Shadow Man: Grayson Duet: Book One

by Wiltcher, Catherine

  “Post quarter… Waning moon maybe.” My eyelids flutter shut as I bask in the delicious burn of his touch. “Your declaration by the pool—”

  “No,” he says sharply. “I’m earning that status tonight with my tongue and my fingers, not my confession.”

  There’s a jolt between my legs and my eyelids flutter open again. “My pussy’s ready and waiting for you, Joseph Grayson. Only you can kiss me better.”

  Gray-blues gleam, crystalize, and a smirk touches his lips. “Don’t expect me to be a gentleman and roll over when shit like that is laid out for me. I was shot in the shoulder, not in my dick.”

  “I’m not in this bed because I want a gentleman.” I reach out and cup his jaw, his russet stubble grazing my palm, feeling the strength beneath my fingertips and needing to feel a part of it inside of me. “I’m in this bed because I want you.”

  “Good… Because I’m a bad, bad guy, sweetheart.” He glides his hand downward and pulls my legs apart. At the same time, the two rings he wears around his neck collide with my shoulder. He pauses, his expression unreadable, and then he’s removing the chain and placing it on the nightstand. “That’s a conversation for another night,” he says, rubbing circles into my belly, and then inching lower until he’s close to where I need him to be. That’s when he leans over and murmurs into my ear,

  “Give me permission to slide inside you, Luna. I can tell myself all the words, but nothing will adequately describe how tight your pussy will feel gripping my fingers in the next few minutes.”

  “Permission granted.” I let my legs fall open even wider, giving him all the access in the world. He takes it, and then he takes me: circling my clit slowly until my hips are lifting off the mattress for more; until I’m so wet there’s a damp patch on the sheet beneath me and I’m panting out his name.

  “Are you ready?”

  I manage a faint nod, but the truth is I’m already flying. Bad memories lurk at the edges of my consciousness, but when he pushes that first finger inside me, I glide past them all. When he pushes in two, I come so hard he has to swallow my screams to stop Gabriela raising the alarm.

  “Inhale it, Luna,” I hear him groan. “Fucking feel it everywhere.”

  Electric pulses sing through my veins. I’m free falling into heaven.

  When I finally open my eyes, I see stars, and then I see him—the need and tension written all over his once-frozen expression.

  “It was worth getting shot just to see that.” His Texan drawl is even more languid and charming when his lust is burning him up like this. He slides his fingers out of me and paints my lips with my wetness. “Taste your victory, Anna… Tonight, we won.”

  My tongue snakes out and I lick them clean, salty-sweet, swallowing them all the way up to his knuckles.

  “Aren’t you going to leave me any?” he says, sounding amused.

  I shake my head, but to pacify I delve deep into my own wetness and bring my glistening index finger up to his lips. Holding my gaze, he mimics my action, the sudden heat of his mouth blooming a fresh kind of heat between my legs. “You filthy fucking bad girl,” he exclaims, and I laugh, letting him fall from my mouth.

  “I should always own my crimes, or so a bad guy once told me.”

  Now it’s his turn to laugh as he leans over to the nightstand and switches off the light. “Time to sleep.”

  “What if I’m still hungry?” I say, pouting at the growing darkness. The room is more shadow than light now.

  “Then you need to learn to space out your meals.”

  I watch his silhouette rise from the bed. He kicks off his boots and starts to undo the rest of his jeans. Crawling over to him, I push his hands away and finish the task myself, smiling again at his own harsh intake of breath as the backs of my fingers brush against his massive erection.

  “Anna,” he warns.

  “Bad girl, remember?” I remind him.

  “Recovering girl,” he says heavily.

  “Starving for you girl,” I argue, letting his jeans drop to the floor, and then dropping my face to his cock and blowing through the fabric of his briefs, feeling him jerk in response.

  “You really want this?” He takes a handful of my wet hair and pulls me back to look at him.

  I nod, rimming the waistband with my fingers. I never dreamed I’d want to do this with a man again, but with him it’s different. He wipes all my slates clean.

