Chapter 12
R iordan
Shame dogged my actions in finishing up in the shower. I rinsed down the wall then smacked the button to kill the water. Stepping out, I snagged a towel and wrapped it around my waist then took my fingers to the knot constraining Cassie.
Never in my life had I wanted to tie up a woman.
She was so fucking pretty like this.
The second the rope was loose, Cassie yanked it free then burst up to standing. She shoved me with both hands, barely rocking me, then passed me to peer into the mirror. “What did I tell ye about my hair and humidity?”
In quick, clearly annoyed actions, she snagged a bottle of hair product and sprayed her curls, glowering at my reflection in the mirror.
Vaguely, I recalled the time I’d busted her putting the tracker on my bike. I’d tugged her hood down to identify her, and she’d jerked it right back up, saying something about her curls and the rain.
“You’re angry at that?”
“Get out, Riordan.”
I backed away, hunting down my bag in her bedroom where I’d dropped it. Inside, Genevieve had packed me a selection of clothes—she still had the spare key to my car—and I pulled on joggers and a fresh crew t-shirt.
Tiredness hung over me. If Struan’s lesson had worn me out, his sister’s provocation nearly ended me.
At the bottom of my rucksack was a small, wrapped bundle with a tag reading Cassie’s name.
I returned to the bathroom door and knocked.
She swung it open, still in only her fucking sexy lingerie, her body a sight I’d dream about for years.
“What?”
Words escaped me. Heat swallowed me whole.
In the shower, I thought I’d taken my fill of her. I’d let the crackling energy between us crest. I’d orgasmed staring at her pussy and pictured being inside her while she rode me. Or bending her over in the stall and losing all control.
Yet one minute on and I was raring to go again. My dick thickened, and my mouth dried.
Helplessly, I held up the packet.
Cassie squinted at it then took it from me and breezed past. “I’m going to get dressed. Or maybe first lie on my bed and copy what ye did. So leave me alone.”
Holy fuck. I backed to the wall, hands behind my back. Her bed was wide. Far too big for her alone.
“I want to watch.”
Her lip curled in a pretty snarl. “No.”
“Why not? You already tormented me earlier when I was outside in the hall.”
“Ye turned my first kiss into the most frustrating experience, so excuse me if I don’t want a repeat.”
“Your first kiss?”
“Aye, jackass, so leave me alone.”
Something tightened in my chest. I’d guessed that she was inexperienced, but not that much. Fucking hell. I’d attacked her. Tied her up.
“I didn’t know.” A step took me closer.
“Well, now ye do.” She folded her arms, not meeting my gaze.
The challenge had left her. She’d never backed down from me in the past. Dropping my hand, I puzzled at her, confused and insanely horny again. More, I wanted to make amends.
“I owe you three kisses for how rough I was.” With my pulse racing, I took a step. “The first I’m giving you now. The others will come later.”
She peeked at me through her eyelashes.
I approached the bed. Tipped up her face and gave her a second to react then brushed my lips over hers. If circumstances had been different, I’d have kissed her like this for our first time. A peck. A slow return.
Another, teasing her lips to meld to mine.
Cassie whimpered. The sound shot desperation through me in a drugging wave that I fought to manage. She followed my lead, rising on her knees to meet me better. A promise to come with me to where I led. I tilted my head. Parted her lips with mine then pulled away.
Over a heavy breath, I told her, “One.”
Then I left her to slam the door after me.
Holed up in her living room, I adjusted my junk and strained to listen for any sound.
Music started. ‘Rush’ by Dutch Melrose and benny mayne.
I sighed and checked myself. There was a reason I’d tied her up, beyond the fact it was the sexiest thing I’d ever imagined. The pull to her was insane. A full-force draw I temporarily couldn’t ignore. Restraining her hands had stopped her from touching me, an event which would have had me lose my mind completely. Yet a simple fact remained. I couldn’t get involved with her. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t safe. For either of us.
She was right to kick me out. It was what I deserved.
I exhaled and slumped on the sofa cushions. Thank fuck for logic. I just had to follow that path.
After a while, the music cut out, and Cassie emerged from her room, her movements brisk and her attention on her phone. She took the opposite end of the couch from me, some kind of material in one hand and her phone in the other.
“I’m talking to your sisters. Say hi.”
She turned the camera on me. Onscreen, Gen and Everly peered out. Both held the same piece of cloth and string Cassie did.
Genevieve squinted at the phone. “Is that a black eye?”
I rubbed my face. My whole body ached now the adrenaline had worn off. “Cassie has a mean right hook. What are you all doing?”
Everly held up her hands. “We’re learning embroidery. I need a hobby so am exploring options. Cassie and Genevieve are supporting me. This is a sampler, and it contains all the different stitches we need to practice. If we do it together, it’ll be fun.”
‘Fun’ sounded dubious, and Cassie sewing was a far sight stranger than seeing her with a blade or any other weapon. I eyed her. She pouted back at me then set the phone down on the coffee table, propped up on its side so we were both in shot.
