Justified Steel (Steel Crew Book 4)

by Mj Fields

  “You look hot, girl. Now you need shoes. What size do you wear?”

  “Six and a half,” she says, turning around and looking at her ass. Her smile slips.

  “Hell no. You took number one ass at Seashore from me, so you better love that ass.” I turn around. “Now zip me.”

  Smiling again, she giggles. “Valentino feels like I imagine the clouds do.”

  I watch as she rubs her fingers on the feathers decorating the otherwise simple, off-the-shoulder black dress.

  “Or maybe feathers?”

  She laughs. “Yeah, I guess that would make sense.”

  I walk back to my closet and grab a pair of Christian Louboutin sling backs for me and a pair of Bottega Veneta square-toed, leather mules for her.

  Standing side by side in my full-length mirror, I hold my camera up. “Selfie?”

  We both lean in and smile as I hit the button on the screen and take the pic.

  “Now, let’s go present.”

  “Let’s.” She laughs.

  As soon as we walk out of my bedroom door, I hear the music and laughter, and it’s no quieter than a normal party.

  “How many people are here?” I ask Truth.

  She smiles. “Two hundred.”

  “That many showed?”

  She laughs. “And then some. Those some got tossed.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who,” she grumbles.

  “Well, let’s hope they don’t call the cops.”

  “Tobias and the security staff have already made sure the newbies know who to follow out the back way if necessary.”

  I nod. “Good.”

  “And The Sound app is down with technical difficulties, so no one can post tonight until Tobias has handed that over, too. Basically, I’d expect worse than them surrounding your car today at the plaza, so don’t take off alone until this all dies down.”

  “I would have been fine. They’re all bark—”

  “Justice described the scene, Gabrielle. I would have pissed my pants, so cut the tough girl act, with at least me, Tobias, and Justice.”

  “I was fine.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “I was.”

  “Okay. Cool. You may be, but we aren’t.”

  Walking down the stairs beside Truth, I glance over. “Fun, isn’t it?”

  “If I trip, I’m taking you with me, so I don’t feel like the only asshole.” She laughs as she shakes her head.

  “You won’t. You’re in flats. But if I do, same back at you.”

  “That’s the whole thing with crew, Gabs—we go down, we don’t do it alone.”

  I nod. “Well, can we please not do it in thousand-dollar dresses in front of people who would love to see me fall?”

  Truth looks around. “They look at you like they love you.”

  “They look at me like they want to be me, Truth. It’s a different animal.”

  When we’re at the center of the stairway, Tobias is smiling at Truth and shaking his head. She winks. He looks away and nods, and by the time we get to the bottom, Justice is standing next to Tobias, in dark jeans and a white button down, his eyes narrowing as I get closer.

  Great, just great.

  Her Highness

  Justice

  Last week, we showed late, so I missed her highness’s grand entrance. It’s quite a fucking scene, and now Truth is right in the midst of it, too.

  I glance at Tobias. “This shit okay with you?”

  “Two girls playing dress-up, dozens of guys looking at them like they want to undress them?” He scowls. “Fuck no.” He looks back at her with a smile as he whispers, “But I’ll tell her she looks beautiful, because she does. Then I’ll spend all summer feeding her tiramisu while trying to convince her that Boho and burlap are the new Gucci, and pray to God she believes it before I leave for college.”

  “Truth isn’t a label whore,” I whisper.

  “Look at her, JT. She’s stunning. Just as soon as she realizes it, that may change.”

  “Hearts like ours don’t change, Tobias. She loves you. She will for the rest of her life.”

  He looks at me “Yeah?”

  I nod as I look back at Gabrielle, who is now walking toward us, and whisper to Tobias. “You fuck her over, she’ll make you hurt.”

  “Never gonna happen,” he says, and I believe him.

  “Good, ’cause if she hurts, so do I.”

  I lift my chin at Gabrielle, and she gives me a tight, little smile.

