She doesn't cry, but water sits in her eyes like a never-ending pool of poised grief.
“Shepard wants me.”
I feel my scowl. “You said he's some kind of perv, that he breaks the girls in, shows them what's what, then sends them on their un-merry way.”
“True.”
There's something more in her face.
“Then what makes you special?” Kiki asks then blanches, realizing she might have inferred Juliette's not special.
I don't think Juliette has a big enough ego to bruise.
Juliette doesn't notice. “I think I was his first.”
“First what?” Kiki asks.
“Cherry,” she says.
I blink. Let me count the shades of fucked up.
*
I pace the small living room, noticing nothing—thinking about everything.
I stare out the expansive glass that covers the walls and spreads out over Puget Sound. The water churns, deep pewter and angry. Kind of like my thoughts.
Shepard will come after Juliette. He's got some emotion wrapped up in his quest for her. It's more than business. So naturally, it's more complicated.
I need to protect her. I chuckle, softly shaking my head.
“What's so funny? 'Cuz, Thorn, I can't find any comedy right now.”
I give Kiki a small smile as the drone of water comes from Juliette's shower. “I'm just thinking I need to keep Simone—Juliette protected.”
Maybe, if I did my goddamned job, she could be witness protection. But no. My pits sweat when I think about the potential for her in that system. What terrifies me is her being separated from me.
Now that's honest as a two by four between the eyes.
Kiki jerks her eyes up from what she's fixing in the kitchen and arches an eyebrow. “Yeah, sounds lame. That girl can take care of herself.”
I scrub my coarse mat of hair. Twice. “Yeah, true that. But here's the thing: she's all offense right now. She's hell on defense, but everyone wears out on that one. We need strategy.”
Kiki makes a sound. “Well, exotic dancing is out.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
I hit on something. It's crazy but just might work.
“What?” Kiki asks, watching my expression as she sets a plate of sandwiches on the table.
They awaken the beast. My stomach gives an appreciative growl, and I grab one.
She smiles.
Bad shit happens, but hunger needs to be handled. Simplicity.
I take a huge bite and swig of water. I work the food to the side of my mouth. “Mick wants me to shore up those east coast clubs.”
Kiki nods. “Yeah, I know.”
“My mom just died.”
“Yeah,” Kiki answers quietly, her face questioning where this is leading.
“I'm thinkin' it'll take me some time to get past my inability to protect my mom....”
“No Thorn,” Kiki says, denying my words.
I hold up the hand with the sandwich. “It might not be technically my fault, but I can't help how I feel. Responsible.” The cheese and meet flop back and forth in my hand. I take another bite, leveling it between the chompers and a pull of water. I set the water bottle on the table.
“Pffft.” Kiki doesn’t believe my role of protector for my druggie mom. She takes a small bite of her sandwich. Probably trying to soak up the booze. Kiki never eats enough. Typical of a dancer.
“Then there was wanting to find Rex,” I say, crossing my arms.
Kiki nods.
“I don't know if it's right to blow off whatever fucked up grief I need to figure out or put finding bio-daddy on hold, because my pecker's in a twist about Juliette.”
“I think it's more than your pecker, dude.”
That's what I'm afraid of.
Thorn's not afraid of jack.
Except now—I am.
Kiki gives a small shrug and takes another bite. “Maybe it's the perfect thing, Thorn. You go jerk a club into shape and take our girl with you. She distracts you.” Kiki looks at me and inhales deeply. “Heals you.”
I whirl around, my back to the sea of glass and water. “I don't need healing, Kik. I'm not some simp trying to work through my mind shit.”
Lie.
Juliette stands there in a towel. Neither one of us heard her approach.
My gaze rolls down her body like she’s my favorite candy, and my dick pops a boner.
God.
I track the water droplets that slide from her neck to that tender spot between her breasts. Her eyes are emeralds in the sweet coffee and cream of her face.
Hair like kinky ink springs back from wet to dry as I watch.
“Huh. Don't need anybody or anything, Thorn?” Kiki asks in a droll voice.
I resist flipping Kik the bird.
I move toward Juliette, and she meets me.
“Don't take me,” she says. “Just let me go, and you do what you need to do. I can survive. I can avoid Shep.”
My decision’s made before I know it.
“No.”
She cups my face, and her other hand holds the towel around her tits.
My eyes burn. I've never felt like I do now. God help me, I can't let her go. Won't.
It was so much easier when I was numb to life.
This is my chance. Happy has come calling and contentment is MIA.
Somehow, the status quo isn't enough anymore.
*
I sort through Juliette's “escape duffel,” and my sense of things going sideways deepens.
She's got five different passports, contacts to turn her green eyes brown, wigs, and money from five different countries.
A shitload of currency.
But there are no drugs.
“Damn, baby, you've got enough money...”
“Three months,” she says, taking a small gun apart and oiling every piece.
I watch her cram a cleaning rod down the barrel of the tiny 380 Colt. She sights it, one eye scanning the beads at the end, and slaps the whole thing back together, carefully priming each section with a tramp down using a lint-free cloth.
Then she's on to her knives. She doesn’t have many, but all are martial arts oriented.
