Broken Compass

by Jo Raven

  Relieved, I put my hands on her again, stroking her, my dick fully hard now, sliding against her round ass. Man, I want into that ass. Would she let me?

  As if hearing my thoughts, she moans and rocks back. “Want you, West,” she whispers. “And Nate. Need you so bad.”

  “You got us,” Nate says, and then he’s lifting her leg and stroking her pussy. “I have to get inside you. I can’t fucking wait any longer.”

  My cock throbs, hard as fuck. “Together.”

  Nate groans. “Yeah.”

  “Then fuck her, man. What are you waiting for? You ready for this, girl?”

  She moans in reply as I rub her wet pussy, spreading her juices to her ass and pushing a finger inside. She’s so tight. A tight fit.

  Then again, what’s new? We’re the tight fit experts.

  Pushing a second finger inside, I open her up with slow, deep strokes, scissoring my fingers, stroking until she’s pushing back and whimpering.

  Let’s do this. I meet Nate’s eyes over her shoulder.

  He nods, his face serious, his gaze hooded and hazy with arousal. He lifts her leg a little higher and guides his cock into her.

  “Oh crap…” She’s tensing up, arching back against me.

  “Okay?” Nate manages, his jaw clenched tight. He sinks a bit deeper, and I feel him inside her where my fingers are resting. “Fuck, so tight.”

  She whines deep in her throat. “West…”

  I pull my fingers out and replace them with my cock. I go slow, so fucking slow. It’s excruciating and suddenly I’m on the verge of shooting my load.

  The pressure is unbelievable. And dammit, yeah, I feel Nate’s cock inside her pussy, pressing up against mine through the thin wall between her pussy and her ass.

  Holy shit. Nate is moving already, rocking, thrusting inside her, his eyes closing even as his mouth crashes on hers.

  I fuck her ass doing my best to hold back, take it slow. It won’t last. She has my dick in a vise, and every thrust of Nate’s cock inside her pussy rubs against my dick, shooting sparks right through me.

  Fuck, fuck, I need to come. I’m fucking her, fucking her at the same time as Nate, and I lean back to see where my dick is sinking into her body. Across from me, he pulls back, too, looks down where his cock is buried in her pussy, and groans.

  “West.” Syd turns her head and I kiss her. She moans in my mouth, her hips bucking. Her body tenses, bows back, and she clamps down on my cock as she comes. I swallow her wail and hold on to her writhing body.

  Nate gasps and jerks, his cock spasming against mine, and that’s it. My balls tighten, my dick swells painfully and then bursts, shooting load after load.

  So much pleasure.

  So fucking good.

  It wipes me out, makes my limbs heavy, sweeps my mind clean. I ride it until it ebbs, all that pleasure, all the relief, until I can’t any more.

  Pulling out, I haul her against my chest, grab Nate’s hand and drape his arm over her waist, and drop into dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Sydney

  Music drags me out of sleep. I was in so deep, even though I blink my eyes and rub them to get the grit out of them, I’m still inside the dream where I’m holding Kash in my arms, with Nate and West beside us.

  How much did I have to drink last night with Gigi? I remember having cocktails at the bar, finding a dealer, talking to him. I remember the dealer getting angry and then… a guy with wolf eyes punched the dealer in the face and told me to be more careful.

  Only problem is, I still haven’t found the pusher I’m looking for. It’s a guy they call The Eel, and he’s just like one, always slipping out of my hands.

  And then I came home and oh God… the sex. With the guys. Holy cannoli. Did we really do that? Did Nate get inside me? And West at the same time?

  Oh yeah, we did. I feel it as I sit up gingerly. My nether regions feel abused. My pussy and my ass throb and feel tender as I maneuver myself to the edge of the bed, trying to not wake up my boys. The ache inside me reminds me of what we did and brings a smile to my face.

  The music comes again.

  A phone ringtone. Not mine.

  “That’s… mine,” Nate mumbles, his voice full of gravel, lifting his head from the pillow. “I got it.” He grabs the phone from the nightstand, slams it to his ear. “What?”

