by Angel Payne
I’m not comfortable, but I keep going. She deserves the truth, and in this case, the truth doesn’t come in a scrapbook surrounded by hearts and flowers.
“When she told me the scene in Barcelona was more interesting than Paris, I jumped at the chance to follow her there. She played me perfectly, knowing the exact bait to dangle. I wanted the goodies none of my friends had seen yet. The experience none of them could buy through the normal channels.”
Emma curls her hand into a fist, forms her other hand over it, and then parks her chin on the stack. “You wanted more.”
Three simple words, meaning so much. Meaning too much.
“Maybe.” It’s more like probably, but it feels wrong to lay the filter of my depraved life over the earnest honesty of hers. To her, “more” has been a synonym for expanding her world. To the man I was, it was a chance to get off on new thrills and expand my empire of illicitness.
Pathetic, stupid man. Grasping small, insignificant dreams.
I had the capacity to do so much more. To be so much more.
Thank fuck she’s there again, her tender voice hauling me out of my moroseness. “So what happened then?”
“We’d been in Barcelona a few nights. I was getting bored with the scene, but Angelique kept me on her string—and finally told me about a private rave on the outskirts of the city. A real Bohemian bash in some secret warehouse with designer drugs and royal family cousins and shit.”
“Only it wasn’t a party.”
At first, I give her only thick silence. I use the pause to turn my stare back up at the ceiling while reaching to the back of her head and combing my fingers through her strands, using the movement as subliminal Zen. “You know that urban legend about the businessman who sleeps with the hooker, gets drugged, and wakes up missing a kidney? It was sort of like that, but if there was sex first I missed it, and the ‘hooker’ was a bunch of big guys in lab coats telling me they’d formed a global conglomeration called the Consortium.”
“The what?” She stiffens. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“Wasn’t sure. And I didn’t care, since I’d just been checked into a joint that sure as hell wasn’t the Ritz. Slowly but surely, they let me in on the joke—but it wasn’t a joke. I’d been recruited as a subject in their groundbreaking research in the field of human DNA improvement through electronic enhancement.”
She jerks upright and stares as if I’m about to reveal the big joke of the story, but with her lungs pumping frantically, she knows I’m not. She hears my truth. And crazily, crucially, she believes it. “Oh, my God,” she rasps.
I shrug again. It looks caustic, but I know she sees that truth too—that it’s the sarcastic shield to lessen the stain of the memories. “God wasn’t around much,” I mutter. “Plenty of his son-of-a-bitch friends, though. What’s that fun expression? Devil’s in the details?”
With that, even fixating on the ceiling won’t help. I push away the covers, roll to the side of the bed, and plant my feet on the floor to make the room stop spinning—and keep the cockroaches of memory from invading my mind. “Those bastards were very detailed.”
I let my eyes slide shut and my head drop down. In my mind, I escape to visions of mountains and meadows and peace… My refuge when the lab and the walls and the pain threatened to drown out everything I was.
Not working. Not anymore.
What works now…is her.
Emma’s fingers, soft as wind, brushing my hunched shoulders. Her body, like a waterfall, draping across my back. Her kisses, healing as herbs, following my jawline. She coaxes my body back, though my mind clings to the fear. The vow I made to myself over and over again during those months before one of the guards got careless with my shackles one night, giving me the sole chance to escape that hell.
But along with that memory, I also recall the mantra. The vow I swore I’d never forget—or betray.
Never. Trust. Again.
A year. I’ve honored the crap out of every syllable of that oath through every second of every day for the last goddamned year. Haven’t even been tempted to abandon it.
Until now.
Until, bathing in the perfection of her touch and the light of her comfort, I’m torn to let it all go. To let her all the way in. I’ve already given her the truth of my existence, and she’s already returned it with the gifts of her adoration, her acceptance, her passion. But there’s more. So much more. So much still bricked-up and blocked—those parts of me that were young and arrogant and stupid. Maybe they don’t even exist anymore. I haven’t even looked behind the wall in a year. Maybe they were fried by the lightning and are now shriveled husks in the heart that once pledged to keep them alive, hoping some extraordinary someone would come along to heal them one day.
