“Get on your knees.”
Panting, I pull myself up on shaky limbs.
“Good,” he grunts just as a finger hits my swollen clitoris. He begins to slowly move in a circular motion. “Why’d you do it?”
“I … oh, God.” I drop my head as he continues to play with my clit, torturing and teasing me with his touch.
He slaps my ass with a firm hand. “Tell me.” He hits my sore ass cheek again.
“Just finish this, Nix. Oh, shit.” I shudder from the near orgasm.
“Not until you tell me.” Everything, his finger, his spanking hand, it all stops.
Dammit! He can’t do this! I roll over and catch his dark, hooded eyes. “Okay.” Glancing down at his jeans, I need to pull it together. “Take your pants off and I’ll tell you.” I sway my legs open and closed. He glares down at my pussy for a couple of silent seconds, then he gets up, removes his pants, freeing his blatant, aggressive, magnificent arousal. My insides pulsate even more as they scream for him. “Now”—I lick my bottom lip—“get on your knees,” I order, surprising myself with my steady tone.
Eyes pinning me to the mattress, he does as I ask and positions himself between my shaking thighs.
I smile at him. “I’m sure you know what to do from here.”
“Yes.” He grabs my hips, lifts me, and thrusts his hot shaft deep inside me. “Now.” He withdraws and penetrates me once more. “Start.” He removes his cock and holds it just outside my hot, wet sheath. “Talking.” He pushes himself back inside and holds himself deep inside me.
“Finish this.” I wrap my legs around his hips and pull myself closer. “And I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
“Fuck you!” He pulls back from my leg hold, his large hands gripping my hips to immobilize me. He starts to thrust in and out, repeatedly, farther inside, deeper, harder. I can’t move. Can’t join him. Can’t control him. Can’t answer his thrust. It’s hot. I need to make him stop, so I can catch my breath, so I can check myself, bring myself from the faraway place he’s taking me, but he refuses to let me have what I want, and that just builds the fire within.
All I can do is arch my back, toss my head from side to side, and whimper with frustrated pleasure.
“Yeah, I got you.” He grinds against me, jerking my hips. My clit chafes him, each scrape scoring my heated flesh. “Now. Right now.” His husky voice like his finger to my clit reaches deep inside, stealing the last of what little control I might’ve been holding on to.
“No!” Thrashing beneath him, I grip the sheets. “I won’t do it for you.”
“Yes.” He grins down at me. “Yes, you will.” He taps my breast.
“Shit!” Hands clenching tighter to the sheet, I pant.
“See.” He slaps my other breast. “You’re going to come.” He pinches my pinkened nipple. I release an encouraging whimper. “Oh, yeah.” He flicks my erect bud. “I’m thinking, one more hard slap to your tit, and you’re going to—”
And dammit. That sound, the one that only releases my body when I’m about to … “Oh my God! Nix! Oh God! Yes! Yes!”
“Yes!” He grips my hips and starts to bang me, faster and harder as he jumps on for the wild, relentless ride that’s about to take us to another world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I lift my head when I hear the bathroom door open. A few seconds later, the fridge door closes. With shaky limbs, I crawl out of bed and search for my tee shirt. Finding it on the floor where Nix tossed it, I pick it up and pull it on. Part of me assumed he would’ve left after the sex while the other part prayed he’d stay.
I pad in bare feet the short distance through my apartment into the kitchen. The first thing I see is the gorgeous, shirtless man who just devoured my body with his power. The second thing is Mr. Paddington sitting on the table, looking at me, smiling at me. I walk over to the happy bear.
Nix breaks me from the hypnotizing toy. “Want a beer?” He lifts the bottle he got for himself.
“Yes, please.” I sit down, Mr. Paddington’s black glossy eyes following me.
Nix turns to the fridge, comes back around, and twists off the cap. “Here.”
“Thanks.” I grab the cold beer, unable to take my eyes off the smiling, short-haired stuffed animal.
“It’s not in there,” Nix says, pointing his bottle at the fabric sewn toy.
