Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2)

by Laurelin Paige

  “Blue,” she says, sounding breathless, her voice husky. I’m attuned to that kind of shit, with people’s voices. While other kids were learning to ride bikes, we boys were listening for signs of heat-roughened voices in the adults around us.

  Like fucking rabbits, alert to every threat in the jungle.

  “They’re both blue,” she says. “It’s a sleep set.”

  “A sleep set,” I say, as if it makes perfect sense that you’d change into a special outfit for sleeping. I just pull off my shirt and leave on whatever jeans I wore that day. It means I’m ready to fight at any time of night.

  I like that she has special sleep clothes. I like to think of her relaxed. Safe.

  “What kind of blue? Light or dark?”

  She makes a little humming sound. “I’d say…azure.”

  Azure? What does that even mean? I can’t tell if she’s fucking with me or being serious anymore—that’s how far apart we are. “Is azure light or dark?”

  “Oh. Medium, I guess.” The words come out shyly. “The color of the sky when there aren’t clouds.”

  I’m suddenly thinking about her silky skin. I’m thinking about me pressing her against that cherry-red car, my cock at her flat belly, her tight little ass cheeks squished against the warmth of that metal. Blue cotton straining and stretching. Azure.

  “You know what I think, Brooke?”

  “What?”

  “I think there’s a part of your panties that’s dark blue.”

  “No, they’re completely blue. I mean, medium blue,” she says, her breathless voice betraying her. “With white lace.”

  “I happen to know for a fact that there’s a part that’s darker than the rest.”

  “I think I would know.” I can hear the slight smile in her voice.

  “You want me to prove it?”

  Silence.

  “Put your hand between your legs.”

  “Stone!” The way she gasps my name gets me even harder.

  “Do it.”

  “I don’t…I can’t…”

  “Yes, you can. It’s so easy. Just slip that pretty little hand—your fingernails are painted pink, aren’t they? Slip them down over your panties. Touch yourself. See if you’re wet.”

  “No,” she says on a sigh, but I know I’m winning.

  “Okay, okay. Look, how about something easy. You know that line of skin above the elastic band of your panties? Right below the hem of your top? You’re going to trace that with your finger.”

  She says nothing. It’s just soft breath. She’s not doing it, but she will. I’ll make her. It’s wrong, what I’m doing, but I tell myself it’s better she’s doing it to herself than me doing it to her. Better her soft, silky fingers on her instead of my fingers, rough and brutal and scarred as the moon.

  “I don’t know if I want to do this,” she says.

  “You do want to do it. You know how I know?”

  “No.”

  “Because I’m a bad guy, a criminal, and I can tell things other people can’t. I can tell when somebody’s heart is beating like crazy the way yours is right now. I know when they say they don’t want to do things, but they secretly kind of want to.”

  There’s a soft sound, like a whimper.

  I push harder. “I live outside of the law. That is where I live, little bird, and that’s where you went the first night with me. And you think I can’t see you, but guess what? You’re in my fucking living room, and it’s my hand you’re going to press between your legs because you belong to me.”

  She lets out a shaky breath.

  “Are you scared?”

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  “I think you do know. Honesty works both ways. I won’t lie to you, but this doesn’t work if you lie to me. This all falls apart.” It’s a threat. A push. “And you don’t want that, do you?”

  “No.”

  I push aside the relief I feel that she wants this. That she’s fucking glorious and sexy and desperate in it. A beautiful girl like her, turned on by fear. Like the fucking holy grail for a bastard like me. “So tell me. Are you scared?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. But here’s the thing—you don’t ever have to worry about anything when you’re mine. I’ve got you. You’re safe, and you’re going to touch yourself until you come.”

  Her breath catches.

  “Did you ever make yourself come before?” I ask.

  There’s a silence. Then, “Yeah.”

  “Now you’re gonna do it for me.”

  “But…what about you?”

