by S. Massery
All at once, he stops.
My eyes flutter open, ready to give him hell for leaving me at the edge of a cliff, when he grips my thighs and thrusts into me.
I squeak in surprise. My fingers scramble for purchase on the comforter at the feeling of him inside of me. At this angle—him looming over me, standing while I’m flat on the bed, my butt nearly falling off of it—I feel every inch of him.
His pace is brutal. His eyes fixate on his cock sliding in and out of me. “Touch yourself,” he orders.
I meet his eyes. This Jackson is different. Colder.
I almost like it better.
My hand slides down my body, starting at my throat. Past my breasts, my stomach. His eyes track the movement until my fingers press on my clit. I’ve been doing this for years—I know how to make myself orgasm in record time. It’s different with him watching. For the first time, I feel shy.
I think he understands that. His pace slows, almost crawls. He looks pained, but his eyes fasten to mine. There’s something wild hidden in his depths. Something trying to claw free. I reach up and grab him by the back of his neck, bringing him down on top of me. “Kiss me,” I say.
He does.
Our lips touch, and we become more in sync. My hips rise up to meet his thrusts. His fingers slip between us and take over doing what I couldn’t. In seconds, my body is on the brink of an orgasm. I gasp as it explodes through me, as he rubs and kisses and fucks it out of me.
My muscles relax after it’s over, but only for a second, because Jackson’s teeth take hold of the sensitive skin between my shoulder and throat. I already have a bruise there from before, and the pain, the pleasure—it combines and makes me whimper.
He slams into me over and over, so I lock my ankles behind him and hold onto his shoulders. His teeth release my skin. There will be another bruise, if not multiple, and it feels like a brand on my skin. My cheeks heat, and I squirm at the idea of it. Just when I thought I’ve had enough ownership in my life, Jackson comes and knocks my theories on their asses.
He comes with an, “Ah, fuck, Delia,” in my ear. I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my face. He pulls out of me and stands, and for a second, I’m afraid he’s going to demand more information from me. The other part wants him to ask, because that’s the only way I’m going to keep this straight in my head.
I can’t get attached, I tell myself.
I don’t know where I’m going, but Jackson isn’t going along for the ride. He’s said it himself—he has a life that he has to get back to. All that’s left for me is in Vegas: a crumbling empire.
The fatigue hits me—not just because I’ve been running on empty for almost two weeks, but the fatigue of knowing in a few hours, I’ll have to figure out where I’m going. Just as my eyes start to drift closed, Jackson scoops me up into his arms.
I throw my arms around his neck automatically, blinking at him.
“It’s time to sleep,” he murmurs. He manages to fold back the comforter while holding me, and then he gently sets me down on the sheets. My eyes are already closing when a soft fabric glides between my legs.
I blush when I realize he’s cleaning himself from my skin, but sleep is dragging me under. The room darkens, and then the mattress tilts as he climbs into bed behind me. The warmth of his body against my back is a comfort I didn’t know I needed.
“Jackson,” I say.
“Sleep,” he whispers.
So I do.
10
JACKSON
I wake up flat on my back, with Delia wrapped around me like an octopus. The room is dark, which means we slept for a while.
Good, I think. We both needed to catch up on our rest.
But now that I’ve had that time, my mind focuses on the burning sensation in my arm. I knew it was getting infected, but I had hoped that my body would fight it. It’s nothing a dose of alcohol can’t fix.
I extract myself from Delia, who rolls over and hugs her pillow, and get dressed before I go out into the main room. In the doorway, I cast one look back at Delia and feel my heart do an odd spasm.
“He’s awake,” a voice says from the top of the hallway. I jerk away from my room, closing the door behind me, and turn to face someone I haven’t seen in too long: Griffin Anders.
I grin and meet him halfway, slapping his back. “Good to see you, man,” I say. “You were in Seattle?”
“A well-paying client from Russia was visiting,” he murmurs, following me into the main room.
