Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Cinna
I woke up with Dav still underneath me, his arm casually draped across my hips, his heartbeat a steady metronome against my ear, comforting in a way it had no right to be.
I knew I should move away, put some space between us, especially as my mind wished to be closer, to sink into his very skin.
But I couldn’t seem to make myself move, to create the wedge some part of me was still trying to convince me I needed.
It was just trying to protect me.
But… protect me from what?
From getting hurt? I’d been hurt before.
That same voice, though, whispered that it was different, that the kind of pain the ending of this might cause was the kind that I had no defenses against.
Still, I’d been through a lot.
There was no reason to assume I wouldn’t survive this as well.
So I let myself stay there, enjoying the feel of him, the warm sensation in my chest at being beside him.
Eventually, his fingers started to drift up and down my spine, taking me from warm and cozy to burning and aching in seconds.
That was all it took with him. The slightest of touches, the promise of more.
I slid more fully over him, my lips landing just below his jaw, then moving down the column of his throat, over his chest, down his stomach, my tongue tracing the dips of his muscles, loving the way his breath hitched and his muscles twitched as I kept moving downward.
I slipped under the covers, finding him already thick and straining, then teasing my tongue across his head, tasting his desire, then sucking him deep.
His hips bucked up into my mouth as he whipped away the covers, then gathered my hair out of the way, so he could watch as I worked him.
His breath grew fast and ragged as his hips rocked into my mouth, as his fingers dug into my neck, the taste of him filling my mouth as I worked him with my mouth and hand, the other slipping down to tease over his balls as his body tensed, and ragged groans started to escape him.
His hand tugged my hair, a silent warning that he wasn’t going to be able to last much longer. I didn’t want him to. I worked him faster, driving him up, then through the orgasm, his release sliding down my throat, and a little moan escaped me at that.
I couldn’t explain it, the way some strange, primal part of me wanted him inside me. In my mouth, coming deep inside of me like he had the night before.
I’d never felt that way before. Never let someone inside of me like that before. Somehow, though, with Dav, it felt right.
“Fuck, love,” he hissed as I finally released him, looking up with a satisfied smile. His hand moved out, teasing over my swollen lower lip. “You better get up here and let me have a taste too,” he said, hand pulling at my hair when I didn’t immediately move to do just that.
“Come on,” he said, wicked smirk toying with his lips. “Be a good girl and ride my face. I’m fucking famished,” he added, making a strange little laugh escape me as I moved up his body, my legs settling on either side of his head.
“Sit,” he demanded, grabbing my hips and yanking me down fully.
There was no more talking for either of us then as he started to work me with his tongue and lips, as his fingers slid inside of me, intensifying the sensations as I rocked against him, shameless in my own need for release.
He worked me relentlessly through one orgasm, but wasn’t satisfied with just that, taking me down from one and driving me upward once again.
His fingers got harder and faster inside of me, and I felt the slight stretch as he slid a third inside, gathering up my desire, then slipping back out… sliding back, pressing.
There was a second of hesitation, waiting for me to tense or object.
I found no objections to give him. I wanted everything he could give me.
So his other finger slid into my ass, creating a new sensation, intensifying the pleasure as he kept working me with his tongue, as his fingers started to thrust faster, harder, driving me to that edge, then sending me ruthlessly hurtling over, making my legs shake and me need to bite hard on my lip to stifle my cries.
“I can’t,” I whined afterward, my clit too sensitive to take any more.
Dav let me scoot down, but his fingers stayed inside of me, thrusting lazily as I straddled him.
“So fucking gorgeous after you come,” he said, his free hand moving up to glide over my cheek, down my neck, then chest, teasing my breasts and nipples until my walls were tightening around his fingers again.
A devilish glint hit his eyes as one of his fingers left my pussy, making me grumble, until it was sliding back too, slipping into my ass, stretching me.
“You like that?” he asked, already having his answer as a surprised moan escaped me.
“Yes,” I whimpered, hips rocking, needing more of the sensation.
That deep rumble moved through him as I felt his cock getting harder beneath me until he was just as needy as he’d been before I’d taken him in my mouth.
“Ride me, baby,” he groaned as his final finger slid out of my pussy, his other two staying in my ass as I lifted up, desperate for the fullness of him inside of me again, then sliding down on his length, the sensation amplified my his fingers inside of me at the same time.
“Oh, fuck,” he groaned, eyes molten as he watched me starting to ride him.
His cock and fingers had me rushing toward that edge faster than seemed possible.
