Into the Shadows

by Carolyn Crane

  She never got that he really was a secret agent. A secret agent in the gangs, a secret agent in the world of normal people, trying to figure out how they operated. His only firsthand source of family information had been his no-good trust fund dad. A man who kept his kids out of school in half the places they lived because it kept him off the radar. A man so whacked out on drugs, you never knew who he’d be on a given day—generous Dad or violent Dad. A man who sold his own daughter’s virginity for crack when he learned she wasn’t his biological offspring. He never understood how his mother could have left them with such a man.

  He got on his knees and pried out another line of molding for her to check. When he looked up, she was frowning at her phone, texting.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Just Kara stuff.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Hotel.”

  Nothing more than that. Not for him. She was right not to tell him.

  “Kara,” he sneered.

  “Things are different now,” she said, “since Benny. Benny’s brought us closer. Made us allies, in a way.”

  Something struck him then—her sister, Benny, and Richard, all together in that house. “You lose your dad and you say, ‘screw it, I’ll make my own damn family.’”

  “I suppose,” she said distantly, as if she didn’t want to discuss it.

  “No. Good for you.” He went back to work. Of course she was being weird about it; she was trying to make a home and a family and he’d come along to wreck it all.

  He winced when he heard wood crack; Nadia had never been exactly handy. He showed her how to loosen a board evenly.

  “I guess in your line of work any family would have a target on their back,” she said. “They wouldn’t be safe.”

  It was a strange thing to say. He loosened another nail. “If I had a family, it wouldn’t be safe for anybody who wanted to fuck with them, that’s who it wouldn’t be safe for.”

  She didn’t reply, but he was aware of her attention on him as he worked away. He’d always known where her attention was, the way a plant in a dark corner of a room knows how far away the window is, turning and stretching toward the sun, even if it can never reach it. Measuring longing in feet and inches.

  He looked up and caught her regarding him strangely.

  Was he showing more of his ignorance? Maybe defending a family wasn’t the problem. Maybe the problem was that he didn’t know how to be a good man.

  She took her hammer and went to the next section.

  He hated her being so close and so far away. “You still have my leather jacket?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I wrap myself in it all the time, thinking, ‘what would Thorne do?’”

  Her sarcasm stung. His leather jacket had been a prized possession. Why had he given it to her? But he would again. He’d wrapped her up in it one night, and he’d loved how she looked in it. He loved her wearing his stuff. He loved touching her. He loved getting her a little bit dirty with himself.

  He put down his hammer and went to her, kneeling beside her. “You suck at this.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You should’ve kept the jacket,” he said.

  She worked away at a nail.

  He grabbed the hammer.

  She turned to him, not letting go. “What?”

  “Come here,” he said.

  “I’m already here.”

  “Come on,” he whispered, trying to pull the hammer from her grip. “Don’t you want a little lowlife in you?”

  She held on tight, burning at him. It was messed up, how he loved that. How her disdain pained him and got him hot at the same time. “I don’t call you that anymore.”

  “No?”

  “No,” she said.

  He smiled. He would make her say it.

  He would make her say it because he loved her and she didn’t love him back. He wanted the pain of the truth to be between them while he fucked her. He was a brutish and fully interchangeable lover, and it hurt his heart, but it got him hard, too. “You like losers and lowlifes and thugs.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Do I have to put on the glasses? Is that what I have to do?”

  She smiled. “No.”

  He put his bad hand on her thigh. It wasn’t fair, really, but he knew what she liked. She finally let go of the hammer and he set it aside and took her chin in his fingers. She liked that, too, when he touched her chin like that. “Just come here.”

  She came to him, straddled him, movements slightly clumsy. Nervous with arousal.

  So hot.

  He pressed his hands to her cheeks and kissed her hard.

  She sighed into the kiss, arms around him now, chest arched, breasts flattening against his chest.

  “You liked a big, thick, hard loser in you,” he said.

  “I don’t say that shit.”