  “What’s going on?” West grates from behind me. “Syd?”

  “Phone call,” I whisper.

  Then Nate sits upright so fast he almost headbutts me. “Zane, hey. Sorry. Yeah.”

  “What is he saying?” West sits up, too, running a hand through the spikes of his hair. “Put him on speaker.”

  “Zane?” I look from one to the other. “You found him? The guy who did the tattoos?”

  Nate puts the call on speaker and we all bend over the phone as Zane’s voice rings inside the bedroom, tinny and rough.

  “I found the fucker,” Zane says. “Sorry it took me so long, but I had a lot going on. So yeah, I inked this guy years ago, but that’s the thing: I don’t ink dragons on just anybody. There’s a code…” There are voices in the background, and Zane growls something back, and they fall quiet. “A code about who gets a dragon. It’s for people whose family fucked them over. Right? And this guy… well, he was still a boy back then. He’d been fucked over plenty. See, he’s the son of Mikhail Vasiliev, a former underground fighter.”

  We stare at each other with round eyes.

  “It’s him,” West mouths.

  “Holy shit,” I mouth back.

  Nate grins.

  “A friend of mine used to fight in the underground ring here, and he brought him to me,” Zane is saying. “Friend of a friend. Said the boy’s family was all gone, dead, and his uncle was an abusive motherfucker. So I inked the boy. I had to, see?”

  “Yeah,” Nate says, and his voice has gone dark and hard, his grin gone. “I see.”

  “Good, okay.” The tone of Zane’s voice changes, gentles. “Okay. Was this helpful? I’m not sure what you need. I’m real fucking sorry to question your hope, but are you sure Kasimir wasn’t victim of an accident or killing somewhere? You said it, it’s been months.”

  Kasimir. So strange to have people refer to Kash with that other name. He’s Kash. He’ll always be Kash to me.

  “We can’t lose hope,” I say, and find Nate’s and West’s gazes on me, their eyes glittering in the gray light of dawn. “We can’t lose him.”

  “I understand that. Let me know if there’s anything I can do. If you want me to ask that friend of a friend who brought Kasimir over for information, I can do it. Just tell me what to ask.”

  “I wish we knew,” West says. “But what you told us is helpful. Thank you.”

  “Any time, guys. Give me a call if you think of something.”

  The call disconnects, and we sit there in silence.

  “You were right, Nate,” West says finally. “Kash is a Vasiliev.”

  “Wow.” I look down at the dark screen of the phone. “That’s crazy, that’s… finally we know who he is.”

  “And what should we do? Contact Andrei Vasiliev and ask if his nephew came home from Brussels?” Nate grinds out. “You heard what Madden said. The uncle is an abusive motherfucker. And Kash was on the run, from the uncle or someone else we don’t know. We can’t just call Vasiliev up and ask, can we?”

  As it turns out, there’s no need. Something happens without our input.

  My job at the university campus offices is nice, and I’m also taking a few classes toward a degree, trying to get my life back on track—something I failed to do with West’s family dying and Kash disappearing.

  Not sure how I thought I’d be more focused now. My thoughts keep spiraling. But it seems that life goes on even when you think it has stopped still.

  My new colleagues are nice, and the office is quiet at this time in the morning. I’m on my phone during coffee break, and while engaged in my usual activity of the la
st few weeks—Googling the heck out of Kasimir Vasiliev and his whole family, is a masochistic hobby for sure, when it won’t help—I find an article where Andrei Vasiliev says he has welcomed his nephew back home.

  What in the world? The article is dated three days ago. That’s really recent. I send the link to Nate and West, and I’m not surprised to get a call from Nate almost instantly.

  “Hey, girl.”

  His warm voice makes me shiver. I smile and turn away from the curious looks my new colleagues shoot me. “Hey, you. Did you see what I sent you?”

  “I glanced through it. It seems legit. It’s a local news station, not some random blogger writing about it.”

  “Okay. So… what does this all mean?”