She even has a throwing star.
“You're not just a mule,” I say, pacing over to the door.
Juliette looks up from sharpening a familiar-looking blade. “No.”
A black light would light that thing up with blood spatter.
She rubs lanolin and Neosporin on the abrasions of her knuckles.
My gaze moves to her hands and locks on.
“I don't know if I'll have to defend myself again. If I fight in too quick of succession, my knuckles will be stiff because of the wounds. But if I use this”—she holds up the lanolin—“it allows flexibility, suppleness of movement.” Her lips twitch. “And who knows what those guys were carrying, germ-wise.” She lifts up the tube of antiseptic ointment.
My eyes are steady on the implements of the trade.
Her lip begins to tremble and I come off my lean against the jamb. My body fills the doorway, casting her in shadow from the light behind me.
Juliette brushes her hand over her cheeks as she cries for the cretin she killed.
Who knows what happened to the other.
I'm not broken up about them. They would have incapacitated Juliette and returned her like a broken doll to that French pimp, Shepard.
I grab her duffel. The door I shut and lock.
Her eyes never leave mine.
Expectant.
Alive.
I fall even harder. It's not something I can stop. The iron control of my emotions, my life—and everyone in it—slides down the slippery slope that is Juliette.
EIGHTEEN
Juliette
I feel guilty.
I feel sublime.
It is slow this time, our lovemaking. I don't think either of us understood what we were starting in my apartment just days ago.
; Now he takes me as if he'll lose me. He savors each touch.
Thorn sets my weapons on the nightstand, and it’s just he and I. Kiki is out getting supplies for the short time I'll be here.
The quiet is profound—swollen—as he strips off my clothes.
My skin is still damp from the shower as I lie back and toss my arms behind me.
Thorn accepts my unspoken invitation. He slides my shirt up and over my head, leaving it in a knot behind me. I keep my arms where they are.
When sex isn't a maneuvering technique or something required, it becomes organic. Each caress builds on the last, our breathing propelling us like two mountain climbers toward that mutual peak of ecstasy.
I can lie here and not think. I can let my instincts guide me for pleasure instead of survival.
Thorn has given that gift to me in the handful of days I've known him. He blanks my head. His large hands are espresso against my cafe au lait skin. Dark and perfect, they trail down between my breasts.
Then his mouth is there, his full lips pressing into that soft spot that separates what his hands now knead.
I groan, scissoring my legs at his touch. I'm full-breasted, but his hands are so large they overwhelm my flesh. He squeezes, and I make a small noise of encouragement.
“Oui,” I whisper, and he responds in French.
He calls me his sweet.
It's a common expression for the French, but whispered in his gruff tones, I respond, parting my legs. He swims between them.
“Too many clothes,” I say, panting.
He ignores me, wrapping his hands around my waist and bringing his mouth to my nipples. He laves one until the bundle of flesh fills his mouth in a hard pebble of arousal.
Thorn moves to the other, suckling until I cry out.
“That's it, baby.”
“Please...” I'm boneless. I'm wet. I want to be taken by Thorn. I want to watch him while he does it.
Before, I left my body so I could perform.
There is no performance here, it's all interactive, spontaneous lust.
And maybe something else, though I don't analyze what.
“Hey,” he smooths the crease between my forehead with his thumb. “Stop thinking so hard.”
His finger enters me and my hips shift down, forcing him deeper. I groan at his delicious penetration.
Thorn sits up on his knees, his finger continuing its slow pump inside my body. He's tossed his shirt aside. Every inch of his gorgeous body is mine to see.
I look him over. He's not a cut pretty boy, but a man whose muscle mass is naturally a part of his structure. His strong hips lose their pants in a one-handed slide, and they drop to his knees.
His finger never stops. His thumb sweeps up, and my thoughts cease. All I feel is how near that tantalizing edge he takes me. My legs spread further, and I don't realize I've closed my eyes until I hear a noise.
My eyes pop open, and I see that Thorn has sprung himself free. I felt him two days ago. He was a lot to take in, but he's so much more in the glaring light of day. Gradually, my eyes flow from his huge cock to his face.
He sees my desire and makes another strangled noise.
“Fuck me, Thorn.” I'm dripping for him, so saturated the sheets are damp underneath my butt.
His eyes glint like captured coal. “No.”
Thorn presses a second finger inside, and my hips buck as I slap the bed, my fingertips digging into the sheets. He leans over, and his mouth covers my clit in unrelenting suction.
He pulls my nub into his mouth and stabs inside my sex with his fingers as my ass comes off the bed.
I scream, his fingers deep, his mouth holding my clit captive. I begin to pulse deeply around him and he cups his fingers slightly.
Waves crash into my core and flood my channel as he keeps up that gentle friction. The sucking on my clit grows lighter.
I float back to Earth in pieces like golden dust motes.
My heart is racing, my palms sweating, and my pussy is giving his fingers loving hugs.
I inhale deeply and let it out slowly, trying to come back to myself. “Oh my God.”
Thorn smiles and wipes my juices off his mouth. His face is naked and perfect in that shining happiness, and I realize he hides himself from everyone.
