by Anthology
“I ran away from home that night. I got a fake ID, made myself eighteen with a fake name, Ella Finley, and I took only one thing, a shoebox full of him, to remind me there was good in this world.” I swallowed hard. “It proved me wrong a few more times. I was taken advantage of in ways that I couldn’t… I still can’t…” I trailed off. “When those men broke me completely, I knew the way to make it better, to take control.”
“Faceless, nameless sex,” he bit out and a shiver ran down my spine.
“I met Marcus, the owner of this place, when he was just a kid. He was nice to me, he saw me as a person not a toy, and when he got in trouble with the owner of the brothel, I stood up for him. We’ve been an odd team ever since. He gave me back respect. He gave me back strength.”
*****
Shep
No words came to me as the pure and blazing fury ripped through my body. Literally zero.
M wasn’t an M at all. She was my scared and broken soulmate, finally spilling her guts as to what had gone wrong. She was finally answering all my long standing questions and didn’t even realize. I’d grown up and grown hard after she left. And now either she couldn’t, or worse, wouldn’t, see the resemblance between me and her first love.
She was going to fillet me with this story, with the knowledge that I was going to send the woman I’d always held a flame for to jail. I was going to dismantle the man that had been there for her when I wasn’t.
“Shit, sorry,” she said as she pushed away from me, wrapping her body in the comforter like she was ashamed as she tried to push away. “This vulnerable mess isn’t what you signed on for. I’ll send in a different girl.”
Panic shot through me.
I scrambled for the leash, and pulled her back. Slowly I pulled the comforter away from her body and took a moment to devour every inch. Not just because she needed to see me appreciate the goddess she was, but because I wanted to see all of her, all of what she’d become, every inch that should have only ever been mine. Even she said she should have only been mine.
I bent down and started kissing a small trail up her perfectly toned stomach.
Her fucking step dad.
A part of me had always known. He’d always looked at her like a wolf and at me like I was circling his prey. When I decided to become an FBI agent, a part of me had said it was to find her, or find girls like her that just went missing, but a part of me knew it was to protect people from assholes like him too.
I reached her perfectly pouty lips and pulled back. Those icy blue eyes and their golden ring had beckoned to me because they were the only ones that had ever cut through me. I’d convinced myself that the gold we shared was a sign. A sign that it was okay she’d obliterate me, because it was a sign she was already part mine.
“I think I like vulnerable,” I murmured as my hand reached up and pushed at the mask she wore.
Those eyes I loved so much fluttered shut as she let me. And just a moment later, there she was. Gracie. Her sharp cheekbones, her plump lips, her beautifully hooded eyes were as familiar as the way the sun peaked over the horizon. She was mine, the mine she’d always been, and it almost took my breath away.
I’d think about the ramifications of this later but, for now, I needed her. I needed a few hours stolen from the past. A few hours where we could just be Gracie and Shep again. So I bent down, kissed her with all the love I’d always felt for her. Her body knew what I was saying, her hands tangled into my hair immediately, and mine went to unbuckle the collar.
Then for the next hour, the last hour before I fell deep into the hole of self-loathing that I already felt looming, I made love to my long-lost soulmate.
I’d laid with Gracie wrapped around me, staring at the ceiling lost for more than words. Lost for something closer to feeling at all. When I snuck out of her arms, she smiled and, for a moment, it really had been 16 year old Gracie smiling at 16 year old Shep, like I was her whole universe all over again. And without her even knowing.
I wanted to puke.
And later, with the name Ella Finley, and the fake birthday, she was easy enough to trace. The trail I’d been searching constantly for read more like the wake of a devastating storm than a simple path. She was suspected of breaking and entering, skipping out on rent, and even grand theft auto, but she’d never been convicted. Usually because someone powerful enough had wiped it from her record. It was a blatant list of what—or rather who—she’d had to do to survive.
I should have read it like an agent, all the more enticed to follow through with her arrest but, instead, I was just a man disgusted. And mostly at myself. Had I known, I would have kept her from it, all of it. The guilt of letting her go, letting her slip through my fingers was enough to consume me.
Nausea kept coming back in waves. And when it washed through my shitty apartment, I picked up the phone to make the worst phone call of my entire life.
“Director Bradley, I need an arrest warrant for Marcus Deveroux.” I sucked in a deep breath while he offered his congratulations. “And Grace Danes. I should have them each detained by the end of the week.” And with that sentence, my stomach bottomed out.
*****
M
My nights off were few and far between. It had taken ages for me to relax when I was alone. Even more time to actually enjoy it. But tonight, I felt good. No, better than good. My mystery man had warmed more than just my bed.
I let my fur fall away from my naked body as I sat up from my lounge chair and snatched my ice cold martini. The warm breeze contrasted the cool drink as it danced on my skin, the same way it rippled the water against the marble edge of my pool. The gentle lapping of the water usually pulled me into the foggy memory of Shep and I skinny-dipping, but tonight it was my mystery man and I with water caressing our naked bodies.
