Chapter 24
Hook
It’s late by the time we change the sheets and collapse onto my bed.
I’m not surprised Gaeton took me up on the offer to stay overnight, just like I’m not surprised that he wanted to be fucked until he couldn’t think straight instead of talking about it.
My friend has some shit to work out, but ultimately it’s going to be up to him how he handles things.
He hits the mattress on the other side of Tink and, within two minutes, his breathing evens out, and he’s snoring lightly.
She rolls to face me, though I can’t read her expression in the starlight from the windows overhead. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I got just as much out of it as you did.” I hesitate, but I’m tired and in danger of thinking too hard about tomorrow. In the end, it’s the simplest thing in the world to pull Tink to me and arrange her head on my chest. She doesn’t tense up like I half expect her to.
“Jameson …”
Here in the dark, it feels like we’ve finally turned a corner.
I don’t know if it’s too late. I can’t afford to believe that, to let myself be fatalistic.
Failure is not an option. Not with so much on the line.
I gather her closer and rest my chin on her head, giving her time to get out whatever she’s been chewing on for the last few hours.
She shudders out a sigh. “You really don’t make this easy.”
“Nothing in life is easy, Tink. Least of all people. If it seems like it is, someone’s lying.”
Strangely enough, that makes her relax. “I don’t understand how you always know what to say.”
“I don’t.” Fuck, I definitely don’t. I’ve been in a tailspin for months, my people looking to me for answers that I don’t have.
I’m doing the best I can, but I’m muddling through like everyone else.
I smooth my hand over her hair. “We have a similar way of viewing things once you cut through the bullshit. That’s all. ”
She runs her hand up my chest. A touch not meant to seduce; one simply done for the sake of doing it. “This might sound a little cliché, but I feel like I’m running out of time to say it.”
“Tink—”
She touches two fingers to my lips and lifts her head. I still can’t see her expression clearly. “I love you, Jameson. It makes me kind of cranky because I didn’t plan on this, but it’s the damned inconvenient truth.”
I don’t smile, but it’s a near thing. “Loving me is an inconvenient truth.”
“Stop being amused.”
“Only you would fall kicking and screaming into love and then pout about it.” I move her hand from my mouth and press it back to my chest. “We’re not running out of time.”
I don’t have to see her expression clearly to know her mouth has twisted into a frown.
“Save your comforting lies for the people who believe it. I know what Peter is capable of better than anyone. Unless you’ve been hiding things from me, we don’t know where he’ll strike, only that he’s revving up for some kind of attack.
” She takes a shuddering breath. “Actually, that’s a lie.
We know exactly where he’ll strike. Me.”
I frame her face with my hands. Tink never feels fragile, not really.
She’s too strong, fills a room with her energy too effectively just by walking into it.
But at the end of the day, she’s only human and she’s about to come face-to-face with someone who’s done her immeasurable amounts of harm. “I won’t let him touch you. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you have no way of keeping.”
I start to argue, but she kisses me before I can get another word out.
It would be the easiest thing in the world to break that kiss, to keep talking in circles until we’re both blue in the face.
That’s not what we need right now. Tomorrow is coming, for better or worse, and neither of us is that good at masking our worry.
It’s there, a lurking presence that drags its nails along the edges of my mind, a taunting whisper of all the things that can and will go wrong.
Touching her is the only thing that silences it.
I kiss her back with everything I have, taking the comfort she offers and giving it in return.
I reach between our bodies, and she lifts herself just enough to give me access without breaking the kiss.
Part of me wants to rush this, to lose myself in the feeling of fucking her again and again, until we have no energy left for fear.
That can be comfort in its own way, but that’s not what I want right now.
That’s not what she needs. Instead, I tease her, palming her pussy and exploring her with my fingers. Denying us both.
Or at least that’s the plan. Tink has other ideas. She grabs my hand and moves it away from her. “I need you.”
“Tink.”
“I don’t want to wait.” She presses my hands to either side of my head. Not so much holding me down as giving herself leverage. I could free myself without effort, but I can’t quite catch my breath. This isn’t domination and submission. This is something else. Something that goes even deeper.
She laces her fingers with mine as she grinds against me, each slide of her pussy against my cock teasing at the possibility of penetration. “You make me lose my mind.” Her voice weaves a spell as thoroughly as her slow, rolling movements. “This shouldn’t work. We shouldn’t work.”
It takes everything I have not to grab her hips and slide her onto my cock. To maintain stillness and let her guide us. “Who gives a fuck about ‘should,’ beautiful girl? We work. It’s enough.”
“It’s enough.” She does another of those hip rolls that has my cock notching at her entrance.
I hold my breath, my body a single line of tension as she keeps us hovering on the precipice.
Tink’s laugh is breathy and a little amazed.
“I really do love you, Jameson. I really, really do.” She slams down onto me, taking my cock in a single stroke even as she takes my mouth in a kiss that leaves me dizzy.
This woman might kill me, but what a fucking way to go.
She moves her hands to tangle in my hair, and that’s all the encouragement I need to stroke up her thighs to her hips and ass, squeezing and urging her to move. Then there is no more need for words. We’ve said all there is to say; we’re both content to let our bodies continue the conversation.
She rides me slowly and kisses me like she’ll never get enough. That makes two of us. I can’t touch her enough, can’t keep my hands still. I want everything. Fucking everything.
When Tink comes, she does it with my name on her lips, a soft moan that I drink down like the best kind of whiskey.
I want to hang on, to make this last, but she feels too good, and this is too important.
Pleasure shoots down my spine, and then it’s too late to worry about anything but the orgasm turning me wild, pounding into her from below with a single-mindedness I can’t shake. I don’t bother to try.
