Break Me In (2 page)

“Attention to detail,
brother.
Pay enough and it’ll get you laid. Too little and it’ll get you dead. Look around. It’s a Saturday morning. There should be a line of old ladies here to get their weekend frizz on. What’s up with that?”

“There’s a sale on Ensure at the A&P?”

Noah shakes his head. “Go bang on Luca until some change falls out.” Then he turns to me. “Come on, baby. You want to get your hair done?”

The question is so ridiculous I don’t even know how to respond. “What? Why?”

“No customers means no money in the register. She’s gotta pay one way or another, and I’m not having her do for me what Stone was after.”

“You mean sex.”

He nods.

“If I wasn’t with you?”

He runs a hand through his dark hair and smirks. “I wouldn’t be getting a trim.”

Bells tinkle above the door as we enter the shop, and a dark-haired woman in her thirties peers over her magazine. Her lips are so chapped it looks painful. When she licks them nervously, I understand why. “That time again already?”

“Where’d all your customers go, Kristi?”

“Luca’s been causing some trouble. I don’t think he’s very discriminating about the type of merchandise he’s willing to buy lately. It brings the wrong sort of clientele to the mall. There’s times I don’t even want to cross the parking lot by myself, but what’s a girl to do?”

“You could’ve called. This is the kind of shit we’re here for. Protection.”

Her face twists in confusion. “Dev came by and told me to keep my mouth shut and my eyes on my magazines. I’m doing it, but damn. I don’t just pay you bastards. The bank’s on my ass too, and they won’t take a blow job in payment.” Her pretty brown eyes fill with tears that don’t fall, and she twirls a manicured hand at the empty salon. “Wouldn’t my nana be so proud?”

“Your nana was a good woman who did what needed to be done to provide for you. She was a friend of the club, and that means something.”

“But Dev—”

“I’ll take care of him. Now take care of Star. Whatever she wants. If I’m going to tell the brothers they need to send their old ladies up here, we need to sample the merchandise.”

He nudges me forward, and I squirm under their scrutiny. “Maybe just a trim. I haven’t had one of those in a while.”

“Honey, your split ends have split ends.”

“I’ve been busy.”

Kristi looks from me to Noah and back again and purses her sore lips. “Yeah, I get that.”

Warm water rushes
over my scalp, soaking my hair. I scoot back farther in the reclining chair, letting my head fall deeper into the shampoo bowl so the water doesn’t run down the back of my neck.

“Too hot?” Kristi asks, pulling the stream away.

“No, it’s perfect. I was just getting comfortable.”

Kristi lifts the bulk of my hair and directs the spray underneath. “You relax. I’ll take good care of you.”

“Mhmmm,” I murmur as she works up a coconut-scented lather. Her touch is brisk and efficient. In minutes I’m reduced to jelly. I wonder if it would be too forward to ask her to work her magic on the small of my back. “That feels so nice. I don’t think there’s anything more decadent than having someone wash your hair.”

Then her tight circles are replaced by broad strokes, and I gasp. My eyes flutter open, and Noah is hovering over me.

“The noises you were making? All those mmms and aaahs? I only want to hear them if I’m the one wringing them out of your body.” He glides soapy fingers along my neck and trails them over my collar bone. Cool water runs down my breasts, soaking my shirt and tightening my nipples. My cheeks burn and I squeeze my eyes shut.

“I’ll take a break in the back room. Don’t forget the conditioner.” Kristi says.

“Don’t go far.” Noah grunts and continues massaging me, working his way ever so slowly back to my scalp.

The spray starts back up, and I hear a break in the stream before it lands on my soapy tresses. The realization that he checked the temperature warms me more than the water.

“I’m not going to fuck you here, Star. Not in Kristi’s shop. She’s put up with enough. But I had to get my hands on you again. If anyone is making you feel good, I want it to be me.” He tugs my hair, pulling me taut, and flicks his tongue over my mouth. I feel deprived and pleased all at once. There are things he’s not willing to do, boundaries he won’t cross. More ways to pay than just with a body. “I’m going to have some words with Luca. I’ll be back to collect you.”

I wonder if words means broken bones. I wonder but I don’t ask, because Kristi is back with her magic fingers and a rich conditioner. I’m careful not to make a sound, though. Not because it doesn’t feel good, but because Noah made it clear. All my moans belong to him.

I can give him that.

W
e pull into
a fenced lot and park next to a long line of bikes in front of a warehouse. I assume it’s a warehouse with its corrugated metal walls and windows up near the roofline.

Noah’s muscles are tense. He’d softened under my touch on the road, but here, he’s wound up tight. I run my palms over his back in soothing circles, let my fingers play over the patches stitched to the leather and wait for him to make a move.

Stone gets off his bike first. “Give me your phone, Romeo.”

Noah slips his phone out of a pocket inside his jacket and tosses it to Stone.

Stone drops it on the ground and slams his boot heel into the shiny screen. It’s a sick crunch, and plastic pieces fly everywhere. Noah growls. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Saving your ass. Again. Now you can tell Dev your phone is busted. You’re welcome.”

Noah scoops up the biggest pieces and presses them into my hand. “Hang on to these for me. There’s a SIM card in there somewhere.”

I follow them toward the building’s entrance. A large dog lopes near us but Noah snaps his fingers and it turns away. Muted sounds filter out beyond the door, and my belly flips. I can’t tell if that’s music or shouting. I have no idea what’s on the other side. A drug empire? A sweatshop? Dog fights? Sex slaves?

