“Don’t ever feel like you have to keep things from me.”
“But…”
“No. You’re mine now, Alisa. Do you understand? No one will ever hurt you again. And if they try it, I’ll do everything in my power to end them.”
She regarded me, then nodded. “That works both ways.”
I chuckled. “Really? Would you kill someone if they hurt me?”
She frowned while biting her lip.
My grip tightened on her. “That’s the difference. I know what you’re thinking, that I shouldn’t hold back with you. I know you care, but there are some things I need to work out about my past. Just know this. For you, I’ll work on it. For you, I’d do anything. But there will always be some things that won’t heal, and I won’t tell you. I can’t change those things.”
“Okay,” she whispered and laid her cheek on my chest.
I kissed the top of her head and wondered whether she truly understood the path that we’d laid. If her father ever touched her again, I’d make him pay in the worst imaginable way.
Grabbing the soap, I lathered it and began washing her shoulders, gently rubbing the thoughts in her head away.
She was a fighter, whether she knew it or not. Everything that’d happened in her life would have broken a weaker woman. They would have complied, would have stuck with what her father wanted. Given the information that I had on their family, most of them already had.
I'd never have guessed she had such resilience in her, as I hadn’t seen it the first night we'd met. But now, I realized she had more inner strength than most. It was subtle, not overwhelming in any way. It helped me, drove me, and motivated me to do, maybe not the best things, but better things than I’d been doing. No more drunken nights on the floor, no more wallowing in self-hatred. She was my world now and I’d be damned if she ever lived another moment being unhappy in her life.
My hands reached the fullness of her breasts and massaged. Her head tilted back, eyes closed, and my dick hardened at the sight of it.
Smirking, I rubbed over her nipple. She let out a tiny gasp.
“Those sounds you make are getting me hard again and you’re sore. Let’s get you dried off and back in bed. I’ll order some food.”
Her mouth formed a little pout. The things I wanted to do with that mouth were endless, but tonight wasn't the night.
She gazed up at me, my eyes locked on her breasts as soap slid down the mounds to pool at her feet.
My hand grazed over her cheek. “Be a good girl for once.”
She smirked, then frowned.
“What?”
She shook her head and tried to move past me.
My mouth met her ear when I stopped her. “I love you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
She smiled up at me and my heart clenched.
“I love you too, Mick. No matter what.”
I felt gut-punched hearing those words from her. I knew how I felt, but our definition of love was probably so dissimilar she wouldn’t recognize what it was in me. Love was defined rather inadequately as a feeling of deep affection. To me, it was everything that was Alisa. Not just affection, but need, as if her departure from my life would rip me to shreds and burn down whatever remained of my grip on the world. I’d never leave her, to do so would be like jumping off a cliff into a bottomless, dark pit.
When she left the shower, I took a deep breath and buried my head in the water. As the hot spray landed on my face and shoulders, I wondered if she’d love me if she knew how dark my soul was, and still could be.
My thoughts wandered inevitably to what happened at the Bureau. I closed my eyes and saw my partner’s face. The demon in his eyes that he’d hidden from me.
All the facts ran through my head. The database filled with young, missing women. A string of small clues on several cases for months. Days where nothing added up and the missing continued to be found sporadically. There’d been so many other cases, that I hadn’t seen three of them for what they were. Even with my background, the training, the ego of my own abilities.
Then that day, that one fucking day. The body on the ground. Cold, lifeless eyes staring up at me. I was already numb from past cases when we walked into the field together and looked over the body privately. I’d seen so many by that point that I’d already shut down.
She was young, angelic even in death, gazing vacantly up at the blue sky on a cloudless day. Sweat trickled down my back from the heat of the field she’d been found in. The clothing beside her, folded in a neat pile just like the other three victims. The knowledge that this was a serial case made my stomach clench.
My partner's hand twitched in my peripheral vision as if he wanted to touch her. His fingers ran across the fabric of his pants in a strange caress. Blood under her fingernails. Something that had never been found on the other three. The scratch on the back of his neck that I’d given him hell for. Something he’d said last week. The woman he described fucking over that weekend had been an angelic blonde, but “feisty” according to him.
Movement behind me as someone approached. My hand on my pistol before the person reached me. My head whipped around to find his friend. My friend too. Whom I’d shared a drink with, laughed with after a long day at the office. Gun in hand he aimed at me, but I was quicker. His body dropped with my bullet in his face. When I turned to my partner, he was smirking, crouching over her body, touching her leg. His other hand twitched near his gun, then I put a bullet in his head.
My hand shook as I lowered my weapon. The acrid odor of spent gunpowder reaching my nose. He hadn’t drawn his weapon. Thinking about it? Maybe. That fucking smirk, though. The same one that I’d seen on his face nearly every day. So human, and yet so utterly evil. He’d been playing a sick game for months at the cost of my sanity. I hated everything about him.
We’d held everyone back at a roadblock a mile in the distance, but the sound of my weapon alerted them. Distinct voices of people yelling and coming closer penetrated my haze.
