Page 20 of Dagger in the Sea

“Hmm. Ass.”

She flipped over onto her knees, and I spread her ass cheeks and spit, carefully fingering her tight hole. “Have you done this before?”

“Yes.” She rocked her ass back and forth.

“My fucking lucky night then.” I had lube ready and squished a dollop into her. I slid my dick in between her ass cheeks, and stroked. She moaned, rocking against me, and I got hard again. Condom on, I nudged my cock past her tight ring, inch by slow inch.

“Play with your clit,” I gritted out.

Pleasure pulsated through me as she began to push back, her grip strangling my hard length, her hand working fast between her legs.

Robot.

Robot.

Hollow robot.

Fuck you, Ciara, for your tears.

Fuck you, Serena, for making me want to want more.

Gripping her hips tightly, I pulled out slowly. “With every pound of my cock, you fucking moan.”

She moaned.

I controlled my orgasm. I wanted this one long, long, long, and hard won.

She pressed her head against the sofa for stability, her hand steadily working between her legs, as I burrowed deep into her perfect tightness, finally allowing myself to blow.

I released her. “Bedroom. This way.” I pointed toward my guest bedroom.

She tottered in there on her heels, her ripped panty hanging on an ankle, a damp sheen in between her legs. My artwork in the making. I followed her into the room, pushing her back on the bed, and she lay there, hips twisting, tattoos fluttering on her flesh.

Reminding me ofher. Serena’s face flooded my vision.

It all started when Serena had come to me one night. She’d never spoken to me before, but that night she asked me for a favor. Not your everyday request from a friend of your girlfriend’s.Could you get me a cab? Could you make me a reservation at that hot new restaurant I can’t get into? Could you pick us up from the nightclub because we’ve had too much to drink?Those were normal requests. No, not Serena.

She asked me to get rid of a dead body in her apartment because she didn’t want the police involved.

The moment she’d entered the restaurant where I was enjoying a glass of wine at the bar and her eyes locked on mine, I knew she neededme. I sensed it immediately—she was full of desperate hope, full of hopeless desperation. She had the keen, quiet determination of a lioness with the startling calmness of an ordinary cat, but for the first time, there was a scent of vulnerability about her that put the bouquet of my Cabernet to shame.

Something inside me flared awake, a slick of pleasure washing through me, unlike any I had ever known.

I agreed instantly to her request, eager to see the consequences of her wrath. At her trashed and blood-filled tiny apartment, I’d recognized the club tattoos on her victim’s burly body. I knew there was a story there, not the bullshit one she told me. I would unwind the truth from her tightly fisted hands, loosen it from those sensual lips.

And I did.

I was like a dog with a barbecued pork bone. I chewed deeper, chasing the flavor, and got to the delicious marrow. Serena was Med McGuire’s former “old lady.” He’d kidnapped her as a teenager and kept her, abusing her for years, until she’d escaped and landed in Chicago.

Initially, I had fully intended on making her pay her debt to me for cleaning it all up in a number of satisfying, interesting ways, but an alternate plan had unfolded before me like a mathematical equation suddenly clarified. To have insider information from an intimate source on this mysterious legendary outlaw who worked with our rivals was a priceless opportunity.

The things I could do with that sort of information. I would do them all, and the Boss would be not only impressed, but grateful, so fucking grateful. As time went on, I’d realized, much to my surprise, that I had an ulterior motive in terrorizing Med and ruining his business—I wanted to make him suffer for what he’d done to Serena. Emotionally, physically, sexually. A compulsion to satisfy her with his torture overtook me. I would make him pay and make her smile. A dark mission from my dark heart. An unspeakable gift.

I’d promised her he’d pay, and I sensed her tense excitement. It was in her silence, in her tripping breath, the slow blink of those eyes, her stillness. I knew.

She agreed to rat on him.

By killing Med I’d gotten rid of a cockroach in the crap apartment of life and cut off a vital circuit on the motherboard of the Tantucci network. But what had given me the most pleasure was the simpler thing. It remained through the flames and the smoke—I’d done a good deed for a good woman. That actuallyfeltgood,and in a wholly new and different way. Surprising. Worthy of a grand statement kill, worthy of risking the fallout.

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