A breeze gusts through, and I turn my attention to the cracked window. Dalton is on the other side, sitting on the fire escape, the orange glow of a cigarette at his mouth.
“He doesn’t listen when I say those things are gonna kill him,” Griff says.
“When did he start?”
Griffin is tall, with dark hair cut close to his skull. Before he joined Scorpion Industries, he was doing body-building shows and competing in strength contests. He treats his body like a temple.
He sighs and rubs at his eyes. “Fuck, I don’t know. When did you stop talking to us? Probably around there.”
I wince. It’s true—they’re my best friends, but I shut them out when I got on the “right” path. Stupid me. “It won’t happen again.”
“Fucking hell it won’t,” he mutters. Dalton had said much the same thing when I got here. Griffin perks up. “Dalton said you were injured?”
I grimace. “Yeah, do you mind—”
“That is my job,” he says, rolling his eyes. There’s a new smile on his face. “Sit.”
I do, sliding my shirt off. Griffin doesn’t look up until he’s set his med kit on the table and unpacked some essentials. I try not to look at it all—the gleaming array of tools that he’s collected over the years. His specialty is trauma. In the field, he was the Special Ops Medic. It meant that he went into the most dangerous areas with only what he could carry on him.
We once watched him cauterize a man’s leg—well, what was left of it—with gunpowder from a few bullets and the flash of a lighter. That soldier’s screams come back to me if I think about it hard enough. That was at the end of a long mission, when Griff’s supplies were low. The soldiers we were traveling with started calling him the Angel of Death. If they saw him, it meant they were on the brink of death. Most times, he was able to save them, or at least prolong their lives enough to get to a hospital. It was the ones who died who cemented the nickname into place.
That name became something he was proud of. At first I think it hurt, but after a while, he’d just give a grim smile. I’ve heard rumors that he still goes by that name. That the people he works with only call him if they need him, because he’s the best. He can return a soul to a body, the rumors say.
All of us were branded with those kinds of names. Names that made people shiver. We don’t call each other by those names if we can avoid it.
He motions for me to twist in the chair and put my arm on the table. I do, and he grunts. “You do this hack job yourself?”
“I sanitized the needle,” I mutter.
“You probably didn’t clean out the wound, you idiot.”
I shrug one shoulder as he snips the threads and pulls out my makeshift stitches. “I rinsed it with alcohol.”
He barks a laugh. “Alcohol—the kind you drink?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a movie trick,” he growls. “Next time, call me.”
I tip my head back. “I already apologized—”
“No, you fucking didn’t.” He doesn’t warn me when he pulls the last thread and pushes on either side of the gouge in my arm. Fire radiates up and down my arm, into my shoulder, and I squeeze my hand into a fist. Hot liquid pours down my arm, and I risk a glance—white and clear liquid first, then seeping blood.
I meet his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry I’m an ass that abandoned you guys.”
“Give him a break, Griff,” Dalton says from the windowsill. He hops back into the room. “At leas
t give him something to bite on before you stick your fingers under his skin.”
I pale.
“Yeah, I guess we don’t want to wake up the neighbors,” Griffin mutters. He grins. “Oh, wait. We don’t have neighbors.”
I growl when he starts scraping at the skin. My forehead breaks out in a sweat. “Fucking hell, Griff, this is some sort of payback.”
“You should’ve called me,” he replies.
When he stops, my head falls forward. For this trouble, I should’ve gone to a hospital.
“A hospital would’ve filed a report,” he murmurs. “That’s why people call me.”
“You probably give the paying clients a shot of novocaine,” Dalton laughs.
Griffin shrugs, winking at Dalton. “Depends on the client.”
“You’re bad,” Dalton says. He pulls out a chair and watches with fascination as Griff continues cleaning out my arm. Griff finally stops that and starts stitching, which hurts almost as much as the other part.
