Chapter 9 #2
I took the bottle and held it out. “Finish it.”
She took it from me without breaking eye contact.
Then she looked down at it, slow, like she was considering something.
She wrapped her lips around the mouth of it, tilted it up, and drank—not tipping her head back, but keeping her chin down, her eyes up, her throat working in long, deliberate pulls.
When she finished, she drew it back slow, lips dragging along the rim.
I didn’t move. Didn’t give her an inch.
She smiled. “Is that what you were hoping for, Daddy?”
I stood. “We’re done here, brat,” I said.
She watched me leave, the look on her face somewhere between disappointment and a dare.
At the door, I braced my hand on the frame for just a second. The wood was solid, cold under my palm. I could have punched through it. Instead I let the moment pass, then let myself out.
In the hall, I put my forehead to the wall and breathed, steady and slow, until the urge to go back in there and break every rule in the contract faded to a manageable ache.
She was going to destroy me, one drop at a time.
Just one thing for it. I needed to sweat.
The safe house gym was a converted second bedroom: two treadmills, a free weights rack, a battered old rowing machine with duct tape holding the seat together.
I hit the treadmill for the clean head it gave me.
Running was the only time I could turn off the part of my brain that counted risk like beads on a string.
Today, I needed it more than ever.
So I ran.
Five miles at an even pace, every step another line item: the Bratva, the gap in the south perimeter, the fact that Sal was right and I was not built for restraint.
Every half-mile, I thought about her—how she’d look on her knees, how her thighs would shake when I told her to open them, how her mouth would sound when I made her say please.
Every half-mile, I told myself to let it go.
But five miles wasn’t enough.
By mile six, my shirt was glued to my back and my hands ached from clenching the handles.
I hit the stop button and coasted down. My pulse ticked in my ears.
That was when I realized the door was open.
She stood in the doorway in leggings and a sports bra, hair braided back. The leggings were a crime—matte black, spray-painted to her skin, high-waisted and smooth. The bra was blue, low enough at the neck that every breath shifted the line of her cleavage.
She took in the room, the sweat on my body, the numbers on the readout. Her eyes skipped over everything except my chest.
She said, “Can I join you?”
I wiped my face with my shirt. “It’s your gym, too.”
She stepped inside, bare feet silent on the mat. She climbed onto the other treadmill, set her phone on the shelf, and dialed up a run.
The first minute was slow. She stretched her arms overhead, then back, arching her spine until I heard it pop. She looked at me in the mirror, held my gaze for a second, then let the treadmill pull her forward.
She ran like she did everything else—no wasted movement, nothing extra. After ten minutes she found her pace and settled in, the beat of her shoes lining up with mine. The room filled with the smell of clean sweat, the faint tang of her body cutting through the air.
I tried to lift some weights, I really did. Did everything I could to keep focused and not gawk at her. But I couldn’t help it. I watched her in the mirror. She watched me, too, eyes flicking from my face to the readout and back.
Twenty minutes in, she started to sweat in earnest. The bra darkened at the edges, the valley of her breasts catching the light. The leggings shimmered with every stride. She kept her lips slightly parted, every breath a little louder than before.
I caught her looking at me. Twice.
She didn’t smile, but there was a hitch in her rhythm, a deliberate trip of the heel that said she wanted me to see her, wanted me to watch.
I pretended to check my phone. I scrolled nothing, thumbed through empty emails. She caught me doing it and smirked.
After forty minutes, she stopped the belt and stepped off. She walked a slow lap around the room, wiping sweat from her brow, then stretched out against the wall. She leaned back, hands over her head, ribcage rising under the skin.
I tried not to stare. I failed.
She came over and stood in front of me. Her chest heaved, a deep flush running from her collarbones to her jaw. She didn’t say anything. She just held out a towel.
I took it. Her hand lingered on the edge, fingers brushing mine.
I said, quiet as I could, “Behave, Angela.”
She leaned in, just enough for me to feel her breath on my neck.
She said, “Absolutely not.”
She left the towel in my hand. I watched her go, ass swaying with every step.
When the door closed behind her, I stood there, towel pressed to my face, and counted to ten.
Then I went and ran two more miles, just to bleed it off.
The afternoon was all operational drag. Marco’s intel drops every hour, Sal’s check-ins every thirty.