  I pause, considering the question. There’s no way I’m touching myself in the middle of a seedy park. The question means more than that, at least to me. What about you? It means, what do you want from me? What’s the endgame here?

  Of course there’s no future for me and a girl like her. No future for me at all. I’m going down in a hail of bullets. As long as I can free Grayson and take as many of the assholes who kept us in that basement with me, I’m content with that.

  That means all we have is the here, the now. The imaginary touch of my hands on her pale skin.

  “I’m there,” I say, my voice hard. “I’m with you, my hand on your stomach, my fingers edging under the band of your panties. Do you feel me?”

  There’s a gentle rustle of fabric. A hitch of breath. “Yes.”

  In that one word, I see everything—her hand slipping into her panties, her wide eyes in the privacy of her bedroom. Her other hand clutching her phone like the dirty little secret that I am to her. It feels like victory, like I’m so fucking proud, so fucking pleased, that it doesn’t even matter what happens tonight. Doesn’t matter if I find the people we’ve been searching for forever. And that makes her dangerous.

  “Now lower,” I say. “I bet you have hair, don’t you? Springy curls a little darker than the hair on your head.”

  Her whisper comes out in a rush. “Omigod.”

  “You’re doing good,” I say. “It probably feels a little coarse to you, but it would be a fucking cloud against my cock.”

  She makes a high-pitched noise. “You can’t—”

  “There’s nothing I can’t do to you, baby. That’s what you need to learn. Your body belongs to me. Your mind belongs to me. Every part of you is mine for me to touch. Even that swollen pink slit. Slide your fingers down. See how wet you are.”

  A moan. “This is wrong.”

  “You love it. Imagine how shocked your mother would be. How angry your father would be. Every person in that fucking birthday party, smiling for you, looking down at you like you’re some little kid. And meanwhile you’re fucking yourself with your fingers, hungry and slick, desperate enough to come for a criminal.”

  Her breath comes faster. “I won’t.”

  “Won’t what?” She’s already doing it.

  “What you said. I won’t come.”

  Despite the aching in my cock, I give a soft laugh. “Come. Is that the first time you’ve used the word like that? How about another word? Like climax. Orgasm. Do you want to orgasm, little bird?”

  “No,” she stutters, but it’s a lie.

  I could call her on it, demand honesty, make her admit how much she wants this, needs it. But there’s something delicious about pushing her against her will. “Doesn’t matter,” I say. “Whether you want to come or not, you’re going to. Those fingers are so wet, aren’t they? Your body knows who it belongs to. Me, sweetheart. You’re mine.”

  A black car pulls around the block, crossing right in front of me. Chrome gleams in the moonlight. All the hair on the back of my neck rises. My body is revved up by arousal and pure violent impulse.

  Her soft moan is a balm to my cold anger, thawing me out enough to say, “Now find your clit. You know where that is, don’t you? You play with yourself at night, finding all the places that feel good. It must be hard now. Hard and sensitive. Pinch it. Right now.”

  She makes a hoarse sound. “Stone. Not like t
his. You’re not…with me.”

  Because I’m already standing from the park bench. I’m halfway across the weed-riddled sidewalk. How does she know that I’m withdrawing? How can she sense that I’m not there anymore?

  I shove the questions aside, because they don’t matter. She doesn’t matter. Not really. A pretty face. Sweet brown eyes. A smoking-hot body. That’s all she is to me. That’s all she can be.

  And I can push her away more effectively with words than with a gun.

  I slip along the side of the building, using the shadows to disguise myself. If I really wanted to be stealthy, I’d hang up, but I need to finish this. For both our sakes.

  “Oh yes, sweetheart. I’m there. I’m holding your hands down to your cunt, telling you to fuck yourself. Shoving my cock in your throat until you’ve got tears down your cheeks. Until you’ve got saliva running down your chin. You’re crying, but you don’t dare stop touching yourself.”

  Her cries grow louder as I speak, her breath faster.

  “And it feels good because it’s so wrong. You’re coming on your hand, spilling that sweet juice all over your slippery fingers. Even while I’m taking away your air, making you choke.”