“I’m giving you antibiotics,” Griffin tells me. “You’re going to take them all or else I’ll do this again, and it’ll hurt worse.”
“Yes, boss,” I mutter.
Dalton laughs. “You always knew how to bring us to heel.”
“Okay, done.” Griffin slaps a gauze pad over it and tapes it down. “Don’t get it wet until I take out the stitches.”
“Thanks, I think.”
Griff rolls his eyes and starts repacking his bag.
Things between us weren’t this tense a year ago. I gnaw on my lip before I say, “I couldn’t handle Wyatt’s death.”
Griffin slowly sinks down in a chair. The three of us look at each other.
“Did you go to the funeral?” Dalton asks in a low voice.
I shake my head. “I wanted to, but—”
“We made a pact,” Griff says. “None of us went.”
“Mason did.”
I flinch. “He didn’t tell me that.”
Dalton nods. “Yep. Fucking liar said he was going on vacation, but instead he detoured to New York City and sat in the back row of the church. Didn’t say a word to his family, his friends—”
“Wait,” I interrupt. “How do you know? Did you go?”
Dalton smashes his hand on the table. “Of course I fucking went to my best friend’s funeral,” he spits. “You dickheads and your pact. If you don’t show up to my funeral, I’m going to haunt your asses forever.”
I close my eyes. “Damn it, Dalton.”
“What does it matter, Skye? It isn’t as if you were talking to us even before that.”
“We’ve already discussed my shitty communication skills. You went to his funeral.” I remember reading Wyatt’s obituary in the New York Times. If there was a real story beyond the mask of a house fire, I never found out.
Dalton shrugs. “You know damn well that Wyatt liked to dig into dangerous shit. I just wanted to see—”
“See what, if the police were investigating his death as a murder?” Griffin snaps.
“Yeah,” Dalton says. “They weren’t,” he adds.
I rub at my eyes again. They’re still sandpaper. “So you think he should’ve been able to get out of a burning building?” I laugh. Fire has become my close acquaintance since I started working for the Forest Service on the Fire Management Team. I’ve seen how destructive it can be. I’ve seen how it traps even the most skilled hotshot crews. I picture Wyatt, trapped inside of his apartment, and anger smolders in the pit of my stomach. “It doesn’t work like that. Fuck.”
“I don’t know,” Dalton says. He’s a lot calmer than me. I can feel myself getting worked up higher and higher. “Calm down, Jackson.”
Griffin grabs my forearm. “Breathe, would you? Save your alter ego for the fight.”
I inhale and exhale, trying to get the red haze to recede. It takes me a minute. I have to systematically release each muscle in my body. My curled toes, my calves, my thighs, up and up until I can let out a deep breath.
“It’s been a while since we’ve seen that,” Dalton murmurs.
I glare at him.
He raises his hand in surrender and winks. “Hey Griff, did you hear that the new girl got the jump on Jackson?”
“A one-time thing,” I mutter.
“Two times,” Delia says from the hallway. She put on one of my shirts and boxers. My heart thumps extra hard in my chest seeing her. Her hair is crazy, and sleep still clings to her. “I got the jump on you two times.”
Dalton hoots. “You’re losing your touch, Skye,” he laughs.
Griffin twists in his chair to look at her, then shoots to his feet. “Little blossom,” he says.
She blinks at him. “Oh hell,” she whispers.
I cock my head as the blood drains from her face. She takes a slow step backwards, and when Griffin doesn’t move, she bolts back down the hallway.
“What the fuck?” I ask him.
He stares at me with wide eyes. “I’ve… met her.”
11
DELIA
No, no, no.
The bedroom door has a lock, but it doesn’t make me feel safe. There isn’t a chair to wedge under the door handle, so I grab my bag and rush into the bathroom, locking that behind me, too. I lean against the door and slide down until my ass hits the ground. I wrap my arms around my knees, tucking my head down. I’m in a ball, and I still don’t feel safe—but there’s nowhere to go.