  “This is nearly full moon shit, not quarters,” he warns. “I’ll be ramming that pretty mouth so full of me, you’ll be spitting up all over my dick.”

  A moan of lust escapes me and he loosens his grip; his briefs hit the floor so fast he bobs against my face. I lap at his slit, his pre-cum, everything… I take him into my mouth and he lets out a curse, slamming one knee down on the bed and locking a hand around the nearest bedpost to hold himself steady. The other is still tightly knotted around my hair.

  “You’re better than any morphine, baby,” he grits out as I take him in even deeper. “I can't feel anything other than you anymore.”

  His hips start to thrust, driving his cock right to the base of my throat. I take it all as this moment replaces a thousand ugly ones. I’m blooming and growing as his groans increase, filling up the last of my empty spaces.

  “Fuck, Anna!”

  My pussy is a swollen, throbbing wet pool of need. The insides of my thighs are slick with it, and my hand starts to stray. Soon, I’m fucking myself with my fingers as he fucks my mouth, relentlessly and without mercy, holding fast to his promise.

  I can’t stand it any longer. My craving for him is superseding my fears, my apprehension…everything. Without warning, I jerk my head away and fall backward onto the mattress, opening myself up as wide as I can again, making my intentions clear.

  “No way.” He shakes his head as he fists his cock, and I let out a scream of frustration. “Going from zero to sixty in one goddamn night is not going to cure—”

  “I want you inside of me!”

  “Are you whole?”

  “I don’t know,” I gasp out, truthfully. “I just know I can't breathe without this.” Without you.

  With a growl, he takes one of my legs and yanks me closer to him. “Don't fucking present yourself like this to me when I can still feel your sweet lips around my cock. I’m trying to do the right thing here.” His good arm comes crashing down next to my head. I can feel him sliding over my entrance and I jerk my hips to claim him myself.

  “I need this, Joseph. I need you.”

  “Do you now?” The next thing I know he’s pushing between my pussy lips, and then he’s pausing to blast me with his intensity, his handsome face dangerously close to mine.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes!” I lift my hips and he slides in another inch, feeling so good I want to scream.

  “Then we do this slow. My pace.”

  “No, we won’t.” I tip my head back and dig my nails into the bedsheet. “Bad girls and bad guys don’t fuck like that.”

  “You're right. They fuck like this.” His self-control snaps and he slams into me so deep the air is driven from my lungs. I’m soaked. There’s no resistance. He’s everything I ever wanted, and more.

  Pulling my body backward, his cock still buried inside me, he falls to his knees by the side of the bed. Wrapping my legs around his waist and jamming his fingers into my mouth to silence my moans, he starts to fuck me exactly how we both need it. Hard, so hard, like he’s pounding all the badness out of me.

  I bite down on him as he drives me closer and closer.

  When I come for the first time around his cock, I almost believe in heaven.

  When I come for the second time, I know I’m already there.

  28

  Dante

  I’m making serious inroads with a bottle of bourbon by the pool when Alejandro Fernandez has the audacity to call me.

  “Señor Santiago,” he simpers, his greeting more a threat than civility. No sycophantic Gomez sh
it from him. “I was just finalizing the funeral arrangements for my son.”

  “Please accept my condolences,” I remark coldly, sounding no more sincere than his salutation.

  “There will be great justice for this.” He pauses for effect. As if that shit ever works with me. “Gomez will pay heavily for his disrespect.”

  What are we? The Mafia?

  Technically Gomez wasn’t involved—two naïve, trigger-happy women did the honors—but what’s a little detail like that between cartel rivals? Entire world wars have been started on half-truths... Besides, this shit has been rumbling away in the background ever since I disbanded the Santiago cartel. The killing of Alberto Fernandez was just a catalyst for the final act.

  “Gomez isn’t going anywhere,” I tell him, and then I pause, deploying the same techniques as him, driving my declaration home like it was a stake through a fucking vampire as I tip the rest of the bourbon down my throat. “He has the processing plants that I need, and I have my army here to defend them.”

