he's already been fined or on probation for doesn't do us any good.”
He nodded and I stood to let him take my place in front of the keyboard. “I'm all over it.”
I left him to it and made for the door, taking a quick glance at my watch. Eight PM. Still light out for another hour but just on the cusp of that time where the seedier side of Boston came out to make trouble.
I hopped into my car and drove straight over to Club Exxxcite. It optimistically referred to itself as a “gentlemen's club” but it was really just another shithole of a strip club filled with sad, lonely assholes doing some serious drinking while they watched even lonelier girls with hot bodies and hard faces grind a pole for dollar bills.
I had nothing against nudity or a girl trying to make a buck, but something about the whole thing made me feel nasty inside.
I bit the bullet, though, knowing full well that the guy I would want to talk to most would likely be inside. This was the only strip club in a ten-mile radius that wasn't owned by Mick and his gang, and I knew full well that the owner had a hate on for his competitor. If anyone would be willing to spit some gossip about him, it would be Eddy DeCruz.
As I approached the door, a large bearded guy in a suit with a tear tattoo under one eye and a mouthful of gold teeth stood to greet me.
“Twenty dollar cover, and a two-drink minimum, my man.”
I whipped out my wallet and kissed the twenty goodbye. If I was looking for criminals, I'd clearly come to the right place.
The room was dark and it took a second for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I almost wished they hadn't. It was worse than I thought. The scarred bar was lined with empty glasses and full ashtrays as the young, blond bartender swapped spit with a fat bald guy seated in a stool across from her.
She pulled away a second later and snapped her gum, a bored expression on her face as she tucked a five dollar bill into her tube top.
“Two drink min and you gotta order them both and pay for them now. Guys are always trying to fuck us over on that.”
I ordered two beers and turned to glance into the next room. It was larger, and featured an oval stage in the center where a redheaded girl of about nineteen writhed in either agony or ecstasy as she humped a chair.
“Here ya go. Eight bucks.” The bartender handed me two sad looking beers in plastic cups that were lukewarm to the touch and for a second I was about to ask her if it was beer or a couple of urine samples. Biting my tongue, because why bother, I handed her a ten and walked into the room with the stage.
Just like in the bar area everything looked sticky. The chairs, the tables, the guys. I'd spent plenty of time in shitholes growing up, but this place was skeeving me right the fuck out and I couldn't wait to leave. After a quick glance around, I was going to do just that when someone walked in behind me.
“Matty McDaniels. The fuck are you doing here?”
Eddy held out a hand and I set down one of my beers and shook it. “Came to say hi, check out the place.”
“The place has been in business for three years and you never came to check it
out before,” he said, tipping his head and eyeing me with a suspicious gleam in his bleary eyes. He took a long pull from what I was guessing wasn't his first glass of amber liquid of the day and motioned to a nearby table.
“Have a seat. I'd say I'd buy you a drink, but...” he jerked his head to my plastic cups and grinned. “Looks like Amber got you all set up already.”
“Yeah, I'm good.”
We sat and I gave a perfunctory glance at the dancer who was shimmying a few feet from us. “Pretty girl,” I said, taking a sip of my beer.
“She is. Smack-head, though. Shame,” he said, with a shake of his head and a tsk. “She'll be ugly inside five years from that shit if she ain’t dead.” His pock-marked face went tight as he realized what he'd said. “Sorry, kid. I forgot about your dad. No disrespect.”
I nodded, unmoved by his words but happy to have him feeling some guilt. My father had OD'd on heroine years before. Eddy had been a friend of his, and I was pretty sure he was also his supplier, but that didn't matter to me. My father had been a grown man capable of making his own decisions, and he'd made them, choosing drugs over his kids. I'd given up grieving for him years ago.
“Nah, it's fine. It was a long time ago. But I did want to talk to you about something. I was hoping the fact that you and the old man were friends might grease the wheel a little.”
He sat back and set his glass down before plucking up the little red straw in it and popping one end into his mouth. “You here about Mick?”
I hadn't told anyone about my plan except Reid. The fact that Eddy knew why I was there had me feeling more than a little unsettled and I had the sudden urge to look over my shoulder.
“How did you know?”
“Everybody knows he's got you by the short and curlies. That cocksucker’s got half the town by the nuts.” He snort-laughed and chewed on his straw for a long moment before shrugging. “So what do you want from me? I hate him, but there ain't shit I can do about it. I'm lucky he respects my parents enough to leave my club alone and not make me pay for protection. I'm not about to make waves no matter how much of an asshole I think he is.”
“Right, but what if you weren't the one making the waves? It would be nice to see him struggling a little, wouldn't it? He's always got the upper hand, muscling everyone around. What if we can make him sweat a little?”
He scratched his shiny forehead with a dirty fingernail and eyed me hard. “Like how?”
“I'm looking to slow him down a bit. Get him on a more righteous path of stay the fuck out of my way. In order to do that, I need something juicy on him. Something I can sink my teeth into. Something bad enough that it could put an end to the monopoly he's got on this neighborhood.”
His eyes lit up at my words and I could tell he had something. Something big, and my pulse started to pound. Now I just had to get him to tell me what it was.
“How long do you think your truce with him is going to last, Eddy? He's eating up all of Boston, one block at a time. You think he's going to work around you because he respects your family? I promise you, that's only true as long as you're not in his way. The second you are?” I shrugged, letting him fill in the blanks.
“How do I know my name isn't going to get involved?”
