Explicit Memory

by Scarlett Finn

  ‘He had business to dispense with.’

  ‘What business?’

  ‘Now who’s interested,’ Lucia said.

  ‘Does my man look like the type to step out on?’

  ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘In the last place I ever would’ve looked,’ Flick said. Few people would seek or discover love in the place that she had found it.

  ‘It’s not... serious, is it?’

  ‘He’s died for me once, and he’d do it again,’ Flick said. ‘Tell me everything you know about Antoine.’

  ‘Why? What do you—?’

  ‘You don’t think it’s odd that he showed up, and now he wants to live in your parents’ house?’

  ‘Roger and I stay here all the time, Viv too,’ Lucia said. ‘We all socialise and—‘

  ‘He’s not family,’ Flick said. ‘Before a month ago, had any of you ever heard of Antoine Mercier?’

  Lucia’s always sparkling eyes tapered, but before she garnered a response Flick saw Rushe and Antoine walk away from each other. Unsure if Rushe knew her position, Flick got moving through the groups between them until they united. He immediately took her hand and hooked it into his back pocket.

  ‘We’re leaving,’ he said, leading her into the house and through the dining room.

  ‘There’s a bedroom upstairs for us,’ Flick said, struggling to keep up as they wound through the long hallways toward the exit. ‘He’s staying here. My family could be in danger.’

  Rushe stopped in the entry lobby to spin on her. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘He’s been working with Roger for a month,’ she said. ‘He’s living in this house, and you know him. Who is he?’

  ‘Exactly who you think he is.’

  ‘The danger.’

  ‘I don’t want you here,’ Rushe said.

  Flick slipped her hand into his pocket. ‘Don’t let him see you riled, Lover. You know we have to be here to watch out for them. They have no idea who he really is, and if he gets control of them... We can’t risk their safety.’

  ‘And what about yours?’ he growled, taking hold of her arm and thrusting her back against the wall, knocking the wind out of her. ‘You’re asking me to risk you.’

  Flick recognised the darkness, the edge that he teetered on so precariously. ‘We talked about this,’ she whispered. ‘You have to let me be a part of your work, risks and all.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m capable,’ he admitted on a hushed exhale.

  ‘You’re capable of anything, Lover. I’ve known that since the night we met. As long as I’m with you I’m safe, Rushe.’

  Footsteps preceded a new feminine tone. ‘Vivian, we won’t have...’

  Rushe twisted toward her mother’s voice but kept his body on hers, her eternal defender. From how Beverly Hughes’ voice trailed away, Flick knew Rushe had landed her with that nefarious glare. Her mother must have been calling back to her other daughter because at the moment she remained alone in the entryway.

  ‘What is this?’ Beverly asked her daughter, but she couldn’t tear her attention away from this alien creature in her lobby.

  ‘We’re going to bed,’ Flick said.

  ‘We?’ This did bring Beverly’s focus to her daughter. ‘You know this man?’

  ‘No, we just met,’ Flick sassed. ‘I’m a real slut now, ma.’

  Beverly’s jaw fell on a croak of indignation, but Rushe crouched to nuzzle his face in Flick’s hair. The action was cover meant to misdirect attention from the hand he scooped up under her dress to fondle her ass.

  Flick couldn’t explain the enjoyment she got out of shocking her family. Vivian came in at Beverly’s back, prepared to speak and to see what her mother gawped at. She stopped when she witnessed the unexpected show, and Flick’s smile spread.

  She didn’t know how Rushe read her so well; they’d never been in her family’s company together. Playing his role as the animal, he sucked her neck until Flick gasped at the sting, then Rushe drew his mouth higher to trace his teeth along her jaw.

  ‘He gets testy if I don’t service him at least five times a day.’

  ‘Felicity!’

  ‘This is the guy with the hands!’ Vivian exclaimed. ‘You said he did it himself!’

  ‘That’s right,’ Flick said, stroking a hand up his arm and down his chest. Taking hold of Rushe’s belt buckle, Flick sauntered away from the wall and led him toward the staircase.