My eyes flash to his. “You have it?”
He pulls out a chair, sits down across from me, and nods. “Yes.” He sets his beer on the table, takes off his glasses, and places them next to his beer. “How do you know Lexi?”
“Ah …” I glare back at Mr. Paddington’s beady eyes.
“He’s not going to help you here, only the truth will.”
“Allie—” I turn to Nix. “I mean, Lexi was my roommate. We shared an apartment in New York for about four years—”
“Allie?”
“Yeah.” I take a swig of my beer, knowing I need like five or six more to get through this. “I didn’t know she was under protection, well, ya know, like witness protection, until she, ah …” I pause, Nix’s face skewed in all kinds of places.
“Protection?” The line of his jaw starts to sharpen again. “Who did she need protection from?”
“You.”
“Me!” He jumps up from the chair. It falls back, crashing on the floor. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“That day Allie, uh, Lexi left you, the last day you saw her when she went to the store, she was approached by government agents. They threatened her, knew about CG and your involvement. They gave her two options: return home to you and you’d be arrested, or leave right then and work for them and they’d spare you. Obviously, she chose your freedom because the next day, I had a new roommate, and Becca lost her mom. I think the government knew if you could find her, you’d come after her. So they gave her a new, ironclad identity and moved her to New York. I didn’t know anything about you or who you were to her. She never told me about Becca, and I lived with her for four years.” I pause as Allie’s smile passes through me. “I didn’t know she was a mother.”
Nix’s flat eyes gaze down at me. Then, without a word, he turns around, grabs another beer from the fridge, calmly picks up the chair, sits down and places his glasses back on his motionless face. He gulps down half the beer, sets it on the table, and nods at me. “Continue.”
Okay. I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I always knew there’d be a chance I’d have to explain what happened to my best friend to her Cyberthief. “For a while there, Lexi was hot, and the government identified her, and once her signature was found everywhere, they had to have her. They thought she was the best. So they got to her through you. She loved you and would’ve done anything for you. But little did the government know, they plucked the wrong hacker that day for you shared the same signature. I didn’t know it was you. We worked together in that small apartment tracking hackers, but there was this one hacker we couldn’t hack. Lexi liked to call him Cyberthief, and we both knew she wasn’t the best, he was, and later, I realized to keep his identity safe, my friend had sacrificed herself for him.”
Nix’s shiny eyes blink a few times as he runs a hand up and down on his bottle. “How did she …” He swipes a finger behind the glass covering his eye. He clears his throat and looks me straight in the eyes. “How did she die?”
The steadiness in his tone convinces me that he’s as ready as he’s going to get to hear the truth. “It was late November, she got sick, thought it was just a cold, but the cough didn’t go away. She was tired all the time, so after about a month, I talked her into going to the doctor’s.”
“She’s so fucking stubborn,” he says in a detached voice, rubbing his empty beer bottle.
“Yes, she was.” Finally, being in the presence of someone who knew and loved my best friend as much as I did tugs at every emotion in my heart. “But she was sicker than we thought.” I swallow hard. “She had stage four lung cancer, and it had spread to her bone
s, liver, and bladder.” My voice cracks as I blink back my tears. I lift my chin to stay strong for my friend. “There was nothing the doctors could do for her. They gave her a couple of months.” I reach out and grab one of Nix’s cold, trembling hands. Eyelids lowered and unable to read his expression, I squeeze the hand of the man my best friend loved enough to give up her life and her child for. Guilt like an anchor dropped into the murky sea weighs heavy in my belly. I never meant to fall in love with Nix Kane. But after those long, sometimes lucid and other times delirious nights with Allie, after listening to her talk about what a loving, honorable, caring, and dedicated man Nix was, I secretly fell in love with him through her words. “I know what you meant to her, and you’ve got to believe me, I tried for weeks to find out who you were so I could call you, so I could let you know what she was going through, but she wouldn’t have it. We stayed and worked in that apartment until her fingers wouldn’t work anymore, until she was too weak to hit the keys, and that’s when I brought her to my home, to my parents’ house.” I sniffle back the cry stuck in my throat that’s waiting for me to break long enough for it to escape. “She lived for another three weeks, but it was in that time, when her mind started to go, that she talked about you, about Mr. Paddington, and how he held the keys to Phelps DC Corporation. At first, I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but then I remembered Phelps DC’s new program was supposed to lift off last year. It’d been held up due to computer programing issues. They’ve got billions invested into the program, so they contracted the government for assistance. I understood than what All—Lexi wanted. If the government discovered it was you who held the key, they’d come down hard on you to get it.”