  “I dunno, Syd. I’m thinking… What if it wasn’t his uncle he was running away from? What if Zane’s memory isn’t perfect when it comes to the uncle? What if Kash really went back home? He is heir to a fortune, after all, and now he is of legal age.”

  My heart sinks.

  Which is stupid and selfish. Better if he’s with his uncle and heir to a fortune than dead in a ditch somewhere, right?

  Or here with us. Why not this last option? Why can’t we get a happy ending together?

  “He wouldn’t do that,” I whisper. “Leave us without saying goodbye, at least. And why are there never any pictures of Kash in these articles? This smells fishy to me.”

  “Come on, Syd. As it turns out, we barely know Kash.”

  “I know him. And no way. He wouldn’t have done this.”

  He wouldn’t do this to us.

  But doubt is eating at me and it keeps gnawing at my thoughts as I go through the motions at work, and stare without seeing the texts I’m studying for my diploma, as I take the bus home.

  He wouldn’t.

  Is he there right now, in that mansion shown in the article? Of that there is a pic all right. It looks like a palace with open grounds around it, and lawns, and tennis courts.

  Was Kash biding his time until now, until he came of legal age to claim what was his? But who was he running from, then? None of this makes any sense.

  Why has his uncle been lying, saying Kash was in a boarding school somewhere in Europe when he was here all along, smoking weed through panic attacks and scraping by to make a living?

  There were clues, of course. Clues I totally missed. Like the expensive things he had and sold to set us up here. I thought he’d stolen them.

  But maybe he hadn’t. Maybe they had been his. He’d run, taking with him some things of value.

  I still want to talk to the pusher who said he saw something involving Kash. And it’s time to go back to the journal and read it to the end.

  “Syd. Come here,” Nate says as I put the final touches to my make-up. Since he came back from his appointment with the psychologist yesterday, he’s been off. “You said you’d tell us where you go with Gigi and why.”

  “You’re right. I said that.”

  Then again, he can’t be all that happy with me going off all the time without them to drink and dance with my friend. I know he and West go out for drinks sometimes, and I wish I were with them. I wish I didn’t have secrets from them.

  “Well?” He’s glowering at me, his eyes like fire under his lashes. He snags my hand when I approach and hauls me in his lap. “Talk.”

  West approaches us and sits beside us. “Is it another man?” He slides his hand up my arm to my neck and brushes his thumb over the thick vein beating frantically there, pressing gently. Measuring my wild heartbeat.

  “What? Of course not.” I hadn’t even considered I was hurting them with such a possibility. “Never. I love you guys with all my heart!”

  Nate growls. “Good. You can’t keep hiding from us. Tell us what is going on.”

  And it’s a relief to have the secrets forced from me, to have his anger at hiding anything from him. From both of them.

  We are together, and they should know. They deserve to know, they deserve to worry and ache along with me.

  So I tell them. About my idea that Kash’s dealers might know something, about the pusher who might have seen something. About my need to find out if it’s true, if it’s important, before I let it go and accept that Kash has walked away from us of his own free will.

  No matter how much it hurts, or how much I want to hate him for it.

  “But there’s no need any more to ask the dealers, is there?” West says. “Kash is with his uncle. What does it matter?”

  “There are no pics,” I insist. “No proof he’s with his uncle.”

  “You’re saying his uncle is lying about Kash being back? What the fuck for?”

  “I don’t know. What if it has something to do with that inheritance? Time is up and someone has to get that money and estate.”

  Kash. Kash has to be there to receive his inheritance. And maybe something will happen to Kash then, and the uncle will take it all.

  Or maybe I’ve watched too much Sherlock on TV.

  “I just want to talk to that guy I’ve been chasing down for so long, reassure myself he has nothing new to tell us.”

  “Fine. Then we’ll be coming with you,” Nate says.

  His expression is tight, like he expects me to say no. But I’m not about to. I didn’t want to worry him, or West, but the last couple of times I’d wished for their presence. Call me naïve, but I didn’t expect dealers to get so aggressive because of the questions I was asking.

