Chapter 42
Chapter
Forty-Two
Lizette
I t’s late, and I sit at the bar downstairs, numb.
One, Knight used his voice on me to keep me still and silent.
Two, I hate Candice.
She’s gone. The woman who gave birth to me—she’s no mother—is gone and a hand delivered contract was delivered. An NDA, apparently, where everything that happened officially never did and we don’t talk about it.
Their lawyer, who’s name I’ve forgotten, a handsome shark in a suit, came and went and said it’s all airtight. Susan and the other girls the Unholy Trinity saved are a long way from here and now have a life of their choosing to live, because of… Trenton? Trevor?
It doesn’t matter, I guess. I just…
I don’t know.
I should be happy, except how can I be when Dad would be here, now, with me, if it wasn’t for that woman?
A hand comes over mine and a drink appears. I look up and Darcy smiles at me, the friendliest I’ve seen her. It’s like her guard’s gone. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been marked now by the alphas of the pack, or if it’s because she helped me shower and clean up after Jake tried to kill me a lifetime ago, or if it’s because she feels sorry for me.
“Why did she kill Dad?” I ask rhetorically.
Darcy shrugs and picks up her drink. “Why do fuckwads do anything? But from what I know, I’m guessing because your father took you.”
“He said she died. He said his name was different.” I shake my head, hand clenching on the bar. “Why?—”
“That wasn’t a maternal creature, and I know your father loved you, raised you in his protection. I know, because you’re here. And strong, brave, real. Trust me, it’d take someone special to take on those three.” Darcy smiles. “Whatever the reasons, it was love, to protect you, and she’s the type to tie up loose ends unless she’s caught like what the Trinity did. And she’s the type for revenge.”
“What’s to stop her coming after you all?”
“Us. She wouldn’t fucking dare. Your father was a visionary…I know the name, his real one, heard it, because he didn’t believe in structure put in place to control people.” She looks over as Julien passes by. “I don’t, either.”
“Thank you for that, Darcy.”
“It was the truth. Drink up.” She leans forward. “You wear every expression on your face and you’re looking at me like you’re my latest pity project. I don’t have those. Maybe I like you, kid. Ever think of that?”
Heat flames in my cheeks. “I’ve never had a friend.”
She laughs. “Heaven help you if I’m your first.”
“Darcy’s okay,” Knight says, coming up, his dimples flashing as he kisses me long and slow and sweet. “Darcy’s brilliant in a fight. Always have her in your corner.”
He heads upstairs to join Dante.
“He’s trying to ask you if you’re staying. He wants you to stay. Men, kid, are easy. They’re pathetic. ”
“Even Julien?” I say, teasing.
“Especially Julien.” She sighs. “Don’t tell him. But I think he’s fucking great.”
“I think he knows.” I pause. “And I can’t leave.”
“There are different ways of leaving. You could be with them here and never have them touch you again, you know?”
“I’m not leaving in any way.”
Reaper’s in the corner, unlit cigarette in hand, watching the small crowd. He narrows his eyes as one man goes to touch a waitress, but she handles it, giving him a look to let him know and he relaxes. It’s all microscopic, those reactions, and it makes me think about what he told me when I was half out of it, about bringing him to his knees.
I love them, and earlier, before Candice arrived, Reaper kissed me hard and whispered his words of love. Just simple, no moon and stars and whatever Knight feels like saying. I love it all, the quiet, the flowery.
The only one who hasn’t said anything is Dante.
I look at Darcy and sip my drink. It's sweet and doesn’t have too much alcohol, and I think I prefer it to the hard liquor and even the wine they drink.
“Do you think,” I begin, “that Dante?—”
But she cuts in. “Dante’s a hard man. I think you unhinge him in ways he can’t deal with, or isn’t sure how to deal with,” she mutters. “But I don’t think you’d be here if he didn’t want you to be. He’s set in his ways.”
I blink hard, my eyes burning. “I know, but I have less confidence than you with him. And I deserve… I deserve more than crumbs.”
I wait for her to say I’m being greedy, wanting the three of them to love me back. But she doesn’t. I sigh as the music starts for the first dancer.
“You deserve your world.” She looks at the stage.
I don’t push. I’ve said enough on that, and the only people who can work this out is me and the alphas. Me and Dante .
“But I was going to ask,” I say. “Do you think, honestly, I’m to blame for Dad’s death? She killed him because of me. She?—”
“I once heard Dante and Reaper talking, mostly Dante, because Reaper’s a man of few words. Majority of the time,” she says. “But they were talking about the man who risked everything to save them. The man who got them out of the pack they were in. Reaper was drowning in trouble, and I think Dante was set to be mated to some girl from another pack. Not his thing—it was that, or they’d take down Reaper.
“Their lives would have been locked away in an old-fashioned pack life. No out. The man, he was escaping. But he took them. Got them a long way away, hid them, and when they had to go separate ways, gave them money, as much as he could spare. They’ve talked about him a lot.”