The Bratva crew was ID’d but not in play yet—they were at a motel in Elk Grove, drinking through their nerves and waiting for an all-clear.
We had to wait, too. There was nothing worse than waiting for men to do violence at your back.
I worked the phones, the computer, the spreadsheet of doom Marco had set up to track every single variable in the case. I checked the cams on the terrace, checked the entry logs, ran the perimeter once in person, just to feel the air.
I hadn’t seen Angela since the gym.
I texted her. No response.
I went looking.
The nursery was soft yellow with dusk, the overhead light off, the lamp on the side table glowing low.
She was on the sheepskin rug, one hand curled under her cheek, the other fisted in the edge of a pale blanket.
Her hair was loose, falling across her face.
A copy of The Little Prince was open next to her, spine cracked to the chapter with the fox.
She looked so fucking tender, so undone, it made my heart hitch. I knelt beside her, just to watch her breathe for a second. The muscles in her jaw unclenched when she slept. Her lips parted, a soft wet sound coming out every other exhale.
I reached out, smoothed the hair back. She stirred. Her hand reached up, without thinking, for my face.
“Daddy,” she said, sleep-soft, like it was a word she’d known since birth.
That was it. That was all it took.
I sat on the rug, legs folded, and pulled her up into my lap. She curled against me, head in the crook of my shoulder, her whole body loose and trusting.
I held her.
The blanket slid down, and I wrapped it around us both, cocooned in the yellow light and the smell of her. She made a little noise, not quite a word, then pressed her nose into my neck.
I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to do anything except this, for as long as she wanted.
When she woke fully, her eyes opened slow. She looked at me, confused, then saw where she was. She tightened her arms around my chest.
“Hey,” she whispered.
“Hey,” I said.
She shifted, sat up a little straighter. Her legs straddled mine, loose and warm under the blanket. Her hair was still a mess from sleep, one strap of the sports bra fallen off her shoulder. She didn’t fix it.
I looked at the wall.
I traced her jaw with my thumb, just once, telling myself that was all I was going to do.
She turned her face into my hand like a cat, lips brushing my palm.
I looked back at her.
I shouldn’t do it. I should wait. I had to think carefully. I—
I kissed her. She kissed back.
She did it like a question, slow and careful, letting me answer in my own time. Her lips were soft, her tongue tentative at first, then bolder when I opened for her.
I kissed her back, slow at first, then harder. I let my hand tangle in her hair, holding her in place, tasting the edge of need that lived just under her skin.
She made a sound, a high whimper, and I felt her hips roll against me. I gripped her tighter, the heat between us building fast, but I held the line.
I wanted her. I wanted to take her, right here on the rug. But more than that, I wanted to keep her. I wanted to give her this feeling, this safety, until she asked for more.
We kissed until we were both shaking.
She pulled back first, eyes dark, pupils blown.
She said, “Don’t stop.”
So I didn’t.
I gathered her up, the blanket and all, and carried her through the apartment like a fireman bringing out the only thing worth saving. She didn’t weigh enough to matter. She didn’t struggle, didn’t laugh or squirm—she just buried her face against my neck and wrapped her arms around my shoulders.
I took her to the living room and sat down on the couch with her still in my lap, cradled against me. She was loose in my arms, legs tucked up, blanket pooling over both of us. For a while she just breathed, cheek pressed to my chest, listening to my heart trip and stutter.
It was dark outside. The only light came from the TV, which played the news with the sound off, and a single floor lamp in the corner. We could have been the only people left in the city.
She looked up. Her face was flushed, hair a wild mess over her eyes, lips pink and bitten from the last round of kissing.
She said, “I want you.”
I made her say it again. “What do you want, Angela?”
She hesitated, just long enough to make me think she was going to hedge. But she didn’t. She looked right at me and said, “I need you to fuck me, Daddy.”
I lost my goddamn mind.
I ran my hand up under the hem of her sweater, slow enough to test her patience, slow enough to hear her breathe.
The skin on her side was warm, smooth, and tight over the muscle; I traced the ridge of her ribs and felt her shiver.
My palm was rough as sandpaper, callused from a decade of fighting and fixing and breaking the world open, but she didn’t flinch.
When my fingers grazed the edge of her bra, she gasped, soft and high in her throat, and arched her back like she was starving for it.