  She comes on the word choke, her body reacting on primal instinct, squeezing her throat until she breaks apart.

  Like I’ve done a thousand times, I detach from the moment. I store her moans and cries in a secret place, balm for every dark thing I’ll do in the future. By the time her body finishes spasming, her inner muscle clenching, her breathing exhaled in a low moan, she’s already a memory to me.

  “Very nice,” I say, my voice clipped.

  I stare down the alley where the black limo has stopped in front of the private poker game. Early. This is a high roller, but he isn’t coming after midnight. Because the guy at the door lied to me? Did the guy decide to have a few drinks before the game?

  “Stone?” she asks, sounding lost.

  Her voice seems small and distant over the phone line, like it’s across an ocean instead of just the city. “Now you sleep in those wet panties, understand? Keep them on and pretend I came inside you, that I’m leaking out all night long.”

  Before she can respond, I click the end button on the phone.

  The light in my phone goes out, leaving me in darkness. I erase the call history—nobody needs to know about Brooke except me—and I turn my attention to the back entrance of the pub.

  The dark car is pulling away. It moves around to the edge of the park and pulls over. That’ll be the driver, settling in to read or watch something on his phone or smoke or whatever, waiting for whoever it is to finish his game or his business inside. Is this the guy?

  Is the game starting?

  This is a fact-finding mission. If I don’t recognize anyone, I’ll just sit down and play. You get a really good sense of different guys off playing cards with them, especially if there’s money involved. I take the safety off my piece. Nothing has to get bloody here. It’s just me figuring out who might’ve hired the guy who framed Grayson.

  Still, I like to be ready.

  I’m back at that door. It’s the same bouncer, and he gets a nice, crisp bill for letting me in. “Game’s just starting to roll.” He nods his head toward a staircase.

  I don’t like this. Something about this feels rushed. Not my presence here, but the dark car. The break in schedule. I just don’t know what it is.

  “They have their five yet?” That’s how many they’ll need to start, but it’s not really why I’m asking.

  He hesitates. He doesn’t seem to like the question. “Yeah, but one of ’em’ll play out.”

  I watch him an extra beat. Is he nervous? And upstairs. Not the best. Better than the basement, though. That’s an old weakness, my reluctance to go below ground level. Not that I’d let it stop me.

  I turn and head up. At the top, I knock on another door.

  It opens, and right then I know it’s wrong because the guy backs way away, but it’s too late, because somebody rushes me from behind, pushing me in. A setup.

  Four guys materialize on either side of the door, which gets slammed quick enough. Do they know who I am? Or is this about the game?

  They have my arms before I can pull my piece out of the back of my pants.

  I go at them with my legs. I land a knee-cracking blow on the biggest guy, and get in a backward head butt on one of the guys holding me—his jaw, I think, from the way he cries out. If this goes bad, I’m extra fucked for that one, but that’s what you do—when you fight, you fight.

  Five against one. And they already have my arms. It’ll definitely go bad.

  I get in what blows I can before the beatdown. A fist in my face. Warmth explodes, followed by the taste of blood. Another fist drives into my gut, and another and another.

  The biggest guy, a baldie with bushy blond eyebrows and a goatee and blood coming off the side of his lips, does the honors while the other two hold me.

  “Fucking serious?” he says, smashing his fist into my mouth. The guy I got in the knee is down in the corner, back against the wall. He’ll be trouble later.

  I go into it, just go into the misery of it. That’s what you do when there’s no more fighting. You just want it over with, because you know the morning will come again. Or at least, you have to think that. I relax and take the pain. The broken ribs. The blood. There’s no part of me that isn’t battered, but they need me conscious. So eventually they stop. I let them push me into a chair.

  The goatee guy puts his hands on either armrest and gets into my face. One of his teeth is cracked. Did I do that? “You’re gonna tell us what you know about Dorman, starting with thing one, and not ending ’til you’re done.” He gets closer. “And we know some of what you know, so there’ll be no use leaving anything out.”

