“I-Is that a problem?” I asked shakily, stepping up onto tiptoe as he pushed down, pressing into the folds of my sex in a way that made me wish he’d rub higher up.
“More of a perk of the dress,” he confirmed softly. “Camille?”
“Y-Yes,” I stuttered, my eyes falling closed as he found my clit and started to rub it.
“You’re wet.”
I licked my lips. “I know.” And I did. I was getting more comfortable with my body now he spent so much time focused on it.
His fingers withdrew, prompting my eyes to pop open. I gaped at him as he got to his feet and traced his sticky fingers—God, had I made my panties wet?—between my breasts.
“Buy both of them.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my lips, his tongue tracing over the bottom one before he thrust into my mouth and claimed my breath right from my very lungs. When I was sagging into him, he pulled back. “Bagpipes is waiting outside on you. I’ll see you tonight.”
As he started out of the changing room, I choked out, “Brennan?”
He peered back at me. “Don’t get off. I’ll deal with you before the gala.”
I chomped down on my bottom lip, trying not to be even more aroused at that command than I already was.
He knew.
Dammit.
He knew what those orders did to me, making me aware that in barely no time at all he knew my body better than Nyx ever had.
A shaky sigh escaped me as he left the cubicle, and it was only by chance that I heard Bagpipes mutter, “Bren, we’ve got a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” His voice was fainter, like he’d moved away.
“That Quin kid. He’s just got shivved.”
I knew what ‘shivved’ meant. In jail, prisoners made makeshift weapons out of the most banal of items. Spoons, for example, were weaponized by sharpening them into hard points, turning it into a dagger that could kill.
As concerning as that was, it was the name that registered.
Quinn. Or maybe, Quin.
Double ‘n’ or just the one?
I worried my bottom lip between my teeth, because I knew a Quin in prison—Nyx’s brother was in Rikers.
“Is he alive?” Brennan asked, his voice grim. “Or did the bastards kill him?”
The few instances I’d heard him talk about business, I knew that his voice was oddly without inflection. Like nothing surprised him, nothing worried him. I doubted that was always the way as I’d yet to hear him be angry, but still, that he sounded anything at all told me this was not a good development.
And not just for the poor guy who’d been shivved.
“No, he’s alive. Barely.”
“Fuckers,” Brennan growled, and I heard a sound that made me think he was pounding his fist into his palm. “The kid must know more than Rex let on.”
A sharp gasp escaped me as I had my confirmation.
It was Nyx’s brother.
Quin had just been stabbed in prison!
Heart in my throat, my shoulders hunched in on themselves as I tried to process that horrifying news.
The Sinners had been feeling a world of hurt lately. What with their clubhouse being blasted, and God only knew what else. I’d only stayed in touch with Jingles but she’d died in the bombing, and because I hated the other clubwhores and knew that by staying in contact I was only doing so to hear news about Nyx, I’d gone cold turkey and had no idea what had happened since the compound’s destruction.
But hearing this raked up all the old pain, all the longing and the need for more than Nyx was ever willing to give me. What he’d only ever given to Giulia, his Old Lady.
I bet he cared if she came.
Hell, I bet Giulia cared if she came. I bet she made demands on him, not just where sex was concerned but in life too.
I hadn’t been good enough for Nyx, but Giulia, who’d been dragged up, had.
When she’d made an appearance at the clubhouse, I hadn’t realized that my life was about to change. That I was about to be usurped.
I’d thought Nyx loved me, but when he and Giulia had grown entangled, I’d come to see that I was the fool. He’d never promised me anything, but I’d gone chasing rainbows with the desire for protection. With the need for security.
As I stared at myself in the mirror, wearing a bright red Gucci dress that wouldn’t fit in at the Sinners’ compound in West Orange, it was so easy to see me in the barely there gear I’d worn before.
Only through Nyx and his particular proclivities had I not been passed around. If it weren’t for him being a possessive bastard, I’d have been whored around the brothers...
When Brennan teased me, taunted me, called me a slut, I knew that I wasn’t. I also knew that he knew I wasn’t, but with him, the label turned me on. He turned me on. Everything he did, the way he talked, the way he walked. What he wore, how he carried himself... The way he touched me, kissed me, sucked me, licked me...
I would never have known sex like this was real if it weren’t for him.
Brennan, in a week of marriage, had disproven my self-belief that I was frigid.
I wasn’t.
I just needed the right man.
He was that right man—my body had made that decision for me. And maybe his had made that decision for him too…
Been waiting a lifetime to claim a woman in as many ways as I’ve claimed you.
My heart was still pounding, the past and present blurring, my heartache for a man who’d never wanted me fading away as I realized that it wasn’t Nyx’s fault I’d pinned all my hopes on him. It wasn’t Nyx’s fault that I’d fallen for him when he hadn’t fallen for me.
Ever since I’d shoved my way into Brennan’s life, thoughts of Nyx hadn’t been as constant as before and that feeling of being heartsick had disappeared. I’d been so stupidly in love with him that I’d been pining, but Brennan didn’t give me room to pine.
If anything, I only thought about Nyx now to compare him to Brennan, and my husband always won.
Always.
