16. Keys
SIXTEEN
KEYS
LUCA
C urled up together on the cot, both of us fresh from our recent shower, our naked legs intwined, I have to admit that this was the fucking Christmas I’ve ever had.
True, the bar was in hell considering the prophet refused to celebrate the secular version of Christmas. I didn’t get my first Christmas present until I spent a December as Devil’s driver and he gave me a pricey piece I was needing for my build, plus an eye-opening bonus. And as much as I appreciated the camshaft, Kylie letting me fuck her ass with my shaft tops a very short list.
I know I didn’t last long. As she preened in the shower, letting me rub her down with the body wash I ordered specifically for her, she admitted that she expected it to be over quickly. There’s a huge difference between fucking your fist and working your dick in and out of a tight asshole. She squeezed the life and all of my come right out of me, and I barely made it ten thrusts before I was filling her up with everything I had.
If it was anyone but Kylie, I would’ve been mortified. I’m a twenty-seven-year old guy in the prime of his life. I’ve whacked off more in the last five years than most boys do throughout their entire teens and early twenties. I thought I had control over my cock.
I was wrong.
I couldn’t keep from coming. The sensations were too powerful, but she didn’t make me feel like I took her prep and her generous offer for granted. Instead, she kissed my chest, pulled me toward the bathroom, and I finally got to share a shower with her.
A shower—plus she showed me just how much she expects to get off when we’re together, even if that was meant to be my Christmas gift. Instead, I get a second one when she shoved me on my shoulders, pushing me to my knees before hooking one leg over my shoulder so that I could eat her pussy until she came all over my face.
Between the drip from the shower and her leg hooking me in place, it was difficult to breathe, but fuck it. If I died, I died, and like I told her the first time, it would’ve been an amazing way to go.
I obviously didn’t. Fingers threaded through my hair, holding me against her box, I licked and sucked and nuzzled until she was screaming my name. She might not have enjoyed it as much as when I was pumping into her ass, but hell if I didn’t make sure she had a merry Christmas herself before we curled up on the cot, sated and pleasured and ready to take a nap before I made her lunch.
At least, Kylie was ready to take a nap. I thought she passed out almost immediately. Me? Unwilling to let this amazing morning come to an end too quickly, I twirled one of her curls around the length of my pointer finger while trying not to notice how close my cock is to her entrance.
One thrust. If I angled my body around hers just right, all it would take is one thrust and I could be seated inside of her pussy.
I don’t. I wouldn’t. Not only would I never betray Kylie’s trust like that, but I haven’t changed my mind. My clever girl found a way to share her body with me without breaking my promise to myself that I’d wait for marriage. If I threw it away now, what was the point.
Even if, at this moment, my lifelong conviction is wavering a little…
“Luca?” murmurs Kylie. “You still up?”
I’m not the only one—and I don’t mean how Kylie’s obviously awake.
Angling my hips back so that I don’t poke her with my erection, I say, “Yup. You?”
She tilts her head enough that I can see her bright eyes. In the basement, there are two lights. One that we keep on around the clock so that there’s always some illumination. The more powerful bulb is overhead, and it lights up the entire space.
It’s one for now. That’s okay. I can see that she’s not only wide awake. I don’t think she fell asleep at all.
“What’s up?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been meaning to ask for ages now, and I never did, but I’ve been staring at it ever since we climbed into bed and…” The chain around my neck bites into the back of it as she gives it a quick tug. “What is this?”
Even without asking for verification, I know she’s not asking me about the chain itself. She wants to know about the key.
My first instinct is to brush her off. This isn’t really a conversation I want to have after she let me see what it was like to fuck even if it wasn’t her pussy, but because she did, I can’t see any way I can refuse to answer her.
And why shouldn’t I? I thought I’d turn her off when she learned the truth about the brand on my arm. That didn’t happen. And if I didn’t want her to every be curious about the key I usually wear tucked under my shirt, hidden out of sight, I could have removed it before she could ask.
Maybe, in some ass backward way, I wanted her to ask.
I wanted Kylie to know.
I wanted her to care.
And, most of all, I needed to tell her about Emily. Because how can I keep from making the same mistakes with Kylie if she doesn’t know about what happened before her?
I blow out a rush of air. “It’s stupid,” I warn her.
“It’s not,” she whispers back. Letting go of the key, she slides her hand up the side of my throat before rubbing her thumb along the edge of my jaw. “If it matters to you, it’s not, Luca.”
“You remember how I told you about the church I was raised in? About Donovan?”
“That prophet guy?”
My jaw clenches. I’m sure she can feel it. “Yeah. Him. This key belongs to him.”
She’s quiet for a few seconds. “Okay. Weird. Not the kind of story I was expecting, but?—”
I roll onto my back, making my confession to the ceiling. “Donovan stole my girl. So I stole his key.”
Kylie rises up on her elbow so that I have no choice but to see her; at least in my peripheral vision, that is. “Back up, ace. I think I missed a bit of the story.”
I exhale. “It’s not a fun story. When I was still a member of the church?—”
“Cult.”
