Chapter 1 #2
She curses at me in English first, then Spanish, nails scraping my neck, thighs shaking around my hips as I work her open with my fingers and my mouth and every filthy promise I’m dumb enough to mean.
She says my name like she’s pissed it feels good.
Like pleasure is another fight she refuses to lose.
I get my hands under her thighs and lift her. She wraps around me, slick and hot, and I pin her to the tile with my body, giving her every second to tell me no.
She doesn’t.
She digs her nails into my shoulders and looks me dead in the eyes.
That look nearly ends me.
“Still want me gone?” I ask.
Her lips part. Her chest rises hard against mine. “Shut up and fuck me.”
Goddamn.
I push into her slow because I want to feel the exact second she stops pretending this is just another bad decision. Her head falls back against the tile. I catch her chin and bring her right back to me.
“No,” I rasp. “Look at me.”
Her lashes flutter.
I grip her tighter. “Look at me, Lady.”
She does, and the whole world goes stupid.
I move deep and slow at first, letting her feel every inch, letting myself feel how bad I’ve got it.
She’s tight around me, hot as sin, mouth open, breath breaking every time my hips roll into hers.
Water runs down her throat, between her breasts, over the place where our bodies meet, and I swear Miami could burn outside that glass and I wouldn’t look away.
“That’s it,” I tell her. “Give me that face.”
Her nails bite into me. “What face?”
“The one nobody else gets.”
Her body clenches around me.
I grin like the bastard I am. “There it is.”
“Shady.”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Harder.”
That word in her mouth, rough and needy and pissed off, tears through what’s left of my control.
I fuck her harder, still watching her, still holding her like she’s a storm I was stupid enough to ride into on purpose. Her back hits the tile. Her thighs tighten around my hips. She’s cursing again, breathless and filthy, and every sound out of her goes straight into my blood.
I make her look at me when she comes because Lady Nyx likes to turn pleasure into performance, and I want the truth.
I want the split second where she forgets the camera face.
Where there’s no glitter, no crowd chanting her name from a dance floor, no sharp smile daring the world to underestimate her.
Just her.
Just mine.
For one hot, shaking second, she gives me exactly that.
Her mouth opens. Her eyes go wide. Her body locks around mine, and I feel her fall apart with my name breaking out of her like she hates how much she means it.
I follow her down hard, face buried in her neck, my groan rough against her wet skin. I say her name when I come because I can’t stop it. Because my body knows before my head is ready to admit it.
Lady.
Not Nyx. Not the DJ. Not the headline.
Lady.
When it’s over, she rests her forehead against my shoulder, breathing hard while water beats down both our backs.
I hold her there. Not too tight. Just enough.
And for the first time in a long damn time, I don’t want to run from what quiet feels like after.
“You’re bad for my brand,” she whispers.
I kiss the side of her head before I can stop myself. “You don’t have a brand with me.”
Her body stills.
There it is.
Too much.
I ease her down, but she doesn’t step away. She studies me through wet lashes, and for once her face ain’t easy to read.
“My brand pays for this view,” she says.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t pretty.” I’m looking at her.
“I’m not pretty.”
“No?” I ask, reaching past her to shut off the water. “You’re dangerous.”
Her smile comes back, but softer. “That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It wasn’t almost.”
The phone starts ringing in the bedroom.
Mine.
The sound cuts through steam and whatever stupid thing is trying to grow between us.
Lady hears the ringtone and steps back first.
That’s how I know she knows.
Saints business has a sound. Even a woman who lives in glass can recognize a blade being drawn.
I grab a towel and move into the bedroom. My phone is on the nightstand beside her gold hoop earrings, three lip glosses, and a little white dish full of rings she probably wears to make men think about her hands.
Vice’s name flashes on the screen.
I answer.
“Talk.”
“Church. Now.”
No greeting. No bullshit.
Vice only sounds like that when the room is already on fire.
I reach for my jeans. “How bad?”
“Carmen walked into Vice Ink with two Solano lawyers, a camera-ready smile, and no ring.”
I stop with one leg in my jeans.
Lady appears in the bathroom doorway wrapped in a towel. Her gaze is casual, but her body ain’t. She’s listening.
Vice keeps talking. “Diablo ended the engagement last night. Official enough for the officers. Not clean enough for Miami. She’s calling it betrayal. Says the Saints stole her father’s legacy.”
“Fuck.”
“That’s one word for it.”
My mind starts moving through routes and risk before emotion gets a vote. Carmen without a ring is still Carmen Solano. Maybe worse. A queen without a throne doesn’t stop being a royal pain in our asses. She just starts looking for heads to chop.