“That’s it,” he groaned. “Squeeze my cock,” he demanded. Then just like that, I was, crying out as I came, the pulsations slow and deep, taking me under over and over. “Fuck,” he hissed as he came with me, the heat of his release filling me, making another little pulse of pleasure course through me before I was finally spent, falling against his chest, panting for breath.
“That’s one hell of a way to wake up,” Dav said, voice calm, sated.
“Mmhmm,” was the only response I could manage, sucking in slow, deep breaths. Then, as reality slowly came back to me, “Was I loud?” I asked, wincing as I pushed back to look down at him.
“I’ve heard you louder,” he said, shooting me a lazy smile. “For example, I’m pretty sure an entire forest of owls got good and spooked when we were out there.”
“Joel,” I said, glancing over toward the door.
“He’s fifteen. Pretty sure he’s well past the birds and bees discussion,” he reminded me, shrugging off my concern.
“Knowing about it and hearing it—“
“You think he hasn’t already used that fancy new tablet to watch all sorts of porn?” he cut me off.
“Gross,” I said, climbing off of him, leaning over the side of the bed to fetch Dav’s shirt from the day before to throw on to rush to the bathroom.
“He might already be fucking,” he added as I yanked the shirt over my head.
“Were you? At fifteen?” I asked.
“Yep. You?”
“Sixteen,” I said, memories of a quick, underwhelming fuck against a brick wall in an alley. Not the most romantic cherry popping story, but then, I’d never been a romantic kind of girl. “Maybe I can sneak you out before he sees you,” I said, pressing my thighs together as I made my way to the bedroom door, peeking out.
“Ashamed of me, love?” he asked as he leaned down to fetch his pants off of the floor.
“It’s not like that,” I insisted. “I’ll be right back,” I added before rushing out into the hall.
By the time I came back out, Dav had fresh clothes waiting for me.
“Thanks,” I said, getting into them, then handing him back his shirt. “Come on. Try to be quiet,” I demanded, leading him out into the main area of the apartment.
“‘Morning, Dav,” Joel called, voice thick with sleep, but smile amused as he sat up on the couch.
“Kid,” Dav said, struggling to keep his lips in a straight line. “I was just here, ah, braiding Cinna’s hair,” he said, making Joel’s gaze slide to my wild bedhead.
“Good job,” he said, holding in a chuckle.
“Yeah, I’m not very good at it,” Dav agreed, the two of them sharing a look.
“You guys could at least pretend that we don’t all know what this is about,” I grumbled, making my way to the coffee pot. “You staying for a cup?” I asked, glancing back at Dav.
“I think I’ll save myself the instant ulcer this morning,” he said. “I’m gonna go home, shower, change, get some food. You let me know what we’re up to today.”
“Okay,” I agreed, watching him undo the locks, then make his way out.
Joel beat me to the door, sliding the locks back into place before heading to the bathroom.
“There’s toothbrushes in the drawer,” I called, wincing at how… motherly that sounded as I grabbed my phone, placing a quick order for breakfast to be delivered, and making a mental note to grab some shit to actually keep in my apartment, since Joel seemed to be permanently crashing here now.
Cereal, breakfast bars, easy shit for him to grab if he was hungry, since I wasn’t around much to order food.
What else would a teenager need?
Deodorant, I decided, thinking of the permanent stench that seemed to cling to kids that age, no matter how clean they seemed.
A pillow or two.
“You always get up this early?” Joel asked, coming out of the bathroom a few minutes later, his hair looking like he’d combed wet fingers through it to tame it down.
“No. But I usually don’t get home that early either,” I told him. “I ordered breakfast. You hanging here after school?” I asked.
He froze at that, likely feeling put on the spot.
“Maybe.”
“Okay. I just want to show you something,” I said, leading him over toward the cabinet under the TV, opening the second drawer, where I slid open the top of a box. “This is here,” I told him, gesturing down toward the gun. “I’m assuming you know enough about one to know how to aim and shoot.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s no safety. So don’t be stupid with it,” I told him. “It’s just for if you hear someone trying to come in and you don’t have a way out. There’s a fire escape out the bedroom window,” I told him. “So try for that before you go shooting people. I don’t know if I want to deal with two bodies this week.”
“Okay,” Joel said, nodding.
“But if you can’t get to the bedroom, you shoot and you don’t think twice about it. If it’s you against someone else, you always have to pick yourself.”
“Got it,” he agreed, suddenly looking a lot younger to me. I probably should have been telling him to go back to his place where he was, relatively, safe. But as a former kid who wanted an out, and hadn’t been offered one, I couldn’t rip it away from him now that he had it.
