Chapter 26 Mercy
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.”
He’s already nodding, desperate for surrender. I don’t let him speak. Instead, I back him toward the table, hands on his hips, and when the backs of his thighs hit solid wood, I hold him there and break the kiss.
“What are you—”
“Trust me.” The backs of my knees go liquid as I drop, slow, until I’m kneeling on the faded carpet.
And for a second I think about how Gabriel never let me lead. Never trusted me to know what I was doing, what he needed. Everything was about him and his needs.
But Cash? Cash is shaking above me, surrendering, trusting me to take care of him.
There’s something sacramental about it, a new religion stitched together with lust and the unspoken ache to make him whole.
I look up and see him scramble for the edge of the table for leverage. “You good?”
He nods, unable to unlock his jaw enough for words, and the plea in his eye makes any last hesitation in me vanish.
I undo his belt slowly, not teasing, just savoring the unfamiliar slide under my fingers.
His hands fist tighter on the edge of the table—white-knuckled, like he’s bracing for something catastrophic and beautiful at the same time.
I pull him free with as much care as I can, and the sound he makes is pure animal.
Pain, relief, need, everything at war inside him with nothing to muffle the edges.
I feel powerful, weirdly tender, wholly myself.
He’s not the only one who needs to erase the last twenty-four hours with skin and heat—my mind has been running in frantic hamster wheel circles, and right now the only thing I want is to flatten every memory of my old life, every inch of scorched earth and loss.
I trace the tip of my tongue lightly along the length of him, watching as he draws in a breath so rough it makes my own lungs seize in sympathy.
I flatten my tongue and lick a slow stripe up his length, sucking the head gently into my mouth.
It throbs, salt and desperation. He’s trembling, the tremors rolling down his stomach, and for the first time since this nightmare started I feel like I have something powerful—the ability to make him forget the world, to make him need me more than he needs to be strong or right or safe.
“Fuck, angel.” The words are a growl through gritted teeth. I slide my hand up the outside of his thigh, feeling the tension ready to snap. He tastes of sweat and longing, and as I take him deeper, I let my mouth go slack and my throat open up, giving him everything.
“Touch yourself,” he commands, and the rawness in his voice does something to me. Makes me want to give him whatever he needs. I hold his gaze for a long moment, then slide my hand down the front of my jeans.
“That’s my girl.”
I slip my fingers into the heat between my legs, and the relief is instant, a sharp, bright spike of pleasure that makes my eyes flutter closed for just a second.
But then I force them open again because I need to see him, need to watch what I’m doing to him as I work my fingers in slow circles while taking him deeper.
His hips jerk forward, just slightly, and I hum around him in approval. The vibration makes him curse, low and filthy, and his hand comes down to tangle in my hair.
“Jesus Christ, Mercy.” His voice is wrecked, barely more than a rasp. “You’re so fucking beautiful like this.”
I take him deeper, feeling my jaw ache in the best way as I hollow my cheeks and suck in slow, steady pulses.
Above me, Cash’s hand strokes clumsy through my hair, sometimes gripping too hard and then going gentle, like he can’t decide if he wants to keep control or lose it completely.
I glance up, and the look on his face makes my own pleasure spike.
I want to ruin him, to rebuild him. To be the one thing in this world that no one can ever steal from him, not with a badge, not with a gun, not with a match and gasoline.
I hum around him, and his hips jerk. I can feel myself getting wetter, my fingers moving faster as I match the movement of my mouth.
“That’s it.” His voice drops lower, dirtier. “Want to watch you fall apart while I come down your throat.”
I’m so close. My rhythm stutters as pleasure builds, my hand working faster between my legs. I take him as deep as I can, eyes watering as his grip tightens in my hair.
“Mercy, I’m gonna—”
I don’t pull back. Just keep that steady suction as he comes down my throat, groaning despite clearly trying to stay quiet. The sound of him losing control pushes me over, and I shudder against my hand, clit pulsing, a muffled moan escaping as I work us both through the aftershocks.
When I sit back, Cash sags against the table, hands braced behind him, chin tipped to the ceiling like he’s praying to a god he doesn’t believe in. I wipe my mouth on the back of my wrist and get to my feet, legs shaky.
He lifts his head and looks at me, smile lopsided and soft around the edges.
“Come here,” he murmurs, and tugging me into a kiss, slow and deep.
When he finally pulls back, he doesn’t let go—his thumb smoothing across my cheek, his other hand pressed to the small of my back like he’s afraid I’ll be snatched away if he stops holding on.
“Are you OK?” I whisper, brushing damp hair away from his forehead.
He laughs, breath hot against my lips. “I feel fucking incredible.”
Someone pounds on the door hard enough to rattle the hinges. I freeze, but Cash just groans and zips up, braced on the table with both hands, blinking like a guy who’s just taken an uppercut to the soul.
I scramble to fix my shirt and smooth my hair, heat flushing up my neck. The knocking comes again, more insistent.
“Occupied,” he calls, but his tone says fuck off and die. I can’t help laughing into his shirt.
“Open up, it’s Bones. Stone’s on his way down the hall and I am not stalling him while you put your dick away, Cash.”
Cash snickers and finishes buckling his jeans just as I unlock the door and let Bones in. He immediately clocks the flush on my face and the state of disarray in the room, and shakes his head with a long-suffering sigh.
“Classy, kids,” he mutters, but his eyes are almost fond. “Wipe the drool off each other and get to the war room, Stone’s got something.”