Chapter Eleven
Carmen
“I feel guilty for ordering two entrées,” Sofia said as she shared a small piece of her burger with Hammy.
“Don’t be.” Clearly, if Rune could afford two fancy hotel rooms and spa packages, he wasn’t going to sweat a room service charge. “One is for celebrating and one is for comfort. I feel like today needs both.”
“You’re not wrong about that. I still can’t believe there was a shooting.”
“Promise me when you move to California, you will live in a safer neighborhood than we do here.”
“I haven’t even thought about that yet.”
“Oh, please. I bet since the day you first saw the listing, you have been looking up all the different neighborhoods, apartments, and public transit.”
She shot me a guilty little smile.
What can I say? I knew my sister.
Which was how I knew that after we ate, fed Hammy, then took her out, she was going to want to take a long bath, then pass out hard.
I tried to get an early night myself, but my mind refused to settle. All I could think about was what Rune said in my room before the bullets started to fly.
That he hadn’t shot Vicky.
But he’d been there.
He’d seen it.
That meant, if I believed him, that he would also know who’d done it.
And if I’d been wrong, if I’d been chasing the wrong man all along, that meant Vicky’s killer was still out there. He was still walking around, smiling, laughing, spending time with friends and family, maybe falling in love. All things Victoria would never get a chance to do again.
It was wrong.
He had to pay for it.
I waited for Sofia to curl up with Hammy and pass out. Then I grabbed my key card and quietly made my way out of the room and down the hall.
It was getting late.
There was a good chance Rune would be asleep.
But I barely finished knocking when the door slid open.
And there he was.
In nothing but a pair of black basketball shorts.
Desire sliced through me, stealing my breath, making my belly twist as my gaze drifted across his wide chest, down the indents of his abdominal muscles, then traced the deep V that disappeared into the waistband of his pants.
“Carmen?”
I swallowed hard and pretended that there wasn’t an ache between my thighs. “Can we talk?”
Hopefully if he heard the breathlessness in my voice, he attributed it to wanting to be quiet so the other guests didn’t get annoyed.
“Yeah,” he said, pulling the door fully open, but barely moving out of the way. When I stepped through, my body brushed his. I swear each inch that touched warmed, sparked.
Rune’s room was smaller than ours, without a kitchenette, but dominated by a king-sized bed.
“You okay?” Rune asked, closing the door.
Aside from the throbbing need that was making it hard to think clearly? “Yeah.”
“Sof?”
I liked how he always thought to ask about her, to think about her.
“Sleeping. This was a lot. She hasn’t been plotting her own criminal lifestyle for the past year.”
“Yeah, about that,” Rune said, leaning against the wall, crossing his arms. “Why a year?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve been back in Jersey for longer than a year. And… and Victoria was—” he paused, softening his voice, “killed just before then.”
“I didn’t know at first,” I admitted. “We, uh, we were kind of… on the outs when she went to Puerto Rico for the summer.”
I wouldn’t claim it was the first time. Grief made me want to soften the sharp edges of our friendship. But the truth was that Vicky and I had a lot of ups and downs over the years.
We’d met in kindergarten when I’d been cleaning up the toy area, and she came through like a tornado, undoing everything I’d done.
We’d argued.
Yet somehow became immediate friends.
Fate was on our side through four out of the five years of elementary school, sticking us in the same classes until we were as close as sisters.
Middle school had deepened that bond from the superficiality of young friendships to the more emotional intensity of the tweens and young teens.
It was high school when our unshakable bond got, well, shakier.
Part of it was because of boys and the way all young girls make the mistake of choosing them over their friends at times.
Then there came the jealousy when, during one of our off periods when she was dating some college kid who didn’t want her hanging out with me, I started to get close to my little sister instead of her.
And so it went for the next several years. Periods where we were damn near inseparable followed by months where we barely spoke—mostly because Vicky started dating someone new, and that became her main focus.
There’d been a bad falling out when I’d chosen to move with my sister when she’d gotten into college in the city.
But we seemed to move like tides, retreating but always returning.