“Good. I’m gonna pick up a new door. That piece of shit could be kicked in by an eighty-year-old with a double knee replacement,” I said, shaking my head at it. “Maybe I’ll try to get that done tonight.”
“I can help,” Joel offered as he grabbed two mugs.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“My old man, he did construction. Before he jacked up his back and…” he trailed off.
I didn’t need help filling that in.
Workplace accidents to prescription pills to street drugs. It was a lot more common than people realized.
“I know some things,” he added, pouring two cups of coffee.
“Good. Because I don’t,” I admitted.
“But you know how to kick ass, which is, arguably, better,” he said, holding out a mug toward me.
“How about you teach me home maintenance shit, and I teach you to fight,” I offered.
“Deal,” he agreed, turning to put a cup of sugar in his mug before drinking.
The food showed up, and we ate over another episode of Buffy before he had to dip into his apartment to get a change of clothes. It was quiet for a change, his parents worn out from fighting finally.
I got myself together by the time he came back, and we walked out together.
“Aren’t you supposed to wait for Dav?” he asked, shooting me a knowing glance.
“I’m not supposed to wait for anyone,” I told him. “We’re both equals in the organization. I’ve been going out on my own since I was nineteen.”
“But—“ he objected.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, waving him off as he ducked down the street for the high school as I kept moving.
The thing was, I actually wanted to wait for Dav.
That was exactly why I didn’t.
I didn’t want to start getting dependent on someone else because I was doubting myself. That wasn’t how a capo acted. Sure, we had crews. We had men and women to rely on when a job was too big. But I didn’t need someone hanging over my shoulder watching me do my job.
So I began working on the mental list I’d started as I got myself ready for the day. All the names of the people who I did jobs with, who might be pissed at me.
And I… started dropping in for unexpected visits.
I figured the best way to truly gauge if someone was holding a grudge was to show up unexpectedly and see their knee-jerk reactions.
The first two people I visited had just been perplexed, not understanding why they were seeing me again when things had been squared away for so long.
The third snorted at me as I walked in, shaking his head. “Here to take the actual food out of my mouth?” he’d asked. “That’s about all I got left.”
But that was all bruised pride and the frustrations that came with life beating you down.
Not something he’d hire people to attack me about. He couldn’t even afford it if he wanted to.
“You seen this guy around?” I asked them each, holding out my phone to show the picture of Chet.
But no one had.
I mean, this was Brooklyn. It wasn’t exactly a rural area where new faces would stick out like sore thumbs. And there was no way this guy was a local criminal, because I was pretty sure either Dav’s crew, my crew, or Drake’s crew would have known about it.
He wasn’t from this area.
Which wasn’t helping.
My phone vibrated in my pocket after a few hours, and I pretended to ignore the way my heart trilled at seeing Dav’s name on the screen.
You’re a pain in my ass, Cin.
I caught myself smiling down at my phone, and forced my lips into a straight line as I shot a text back.
I’ll let you know if I need backup.
Sure you will, he shot back. Then, Don’t forget we have a meeting with Renzo tonight.
Crap.
Yeah.
That shit with the butcher shop.
Like I needed something else to worry about.
Though, Renzo wasn’t an alarmist kind of boss. So if he was calling us in, this was probably something big. Maybe even that shit going down with the Russians that he was siccing Elian on.
I scrolled through my texts, finding the one from Renzo, then making a mental note to head in that direction around that time. Which still left me the bulk of the day to keep running down leads.
“And what about your wife?” I asked yet another guy on my list, six pints deep in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday.
“What about her?” he asked.
“She pissed at me?” I asked as he reached his hand into the bowl of nuts that likely had fifty unwashed hands in there per shift.
“Why would she be? You weren’t the chick I was fucking instead of her.”
“You’re real charming, Joe,” I said, rolling my eyes at him.
“She had a good snatch too,” he said, looking down at his beer. “Even after the kids. Dunno why I did that.”
In general, I thought I liked working in a male-dominated profession. I fit in better with their detachment and coldness. But, fuck, every once in a while, one of these idiots made me wish I was a hairdresser or some girly shit like that.
I was about to walk out when Joe called back to me. “Can I see that picture again?” he asked. “Something’s bothering me,” he added as he finished off his beer.
With a small surge of hope after another long day of nothing at all, I walked back, holding out my phone.
“Think I maybe saw him with Lip once. Givin’ the poor guy a hard time.”
“Lip?” I repeated, brows scrunched.
“Guy out front of the sushi place over a block or so,” Joe said, waving in the general direction.