My eyes fluttered shut as I thought about how his hands would hold me, how they had held me. There was something so familiar and comforting about his grip, like it effortlessly held the pieces of me I worked so damn hard to keep in place. I lost myself in him. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t find myself, but rather, I lost the parts of me that made me scared to look too long in the mirror.
It was almost like he was…
“I found you.” A rough voice made me shoot up from my chair and had me squeezing my fur tightly around me. My eyes went wide as the mystery man I’d been dreaming of materialized out of the deeply wooded forest surrounding my house. There was something as wild and feral about him as there was about the woods. “I found you,” he repeated as his face fractured.
And as he broke, the answer snapped into place.
“Shep,” I whispered.
“Why?” His voice was something even more savage than his beautiful face.
I knew what he was asking but I couldn’t answer. How I’d found any words last night, I didn’t know. But I was sure that it had to do with my denial of what was plain truth in front of me now. Yes, he was bigger and stronger, with so many more muscles. His hair was wavy and styled, not at all shaved, and the patchy scruff he’d never been really able to grow had filled in. But those eyes, those blazing golden eyes that matched the tiny bit of liquid honey in mine should have given it away. Or his kiss, all consuming, or his taste, my own brand of addiction, should have slapped me the way this moment threatened to.
“Why?” He stood mere feet from me, just the edge of the pool between us, and it was somehow closer than I ever dared to hope he’d be again and too close for comfort all at once.
“Because of this.” I barely breathed. “Because of the way you’re looking at me right now.” I burrowed deeper into my fur, feeling really, truly naked for the first time in years.
“I’m looking at you like you’re both a ghost and the answers to my prayers. Like you’re the water in a desert oasis. Like you're the fucking answer and the riddle all at once.” His voice broke on the last little bit.
“I’m none of those things,” I murmured and let my eyes fall to the pool, watchin
g the patterns as they warped and changed under the small ripples in the water.
He took two powerful steps around the pool and shoved the fur from my shoulders as he grabbed me. “You are every single one of those things and a million more.” And with that, his lips clashed down to mine.
The ferocity with which he kissed me had us both teetering back toward the pool. His big, burly body wrapped around mine just before we stepped back toward the water. We were off balance, and I felt his weight shift, but then we were free falling. For a moment, it seemed like we were plummeting far further and far deeper than just into the pool but then the firm smack of the water and deafening splash surrounded us less than a heartbeat later.
Shep didn’t stop kissing me. We were underwater breathing in only each other, his clothed body tangling with my bare skin. When we finally pushed off the bottom and broke the surface, we both gasped before clamoring back at each other. His kiss was hungry, mine was greedy, and the way our lips worked against each other was enough to devour the world piece by piece.
He only broke our kiss again long enough to rip his shirt off, sending water droplets dripping down every inch of his beautiful body. I had to claw at the cascade of muscle. Then at the denim still clinging to his thighs.
His teeth bit down roughly on my bottom lip and I cried out. His mouth left mine to make similar marks down my neck and across the arc of my collar bone.
“Gracie.” His word was the breath of life against my skin, and I curled my fingers into his shoulders.
He turned me, letting the water swirl around our bodies. I arched back, pressing myself to his fine body. His fingers fumbled behind me then I felt his dick between my thighs. Then there was gentle, shallow thrusts against me as he went to push in.
“Stop,” I said breathily as I shoved my hand back.
“Please. Please let me have you,” he begged.
“Don’t just have your way with me. Don’t just be one of the other guys.” The fear was thick in my voice even if the sound itself wasn’t strong.
He bent and gently kissed the curve of my neck. Then he collected the wet strands of my hair and twisted them up and over my skin still burning from his tenderness. His lips caressed the same spot on the other side, this time his lips brushing my shoulder.
“I just want every inch of you.” He nuzzled his nose along the curve of my ear as he spoke softly, raspy and honey all at once. “I need every inch. I’ve ached for it, for you, for years.” He nipped at my earlobe. “I found you.”
The desperation in his voice was a beautiful tormented thing. I rolled my head back into the crook beneath his chin and breathed in deeply. He wove his arms around me, squeezing tightly, and let his fingers brush along my skin. I breathed in, his warmth and freshness and overall male-ness washed over me, the familiarity striking a deep golden chord inside me. I couldn’t help but nod.
Shep’s big, perfect dick found its way back into my sex. His tentative thrusts were back and this time I relaxed, once again letting the golden eyed—no, golden hearted—man deep inside me.
*****
Shep
She felt so good. So perfect. Tight.
She felt like mine. Sixteen year old Gracie had fit perfectly with sixteen year old Shep, and though we’d changed so very much, she was still my other half. Seamlessly so.
I clutched around her hips with one hand and dug into the pool deck with the other. The water sloshed around us as I pushed over and over into her. Each time my hips rolled against her, I made sure it was deep and possessive. I made sure she knew I wasn’t taking her, but instead I was keeping her, every inch of her.
The thick, warm air and the few stars shining down were laughing with me, laughing at my good fortune to find her again. To have her luscious, beautiful body at my disposal, but more importantly her heart beating hard enough to shudder her ribs against my chest.
