Chapter 12
Brawley
Kayla takes a few steps backward as the impact of Clay’s shot registers, red dripping down her shoulder. She smirks and lifts her gun as she fires toward us, then turns and runs.
“First to catch my paper-cut princess gets to fuck her,” Vero says and takes off after her.
“Catch me if you can, suckers,” Kayla yells out from somewhere in the darkness.
Clay, Ares, and I all look at each other, then we must all have a fuck-it moment at the same time.
I’m surprised Clay joins us, though he has complained so many times that the women he fucks bolt when he gets a little rough.
I get it, but though I love violence and it turns me on, I am capable of fucking without it.
Clay is wired differently and has convinced himself that if he lets his guard down and catches feelings, it will make him weak.
He has it completely wrong. I am head over fucking heels in love with Vero, though god knows why, as he’s a lot to deal with.
Every day when I open my eyes and see his face staring up at me, my heart skips a beat.
Loving him doesn’t make me weak. If anything, it makes me stronger, but since I live for violence, it works out well for me.
I don’t follow the others; I already know where she is heading. She will go where she thinks Vero will go, as he is her safe space amongst us.
I make my way to the tanker, keeping an eye out for her and the others, though so far I see no one. The hatch to the tanker is already open, and as I pull myself up and inside, Kayla spins around.
Her back hits the curved wall, paintball gun raised and aimed directly at my chest.
I hold up both my hands slowly.
Kayla’s chest is heaving—she is clearly not a runner—and the red paint has dried in streaks down her shoulder and across her collarbone. She looks absolutely feral, and I understand now why Vero is so infatuated with her.
“Not who you were expecting?”
“No,” she admits, not lowering the gun.
“You can put that down,” I say, but she just raises a brow at me, mistrust written all over her face.
“Give me a good reason why I should.”
I take a cautious step toward her; the tanker is bigger than I expected. “Because I’m not here to shoot you, but I would like to fuck with Vero a little. Call it payback, if you will.”
“So you’re using me?”
I shrug. “Maybe. But maybe I am also curious. What is it about you that has Vero looking at you with hearts in his eyes?”
“You’re jealous,” she quips, and I laugh.
“Not exactly. I eliminate threats. Are you a threat to me, Double P?”
“No. If I thought I was causing issues, I would walk away. I want what you two have, but not at your expense.”
“Then I think we should give him a taste of his own medicine.”
She smiles and crosses the space, putting her paintball gun down. Then she presses her hands to my chest and pushes me backward until I am seated on a tiny bench seat that barely fits my ass, and she straddles my lap.
Before we get a chance to say or do anything more, a thump on the side of the tanker has us both looking toward the hatch. Vero’s head appears, his gaze moving from her to me and back again, then he grins. It’s unhinged, just the way I expected.
“Look at you two,” he says, before dropping himself inside headfirst and crashing to the floor. “My favorite person in the world and my new second favorite. And you’re already in position.”
He pushes up from the floor and moves toward us. With the three of us in here, the space feels a lot smaller than it did a minute ago. He stops behind Kayla and ducks his head down to the curve of her neck, his eyes finding mine over her shoulder. “Are we doing this?”
We become a tangle of bodies as I nod and reach for the hem of her tank.
She lifts her arms up and I pull it over her head as Vero unclips her bra from behind.
I pull her closer, and her hands slide up my chest, scrunching the material of my shirt as she gathers it up, then removes it completely.
She runs her eyes over my chest as Vero moves his mouth down her spine.
His hands come around to the front of her pants, popping them open, and between the two of us we get her out of her clothes.
Kayla sits back on my lap with zero self-consciousness, staring at me with blue eyes I swear are almost green, and I can understand why she has even Clay all up in his feelings. She is fucking stunning.
“You going to take those off?” she says, nodding at my pants.
“When I’m ready,” I growl, and as she raises a brow at me, Vero laughs silently against her shoulder blade.
I take my time, moving my hands over her body. It’s been so long since I enjoyed the feel of a female beneath me. I trace the lines of her tattoos, and she shivers beneath my touch.
Vero crouches behind her, watching the way my hands roam over her skin. “Look at her,” he says, running his hands up her sides. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful in your lap?”
“Careful,” I warn him—he knows I hate it when he lessens how I feel about him.
He grins at me over her shoulder. “I’m just saying, look at her.
” He turns his face into her neck. “You have no idea what it’s doing to me, watching you two together.
I have been thinking about this for what feels like forever.
It’s so much better than I pictured in my head.
Ask Brawley how much I have been talking about it. ”
“He talks about you constantly,” I confirm.
“Every single day,” Vero says against her skin, and his hands slide around her front and palm her breasts, taking over so my hands are now free to move to her thighs, spreading them wider across my lap.
She lets her head fall back against his shoulder.
“You have no idea how good you look right now.”
“Vero,” she whispers.
“Yeah?”
“Less talking.”
He laughs into her neck, then bites down softly, and she shivers. I run my hands up the inside of her thighs slowly, and she makes a frustrated sound in her throat.
“She’s impatient,” Vero tells me, like I didn’t hear the sound myself.
“I’m right here,” she says.
“Oh, I know exactly where you are,” I say, finally moving my hands where she wants them, and she exhales as I work her pussy until she is wet and squirming in my lap.
Vero watches over her shoulder with his bottom lip caught between his teeth.
When she is close, I pull my hand back and undo my pants, shifting my cock out between us.
Vero lifts her from behind and positions her over me, and she lowers down slowly around my rock-hard shaft as every thought I have exits my body. I was not prepared. Not for how her body feels against mine, or for how my hands sink into her hips before my brain catches up to what my body is doing.
