Chapter 6 Predator’s Wake #2
My hands flexed, the urge to close the distance and pin him to the wall nearly overwhelming. “You made it my concern when you entered Eden without authorisation. When you followed someone at Viktor's wedding.”
“I belong everywhere information lives.” His gaze held mine, steady and challenging. “And I don't answer to you. Or Adrian. Or whoever else thinks London belongs to them.”
“You're crossing lines.”
“I've been crossing lines for years. That's how you catch people who operate above them.” One step forward, closing the distance to less than two metres.
“And before you threaten me or try to intimidate me or whatever else men like you do, understand this: I know exactly who you are, what you do, and I'm still standing here.”
Stupid, fearless, or so focused on whatever he was hunting that self-preservation had become secondary. Possibly all three.
“What are you hunting?” I asked.
“Truth.”
“Specific truth. Specific target. Who?”
“My business.”
I moved before he could react — closed the distance, backed him into the alley wall, my body blocking every exit. Hand pressed to brick beside his head, caging him. Close enough to feel his heat, to smell coffee and rain and adrenaline.
“Make it my business,” I said. Voice low. “Or I make your life very difficult.”
He didn't flinch. Didn't try to escape. Just looked up at me with those mismatched eyes, and something shifted in his expression. Not fear. Not submission. Heat.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Pin me to this wall. Threaten me. I already know you're dangerous, and it's not going to make me talk.”
“What will?”
“Nothing.” His hand moved, palm flat over my heart, feeling it pound. “You're used to people being afraid of you. Used to your size and your reputation making civilians fold. But I'm not a civilian. I've been trained by people who make you look gentle.”
“That's what you're hunting,” I said. “Whoever killed your partner.”
“No. I'm hunting the system that let them get away with it. The corruption that turns evidence into smoke and witnesses into ghosts.” His hand pressed harder. “And if you're part of that system, if you're protecting someone who is, we have a problem.”
“I protect Adrian. The people who matter to me. Nobody else.”
“Then we don't have a problem. Yet.” His other hand came up, rested on my hip with casual intimacy that felt like fire. “But you need to back off. Stop following me. Stop digging into my cases.”
“Can't do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don't trust you. Don't know what you're hunting or who gets hurt when you find it.” My own hand moved without permission, settled on his shoulder, feeling muscle beneath dark fabric. “And I can't let that happen.”
“Viktor has nothing to do with any of this.”
“You've told me nothing. Just deflection and warnings.”
His eyes narrowed. “I'm always in control.”
“Prove it.”
“You want proof?” His hand shot down and grabbed my crotch hard through my trousers. Not gentle. Not seductive. Aggressive. Claiming. “Fine.”
I inhaled sharply, body jerking at the contact. His grip was firm, confident, palm pressing against my cock through the fabric with pressure that bordered on painful.
“Still want proof?” Voice low, dangerous. His hand squeezed once, deliberate.
I couldn't speak. Couldn't move.
His free hand worked my belt buckle, popped the button, lowered the zip — all while maintaining that grip, that pressure, that reminder that he'd turned this confrontation entirely on its head.
“Tell me to stop,” he said. “Push me away. Reassert all that discipline you're so proud of.”
I didn't. My body had mutinied.
He pushed my trousers down just enough, then my boxers, freeing my cock. His hand wrapped around bare flesh with a grip that was firm and merciless.
Then he did something that stopped my breath entirely.
He pulled his hand back, brought it to his mouth, and spat into his palm. Once. Twice. Eyes never leaving mine — didn't look down, didn't break contact, just held my gaze while he made his hand slick.
The act was obscene. Deliberate. A show of control that lit every nerve in my body.
He wrapped his slick hand around my cock and stroked. Long, slow, the slide perfect and maddening.
“You're hard,” he observed, voice clinical. “Interesting. Didn't think this made you responsive.”
“It's not this.”
“Then what is it?” His hand tightened, stroking faster. “Curiosity?”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.” Base to head now, thumb sweeping over the slit and spreading precome, his other hand gripping my hip to hold me in place. “Oh wait. You can't. Because right now, I'm the one in control.”
Airless in the alley, nowhere to go. His body heat and brick behind me and that grey sky overhead pressing down like a lid. Just his hand on my cock and his eyes locked on mine.
I bit back a sound. Failed. The noise escaped, rough and desperate.
“That's better,” he murmured. “Honesty. I appreciate that.”
“This isn't—” The words died as his grip tightened, his rhythm increased. “Fuck.”
“Not yet. But we're getting there.” He leaned closer, breath hot against my throat. “You want to come, Rourke? Want me to make you spill in this alley where anyone could walk past?”
“Mercer—”
“Say it. Ask for it. Admit you want this.”
I couldn't. Wouldn't. My body didn't care about strategy or pride or control — it just wanted release, wanted his hand, wanted permission to stop fighting.
His hand moved faster. Merciless. His other hand slid from my hip to my arse, squeezing through fabric, fingertips pressing with pressure that promised more.
“You're close,” he said. “I can feel it. The way your cock's pulsing. The way your breathing's changed.”
“I'm not—”
“You are.” His thumb circled the head, applying pressure that made stars burst behind my eyelids. “Come. Give me proof that I can break your control.”
I came. Release tore through me hard enough to buckle my knees, filling his hand, ruining my boxers with evidence of how completely he'd taken me apart.
He kept stroking through it, milking every pulse, expression focused and clinical. When the aftershocks faded, he released me, withdrew his hand, wiped it clean on a handkerchief from his pocket.
“There,” he said. “Control proven. Any questions?”
I stared at him, rage and shame warring in my chest.
“That was manipulative,” I managed.
He pocketed the handkerchief, adjusted his clothes. “You wanted to intimidate me. I turned it around. Showed you that bigger and stronger doesn't mean immune to leverage.”
“This isn't over.”
“No. It's not.” He met my gaze. “But now you understand: I don't scare easily. I don't fold under pressure. And threatening me just makes me more creative about how I respond.”
He adjusted his jacket, smoothed out the wrinkles, then looked back at me with that infuriating smile. “I think we're past formalities, don't you? After all that.” A vague gesture toward my still-undone trousers. “Can I call you Dom? You can call me Cal. Seems only fair.”
The audacity of it. The sheer bloody cheek. He'd just made me come in an alley and now he was asking permission to use my first name like we were mates at a pub.
Before I could answer, he was already moving past me toward the alley's entrance. “See you around, Dom.”
I stood there for five minutes. Breathing. Processing. Trying to reassemble the control he'd shattered and failing because the pieces didn't go back where they'd been.
The man I absolutely could not afford to be attracted to.
The man whose touch I could still feel like brand marks.
I walked out of the alley, headed back to Ravenswood, and tried to pretend I hadn't just crossed a line I couldn't uncross with someone who was either going to help me understand the corruption eating London or destroy everything I'd built to protect the people I loved.
Either way, Cal Mercer had just rewired something fundamental.
And I had no idea how to fix it.