  “Then let me take over the plants once Gomez is dead,” he offers smoothly. “You’ll keep your distribution lines to the US and Señor Sanders. You have my word on that.”

  His word?

  “Do you take me for a fool, old man?” I say, chuckling darkly. “You’re high off the thought of a power change. If you have Gomez’s operation under your control, you’ll favor distribution to the Russians, not the US. I know your sister is married to the Pakhan of the Ronov Bratva.”

  He tried to hide it from us, but Joseph Grayson can sniff that kind of shit out a mile off.

  For me, it’s about keeping the Russians out of the play. Call it a personal preference, mixed with a vengeance that will never die. Stop the drug money flooding the Bratva bank accounts and they have fewer dollars to transfuse their sex trafficking businesses, which I’ve dedicated the last year and a half of my life to bleeding out.

  The only decisive way to quell this uprising is to resurrect the old Santiago cartel era, instilling enough fear in Fernandez and the rest of Los Cinco Grandes to keep them chained to their respective corners of Colombia. But that would mean destroying the fragile equilibrium that I’ve achieved in my personal life. Eve would hate it, and end up hating me. The safety that my private island provides would be replaced with a shitty mansion like this one, and painted red targets on our backs everywhere we go.

  I refuse to do that to her.

  I refuse to do that to Ella.

  “Are you saying that particular solution is out of the question?” Fernandez’s gruff hostility brings me back to the conversation at hand.

  I stare at a sunset that’s blazing a bloody trail across the sky. “You heard correct.”

  “Then, regrettably, we are finally at war, Señor Santiago,” he declares, even though I know he’s fucking hard over the prospect. He wasn’t around the first time a chancer cartel tried to take me on. He doesn’t know the lengths I’ll go to for revenge, but he soon will.

  “Go fuck yourself, Fernandez,” I say coolly, hanging up on him. I don't negotiate with cartel assholes.

  Glancing back at the house, I seek out Joseph’s bedroom window. These latest developments need to be discussed and deliberated over, but I have a hunch he has other things on his mind right now.

  Took them long enough.

  So now what?

  Now I kill.

  Calmed by that thought, I pick up the half-empty bottle of bourbon and take my drinking and murder indoors. That bitch, Viviana, is taking up too much oxygen around here. Gabriela’s a fool to think she can keep on hiding her from me. My men and Gomez’s soldiers have the whole place surrounded. No one is going in or out without my say so.

  Kill or be killed. Family loyalty is a postcode lottery, and mine will always fall on the losing side.

  Taking the long route back to the kitchen, I enter using the side entrance after detouring via the cellar for another bottle of bourbon. As I do, I catch a cloud of black hair sprinting for the main door. I have my gun pulled on her so quick she’s not even crossed the threshold. One bullet fired into the frame above her head has her stopping dead in her tracks. She cries out in fear, but I’m dead to all that keening shit.

  “Viviana Martinez, I presume?” I slow my articulation to solidify my disdain. “Or should that be Viviana Santiago?”

  She turns, and my grip tightens on my gun. Holy fuck. She’s a carbon copy: Same oval-shaped black eyes, same wound-up tight features... same psychopathic disposition? I’d need further proof to confirm that.

  “Please—” she begs. “Don’t shoot. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Then sit down.” I indicate to a long wooden table in the center of the room and she obeys without question, avoiding my gaze. Even so, she’s more stoic than I was expecting. She’s not a trembling wreck, by any means, and that rose tattoo is giving off some sassy vibes. “Keep your hands where I can see them.” She plants them in front of her. “How long have you known you’re Emilio’s daughter?”

  “How did you find out about me?”

  I smile coldly. “I’m not into the rhetorical, sweetheart. I ask the questions and you answer them, or I blow the top of your fucking head off, right here, right now. Understood?”

  She nods and swallows. “My birth mother left me on the steps of a convent when I was a couple of weeks old. Gabriela sought me out and raised me herself. She never hid the truth from me. I’ve known since the day she adopted me.”