“Mutherfukers?” I ask.
“Quiet.”
“Quiet means moving.”
“Exactly. Carmen brought white roses. Not hers,” Vice says. “Theirs. Mutherfukers. She wanted us to know whose leash she’s holding.”
I grab my cut off the chair. “I’m twenty out.”
“Make it fifteen.”
He hangs up.
Lady leans against the doorway, towel tucked tight above her breasts. Her eyes flick over my face.
“Carmen took the ring off?”
“Diablo cut the engagement.”
Her brows lift. “About damn time.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Nothing with your club ever is.”
I pull on my shirt. “You need to stay your ass here.”
Her expression changes fast. “Excuse me?”
I hear it the second it leaves my mouth.
Wrong words.
Wrong woman.
Still, the threat doesn’t care about her feelings.
Carmen’s pride just got gutted in public.
Diablo’s name is tied to Darling all over Little Havana.
White roses belong to the Mutherfukers, and they’ve been too quiet since Rico hit Darling’s place.
Quiet enemies aren’t resting. They’re choosing an angle.
Anything can be an angle. Lady is an angle. Darling’s best friend. Vice Ink’s DJ. Miami-famous face. Woman with my bite marks still warming under her towel.
I cross the room and grab her phone off the dresser, thumb already checking the charge like I’ve got a right.
She snatches it from my hand.
“Don’t.”
“Stay here, Lady.”
“No.”
I stare at her.
She stares back.
The city is bright behind her, glass and sun and somewhere out there, murder pretending it’s scenery.
“Do you know what today is?” she asks.
“The day Carmen starts a war.”
“It’s also the day I’m playing a noon set at Eclipse for a charity livestream that I promoted for three months. There are sponsors, cameras, contracts and about five thousand people waiting to watch me smile like my life is cute.”
“Cancel the damn thing.”
She laughs once. “You say that like a man who can make me.”
My jaw tightens because I can feel the old argument opening its teeth. “This ain’t about owning you.”
“Funny how men always say that right before they tell me what to do.”
“I’m telling you what’s safe.”
“No,” she says, stepping closer. “Oye, gringo, you’re telling me what’s convenient for your fear.”
That hits harder than it should.
I’m not scared. I don’t do scared. I do prepared. I do armed. I do watching exits while everybody else orders another round. I do counting vehicles and clocks and brothers and bullets. Fear is just information your body gives you before your brain catches up.
But Lady standing there with war waking up below us makes fear feel personal.
“You’re connected to Darling,” I say. “That makes you useful to anyone trying to hurt Diablo.”
“I’ve been connected to Darling since we were sixteen and she cried in the girls’ bathroom because some pendeja made fun of her shoes.”
“Don’t be cute.”
“I’m always cute.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” She drops the towel and walks naked across the room like the argument would be stronger with clothes but she refuses to need them.
“You don’t get to show up in my bed, bite me like you’re signing your damn name, then order me to stay in my place like I’m some shiny little hostage you get to keep safe. ”
The word hostage punches through the room.
I go still.
Her face changes like she hears it too. Like neither of us meant to drag Darling’s nightmare into this bedroom, but there it is. Zip ties. Bruises. Rico’s gun. Diablo carrying his woman out in front of phones and flashing lights. The whole reason I’m worried. It’d kill me if it’d been Lady.
I soften my voice, not because I’m soft but because she deserves the effort.
“You’re not a hostage.”
“Then stop building cages for protection.”
My phone buzzes again.
Not a call this time.
A text.
I glance down before thinking.
Cherry: Heard you spent the night uptown. That true, baby?
My stomach drops half an inch.
Lady sees my face before she sees the name.
Women always do.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Shady.”
The phone buzzes again.
Cherry: You still owe me. Don’t forget who kept your bed warm before your glitter girl started slumming.
Lady’s eyes land on the screen.
The room loses ten degrees.
I lock the phone and put it in my pocket.
Too late.
“Glitter girl,” she repeats.
“Lady.”
She grabs a black robe from the chair and shoves her arms into it. “Who’s Cherry?”
“Nobody.”
Her laugh is bright and ugly. “God, you men need new scripts.”
“She was a clubhouse sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart? A club whore?”
I lift one shoulder. “We try not to call them that.”
“Current?”
“No.”
“Yours?”
“No.”
“Does she know that?”
I don’t answer fast enough.
Again.
Lady nods slowly, lips pressed together like she’s making a decision she doesn’t want to show hurts.
“That’s what I thought.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Of course it’s not. It never is. She just texts you before breakfast to see where you slept because she’s a devoted historian.”
I step toward her. “I haven’t touched her since before you.”