by Chloe Liese
I glared at the fry as she rimmed her lips with it. “Enough of that.”
She tipped the last of it in her mouth and chewed without acknowledging me. “When are we going to talk about the fact that you eat burgers practically raw?”
I tipped a shoulder and took another bite. “Nothing to talk about,” I said around a mouthful.
She picked up her milkshake and took it with her as she shimmied deeper into the booth. A long pull from the straw had my cock throbbing, and she smiled as she licked her lips. It was either throw her over my knee and spank her little ass red right there, or ignore her. The first would land me in prison, and if I was going to prison for anything, it sure as shit wasn’t that. I took the high road and had a swig of my beer.
She wore a blue Sox cap that made her hair look shockingly red, and her emerald eyes sparkled in the shadow of the brim like two gems hidden in a cave. I’d liked her all polished in her boardroom outfits. Soft blouses and tight black pants. And I liked her dinner-out skirt and sheer jade top last time. But casual Nairne, chowing down bar food, smiling as she played footsie with me and threw baseball stats in my face, was an intersection of too many points of pleasure. Standing in the middle of them made it impossible to know what was safe to respond to, or what led down dangerous roads. She was hot chaos flying a hundred and twenty miles per hour straight at me, and I couldn’t make myself dodge her impact.
“So, this place.” She glanced around the restaurant, then speared her salad with a fork. “A relative’s? O’Shea is your mother’s family name, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “They keep the paps away.”
Her eyebrow quirked. “In exchange for?”
She was too quick with this shit. She’d already deduced that I walked a crooked path. Now she seemed on the cusp of deciphering exactly how I navigated it. Dad’s way of dealing with the life had given me a rough roadmap. You accepted that you’d never be able to fix it as much as you wanted, and then you used your strengths as leverage to improve what you could. Mine was a reputation—respectable, direct, straight-laced. I held rapport with the cops because I covertly helped them bust the nastiest shit going down. I maintained Cosa Nostra’s trust because I redirected them toward avenues that garnered law enforcement’s slap on the wrist rather than a life-sentence, and made sure their bottom lines stayed healthy. I wielded power from a place of principle and enforced obedience that fell within the lines of my morality.
I almost explained it to her because she was a nerd for science, and this was always the metaphor that came to mind: My M.O. was the only way I’d found to change corruption from within the nucleus of evil’s atom. Even if all I ended up with was a slightly less malignant mutation, it was better than pure toxicity. At least that’s what I had to tell myself.
For example, this place laundered money. When I confronted Mike about it two years ago, I’d threatened retribution if they didn’t terminate their business with sex traffickers. Hard fucking limit right there. Anybody else, they would have just blown my brains out and chucked my body parts into the harbor. But nobody was going do that to me. I had powerful connections, a moral threshold that wasn’t budging, and the position to enforce them both. Mike had cleaned his act up, and while the place was still far from above-board, it was a hell of a lot better than it had been.
It helped that the place was already on the feds’ radar. I didn’t rat on Mikey, but I also didn’t disabuse law enforcement that he was up to some shady shit when they came a-callin’ a few months back. Two of the guys at the bar currently were undercover cops. The bouncer was, too. He sat by the door, emptying pockets and purses, and turned anyone with a gun or a camera right back onto the street.
I smiled at Nairne and stole one of her fries. Hers looked better than mine for some reason. “I can’t really talk about it.”
Nairne shook her head and jabbed her salad again. “I feel like I’m in the Sopranos when you talk like that.”
Her leg began wiggling under the table and I lifted it onto my lap, flexed her foot, and started in on her calf. Spasticity she’d said. Painful muscle cramps that happened because her nerves were shit communicators now.
“I’m clean as a whistle. Always will be.”
She chewed her food and eyed me up with a stare that felt like an x-ray. “I believe you.”
“Good,” I said.
It mattered to me that she had faith in me, that she didn’t look at me and see the smear of my family’s name, the cosmic weight of their corruption. Even if, when I caught my own reflection, I couldn’t help but see it myself. After a few minutes, her leg settled, and I eased it down.
“How old are you, Zed?”
“Twenty-six. Why, too big an age difference?” I’d never asked her, but I knew hers. College senior. Twenty-one.
She frowned and I wanted to kiss that concerned look right off her face. It wasn’t her job to worry. It was mine.
“You seem older than that,” she said. “Like you carry more.”
I shrugged and adjusted my ball cap. “I’ve always been an uptight asshole, if that’s what you mean.”
She knocked her knee against mine under the table. “I don’t. You seem burdened for someone so relatively young. Where’s your passion? Your joy?”
I drummed my fingers on the table. Nairne was jiggling the handle of a door I pretended didn’t exist, shielding a room that no one had access to, including myself. “I’m content living here. Doing what I can. Playing the beautiful game.”
She leaned forward. “How beautiful is it, really? No offense, but you’re playing in the States. You’ve no business here. I Googled you, remember? You were destined for the highest level of footie out there. What are you doing wasting your time here?”
I took her hand in mine and massaged her fingers because it gave me something to do while I told a truth that was a lie by omission. “I have responsibilities I can’t abandon. Staying here isn’t wasting my time.”
