Chapter 62
The Ghost and Mikhail are already gone when I wake. One less thing to manage.
I’ll send gift baskets to thank them for their service. Later.
Today has one priority. Learn the inner circle’s innies and outies.
I start after breakfast and read until my eyes cross. Then I keep going.
Profiles stack on profiles. Faces blur until I force myself to slow down. I learn the rhythm of them, their habits, their tells, who trusts whom, and who sleeps with whom. I memorize tattoos and scars, the way mouths tilt when they lie. I build a mental lineup and walk it again. And again.
Nine of them were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery.
Nine human beings broken under Van Quiso when he was at his worst. The details make my jaw ache.
I wouldn’t have believed redemption was possible if the file didn’t trace the arc all the way back to Van’s childhood.
Neglect, coercion, and cruelty I know too well.
The trauma doesn’t excuse it. But it explains a lot.
This inner circle is a nightmare split down the middle, monsters on one side, and the people they hurt on the other, all bound together in a tribe that shouldn’t work.
The world’s worst criminals stand shoulder to shoulder with their victims. It makes my brain itch.
I scroll back to Van Quiso’s photo. Scar down his face. Eyes like steel blades. A man who learned too late what his hands had become and chose to use them differently.
Against my better judgment, a grin creeps in.
I want to meet him.
Across the room, Jag is chained to his keyboard, the keys ticking and chair shifting. He shaved today and pulled on his new clothes with an inappropriate amount of appreciation in his eyes.
I haven’t had time to explore that appreciation. We pass each other for water. Food appears and disappears untouched. We trade looks, not words.
Everything funnels toward the call.
The hours crowd in, dragging and pressing. The waiting gnaws. I feel it in my teeth, my hands, and the way my leg won’t stop bouncing. By the time the sun sets, I’ve chewed a hole in my cheek.
Jag finally lifts his head. “Time.”
I cross the room and sit beside him, letting our knees touch. My nerves light up the second I stop moving. My shoulders tense. My hands don’t know where to land. My pulse keeps skipping even though nothing has happened yet.
Jag, meanwhile, might as well be made of stone. His face gives nothing away. No tension around his mouth. No tell in his eyes.
He reaches for equipment, swaps phones, flips a switch on a small box, types a string of nonsense, pauses, deletes, and starts again.
The laptop screen fractures into windows within windows, timers, hashes, and a map that isn’t a map. Numbers roll and invert. Fucking witchcraft.
Then he waits exactly long enough for my skin to crawl.
I hook my fingers together to keep them from shaking and lean back in the chair, trying to match his stillness. It doesn’t work. My leg starts up again.
Jag glances at me and sets a steady hand on my knee.
Then he presses a button.
The call begins. Not with a ring, but with silence. Thick, waiting silence.
I hold my breath.
Then…
“Wolf?” Her voice cuts through the speaker, soft and real and alive.
I flatten a hand against the thunder in my chest, ordering my heart to calm down.
“I’m here, Bluebird.” I lean toward the console, elbows on my knees, and meet Jag’s molten amber gaze.
“Okay. Good.” She exhales on the other end, a sound I desperately miss. “I was starting to worry you’d do something dramatic.”
“Never.” I give Jag an innocent look. “I’m all restraint and safety first.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose.
“That’s a lie.” A smile teases her voice. “But listen to me. I’m safe. I’m healthy. I’m… Comfortable.”
I glance sideways at Jag. He hasn’t moved, but his jaw tightens.
“This place… It’s not what you think. I’m not scared. Not hurt. No one’s touched me.”
“It’s been eleven days.” My lungs finally start working again.
“Yeah. I know. But they’ve kept me busy. There’s a garage. Like, you wouldn’t believe the cars. The food is crazy good. And the women?” She inhales. “They’re terrifying in the best way. Badass doesn’t cover it.”
I close my eyes, picturing Liv Reed, Camila Dias, the Gomez sisters, and Lydia the former Russian operative… Yeah. Those women don’t survive things. They go to war.
“Don’t worry about me. I…” Her hesitation snaps my eyes open. “Is he there?”
Jag’s expression fractures in a way I’ve never seen. Raw relief. Bottomless love. And regret. His sadness is so heavy it darkens everything else.
“Yeah. He’s here.” I find his hand on his thigh and lace our fingers together. “He can hear you.”
“Oh.” She pauses as if rearranging herself.
“I don’t know what’s going on. Not all of it.
Probably not even a sliver of it. But I know whatever this is, it involves you saving my life.
Again. I have so many questions, but I was given very specific instructions about what I can and can’t say on this line, so I’m trying not to screw that up. ”
“I’m coming for you.” His voice breaks.
“I know. That’s the one thing I’ve always been able to count on.
” She draws in a breath, and it comes out choppy.
“I’ve had time to think, and after talking with some new friends, I’ve been able to look back, see things differently, and sort out pieces I couldn’t line up before.
But when I see you again, you better fucking be straight with me. About all of it.”
“I will.” He glances down at his hand and discreetly lifts his smallest finger. “I swear it.”
“He’s staring at his pinkie.” I grip it and bring it to my mouth. “From here on out, we tell the truth.”
She makes an un-Dove-like whimpering sound and coughs to cover it up.
