Chapter 6 #2
Jordan wasn’t as familiar as I was with the beef those two had, and it was a mindfuck I didn’t want any part of.
Long story short, Biancchi infiltrated Mendoza’s criminal nest while working undercover.
When Mendoza found out his identity, he took it to heart—to put it mildly.
As narcissistic as he was, he didn’t appreciate being duped like that.
Ever since then, he had been breathing down Detective Biancchi’s neck.
“And you’re telling me this, why?” I asked Mendoza. “Biancchi is GPD. I barely know him.”
Mendoza shrugged. “Not my problem, but since your esteemed colleague refuses contact with me—”
“You tried to kill his wife,” I said, blinking in disbelief. “What did you expect?”
“He betrayed me.”
“You’re a gun smuggler. He’s a cop. That’s how things work. It wasn’t personal.”
Ah, but judging by Mendoza’s face, it was personal. As I said, it was a mindfuck I didn’t want any part of.
“Look,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “I’ll talk to Biancchi, but I can’t make him do shit if he doesn’t want to do it. You get that, right?”
“Talk to him,” Mendoza said coolly. “Or I’ll spill the beans. You have twenty-four hours.”
Fuck him and his ultimatum, but he was right. Our lives were in his hands, so I didn’t have any other choice but to do what he said. The fact that the phone calls were monitored only added to the fun before I called the secure line.
“Alaska,” Marcello said after the third ring.
“Greenland,” I responded. “There’s some heat around the corner.”
“Are you in danger?”
“Not at this moment, but there has been an unfortunate development. Your criminal friend of the obsessed variety showed up here, so we’re in a bit of a jam.”
“Shit,” Marcello murmured. “How the hell did that happen? He was supposed to go to the Smitsville pen.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about that, but he’s threatening to rat us out.”
“Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t do it already. What does he want?”
“He wants to talk to you. Can you visit him?”
“Fucking hell,” Marcello growled. “Why can’t that fucker just leave me alone?”
“Yeah, well, our asses are on the line, so… sorry?”
“This is what we’ll do. Tell him that I will visit him tomorrow if he helps you out.”
“What if he refuses?”
“I’ll visit him anyway, but first do as I say.”
The dinner, to my everlasting surprise, passed without incident.
Crusher wasn’t present because they put him in solitary after he tried to strangle his cellmate.
We talked to Mendoza, who agreed to Biancchi’s terms with a look of morbid satisfaction on his face.
After dinner, they sent Jordan to the kitchen because the inmate working there cut off his finger.
I went back to our cell and waited for Jordan to return, which happened an hour later.
After the guard left, I dropped both mattresses on the floor as Jordan unbuttoned his jumpsuit.
When he reached into his briefs, flashing me with his trimmed pubes, I made a face.
“What the hell? Cover your shit, man.”
I’d barely recovered when he pulled a small plastic bottle out of his underwear.
“A shampoo?” I said, wondering what the hell was going on. “Why would you smuggle shampoo into our cell?”
Jordan smirked. “Nope. Try it.”
“It was in your briefs, so I don’t think so.”
“Just do it.”
I eyed the bottle, finally relenting.
“On my hair?”
“No, just… taste it.”
I opened the bottle and sniffed, but it had no particular smell. I took a small sip, only to shudder all over.
“It’s tequila,” Jordan whispered. “Miguel’s aunt smuggled it in for him, and he shared it with me. I told you he’s cool.”
No wonder Jordan looked so cheerful—he was drunk.
“Tequila, my ass,” I murmured, peering into the bottle. “Tastes like battery acid, but… beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.”
I took another swig, suppressing a gag. “It tastes vile.”
“Not after you drink half a bottle,” Jordan said, hiccupping.
He was trying to button up his jumpsuit, but his fingers kept missing the buttons, so he gave up.
“How drunk are you exactly?” I said as he collapsed on the mattress next to me.
“As Miguel would say, un poco. But we’re celebrating, aren’t we? Our fish took the bait.”
“True,” I admitted. “And we’re still alive, so there’s that.”
Half an hour later, I was pleasantly buzzing.
Thanks to the devil’s brew we were drinking, I almost forgot our circumstances.
I was somewhere dark where it smelled like lemon, probably because of Jordan’s head in my lap.
Incidentally, why was his head in my lap?
Was he asleep? Was I asleep? My insomnia sometimes made me feel so confused that I couldn’t tell if I was asleep or awake.
Presently, I was still in a seated position, so I was probably awake.
I flicked Jordan’s nose to wake him up, but he swatted my hand with a frown.
“Don’t.”
“Get up,” I grumbled. “I’m not your pillow.”
“I refuse.”
I choked on a laugh. “Excuse me?”
“I’m very comfortable,” Jordan said, yawning. “Besides, you owe me. You have been using me as a sleep token lately.”