Her hand started to pull away, but I snapped it closed in my grip.
“Zed,” she said. A minute of silence sat between us, but I waited. “I get pissed about this because I know what you’re missing. I played footie in Europe. That’s how I got injured.”
Her words didn’t compute. “What did you just say?”
“I played for a professional team in Paris.”
I tugged at my hair, trying to make what she’d said seep into my brain. “You said you played professionally? Got injured on a field? A spinal injury? How?”
She nodded and spun her coaster on the table. “I have lumbar spinal stenosis. I’d been diagnosed by then. You familiar?”
I shook my head.
“Means I had compression around my vertebra. I got epidurals a few times when it got really painful, and I took more NSAIDs than most people do in their entire life. But it was manageable. And it was also a risk. It increased the chances that impact would irrevocably injure my spinal cord.”
My elbows hit the table. “You played, knowing that could happen?”
She shrugged. “It could have also happened if I was bumped by a car. If I’d taken a fall while hiking. If I’d slipped down a bank in the snow. I couldn’t not live my life because of the possibility that my life might change. I’d have an intact spine, but I’d hardly be living.”
I swallowed and squeezed her hands again. She was fearless. I respected her infinitely more and at the same time itched to throttle her for being so intrepid with her one body. “I can’t believe that happened. I’m sorry, Nairne.”
She waved it away. “We can talk more about it another time. I just wanted you to know…”
“You haven’t wanted to talk about it before. Why now?”
Nairne blushed and pulled her hands away. “I don’t generally like to get into it with a bloke until things get…”
I grinned. “Go on.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I’m saying. I’m not stroking your ego. It’s big enough.”
I sat
back and smirked. “What you’re saying is you like me. Enough to tell me more about yourself.”
She blushed a deeper shade, cleared her throat, and redirected us. “I simply wanted you to know my background as a professional athlete. That I understand a bit more than you think about this life. The press. The pressure. The isolation that it engenders. And I really get hating the paps.”
My heart thundered in my chest. I’d said it teasingly, but her confession had impacted me. Her implicit trust, her empathy, they were a drill spinning deeper into my sternum. I didn’t invite understanding. I was terse to keep people away, or I smiled and kept my answers surface-level. Yet here she was, pushing a wall of buttons, sweeping past doors I’d blocked off and ignored, and showing me how perfectly she fit among and made sense of my insanity. Most of all, she was reaching out, meaning she felt safe with me. The woman was as closed-off as I was, if not more so. And she’d offered this little window into her past, a vulnerability I hadn’t seen coming one bit.
“Thank you,” I said. “For telling me.”
She smiled. My chest tightened as panic set in. Because Nairne wasn’t the only who’d made her way into my deranged inner sanctum. I’d followed her there, and I really didn’t like it. There, I had to examine the long game of my life. The years I was going to spend a slave to this unsatisfying world, without a wife or children, because fuck if I was bringing anyone else into this hell. I was stuck fending off murder while enabling fraud. Fucking women I didn’t care about. And living my entire existence in a city whose criminal history was as old as its founding. Nairne sat there and made me glimpse at a life I would never have.
I needed an exit. An escape route. She was dangerous. Crossing more wires, intersecting parts of my life that never overlapped. She got me thinking about realities I couldn’t stomach, asking me about vocation and life values, instead of accepting my deflections.
My throat had a wad of unease lodged in it, and I cleared it roughly. “Speaking of the paps, we need to talk about our next stop.”
Her water glass was halfway to her mouth. She stopped and looked at me warily. “All right.”
I caught and twirled a long red wave of hers between my fingers. “Fragolina, you have two options tonight. One is…safer. You sit in a nice box with heaters and whiskey. Watch a certain ballgame from the cozy confines of upper crust comfort.”
Her eyes widened and I had to fight a grin. I’d surprised her. She didn’t seem like the easily surprised type.
“Or, you could sit in dugout seats—”
“Shut the fuck up!”
Fook. I loved how she said it. She slapped my shoulder and I let her because it was pure effusive joy.
“There’ll be cameras. You’d be seen with me. It’ll be colder, and you’ll have to settle for hot chocolate or Sam Adams. Your choice.”
Her hand slid down my arm and I let her touch me how she wanted. An unsolicited, spontaneous gesture of tenderness. The last woman I’d let touch me like that was my mother, maybe Molly at the funeral, and their impact was thankfully worlds away from Nairne’s.
“Zed, it’s too much. I can’t…” She slid her hand to my fingers, then interlocked them.
I linked them tighter as I stared at her. “Remember the deal? I get to do nice things for you. In exchange for being an asshole.”
She laughed. The sound broke the thin ice of the moment like a hot blade as our eyes settled on each other. I needed inside her, yesterday, the moment I saw her. For the time being, I’d settle for anything that stripped the layers of impossibility between us and shut up my buzzing mind. A broom closet and tasting her sweet cunt. That would do just fine.
“Well?” I prodded.
“The dugout, of course!”
