Player: Stone Cold MC (22 page)

I walked her to the end of the alley when Rat appeared.

“Rat,” I said. In the light of morning he looked different—almost too exposed. Rat fit into shadows and corners and unsavory places, not direct sunlight and wholesome mornings.

“We got it,” he said and smiled. It was the first time I saw him smile.

“All of it?”

“All of it. You were right; there’s so much of it that I’ll be doing this for years and never need money again.”

I didn’t mention that he was going to be screwed if he was ever caught with that much dope. It was his problem, the same as it had been Jerrill’s. The way it had never really been mine.

“What is he talking about?” Alex asked.

“We did more to Jerrill tonight than just break into his casino,” I said and kissed her hair. Rat lit up a smoke. I let go of Alex and did the same. She leaned against a wall. Whatever they’d given her was starting to wear off, but it wasn’t gone completely.

I dragged on the cigarette, and I felt myself calm down. Cigarettes tasted like shit, but the instant calm that came with them was worth it in a life like mine. I was amazed that Alex didn’t smoke.

As I thought it, she held out her hand. I hesitated before handing her the cigarette. She took it from me, put it between her lips in the most elegant way I’d ever seen anyone smoke, and pulled. The cherry glowed red, and when she removed the cigarette, she blew the smoke out in a cloud that framed her face. Maybe she used to smoke. She did it like a pro, and she didn’t cough.

I didn’t blame her for needing a drag.

I took the cigarette back from her when she held it out and looked down at the ground, pulling on it again. Alex squealed, and Jerrill was suddenly with us, holding her against his body like a shield with a gun against her head. She had her hands scratching at the arm around her neck, and her body squirmed, but it did nothing at all to break his hold.

“You thought you could get away with this?” he said, looking at me. He glared at Rat for a moment, and I was guessing he understood we had some sort of alliance going now. I glanced at Rat who looked nervous. He might have hit Jerrill’s big stash a couple of minutes ago, but he was obviously still scared of him.

“I want you to walk away,” Jerrill said. “Turn around and walk away, and I won’t kill her.”

I held my hands out, palms toward him, to show that I didn’t have any weapons or intentions of harm. Which wasn’t entirely true because I wanted to hurt him in any way possible.

“You know that’s not going to happen,” I said in a calm voice. I looked Alex in the eye so that the words I spoke were aimed at her, not Jerrill. She needed to know that I wasn’t going to leave her again. That was over. Her eyes were wide with fear so that I saw white all around the irises, and her breathing was quick and shallow. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to hyperventilate.

“Let’s think about this,” I said. I feverishly tried to think of something, but nothing came to mind. I didn’t have any way I could make this situation work to my advantage. If I reached for my phone, he was going to kill her. If I attacked him, he was going to kill her. And neither of us could leave.

Letting her go with him wasn’t an option. I didn’t know what he wanted with her, but it wasn’t hard to guess. A man like Jerrill who had everything money could buy? It made sense that he would want the one thing money couldn’t get him.

“I’m going to back toward that door slowly,” Jerrill said, jabbing his head backward so we understood which door he meant. “And you’re not going to follow me. You’re going to stand right there until the door is closed, and if you come after me at all I’m pulling the trigger.”

Just to make his point he cocked the gun. It wasn’t necessary, but the drama was effective. I knew he was serious. Alex knew it, too. She whimpered and her face became a shade paler.

“Don’t do this,” I said, but I didn’t have anything left to say and no way to bargain with him for her. I was utterly useless, and I’d never felt more pathetic as a man.

Something moved in the musty shadows behind Jerrill. I strained to see. Just before the hand reached out and the gun’s butt hit Jerrill’s head, I recognized the face. Every muscle in my body relaxed, and I looked at Alex, trying to convey my calm. She frowned, and I knew she’d seen my change in attitude.

Benmore crept up behind Jerrill and hit him at the back of the head with the butt of a gun. Jerrill’s eyes rolled back, and then he fell to the ground. Alex fell forward, and I stepped in and grabbed her before she hit the ground.

Philip Benmore sniffed nonchalantly and stepped forward, putting the gun in the waistband of his dress pants.

“Rip,” he said, nodding to me.

“Philip. I didn’t know you came along.”

