Page 28 of Begging for Mercy
Tilting her head to the side, she considers my question for a few silent seconds. “I don’t know.” She meets my gaze as she pushes herself out of her chair and picks up my shirt off the floor. After inspecting it for a moment, she hands it to me. “But maybe we should ask.”
I roll my eyes, and she pinches my side. “I’m serious! Maybe they’ll tell us!”
“Maybe they’lllieto us.” Shaking my head, I crumble my shirt into a tight ball. “Whatever, Mercy, if you want to ask, go ahead. But I don’t think they’ll be honest with you. We’ll have to figure them out on our own.” I hate the idea that pops into my head, but I say it out loud anyway, hoping that Mercy will say no. “We could invite them out, or something. Observe them up close.”
The last thing I want to do is hang out with Reaper and his brother, but if it helps Mercy make them fall in love with her… I clench my jaw and quickly rewrite that sentence in my head.
If it helps us convince them not to kill us… thenfine.I’ll try anything.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Mercy admits, actually fucking agreeing with me. Great.
At least let me turn this into something for me, too. “Does it count as a date if they’re third and fourth wheeling?”
“Who says it’s a date?”
I bend at the waist to reach Mercy’s height. “I do. I want to take you on a date.”
Mercy quickly averts her eyes. “You don’t have to do that.”
Puzzled, I gently cup her chin and turn her face back towards mine. “Do what?”
“Pretend that you like me.” Sighing, she takes a step backwards, putting distance between us. “The hand job was nice—thank you for that—and you can still come over to hang out after practice, but we don’t have to play the game with each other. You don’t need to fall in love with me.”
I tap the hollow of her cheek with my fingertips. “Mercy. That wasn’t part of the deal.” I brush my thumb across the seam of her lips. “I’m supposed to makeyoufall in love withme, remember? And I’d like to try. Won’t you let me?”
Her eyes shimmer like crystals in the sunlight. “Why would you want to?”
Sighing, I try to hide my smile. “Because I actually like you, Mercy. I didn’t kiss you last year by accident. I wanted to date you then, and I still want to date you now.” I link our hands together and press a gentle kiss to the edge of her lips, tempted to take more, but knowing that I shouldn’t. I don’t want our second first-kiss to be in an empty office in some stuffy campus building.
I want to kiss her on a real date.
“Go out with me,” I insist, “and let me prove it to you.”
She looks like a deer caught in headlights, and it’s so fucking cute. “Okay. We can… date.”
If I’m being honest, I don’t know if she’s ever had a boyfriend before, but I hope that if I make the cut. I’d love to brighten her life the same way that she’s brightened mine. As long as those other two men keep their dicks in their pants and their hearts to themselves, I’ll go as slow as Mercy needs me to.
But the minute either of them tries to take her from me, I can’t risk going slow and steady. I’ll have to dive in and drag Mercy under with me. It’s the only way I know how to survive.
Chapter 11
Zane
The gravestoneson the Morningstar property are set in uneven rows that curve along the natural slope of the mountain. Whoever first dug them—likely long dead by now—had the impossible task of breaking ground in a terrible location. By the looks of it, no one has ever tried to correct the original owner’s mistakes, choosing to keep to the lines crooked, curving, and completely fucking annoying to look at.
I take a pull from my cigarette and blow the smoke into the air. If Kane were here, he’d call the entire propertyart, declaring that it holds humanity’s very essence within its soil. Imperfection, as he puts it, is part of the wholebeing humanexperience. We aren’t meant to create flawless works of art. We’re only meant to live in these imperfect moments and somehow be happy about it.
Scoffing, I walk the rows of graves for the third time, aimlessly giving my feet something to do while my mind wanders. As I move between the narrow paths, I fiddle with the cameras in my pocket. They’re small enough that no one should notice them planted around the house. Getting to know Mercy’s habits when she thinks no one is looking will tell us everythingwe need to know about her to make her fall for Kane… and I can keep an eye on her to make sure she keeps her promise.
Not a promise, I remind myself, frowning. The condition I set for the game. Refusing to sleep with Kane.
I scrub my hand down my face and crouch in front of a newer headstone, brushing off its face to read the engraving. The name and dates don’t mean anything to me, but I know they meant something to someone, once upon a time. I brush the remaining dirt and debris from the stone before turning to the plot itself. The grass is overgrown, the autumn leaves are threatening to take over, and the scent of natural decay hangs in the air. Someone’s been neglecting their groundskeeper duties.
It’s easy to find a shed off to the side with a rake and a dust brush. I start by clearing the tombstones of dirt and cobwebs, then I move on to the leaves, raking them into tall piles along the far edges of each row. This isn’t why I came here today—but it’s a good distraction from my thoughts.
Are Kane and Mercy together right this very second? Is he flirting with her, or is he actually going to take things slow for once? With Mercy, I feel like my entire world has been flipped upside-down and turned inside-out. The normal rules don’t apply with her, and it leaves me feeling like a boat being tossed around in a stormy sea.
At the mercy of things beyond my control.