How was it that hearing about his kid brother being injured was a slap in the face that proved to me how over Nyx I was?
The curtains parted, and I jerked when I saw Brennan watching me. “Everything okay?” he asked, frowning when he saw I was still wearing the red dress.
I blinked at him, feeling dazed with my revelations. “Huh?”
A rueful smile creased his lips as he looked me over—his awareness of me was incredible, as I came to realize he’d heard my gasp so was checking in with me.
Swaggering in, he hauled me against him before he lowered his head and let our mouths collide. Relieved that he’d mistaken my mood, I raised my arms and tucked them around his neck, clinging to him as he pressed me against the wall of the changing room.
His tongue thrust against mine, eating into me as he tipped my head to the side for better access. When I was breathing his air and he was breathing mine, I rippled against him, needing to get closer as I raised my leg and cocked it against his hip.
A grunt escaped him, prompting him to pull back before he muttered, “Fuck, I knew I liked this dress. Easy access.”
His hand slipped between my thighs and he rubbed along the gusset of my panties again before he prodded beneath, letting bare flesh connect with bare flesh. I shuddered against him, my back arching as he let out a hiss.
“I swear to fuck, you make me remember what it was like to be twenty.” His dick was thick and hard against my thigh, before he muttered, “Goddammit.” His mouth burrowed against my throat, where he pressed a soft kiss, mumbling, “I have...” Another kiss anointed my collarbone. “To...” Another to the divot between my breasts. “Go.”
I smirked up at the ceiling, letting my head tip to the side so I could see us both in the mirror, and as heat flared inside me, acceptance did too.
Nyx was the past.
Brennan was the present.
But, more importantly, he was my future.
I let my na
ils rake over his head, ruffling up his hair, before I purred, “There’s always later.”
“There always is with you,” he said dryly, pushing his forehead against my chest, smothering himself in my cleavage.
After a good minute passed, with him suffocating between my tits, he straightened up, stared at me, then shook his head like...
With any other man, I’d think he was disappointed in me.
That he thought me lesser.
But Brennan, when he looked at me like that, I knew he was thinking, ‘How am I supposed to keep my hands off her?’
Beneath his gaze, I actually felt desirable. Not just for who I was or what was between my thighs, but me. As a whole.
I’d never realized how deconstructed I felt and what that did to my self image, something I’d even perpetuated when I’d had breast augmentation surgery that had nearly bankrupted me at the time. I was a womb, a pussy, tits, ass. I’d never been Camille.
Until now.
And the craziest thing of all?
I liked Camille.
A smile curved my lips, one I didn’t even register, one that came with a contentment that I hoped would only grow with time, getting deeper and deeper the longer we were together. I was taking every day as it came, would continue to do so with the weeks and months ahead, but for now, I was happy.
I knew, where regular dating was concerned, we were in the first flush, but this wasn’t a regular relationship. Nothing about us was.
I just hoped that we continued in this vein.
He clucked his tongue as he reached up, his thumb smoothing along my smile. “I’ll see you later, Camille.”
Nodding, I whispered, “Can’t wait.”
That wasn’t a lie, either.
I couldn’t.
Thirty-Six
Aidan Jr.
“Hi. I’m Asher.” The guy in front of me hesitated, his head bobbing as he hunched his shoulders. “I’ve been sober for fourteen years and three months.”
“Hi, Asher,” the room intoned apart from me.
I was in the corner. At the back. Just not as far back in the corner as I’d thought because this guy was in front of me, and everyone was shooting him looks which meant I might be in their line of sight.
I never spoke at NA meetings, but attending them was cathartic.
Every day, I’d say to myself that it was going to be the last day I took some Oxy, but it just never fucking worked out that way.
The men and women in this room were a hell of a lot braver than I was. They might not own as much as I did, might not command fear or loyalty in people, might be average Joes and Josephinas, but they had the balls to do what I couldn’t.
They were clean.
The guy, Asher, didn’t speak after he was greeted, not until the group leader, a guy called Christopher, prompted, “Is everything okay, Asher?”
It was a testament to how long the guy let the silence last that Christopher said anything, period. This was, after all, a safe space. People were never pressured into talking. Like me. I’d been coming here for a month, and I’d said dick.
Asher was new, though. From what I’d seen of him, he had shaggy blond hair in need of a trim, his arms were covered in inked sleeves, and he had what I thought was an MC cut, just worn inside out so none of the insignia was showing.
To anyone else, it’d just look like a leather vest, but I knew differently.
I was the second-in-command of the Five Points’ Mob—this kind of shit had been fed to me along with sweet potato mash when I was a brat.
“Not really,” Asher replied eventually. “Everything isn’t okay. The drugs... I got them under control a long time ago, but what replaced it is much worse. It’s destroyed my life. Ruined my marriage. It’s wrecking my kid’s life too. I—” He sucked in a breath. “My name’s Asher and I’m a sex addict.”
My brows rose at that admission. I mean, come on. What guy wasn’t addicted to sex?
The thought was instinctual, but when I thought about the last time I’d gotten laid, when I’d started preferring popping Oxy to orgasms... Jesus.
