Inescapable (Men of Mercy Novel, A)

by Joss Wood

  Flick felt the throb between her legs and the butterflies in her stomach went crazy. Yeah, bed would be a fantastic distraction, and she was tempted . . .

  But it would just be another way of running away from her problems, of procrastinating. Gina and her craziness would still be there when she left Kai’s bed. She’d be physically satisfied but mentally she would be even more fried. Because she was done with using men as a panacea for her wounds, as a distraction . . .

  She could justify sleeping with Kai once, but she couldn’t do it again. But, damn, she still wanted him. “I’d like to, but I can’t.”

  Kai’s mouth quirked. “Yeah, I figured.”

  Astute man. Or maybe it was because Flick had the opposite of a poker face—she had a shout-it-out-in-six-foot-neon-letters face. She’d never been able to disguise her emotions, let alone keep secrets. Hence her current Gina-related problem. She rested her forearms on top of her closed laptop and frowned.

  Kai didn’t say anything. He seemed to know that silence was a more powerful inducement than an appeal to talk.

  Flick propped her feet up on the chair next to her and tapped her nails on the table. “Pippa is my best friend, my partner. We’re cousins and we share everything.”

  Kai just lifted one eyebrow in a yeah-so? gesture.

  “I’m keeping a pretty big secret from her and it’s killing me that I can’t tell her,” Flick said, the words rushing out.

  “You’ve been asked to keep whatever it is quiet?”

  Flick nodded.

  “Will the secret affect her?”

  “Indirectly. She’ll be surprised, hurt, when she finds out,” Flick admitted. Damn, she wished she could tell him. Not only because it would help to share the load but also because she thought that he’d have an idea of what to do with the junk, of how to start. Kai, she guessed, wasn’t a man who was short on ideas, and he’d help her find a plan of action.

  Kai was silent and Flick gave him some time to sort through his thoughts. “Is anyone in danger? Is keeping this secret going to result in physical harm to someone?”

  Only if one of her children murdered Gina when they found out that she’d all but emptied her bank accounts to fill up her house with junk. It was a possibility. A very remote possibility but still . . .

  “No,” she replied.

  Kai shrugged. “Then you can’t tell, not until they give you permission. It sucks and it’s horrible but you chose to hear the secret, so you have to keep your mouth shut until you’re given permission to do otherwise.”

  That was what she’d thought. Flick dropped her feet to the floor, swiveled around, and placed her forehead on the table, knocking it against the wood. “Dammit, crap, hell.”

  She felt Kai’s large hand slide into her hair. “Hey, there are better ways to bang.”

  A laugh made its way up her throat and came out sounding rusty.

  Kai’s fingers massaged her skull and she released a soft, grateful moan. “Not the type of moaning I had in mind either,” Kai quipped, and she turned her head to look at him. His fabulous eyes were filled with amusement and . . . could that be . . . tenderness? Affection?

  Yeah, no. She was imagining emotions he didn’t feel. The man liked her enough to talk to her, and definitely was attracted enough to want to sleep with her, but that was it.

  “About this secret . . . It’s worrying you and you obviously need help to sort something out.”

  “Yeah.” Flick moved her head under his fingers in a silent plea to get him to start massaging again. When he did she felt warmth slide down her neck, into her shoulders.

  “Ask her if you can tell me. I don’t know anyone in town, I don’t talk to anyone in town, and her secret will be safe with me. Maybe I can help you.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  Kai looked as surprised as she felt. Obviously he hadn’t been intending to make the offer. He sat up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, yeah, I suppose I could help you work through some shit. If I’m here and if I can.”

  And he would, she knew that. Flick sat up and stared at him. Did Kai still have something of a white-knight syndrome? Was that the reason why a long-ago, now-dead friend sent her daughter to him? Flick could understand it, she thought. His strength, mental as well as physical, encouraged people to lean on him, to take a load off. He radiated control and calm and a can-do attitude.