  Yeah, well, she would.

  He sucked her tongue, a little violently, until he felt her pelvis tip up to his, like she wanted him to suck in her whole body. Only then did he let go of her tongue. “Say you want me to fuck you with my lowlife cock.” He slid his hands around her ass. She’d be dying for him to touch her between her legs, but he wouldn’t yet. “Say it.”

  “No, come on.” She slid up on him, sighing in pleasure as his hands roamed all over her ass.

  “It’ll feel so good when I put my lowlife hand between your legs.”

  She snorted.

  “When I slide the hard edge of my finger right along your pussy. As you know, jeans never stop a lowlife like me. I’ll make you come right through them. I’ll strum you like a fucking guitar.”

  “Do it,” she breathed, sitting up, letting her breasts rub up against his chest.

  “You want me to fuck you with my thick loser cock?”

  “Let’s just fuck without all that,” she said, pulling off his shirt. She always liked to see his scorpion tattoo, the outward symbol of the damage inside him, of why he was unfit for normal life. For her.

  “You want my loser hands on you. You want my loser cock in you.” He stood, pulling her up with him, and pushed her against the wall. But he wouldn’t touch her like she wanted—not yet.

  “Come on, Thorne.”

  “Not until you say it.” He pinned her hands above her head. He wouldn’t be lied to. It was perverse—she clearly didn’t want to say what he was to her, and that made him want it more. Like there needed to be that painful truth with the fucking. “I want your loser hands on me,” he coached.

  “I’m not going to say loser.”

  He took her earlobe in his teeth. He felt her pelvis press out to him, but he moved like the water, giving her nothing to oppose, nothing to grind against. It was how he fought, but not usually how he fucked.

  He would leave her squirming forever if she refused.

  He bit down on her earlobe. She squirmed again, panting. He pressed her belly to the wall with his hand and tongued her ear. Now she couldn’t move at all.

  “No more games, Thorne. Don’t be an ass, let’s just do it.”

  “I want your loser hands between my legs,” he whispered.

  She snickered.

  He let his breath be heavy and hot in her ear. “I want your loser fingers to invade my pussy,” he breathed. “I want your loser lips to suck my juicy folds.”

  “You sound like smut porn.”

  “I want your smut porn mind to think up new obscene ways to fuck me,” he breathed. “I want you to flip me over and invade my ass with your fucked up mangled thumb while you fuck me,” he said. “That was always one of my favorites, Thorne,” he added. Because that was true. And her favorites had always been his favorites. “Just plunge your thumb right in my asshole, Thorne,” he whispered, “in and out and wiggle it around and just fuck me like crazy with your lowlife thumb and cock until I scream.”

  “Don’t be like that,” she said.

  “Fine.” He let her go and turned and walked to the bathroom.

&nbs
p; “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Are you serious?”

  He smiled. She thought he was going to rub one off. He slammed the door. Actually, he’d remembered a stash of condoms on the upper shelf in the medicine cabinet. He hoped they were still there. She was going to relent; she always did. He might be a despicable loser, but she was a slave to their chemistry.

  He opened the door to the cabinet, and there they were. Old, yeah, but they’d used old condoms before without problems.

  “Hey!” She banged on the door.

  He opened it, walking out with the condom between his fingers. “Look what I found.”

  Her nostrils flared.

  He wanted to be inside her like crazy. He picked her clear up and carried her to the couch, setting her down gently. He went and locked the door, then he came back to her, slowly, stripping along the way. “Say it,” he said. “Thorne, I want your loser cock in me.”

  She rolled her eyes, like he was being so fucked up.

  Even just that hint of disdain turned him on. It didn’t make sense, but he was past caring about being fucked up. He’d left fucked up behind in his rearview mirror a long time ago. It would take him years of therapy and maybe two lobotomies just to repair himself enough to see fucked up again on the long route back to normal.