I look at Vero, but he is right there, his chin hooked over her shoulder and his eyes fixed on mine.
It’s like he was waiting for me to look up, knowing I would need him.
He gazes at me the way he always does, as if I am the center of his universe, and that settles me.
He nods, and I exhale through my nose, bringing myself back to the moment.
Kayla is warm against me, and it’s unexpectedly pleasant.
Vero wants me to want her, and I would do anything for him.
This situation isn’t complicated, and my head is trying to make it something it’s not.
I’m not built for pulling things apart and examining them; I am built for acting and enduring, protecting what is mine.
Right now, what’s mine is watching me over Kayla’s shoulder with those big brown eyes.
I shift my grip higher, encircling her waist, and stop thinking.
Vero takes Kayla’s hips as she moves on my lap, finding her rhythm, and I let her set it for a little while to see what she does. She doesn’t rush, moving like she knows exactly what she wants and is taking it.
Sliding one hand up her spine, I press between her shoulder blades, bringing her chest flush with mine. Her mouth finds the side of my neck, and her breath tickles against my skin every time she exhales. The sounds she makes are quiet and nothing like what I expected.
I take over the pace, moving my hands to her hips and tangling them in Vero’s.
Kayla makes a sound against my neck that she didn’t intend—I can tell by the way she presses her face harder into my throat. I tilt her hips and continue my same pace and motion. Her fingers curl into my shoulders, and she stops trying to be quiet.
“That’s it, let go for me,” I say against her hair.
Vero leans over her shoulder and holds his fingers out toward me. “Spit.”
Kayla lifts her head, but I hold his gaze as I lean forward and spit on his fingers. He moves his hand behind her, and I feel her tense slightly. Though I keep my hands on her hips, I focus on what Vero is doing, how he presses his forehead to the back of her shoulder.
“Okay?” he murmurs.
She nods, fingers tensing and digging into my pecs. “Don’t stop.”
I keep her distracted, bucking up into her until the tension leaves her body and she is pushing back against him.
“So fucking perfect. Take notes, babe. Now this is how you act when someone puts their fingers in your ass. You don’t threaten to murder them,” Vero sasses.
Kayla snorts and I grit my teeth, then she does something with her hips and my eyes roll back in my head.
“I need to be inside her,” Vero groans out. “I have used all my patience and my cock hurts.”
“You have never had patience,” I grit out. Fuck, she feels so good.
“Exactly, so you understand this is now life or death.”
Kayla laughs and shifts forward in my lap. As Vero positions himself behind her, she exhales and leans into my body.
“Oh, fuck,” Vero moans, and Kayla goes completely still. Her hands come up to my collarbones, and her nails dig into my shoulders.
“Are you okay?” Vero asks, forehead pressed against the back of her neck, his hands trembling slightly.
“Give me a second,” she breathes.
We do as she asks, then Vero presses his lips to her shoulder. When she rolls her hips forward, we know she’s ready.
Vero sets a rough pace, and I meet his every movement with my own. She takes it with her face buried in my neck and her nails dragging lines down my shoulders. I tighten my grip on her hips until she is making that sound again, and Vero groans behind her.
Kayla is getting close; I can tell by the way she tightens around me and the way her breathing changes. She lifts her head from my neck and opens her eyes, and that’s when she goes completely still.
She is looking over my shoulder at the window, where she holds eye contact with whatever she sees. But Kayla doesn’t stop moving, continuing until she comes apart completely, her body shuddering between us.
Vero follows right behind her, his forehead dropping to her shoulder, and I’m right behind him.
The three of us remain tangled together, breathing hard, until finally Vero lifts his head to look at me and mouth: “I told you so.”
The first paintball hits the side of the tank, echoing like a gunshot.
Kayla jolts upright. “What the fuck?!” she yells.
The second one comes through the open hatch above us, exploding red across the wall six inches from my head.
“CLAY!” Kayla screams, detaching herself from us as quickly as possible given our compromising position, then scrambles sideways.
More shots are fired, hitting all three of us. Vero loses his mind laughing, already pulling his clothes toward him across the floor. “I told you he was a sore loser.”
Another shot hits Vero’s thigh, and his laughter gets louder and more unhinged. He looks genuinely delighted.
“GET. DRESSED.” Clay’s voice comes from above us, flat and unamused. “We have a problem.”
Vero’s laughter cuts off, and we look at each other. Kayla is already pulling her shirt over her head when she hisses through her teeth, then her hand drops to her ribs on her left side. She pulls her shirt back up, and we see a small spot of red that’s not paint.
“It’s fine,” she says.
Vero crouches in front of her. “Let me see.”
She lets him examine her, and he prods around it gently, but she hisses again. The paintball split the skin, not deeply, but enough to bleed. Vero glares up at me, and I scowl toward the hatch where Ares has appeared, right as he drops inside.
He crosses to Kayla and crouches in front of her, moving Vero’s hand aside. He looks at it himself, his jaw tight.
“It needs to be cleaned,” he says.
“I said it’s fine.”
“I said it needs to be cleaned.” He doesn’t raise his voice, simply stands up and patiently holds his hand out to her.
Kayla looks at his hand, then up at his face, and I see something pass between them. She takes his hand, and he pulls her up, steering her toward the hatch without looking back.
Vero appears at my shoulder, still pulling his shirt on. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“When you say nothing, it means it’s something.”
Ares helps Kayla through the hatch, one hand steady on her back.
He is focused on her in the same way he focuses on a problem he is trying to solve.
It’s not his normal act. I almost tell Vero, knowing he would pester Ares into sharing with him what’s going on, but I want to see how this plays out.
So instead, I file it away for later and pull on my shirt.
“Let’s go find out what Clay’s problem is now.”