Threading her needle, Genevieve scrunched up her nose. “While we work on the first, what is that, a straight stitch? Surely I can’t fuck this up. Anyway, while I try, I want to tell you both about the march that’s happening in Deadwater this weekend.”
“What kind of march?” I asked.
“For women’s right to safety on the streets. There’s been protests in town and outside of the warehouse.”
Cassie jerked forward. “They’re protesting us ? I knew from Arran the reporters had said we were to blame, but people believe them?”
Gen nodded. “Apparently. There’s been some shitty gossip videos made over how the strip club attracted the killer. The proof being that Natasha’s body was left outside and Alisha was an employee.”
Cassie stabbed her sampler, drawing through the baby-blue cotton. “That’s bullshit.”
“Horrible,” Everly agreed.
Gen clucked her tongue, her focus on the needle she was still trying to load with thread. “It’s also good. In an unexpected twist, those same social media warriors patrolling outside in search of clout are protecting us.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. Red can do even less to attack the skeleton crew with such a big audience.”
Cassie gave a small smile of approval. Coming from the queen of gang strategy, I got a glimmer of pride.
Gen continued, “Exactly. Soon, we’ll bring an end to this. Until then, we can wait behind a shield of morally outraged keyboard warriors.”
That word replayed in my mind. “Soon?” I repeated. As in Bronson was almost caught? It meant we could go back.
“Soon.” My sister poured meaning into the word.
I ducked out of the conversation, reclining and thinking about the strange mission I was on, not voluntarily at first but by choice now. When it was over, I’d be back to life in the warehouse. I’d see Cassie around, but she wouldn’t be next to me all the time.
An odd surge of emotion curled in me. It felt suspiciously like regret.
Distracting myself with my phone, I flipped through the cameras, then messaged Tyler to check in.
Tyler: All is quiet. I’m going to grab some sleep. I suggest you do, too.
To the tune of Cassie cursing her stitches, then to a telenovela she put on the TV as background noise, I let unconsciousness drag me under. It happened quickly. I’d been on high alert and couldn’t remember the last time I’d closed my eyes, but the orgasm took enough off the edge to allow me to relax.
The blackness was a welcome and warm escape.
My dreams didn’t play ball. In them, I was running from danger, my heart racing so fast it felt like it could explode. A black car chased me, screeching through traffic and herding me down alleys and side streets in Deadwater’s suburbs. Doors slammed. First Gen’s father then my ex-boss appeared in entryways and rejected my need for sanctuary.
I ran out the end of the street to find my way blocked by a churning river. The water boiled, frothing grey and white.
In my hands, I held something small. A little life. Maybe a bird or a kitten. All I knew was that it was precious and I had to protect it.
A bullet whistled past my ear.
From the car’s window, the mayor leaned out. He taunted me with a cruel smile and words I couldn’t understand. He held a comically large handgun like something from a Western. Then he fired again.
The bullet lodged in my chest. It punched me back into the water.
The river closed over my head, freezing cold, cutting off my air, and I sank down, clutching my precious creature like my faltering heartbeat could save it. I tried to fight. To swim. My body didn’t respond.
There was nothing for us but to drown and die.
With a gasp, I woke, frozen still but with my pulse racing. It took several seconds to realise I could breathe easily. And to recognise the warmth of the woman curled against me.
Cassie had crept close while I slept, as she’d done when I’d been knocked out. Except this time, my arm was tucked around her frame, and our hands were entwined and linked at her chest.
My heart skipped a beat.
I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep, but maybe she’d seen my nightmare. Turned off the TV, forgiven me for the shower incident, and decided I needed comfort.
All I knew was that contact. Her heat spread down my arm, doing the same thing as last time she’d touched me like this—battling the cold inside me and giving me something better. My breathing sounded loud in my ears. Adrenaline from the nightmare or maybe the fight still ghosted through me.
I couldn’t move. Not to withdraw my hand and not to bring her closer, though it felt like the most natural thing in the world to lift her onto my chest and kiss her awake.
In the darkness, I was hers and she was mine.
For a minute, I’d pretend.
Cassie stretched against my body, her bare toes drawing down my leg and her ass too close to my groin for comfort. She turned so we were facing each other.
“Everything’s okay. It was just a nightmare. Ye shuddered with it then relaxed, but it came back so I cuddled up. Ye are so nice to sleep with. I’ve never done it with anyone else.”
I asked a question that had plagued me, easy to say in my half-awake state. “Why did you proposition me?”
“Seem to recall ye were the one with his dick in his hand in my bathroom.”
I heaved in a breath. “Before that.”
Cassie’s blue eyes focused on me. “They say do the thing that scares ye.”
“Seriously.”
“I am being serious. I live by that. It helps me every day.”
“What scares you, wild girl?”
For a moment, she just watched me, then her throat bobbed. “Everything. I think I’m broken like that. I get nightmares, too.”
“What about?”
“I lie awake at night and think that my family’s gone. As a kid, it was even worse. I had to ask Sin and Lottie for my own rooms so I could move out of theirs.”
“How would that help?”
“I didn’t want to disturb them by repeatedly checking on them in the night, particularly when they had their babies.”