Reaching up to rub at my eyes, I realized how fucking low I’d sunk.
The only reason I wasn’t shooting up heroin was because I could afford the Oxy. Only my position saved me from tacking on a ‘yet’ to the end of that.
Heroin was a lot fucking easier to score, and were I anyone else, there'd only be so many doctors I could call on for prescriptions... As it stood, I was a prescription junkie, one up from a regular hood rat because I was an O'Donnelly.
Go figure.
“When I got off the drugs, I switched to fucking everything that moved. My lifestyle isn’t regular. There’s a lot of easy pussy around—” Talk about a confirmation that the guy was in an MC. “—it was okay until I met my wife. I tried to stay faithful to her, but when she got pregnant, she was... she couldn’t have sex.” He gulped, and the sound was audible. A quick glance around the room told me the guys were sympathetic and the women, if they had a desire to get locked up, would have stabbed him on his wife’s behalf. “I tried. I fucking tried so hard. I was jacking off twenty, fucking twenty-five times a day. So much I was getting goddamn wrist strain, but then a bit— I mean, a chick came onto me. She... offered herself, and I was desperate. I hated myself after, and every time I cheated on her, it was like a knife to the heart.” He shook his head. “I hate myself now. Every time I have sex with someone who isn’t her, I hate how weak I am.
“I had to leave town... and I promised myself that I’d do everything in my power to get a handle on my addiction. I want her back, want them both back in my life, full time... Hell, all the time. But to do that, I have to get this under control.” He sucked in a breath, straightened his shoulders, and declared, “It’s been seven weeks since I had sex. F-Five since I jacked off.” He clenched his hands into fists at his sides. “It’s difficult. Some days, it’s impossible. It’s harder than the drugs, because what I’m chasing is as easy to grab as a donut.” He tightened his fists some more. “For my kid, for my woman, I have to do it. If I don’t, I’ll lose her, maybe both of them, and I know I’ll deserve it.”
With that, he plunked himself down on his seat, abruptly ending his monologue and prompting Christopher to lead into a round of applause that most of the women in the room begrudgingly took part in.
I stretched out my legs, wincing as the agony in my knee ricocheted through me. That bastard was why I had to attend these fucking meetings.
Until the drive-by shooting on my best friend’s wedding day, one that had destroyed my fucking patella and had nearly killed Finn’s bride, I’d been fine. A little heavy handed with the whiskey, okay, a lot when it was hard to sleep at night, but nothing like this with the Oxy.
I glared at it, a part of me wishing that they’d just chopped the fucking thing off, but instead, it was plaguing me. Killing me as I chased a way to escape the pain.
Wasn’t that what we were all doing here?
Chasing a way to escape the pain?
And didn’t addiction lead to other addictions? Just like that schmuck in front of me?
A month, I’d been coming here.
Four, fucking, weeks.
I’d never had any desire to say a word, mostly because I didn’t have the right.
The Oxy was already starting to wear off, and I’d only sank some back two hours ago. The pain was like a monster, gnawing at my nerve endings like Da gnawed on a turkey leg at the end of the Thanksgiving meal.
The sweats would come next.
The jitters.
The vomiting.
Christ, I was so fucking sick of this life. So fucking sick of trying to escape, but how—
I closed my eyes when the room burst into applause after Sandra, a housewife from Queens, finished her speech about being clean for three months, and I darted onto my feet as fast as my bum knee would let me.
“Aidan, you wish to speak?” Christopher asked, his surprise and pleasure clear.
/>
I’d had no intention of speaking. I’d just wanted to get the hell out of this grimy community hall that stank of bleach, disinfectant, and sweaty socks. But... Asher had just admitted to jacking off twenty fucking times a day. And I was so tired of my life. The pain was here, like a physical entity in the room. I might as well have been punching my knee for the past forty minutes instead of just taking it easy...
I needed it to stop.
I needed a way to make everything stop.
“Aidan?” Christopher queried softly, his pleasure fading into unease.
I lifted my head to face the room, saw the expectant faces, scented the shitty coffee and the sugary tang of donuts that were only marginally more bearable than that tar they served, and... Asher had just admitted to jacking off twenty times a day.
I could admit to this.
“My name’s Aidan,” I rasped, “and I’ve been clean for one-hundred and twenty-three minutes...”
Thirty-Seven
Brennan
I cracked my knuckles as we rolled up to the hospital. Da had managed to pull some strings, get shit rolling so that Quin kid wasn’t in a prison butcher shop but a decent clinic. But it didn’t take away from the fact that the fuckers had gotten to him inside.
Unsurprised to find a half-dozen bikes outside the clinic, I made my way in and saw Forrest was waiting on me at the end of the corridor.
Heading for him, I asked, “What went down?”
“It’s hard finding out because they’re on lockdown now. The guys who have phones probably don’t want to risk losing them so it’s all quiet for the moment.”
I grunted. “We need answers. We must have a couple of guards on payroll—”
“We have four. None of them were on shift.”
We shared a look.
“That can’t be a coincidence,” I rumbled as our shoes squeaked against the linoleum.
“I don’t think it is.”
Filthy Sex: The Five Points’ Mob Collection: Four Page 36