  “Fine. Two can play this game.” She unbuttoned her jeans and wriggled them down until they were just around one ankle, revealing black panties under her silky red shirt. She licked a finger and slid it under the elastic, watching him.

  She didn’t like being onstage like that, but she’d go for it anyway. That was one of the hottest things about her that she never realized, the way she’d try so hard at things and think she was shitty at them, but a lot of times it was just the opposite. Touching herself like that, she was hotter than hell.

  She moved her fingers, pulsing lumps under the black fabric of her panties.

  His cock went hard as rock under his own jeans, watching her. He thought he might die.

  “Take them off me.” She held out her legs.

  Like a doomed man, he went to her and pulled the jeans off her ankles.

  “Now these.” She tipped up her hips and pushed down her panties.

  He pulled them off the rest of the way, wishing she’d take her shirt off, too.

  “You know what I’m doing right now?” She spread her legs wide.

  He fell to his knees in front of her, condom in one hand, her panties in the other. She was destroying his mind, that’s what.

  “I’m getting myself ready for you.” Her finger played lightly in her pale folds under trim little brown curls. “I’ll call you whatever the fuck I want to call you, and if I don’t want to call you anything, I won’t, got it?”

  He was already fumbling with his belt, barely caring that she’d refused to call him a loser. He grabbed her fingers from her and sucked them, two at a time, moving them in and out of his mouth to show her how he meant to fuck her.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  With rough, clumsy movements he shoved up her silky shirt, kissing her belly along the way, enjoying the amazing silky softness of her skin. He slid his whisker stubble around her belly button, marking her, letting her feel him, enjoying the smell of her rose-scented soap from India, the same she’d always used.

  He’d heard that Bruce Lee once asked a student to contemplate whether it was God or the devil in charge when events whirled out of control. The student didn’t know; Bruce had told him that you should be open to all things all the time. It’s how Thorne fought, and it’s how he fucked. He never knew if he’d be God or the devil from one second to the next.

  He pushed her legs apart and tongued her belly button as she tangled her fingers in his hair, trying to push his head down to her sweet spot.

  He wouldn’t go, or maybe he would. He was her god and her devil both. He was her master and he was her slave who would die for her a thousand times over. He would impale himself on her pleasure.

  For now, he covered her with senseless whispers and hot breath, marking her. He made his leisurely way down to her mound and paused there, letting her feel his hovering presence, then he sucked a hot little fold into his mouth.

  She cried out in breathy distress; it was the sound of pent-up desire whooshing out of her as he took over her body. One of his favorite sounds in the world.

  Sometimes he stopped what he was doing—she always thought it was just to be wicked, but really, it was because she’d make that soft sound of happy distress when he started up again. He loved to force it out of her, to be relentless with pleasure.

  He pushed her legs wider and pressed his hands around her pussy, plumping everything out. He would let no part of her stay hidden. Mercilessly, he lapped up her arousal.

  “Jesus,” she breathed.

  His cock felt huge at that.

  “I need you in me,” she said.

  He grumbled against her, consuming her, thrumming with the charge of electricity surging through her, spinning her higher with every lick, as if they were communicating on a pure level, as if they were one charged being. He tongued her folds, licking and sucking. God, he wanted to be inside her, but he wasn’t sure if he could stop doing her with his mouth. And she hadn’t called him any names, but he was so off the rails now.

  “I won’t last,” she breathed.

  “You’ll last,” he growled into her core. “And you’ll last and last.”

  She grabbed his hair.

  He shoved his finger into her, and she groaned. It was like heaven, and he wanted to cry, almost. He could feel her about to come. He wouldn’t tease her this time. He’d make her come and then he’d fuck her. And he’d be God and the devil to her over and over. He’d put her in a heaven that was hell and in a hell that was like heaven.

  Her sounds always changed when she was coming. He knew all about her, like an ocean traveler reading the wind and the height of the wave swells.

  He felt it rip through her before she even made a sound, bright ecstasy convulsing around his fingers, and he kept on. Her coming was the softest and sweetest thing ever.

