Savior (12 page)

And it wasn't just the two in front of me. It was the dozens of men, and the smattering of women, that I employed. Yes, I gave them a way out of poverty like Terrell and Darius offered me when I needed it. But in exchange for that, how many men died at my hands? Rival gang members, sure, but my own too. Ones I had ordered to be taken out, ones who had caught a spray of bullets during a drive by, ones that went away to jail and got shivved and left out the back door in a casket.

In that moment, slumped back against the wall in a house that obviously didn't belong to the kid getting his jaw busted, I was done.

It was over for me.

The problem being, it didn't work that way.

If you wanted out, you got out by death and death only.

Leaders especially didn't get the luxury of walking away.

Maybe they would have let me run. I could have rounded up my family and went to the West coast. But it wasn't just about my family at that point. I liked Navesink Bank. It was all I ever knew. I'd made friends outside of the gang that I didn't want to lose. I wanted out, but I wanted to stay in the area.

And, well, that meant my options were limited.

And the options I did have, yeah, they were bloody.

"Enough, Enzo," I snapped, dragging him backward by his shirt as the kid rolled to his side and spit out blood on his mother's carpet. Enzo shook me off and stormed outside, needing a minute to calm down. "You're out obviously," I told the kid. "We see you anywhere near our operation and especially our women again, your mom will be picking out funeral flowers. Got it?"

It took me three weeks to build up the nerve and steel my stomach to do what needed to be done.

Half of the men in Third Street ended up with knife wounds or bullets.

This included Enzo who spent two nights in a hospital bed recovering from a shot to his shoulder.

It was all bravado and it only worked for about a week before some of the men I attacked came at me in my new life in the industrial part of town. But I had been expecting them.

I spent two years fighting before they got tired of losing and left me alone.

Enzo never came after me, but I also lost my brother the second I put a bullet in him.

By the time I was thirty-four, I was fully free. No one messed with me and I got a following of ink lovers who kept me in business. I still had my nest egg that I earned illegally that allowed me to have the nice things I liked, the car I liked, the spending money I liked.

Enzo had a bloody fight to get to the top. A couple of the other guys who had been around longer kept him down and called shots until either he, or someone else, took them out. Things had been crazy since I left them, but had finally started to shape up once Enzo got in power. His men still needed some reining in, but he was doing better. Things were more controlled, less paranoid. People respected him, maybe partly because he reminded them of me in my younger days, but also because nothing about Enzo invited questioning or disrespect.

Things between us were fine for a while, both of us ignoring the other, pretending there wasn't history.

That all stopped when I found out Third Street sold H to my little sister, a girl who had once been like a sister to him as well. Granted, it wasn't him directly, but it happened under his watch. I handled my sister first, shipping her off to rehab even though she had only been high twice. Then I grabbed my gun and sneaked into Enzo's place, walking up behind him as he sat on the couch and put then cocked a gun against the back of his neck. "Sell my sister smack again and you won't live to regret it, Enzo."

The next time I saw him was when my friend Shooter had his girl kidnapped a year back by the Third Street gang's heroin supplier. It wasn't a warm reunion.

It was a sick thing, but I missed him.

I missed the boy I grew up with, the man I did business alongside, the face that used to sit across from me at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter dinners.

But there was no going back from what we had done.

In general, as well as to each other.

Nine

Elsie

"You shot your brother?" I heard myself ask when he stopped telling me his story.

It wasn't an easy story to hear. Worse yet, I imagined, because I came from such a privileged background. That kind of dark and twisted didn't happen in my world. In my world, the worst that you'd suffered through was someone talking behind your back, destroying your image. Maybe a little drug addiction thrown in here or there- alcohol or cocaine mostly, high society drugs. But there were no beatings and backstabbing and shooting and killing.

But the way Paine told it, with a sort of detachment, was a testament to how normal it was in his life. Like that was just how life was where he grew up.

"Yeah, baby. I shot my own brother."

"Wow," I said, sitting down on my couch and looking down at my hands for a second.