I listen intently, wondering where Darcy’s story is going.
“And always with reverence because the things he told them, how life didn’t have to be this way just because they were alpha or delta or gamma or omega. They could do and be anything. And I think he was their inspiration. He had a kid, real little, a baby or toddler. The guy’s name was Elias. Elias Enver. And that baby was his life. His reason for living. He saved them for his kid. Because she deserved to be in a better world than the one she’d been born in.
“You, kid. That’s your dad.” She takes a breath. “And those two are where I first heard the name.”
“But—”
“As to why she killed your dad? You’re not to blame, I know that. She is. Revenge, spite… The list goes on, so take your pick. And I get the feeling he’d be pissed the fuck off if you blamed yourself. So stop. You made him happy, end of story.”
I look at her, and to my horror, I burst into tears.
Later, like the next day, they finally take me to the complex they live in. All of them. When the Trinity isn’t bunking down at their nerve center, Pandora’s Folly, this is where they live.
The only good thing about the tears last night is that Darcy saw and she took me to a corner and made me pull myself together before anyone else noticed.
Her no-nonsense style combined with her complete loss at what to do cleared the tears to a watery giggle.
Thank goodness, because later it was business as usual and I sang.
Not so good? The alphas let me sleep alone.
And now…
Here I am in a beautiful building that’s a modern, airy dream inside.
The top floors are built to code on top of the existing building and those smaller floors, each with terraces, all belong to the three alphas.
The rest of the staff live in the other floors. And not just staff from Pandora’s Folly, but from their other places, other businesses.
I know because Knight wouldn’t shut up, telling me who lives where and what they do for the Unholy Trinity.
It’s completely endearing.
Right now he’s getting some wine for us and I move about on a shared living floor, where they could, if they were the type, entertain. The open plan great room is gorgeous and I’m…
I’m restless.
It isn’t fair to be so jumpy because this place is stunning. All of it.
“So what do you think? Modern as all get out inside, heritage on the shell. A home in the sky. Away from the shitty part of Starlight City.” Knight grins like he built it himself.
“This building is glorious.”
He hands me a white wine. “And…there’s a floor for you. It took a bit to get ready, but it’s there.”
Then he peers at me as the elevator dings and my senses spike up again. It’s Dante.
I slide him a look but he moves past and into the kitchen area.
“Took us some fast talking, but it’s there.” Knight sips his wine. “You want something changed, just tell Daddy.”
And my libido ticks up, momentarily squashing down the emptiness that’s settled since yesterday, like something’s missing. That something’s just…wrong.
From the corner of the shared floor of their three-story part of the building, Dante glares. “Maybe she likes it.”
Cigarette smoke drifts in from the open balcony doors where Reaper stands, looking out at the city.
No doubt he can hear every word and he’s just keeping out of it. This is between me and Dante. He knows it.
Why couldn’t it be just Reaper and Knight?
And why the hell do I have to be in love with the complex and cruel Dante as well?
I can’t be here without all of them.
I deserve everything, and Dante doesn’t get to play with me when he feels like it and have his walls up, too.
Crumbs are for birds.
I’m not that.
“I do like it, Knight.”
“But?” he asks, taking the wine and setting it down.
“I don’t belong,” I say.
The words bubble up from nowhere, from the depths of me.
On the floor near the elevator doors in in the antique white open foyer that takes up half the level, are my bags. Ratty and pitifully small.
I look like I’m on the way out.
“No.” Knight looks at me as Reaper comes in. “No, we love you, we want you to stay.”
“All except Dante.”
“He loves you too, he’s just the problem child,” Knight says.
Dante and Reaper don’t say a word.
Words and emotions press at me, threaten to drown me in a deluge I can’t escape. It’s only when Knight takes my face and kisses me that things settle.
Maybe this can work here with them, I don’t need Dante.
So I try.
Lifting my face, I kiss Knight’s soft lips, then all along his jaw where he needs a shave. It’s all soft and I wonder what a beard would be like on him, but then I reconsider. Scruff yes, but he’s the kind of Daddy who needs a smoother face, he’s a Daddy with a hard shell filled with caramel and I want to sink to my knees and take him in my mouth.
“Do Daddy a favor,” he says, “pay Mr. Reaper attention while I fuck your pretty pussy.” Before I can move, he puts his mouth to my ear. “Give the fucker a show. He loves you, he just needs sensitivity training. Do it.” He says this louder. “For Daddy.”
Knight goes back to those soft, seductive little kisses, moving me backwards until hands take hold of my hips.
Reaper.
He’s standing and his gaze flickers once to where Dante must be, and then his attention goes to me. For a moment there’s a warming flash of bemusement, but it sinks into the Reaper mask, and there’s love there, I see it, feel it.
Reaper grips my hair as Daddy Knight flips my skirt.