Right. “—there weren’t any other girls my age. Just Emily. Emily Dallas. Her family joined the HCofJD when we were both twelve. By thirteen, I knew she would be the girl I married. At fourteen, we started to date. Church-approved dating, obviously, but when we were twenty-one, the prophet said I could marry her.”
“The same prophet who, uh, stole your girl?”
“Yeah.” I shift so that Kylie doesn’t have to touch me if she doesn’t want to. “You can guess what happened. We turned twenty-one. I thought we were engaged. And then…”
And then I was told to head to the church pulpit where I was forced to watch Jack Donovan fuck Emily on the altar while wearing a white dress.
A wedding dress.
Because she agreed to marry him instead of me.
“She’s his wife now. He decided that, of all the congregation, she was the one who was holy enough to bear his heirs. Last I heard, she’s had at least two of them. She seems happy, and I want that for her… Emily was sweet. A little feisty like you. But she didn’t choose me.”
She was supposed to.
Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Twenty-one-year-old Luca was convinced the world was ending when I lost her. I’d known Emily for almost a decade at that point, and I did love her. Was I in love , though?
Who the fuck knows? But I do know that the feelings I have for this woman lying next to me right now? They’re undeniable.
What would I do if I saw anyone fucking Kylie?
I’d get my ninth tally mark, that’s what I’d do…
Completely oblivious to how murderous she makes, Kylie scoots closer to me—and that only firms my decision that, if anyone is going to touch, taste, and eventually fuck this woman, it’ll be me. “So she made the wrong fucking choice. Tough luck for Emily, but I’m not complaining because I get to have fun with you. That still doesn’t answer my question about the key, though.”
“Donovan has this gold altar where he keeps his copy of the Bible, his gold goblet, and his cross. This key… it belongs to that altar. I stole it. I just… I told you it was stupid, but after he married Emily, it made me feel good to know that I had something of his. And I knew he probably had a spare. I knew he could get in regardless. I was still so brainwashed, I didn’t even take the cross with me when my parents disowned me.”
Kylie digs her fingers in the sheets on the cot between us. My mood brightens a little when I think that she might actually give a shit about how awful my parents treated me back then.
“Probably a good idea,” she says after a moment. “I mean, what would you need it for? If you left the church. The key, I get. You wouldn’t want to wear a cross.”
Oh. She doesn’t know. “It was six inches tall and covered in diamonds. It’s worth a fortune.”
“What? Dude! You should’ve taken it. They kicked you out with nothing!”
“I know. I also should’ve realized that no prophet, priest, or pastor would have such a fucking gaudy cross. It was a sign of how loaded he was. Of how powerful he was when it came to taking every last dime his congregation had. He was a cult leader.” Plain and simple. “And even though I didn’t take the cross, I took this key.” I take it between my forefinger and thumb. “To me, it’s a reminder of what I left behind. What I escaped from. It’s also a sign that I’ll never go back.”
Reaching up, Kylie’s soft fingers ghost over the bump brand on my forearm. “This should’ve been the first one, ace.”
“I know. And it is. I needed it, too.”
“What do you mean?”
She wants to know? I’ll tell her.
“When they disowned me, I didn’t just take this key. I took another set. To my parents’ car. I used it to drive all the way out of Oklahoma and ended up in Hamilton. I spent two years there as an eventual wheelman for this guy, Kane, and his crew. But they found me.”
I lay my hand over hers, covering my brand. “My parents, I mean. They said Donovan wanted me to repent and return to the fold. That Emily already gave birth to a son, but she was now pregnant with his daughter. The prophet finally realized how important it was to strengthen the congregation… that, if I confessed my sins and vowed to follow his word again, I could marry his daughter when she was grown.”
Kylie sucks in a breath. “No, he fucking didn’t.”
I nod into the dark. “I remember saying something like, so I wait twenty-one more years to make my ex’s kid my wife? And my mother… my mother … patted my arm and said, if I’m faithful again to the church, it would only be about fifteen. That the prophet promised .”
I was twenty-five at the time. They were telling me that, at forty-one, I’d finally get a chance to fuck—and it would be Emily’s fifteen-year-old daughter.
Luckily, Kylie comes to the same conclusion as I did then: “Your mother sucks.”
“I know. And while they waited for me, expecting me to be their doting son and do what they said, I packed my shit, ducked out through the back, and took off. I hid out for a week, then shit went down in Hamilton… a job went bad… and I left. I didn’t stop running until I hit Springfield and I discovered the West Side was ruled by a man called ‘Devil’.”
For the first time since I rolled onto my back, I turn to look at Kylie. “I figured the only way to get them to leave me alone was to show my allegiance to the devil for once and for all. The devil or just Devil, it didn’t matter. And you know what? He saved me.”
She ghosts her fingers over the height of my nearest cheek. “Nah.”
“Nah?”
“Don’t give that murderer all the credit, ace. From the way I see it, you saved yourself. Now, let’s go have some lunch.”
I nod, even as I can’t help but think: Save myself? Maybe.
But I won’t stop until I save her .
I’m actually pretty glad that Kylie knows just how much I owe Devil Crewes. Between that and how close we’ve gotten in the last two weeks, trapped together in Burns’s cabin, I think I accomplished what I set out to.