Someone like her.
“You’re not there anymore, Reece. You’re right here, and you’re perfectly safe with me.”
“Thanks.” I want to add more but can’t. The vow has been embedded deep into my psyche.
Never. Trust. Again.
“Hey.” Her fresh tone, inching toward a little playfulness, makes my head perk up. “You got any wheels around here? Other than Z’s?”
I bark loudly, this time in laughter. Before she can deliver much of her confused scowl, I sweep off the bed, scoop up the T-shirt, and toss it at her. I fish into the dresser for a pair of my drawstring shorts, usually reserved for home gym workouts, and add the Pentatonix sweatshirt I borrowed from her last night. “Those’ll fit you for now. Come on.”
A few minutes later, we’ve descended to a garage below my building’s public space, gazing over a row of gleaming BMWs in different shades of gray and blue. As Emma takes it all in with a wide gawk, I grin like a kid showing off his Lego collection. “Welcome to the nursery.”
She swings her gaze around the garage and takes it all in. In this light, her eyes perfectly match the Long Beach blue of the M2 right behind her. “Excuse me?”
“One advantage of being in LA over New York, besides destiny’s slam-dunk win this last week”—I clarify this with a wicked stare over her body—“has been indulging my little Bimmer addiction.”
She giggles. “Little?”
“I blame my buyer. Shannon keeps finding me deals I can’t pass up. She calls the machines her ‘sweet babies.’”
“Ergo, the nursery.”
“Bingo.” I rub my hands together with eager joy. “So, which one do you want to play with?” I waggle my brows as she brightens the whole garage with her laughter. “How about the one that matches your eyes? She’s cute—and fast.”
She shakes her head and points to one of the M4 convertibles behind me. “I like going topless. The sun’s about to set. Let’s head for the beach.”
I impale her with a mock frown. “Excuse me. I didn’t hear a word you said after ‘topless.’”
She snickers again. “Dork.”
“Your dork.”
A grin lights up her face as she gets into the passenger seat. “If you insist.”
While waiting for the M4’s roof to retract, I dip over the center console and yank her into an adamant but chaste kiss. Annnnd that lasts for about two seconds before I sneak in some tongue. Just a little. Okay, maybe a lot. I can’t get enough of this woman’s taste. I don’t think I ever will. “I insist.”
Our hands stay entwined the whole trip to the coast.
Her idea was a damn good one. As we park at Pacific Palisades, the sun is just a gold disk on the horizon, still casting brilliant rays across the waves. The sand holds the heat of the day, and it surrounds our feet with grainy warmth as we make our way to the berm. We’ve stayed hand in hand. It still feels fucking amazing.
We walk to the edge of the berm and sit, butts in the softer sand and feet edging the firm moisture where the tide starts to tease. I release a satisfied sigh as Emma tilts her head onto my shoulder. Her sigh blends with the seagull caws and the rhythm of the waves. It’s resonant with trust.
For right now
, this space feels pretty okay.
More than okay.
“Reece?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me if I’m overstepping…but since it was what sparked all the drama last night…”
I turn in, pressing lips to her forehead to indicate I’m able to fill in her implication. “I have no idea why Angelique’s in LA, Velvet.” I see a sailboat on the water, tacking south toward Marina Del Rey, and pray for the calm of its glide to permeate my tension. “She called out of the blue the day before last and insisted on seeing me, saying she had important shit to discuss with me. I agreed only because I knew she wouldn’t relent about it. I looked forward to it less than a root canal.”
Her head lifts, and the curiosity in her eyes turns them the shade of the water at the horizon’s edge. Brilliant and blue and piercing. “Important shit like what?”
I expel a heavy breath. “I don’t know. We never got that far.”