  Fuck this, I think as I hold my hand out to her. “Got a few minutes?”

  Taking my hand, she smiles a little bit more convincingly—for the crowd around us, I assume—and whispers, “Sixty seconds.”

  I walk her across the room to the home office/study that Tobias brought me to last week and pull the key out of my pocket

  “Who gave you a key?” she hisses as I unlock and open the door.

  We walk in and, as soon as I turn to the door, I drop her paw. I then turn back around and catch her looking around the room.

  “I have the master key you gave Tobias.”

  She looks back at me, pissed off.

  “I knocked on your bedroom door for ten minutes. You didn’t answer, and I didn’t use it, because you told me not to come in your room. So …” I stop myself from saying chill, knowing that seems to cause an issue.

  “So what? So now you can come in here without permission?”

  “Aside from upstairs, it’s the only room not full of people or turned into Vegas-style card rooms.”

  She leans against her father’s desk and crosses her arms. “Sixty seconds.”

  “Cool. Let’s not pussy-foot then, Queenie. You popping pills?”

  She huffs and shakes her head. “If I had, you’d have no right to be pissed or lecture me since you told me to.”

  “My bad.”

  “Yeah, your bad.”

  “So, you’re telling me you sleep like a damn log all the time?”

  She shakes her head. “I haven’t gotten much sleep this week. Apparently, I needed it.”

  “Why?”

  She pushes off the desk and walks toward me, her nose in the air. “Not your concern.”

  “I’ll accept that, but you need to hear me, and I don’t give a damn if it takes ten minutes. The shit they pulled in the parking lot, not acceptable. You want to be pissed at me for following a whole convoy of vehicles tailing you, unnoticed by you, fine, but you will get over it. You wanna be pissed at me for noticing how shook up you were, go ahead. You need someone to be a bitch to, you don’t do it in front of any of them, and you don’t do it here, tonight. After the parking lot incident, they had the balls to show up here tonight, because they see a divide. You showed them that divide. You wanna bitch out of this and go back to fucking around with assholes who are gonna throw you away the first chance they get, then we have an epic breakup tonight. I will find somewhere else for people to party and make bank, because that’s what this is. Tobias will never admit it, but if you know him, he didn’t do it for Seashore; he did it for the people who need it more than you or me. So, if you want out, I am asking you to jump. And if you stay in, then you do it for them, not to feel like a queen and feed your ego.”

  I see tears in her eyes, and if she were anyone other than her, I’d back off, but after meeting the Bayside crew, I know how important this shit is. She needs to feel it, too.

  “United front, Queenie. You feel me?”

  She nods as she turns around and walks toward the window.

  “I’m gonna expect full honesty, one hundred percent of the time. You’ll get the same from me.”

  She nods.

  “Did you pop Xanax tonight?”

  She turns on her hot, little heels and snaps, “No!”

  “Next question: who’s the asshole following me around, telling you what I’m up to when we’re not together?”

  She lifts her nose in the air and walks past me.

  “Goddam
mit, this shit’s important,” I snap as she hurries to the door and opens it.

  She slips out into the foyer, and I slow the fuck down because, as I just lit into her about showing a united front, I need to do the same, no matter how fucking hard it is.

  I catch up to her and grab her paw. She looks at me.

  “I wasn’t done with you in there.”

  She leans against me, grabs the back of my head, and pulls it down to whisper in my ear, “You.”

  I pull back and lock eyes with her. “The asshole following me around is me?”

  When I feel her slide her paw into my jeans pocket, I smile for show and ask, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  She laughs and says loud enough for those around us to hear, “Oh, my bad, is that not your phone?”

  I play along and tell her, “A little to the left.”

  She pulls my phone out, turns, and leans against me. “Take a selfie with me?”

  I whisper in her ear, “You’re fucking pushing it a bit here, huh?”

  “Smile, JT.”