  ‘You’re going to do it in our parents’ house?’ Vivian gaped like a teenager.

  ‘Several times,’ Rushe grumbled, and flopped his arms around Flick.

  ‘Felicity!’ Beverly exclaimed.

  ‘Good night!’ Flick said, and took Rushe up to her bedroom.

  As soon as the door closed, granting them seclusion, Flick turned on Rushe, and out of his arms.

  ‘Why is Antoine Mercier here with my family? This is about Jansen, tell me what they did to him, how he looks.’

  Flick couldn’t bear to think of Rushe in pain, and the idea that he could go through the same ordeal as Jansen disturbed her.

  ‘I didn’t go in,’ Rushe said.

  ‘Will he wake up?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The suspense was unbearable. Flick was used to things happening quickly, or at least being able to take action. But now that they knew Antoine was here, and connected with this debacle, things had gotten serious for not only her and her love, but her family as well.

  ‘What about Serendipity? Give me the details.’

  ‘She was last seen at work eight days ago,’ he said. ‘No one’s seen her since then.’

  ‘Eight... after I got the email.’

  ‘You think if we’d mobilised quicker—‘

  ‘Don’t get defensive,’ she said, recognising where his tone was heading. ‘I made a statement. I’m not blaming you for anything. We couldn’t have foreseen this. It took us nearly three days to verify the facts of what happened to Jansen.’

  ‘We don’t know the facts,’ Rushe said, shoving her further into the room and turning on the lights to look around.

  The space was vast, but basically empty. The bed and the nightstands stood against the head wall with a large window behind it. Looking at it now, Flick was reminded of her prison in Victor’s mansion.

  She and Rushe had met after a sequence of events leading her into the clutches of gangsters led by a man called Victor. In the end, she discovered that the chain of command actually went higher than him, presumably to the bankrolling Merciers. Victor’s job was to capture women for his superiors to sell. Their trade was human trafficking, and Flick had almost been a victim herself.

  Rushe had gotten involved with Victor after Victor and his gang had learned that Jansen was actually an undercover cop sent to spy on them. When the jig was up, Victor snatched Jansen’s girlfriend in an effort to force the cop to do his bidding. It worked. Serendipity was that girlfriend, and when Jansen had no luck in locating or saving her, he had hired Rushe through a third party to do it for him.

  When Victor got paranoid about Flick’s relationship with Rushe, and of Rushe’s identity, Victor imprisoned her lover. On her journey to be sold, Jansen intercepted the shipment and saved Flick, who then convinced the cop to help her free her lover because by then Flick knew Serendipity’s location and had that to barter with.

  She and Jansen went in together and saved Serendipity and Rushe in an operation that ended many lives, including Victor’s. Only the four of them and one other person walked out of that building alive. The other person was Simone, who Flick now assumed was a relation of Antoine. The French woman was charged with supervising Victor and looking after the women meant to be sold.

  ‘They have Serendipity?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, sitting on the bed to unlace his boots. ‘Mercier just confirmed it.’

  ‘So what now?’

  Rushe sat up to stare her down. ‘Sex.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘You had it made
here, Kitten,’ Rushe said, drying his hands on the towel then throwing it back into the bathroom an hour or two later.

  Flick lay on the soft white linen of the bed brushing her fingers up and down the black leather of Rushe’s loose belt, which now lay across her abdomen.

  ‘Don’t start that, there’s enough money in the bank that we could have a big fancy house if we wanted it, but we don’t.’

  Rushe’s money might not equal Hughes proportions, but he was no slouch and would always be able to provide for her. While working for various clients through all these years, he’d done some very risky jobs for some very wealthy people, and those contracts paid very well.

  Rushe joined her on the bed, laying himself out then picking her up to drape over him, tossing the belt aside in the process.

  ‘I’ve got something you can wrap those fingers around.’

  ‘What does Mercier want?’ Flick asked, rolling onto her front so they were chest to chest. ‘Money?’