I’d killed him at close range and his blood coated my shirt. His weapon lay in the holster on his hip. Taking a pen from my back pocket, I yanked it out with some effort and placed it on the ground near his hand, right before the first officer arrived over the hill.
Glaring at him, I walked past him on shaky legs, knowing my life had just gone to hell. I didn’t care. He was just another dead body.
Chapter Fourteen
Alisa
Watching Mick put on his clothes the next morning, felt like a natural thing couples do. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him dress at least once, but it felt different this time. Somehow normal and right. He was mine. Every single inch of skin that he covered in pants, socks and shirt was voluntarily given only to me.
After our shower, he’d come to bed distracted and I’d wondered why. It was either something that he wasn’t ready to talk about, or couldn’t for now. I wondered very briefly if it had to do with me, but as the long night wore on and he told me a hundred times that he loved me, I knew it was something more to do with him. He was letting me in slowly and it was enough for now.
The night had gone so differently than what I’d expected. But like anything with Mick, nothing was ever predictable. I’d gone from thinking he’d dismissed me, to hearing him say that he loved me. A crucial turning point for both of us.
He looked at my dress for the hundredth time and frowned as he gathered his things. Last night had been one of the best of my life. He loved me. Something I might have guessed at, given enough time, but he’d freely given me the words I’d needed to hear and that to me was significant.
He wasn’t basing it on a familial connection or what I could do for him. It was just love, formed over the past few weeks. I didn’t have to be anyone I didn’t want to be. Didn’t have to prove myself to him. I wasn’t living my dream life, with a job that was fulfilling. I had very little money and couldn’t provide him with any financial gain. It was just me with my faults and past.
“I k
now you still hate the dress, Mick, stop scowling,” I said with a smile.
He rolled his eyes. “It’s the lack of clothing under it.”
I slid the hem up a little as I leaned back on the bed. “Would you like to take it off again?”
He ran a hand down his face in frustration. “You’re sore. You tried that all night and it’s still not going to happen.”
I threw him a haughty pout.
“Pouting won’t get you anywhere either. Give it a day.”
“Bossy.”
He glanced at me and held out his hand. “Get used to it.”
Taking his hand, I followed him through the door and down the long hallway to the elevator. When the doors closed he pulled me up against him and ran his fingers through my hair.
“We’ll go by the house to change, then head to Erebus.”
Mick’s decision to buy the club with Mason confused me when he’d mentioned it the night before. I knew exactly why it bothered me. Mason’s addiction to anything with a pair of boobs was one thing, but it also meant that Mick would be around the same temptations. I was hoping last night that he’d tell me he was going to be a silent partner. But the more he talked about it, the more I realized that Mason wouldn’t be able to run the business on a daily basis without him, and I worried.
I would have never thought I'd be a jealous person. At least not with a man. I envied other people’s families, relationships that seemed normal, their happiness. It was never really something I’d thought about too much until last night.
There was a line in my life that was distinct now. Life before Mick, and life after meeting him. The reality was, despite being surrounded by friends in college, excelling at the things I wanted, I wasn’t happy. Not truly. I was only waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Especially with men.
Apart from Alex, I didn’t have any influential person that I idolized. No one I admired for their resilience or even their ability to make me feel safe. Not my mother and certainly not my father. But that was the King family way.
Then there was Mick. My eyes slid across his face as he stared at the elevator door. Mick, my complicated and troubled man. He was mine and I was determined to keep him.
Mick’s phone rang when we stopped at the third floor. He answered as a couple, who appeared to be lost, peered inside the cab, then started arguing about which floor they were supposed to be on.
The doors closed without the additional company and I turned toward him. The expression on his face was alarming.
“What did you say?” he barked in an angry tone.
He paused, listening, his eyes sliding over my face.
“No. We weren’t home,” he said with another pause. “Alex, I don’t owe you a goddamn explanation. What the fuck do you mean her car was broken into at your house?”
My eyebrows furrowed with concern as I listened.
“Your house? What the hell would they be looking for? Forget it, we’re headed home right now.”
The elevator dinged and I realized we still weren’t on the lobby level. The doors slid open and a man with a grizzled complexion stared back at me. His scruffy face looked like it hadn’t had a shave in a while. His clothing, t-shirt over a pair of slacks, seemed somewhat rumpled.
My eyes clashed with his, and I knew instantly there was something wrong. As he stepped in he noted Mick, then barreled into both of us.
I felt a sharp pain in my side and cried out.
Mick’s large hands grasped my hips and shoved me to the side. My body hit the wall and slid down as I stared back at Mick. The man that had joined us was now locked in a wrestling match with Mick against the opposite wall. His teeth gleamed as he let out a howl when one of Mick’s fists hit him in the side. The man elbowed Mick in the face, punching his ribs. Mick’s palm came up and started squeezing the man’s throat as he kneed him in the leg.
The doors were shutting when Mick was punched in the jaw. Off balance, he managed to throw a punch of his own squarely in the man’s chest, but the attacker was already stumbling out of the cab. He took off down the hallway with speed and Mick was nearly after him before he glanced at me to make sure I was alright.
