Chapter Four
Then…
“Mmm… no,” I whine, raspy and petulant. Frowning, I roll over, stuffing my face into the pillow. “Not yet…”
The deep, sexy rumbles and rustling of cozy blankets are being drowned out by that insufferable beeping. Annoying as shit.
A heavy arm around my waist pulls me closer. I want nothing more than to stay like this, because I can feel a distinct rock-hard object jamming into my ass, and it has me thrumming below the waist.
That goddamn beeping, though…
“Kemper,” I growl. He hums, clearly half-conscious, kissing my shoulder. It feels awesome, but now Sobaka is barking at the alarm, and it’s way too early for all this noise. “Shut it off.”
Kemper sighs, brushing his lips over my ear.
“Yes, sir Luscious.” He’s moving in slow motion as he shifts away to turn the damn thing off.
“Sobaka,” he snaps. “Give it a rest. You’re bothering other Daddy.
” Nestling up behind me once more, he resumes his kissing and rubbing his morning wood on me. “He woke up grumpy.”
A tired chuckle puffs from my lips, my frustration easing now that the stupid alarm is no longer screaming at me. “Sorry…”
“Perfectly alright, sexy ass,” he croons, and I laugh some more. “I know how to handle you when you’re like this.”
Grinning sleepily, I arch my back to grind my butt on his deliciously large cock.
“You mean by handling this…?” I take his hand in mine, bringing it around to my front so he can feel that I’m now equally hard.
His chest vibrates into my back. Tired or not, I’m squirming.
Kellan Kemper has the uncanny ability to get me all the way up, no matter what.
“Or wrapping my lips around it,” he rumbles, amusement audible in his deep brogue, extra gravelly and erotic first thing in the morning. God, I love it. It fills my dick almost as much as the way he’s massaging it right now. “A blowjob does wonders for grouchiness.”
“True.” I bite my lip. “All Oscar The Grouch needed was for Grover to get on his knees in that trashcan and throat some puppet dick.” Kemper snorts on the nape of my neck. “Oscar The Chill As Fuck in ten minutes.”
“That’s disturbing, Luscious,” he teases. “He lives in garbage.”
“I didn’t say it would taste good.” I shrug.
“Jesus…” He grunts and mimics a gag.
I chuckle, rolling onto my back to gaze up at him, blinking at his beautiful face, and the way he’s glowing down at me, brighter than the rays of sunshine streaming in through our partially drawn curtains.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he hums, brushing messy strands of pink hair from my forehead.
“It is now.” My fingers treasure the curves of muscle in his chest, grazing up his neck and jaw. I touch his lips and bites my fingertip playfully.
“Why’d you schedule the meeting so early when you know you prefer sleeping in?” He cocks a stern I know you better than you know yourself brow at me, and I huff.
“I figured it’d be fine.” I rub my eyes. “But I barely got an hour last night. By the time I finally fell asleep, the alarm was going off.”
A frown tugs his lips into this Kemper-pout that warms my chest with how adorable it is, and how unbearably sweet it is that he truly hates when I’m even the slightest bit unhappy or stressed. If Kemper had his way, I’d be living in Utopia, orgasming and eating ice cream twenty-four hours a day.
Unrealistic, yes, but he pampers me enough to get pretty dang close.
“That’s upsetting,” he grumbles. “I could’ve sworn I fucked you into at least a few solid hours of sated slumber.”
I laugh, and he cracks a tiny smirk. “Uh, no. That was you.” I’m grinning while he scowls at me. “I was energized. While you were snoring, I went out to the garage and picked accent colors for the Corvette.”
“You left the bed??” He gasps.
Dog barks, jumping onto the bed.
I’m cackling. “Please stop.”
“Ugh, sorry.” Kemper rolls his eyes, sitting up to tend to Sobaka. “Daddy didn’t leave, child. He’s right here.”
Dog’s tail is wagging as he rolls around, being the hyperactive nutball desperate for attention that he is—even more so in the morning.
Normally we’re pretty early risers, mainly because we like to take our time in the shower. We sleep in on weekends, but during the week, Kemper’s up by eight at the latest, and I’m not far behind him.
Sobaka, on the other hand, likes to be up when the stock market opens so he can check on his investments.
“He was out like a light too!” I gripe. “Everyone’s been sleeping soundly except me.”
The humor dissolves, and I witness Kemper swallowing. “I wish I could ease your mind, baby Luscious. I hate it when you stress…”
“I’m aware,” I force myself to tease, though it’s strained.
Because I am stressed. I don’t want to be, but it’s tough.
