Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
VIVIAN
The tall stranger by the black Tahoe holding up the arrivals pick-up line crows, “See, officer, there’s my little buttercup.”
Grinning from ear to ear, he clamps his hand down on the irate airport officer’s shoulder. “Told you my missus would be right out. And look at her pretty smile; yep, she sure missed me.”
Shit, now I’m forced to smile as the officer fumes at Jace’s friend—I sure hope he’s Jace’s friend.
Taking the handle of my suitcase while opening the passenger door for me, he gestures like a footman to a queen. “Hop in, darlin’. Daddy needs to get you home so you can unzip his big welcome gift for ya.”
I halt. About to give him a piece of my mind and my ass turning right around, but he winks, assuring me with his honey whisper, “I know who your real daddy is, darlin’. Now, play nice and get in so Jace won’t kill my ass.”
I grab the passenger assist handle to hoist myself up. The frisky friend attempts to help me by palming my ass, but I swat his hand away, hissing, “Touch me and die.”
He grins, closing my door.
In a rush, he throws my bag in the back and jumps into the driver’s seat.
“Keep smiling.” He grits through his pearly whites, waving at the cop. “Don’t need that officer realizing I’m a wanted man. The trick is to approach them. Overwhelm ’em with charm, and my good looks, and it’s all they see, not the outlaw.”
“Wanted?” I whip my glare to him as he merges into the airport traffic.
“Look at me.” He gestures to his ripped white T-shirt with more holes than Swiss cheese, his tattered jeans, and his tarnished belt buckle with a skeleton riding a motorcycle. “Darlin’, who doesn’t want all this?”
He is muscular. He is sexy. He is a younger Brad Pitt, all cute in a he-knows-he-is-arrogant way. His looks could let him get away with murder, and he acts like he already has.
Silently, we take the interstate toward historic downtown Charleston.
“Where are you taking me?” I clock the pistol on the console. “And where is Jace?”
He plucks a toothpick from the mesh of his backward baseball cap, offering it to his lush lips. “I got strict orders to take you straight to your king’s lair. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”
“This isn’t Monopoly.”
“Got that right. It’s Mafia.” He winks at me. “But we ain’t supposed to say it, are we?”
I deadpan, “You just did.”
“Whoops.” He smirks, chewing his toothpick. “Guess I got carried away. Tend to do that.”
My glare volleys between him, his gun, and our route. I’d be scared if I didn’t trust Jace. If I didn’t feel oddly safe with this wild man, playing Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.”
But then, he takes his toothpick out, tucks it back into the mesh of his hat—yuck—and starts crooning the song about being crazy in love. Sounding way too good as he takes the wrong turn, away from Delta’s.
“What… what…” I turn around, watching the right intersection disappear. “Where are you going? You said Jace ordered you to take me straight to him.”
“Know what I hear every time someone makes a rule?” He bounces his bad-boy brows. They’re dark blond like his shaggy hair. “I hear a rule I need to break.”
My pulse skyrockets, my glare scanning the cabin of this SUV, looking for anything I can weaponize. Suddenly, I wish I’d worn stilettos, not sandals, so I could stab his throat with the heel.
He chuckles, spying my fear.
“Aw, now, darlin’, don’t worry. I wouldn’t hurt a pretty golden hair on your claimed head. I’m talking about breaking hearts.”
Slowly, he turns right, letting our SUV crawl by a corner law office. Leaning across me, he doesn’t hide that he’s scoping the place out, that he’s curious, if not outright stalking the location.
I glance over, gasping as I realize it’s Harlow’s office. Her loft apartment is right above it.
Suddenly, it all falls together.
“Oh my god.” I whip around, confronting him. “You’re Wilder Lawless, aren’t you?”
He angles back, half flattered, half plotting my murder. “Who wants to know? Other than Jace Ryan’s queen?”
“How about Harlow Sutton’s best friend?” I narrow my eyes. “I’ve heard all about you.”
Harlow hates him. He broke her heart. He was her first love and her first criminal.
I don’t know how to describe his smile at the mention of her name. Innocent. Injurious. Enamored. Evil.
He refocuses on the street, driving away. “Nah, just looking for a good lawyer. Gonna need one.”
I don’t say another word as my mind reels, deciding what to tell Harlow.
Is she in danger? Is she being stalked? Is this unrequited love or unmitigated revenge?
Shit, if I tell her, then I’ll have to explain how I crossed paths with Wilder Lawless in the first place. You know, my I’m-in-love-with-an-ex-Bratva-prince Mafia path that I can’t tell her about.
It turns my mouth into a locked vault. I don’t say another word as Wilder finally parks outside Delta’s, where I belong.
Quickly, I yank the door open and leap out, grabbing my camera bag.
“Not so fast.” Wilder jumps out after me. “I gotta deliver you safely, or I’ll get my balls delivered down my throat.”
Holstering the gun on his hip, an outlaw like him must love that this state allows him to openly carry a firearm. To the rest of us, it’s like living in the Wild West, minus the west.
Opening the SUV’s hatch, he drawls, “Grab your suitcase, little lady. Let’s go.”
Gladly, I do. Anything to get him away from me, but I can’t resist, muttering, “Such a gentleman.”
“Darlin, you want a gentleman or a bodyguard ’cause you can’t have both? I don’t carry luggage. I carry Magnums.” He puffs up like a peacock, hearing his pun. “In my pistol and on my big d—”
“Shut up.”
I march across the cobblestone street, lugging my bag behind me. After two weeks in Florida, it’s heavy, and I’m huffing mad. Not at Jace. At his choice of friends, and this one who broke my best friend’s heart.
And hymen.
I have a key to Delta’s entrance and use it, pressing the required code into the brass keypad as well. Pushing open the heavy black door, I call out, “Hello?”