Face beet red, he pulls his hand from mine. “Phelps is corrupt!”
“Yes. Phelps was corrupt, so Lexi and I understood why you stole the keys to unlock their encrypted data, but ever since Dolan and Connors stepped in, they’ve cleaned up the company. Lexi and I checked it out, and it’s legit. I understand.” I set my hand over his. “I didn’t always work for the government. I was like you and Lexi; I investigated and questioned everything, but it was small stuff compared to you two. Still, the government caught me, and now they own me as well.”
His eyelids lift, bloodshot eyes flash to mine.
“After Lexi died,” I finally say into the quiet and uncomfortable room, “it took me a few months to pull myself together. It took me another three months to find you, and a couple of months to observe you, and that’s when I found out about Becca. My heart broke to think …” I take a deep shaky breath. “Lexi had a child, and she couldn’t …” I tremble as the tears start to fall down my cheeks.
“Fuck!” Nix jumps from the chair, and it goes crashing to the floor again. “Stop!” His hands fist at his sides. “I get it! It’s my fault! She couldn’t hold her, couldn’t be there for her first steps, first tooth, first day at school. Fuck!” He inhales, upper body shuddering, eyes bulging. “The things I thought about her, the hateful, awful, terrible things I thought about her because she wasn’t there for our child!”
“You couldn’t have known.” I stand to comfort him.
His hand comes up. “No!” He steps back. “I should’ve believed in her. Should’ve known she never would’ve left Becca unless she had to! If she’d just come to me.” He walks to the door and spins back around, coming at me eyes bright and wild. “It wasn’t her choice! It should’ve been me!”
“Yes, I know. She left you no choice.” I nod, recognizing at this point, there’s no consoling him. He needs a moment to let this soak in until he can absorb the sense of it and accept what Lexi did for him and Becca.
“She should’ve come home to me when the government approached her. She could’ve come to me!” He punches his chest. “She should’ve told me! It’s my fault Becca didn’t have her mom all these years. It’s my fault. My freedom cost Becca her mother, and now she’s gone!”
“Nix! No!” I run to him, grab his arms, and give him a hard shake, trying to snap him from the rage and guilt. He needs to feel the pain, but I can’t allow him to own all the other emotions for too long because he’ll get lost in them. “You didn’t know! Couldn’t know! Lexi made this decision without you. It wasn’t fair to you or Becca, but she thought it was the best thing for all of you. You can’t do this. She’s gone now, and your daughter still needs you. She’ll always need you. I think Lexi knew what an amazing father you were going to be and that you two would be okay. I think that’s why she chose you, and after her diagnosis, she probably didn’t have the heart to come back to you or her daughter just to break your hearts all over again. I really do believe she did the best she could for you and Becca. I know she loved you both very much. Don’t let her sacrifice be for nothing, Nix.” I grip his arms harder. “Don’t turn what she’s given you into guilt or shame, and don’t make what she did for Becca meaningless. All she ever wanted was for you to be happy.”
“How do you know?” His eyes darken, jaw clenches. “You said, she never spoke of Becca. How could you know what she was thinking? Maybe in those last few weeks of her life, Lexi hated me, hated that I got to spend the last five years of her life free and with her child. Maybe, she despised me, maybe she realized I wasn’t worth it, did you ever think of that? ’Cause I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but I wasn’t worth it. Do you know what I did for the past five years? I tried to delete her from my mind by sleeping with every woman I could. I didn’t care about any of them and faked any and all emotions.”