I’ve been overcome with worry for weeks now… Shit, months.
Something is wrong… I can feel it in my bones.
But, like I have been since our phone calls began going unanswered, I attempt to push it out of my head, showing my fiancé a smile that’s certified organic. Because if anyone can draw me out of the depths of distress, it’s Kellan freaking Kemper.
“You know, the meeting’s not until ten…” I lick my lip, taunting his deep blue gaze. “If you fuck me on the kitchen counter while I make your breakfast, that’s like, two birds with one stone, right?”
Kemper rumbles a seductive chuckle, dropping his hungry mouth to my throat. “That’s mighty pragmatic of you… 101.”
Shivering, I rake my fingers through his golden hair while he kisses lower, teasing my chest and pushing my thighs apart roughly enough that I gasp. “Mmff… fuck me, Officer…”
Chest kisses evolve into him kissing my dick, and before you know it, it’s in his mouth and he’s sucking the stress right out of me.
Not the plan, but it works wonders. I make it to my meeting with only seconds to spare, sore muscles and sufficiently drained balls.
For a hot second, it’s looking like I might win this round of Dascha versus Overthinking. But then my new potential client gives me the details of the job.
“So I’m thinking candy apple red,” Rodrigo—this dude who collects classic cars I met through another customer—says, paying for both of our coffees at the truck we always go to, just up the beach from our house.
“Gracias,” I murmur, taking a tentative sip. It kinda burns, but it’s too good to wait.
“De nada. With the shimmer. Tu sabes? Like that old school vibe… And the pin-striping to match the wheels.”
I nod along with his ideas, already visualizing it in my head. “What kind of car is it again?”
“A sixty-seven SS,” he tells me, and I pause. “Chevelle.”
Fuck.
I fix my face before he realizes that I’m gaping at him.
But it doesn’t stop my brain from fixating on that one word, spiraling around it for the duration of our meeting.
A meeting that has absolutely nothing to do with that island, or my friends back in New York, whom I haven’t heard from in weeks.
Overthinking: 1. Dascha… 0.
When I get home, my mind is tired, but my body is jacked with nervous energy. I take Sobaka for a walk to clear my head, but it’s not really working. I wind up pacing in such aggressive circles that Dog thinks it’s a game, and I’m making myself fucking dizzy.
It’s not good. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been in psychosis in the last year, since I started taking my meds more consistently and seeing a shrink.
But times of high stress have the potential to trigger me, medication or not, and the way these thoughts are becoming louder and louder inside my skull is reminiscent of uglier times.
The fact is, we haven’t been able to get ahold of anyone on Alabaster Isle in weeks. And even before the radio silence, things weren’t exactly going well over there. Last we’d heard, the Warden had brought in a team of new guards—cartel men, hired as a giant middle finger to Velle and his team.
Joy told us they were basically demoted. The Ivory’s guys had taken over everything, which really sucked because things had actually been looking up prior to that.
I think maybe we were all a bit naive in assuming Manuel Blanco would stay quiet, after everything that happened, the blowout with Velle in particular.
Kemper told me that The Ivory views them all as his property, but no one more than John Chevelle.
As far as Manuel Blanco is concerned, Velle belongs at his feet.
His pet standing up and saying fuck you to his master while usurping control of the Pen for himself clearly didn’t sit well with the Warden.
Joy insisted that they’d been planning for this; an inevitable retaliation from The Ivory. But the last time Kemper spoke to her, she told us he’d kicked them out of the mansion.
Fucking evicted, literally. They were now homeless, on an island in the middle of nowhere, no less.
It’s completely fucked up, but even more so because we haven’t been able to reach her since. None of them…
Kemper’s tried Joy’s phone dozens of times. Peters, Hancock, Jasper, even Velle… He can’t get ahold of anyone. All of their phones are either disconnected or going straight to voicemail.
And then there was the storm.
We didn’t heard about it until about a week later, but apparently there’d been this awful storm that hit the east coast right around the time they started ghosting. I’m not sure what it means, but I’m convinced it’s not good.
I just can’t shake the feeling that something bad happened. I’ve been fighting it off as best I can, trying hard to be in the moment, here, and just live.
We had a great Valentine’s Day, made some new friends, partied like the goddamn heathens that we are. But now that it’s over, I have nothing to hide behind. All of my worries are at the forefront once more.
They’re in trouble. They need us.
Shuffling back in from our walk, Dog is scampering around me, but I’m distracted as shit. He’s barking and I’m yanking my hair in my fists.
“Sobaka, tishina,” I grumble. “I’m trying to think here.”