  He wanted her good and soft, because his cock felt like a slab of granite and he wouldn’t be gentle. He hadn’t fucked a woman for two years, not since he was last with her. No woman but Nadia was worth fucking.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nadia lay there feeling so open, so defenseless to him, trembling from the violence of her orgasm—so much so that she nearly forgot about the bullet graze on her arm.

  He was pushing her thighs apart, because he wanted more. It was never enough for Thorne to reduce her to a trembling puddle of jelly. No, that was always just the start of things with Thorne. Give Thorne an inch, and he’d take a mile. Give him a crumb, and he’d consume you.

  Let him kiss you, and he’d fuck you blind for hours.

  Even that wasn’t right. He wouldn’t just fuck her. He’d devour her with all his senses, push her beyond anything, and make her say things she didn’t mean.

  Thorne rose up over her like a surly prince, dark hair wild, arms and thighs lightly kissed with hair, and those crazy scorpion tattoos.

  He took his cock in his hand, just letting it rest there, taunting her.

  That was the thing about Thorne; he’d never been ashamed of his body—he’d just touch his tool right in front of her, keeping himself really hard. He had the body of a fighter, not a weightlifter—Thorne had paid for those muscles with pain and blood, not heath club dues. He liked to be hard in every way. Well, that was how he’d had to be to survive.

  She thought about the strange message he’d left earlier. The uncharacteristically sweet way he’d said her name.

  “Come here,” she whispered.

  He didn’t, naturally. He liked to enjoy the view of her helpless and panting, a centurion standing above the woman he’d pillaged, walls reduced to rubble.

  He stroked his cock, not really jacking off, but just handling
it, eyes dark with desire. He didn’t know how to behave normally, even during sex.

  He could do anything. She would let him do anything, and he knew it. It was another way he enjoyed her submission, that mental part.

  Her breath sped as the air cooled her sex, and still he just stood there.

  She thought about the first time he’d kissed her, that day she was up on the roof, angry and crying, and suddenly there he was, this guy who’d ignored her for so long. His kiss had been full of muscle, his body taut with need. It was like she’d turned on a switch. It was totally psycho, the way he’d been into it. The way she’d been into it.

  It had been so much dirty fun at first, meeting secretly for that game. Sometimes she’d buy lacy things just so he could rip them off.

  Sometimes she wanted normal sex. She wanted him to be tender, and she would be nice, and not be the Party Princess calling him names. But he only wanted to play the game—especially toward the end, when he seemed so much darker and more serious about it. She’d been so naïve, not getting that they’d been kink buddies that whole time. He liked to be insulted, and she delivered.

  And here he was, again, a man without laws, touching himself while he surveyed her like an erotic buffet laid out before him, waiting for her to give him what he wanted.

  Thorne wouldn’t have frozen today and let a man shoot him; he’d have been a seething tiger, just as he was now, all pleasure and violence and not caring about anything.

  How did he get into that frame of mind? The raid coming up would be even harder, with just her and Richard most likely. She was scared, and she needed not to be.

  His hand stilled on his cock. “Where’d you go, baby?”

  She looked up into his face; he was all shadows and light and unruly muscles twining down his arms. “Nowhere.” She lifted a leg and pressed a foot onto his belly, just above the place where dark hair arrowed down to his groin. He wrapped the fingers of his bad hand around her foot, pressing her sole to his skin like it was some precious thing he needed for himself.

  He didn’t like people looking at that bad hand too much, but she thought it was cool, and she loved when he touched her with it. There was a mottled pink scar right up the thumb and another up the pinkie side—his pinkie actually didn’t have movement at all, and his thumb was angled wrong. Well, he’d had to gnaw and break his own hand to survive, chained up in the desert like he’d been, scorpions all around. It made the hand awe-worthy, like a rare medal of honor. People often didn’t realize that the things they hated about themselves were often the coolest things. Thorne was the worst offender.