  I look up, and she takes a picture. Then she opens up the messenger app and sends it to herself before turning and putting the phone back in my pocket, making a big damn show of it, too. All I can do is stand here, telling my cock not to feed into her bullshit.

  I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her tightly against me, hoping to still her little fucking paw. “A little clarification and a little less cock teasing.”

  She pulls her paw out of my pocket and reaches up, placing both paws on my neck, and begins running her nails up and down my it. “You shared your location with me.”

  “The hell I—” I stop and narrow my eyes at her at the realization that she just opened my phone without asking for my password.

  “United front, JT. Smile in place and present.” She pops a quick kiss to my cheek then turns and walks away.

  I pull my phone out and check my settings. Along with my entire crew, I’m now sharing my location with her.

  When I look up at her, she looks over her shoulder, smirking at me.

  Well played, Queenie, well played.

  It’s eleven thirty when I get another text from Quinn.

  Walking by her, I nod then head to the hall beyond the lounge, pulling the key out of my pocket to unlock a room I found while Queenie slept—a butler’s kitchen.

  Unlocking the door, I slip inside then turn to shut and lock the door behind me when Queenie appears out of nowhere and pops her fuck-me pumps just inside the door to stop me from shutting it.

  “Jesus Christ,” I grumble, pulling her inside then shutting it behind her and locking it. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking to see if the united front was getting his cock sucked every twenty minutes.”

  “The hell are you talking about?” I ask, trying to figure her out while shielding the alcohol from her view.

  She sighs. “Every time she sends a text, you disappear.”

  “She texts when they’re running low behind the bar.”

  “And what? She can’t get her own?”

  “Made the decision to keep it back here.”

  “Why?” she asks, leaning against the door.

  “You drunk?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “Are we being honest, JT?”

  Pisses me off when she calls me JT, like it should be followed up with a shoulder punch or a bro hug.

  “Thought we went over this already. Always.”

  “I never drink, well not normally. It makes me …” She seems to be pondering a thought. “Drunk.”

  “Yeah?” I ask, trying to hide my amusement.

  “Until tonight, I stopped drinking when I stopped fucking Harrison.”

  “Rule number seven: you—”

  “You’re on six.” She holds up six fingers.

  “Bullshit, I’m on—”

  “Rule number one: you should be at the front door when I walk in. You shot that to hell when you started picking me up, which was my rule number nine. Rule number two was for you to stay away from Quinn, and you broke that by inviting her to my home. Your rule number two was to move when you told me to. Your rule number three: I’m a game piece.” Her eyebrows knit together. “Rule number four: eat more. Rule number five: if I need to hang around those fucks because of some skewed loyalty to the boy who popped my cherry and was quick to replace me, you or one of your crew needs to be present. Rule number six: I’m on a need to know basis, so …” She looks up as if she’s thinking, and I cross my arms in front of me then she smiles as she looks back at me. “I mean, call it rule number seven if you want, but rule number one, you broke, so I think it should be six.”

  “Fine, rule number six: you don’t talk about fucking him to me.”

  “Because it hurt you.” She nods. “Right. It hurt me, too, but—”

  Pissed, I interrupt her, “Rule number seven: we don’t talk about that shit, because nothing good will come of it. Nothing.”

  “She’s really not coming back here?” she asks, looking at the floor.

  “Told you she wasn’t, but if she does, it’s because she’s out of vodka and I’m taking too long to get it back to her.”

  She yawns and shakes her head. Then, when she steps to move around me, I move to block her, knowing she’s going to get pissed.

  “What are you hiding?”

  “Nothing, Queenie, but I’m sure everyone’s wondering where we disappeared to and—”

  “They’ll think we’re fucking.” She shrugs. “They’ll think you’re not the kind of guy who settles for a quickie.”

  Her words, her tone, the way she looks in those shoes, that ridiculous dress that would make any other high school girl look like a fool, but not her. Not fucking Queenie. She’s pushing buttons, and she knows it. I turn my back to her.