  ‘Don’t worry about—‘

  ‘We’re a team,’ Flick said. ‘Remember what happened the last time when you shut me out? Does he want money? How much of it? Is it a ransom? Will he let Serendipity go if—‘

  ‘He doesn’t want money from us. The Merciers are only mid-level. They don’t have great funds, not like your folks here. They do ok, but they’re not as affluent as they’d like people to think they are. But it’s not our money that they want.’

  ‘Victor was selling those girls for him, wasn’t he?’

  While Rushe had worked for Victor, his mission was to locate and liberate Serendipity. But he’d also played a covert role in freeing the kidnapped women meant to be sold on to the highest bidder.

  ‘Mercier works for his uncle, Jerome, who has no children of his own,’ Rushe said. ‘Jerome is Simone’s uncle too.’

  Simone had been at Victor’s side throughout the operation, watching the gangster’s every move to report to her family, who were funding the operation. Her task might have been to supervise and chronicle, but she actually spent more of her time seducing Victor’s men.

  Though Rushe was technically one of those men, Simone’s attempts to seduce him were never successful, though she didn’t boast about that truth to anyone. It suited Rushe’s cause to let the other men in the posse believe at the time that he was as beguiled with her as they were.

  ‘She’s out there? But I thought the police—‘

  ‘They had nothing on her,’ Rushe said. ‘Nothing physical anyway, and I don’t know what information Jansen fed back about her. She most probably played the victim. I don’t know the details of the investigation. I’ll find them out, but it will take time. Other than the testimony of the freed women...’

  ‘But Jansen’s a cop. He knew what was going on.’

  ‘Jansen had his own mess.’

  Flick pushed her hands to his chest, propping up her weight. ‘His superiors found out that Victor kidnapped Serendipity?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Rushe said. ‘Looks that way.’

  Jansen’s original assignment had been to infiltrate the gang and gather information on the crook and his cohorts. But once Victor had control of the woman he loved, the cop was stuck and fed all sorts of inaccurate and false information to his superiors in order to ensure Serendipity’s safety. Rushe might have been called in to save the day, but after Flick got involved she had been used against him just like Serendipity was against Jansen.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  Rushe grumbled but his hand landed on her crown, mingling his fingers into her hair as he pushed her head down onto his chest.

  ‘He was suspended, pending investigation,’ Rushe said.

  ‘But that was months ago, what—’

  She tried to lift her head but he pressured it in place, keeping her pressed to him. Flick loved the warmth of his skin, the resistance of his muscles, and the pound of his heart that lived encased in the inky resonance of his deep, gravelly voice.

  ‘He went rogue, got obsessed with getting the guys involved in Victor’s game, involved in endangering his woman. Jansen’s a fucking asshole.’

  ‘Would you have done anything differently?’ Flick asked. ‘They held her for months.’ She turned her face toward him until her lips met skin. ‘He loves her, Rushe. I know how much you hate loving me. I know it makes you weak. Is that what they want?’

  ‘What?’ His hand froze, still knotted in her hair.

  ‘They blame us for Victor’s death. They financed the operation, but you and Jansen... and me... we stopped it from getting off the ground. What’s more, we probably sent a whole team of cops to sniff around.’

  ‘Jansen’s the cop, and I told you then that was his problem.’

  The boom of Rushe’s voice vibrated against her cheek. ‘Is that what they want, Lover? Do they want me? They’ve already taken Jansen’s girl.’

  ‘Do you think I would hand you over?’

  ‘No,’ Flick said, insulted by the offense in his tone. ‘That’s what scares me, Rushe. I love you, and I’ve seen you go through enough for me.’

  ‘I’ve endured nothing for you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been taking shit all my life.’

  ‘Without you I have nothing.’

  ‘Flick—‘

  ‘You have the job, you’re great at it. You have purpose.’

  ‘I don’t like this talk,’ he said.

  ‘You know if it comes down to a choice... the smart money—‘

  ‘Enough!’ Casting her body away from his, Rushe got her on her back and took her wrists in his fists. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re going to say? Why in the fuck would you—‘

  ‘Because we find ourselves in these life and death situations without ever having discussed a course of action. You’re the master of forethought, why wouldn’t you—‘

  ‘I know exactly what to do,’ he said.