I pulled out my wallet and threw down enough to cover the meal twice over and keep Mikey’s mouth shut about Zed bringing a female friend to the pub. We were in the back and I brought her wheelchair next to the booth. “Let’s hit the restroom before we go.”
She was mid-scooch when she processed my words and looked up at me. “Sounds wise,” she said slowly.
I kept my face unreadable and jerked my head toward the hallway.
“Private one’s down this way.” I had a key for the bathroom that Mike kept for personal use. If I remembered right, there was a loveseat outside the restroom area. A little enclave where a lady could powder her nose or snort a line of coke, depending on the caliber of woman Mikey decided to dip his wick in that night.
Nairne paused her rims. “You’re up to something.”
I gently tugged another strand that looked amber under the pub’s warm lights, then released it. “Don’t read into it, innamorata. Come on.”
Thirteen
Nairne
When I crossed the threshold, he bolted the door behind us, lifting the brim of his ball cap enough that I could see his eyes. “I’ll wait,” he said.
I pissed and washed my hands. Took my cap off and stared at myself in the mirror. My hair was a mass of wild auburn, and I looked wary and flushed. Anticipation of the unknown had my heart pounding and a throb of arousal pulsing between my thighs. Why did I like it? The order. His low voice.
You like it because he’s exactly what you’ve always liked, just better. Rough. Passionate. An adversary in the battle for power.
The old me had been a junkie for that. I didn’t trust my judgment after I’d followed those crumbs of lust so idiotically they nearly got me assaulted. Here I was again, an addict poised to break sobriety.
One time won’t hurt.
I stared at my reflection. “That’s bollocks, and you know it,” I told myself.
Zed’s voice came from the outer room, muffled and low like he was on a call. The thought of his body waiting for mine was enough to undo the last of my resistance. I unlatched the door and came out as he snapped his phone shut and pocketed it.
His eyes flared as he looked me over and held his hands in his pockets, but it did nothing to hide his erection. Man had a hell of a cock if that’s what it looked like trapped beneath jeans and briefs.
“Get on the couch,” he ordered. “Upright, legs spread.”
I felt a surge of defiance inside me as desire flooded my sex. I might’ve been a bit of a wild child before, but nothing had made me feel like this. Fight or flight kicked in.
Don’t do it. It won’t end well.
Try it. Trust him.
I did what I was told.
He sighed like I’d lifted a weight off his shoulders. “Undo your jeans and leave them just past your knees.”
Again, I followed his words. I was wearing plain cotton knickers. White. With a nice damp spot plastering the fabric to my cleft. I blushed and tried to breathe evenly. It was embarrassing at first, but then oddly empowering to be unornamental, in plain denim and a shirt, knickers that were as unprovocative as they got. And still, Zed was staring at me like he could die from lust.
He stepped toward me until our toes touched. Then he knelt and pressed his palms flat over my hands, which were white-knuckling the fabric of the sofa.
“What’s your word?” he said. His voice danced over my skin and gave me goosebumps.
I stared at him. “Gadzooks.”
He fought a grin. “You’re impossible. Gadzooks.”
“What? You said to pick a word I wouldn’t normally say.”
His eyes searched mine. “Fine.” They flicked down to where I was achingly aroused, then up again and glowed. “Now be still.”
I watched his hands leave mine and slide across my stomach. How he bunched the fabric of my knickers and tugged them down. He stared where I was now naked, then bent to whisper against my skin, “Beautiful.”
He lifted my shirt and kissed a line between my hip bones. His palms flattened my hands while his lips made ten slow connections from one prominence to the next. Triangulated down to my sex as he breathed deeply.
My hands flinched underneath his. I wanted my fingers in his hair, to knock off his hat a
nd fist his dark waves while he licked me to orgasm. But he held his weight over my hands easily. My arms had to make up for my legs’ weakness, and though they weren’t built by any means, they were strong. Just not nearly as strong as his.
“Zed—”
“Hush.” His lips trailed back up to my hip where he bit gently and sucked. “Breathe.”
I did. A shaky exhale as he kissed the hypotenuse down to my mound. Then suddenly he speared me with his tongue, and I gasped. It was incredible—his whole mouth kissing me, that tongue sucking and fucking like I was all he wanted.
My hands flexed again. When he looked up, he nosed my clit, then bit it.
I swore and bucked beneath him.
“Be still,” he growled. “Breathe, Nairne.”
I nodded, fighting nerves about my body’s response. When he’d fingered me in the restaurant the other week, it had been impulsive and hidden. A tease with no expectation, that ended up being shockingly powerful. But this was overt. What he was doing now was supposed to make me come, fantastically. What if I didn’t? We’d talked, so he knew it might take me a while, since what I sensed was uneven. He hadn’t seemed a bit daunted. Orgasm happened in the mind, Zed said. And though my mind was mine, not his, in that moment, his words and touch made my thoughts drift, nebulous and thin. I didn’t have to work to become aroused or trick my mind as I lay there watching him nibble my clit in a gentle rhythm. I wanted him to sink his fingers into me, and apparently, I’d said that out loud.
“Lucky for you, I was just about to tell you. I’m going to fuck you with my fingers.”
“Yes.” It rushed out of me. “Please.”