We lay tangled together as our heartbeats return to a normal pace. “Stay with me. Stay married to me.”
She gives a little laugh. “Most people would hear ‘I love you’ and start making assumptions.”
Most people don’t know Tink as well as I do.
“Stay with me,” I repeat. I cuddle her closer and play my last card.
“Marry me again. Big church wedding and all that shit. Spend a couple years solidifying our power structure in this place, getting us as far out of the criminal shit as we can manage.” I pause, all too aware that she hasn’t taken a breath since I started talking.
I should leave it at that. It’s a lot to dump on her all at once, but hope is a treacherous and slippery slope.
“Have a family with me. Make a home with me.”
She exhales slowly. Carefully. “It’s really shitty of you to start dangling that kind of thing in front of me. We don’t even know if we’re going to survive the next week.”
“Yes, we do. We’re going to remove that bastard, and we’re going to win.” If I say it enough times, it will be true. We will win tomorrow without any losses. We will embark on a future together that I want more than I’ve wanted anything in my life.
“Jameson.”
Every time she says my name, it’s like she’s reaching right into my chest and giving my heart a squeeze. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”
“I know.” She lifts her head enough to give me a ghost of a smile. The fact I can see her expression more clearly now means the moon has once again fled the sun. Dawn isn’t quite here, but it’s close.
She reaches up and runs her fingers through my hair. “Wanting a family is what got me into this mess to begin with.”
“No, Peter is what got you into this mess.” I make a face. “Well, Peter, then Hades, and now me. He used your hope against you.”
“And you aren’t?”
The comment stings, but it’s a fair question. I shift her closer, enjoying the way she fits against me. “You know who my father was.”
She blinks, obviously thrown by what appears to be a change in subject. “Only in passing. He was one of Peter’s generals. Peter kept me away from most everyone.”
“He was about what you’d expect.” Not as bad as some.
If there’s a ranking of shitty parents, Hugh Hook lands somewhere in the middle.
He only roughed me up a handful of times and was usually just a sloppy drunk, not a mean one.
But he ran my mother out of town at some point when I was young enough to only have flashes of memories, and he ensured that the apartment we lived in, no matter how nice, was littered in figurative eggshells I had to navigate whenever he was home and conscious.
Tink frowns. “You mean he wasn’t winning any father of the year awards.”
“No. Not by any stretch of the imagination.” I don’t bother to try for a smile.
I’m not trying to charm her. I’m dead fucking serious about this.
“I want a home, Tink. You know what I mean when I say that. A real home, not just a nice fucking place to sleep. I have my cousins and the people who have become family over the last few years, but I want a family.”
Her lip quivers the tiniest bit. “You know there’s no guarantee I can pop out a few kids. That’s not always how the world works.”
The fact she’s arguing this means she wants it just as much as I do.
She’s just afraid to grab it with both hands, and with good reason.
She’s been slapped down so many times over the years.
Tink deserves a win. That’s not always how the world works, but it’s how our world is going to work.
“I want you, beautiful girl. I love you. The rest will fall into place as it’s supposed to, regardless of what form that takes.
Maybe we work on getting you pregnant and, as you said, popping out a few kids.
Maybe we adopt. Maybe we change our minds about kids and get a small pack of dogs instead. The only rules are the ones we make.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that.”
She frowns harder and finally sighs. “Can we talk about this after we get through the next hurdle? I don’t think I’m superstitious, but I’m about to find some salt to throw over my shoulder or something because I don’t want to jinx us.
” She shifts against me and rests her head on my chest. “I’m afraid to want what you’re offering. ”
“I know.” I press a kiss to the top of her head.
“But you’re right. We’ll talk about it when the future is cleared of this last barricade.
” Of Peter. His death won’t magically fix all the issues in this territory, but it will remove the leader the dissenting voices are trying to rally behind.
Without Peter pushing things forward, I’ll have time to actually fix things here.
Our operations will never go completely clean.
Even with all the money in the world, if we go completely legit, someone else will try to move in.
Finding the right balance is a challenge I can’t think too hard about because there’s still so much to be done to get us to that point.
“Jameson?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for tonight. It doesn’t magically make the pain go away, but it was exactly the distraction I needed.”
“Anything for you.”
I hold her as her breathing evens out, nearly matching Gaeton’s on the other side of her.
In the morning, the big man will be off to fight his own battles, but he sleeps in the safety of my bed now because it is safe.
If we ever go to war with—Well, it’s not the Man in Black’s territory anymore.
I suspect it will pass to his eldest daughter, Cordelia.
She and her wife will hold the center, though I shudder to think about going up against them.
I’ve only met Cordelia a handful of times, and she’s easily as ruthless and ambitious as her father was.
Her wife, Muriel? People who cross Cordelia have a way of disappearing, and I am nearly certain it’s her wife behind it.
One wouldn’t know that they’re a pair of the most dangerous people in Carver City when standing next to them, watching them make eyes at each other.
Cordelia is the eldest, the most ambitious, the leader, but she’s arguably not the most dangerous of the Belmonte daughters.
The middle, Sienna, is a certifiable genius and one of the coldest people I’ve ever met.
The only exception to her icy attitude is her sisters, and her husband who’s a startlingly normal guy.
And the youngest? I look at Gaeton, relaxed in sleep.
Isabelle Belmonte might seem like a nice girl, but she’s playing a dangerous game with Beast and Gaeton and doesn’t seem to care.
No, it’s in everyone’s best interest if the inheritance of power happens seamlessly. There have been too many changes lately in the city. All it takes is someone rocking the boat, and we’ll all end up underwater.
I cuddle Tink closer and close my eyes. Dawn is nearly here, and we have more than enough problems without borrowing from the future. We’ll figure it the fuck out.
We don’t have another choice.