Page 31 of Ashes to Ashes

Chapter Twelve

Ash

I’d been right.You couldn’t fuck a woman like Rae Griffin out of your system. One taste of her had me craving more. More of her lips, more of her sighs, more of her sweet little cunt coming all over my tongue.

More of everything.

And that was dangerous because I didn’t know if we could sustain anything beyond this mad, all-consuming passion we seemed to have for one another. I admired her, and was proud of everything she’d accomplished, but the truth was, we didn’t know each other well. And what I did know about her proved we were as different as two people could be. Aside from music, we basically had nothing in common.

Not that I was looking for forever—not with her, and not with anybody—but the night before had me thinking about more than just the here and now, something I’d ever only done once before. And that had been a lesson I wouldn’t soon forget. Not that Gage would ever let me. Which was why I was hesitant to confide in him now. But if anyone could set me to rights, it’d be my cousin.

“Dude, you’re playing with fire,” Gage said on the other end of the line. I heard passing cars in the background. “You know the rules.”

From the incessant honking and other ambient noise, I figured he was in the middle of a big city. Personally, not where I would have taken Charlotte to keep her out of danger, but Gage and I had operated on opposite spectrums. It was one of the reasons McClintock liked having both of us on his team. No matter the situation, chances were one of us would be able to handle it. It was only when we worked on the same detail that things got dicey. You could only have two alphas vying for control before all hell broke loose. Thankfully it had been awhile since Dermott had needed both of us in the same place at the sametime.

“What’s with you and the rules all of a sudden?” I asked. Gage had never met a rule he didn’t immediately try to break.

“I’m just saying, you shouldn’t get involved withher.”

I could sense there was something he wasn’t telling me, and that pissed me off. First, him keeping something important from me was pure bullshit. And second, the fact that he even knew something important to keep to himself meant he and Charlotte were getting close.

“Hypocritemuch?”

“For fuck’s sake, man. She’s got serious problems. I’m just looking out for you. Isn’t that what wedo?”

“What do you know about her problems?” I asked, suddenly desperate to hear any extra nugget Charlotte may have shared with him despite my misgivings about how he may have gottenit.

It was ridiculous, but like I said, Rae and I hadn’t exactly gotten to know each other. I could tell you everything about her body, every little sound she made, but her mind? Well, that was something I hadn’t tried to breach. We’d talked a bit here and there, but mostly I gave her space to work on her album while I went about my business.

Unfortunately, that business had me bored as fuck. I’d already made sure my studio was set up for whenever she wanted to start recording, and I performed my regular, three-times-daily perimeter walks with Blanche and Dorothy, but that was more about wanting something to do and needing to give the dogs their daily exercise than necessity.

Rae didn’t know it, but we weren’t the only ones out here. I had a whole team that reported to me—not Dermott—patrolling the property and monitoring all the roads in and out of this section of the forest. Dermott hated not being in charge of my men, but that was the price he paid for working with me. He could have me on retainer, but my guys were mine. Loyalty was something I didn’t take lightly.

“I know you think it’s cool to go through life living like a hermit, but that girl has a seriously fucked up past. If you ever picked up a magazine, you’d knowit.”

I had to bite my tongue around the urge to holler “Fake news!” Arguing with Gage was mostly a losing proposition, especially over something he’d read in the aisle of a grocery store or on some online forum. For some strange, inexplicable reason, the man lived for celebrity gossip. The fucker had a subscription to Celeb Weekly and everything, for fuck’s sake. If I hadn’t known better, I’d swear Gage was obsessed with that dude from The Ties ThatBind.

Briefly, I wondered if Gage had shared his celebrity fixation with Charlotte while she was dishing out gossip about her employer. And that was the third thing that didn’t sit well with me. If Charlotte was truly Rae’s best friend, why was she airing the woman’s dirty laundry?

Gage often used his dick in the line of duty, but Rae wasn’t part of a problem we were trying to solve. She was the person who needed our protection, which didn’t include using sex to get access to her secrets.

“I know all I need to know about Rae, so don’t you worry your pretty little head aboutit.”

“So you know she fucks around? Like, alot?”

I scoffed. “Says the man who slept with half of DC on his last detail.”

Gage laughed into the receiver. “Not half, just a quarter or so.” He paused as if reconsidering that number. “Okay, maybe a third.”

“Right,” I challenged. “It’s okay for you to fuck your way through the nation’s capital, but it’s not okay for her to enjoysex?”

“It’s different and you know it,” he argued.

“Watch out Gage, your misogyny is showing.”

“Fuck you!” he barked. “I love women.”

“No, you love fucking them Gage. There’s a huge difference between using them to get off and respecting their choices.”

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