"Wanna run screaming now?" he asked and, if I wasn't mistaken, there was some kind of vulnerability in his tone. He expected me to reject him because he had a past. Maybe a wiser person would, but nothing about Paine said he was a bad person. He had done bad things to get what he wanted and needed out of his life. The same could honestly be said about men like my father. He'd sunk smaller businesses to build his up, laying off thousands of families that needed paychecks, throwing them into financial uncertainty. He did this without a thought, without a flinch. He never stopped to think about what his actions did to others, what they did to himself.

Paine did.

So I wasn't going to fault him for having a sordid, ugly past.

"No."

"You should," he said, coming over toward me, sitting down on the coffee table in front of me, our legs touching. He reached behind him and put the jewelry box down.

"Probably," I agreed. "But I don't want to."

Paine's head cocked to the side as he watched me for a minute. "Pretty rich girl wants to go slumming?"

I felt my eyes lower as I stiffened. "Don't turn me into a trope. I'm not a God damn trope. I don't want you because you are a bad boy tattoo artist who used to run a street gang. I think you're a good man. You've been good to me as a whole. So don't you dare try to pull the 'oh the poor little rich girl can't get fucked right by the rich guys so she needs some back street guy' thing on me. I deserve better than that. And, quite frankly, so do you."

Somewhere along in my speech, Paine's lips tipped up and by the time I was done, he was full-on smiling. "You want me, huh?"

I felt my eyes rolling. "Of course that was all you heard."

"You want me," he repeated, his hands landing on my knees as he slowly moved to stand, raising one hand to rest on the couch behind my head to balance his weight as his body curled, forcing me to press my head against the couch to tip my head up and look at him. His other hand slid up my thigh, over my stomach, over my breast, then cradled my jaw. "Say it," he demanded, his voice low.

I wet my lips, swallowing hard.

"I want you," I admitted because, well, I did. I wasn't the kind of woman to play coy and evade when it came to sex. I knew what I wanted; he knew what I wanted. What was the use in denying it?

"Fuck babygirl," he said, fingers stroking up over my cheek slightly. "Any idea how good that is to hear?"

"How good?" I asked, head tilting, smile teasing.

His hand left my cheek, going down the side of my neck and sliding down my arm until he found my hand, grabbing it, pulling it up, and placing my palm against the crotch of his jeans over his hard cock. I heard a low, needy sound escape me as he curled my hand around him. "That good," he said, his voice getting deeper as I grasped him and did as much of a stroke as his thick jeans would allow.

I looked up into his light eyes, mine a challenge. "You know what I find with you?"

"No, what?" he asked, his hand digging into mine as I did another stroke.

"You're all talk."

"Is that a challenge, babygirl? Because, let me tell you, you open up for me, I can make you scream louder than any man or battery-powered device ever has before."

My free hand went up, snagging the back of his neck and pulling him down toward me, kissing up the side of his neck. "Maybe I'm quiet as a mouse when I come."

"Not for me," he promised, his hand moving off mine, tagging me at the waist as he simultaneously dropped down onto the couch beside me and hauled me up and over until I was straddling him. I adjusted my legs and sank my hips down, feeling his hardness press against my heat and throwing my head back on a silent moan. His hands sank into both my hips, using them to stroke me over his length and the silent moan became a not-so-silent one. "Barely touching you," he said as I leaned forward and rested my forehead to his.

"Yeah, what's up with that?" I asked and was rewarded with a small chuckle as his hands shifted around and down until he was cupping my ass, his fingers squeezing in hard.

"Did I tell you yet what a fucking phenomenal ass this is? Been thinking of it since that first night in those jeans. And in that purple dress... fuck me."

"Yes please," I invited, getting another chuckle before I pressed my lips to his and the sound disappeared on an erotic little growl.

A current passed through my entire system at the contact, making every inch of my skin feel electric and buzzing. I sank lower against him, my chest pressing hard into his. One of his hands snaked up my spine and curled into the hair at the nape of my neck. The other released my ass but only so he could pull back and smack it hard enough to make my body jump unexpectedly. My teeth sank into his lower lip in retribution, earning me another smack that had my thighs and lady bits contracting hard. His hand curled harder into my hair and tugged backward, making me release his lips and pulling me far enough back so he could look at my face.

