Page 78 of Burned in Stone
MERCY
I’ve always known Gabriel to be a smart man—most narcissistic abusers are, to some extent—but I also knew him to be arrogant. That’s why, when we first sat down in the big meeting room the MC calls their chapel, I fully expected to see his smug face plastered across the security feed. Instead, hours later, we’re still scrolling through footage with little more than a few shadowy figures in uniforms to show for it.
Part of me is disappointed. I wanted to see his face on that screen. Wanted the satisfaction of catching him red-handed, arrogant enough to think he’d never face consequences. But another part of me—the part that spent years learning how that man operates—isn’t surprised at all. He’s always been careful. Always had someone else do his dirty work while he played the hero cop.
But that’s fine. We don’t need his face on camera. We just need the thread that connects him to the fire. One thread, and the whole carefully constructed image he’s built will unravel.
Cash, pale but determined, has two monitors running at once. Josie sits at the head of the table, fielding phone calls between muttered legal notes. I’m supposed to be cataloging suspicious vehicles, but the feeds all start to blur together with the same flicker of taillights, the same sad parade of night-owl delivery drivers and drunks. Every hour or so, Stone comes in to check progress, never saying much but always leaving a gravity behind. Ginger sweeps through once with a tray of soup and grilled cheese that we only half eat.
“I need to stretch my legs,” Josie says, standing up, reaching her arms over her head like a cat in a power suit. “If anyone wants a break, now’s the time.” She doesn’t wait for us to answer, just grabs her messenger bag, tucks a phone between shoulder and ear, and sweeps out, already barking at someone named Reggie about court filings and preemptive restraining orders.
The silence that follows is sticky. Cash wipes a hand down his face, groaning quietly. “If I have to watch one more hour of delivery drivers scratching their asses, I’m going to hollow out my skull and use it as an ashtray.”
I stand and roll my neck, feeling it crackle with the fatigue of staring at blurry screens for seven straight hours. “Let’s take a break too,” I say, grabbing Cash’s hand and tugging him gently out of his chair. He resists at first, then lets me help him stand, taking that opportunity to catch my face in both hands and kiss me so deep the world falls out from under my feet.
This isn’t a grateful, I’m alive kind of kiss. It’s raw and hungry, like he’s starved for touch after hours caged with only screens and grief. Maybe he is. I’m not picky. I let him have me, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, pressing up until I’m fused to him from collarbone to hip.
When he finally lets up, neither of us breathes for a second. I open my eyes to find him looking back, the pupil in his good eye wide and wild, like he’s only half here in the room.
“Sorry,” he says, which is a lie. “You just—fuck, I needed that.”
I shake my head, breathless and grinning. “You’re going to split your lip open again.”
“Worth it,” he mutters, voice an octave lower than I’m used to. Something about it makes my core go liquid. I could blame exhaustion or stress, but the truth is that any time Cash is within arm’s reach, my impulses become single-minded and primal.
He leans his forehead against mine, our breath mingling. Both of us are swaying on our feet, and for a minute there’s nothing outside the radius of our bodies. I want to tell him again how much I hated seeing him bruised and bleeding. How the idea of losing him keeps flaring up inside me, as bright and merciless as a welding torch. But I don’t. The words would scramble whatever fragile hold he has on composure, and right now he needs the illusion of being unbreakable more than he needs honesty.
“Lock the door, angel.”
I do, palm flat to the cold metal, then press my back against it as Cash stalks me the two steps across the chapel.
“Are you sure about this? You’re injured,” I say, just needing to get it out. And his answer is to pin me there with his hips and kiss me again, deeper if possible, one hand tangled in my hair. It’s wild how easy it is to let go of fear in the clinch of his arms, how I can taste adrenaline on his tongue and not mind one bit.
“God, Mercy,” he mutters, mouth skimming my jaw, my cheek, down to my throat. His weight is solid, safe, and he holds me just tight enough that the world could burn behind this door and I wouldn’t care.
His hands slide under my shirt, palms hot against my skin. My body answers him before I can, instinctual. The damage to his ribs makes him wince when I press close, but it’s as if the pain sharpens his desire instead of dulling it, and I feel that current pass through both of us. A live wire humming at the edge of recklessness.
“Maybe we should stop,” I whisper, but my hands have found their way under his shirt, and I’m greedy for all the heat of his skin, the impossible, perfect feel of him solid and real. “You just had your stomach rearranged by a bunch of rent-a-cops posing as tough guys. You should be in bed, not?—”
He cuts me off by rolling his hips, pinning me tighter. “If you say ‘bed rest,’ I’m going to get very creative about how I define it.” The hand in my hair tilts my head back and his teeth graze my neck, and I go molten from ears to ankles.
I’m not sure whose moan slips out first—his or mine. I barely notice locking my fingers behind his neck, yanking him down for another kiss that’s all clash and teeth. I want him bruised into me, mapped in fingerprints and aftershocks. I want him stitched into my body so I never have to worry about losing him to anyone, especially not the ghosts in his head or mine.
We stagger backward, knocking an MC memorabilia shadow box off the wall. Neither of us cares. He fumbles, then moves to lift me onto the heavy oak table where the club signs all its deals. But that’s when his body stops him and he lets out a sharp grunt. “Fuck.”
He tightens his grip on my hips instead, slowing the kiss, then anchoring his forehead against my collarbone. His breathing is ragged, chest swelling against my palms as he fights the pain and whatever else is eating him alive from the inside.
“Do you want to stop?” I run my hands through his hair as he shakes against me.
“No,” he bites out. “I want… Fuck.”
“Say it, baby,” I whisper, palming his jaw with both hands. “Tell me what you want.”
He huffs an unsteady laugh and tries for cocky, but it comes out raw. “I want to fuck you right here. I want to think about nothing except how it feels to be inside you. Please, angel. I need—I just need you now.”
If I’d had even a gram of dignity left, it’d be gone, scattered like confetti on the long table between us. I know we’ve got fifteen minutes, max, before Josie or Stone or anyone comes back. But none of that matters when Cash’s breath is ragged in my ear and his hands are shaking on my hips, fighting pain and need in equal measure. I want to give him something that makes the rest of it disappear, even if only for one brief, bright instant.
I press my lips to his ear, and I feel the shiver that racks him to his core. “OK,” I whisper, letting the word thrum in the hollow of his jaw. “But you have to let me drive. You tell me if anything hurts or if you need to stop.”