“When you come for me…” Her voice wobbles. “I want you united. The way I know you want to be.”
I clutch Jag’s hand, and he stares back at me, stunned.
“What are you saying?” I tilt my head.
“Is he trustworthy?” she asks.
I remember our conversation the night before she was taken, when she admitted she could’ve shared me with Jag… If he were trustworthy.
“That’s a stupidly easy yes. He’s solid and proven all the way down.” I take a breath. “There’s so much you don’t know yet. So many things we’ll tell you when we see you.”
“Yeah. I’m quickly realizing that the not-knowing part is the main issue.” She sniffs. “But you trust him, and I trust you. So what you choose to do together won’t hurt me. Just… Don’t forget about me. Because I’m not stepping aside.”
“Sweet Bird…” I laugh, breathless and wrecked, tears prickling behind my eyes. “There is no version of reality where there’s an us without you. You’re the whole point.”
She smiles into the line. I can’t hear it, but I know all her pauses.
“Do you have clothes? Shoes?” I ask.
“Yeah. The women here have been gracious. I have plenty to wear.”
“Are you alone right now?”
“No. There’s a terrifying, flesh-eating overlord standing over me, listening to every word while casually picking at a platter of dead puppies.”
“Despídete ya, chino,” Matias Restrepo growls in the background.
She giggles. Fucking giggles. The sound is so unexpected, I choke on my tongue. Jag and I lock eyes, wide and stunned, both of us frozen until she speaks again.
“He has a reputation to maintain,” she whispers. Another giggle. Then… “I’m going to let you go before he pops a blood vessel. I love you. Both of you.”
Jag clamps a hand over his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to hold himself together. The fearsome Vigilante is absolutely one breath away from tears.
Movement sounds on the line as a presence slides in and takes over the air.
“Tomorrow at dusk,” the jefe says, clipped and unmistakably in charge. “Same as last time.”
The call disconnects.
Jag lowers his hand, eyes damp and breath ragged. I stare at him, this brilliant, ruthless man undone by a giggle and three words of love, while my heart tries to beat itself out of my chest.
She’s safe. Comfortably safe. We’ll see her tomorrow, and until then…
What you choose to do together won’t hurt me.
The strain that’s been pulling between us for a month finally snaps.
We move at the same time and collide in a crash of mouths. Desperate and uncoordinated, the kiss seethes with hunger, relief, and everything we’ve been ignoring.
His hand flies to my hair. Mine fists in the waistband of his jeans. We consume each other with tongues and teeth, and the past eleven days drain out of me in a rush. Fear, pressure, the constant stab of what if, it all bleeds away beneath the unwavering assault of his lips.
His mouth dominates, and mine answers with equal fervor. We stumble, knock into furniture, and everything narrows to the rhythm of us breathing and grinding together.
The destination doesn’t matter as long as it includes bare skin and something solid under us.
We stay fused as we stagger toward the stairs, hands grabbing and ripping fabric. Every step is clumsy and urgent. Jeans, shirts, boxers, our discarded clothes mark our path until there are none left.
Midway up the stairs, he starts to reach for my cock and freezes. His eyes find mine as he struggles for breath.
“Don’t stop.” I trap him against the wall, grab his hand, and close his fingers around my aching shaft. “If I spiral, you’ll pull me back.”
“Wolf.”
“Jag.”
“We’ll go slow.” He twists his wrist in a long, unhurried stroke.
“Sweet hell.” I rock my hips, pumping into his fist. “I give it thirty seconds.”
My hands roam across the wide plane of his chest, over boulders of shoulders and bulges of biceps.
I learn the shape and texture of his strong throat, pausing to feel his pulse kick under my fingers.
His jaw flexes against my palm, muscle and tendon straining as we devour each other in a wet, obscene, open-mouth kiss.
He’s all man, rock-hard and battle-tested, as he jerks me with a practiced hand. No wasted motion. Nothing held back.
I want him. I’m on fucking fire for him. But I don’t know what that means.
Who will fuck whom? I’ve never done consensual anal. It’s probably a trigger-heavy zone. I know he’s bottomed, but that was when he was turning tricks on the street.
The Jag standing before me, with his broad-shouldered, well-endowed, very masculine, very naked body flexing under my questing hands, is not a bottom.
He drives me back a step, then another, his grip firm on my ass as he turns us on the stairs. The world tips. He lowers me to the steps and brackets me there with his muscle-packed weight, knocking the air from my lungs.
His breath fans hot against my face, his eyes swirling with fierce need. He’s starving, and all his restraint is finally giving way.
His mouth leaves mine to trace a steamy path along my throat and collarbone, reverent and relentless. I feel his urgency in the heavy hardness pulsing against my hip. I grip him, running my fingers along his length as his attention travels lower, lower, until his dick pulls from my grasp.
Shifting down a few steps, he settles between my legs and scatters hungry kisses along my inner thighs. When he reaches my balls, he stops.
“Who has put their mouth here?” He pets and nuzzles my cock, making me groan.
“Dove.”
A smile twitches his cheek. “No one else?”
“No.”
“I haven’t done this in a long time.”
“Then don’t.”
“I was never forced, pup. But I never wanted to do it. Not until now.”