“Because I'm going to give you my word that it won't.”
The McDaniels boys were known for a lot of things, but luckily dishonesty wasn't one of them.
“For old time's sake, huh?” I asked.
“Okay, kid.” He pointed his straw in my direction and narrowed his eyes. “But I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it for your Dad. He was a good guy who got caught up with the wrong bitch. Your mother would've sent even the strongest of men to their graves, I can promise you that.”
It was true. Sherri McDaniels was about the coldest, hardest woman I'd ever had the misfortune of knowing, but his words still made my stomach ache. Not because I felt protective of her. Just the opposite. I hated her. And every time someone mentioned her name, a new crop of fury bubbled up and started seeping through me like a poison.
Don't think about it.
Because it didn't matter why he was doing it. All that mattered is that he was going to help me, and I had to be thankful for that much.
I took another sip of my piss-like beer and cracked my neck before facing him again. “So let's hear it. What have you got?”
He settled closer and began talking.
And with every word, my stomachache got worse.
***
Kayla
I hung up the phone and frowned at it before tossing it onto the console next to me.
No answer.
It was Friday night and Matty and I were supposed to watch a middleweight fight between a couple of local guys. One of them was trained by the same team who worked with Willie Martin. We'd already been through the tapes a dozen times or more, but with each new opponent, Martin had seemed to tweak his style just a little. He was a chameleon and a wild card. We both wanted to see if watching this other guy might give us some clue to anything new Willie might be coming in with during Matty's bout against him.
I’d offered to pick him up at the gym because his truck was in the shop. Ever since we'd made the arrangements, there'd been an added flutter in my stomach every time I saw him because it was kind of like a date. We'd had four more Saturday hookups since that first night, and each time it got progressively harder to watch him walk out. The good part was, he'd been staying longer and longer until, this last time, he’d fallen asleep next to me and we’d woken up wrapped around each other. He’d left shortly after, late to open the gym for the day.
But we never talked about our feelings for one another.
I couldn't say what was stopping him. Maybe he didn’t have any. But I sure as hell knew what was stopping me. It wasn’t because I hadn’t fallen for him. I had. Hard. It was just that, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I thought about it, I still hadn't figured out a way to get Mickey to forget this whole plan about setting Matty up for a fall. The clock was ticking down, and with the Martin fight so close, it was only a matter of time before I had to let Matty in on the situation…before someone else did.
I sighed and looked at my watch again and then out the window toward the gym. It was almost ten o’clock. We were going to be late if he didn’t-
A sharp rap sounded on the passenger’s side window and I flinched in surprise. “Shit!” I held a hand to my now-hammering heart and scowled at a grinning Matty. “You scared me half to death.”
He opened the door and slid into the passenger's seat. “That’s weird. I was under the impression that you were expecting me.”
His hair had been cut since the last time I saw him and I entertained a brief fantasy of running my fingers through the freshly shorn locks. I tamped it back and turned the key, sending the engine roaring to life. “We're going to be late.”
“No big deal, we'll just miss the first exhibition match.”
He was right, it wasn't a big deal, but that didn't change the fact that I felt irritated. Irritated because he was late. Irritated that I couldn't stop the constant flow of inappropriate thoughts about him and us every time I looked at him.
And, most of all, irritated that this wasn't a date.
As many times as those hands had been all over my body, I couldn’t even reach out and lace my fingers with his because it would break the parameters we’d set for our relationship, and it was killing me.
Stupid parameters.
I popped the car into drive and pulled out of the lot, kicking up a little more gravel than I meant to as I went.
“What's up with you?” he asked, eyeing me quizzically.
“Nothing.”
“Don't bullshit me. I know you too well for that to work anymore,” he said, turning in his seat to face me. “Are you getting stressed out about my fight?”
I shook my head and stayed mulishly silent.
“You don't think I'm going to lose, do you?” The words we
re spoken softly, but there was an edge of...something to them that made me feel like a real heel. As his manager, the last thing I should be doing right now was fostering doubt. Especially when I was as confident as I could be that he was going to win this one handily. It was the next big one that had me in knots.
“Not even for a second,” I said with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “I think you're going to be great.”
He nodded slowly. “Glad to hear it.”
He went quiet then, and so did I. We made the rest of the short drive in silence, and by the time we pulled into the parking lot of the mini-arena, the last of the joy at getting to spend some extra time with him had faded, leaving behind a bitter-tasting despair.
Who were we fooling with this whole thing? There was zero chance of things ever working out between us. As much as I tried to act like I was cool just banging on Saturday’s, I wasn’t. It meant so much more to me, and every time he left, he took another little piece of me with him. It was like I was committing emotional suicide in slow motion.
I parked the car and turned off the ignition, sucking in a breath. It was time to stop the madness before it was too late to save myself, if it wasn’t already. I’d tell him how I was feeling, and we’d find a way to keep working together. And then, I’d tell him about Mickey’s plan. I’d explain that I was still in his corner as his manager and we’d figure out what to do together.
And then it would be over.
No more Saturday nights, touching and being touched by Matty McDaniels. No more shared cartons of Chinese food, eating off each other’s chopsticks. No more of him walking up behind me while I cooked and cupping my breasts from behind.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek and turned to face him. “We need to talk.”
He nodded and reached out to cup the side of my neck in his big hand. My pulse leapt at his touch and I swallowed hard. This was going to be one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.
Trust Me: Matty and Kayla, Book 2 of 3 (McDaniels Brothers 6) Page 5