Her breathy cries were deeper, richer, than ever before. They tightened everything in my stomach. I moved my hands so that one could palm her breast and roll on her pert little nipple, and the other could flick on the tiny little bud between her thighs. Her body jerked against mine, her pussy flexed and milked my dick, then her wail split the night sky.
Whether I wanted it or not, her body was so in control of mine, it demanded I meet her. I groaned just before I leaned down to bite her shoulder as I pumped into her. The release was frantic, frenzied, just like the man I’d been all day. The man that wasn’t just finding his other half but the man that was an FBI agent, circling his prey.
And now that I’d come, and her quaking body was against mine, reality set in. The reality that had sent me wandering through the woods with an unknown destination in mind. The reality that drew me toward her all the same.
The stars weren’t laughing with me. They were laughing at me. At the choice I had to make. At the dual futures that laid before me, and the unhappiness that colored either one. Loss of the career I’d worked so hard for, or loss of Gracie. Again. My insides started twisting up, my mind racing. I couldn’t be here. I couldn’t be with her. I needed to be but need wasn’t enough. Not this time. Turmoil threatened to boil my veins.
Gracie sagged to the marble deck in front of me, a lazy smile across her face. “How did you find me?” she finally murmured.
Her voice was so sweet, so secure, that something in me snapped. Words started pouring out. Words I never thought I’d say to Gracie Danes, words I’d even debated whether I could say to M.
“I’m here to arrest you. Well, you and Marcus Deveroux.”
“What?” She shot up and tried to twist away from me. I was still inside of her, and pinned as she was against the marble, she couldn’t really escape. “What did you just say?”
“The brothel, we’ve had it on our radar for a while.” I was scrambling to make her understand. “The amount of law enforcement officers, politicians, CEOs that are tangled up in that place. The amount of white collar crime taking place in that house is unreal. And you’re an accessory to all of it.”
“You’re here to ruin everything?” She shoved again and this time got free. I missed being inside her almost as much as I missed having her near.
“I didn’t know you were here Grace. I’ve been searching for years. Had I known, I would have warned you…” I shouted at her, desperation choking my words.
“And now?” She shot out of the pool and covered herself with her fur. “Did you use me as a way in? Did you use me to get to Marcus?” She spat her words at me like venom. “Are there handcuffs waiting? Or is this my warning? One last gesture of pity for the innocent girl from the hay fields before you haul the filthy Madame to her cell?”
“I couldn’t help myself tonight. I don’t… This wasn’t… I had nothing planned.” I stuttered as I got out of the pool and tried to walk toward her.
“So you used me to fucking come just like everyone else?” She could have stabbed me with a very rusty knife for how badly those words hurt. I couldn’t find a way to answer but the acid dripping off her words told me, I didn’t need to. Or better yet, I couldn’t.
“Get out. Now,” she spoke through gritted teeth as she pointed toward the woods from which I’d come. “Or that local law enforcement so loyal to me and my den of inequity will come over here and make you.”
*****
M
Tears wild and furious had welled in my eyes but never actually fallen. I’d loosened my grip on my life for one moment and it had crashed and burned around me. I swallowed back the ball in my throat and picked up the phone, dialing the closest thing I had to a home phone number.
“Nicolette,” I barked. “I need Marcus. Now.” He’d be there supervising since I wasn’t.
Mercifully, in only a minute his familiar voice answered. “What’s up M?” Something squeezed in my chest at the casual tone across the line. I hated myself for the words I had to say, the way I was going to send his life into upheaval.
“I’m going to the grocery store, I’m gonna pi
ck up some banana bread.” The vice grip on my heart grew tighter when I used the code we’d worked out long ago.
He gulped audibly on the phone then left the heavy silence hanging between us while he was deciding exactly how to deal with the information I was throwing at him.
Finally, a low grumble that sent chills up my spine answered me, “Ah. You burnt it again did you?”
“Yes,” I breathed and he hung up before I could say anything else.
His answer meant only one thing. I picked up the phone and made one other call.
“Trixie, I know it’s your night off but I need you at work. Now.” A downright wicked laugh was the only acceptance I got.
Trixie’s eyes glinted in the faint light next to me, something untamed churning in them. We’d made sure everyone was out, barely making time for goodbyes or collecting items, before we’d doused the place. And now we stood side by side absorbing the last few moments of the Magnolia Brothel.
My bag was packed in the back seat of a nondescript pickup truck I’d borrowed from my neighbor. Though the night was warm, I was glad I hadn’t shoved my fur in my duffel, I needed it to shield myself against the bone deep cold I was battling.
“So are you gonna tell the guy?” Trixie asked.
“What guy?” I asked, my voice low and raspy.
“The one that wanted you as much as he wanted this place on a hook?”
“How’d you know?” I looked over and watched the breeze rustle her vibrant green hair, softer tonight then I’d seen in ages since she was off the job.
“People who inflict pain to deal with their own recognize each other.” She smiled weakly. “And the way he looked at you…” Her voice trailed off on the warm wind.
“No one’s ever going to look at me like that again. I won’t fucking let them.” I twisted back toward the mansion, studying the infrastructure to make sure we’d coated all the necessary inches.