  “They’ll think I’m the luckiest girl in the world for being with a guy who looks like you and is hung like you are. All the while, they’ll be thinking how is he going to fit that big, huge cock into Gabrielle’s tight, little—”

  “Enough,” I snap.

  “Pussy,” she whispers into my ear from behind me.

  I turn back around and look her in the eye. “Cut the shit. Get back out there.”

  She smiles menacingly, leans in closer to me, and her sweet as fuck breath mixed with whiskey hits my face when she says, “No. Because they include the ho behind the bar who has had your attention all week and is watching your every move tonight, holding her breath, hoping she won’t die without it as she has to wait until she gets it again when you turn eighteen in September.” Then she quickly steps around me.

  “Oh! My! God!”

  And … busted.

  She spins back around. “You did not use the list!”

  And my dick is now getting soft.

  “You and I will discuss this when you’re sober, and we’ll get along smashingly all night.”

  “I gave you four grand to buy top-shelf alcohol, and you buy … you buy … you buy … shit! Do you know what people are going to say? Do you know what’s going to happen when they find out?”

  I walk around her, pull out a bottle of Carbonadi vodka, and hold it up. “Bought two of these hundred-dollar bottles and two half gallons of decent bar shit that cost twenty-five. Don Julio Real Tequila is four hundred bucks a bottle, Queenie. If the shit was that good, Jamie Foxx would have used it in his song instead of this.” I pull out a bottle of Patron. “Trust me; no one’s gonna find out unless you go out there, flipping shit.”

  “You’re wrong. Everyone will know.”

  “What have you been drinking tonight?” I ask.

  “Yamazaki twelve-year-old single malt,” she snaps. “And don’t tell me I don’t know Japanese whiskey.”

  “Would never tell you that, but Yamazaki is pretty damn close to”—I pull out a bottle—“Nikki.”

  She slaps her paws over her face and whines, “Why would you do that to me?”

  “Your bushes need a trim,” I
answer, pouring the no-name brand vodka into the two half bottles I found behind the bar from last week’s party with a funnel.

  “I assure you, my bush is not only trimmed but bare.”

  I can’t help but laugh out loud.

  “Seriously, Justice!”

  I turn around with two full bottles of Carbonadi in my hand. “Instead of fighting change, embrace that shit. I was talking about your landscaping outside, not your …” I pause. “How did you phrase it? Tight, little pussy?”

  Her face immediately turns red.

  “So, there was enough money to have your bushes trimmed, and I mean actual bushes.”

  “What do you mean was?” she asks.

  “Now it’s going to be used to hire a guard for your gate from eleven at night until seven in the morning so those fucks don’t show up unannounced.”

  “I can’t afford that!”

  “You can. You just need to realize shit like these”—I hold up the bottles— “labels, don’t mean dick.”

  I walk past her and toward the door. “And, Queenie, whoever made you feel like you needed to be bare is a boy. Real men don’t mind a little hair. Reminds them they’re with a woman, not a fucking Barbie doll.”

  She walks around me, unlocks the door, and then opens it. “Yeah, so a full-blown bush makes you hot, JT?”

  “Doesn’t matter what makes me hot, but anyone who makes you think you need to change isn’t for you.”

  Walking down the hall to get away from her, to avoid any more of this kind of talk, I hear her laugh from behind me and look over my shoulder. I catch a rare glimpse of someone I knew a long fucking time ago.

  At midnight, the dim lighting starts to come up, and people start to trickle out of the rooms that were set up for cards.

  I look around to find Gabrielle, making sure she’s not passed out in a corner somewhere, and see her at the door, talking with people as they leave. She’s smiling, looking genuine.

  I feel eyes on me and look the other way, to where my crew is all standing together, smiling at me. I flip them off as I walk over.

  “You need us to stick around, or do you two need a little alone time to play hide the Italian saus—”

  “They haven’t had sex yet,” Tris cuts Patrick off.