“You were just hurt,” I reason with him, rubbing his arms and trying to ease his conscience.
“That’s not true.” His face hardens. “None of those women meant anything to me.” His voice deepens and eyes blacken. “Like you, they were nothing but a fuck.”
I feel the break like when my phone crashed on the pavement and shattered. On the outside, it appeared to be no good, but the inside still worked. This is it. He’s crashing.
I turn to the toy bear and pick him up, the smile reminding me of Lexi when she asked me to do this favor for her. I remember she gave me one of those big ass smiles, and said, “You got this, girl. I know you can do it.”
I knew there was going to be anger, resentment, and guilt. I knew Nix was going to lash out when he found out who I was, and how I hunted, studied, and placed myself into his life. I knew that he’d be hurt when he found out how Lexi died, and knowing when she died, she knew that she’d never see her daughter again. But most of all, I knew deep in my heart that there was a good chance he’d never forgive me. So I raise my head, square my shoulders, and look him right in the eyes. “I need the files. I need the keys for the Phelps programs. I promised Lexi that I’d get them. So where are they?”
He stares at me, and at first, it’s hard to decipher what’s going through his mind, but he clears everything up when leans down until our faces are level, and says, “Fuck you.” He snatches poor Mr. Paddington from my hands. Shirtless and all, he grabs his keys from my table, and without another word or backward glance, he leaves my apartment.
I slump into the chair, tears streaming down my cheeks. I failed you! I’m so sorry, Allie! It’s all my fault …
I should’ve never allowed myself to fall in love with Nix Kane.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I’m sorry, dude.” Token hands me a beer. “I liked Lexi.” He leans back against the counter. “I mean, I was pissed she left you and Becca, but fuck, that’s a shitty way to die.” He lifts a tatted, muscular arm and pushes a large hand through his hair. “What are ya gonna do?”
“I don’t know.” I tip the beer back, gulping down almost the entire thing.
“When did the government hit you up?”
“It was before Becca was born. That’s what doesn’t make any sense. I never told Lexi about my deal with the government. I suggested we get out of the radical group before the baby came, and she agreed. I didn’t know she was still involved. I didn’t know she was still hacking. It doesn
’t make any sense.”
“Maybe she tried to get out, but like you, she was coerced. Maybe the government was using her as a sort of spy or something. That could explain the identity change. Payton could have it wrong. Perhaps, the whole witness protection shit was to keep Lexi safe from the group you guys were involved with.”
Rubbing my stubbled chin, I glance at him. “You could be on to something.”
“But what I don’t get is if you were out, why do you have this file Payton wants?” He crosses his arms over his chest. “Unless …” He squints his left eye.
“Yeah, alright.” I lift my arms. “You caught me. I wasn’t going to let the government own me. I still dabbled in some shit, but I knew what I was doing, and they weren’t going to catch me.”
“So Lexi and you both were lying to each other, huh? You both were still hacking?” He whistles. “Damn, I guess your relationship wasn’t as tight as one might think.”
“Guess not,” I conclude. He’s right. I’m not sure what Lexi and I had, but love might not have been the whole of it.
“But you’re done with that shit now?”
“Oh yeah, when Lexi left … well, when she never returned from the store, a few weeks later, I realized I was all Becca had—”
“Wow, now.” He holds up a hand. “Ya know that’s not true; she’s got me, Harley, Ma, Dad, Steele, Lulu, and—”
“Yeah, yeah but she’s my responsibility, and unlike her mom, I wasn’t going to walk out on her. Fuck, Token.” I shake my head, choking back a tear. “All this time, I thought she left us. I hated her. I dreamed about my hands around her neck. What kind of fucker am I?”
“Hey.” Token grips my shoulder. “Don’t do that to yourself. You couldn’t have known the truth, but now ya do, and she loved Becca, loved you both, bro. Don’t get down on yourself. You’ve done nothin’ to blame yourself for, ya hear me?” He bends down, nudging me with his green eyes.
NIX (Daring the Kane Brothers) Page 13