When he could see me, he smacked again, harder. My body jumped, my mouth parted, and a small whimper escaped me as I stroked over him again, trying to get relief from the pressure low in my belly, begging for fulfillment. "Oh, babygirl, we're gonna have fun," he said with a sexy half-smirk. He released my hair. "Arms up," he instructed and up they went. The material of my sweater felt scratchy and uncomfortable on my heated and overly-sensitive skin. His hands went to the hem and snagged the material, pulling it up slowly, exposing me one inch at a time. I said a silent 'thank-you' to early morning hungover-me for choosing the pretty tan and black lace balconette bra and matching panties and not the plain white 'fuck this shit' bra and panties I almost put on. The material went over my head and Paine flung it across the room. "You wear this shit on the daily?" he asked, hands moving to my ribcage just under my bra line.

"Mostly," I said, grabbing his wrists and moving his hands up to cover my breasts. His hands squeezed hard before his thumbs stroked over my hardened nipples. My palms moved to brace on his thighs behind me as my hips ground against him.

"Fuck," he said, shaking his head as he watched me, my pace unhurried though the need was like a coil wound too tight inside. His hands followed the band of my bra to my back and made short work of the clasps. I pressed back straight so he could slide the straps down my arms. As soon as the material was gone, his hands moved up and covered my bare breasts, the roughness of his palms moving over my sensitive nipples and wrenching a groan from me.

They were good breasts, not huge, but not tiny either, but his big hands completely covered them, squeezing them tightly before he took the hardened buds and rolled them between his fingers, almost to the point of pain. His hands went to my sides, squeezing in, and pulling my body forward. My hands braced on the back of the couch behind his shoulders as his head ducked, tilted, and his mouth closed over my nipple, sucking hard and deep as his other hand worked my other breast, overwhelming my already too-stimulated system.

"Paine, please," I pleaded as his mouth closed over my other nipple.

On a growl, his hands went to my ass again, digging in as he knifed up and to the side, making me land longways on the couch and bracing himself on his knees on the side and between my thighs. His hands left my ass and moved across my stomach, fingers slipping under the band of my pants and toying with the edge of my panties. They moved to the center and pushed the button. It took every ounce of self-control I possessed to keep from writhing shamelessly.

"Ready to scream?" he asked then, before I could even nod my agreement, his hand slid inside, not bothering to tease me first and going right under my panties. One finger slid up my cleft leisurely as if I wasn't just about ready to explode before hitting my clit and pressing in. I let out a moan that echoed off the walls in my quiet house. "Not quite there yet," he said, eyes heavy as he slid his middle finger down my cleft and slipped it inside me. He thrust a few times, making my hips rise up to meet his rhythm, before his finger curled up and started to work over the top wall, hitting my G-spot.

I was close. So freaking close. Every muscle in my body was tense and waiting for the rush of pleasure as my inner thighs started to shake in anticipation. His finger on my clit picked up its pace as his other moved to match inside me.

I felt myself tightening, Paine's eyes too hypnotic to look away from as my moans turned to whimpers, feeling too strangled for air to manage anything else.

"Come babygirl."

I was going to. I was...

My doorbell chimed, making my whole body jump, my eyes going huge. Paine's face spread into a slow smirk as he kept up the unrelenting pace on my clit and G-spot, pushing just to the edge.

"Else, open up! I left the key at my place," Roman's voice called through the door.

My eyes went even bigger and Paine's smirk got a little more sinister.

"Paine, I can't..."

But then his finger stopped working me in circles and pressed into my clit hard. He moved fast, arm whipping out and hand slapping down over my mouth just as my orgasm crested, just as strong as I had expected, my entire body jerking as the waves crashed over me and I screamed out against his palm, thankful for his foresight to muffle my cries. His finger thrust through, drawing it out, turning all my bones to liquid as I sucked in air greedily.