She’s still—too still—before murmuring, “How far did you get?”
“Up to the part where I tried giving the cufflinks back.” I finally glance over, letting her see the pain I can’t convey in my tone. “She gave them to me the night before—” A growled grunt. “Well, before everything changed.” Then a rough chuckle. “They actually meant a lot to me at the time. When you have more money than everyone you date, there’s an expectation you’ll be buying the presents, you know? I was floored that someone had thought to get me something.”
“Only to find out she wanted something from you after all.”
“You could say that.”
It’s dry and bitter, but it’s my truth. But even as she brings some comfort with the press of our foreheads, I can’t set aside what I must say after that. The fucked-up follow-up. It’s almost a hashtag. If only it weren’t so goddamned necessary.
“And Emma…” I pull back a few inches, just to make sure she’s really listening. “It’s probably what she still wants from me.”
The Pacific waves crash harder, ushering in the tide. A couple of seagulls fight for a corner of a trashed sandwich. Salt and smoke rush on the wind, changing midway from the balm of afternoon to the chill of night.
The woman next to me has gone eerily still again. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I’m saying.” I press a hand to the side of her neck. “Angelique picked me up from the Brocade last night, presumably to go to dinner—but I got in the car and she instructed the driver to take us ‘back to the house.’ Not a restaurant. Not even another hotel. The house. Why would a woman passing through town be staying at a house?”
Emma frowns. “Maybe it belongs to a friend?”
“I assumed that too, but my gut told me differently. The blanks have been damn easy to fill in since then. It took my legal team about ten minutes to learn the Consortium’s already filed for business licensing in the state. The address they used is a mansion on two acres out in Rancho Palos Verdes. I haven’t dug any deeper than that, but I’m willing to bet the second owner on that place is Angelique La Salle.”
She pulls away from my grasp. Pushing to her feet, she shakes out her head, turning her hair into white-gold streamers on the wind. “So what does all that mean?”
I scrub my face with both hands. Her crossed arms and hunched shoulders convey volumes of meaning. I’ve dropped so many damn bombs in the last few hours, and I’m about to pound her with one more—but like the others, this can’t be helped.
“It means the Consortium is likely expanding their search for recruits into the States, targeting Los Angeles first.”
Her shoulders visibly tighten. She drops her head, dipping it toward me without glancing all the way back. “Because of Bolt?”
“Probably,” I mutter. “That and a city full of people who already envision themselves as somebody like him.”
“So what are we going to do?”
I reach for her and gently pull her back down. I coax her into my lap, where I can fill her mouth with a long, lingering, I’m-gonna-melt-the-polish-off-your-toenails kiss, which leaves us panting against each other’s mouths.
Finally, I rasp, “Thank you.”
“For what?” She’s genuinely curious.
“For asking what we’re going to do.”
Her eyes go butter soft. She reaches her fingertips to my jaw and tenderly scrapes at my stubble. “I’m in this with you, Reece Richards.” At the finish, she kicks up a corner of her mouth, emphasizing the adorable glory of her dimples. I stare for several seconds, feeling as giddy as a horny thirteen-year-old again. I swear to God, I’m a twenty-four-hour hormone factory, and she’s the glorious, delirious reason. “Until you kick me off the boat, I’m in this thing through any storm that bitch wants to bring.”
Yep. Hormones. And feeling. And passion. And obsession. And the flood of desire that orders me to kiss her again, twice as long and doubly as deep. But her hands, one pulling in my hair and the other gripping my shoulder, compel me to touch her as well. Along her face. Down the curves of her breasts, her waist, her thighs, and then inward, teasing at the warm triangle between them.
She groans softly into my mouth. I growl determinedly back into hers. She tastes like sea salt and arousal. Smells like wind and sweat. My sweat. I want to drench her in it all over again. I need to feel her washed in me, confirming the truth Angelique stole from me.