  God knew that she desperately needed some can-do. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that.” Kai yawned again and sent a hopeful look toward the coffee machine behind the counter. “Any chance of firing that up?”

  Flick nodded and pushed her chair back from the table. Walking over to the machine, she turned it on. “It takes a couple of minutes to warm up.”

  “I can wait.”

  “Long day?” Flick asked, pulling her hair up into a messy knot and securing it behind her head with a band she found in her pocket.

  “Long. Frustrating. Confusing. Weird.”

  Flick tipped her head in a gesture inviting him to elaborate.

  “The team-building exercise was long and frustrating, my partner Axl dropped in unexpectedly and went ten rounds with Reagan—you met her earlier.” Kai rested his forearms on the table and tapped his fingers against his big biceps. “I think we might have trouble with those two.”

  “Meaning?” Flick grabbed two cups off the rack above her head and pulled milk from the small fridge under the counter. “Cappuccino?”

  “A double espresso would hit the spot,” Kai replied. “They fought, which isn’t unusual—they fight all the time. But—” His words trailed off.

  He couldn’t stop now, Flick thought—this was just getting interesting. “But?”

  “But I sensed that if I wasn’t in the room, they’d be ripping their clothes off and banging each other senseless.”

  Flick smiled at his grumpy tone. She pushed a button and liquid poured into the small cup below. “And why would that would be a problem?” she asked as she picked up his coffee and walked back to the table.

  “It would be like putting a match into a tank full of liquid gas.”

  “They are both adults and it’s their explosion,” Flick reminded him. “Speaking of adults—or rather kids who think they’re adults—how did your conversation with Tally go?”

  Kai groaned. “As well as can be expected.”

  “I know it’s not any of my business, and you don’t have to tell me, but how did she end up in Mercy? Why is she here?” Flick asked, knowing that there was a good chance that Kai would tell her to butt out, that he’d clam up, or that he’d change the subject. Kai, she knew, would rather have his legs waxed than open up.

  “Now that’s a long story.”

  Flick wrinkled her nose. Well, it was worth a try.

  ***

  Kai looked at his watch and was surprised to see that he’d been sitting in the bakery for a half hour already. Time seemed to fly when he was with Flick, whether they were making love or just, it seemed, talking. She was easy to talk to. He didn’t find himself checking his sentences before they left his mouth.

  But now she was asking about his past, which was a minefield he didn’t really want to revisit. But Tally’s arrival in Mercy had catapulted him back to that time, to the person he was before he was the Kai of today. Talking about it probably wouldn’t help but for the first time—ever—he wanted to share . . . something. He wanted Flick to know something of the person he still was, beneath the muscles and the good clothes and nice car. Because that person, that was a large part of who he really was. Part savage, part thug, all mean.

  Maybe it would douse the warmth he saw in her eyes, the desire. Both could disappear when he explained who he really was, what he’d done. And it would be better that way; she would distance herself and he’d stop thinking about her, and that part of
his life could go back to normal.

  “Are you sure you want to know?” Kai demanded, steel in his voice.

  Flick didn’t seem fazed by his hard tone. “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “It’s not pretty.”

  “The truth seldom is,” Flick countered.

  Kai took a sip of his espresso and placed the cup back in its saucer. “I grew up rough. Very rough. No parents, very little adult supervision.”

  Flick’s eyes remained steady on his face and she didn’t react to his blunt statement. Okay, then. “I’m not going to talk about my childhood,” he told her, pinning her to her seat with a fierce look. “I’m not going there.”

  Flick’s expression didn’t change and her lack of reaction enabled him to go on. Oh, he still expected her to run, but she’d do it with grace and dignity and little fanfare. He hesitated, not wanting to jump, wanting to keep the status quo. Wanting to pretend, for just a second, that he could be a man who could be worthy of her, of something more than a hot, temporary affair.