Two years ago. That was when I first met Jackson’s friend.
My father and I sat in a car in a neighborhood just outside of the city. Here, we could see the stars. There weren’t a lot, and the moon was hidden behind clouds, but there were a lot more stars than I was used to. It brought up memories of lying on reclining chairs with my mom when I was five, as she pointed out constellations. In Wyoming, there were a million stars. At seven years old, when we moved, I thought we had left the stars behind. It took me a while to realize that they were still there, just invisible. It made me realize that the same was true for my mother.
I craned my head to look up at the sky and tried to pick out star groupings, but it had been too long. The only one I could figure out was the Big Dipper.
“Delia,” my father muttered. “Pay attention.”
I straightened and looked out the window. “You never said what we were doing,” I whispered. Something about this night felt like speaking in soft tones.
“No,” he agreed. “You’re twenty-three. I’ve let you have a long leash, but you’re going to inherit all of this when I die. It’s time to start learning the family business—including the darker aspects of it.”
I winced. There was no use saying no—it was all I’d been preparing for. Something eager stirred in me. He had become so good at keeping secrets from me. I used to watch him leave with Margaret after I was supposed to be in bed, and I would wonder where they were going. At family dinners, there was jovial talk until the children were sent away, and then the mood dipped into something more serious.
I used to try and eavesdrop, but every time, I was caught. Whoever caught me would pinch my arm, tweak my nose, laugh at my antics… and then send me to bed. The door would close, and I could hear the deadbolt sliding home. Yes, they put a deadbolt on the outside of my door.
“You’re going to let me in?” I asked, disbelief coloring my voice.
He turned his head. I expected a wink, a smile, something comforting. His face was a cold mask. It reminded me of a conversation we had when I was twenty, just before I got on a plane to spend the weekend with friends in Bermuda. Keep your mask sharp, he had said.
It reminded me to put it on now, so I did. I erected the mask that I had practiced every night in the mirror before bed for years.
He gave me a short nod. Another car turned onto the road and pulled into a driveway. “This is why we’re here,” he said. “Follow me. Stay silent.” His look said, and keep your mask sharp. He got out of the car. There was a flash of metal in the small of his back, but it di
sappeared as he flipped his coat smooth.
We crossed the street and walked up a steep driveway. The car that had turned in had pulled all the way into the garage, even though I had a feeling it didn’t belong to this house. My father opened one of the car doors as two men got out. They nodded to my father. Their eyes skated over me. I was practicing my invisibility on the dark street. There were no lights on in the house, no flood lights that activated at our movement.
Another car pulled in. No, not a car. A huge truck. Its engine was surprisingly quiet, and the driver killed it quickly. A man jumped out, his feet barely making a noise. He was a ghost. He pulled out a black bag, but his eyes were already fastened on the other car.
I turned back and nearly gasped. The men had pulled out a third man from the backseat while my father watched. He was unconscious, and blood fell on the concrete as they carried him toward the open door into the house.
“Delia,” my father called. A warning. I turned to him slowly, not wanting to show my surprise. The horror was painted behind my eyes, and I refused to let it out.
He met the stranger at the edge of the driveway. “Thank you for coming,” my father said. He extended his hand, but the stranger just looked at him. It was hard to see the details of his face in the darkness, but what I did see sent a shiver up my spine. He was cold.
“Payment?” the stranger asked.
My father exhaled. “Delia will get it for you. It’s in the trunk of our car.”
The man’s gaze slid to me. “I’ll need to see it. I’ll help after.”
“Go, Delia,” my father ordered.
I turned on my heel and walk back to the car. I was too aware of the man following me. I opened the car door and popped the trunk. He stood a few feet away from me, but there was more light out here. The street lights half a block away cast a yellow glow on us. “Who are you?”
He smiled. “Your daddy didn’t tell you?”
“No,” I said, frowning.