“And miss all the fighting?” We both knew it wasn’t about the fighting. He always wore a brown suit that made him look like a detective rather than a crime boss, and he was impeccably clean.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “I have the rest in cash for you at the motel, and the extras you can get from him.”

I pointed at Jerrill out cold on the floor. Benmore nodded.

“Consider us even,” he said, and it held so much more than just the debt that had been paid. He’d saved Alex for me when he hadn’t been able to save Emmett. This was more than just money. I’d repaid my debt, and he’d repaid his. We were friends again.

“The boys are at the cars, we should see who we need to bail out again,” he said and walked past us. I turned to Rat.

“Thanks for everything,” I said and held out my hand. Rat took it, and we shook. I doubted I was going to see him again. Alex looked at me, and I kissed her. A chaste kiss on the lips, just enough to remind her I wasn’t going anywhere. Whatever I did now was going to be with her in mind.

I didn’t know Rip knew that many people. Since I’d met him, I was under the impression that he was a loner, always on the run. When we walked around to the back of the casino, there were three minivans parked and a group of the biggest, roughest-looking men I’d ever seen standing together in a circle.

When Rip and I walked closer to them, his arm still around my waist because my balance just wouldn’t sort itself out, they cheered. They didn’t look at him as if he was the runt, even though he was the smallest. Instead, they looked at him with respect.

“Done,” a blond one with messy hair said around a cigarette in his mouth. The guy who’d saved me stood there, too, and he nodded.

“Thank you,” Rip said to the blond one. “I owe you.”

“No, Rip. For the first time, I don’t owe you.”

I had the feeling that something very big had been cleared up today, but I didn’t want to ask. I wanted to get home. I was tired and sluggish, and I hadn’t seen my bed in what felt like years.

“Thank you,” I said, and my voice sounded weak.

“For Rip’s girl we’ll do anything.”

There was a collective murmur of agreement.

“We have to get Donny out of jail,” the blond one said again. “He’s the only one who got caught.”

Rip nodded. “We’re going to head out,” he said. “If you need anything, holler.”

They said their goodbyes, which looked a lot like punches to me, and then we walked to Rip’s car. He opened the door for me. We drove to my place. By the time we walked to the front door, my balance was starting to improve.

I wanted to sit down on the couch, but Rip took my hand and led me to the bedroom. He let me lie down on the bed.

“Thank you for coming back,” I said.

“How did you know I left?”

“You dropped money through my window. If you were going to stay here, you would have delivered it in person.”

He nodded looking surprised that I knew that, but Rip was pretty predictable.

“I couldn’t just leave you,” he said. “You make me feel something that I haven’t felt in a long time.”

I suddenly wanted to cry. I hadn’t felt that something in a long time either. Rip made me feel something, but not just that, he made me want to change. It was ironic that the one person who was in the same boat as I was made me want to get out of it.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I said, and tears welled up in my eyes.

“Do what?”

“This life. I don’t want to be this person anymore. I want to be different. I want to be good.”

Rip stroked my hair.

“You are good,” he said. I shook my head. I wasn’t good, not by a long shot. He looked at me for a moment before he nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“If you do this, I’m going to do it, too. If you’re going to clean up, then I’ll do it as well, and we’ll be together.”

I rubbed my eyes. I was pretty sure I looked terrible, and I didn’t care about smudging my makeup.

“You want to be together?”

“I don’t want to leave you, Alex. I want you in my life, because you’re fun and you give me a run for my money and you make me feel like it’s worth it. All of this… is worth something.”

I frowned. “I don’t know how to do it when we’re together. I can’t help you if you spiral because then I’ll stand a chance of spiraling, too.”

Rip nodded.

“Then we’ll separate. We’ll sort it all out, and then we’ll get back together and see what happens from there.”

I took a deep breath. He was right; we could do this. I had Cass; she would pull me through.

“Do you think we’ll make it through?”

Rip nodded. “We’ll make it through.”

He leaned down and kissed me, and it was different from before. Before it had been about kissing, about what we could
get
from each other. Now it felt like it was about what we could
give
each other.

Rip got onto the bed and lay down next to me. He put his arm over my body and pulled me closer to him, kissing me deeper and with more urgency. I turned my body into his. I was exhausted, and the effect of what was still in my system made me feel like I was floating, but I wanted him. And not because of the sex.