No one’s in the front parlor. I don’t hear anyone down the hall in the new kitchen.
Glancing up the grand stairwell, I jump when Wilder’s voice teases over my shoulder. “Let’s shop for dildos while we wait. I need one for—”
“Shut up.”
It’s my new mantra with him.
Leaving my suitcase by the door, I aim for the back kitchen, now our darkroom. Jace said he had a kings’ meeting, but surely it’ll be over by now. That was hours ago.
My heart flutters, excited to find him in here, but I push open the door, flick on the red safety light, and find it empty.
Setting my bag on the countertop, I huff, frustrated.
What the…?
Wilder’s loitering in the doorway, gazing around. I growl, irritated. “I’m fine. I’ll wait here for Jace. You can go now.”
Whoops. That was a rule that Wilder’s bound to break. He doesn’t listen, scoping the space, nodding his chin toward our gear.
“You got a vintage Beseler.” His tone changes. It’s not coy and cunning. It’s warm and reverent, admiring our classic photo enlarger. “Same kind Ansel Adams used.”
I’m shocked, clutching my cardigan. It was cold on the plane. I put it over my cream crocheted summer dress. But I shrug it off, tossing it over my bag. It’s oddly warm in the house tonight.
“How would you know about Ansel Adams and his Beseler?”
Wilder lifts a shoulder. “My dad and uncles. They were amateur photographers. Took a lot of shots on their road trips.”
Suddenly, I’m an empath, feeling his pain. There’s a sad story in Wilder’s eyes. He’s more than a reckless outlaw or a cute heartbreaker; he’s got depth.
I open my mouth, always wanting to know more about someone, but a door slams on the second floor—the bathroom—followed by footsteps, booting up to the third floor.
“Oh.” I perk up. “That’s Jace.”
Shoving past Wilder, I don’t want to wait another minute to be reunited, but Wilder’s on my heels. I whip around in the stairwell. “I’d like privacy, please.”
He smirks. “And I’d like a new dildo.”
“You can shop later.”
“And you can bet I’ll wait for Jace to give me the all clear.”
I narrow my eyes. “Since when do you follow the rules?”
“I ain’t.” He licks his lips. “I’m following your fine ass in that little dress up the stairs.”
“Touch me and die.” I hiss it again, marching to the landing between the second and third floors.
“Oh, I ain’t dying,” Wilder assures, turning for the showroom of sex toys. “Not when I can play with sex toys. Now mosey on up there, and I’ll wait.”
Fucking dangerous, deep, defiant asshole with sexy dimples. No wonder Harlow can’t stop hating him.
Smoothing my dress, I hurry up the final flight of stairs. But my feet start to falter as I quietly sneak down the dark hallway on the third floor.
Because that’s what this suddenly feels like: sneaking.
Why?
The antique pine floors gleam in the dim light of the brass sconces, glowing against the caviar-black walls.
The Victorian era gilded trim around the ceiling and doors glints in the soft light.
The gold capitals over the black columns, framing the door at the end of the hall, beckon.
I approach the ominous door, barely cracked open, a sliver of flickering light slicing through the shadows.
But it’s not the elegant motif drawing me closer.
It’s the obscene sounds.
Goose bumps bloom over my flesh at the satisfied woman’s moans. I stifle my gasp at an aggressive man’s grunts. Wait, no. It’s two men. They resonate, rough and raw, as soft groans lull, along with the squishy noise of something yielding to the weight of shifting bodies.
Bodies fucking.
I know the sounds.
They conjure something deep inside me. Something that floods me with arousal and fear. I don’t hear Jace. That wasn’t his ardent grunt, but I know he’s in the room.
Where else could he be, and what has he already told me?
Group sex. A band of brothers. Uniting. Bonding. Claiming. Queens receiving. Taking. Touching.
Coming.
Dripping.
Oh my god, I am.
My sex responds to what my mind imagines is on the other side of that door. I can’t stop myself. I feel like I’m floating out of my aroused body, watching my fingertips gently push the warm wooden door, letting it crack open enough for me to see a huge, low, black leather platform.
Like a bed for an orgy.
It’s what I see in front of me. Some people I recognize, their writhing, sweaty, naked, inked bodies are a luscious shock to my system, the sight igniting my clit.
It’s Sire, hungrily eating Wren’s pussy. It’s Ruby, shamelessly drooling over Axel’s cock. It’s Grant, fucking Delphine on all fours. She’s panting and gazing at Nick, who’s fucking Zar, his dick bouncing hard as they watch some couple who look vaguely familiar.
Loch and Alena: the logic hits me.
It’s Alena straddling Loch, who’s hungrily sucking her ample breast.
But it’s the sight behind them, looming on the other side of the platform, that grabs my heart.
Jace.
Standing alone.
His starched shirt unbuttoned. His dark pants tent with a raging erection. But his beautiful eyes: they’re in a storm of pain.
I remember what he said.
“It hurt to see everyone else in love while I was alone. It was so goddamn bittersweet watching kings find their queens while mine’s been sitting right in front of me, but I couldn’t have her.”
Swinging the door open, I don’t think it through. I feel his pain and need to rush to him, to hold him.
I’m here.
But opening the door whips Loch’s hungry focus from Alena and their bodies fucking, to my intrusion.
“Oh!” I gasp. “Oh! I—”
Want to die. Want to join them. Want to run. Want to hold Jace and never let him go.
But I fucked up. “Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry.” I should know better.
This is private. This is trust. This is passion shared. This is an intimate act you don’t violate. You don’t take or exploit or extort or shame.
It’s everything I’ve been through. Everything I desired that was defiled.
Turning, I run away from the memory, from the shame. Dashing down the hall, I race down the stairs, hearing the voice that owns my soul shouting after me.
“Vivian!”