But not me.
Right now, he's more than Thorn. He's my man.
He centers his prick at my entrance, and my hand is there, gripping the silky flesh. I can't wait to have his love in me.
I increase the pressure, and a drop of precum squeezes out of his slit.
I sit up, and he sits back on his heels.
“Nah, no, baby.” His eyes tighten.
I don't think Thorn was ready for the control to switch so quickly.
“Yes.” Even to me my voice sounds evil. There's something so fragile, yet so powerful about breaking down a man as indestructible as Thorn.
I grab his cock and suck off that crystalline drop as if my life depends on it.
His head falls back, and his Adam's apple climbs and drops.
“Don't—Juliette, I'm gonna go.”
He grabs my hair and hangs on. Instead of moving me off the head of his penis, he pushes me down to the root, and I gag.
He holds me there, and I relax.
I get the game.
I come off him and slam back down. Again.
And again.
He groans and jerks himself out of my grasp.
“No,” Thorn grunts.
He flips me over. My ass is in the air like an offering, and I feel him arrow in on my opening.
Thorn gives me no time; he just rams home. My body can't adjust. He fills me, stabbing as if to kiss my womb.
It's exquisite. The pressure, the fullness of him.
I don't give him time to own it. I pull forward and shove myself back on all that length and girth.
I gasp at the size. It's too much.
It's just right. My every nerve ending is stoked by him. There’s no gap in our flesh for anything but erotic friction.
Thorn grips my shoulders and shoves me back against him over and over. I grunt, feeling the pressure of an orgasm to rival the first. It's not shallow from clitoral stimulation but deep from the penetration from behind.
“Almost,” I whisper, burying my face against the sheets.
My hands are planted on my ass as I spread myself farther for him.
My fingertips dig into my butt cheeks as I open myself.
The orgasm builds, hanging on that edge of rolling down the hill of completion.
Thorn slides a finger into the bud of my ass and I tumble.
I barrel down the hill, unstoppable. I steady myself with my hands as Thorn rams so deeply into me, I think he'll come out my throat.
My orgasm strangles us both, his cock in my tightness and my breath stolen as I revel in my body's satisfaction.
He releases, and I grip the sheets, listening to myself mewl. His cock drives into me, his finger inside my second hole.
Two such sweet penetrations I can't survive.
“Stop.” I'm too fragile to stand the pleasure. I can't take it.
“No,” he says and buries himself further.
I gasp, letting go of the cotton as my head drives forward across the bed.
I come again, sinking into the oblivion of his understanding of just what I need.
Sometimes no means yes, and Thorn knows the difference.
It's why I think I might love him.
That revelation makes me as sad as it does happy.
NINETEEN
Thorn
I'm in such deep trouble.
I curl up next to Juliette instead of going to work at the Black Rose.
I should call Mick, let him know how my life has gone to shit.
I won't.
My hand slides down her naked side, and she sighs, shifting her legs and flinging an arm around my neck. I feel myself go to throbbing attention against her back.
She jerks my h
ead to above her lips.
We hover.
Then I dive and our lips press, and it's not tender. It's hard.
Urgent.
We gasp when our lips peel back.
Simone's gorgeous green eyes fill with tears.
I grab her face with both hands, rolling over on top of her. “No, baby, no waterworks.”
I catch her tears as they slide. I hope they're not for me. God knows, it's been rough and fast.
Is this the way love hits? A below-the-belt sucker punch that's all pain?
Juliette shakes her head, and I plow my fingers through hair that's all kink but like bent silk to the touch.
“It's not you, Thorn.”
Thank Christ. “What is it?”
I push her hair away, making her face as naked as her body. Her makeup is long gone. Her bare beauty stares back at me.
I kiss her nose, and a feeling of long-neglected tenderness strangles me.
Juliette sighs, closing her eyes, and I ignore my feelings of weakness as I kiss each lid. The salt from her sadness makes my heart clench like a fist of pain.
“What isn't it?” She gives me a sad smile.
I prop pillows up against the headboard and drag her against me.
“Talk to Thorn.”
She cups my jaw. “Why do you talk about yourself in the third person?”
Doc's words fill my mind.
It's a distancing technique. People speak about themselves that way when they're damaged emotionally.
My mouth opens to say something, and I realize I can't sound smart like Dillinger.
Juliette waits. Her green eyes probe.
I swallow hard. “I had a tough upbringing.”
Her gaze holds compassion but no pity. Thank God, ʼcuz I don't want any of that.
I hear clanking in the kitchen. Kiki's back.
Juliette's gaze moves to the door then back to me.
“It's locked,” I say.
Juliette nods with a twitch of her lips. “I think Kiki knows we've been together.”
I grin. Yeah, she does. I don't keep secrets when I'm in lust.
I stare at Juliette and wonder why just a glance causes this terrible warmth to flow from my chest to the tips of my fingers, my toes. Just a look.
It's painful.
It's fucking frightening.
“What do we do now?” Juliette asks.
“I have to do certain things to keep my job.” I give a sharp inhale. “I'm seeing a head doc.”
savage 07 - the dark savage Page 31