His fingers are magic on my hot pussy, he slides them over my panties, bringing me to a throbbing, needing ache, the kind that promises untold pleasures if he just tugs them out of the way, if he goes the distance.
“Suck.”
Reaper’s thick cock is out, and I don’t think, I open my mouth, stretching to take him and I suck him right in, just as Knight pulls my panties to the side and sinks into my pussy.
An orgasm hits me.
“Fuuuck,” Knight says. He strokes into me, deep, fingers digging into my hips. “When you come like that it’s fucking amazing.”
Reaper doesn’t say a word, but he has me trapped in the vortex of his eyes, the depths, where so many things are speaking to me, showing secret places within. And I know what he wants, how he wants it. Not through that connection but how he guides me.
They’re rougher hands than Knight’s, and I like that command, the elemental level of it. And I take him in as far as I can.
I’m losing myself in their ministrations, in the way every part of me is engaged. I’m a vessel for giving and receiving pleasure and it’s almost perfect. Almost.
When they come, deep down my throat and in my pussy, I fly.
This is what life here with them will be.
I clean Reaper’s cock, and then move, on my hands and knees, to Knight, and clean his cock, sucking and licking our juices from it.
Not because they expect it. But because I want to.
They’d do the same, and they have.
And…it’s almost perfect.
Almost.
I look up.
Dante’s watching. No expression on his face. “Eight out of ten, Angel, for that performance.”
“You’re an ass.” I get to my feet, straighten my clothes .
Knight goes to say something, but Reaper moves past me and puts a hand on his shoulder, effectively restraining him.
“Tell me something new.”
Does Dante feel left out? Or is this his way of showing emotion? My gaze drops to his trousers. He’s hard. So maybe it’s both. And I can deal with his ways. Can’t I?
But maybe I deserve more.
I wobble. “I know Knight and Reaper love me, and I know that you marked me to save me. That everything you did with Candice—you did it for me. But is that it?”
“What do you mean, is that it? That sounds like a lot to me, Angel,” Dante says.
I take a shaking breath.
“The reason you haven’t said it .”
He stays quiet.
“Am I just a thing to slake your lust and a project as a way to thank the man who helped you? My father?”
Dante’s gaze just holds mine and I can’t read his face.
“Is that what I am to you?” I lick my lips. “You know I love Knight, and I love Reaper. And you know I love you.”
Still he doesn’t speak.
“Do you love me?”
Not one word.
Even Knight stays silent, and half turns to look at Dante.
It hits me. Dante’s silent for a reason.
We both know, him and I, that I’ve committed the worst crime of all. Worse. I spoke it out loud.
I’ve fallen for him, too. He’s the final piece of the love puzzle.
For this to work, I’d need all of them. I’d need all of it. All of them like they’d get all of me.
I look at him, and he’s staring at me, like I’m the devil and not him, like I’m ripping his heart out and not the other way.
And I get it. Suddenly, horribly, I get it .
Everything Darcy said. All the things he’d said. He’s Dante, but he’s holding back.
He’s holding back the words.
Some might say they’re just words so why does it matter if he says it or not. They’re just words.
But for him, they’re not.
They’re real. They’re him.
What he doesn’t say is as important as what he does. And if he doesn’t say them, he’s holding back, and I’m not enough for him to say them.
If he loves me, he needs to find a way, invite me in. With words.
It’s not enough for him to get away with just feeling. He has to admit it. I want the opposite of denial. I know his language. But does he know mine? Reaper does. Knight knew it immediately.
And Dante?
He needs to try.
“I’m bored with this. I don’t need to spell anything out. You’re here. It’s enough.” He shifts, but doesn’t actually move.
“No,” I say, “it isn’t.”
“Sure it is. C’mon. it’s just Dante. He’ll come around.” Knight shakes off Reaper and steps to me.
But I don’t want someone to come around.
Yet I give it another go. One last leap. I know how he likes things. He needs the fight. The denial.
“I don’t want to stay,” I say. “Because of him. Dante .”
He doesn’t say a word. No one does.
“I don’t want him.”
I wait. I’m speaking his language. Denial. And with it, I’m offering him an easy ride. An easy path.
I’m giving him the chance to push me to the ground to take out his cock, to force me into admitting once more I love him, the chance to order me to stay so I know he feels love for me, too. To ease him into telling me after I told him .
Sure I said it, but I’ll say it again in his language, his way.
I’m fucking speaking denial to him. Denial of him, my needs, wants, my love.
And he should get it.
He should see.
Or… maybe he does.
And he just doesn’t want me.
Worse, maybe he thinks it’s enough I’m here to just scratch his itches, accept whatever he feels like giving me.
And maybe he doesn’t care at all.
Because he doesn’t say a damn word.
I gulp down air and look at my stuff.
No, I need it all, I realize. If he can’t even meet me half way, he has to go the entire distance, or not at all.
“Fuck you, Dante. This doesn’t work without you.”
I sweep up a bag.
And I turn.
I walk.
Out the door.