I wanted him because of who he was, and because of who I was with him.

I sat up and got rid of my blazer. When I lay down again, Rip’s hand slid onto my breast. He pushed his hips against mine and I felt him, hot and hard against my body. My body responded, heat flooding through me.

Rip didn’t waste time getting under my shirt, and his fingers pushed under the material of my bra so that he was on my skin. He rubbed my nipple with the tips of his fingers until it was hard and erect. I moaned into his mouth.

I reached for his crotch and rubbed him through his pants. He twitched underneath my fingers and stiffened even more. I fumbled with his belt, undid his pants, and started working them over his hips.

He tugged the hem of my shirt and pulled it up. I lifted up so he could remove it and unclasped my own bra. This undressing wasn’t part of the foreplay tonight, it was about getting naked so that we could be as close as possible without anything between us. I got rid of my own pants, and he got out of his clothes, too, so that we were both completely naked.

Rip positioned himself over me. I opened my legs, and he pushed in between them so that his tip pressed against my entrance. I gasped. He hovered over me, his stomach against mine and his chest inches from my breasts. He leaned on his elbows on either side of my head, and he leaned down to kiss me.

“I’ve wanted this since I met you,” he said.

“We’ve slept together before.”

He shook his head. “I meant how this feels. How close we are. Love, not sex.”

I smiled. “Since you met me?”

“You were the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen.”

He kissed me again, and with his lips on mine, his tongue in my mouth, he pushed into me. I moaned into his mouth and wrapped my legs around his ass, pulling him in deeper. We paused like that for a moment, and I relished the feel of him, hard and stiff inside of me, stretching me so that I fit around his body like a glove, as if we’d been made for each other.

Rip started moving. Slow strokes, out until only the tip was in, and then back in so deep that I gasped. He kept up the slow movement, going in and out at a slow pace, reaching every inch of me. His body was on mine almost all the way and his skin was so hot it pushed up my own body temperature. His blue eyes pierced all the way through to my soul.

I reached up and pushed my fingers into his black hair. It was nice to know that all of this, the hair, the eyes, the body on top of mine, the manhood inside of me, was mine. We hadn’t talked about exclusivity, but somehow it felt like we’d gone past the point where this was just about sex and we could do it with whomever we wanted.

“I adore you,” Rip said just as I was thinking it. It wasn’t an “I love you,” but it was close enough. Adoring me was still damn special. I smiled, and then moaned when he pushed in at a faster pace.

“I adore you, too,” I said in a breathy voice. Rip smiled at what he was doing to my speech patterns and started rocking harder and harder. It felt good. The friction made my body feel numb but in a good way. The heat that had flooded between my legs started spreading through my body, and every inch of my body felt like it was on fire. Rip was coaxing it into a roaring furnace with his increased rhythm.

He started breathing harder and harder in my ear, and my own breathing sped up to match his—in the same rhythm he was making love to me.

Somewhere nature took over, and we were rocking and bucking against each other. He pounded into me, and I moved my hips against him to make magic that couldn’t be created any other way.

Rip was first to near his orgasm. I could feel it in how big he got, and the way his breathing became shallow and erratic. My own orgasm was getting bigger, too, and I closed my eyes, focusing on how it felt with him inside of me, with his face so close to mine, his heart beating right against my chest where mine was, too.

When he came inside of me, it was in giant pulses, liquid that coated and claimed every inch of me. It tipped me over the edge, and I orgasmed, too. My body curled and pulsated and contracted and released in almost the same rhythm as his, my body clamping down around him and milking him until there was nothing left.

When I finally relaxed, I realized I’d dug my nails into his shoulders and crossed my ankles above his hips. I let go.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be.” Rip was breathing as hard as I was. He kissed me and then slid out and rolled off to the side so that he was next to me. His body was still against me, and he put an arm around me and pulled me closer, so close that nothing else could fit between us.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” he said. I was glad I was safe and home, too, and I wasn’t under any illusions. I knew that he must have given up a lot and done a lot to get me out of there, to get his past to come to his present and save me.

And it meant more than he would ever know.

I nestled against him and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. This was what I wanted. It was going to take time to make it work, but I wanted to do it for him so that we could do this again. So that we could do this and have nothing interfere like crazy drug lords and muscled bodyguards.

I just wanted Rip.