“Perhaps, but I’m not as comfortable as you,” I countered, pushing his head off my lap. “I want to get out of this jumpsuit and go to sleep. Come on, princess, get up.”
“Fuck off, pumpkin,” he grumbled as I pulled him into a seated position. “We didn’t drink everything.”
“Ah, yes, we did,” I said, making him kneel. When he lost his balance, I grabbed him by the waist before he could collapse to the floor. Simultaneously, his arms wrapped around my neck as he sagged against me, limp and snoring.
“Jesus,” I muttered, trying to straighten him up, but he was heavier than he looked. To my relief, he woke up then, or so it seemed, because he raised his head and looked at me.
“I hell soh mehing,” he mumbled, making me frown.
“Sorry, what?”
“I have to tell you something,” he repeated, relatively coherent this time.
“Please, hurry. I’m sleepy, and I need to piss.”
“Ya dida ho me yard.”
I grinned, shaking my head in disbelief. “What was that?”
“You’re the one who made me hard.”
Shit, if my smile could drop faster, I would be in the Guinness World Records.
For a few moments, we were both silent.
“In the shower. You made me hard,” Jordan whispered, as I swallowed with difficulty. “It wasn’t the first time either. It keeps happening. Have you ever fucked a guy? I haven’t.”
“Jordan,” I said, but it was a wonder I could speak because my tongue felt glued to the roof of my mouth. “Be quiet.”
“I think I’m hard now. Am I hard now?”
“Yeah, you’re hard,” I said through my teeth.
To be honest, when I felt his boner against my hip, my first impulse was to send him into a goddamn wall.
My second impulse was to punch him in the face.
A few more violent options crossed my mind, but I decided against them because they felt wrong.
I wasn’t that big of an asshole to discard him like a used tissue after he helped me with my sleep problem.
What did he call himself… a sleep token? It sounded about right.
While I was mulling it over, Jordan moved abruptly, and in what had to be the dumbest decision of his life, he pressed his lips to mine.
Yup, the stupid fucker kissed me, and it took me a few stunned moments to process the fact.
The input coming from my senses engulfed me, making it impossible to think.
Like, for example, how his lips were warm and cool at the same time, which was odd.
How they were unexpectedly soft. How he tasted like water…
the freshest, coolest water from a crisp mountain stream, with just a tang of citrus.
His tongue dared to swipe over the seam of my closed, shocked lips, making my dick twitch before Jordan…
fainted? His lips slid down my jaw, his forehead landed on my shoulder with a thump, and I heard a soft snore.
As soon as I deposited him on the mattress, I jerked backward, my legs pushing against the floor until I found myself against the wall.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, hyperventilating. “What the fuck just happened?”
I was stunned. Baffled. Enraged. Well, not quite enraged.
Angry? No, not that either. Maybe angry-ish.
I was shocked, more than angry, but the guy was drunk.
Still, what the fuck? I kept replaying what happened in my mind, but since it didn’t last long, there wasn’t much to replay.
I could still feel his lips on mine, and it was unlike anything I’d felt in my life.
I’d kissed women before, sure, but this was different on so many levels.
Was it because he was a dude? Or because he was Jordan Slade, and I’d hated him for months and years before he became my sleep token?
Maybe I didn’t hate him anymore, but I would still need years of therapy to recover from this.
And while I was going out of my mind, he just lay there asleep, as if nothing had ever happened. It was diabolical.
Not to mention that his jumpsuit was still unbuttoned, and the sight of his bare chest bothered me, so I decided to button the damn thing.
I was careful not to touch his body, but now at least I could look at him without worrying that he would catch me doing it.
He was a lab rat, and I had a microscope—it was as simple as that.
I observed, I studied, I memorized. The way his eyelashes curled.
The single freckle under his eye. His lips, which I now knew were as soft as they looked.
A light shadow of stubble on his jaw. His lean, athletic chest. The barely visible line of light hair below his belly button.
When his lips parted, revealing pearly white teeth, I tried to look away, but my eyes wouldn’t move.
Those lips had touched mine earlier, and I couldn’t stop staring at them.
And since his taste on my tongue was gone, I did something I wouldn’t be able to justify to my dying day—I licked his lips.
I probably lost my mind for a moment, but I swiped my tongue over his lips, from one corner to the other, all over those pearly whites.
Not to be mistaken for a kiss—that didn’t even cross my mind, but there were numerous reasons to lick a person.
For example, if you were hungry and they tasted like fruit, that would be one.
Okay, so maybe not numerous, but… fine, how about I had to do it?
He pissed me off, and I had to do it, but since nothing about our situation was normal, our behavior wasn’t normal either…
which was kind of normal. After that, I lay down next to him and went to sleep, promising myself that I would never, ever think of it again.