  I lean back against the counter, keeping the muzzle trained right between her eyes. “So your father never knew you existed?” She shakes her head slowly. “Hardly fucking surprising,” I drawl, aiming low to prompt a response. “He sold coke and fucked whores for a living. There must be a string of his illegitimates contaminating this country.”

  “I’m not after any trouble—”

  “Trouble?” I scoff. “You just pumped three bullets into Fernandez’ son’s stomach and stirred up a fucking hornet’s nest. It’s a little late to plead the fifth with me.”

  I wait for her to contradict me and lay the blame on Anna, but she doesn’t.

  Interesting.

  “You shot El Asesino,” I say idly. “That man is more of a brother to me than your own father was. You know I’ll make you suffer for that.”

  Still, this doesn't produce any fear. Instead, she serves me a side of those unflinching black eyes. “Do what you want to me. It can’t make me hate you any more than I already do.”

  A chill hits my spine and travels north and south. “And why do you hate me so much, Viviana?” I ask curiously, concealing my unease with a quirk of my lips.

  “Because of the mess you made of this country. Because of your arrogance in thinking you can just sweep in and fix it all with one of your killing sprees.”

  “And what would you do different?”

  “Get rid of Los Cinco Grandes,” she says, without blinking. “Establish one ruling cartel, like you did in the old days. The coke’s not going away, so we’d clean it up. We’d streamline. No more trafficking or any of that other shit on the side. We’d increase production to cover the shortfall, maybe even cut a deal with the Mexicans. We’d reinstate prime government connections and we’d make them blood-tight. We’d stop thumbing our noses at the DEA, and tie them up in paperwork instead. We’d slink back into the shadows like you did when you were in power. We’d stay anonymous, but be lethal when required.”

  I’m almost impressed. Everything she suggested makes outstanding business sense.

  “I see your soul is as compromised as your father’s—”

  “And my Uncle’s.”

  “Touché.” The bitch is growing on me. “Are you applying for the position?”

  “Would you offer it to me if I were?”

  What a fucking joke. How old is she? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?

  “Viviana,” I say patiently. “I don't trust you. I will never trust any spawn of my brother’s. Your place is lying in the ground, six-feet-
under, preferably next to him, and not running a cartel where guns and violence are used freely and without restraint. In exactly five minutes your brains will be decorating this kitchen floor, so I think you’re excused from the application process, don’t you?” She stares at me, frozen and unblinking, reminding me so much of her father that I can feel the bile rising up inside of me. “Is there anything else on your ‘I hate Dante Santiago list’ you’d like to confess before I pull the trigger?”

  “Because of what you did to Manuel.”

  Now it’s my turn to blink. “Nothing like dragging up the past,” I say, recovering quickly. “That’s old news. Manuel died protecting my wife last year. There’s no greater honor than that, and Gabriela knows it.”

  “He was like a brother to me!” Her tight expression fails to crush the surge of emotion in her voice. “He was happy in Colombia until you made him go and work for you.”

  “If we’re getting technical about it, he was actually your uncle,” I say flippantly. “My father fucked Gabriela and he was the result. I use the term “fucked” loosely...”

  There’s a pause. “I shot El Asesino because I thought he was kidnapping and hurting my friend.”

  “I don't give a shit if you thought he was the Easter Bunny and you needed a sugar fix.”

  She’s loyal to someone in this house, and it’s not me.

  “You’re a real piece of shit, you know that?” she says, finally losing her cool.

  I give her a wintry smile. “You’re not the first person to throw insults my way tonight, and I doubt you’ll be the last.”

  “Tell me how you knew about me?”

  Does this bitch show any fear?

  “Anonymous tip off two days ago…. Any other last requests?” I click off the safety and aim high to make it a clean kill. She’s my niece, after all.

  “I’m not frightened of dying, Dante Santiago,” she says suddenly, her face an eerie mask of calm. “With the exception of Gabriela and Anna, all the people I’ve ever loved are in heaven. Manual, and Matias, and…”