My mind races, trying to fill in blanks I can hardly imagine, and I clutch the broken bits of plastic like they’re a talisman against chaos. The jagged edges bite into my palm, but the pain keeps me focused. I squeeze harder and yelp when I break the skin.

Noah whirls around, eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”

Stone pushes through the door, but I can’t see past Noah’s broad body.

“Nothing.” I transfer the pieces to my other hand and hold up my palm to show him just how much nothing it is. Only a small cut. But he reacts like I’ve sliced off a finger. He knocks the rest of the phone to the ground, wraps a hand around my wrist, and pulls me close to study the wound.

“You hurt yourself.” His eyes flash fire, and his voice is a clenched fist, seething and restrained.

I don’t understand his response at all, but I need to. I need to understand the rules of his world, this dark realm. “You’re angry?”

“Nobody hurts what’s mine. Not even you.”

The arrogance. I bristle. How can he possibly… “My body is still my own.”

He pulls me closer and presses his mouth to the cut on my hand. With his head bent, the gesture is almost sweet,
kissing it better.
Then wet heat slicks across the scrape, sending shocks up my arm and straight down to my clit. It’s lewd and filthy, and I never want him to stop.

“This is mine,” he whispers against my skin, and then his other hand is between my legs, cupping my sex roughly. “This too, especially when we’re on my bike or in this club, every inch of you belongs to me. Got it?”

He’s squeezing me through my jeans while he runs his lips and tongue over my wrist like an animal marking its territory. I wonder if he’ll mark me lower—use his mouth instead of his hand—out here in the empty parking lot. Then I wonder how long the parking lot
stays
empty, and my whole body flushes hot when I realize I don’t care.

The pleasure is sharp—I’m still so sensitive it’s almost painful—and then it stops. It takes me a second to realize he’s waiting for an answer. “God, yes.”

Of course
yes.
The only answer is
yes
out here in the middle of nowhere with a junkyard dog wandering the perimeter. Isn’t it? I wonder what he’d do if I said no. Drive me back to the apartment I’m probably evicted from and dump me on the curb? Throw me over his shoulder and haul me into the club anyway? I flush even hotter because…
yes
to that too.

“Sweetheart, you keep calling me
God
like that and I’m gonna lose my mind. Probably do something stupid like fuck you when I’m supposed to be working. You’re gonna get me killed.”

I
nside the club
it’s not the wall of noise and heat that buckles my knees. It’s not the men with guns and the half-naked women. It’s the smell. Smoke, sweat, stale beer, motor oil, and a hint of something sweet. A spritz of cheap perfume over the wreckage of a bender.

The signature scent of my childhood.

It wraps around me like an unwanted hug, dank and cloying. The memories are ashes in my mouth. A fist around my heart. They are a papery hand on my thigh and my eyes locked on a pineapple air freshener swinging from the cracked rearview mirror while I press my knees together so hard it leaves a bruise.
Aloha.

I breathe in shallow pants, just like I did back then, trying not to fill my nose—my lungs—with the stink. I don’t want it inside me. The smell is more of a wake-up call than a pot of coffee.

I hadn’t escaped my old life. I’d endured it and crawled out of the rubble, clawing my way to a subsistence existence. For what? To walk into this pit a willing victim? Giving up every inch of ground I’ve managed to gain? For a thrill ride? For an orgasm or three? God, what the hell have I done?

Noah clamps his arm around my shoulders, holding me up and herding me along. “It looks worse than it is.”

His touch grounds me in the present, pushing back some of that old panic. These are hands that have protected me and pleasured me, cleansed me and claimed me. My scalp tingles at the memory of his tender touch.

There are people everywhere. Crowding a makeshift bar, flanking a pool table. Laughing and shouting. Fucking and fighting. Two topless girls maneuver through the crowd, each with a tray of shots. Their denim cutoffs are so short the pockets hang below the frayed hems like little white flags.
Waitresses.
I wonder if they picked their uniforms. If they paid for them. Somehow I can’t imagine these outlaws with their grizzled beards and
1%
patches offering a 401k and clothing allowance. Shit, it’s not like Jimmy does either.

I lean into him, drawing strength. “It looks like hell.”

“You’re a guest of the Devil’s Host. Where else would I bring you?”

The demon patch I’d studied while riding behind Noah is everywhere. Goat horns, flaming eyes, a hollow skull. It stares at me from every broad back. It laughs at me from a banner over the bar. But this isn’t hell. Hell is a pineapple air freshener and a roaming hand. Hell is an empty stomach and no food for days. Hell doesn’t have music or cold beer or guys getting blow jobs in the corner while everyone else goes about their business.

A man hooks his arm out and snatches up one of the waitresses. The tray of shots crashes to the ground. Glass breaks like tinkling bells, adding another layer of grit and booze to the already sticky floor.

She squirms in his arms, but her laugh is so loud. “You greedy fucker. Now I’ll have to clean that shit up.”

She slaps him, and it’s like slow motion—her small hand flying across his hard face. My stomach drops. I can’t watch what happens next, but I can’t look away. I brace for it.

The big man with greedy hands just smiles. “I’ll have a prospect push a mop. You’ve got better things to do.”

She climbs his body like a tree and kisses him like
she
owns
him.
Like it’s her right.

I wonder if ownership works both ways. If the
owned
have their hooks in just as deep. I look up at Noah. “What would you do if I slapped you?”