  But he wasn’t and he couldn’t be. He’d made his choices and they’d stained his soul. Being alone was the price he had to pay. It was just the way it was; he couldn’t start whining about it now.

  Besides, what did he know of being a regular guy, someone who could be a lover and a friend, someone who could be part of something bigger than himself?

  Fuck all.

  It wasn’t like he’d had any decent role models to show him the ropes. At the time, survival had been more important.

  The tips of Flick’s fingers on the inside of his wrist pulled him back to the present; to the rich smell of his coffee mingling with her light, floral perfume, to a curl that had fallen out of her ponytail, to the fine line of her jaw.

  God, he’d much rather be kissing her than talking. But he had to do this—he had to put some distance between them, to smother the feelings she aroused in him. Because if he didn’t they would build and suffocate him.

  It was all still a matter of survival, emotional rather than physical this time, but just as crucial.

  “Talk, Kai.”

  He forced his tongue to form the words. “At nearly eighteen, I was a semi-hard criminal, running scams, boosting cars, and, like I’d done all my life, trading information.”

  “Where?”

  “In the less salubrious parts of D.C. Places you’ve probably never heard of. I was a street rat, possibly the king of the street rats.”

  “Okay.”

  “It took all my cunning and street smarts to avoid being dragged into one of the gangs that ruled those areas.”

  Flick rested her chin in the palm of her hand, fascinated but not shocked. “How did you do that?”

  “By swearing allegiance while insisting that my sources would dry up if I was seen to be affiliated with any one gang in particular.” Kai’s smile was cold. “I was an exceptional bullshitter.”

  He still was, when he wanted to be. But with Flick he wanted to, strangely, tell the truth. Or as much of the truth as he could.

  “By the time I was eighteen, I’d sworn allegiance to three gangs and somehow, and thank God, they all believed that I was working for them. If they’d had even a sneaking suspicion that I was playing them, and that I was also feeding information to the gang unit at the police department—”

  “God, Kai, wasn’t that dangerous?”

  She had no damn idea. But the cops had paid him for the same information the gangs did. His entire existence had been one big game of dodging death or jail, which were pretty much the same thing. He’d lived with the daily knowledge that important parts of his anatomy could be scattered all over the streets at any minute. Yeah, he’d been rash, and very stupid. But life hadn’t meant as much then.

  “How does Tally’s mother come into this?”

  “I was eighteen, and I met Jane when I passed on some information about a police raid—that gang was paying better than the PD at that stage—and she was one of their girls, hanging on the arm of the leader of the gang. She looked strung out and had a massive shiner over her right eye and a cut on her cheek, courtesy, I’m sure, of her lover’s fist.”

  Flick winced and her fingernails dug into his skin of his wrist. She still hadn’t removed her hand, Kai realized, and he liked it there. He liked the . . . shit . . . connection.

  “The poor woman.”

  “She was barely more than a girl,” Kai snapped. “Sixteen, seventeen maybe? Anyway, I just knew that she was on short time, that the gang was almost done with her. I was right. Six weeks I saw her lampin’—”

  “What?”

  “It’s street talk for standing under a street light—offering blow jobs in exchange for a finger of horse. That’s heroin.”

  Kai stared out the big window to the street and watched an older gentleman walking a rat on a rope. Okay, maybe it was a dog, or something that hoped to be a dog when it grew a couple of inches.

  But it made a cute picture, the tall man in his long shorts and silly hat walking a dog that could fit into a teacup. Kai took another look and noticed the pink, silky shirt pulled tightly across his broad shoulders and tipped his head when he noticed his odd, mincing walk. Kai craned his head for a better look and lifted his brows at the man’s fishnet stockings and bright pink stilettos.

  Okay, he thought, whatever blows your hair back.

  “Hey, come on back,” Flick said.

  Oh, yeah, he had a story to tell. Why had he started this? Damn, there were a million things he’d rather be doing right now, starting with exploring Flick’s luscious, creamy skin. Time to wrap up this sob story, he thought. No good ever came from dredging up the past.