  Dorman, also known as Governor-elect Dorman, is the man who framed Grayson—or, at least, we only suspected it until now. But is he the one who directly ordered the hit of the cop and the frame-up?

  I spit at the guy, but he’s ready for it and backs up, then he advances and stomps my foot under the heel of his boot, and I just wish I would’ve hit him.

  Chapter 11

  Brooke

  There are plastic stars on my ceiling.

  They’ve been there so long I almost don’t see them. They glowed in the dark at the beginning, but that was a long time ago. I had a brief astronomy phase in middle school. A telescope is packed away in one of the closets, too expensive for someone who isn’t serious.

  I can still recognize a few constellations. I remember having my ruler out, determined to get the relative spacing right while the maid held the ladder steady. The little dipper. Gemini.

  It feels like I’ve lived my entire life as a child, my protective bubble lined with plastic and glitter. And suddenly, with a single phone call, the bubble pops.

  Imagine how shocked your mother would be.

  Shocked, probably.

  Disappointed, definitely. All her hard work to turn me into a society lady down the drain. The booster club would never let me in. It’s a strange relief, even if they’ll never know.

  How angry your father would be.

  He would be furious at all the money he poured into me, into my private school and my designer clothes. Like I’m an investment that will never pay out.

  I never wanted to be a society lady. Never wanted to be an investment, but they don’t ask what I want. Expectations. Requirements. A hundred different rules for me to follow, and I’ve complied with them all. They never realized that the pressure would build and build. That when I finally broke their rules, it would be by doing something as disastrous as this. As touching myself for a murderer.

  Every person in that fucking birthday party, smiling for you, looking down at you like you’re some little kid. And meanwhile you’re fucking yourself with your fingers, hungry and slick, desperate enough to come for a criminal.

  And I’d liked it. Loved it.

  My body
still hums from the orgasm, my muscles clenching even as the phone line went dead in my ear. How messed up is that? What’s wrong with me that I get off with a guy like him?

  I need to stop. I know that, but my stomach twists at the thought of never seeing him, never hearing his voice. It’s a crush, like the one I had on Mr. Hernandez in the ninth grade. Silly and stupid, but the way my body felt when he spoke, I didn’t feel silly. I felt alive.

  The bedroom door swings open, no warning, my mother waltzing in like she owns the place—which she does. Even so, it’s jarring, a shock. And my heart is still beating so fast and so hard, I can’t believe she doesn’t hear it.

  “Where is that blue Armani?” she says, breezing into my closet. “We need to make sure it’s ready for the party on Saturday.”

  Will she be able to tell? Can she smell it in the air? The faintest musk? A hint of sex? My body is completely under the covers, my right hand resting on my stomach. The phone slid down to my shoulder. I’m paralyzed. Afraid to move, like it will somehow reveal me.

  Hangers clank. Fabric rustles. So much fabric. So many dresses. “Didn’t you spill something last time? Was there a stain?”

  Someone bumped me, sloshing apple juice onto me. Which is why wearing ten thousand dollars to an overcrowded hotel ballroom isn’t the best idea.

  Maybe it’s because I’m afraid to move or maybe it’s because I just came so hard I saw stars behind my eyelids, real sparks instead of plastic that doesn’t glow, but I say, “Does it matter?”

  All movement stops. My mother emerges from the closet, but instead of looking angry, she seems concerned. “Is this because of Detective Rivera?”

  “What? No.” Why is she bringing this up now? I don’t want her asking me about him.

  And I definitely don’t want her calling him again.

  “Are you sick?” she demands.

  It makes my heart hurt that she would guess that. It’s the only reason someone might not care what other people think.

  “No, Mom. I’m fine,” I say, looking away. My birthday is tomorrow, but that doesn’t matter. It’s all about the party on Saturday. I guess even my birthday can’t behave properly. It needs to be fit into a more appropriate day.