I’m still human. I’m still me. I’m still passion and fire and need and feeling…
And love.
Holy shit. Holy. Shit.
I love her.
I love her.
I should tell her.
But then what?
What if all my suspicions about the Consortium are true? Was that what Angelique wanted to meet with me about last night? To join their recruitment team here? And if I’d said no—translation, hell fucking no, you deranged bitch—what then? Would I have been dragged off to another secret rave somewhere? Is that still the fate that awaits me? After all this time, fighting some of the dirtiest criminal scum LA has thrown at me, am I still doomed to die on a gurney in a lab, fried by the lightning of my own blood?
If those bastards capture me again, it’s a certainty. No guard will let the shackles slip on me this time.
And where will that leave the woman I’ve fallen ass over elbows for?
Pining pointlessly for me, that’s where. Wasting her life—a life meant for so much more—in fruitless madness waiting for me to escape a life of being the Consortium’s number one lab rat.
I won’t do it to her. I can’t.
But I know what I can do to her…
“Shit!” She exclaims it on a laugh as I reach up one leg of my shorts, which look a hell of a lot better on her than me, and swiftly find the trembling pearl of her desire. “Reece…damn.” She quivers as I push back her intimate hood and pinch the hot ridge of her clit. “Wh-What…are you…”
“We,” I correct her with a serrated growl. “You mean what are we going to do?” As I massage her clit, I lie back and swing her over to straddle me. Yeah, right here, in the middle of the beach. In the spell of the twilight. In the grip of everything I can only communicate to her in this way. Commanding her body, to prove how thoroughly she’s conquered my heart.
“Oh. Kay.” She bites her bottom lip to finish it, enticing me to kiss that stung cushion as I pull her down, molding her against me. “So…what are we going to do?”
I release a rickety breath and lift my gaze to meet the blue silk of hers. “Keep the sweatshirt pulled down,” I instruct quietly. “Because I’m going to open my shorts and let my cock out. Then it’s going to slide up inside you, and we’re going to fuck like we can’t get enough of each other.”
“Huh?”
I slide a seductive smirk and caress her with heavy-lidded seduction. “You telling me you’ve had enough of me, Bunny? Because your pussy says otherwise.”
She bites her lip harder. “Th-That’s not it, and you know it.”
“Then pull down the swea
tshirt.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“Now?”
The only answer I give is the grate of my zipper—and the surge of my dick. I owe her more of a churn than this. Romantic words and slow, wet kisses. Erotic imagery and flowery poetry. Sonnets and songs and soliloquies about how she makes more than my blood glow—only now my blood does glow, so before I become the main attraction for the whole beach, I need to get my hands hidden beneath her clothes and my cock buried inside her sweet, silken body.
Fuck. Her body.
Her legs, tensing against mine as we begin to rock. Her cunt, such a tight, torrid channel around my swelling length. Even her back, with lithe muscles flexing against my grip as we thrust and writhe and climb together toward the ultimate, erotic burst.
But most of all, right now, her eyes.
Entrancing me like summer smoke. Drowning me like ocean depths. And with her fearless, dauntless desire, keeping me locked to her face as we surge together toward completion, giving me another gift I don’t deserve but will greedily, thoroughly seize.
And completely, shamelessly, need.
Her glow—emanating from the best power source I’ve ever known or seen.
Her heart—my ultimate treasure.
The prize I can one day, somehow, be worthy of asking for in full.
Right now, I can only tell her that with the force of my own gaze and all the passion in my body—and hope it’s enough.
Dear God, let it be enough.
Chapter Five
Emma
“The dude’s getting laid.”
“Has to be.”
“Regularly.”
“Definitely.”
“Legit.”
I stop where I’m at, in the doorway of the Brocade’s break room, interrupting myself from my badass humming of “Believer”—I’m positive I’m going to make a billion dollars once Imagine Dragons hears this and demands I go on tour with them—to pay more attention to Wade and Fershan’s back-and-forth.