“Guy out front?” I repeated. “You mean homeless?” I clarified.
“Think the PC term is Person experiencing homelessness ,” Joe said with an eye roll. “But yeah. Think that fucker in the picture might be the guy I chased off a while back when he’d been harassing the kid.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Thanks. Maybe you’ll get your wife back,” I said.
“Nah. She’s fucking some stock broker now,” he told me.
She was trading up, it seemed.
Good for her.
I moved back outside, heading down the street to duck into a sub place, grabbing one for myself and this Lip guy before I went in search of him.
He was exactly where Joe had directed me, down a block, sitting in front of a sushi place that boasted a C rating from the health inspector on the window.
Lip was sitting on a piece of cardboard, his long legs pulled up to his chest to protect him from the cold whipping down the narrow street. A black hoodie was pulled up over his head under a large puffer jacket that had been ripped in several places.
“Want some lunch?” I asked, passing him the sub without waiting for an answer, then a bottle of water as well.
“Thanks,” he said, and I could feel his gaze on me as I unwrapped my sub. “You don’t have to sit with me,” he added, his words piercing me a bit. I mean, I’d lived in Brooklyn my whole life. Homelessness was a harsh reality of everyday life. I never wanted to be unaware of it, but it became just… part of life. As awful as that was. So I didn’t always feel that twinge, no matter how many times I brought someone a coat or socks or some food. “I probably don’t smell great.”
“I got a kid crashing on my couch at my apartment who smells worse than you do,” I told him. “You’re Lip?” I asked, finally looking over at him.
He couldn’t have been much older than Joel. Maybe sixteen, seventeen max.
It was another hard truth in big cities that unhoused kids weren’t exactly a rarity. Of all ages. But especially teens. Runaways. Foster kids who opted for the streets instead of going to another home or group facility.
That fact didn’t make it any easier.
Lip was a lot like Joel in that long, gangly way many teen boys were. Like their arms and legs grew faster than the rest of them. Though Lip’s living situation was likely more to blame for his thinness than just a killer metabolism.
He had skin stretched gaunt over what would likely become strong, masculine features if he got some weight on him. A square jaw, stern brow, low cheekbones. His nose had the slightest bend from being broken at some point. And his dark brown eyes looked sunken.
I couldn’t see what color his hair was under his hood, but I imagined dark.
“Yeah.”
“I gotta ask. What the fuck kind of name is Lip?”
“My name is Philip. It’s my old man’s name, though. Didn’t want to use it.”
“Solid reason. I like the sound of Lip better anyway,” I decided, taking a bite out of my sub.
“You’re not sitting here just to be nice,” he accused as he took a much bigger bite of his food, making me wish I’d picked up some chips or desserts too.
“No one who’s met me has accused me of being nice,” I agreed. “I actually just have a question about someone who was harassing you.”
To that, Lip let out a humorless laugh. “Which one? Which one on which day?” he asked.
“People are assholes,” I agreed, reaching for my phone to show him the picture.
“Oh, that guy,” he said, plowing through the second half of his sub.
“Was he just being a dick, or did he say anything specific?”
“He was rambling about how his boss was going to get bums like me off of the street.”
“This street?” I asked, looking up and down it.
If you were being technical, all of Brooklyn was Renzo’s turf. But a lot of the neighborhoods were broken up by other, smaller crews who kicked up money to our family that allowed them to continue to operate in the area without interference.
I was blanking on who this crew was here. Or how I might be connected to them.
“Did he say anything else?” I asked, watching as he balled up his wrapper, sucking in a deep, satisfied breath, his stomach likely fuller than it had been in weeks. “What is it?” I asked.
“Something I probably shouldn’t repeat,” he said.
“I’m a big girl,” I told him, wrapping up the other half of my sub and leaving it on the sidewalk as I moved to stand. “I can take it.”
“He said they just have to ‘take care of some cunt’ around here first.”
“Huh,” I said, racking my brain for why I would have anything to do with this area, but at this point, my mind was spinning with all the different names and jobs I’d been mulling over for the past few weeks.
“Do you know who that is?” he asked.
“I think I’m the cunt,” I admitted, watching his eyes widen as I reached in my pocket for my phone, ready to reach out to the other capos and ask for clarification on who ran this area.
I didn’t even get my finger on the unlock button.
“No!” Lip yelled, trying to fly up off the ground, his panicked eyes behind me.
But it was too late.
I was too slow.
A van door flew open, hands reached out, and I was pulled inside.
Even as the door slid closed, I felt the prick of something in my neck, and the dizziness swirled within seconds.