The morning after Christmas, she announced that—if only for my sake—she wouldn’t tell anyone about what she saw. That, if it was important to me that Devil get away with murder, then she was okay with it, too.
Part of me wondered if she only told me so because she thought it was what I needed to hear to finally drive her back to Springfield. Only I know now that she doesn’t even live there. She doesn’t live anywhere. Not really. She travels for work, taking shots everywhere she goes, living in and out of hotels. She shies away from the topic whenever I bring it up, but I assumed she’s some hotshot photographer.
Too bad I don’t know her last name. There’s countless Kylie’s with photo credits when I look them up, and even when I add an ‘H’ as a surname—assuming what the tat on her hand stands for—I can’t narrow it down.
And I need to.
I need to know everything about her.
In a very short time, this girl has become my life. My world. She’s what I think about first thing in the morning, waking up wrapped around her. Her smile. Her laugh. Her humor.
Her taste .
She owns my thoughts. My fantasies. I’m fucking obsessed, and if she didn’t return my affection, I’d use every ounce of my upbringing to push her away. To remind myself that I’m not worthy of such an angel on earth.
But she does care. Oh, I know there’s no way she feels a sliver of the emotions I have for her. How can she? We just met… but it seems like I’ve waited twenty-seven years for her. So maybe ours isn’t a first meeting to brag about, especially when you consider that I’ve been her sole companion and undeniable captor these last two weeks. It doesn’t matter. I’ve waited my whole life for a woman like Kyie. Now that I have, I don’t want to lose her.
But she finally agreed. I got what I wanted from her. Sure, I want more , but if she’s going to keep Sinners Syndicate secrets… there’s no reason for me to keep her as a captive any longer.
There’s one good thing about it being directly after Christmas. I don’t expect to hear anything from Devil, Springfield, or the rest of the outside world. It was quiet in the lead-up to Christmas. I’m sure it’ll be the same before New Year’s.
And I get to believe that for two more days before I get a phone call.
From the beginning of our stay at the cabin, I kept expecting Kylie to go after my phone. I didn’t get one until I was long gone from Donovan, starting over in Hamilton instead. Though she’s only a year younger than me, she’s basically grown up always having access to her own phone. I figured that was the hardest part of being my captive, but Kylie never seemed to care.
Burns doesn’t have a landline or a computer in the cabin, even if he does have internet access. Without my phone, we’d be completely cut off from the outside world. Surprisingly, she thinks that’s the fun part of being up here with me.
Fun. That’s what she called it. Fun .
She’s gotten used to my fellow Sinners—and Burns, though I’m careful not to let her know it’s a cop who owns this cabin—checking in with me through the phone. Whenever it rings, she either heads into the basement to give me privacy or, more recently, telling me to take the call outside while she finishes watching whatever we have on the TV.
I don’t even wait for her impatient shooing motion. Once the phone rings and I see BOSS in big, bold ladies on the screen, I point to the door. She nods, and I slip outside.
The entire time she’s been here with me, she’s never tried to escape. She could have easily, but she doesn’t, and I don’t even think twice about heading outside to take this call.
Once the door is closed behind me, I answer. “Hello?”
“Kid. It’s me.”
“Hey, boss. What’s up?”
The Devil of Springfield has earned his reputation. He’s a gruff, tough son of a bitch, but if you’re loyal to him, he can be your best friend. He called me on Christmas, despite knowing I don’t actually celebrate the holiday, and he’s been checking in on the situation as much as he has Rolls calling me.
That’s why I expect at least a cursory question about how the girl and I spent the rest of the holiday. But I don’t get it. Instead, Devil launches right into the conversation with a very pointed statement:
“The Hummingbird is working for Johnny Winter.”
It takes me a second to make sense of what he said. The Hummingbird… “Cross told me about him. The mysterious hired hitman who burned down Cross’s studio. Shit. Is that why he was targeted? Because Winter ordered the hit?” My stomach goes tight. “He’s got reasons to be pissed at me. Is that why you’re calling? Am I next?”
Devil’s answer is a soft growl. “Not quite, Luca. And, far as we can tell, Winter didn’t order the hit on Cross. Someone else did, using the same assassin. But Winter made the most recent contract.” The boss’s voice develops a harsher edge. “On me .”
What?
“Do you need me back? You don’t have to worry about the girl anymore… Devil? I can help.”
“Fuck, yeah, I need you back, but not for the reason you’re thinking.”
“Boss?”
“Listen to me, Luca. The contract community isn’t as big as you’d guess with all the fucking mafia guys and crooks coming after us. You know of the Reed Twins?”
I’ve heard of them. A pair of deranged identical twins who Devil hires out as killers whenever he wants a hit, but he doesn’t want it falling back on him. One of them is the brains of the operation. The other is the muscle. “In Shadowvale, right?”
“You got it. Once it got out that the Hummingbird would be coming after me, Nicholas Reed took it upon himself to figure out who the Hummingbird is, especially since she seems to have disappeared since taking the contract. She’s supposed to be good, too, but she ain’t as good as she thinks. Too many of her clients saw her damn face.”
Hang on?—
“ She ?”