  “I knew that I was taking a huge risk by helping her when she’d been tossed out of the gang but I couldn’t leave her there, strung out and shaking.” It was either help her or pay for her next score, and he couldn’t do that, not ever again. He’d bought his last finger when he was eight; he knew, better than most, how dangerous that shit was. You learned that lesson when you watched your mother’s eyes roll back in her head as she OD’ed.

  Moving the hell on. “I took her to a shelter for abused woman across town, where I knew that she had a chance of getting clean.” He didn’t tell Flick that shortly afterward he’d seen a recruitment office for the military and walked straight on in.

  “So, you kind of like . . . mmm . . . what’s the expression? Saved her life?”

  She didn’t get it and Kai couldn’t explain . . . Jane had saved him. His helping her had somehow helped him. He had no doubt now, and he’d even kind of suspected then, that if he’d stayed on the streets he might have lasted another six months, maybe a year before someone took him out.

  Joining the military had seriously upped the chances of him seeing his twenty-first birthday. And, yeah, it was slightly ironic that he’d gone from one dangerous situation to another, from one type of gang to another. In his eyes, the military was just a bigger, legal gang with government funding and more powerful weapons.

  “You saved her,” Flick insisted, emotion casting a sheen over her eyes.

  Kai hadn’t expected her to get emotional about this, all starry-eyed. He’d helped a junkie across town and had checked on her a couple of times. It wasn’t anything worth writing home about. Being naïve and stupid and so young, he’d also thought that helping Jane, checking up on her and bullying her into getting better, was a way for him to redeem himself for all the shitty things he’d done up to that point. He’d wanted to enter the Navy, to start a new life, with his head up a little higher, and without dragging along all his past sins with him.

  As a child and as a teenager, he hadn’t been a fool—he knew that the information he traded sometimes resulted in loss of life, and definitely in loss of property. His information had helped drugs move through the city, aided girls being sucked into prostitution, and contributed to
young men and women dying in drive-by shootings and from drug overdoses. He now understood that helping Jane had been his first, subconscious act to balance out the scales, but he was still a long way from feeling like he’d done enough. He doubted that he ever would feel he had. The crap he’d seen in while he was in the military, the crap he’d done, had moved him back into the negative column again. Helping Tally was just him placing another weight in his ongoing effort to balance those scales.

  So why wasn’t Flick running? Why wasn’t she standing up and showing him the door? Hadn’t anything he’d said resonated with her? Where was the disgust, the distance he’d expected?

  “So what are you going to do about Tally?” Flick asked.

  Kai spread his hands. “I’ve suggested she stay here in Mercy for a while. I’m going to try and find her a place to stay, a job. The kid needs some time to find her feet.”

  “You are so much better than you think you are.” Flick lifted her hand to touch his jaw and the tips of her fingers rubbed his stubble. “You’re a complication I didn’t expect and don’t know how to deal with.”

  Emotion, lust, need arced between them, as tangible as the cooling coffee in the mug in front of him, as audible as the low purr of the display fridge. He was about to lean forward to kiss those upturned lips when a shadow passed by the window. Turning his head, he saw a long tongue lick the windowpane and bright doggy eyes laughing at him through the wet smear.

  Kai lifted a finger. “Hold that thought.”

  “I’d rather kiss you.” Flick pouted and he nearly relented, really wanting to taste those sulky lips.

  “Yeah but if we kiss then we’re going to end up in bed, and that’s complicated, remember?” Kai pushed himself up and tipped his head toward the door. “Besides, we have company.”

  Flick frowned. “Who?”

  “Your damn mutt.”

  Flick muttered an obscenity. “I left him in the backyard . . . Dammit, he must’ve dug a hole under the fence and escaped.”

  “He was lucky he didn’t get hit by a car. This is a pretty busy road.”