  ‘Sacrifice yourself every time, is that your plan? I don’t need you to prove your love to me. I know you love me, I face that truth every day and it makes me happy, you’re the one who has a problem with it. If it’s your plan to get yourself hurt in order to validate your feelings, then your plan sucks!’

  ‘You’re gonna learn, Kitten,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna learn to do what you’re told. I get between you and danger, always.’

  ‘What is it they want? What does Antoine want?’

  ‘There’s a guy, Theo Silver. Everyone calls him Silver.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He needs some work done,’ Rushe said. ‘Mercier will be in touch with him. I have a debt to settle.’

  ‘Who is Theo Silver? What does he want with my lover?’

  Rushe folded her body around to underneath his, and his hand coasted over her breast when his form drifted away. He grasped, massaging the flesh toward himself and away. The motion attracted a grumble, and his face delved into her hair.

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Your lover has his own wants.’ He pinched her nipple, and her calf drifted between his legs.

  ‘No sex until we talk,’ she whispered, but his lips slinked down her body until he kissed her nipple. Lapping it once, he pinched it again, rolling the peak between his fingertips.

  ‘Your tits... you have incredible cans.’

  Circling her again, he coated one breast then the other in long, lingering kisses.

  ‘You’re making out with my breasts,’ Flick smiled, and combed her fingers through his hair. ‘We have to talk. This is important. But it’s been a long day and I’m tired. I’d forgotten how much energy it required to sit up straight all day and smirk at everyone.’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ he said, suckling one pebble then the other.

  ‘If I go to sleep I’ll wake up sore because you’ll still be feasting on me.’

  ‘Your breasts are mine. I can do whatever the fuck I want with them.’

  Bringing her leg higher, she elevated her thigh to his groin and began to undulate. Then, elevating her ass, she twisted to grind herself into
him. He grunted and grabbed her hip to hold her down flat, so his mouth could continue its worship.

  ‘I wanna play with your dick.’

  Seizing her hand, he coiled her fingers around the length of him, but Flick released him to slap her hands onto his shoulders and push him onto his back. Rushe let her throw a leg over him to mount his torso, because she kept her breasts on his face. He hummed out his pleasure and tested her with his teeth, causing a joyous shriek to leap from her.

  ‘I can only sleep on top of you.’

  ‘You stay right where you are, Kitten.’

  He clasped under her arms to hold her in place. ‘Rushe!’

  ‘My girls.’

  ‘Smothered to death,’ Flick said, shimmying herself against him. He buried his face in her cleavage and rolled her to her back, parting her legs with his.

  ‘Talk, then sex.’

  In typical Rushe grouch fashion, he exhaled and flopped onto his back, but he tucked her under his arm to ensure she stayed plastered to the height of him.

  ‘Silver is a pimp,’ Rushe said, threading his fingers into her hair.

  ‘And Mercier knows him?’

  ‘By association.’ His fingers trailed down her spine and back up, then down again. ‘Silver doesn’t hang out on street corners.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘He has a reputation,’ Rushe said.

  ‘Do you know Antoine?’

  ‘I did research on Victor, and on the Mercier family. It’s how I know that their finances aren’t all they’re made out to be.’

  ‘Antoine and Simone are cousins and he’s here, so does that mean...?’ Flick’s first impression of Simone was that she was superior, and her opinion had only gone downhill from there. ‘Are we going to...? Will we see her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rushe said. ‘If you want me to set you up—‘

  ‘We work together,’ she said. ‘Antoine knew you, downstairs. You knew him too.’

  ‘Mercier was at the meeting...’

  ‘In Dell’s,’ Flick said, in a moment of clarity.

  ‘He worked as a liaison with Victor.’

  ‘Why is he here? Why infiltrate my family?’

  ‘Because you care about them,’ Rushe said, drumming his fingers on the vertebrae above her ass in the groove of her back.