His face froze as his eyes swept over my body, then he was on top of me.
I reached for him but the pain in my side increased.
“Oh, fuck, Alisa,” Mick yelled as he wrapped a hand around my back. “Fuck, baby. Stay still.”
His other hand pressed into my side and I cried out again. The fury on his face was unmistakable.
Looking down at his hand, that was causing so much pain, I let out a small scream. Blood covered his hand as he pulled away from my torn dress.
He picked me up in his arms, still furious and punched the lobby button several times. Red smears covered the panel as he slammed the button repeatedly until the doors closed.
“What…”
“Baby, just breathe and try to relax. I have to get you to the lobby.”
When the door slid open he strode out among other guests who gasped. One screamed as Mick’s long legs carried me to a couch.
Someone was shouting for security as others stared in horror.
Mick was on the phone speaking with someone then dropped the phone and placed both his hands over my side.
“Baby, just hold on and breathe. Ambulance is on the way.”
Two men in security uniforms came rushing over. Mick barked out information to them while I tried to remain calm.
Just like the belt. It was nothing. Everything healed. It wasn’t as bad as it looked.
The same mantra kept rolling through my head as I tuned out everything around me and stared at the large vase on the table in the lobby. Mick’s voice carried through the room and he yelled something.
When his face hovered in front of me again he was speaking.
I blinked, wondering why I heard him, but couldn’t focus on what he was telling me. He looked so angry and confused at the same time. His face changed to one of concern then he leaned in, kissing my temple, my forehead, my cheek.
His hands slipped from my side and another face replaced his. Unfamiliar, but kind, a woman, who pointed a light in my eyes. She was pretty, tight-lipped and focused as she gave me the once over. Her eyes darted down my body then back at me and she gave me a gentle smile. When I closed my lids, feeling sleepy, the sounds of the room rushed back to me. Sirens, people talking.
And Mick yelling ferociously.
“What do you mean, you didn’t catch that crazy fuck? He had to have exited through the side entrance. There are only three ways out of here.”
“Sir, there’s an exit through the restaurant. We’ll pull the cameras, once the police get here.”
“Motherfucker,” Mick growled. “He’s probably already halfway across the city.”
“Mick,” I whispered.
A woman’s voice answered. “It’s okay, we’re taking you to the hospital. We need to get you patched up.”
“Mick,” I said again.
“Hey, man,” the woman said. “Are you Mick? She’s asking for you.”
“Fuck,” he barked as he stormed across the lobby. “Alisa, it’s okay, baby. They’re going to take you. Mason will be there.”
His hair was ruffled, a red smear on his cheek while his wild eyes regarded me. I’d never seen him so out of control. Of all the times he’d tried to scare me away from him, nothing compared to the look in his eyes as he scanned the room, fists clenching, snarl on his face.
“You?” I asked as I was moved to the side, my eyes closing.
“I have to stay here. I’ll be up there as soon as I can.”
My body was lifted, then we moved as I heard someone talking in codes.
“Baby,” I felt a hand against my face. “I’ll be there, just hold on.”
* * *
When I woke up, it wasn’t Mick who was leaning over me, it was Mason.
“Hey there,” he said with a smile. “Just relax.”
My arms felt slugg
ish as I tried to sit up.
“What…”
There were men’s voices in the hallway arguing. Mason’s head tilted to the side as if trying to listen to the conversation. A man I didn’t know walked into the room, nodded at Mason, sat in one of the chairs and pulled out a magazine.
“So,” Mason said, turning back to me. “While you were getting a nice set of drugs in surgery and stitches, Mick showed up with your brother and my dad. Alex stepped out, but he’ll be back in a minute.”
“Surgery?” I whispered.
“Yeah, the guy that was in the elevator knifed you. Not sure where he was aiming but it was a lucky miss. Nearly clipped your lung. You’re alright, though.”
“Where’s Mick?”
He raised his eyebrows and nodded at the hallway. “Having a talk with the old man. They don’t get along. Has he told you anything?”
I shook my head.
He pursed his lips for a moment. “Not a pretty bedtime story, but the long and the short of it is that my dad was a dick when we were kids. He’s still a dick, but not like that.”
He gave me thoughtful look.
“You get it when it comes to my brother. You see him now, and I think you can see how bad he could be. He wasn’t always like this, but he was always strong. I looked up to him, wanted to be him some days. My dad was a piece of shit a long time ago. Mick took most of it until he got into sports, then dad found a new way to be a dick, constantly on his ass. But when my mom died he changed, sobered up. Mick just doesn’t want to see it.”
The arguing stopped, and Mason listened again for a moment.
“You’re probably the only person Mick even cares about anymore…”
“He cares about you, Mason.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, he does, just not the same way. I’m telling you, so you know where it comes from. His moods, the way he acts. He’s a lot like my dad, not the jackass who used to beat the snot out of us, but the part that doesn’t take anyone else’s shit. My dad doesn’t and neither does he. And it pisses him off.”
Mick: Kingston Corruption, Book One Page 15