She’d done it to help them, not herself.
Cassie continued, “I’m scared of heights so I put myself in perilous situations to deal with it. I refuse to be afraid of men like Piers so?—”
“You took a knife to his dick.”
Her lips curved into a dangerous smile. “Exactly. Then I kidnapped the guy I wanted because I was scared for us both.”
“Wanted, as in past tense?”
Her smile faded. “That’s the real reason behind my offer. I know it isn’t real so forcing it would make it go away.”
My fucked-up heart wished it was real. That odd sense of jealousy I’d been struck down by when she’d chatted so easily with Tyler, fucking Ty, as she’d called him, wouldn’t stop burning inside me. Memories of her tied hands and her lithe body flexing against the constraint of the rope hit like bombs. In that moment in the gathered dusk, burrowed in together on her sofa, desperation nearly stole my breath.
Wanting her was as real to me as breathing. Nothing had changed.
“I’m sorry I tied you up,” I finally managed.
Unaware of my pain, Cassie sighed. “Don’t be. Can I ask ye something? Before I go further down that why-ye rabbit hole of an explanation.” At my chin lift, she continued. “I think I know the answer to this, but have ye killed anyone yet?”
“Of course I haven’t.”
“At some point, if ye stay working for Arran, you’ll have to. You’ll want to. I already know you’ve accepted the place for what it is. Your sister went through the same mindset shift, with a bit of coaching from me.”
I hesitated, because I’d thought about it but dismissed it. Arran had his enforcer in Shade. He didn’t need another. “I don’t think I’d kill someone without extreme circumstances. How would I be sure that person really deserved it?”
She held up a finger then a second and third, counting them off. “If they try to kill ye. If they hurt someone ye care about. If they commit a crime so awful the world deserves the peace of them being gone. Easy.”
The man in my dream deserved to die. For killing me. For taking the life I was trying to protect. “That’s got to be a tiny amount of people,” I muttered.
“Wrong. Shade has a revolving door of men to dispatch. They just keep on coming.”
I watched her, poised to frame the question but almost unwilling to ask. “Who does he kill?”
“Rapists. Paedophiles. Men released from jail and allowed back in the community. He watches them until he’s sure they aren’t reformed then disappears them for the good of everyone else.”
As much as I thought I’d understood Arran’s crew, new pieces of the puzzle kept being revealed.
Cassie wasn’t done. Something gleamed in her eyes. “They’re the tip of the iceberg. There’s nearly seventy thousand adults on the sex offenders register in the UK. Over ten times that who are deemed by the cops an active risk to kids. Nearly a million actual or potential paedophiles. A million . Then there’s far, far more who are a risk to women—the police estimate around four million men.”
Her lip curled. “Maths was never my strong point, but there’s sixty-eight million people in this country. Twenty-six million of those are adult male. Which means one in every seven men is a serious predator or an abuser. Fifteen percent. Even if a tiny portion of those predators are women, ye can’t make those odds much better. Swing a bat around any public place and chances are you’ll hit at least a few of them.”
Fucking hell. “I had no idea.”
“Right? Because the focus is always on the women and how many suffer. It needs to be on the problem. The perpetrators. Abusers aren’t rare. They’re common. Think about the men ye know. Most people won’t associate with the worst types, but how many would laugh off a friend sharing porn containing an obviously underage girl? Or ignore them referring to a passing woman as a bitch or a slut? Or turn a blind eye to a drunk buddy acting like a predator in a nightclub? I see it and I know that there’s a decent chance one among them is hiding a darkness and that they’re the one-in-seven. That’s why I want to be part of Arran’s crew. The closer I get to the problem, the more I want to be a part of battling it. I want to avenge those women and kids.”
Emotion flared inside me. Deep and fierce heat that had kindled with seeing her take on Piers. She’d been fearless. From her explanation, that had just been the start of her mission.
“You want to deal with them in the same way Shade does.”
She pretended to polish her sparkly nails. Gold, too. Her accent colour, it seemed.
“A worthy goal, no? Which brings me to my point. I consider myself a good judge of character. I saw ye step up to protect your sister. Since then, I learned all you’ve done to support her and keep her safe. Ye did the same for Everly and went up against Shade who’s scary as fuck to the average person. Is it any wonder my mind took a little jaunt to wanting to ride ye like a cowboy? I found the one good man and decided to keep him.”
Sinking my eyes shut, I dropped my head back to the cushion, overwhelmed. Hard again. Luckily, I was lying at an angle she couldn’t feel. Her ruthless edge, her certainty over her calling, it was all so deeply attractive to me. Almost as much as when she’d claimed me.
My words formed of their own volition. “Back to the proposition. Would you ask Tyler the same question?”
“Oh my God, are ye jealous? Please say yes.”
I said nothing.
Instead, my mind shifted to my goal. My dream. The predator I wanted off the streets. It aligned with Cassie’s calling, and suddenly, I wanted to impress her. Explain myself and everything that needed to be said.
Except I’d told no one about this. Not a single soul. And opening my mouth was a risk I shouldn’t take.