  “That might be a good idea.” I scratch the back of my head. “Gigi’s boyfriend is a bit annoyed with me.”

  “What? What for?”

  “It seems Gigi asked him to look after me. Got into a few fights on my behalf.”

  “The hell.” His eyes narrow. “We can take care of you. You don’t need another woman’s guy doing that. We got this.”

  And aww, is it weird I love it when he goes all protective and macho like that when it comes to me?

  “That…” I have to clear my throat, my face too warm. “That would be great.”

  “Then it’s settled. We got your back, girl. And if it’s about Kash, even better. We’re in this together, right?”

  “We are,” I say, and my smile is both sad and happy.

  The bar is full to bursting, the beat pulsing in my veins, in my bones. Pretty boys and girls, all dolled up, shove through the crowd, yelling and laughing and dancing. I should be enjoying this.

  But I can’t.

  Gigi refused to come with me a few times, not that I’m telling the boys about that. She was pissing mad at me for dragging her with me and not telling her my plans. For abandoning her so I could go and talk to junkies and pushers, getting myself into danger.

  If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have stumbled across her old flame and rejoined him, just saying… though I totally get it. I was a bit of a dick, so focused on finding out anything at all about Kash I let her down.

  But this time is different. Her man is in trouble, her heart in ever worse trouble, and I’m grateful she made it.

  Girl is so head-over heels it might be funny—if I didn’t know exactly how she feels. I try to cheer her and support her while she’s going through this hard time, even if my own heart is breaking over Kash.

  The boys finish work late, so they’ll meet us at the club. Meanwhile, I swing by Gigi’s place with the Uber and pick her up. She’s happy she’ll get to meet the boys. But she also makes me promise not to go off on my own and leave her alone.

  But hey, I’ll wing it, okay? This dealer has evaded me so long it wouldn’t surprise me that tonight of all nights he’d be there while I’m stuck to my bestie’s side.

  Plus, I could send the boys to track the guy down tonight. Maybe they’ll have more luck?

  The boys end up arriving before us. They’re already sitting at the bar, drinking, when we saunter in. Nate looks dangerous in a tight black T-shirt and jeans, his amber eyes hooded, and West is badass in black pants and a dark gray T-shirt that bears his muscula
r arms. I try not to drool. I mean, I live with these guys. I should be immune to their charms by now, right?

  Wrong. I doubt I’ll ever be immune to them or anything about them, from the way they look to the way their pain matches mine.

  We get the introductions out of the way, and I get some drinks.

  Gigi is distracted tonight, even more so after coming back from the bathrooms, making me wonder if something happened back there, but she refuses to tell me what got her panties in a twist.

  When I tell her I was looking for her in the bathrooms and got worried, she gets pissed at me.

  “Well, now you know how I feel every time you go off and leave me to wonder what happened to you,” she says, and fear makes her voice brittle. “I know you’re older than me, but I still worry about you, girl.”

  Like, whoa. What the hell happened tonight?

  “She goes off?” Weston asks, frowning. “And she’s older than you?”

  Nate scowls into his drink. “Syd, we need to talk.”

  Oh God. I don’t need this now. The boys think that whatever I did, I always had Gigi right by my side, every step of the way.

  Ahem. Small misunderstanding. Not the place to solve it. I love that girl, but I’m not sure she always gets me—me, the crazy, desperate Sydney. I haven’t even set her right about my age yet. She thinks I’m twenty, when in fact she’s older than me by two years.

  Which is so weird, because I do feel older than her. It reminds me of what Kash told me what feels like ages ago: “I feel old like the world.”

  I direct the conversation back to Gigi and the guy she’s in love with, but she’s not saying much. Tonight’s a total bust, in every way.

  Disheartened, I swallow my drink and ask for another. Might as well drown my sorrows, right? Drink and dance with my boys.

  Could be lot worse than dancing with two hunks, even if they aren’t used to shaking those sexy asses. These boys sure can move. All those sparring sessions, running and a good sense of rhythm mean girls are staring their eyes out as they shake their booty around me.