After another ugly breakup, Victoria was suddenly on our doorstep, then crashing on the couch—or in my bed—for several months as she figured out what she wanted to do next.
Victoria had always been, well, a little flighty.
She bounced from job to job the same way she did from one relationship to the next.
It was something I’d always kind of admired about her: her willingness to take chances, then quickly course correct if something didn’t go how she hoped.
Meanwhile, I was always afraid of change, of making the wrong decision, of trusting the wrong people.
So I just… didn’t take those chances; I didn’t trust… anyone.
“What’d you fight over?” Rune asked.
“Puerto Rico, actually.”
“Why?”
“She’d been planning to go. We both have family there. She was trying to convince me to go with her, spend the summer, have some fun, flings, make memories.”
“You didn’t want to?”
“I just… couldn’t. My job was what was giving Sof and me enough stability. She was starting to figure it out by then, but if I left, she likely would have gotten some soul-sucking job to make ends meet, and acting would have fallen to the side.”
“And she saw it as you choosing Sofia over her.”
“Yeah. Sof and Vicky were oil and water. They both, you know, tried to get along around me for my sake. But things were always tense, especially if one of them thought I was choosing the other over them.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“You never had anything like that with your brother?”
Rune gave me a devilish little smirk. “Can’t say either of us have ever been serious enough about a woman that she came between us. And Croft and I, we’re twins. So I think the bond is just a little different.”
“But you haven’t had friends come between you?”
“We grew up kinda different. In the club.”
“The biker club?”
“Yeah, our father was a member. And the club is like a family, so all his club brothers became our uncles. All their kids became our cousins and best friends. Not many of us made friends outside of the club. Not serious ones, anyway.”
“Because you couldn’t, you know, talk about club stuff with outsiders?”
“I think that part was always known, but never stated. It wasn’t like our parents told us not to make friends. But we always knew there was a lot we couldn’t tell strangers about our lives.”
“It makes sense. But you didn’t fight? With your cousins?”
“Oh, we fought like fucking cats and dogs. Especially the guys. But it was never serious. No fallouts.”
“Why were you in Puerto Rico then?”
“Originally, to visit family. I think Croft and I both felt a little… pinched still living at home but being adults. We saw hopping over to another country as a way to branch out on our own and be seen as men. But then we got there… and we got wrapped up in some shit.”
“The kind of shit that ends with people getting shot?”
“In a roundabout way, yes. At first, we were just in the car when a distant cousin—second or third or something—did a drop.”
“A drop,” I repeated.
“Of something illegal. Still don’t know what it was. Anyway, shit went a little sideways. My brother and I needed to step in so our cousin didn’t get killed. Things spiraled from there.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“The guy who shot your friend?”
“Yeah.”
“I wish I had more for you. But the fact of the matter is, we didn’t work with him. He wasn’t part of the same crew. It was the first time we met them—to do a deal. And shit went fucking sideways in a blink. One minute we were all standing there… then… chaos.”
I could see the ghost of that night on his face, the way it haunted him. It felt wrong to press. But I’d been waiting so long to know who killed my friend.
“What was his name?”
“Jon.”
“Jon? That’s it? Jon?”
“Not as rare as Rune, I’ll give you. But it’s all I have.”
“What did he look like?”
Rune waved a hand. “Six foot. Not built but not skinny. Just… average build. Brown hair. Dark hair. He had it shaved pretty short, and it was nighttime, so I can’t say brown or black. Everything about him was just… average.”
“So you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him again?”
“I didn’t say that. I’d recognize him for sure. But there’s just… there’s nothing else I can say about him that would help you figure out who it was.”
“It’s something. At least I’m not chasing the wrong person anymore. If you’re not lying to me.”
“Baby,” he said, exhaling hard. “I see Vicky’s face damn near every time I close my eyes. Trust me, I’m not lying.”
There was no mistaking the pain and regret in his eyes. I had no reason not to trust him.
I didn’t even realize my lower lip was wobbling until Rune’s brows lowered. “What’s wrong?”
“I almost killed you,” I said, blinking hard as my eyes stung. God, it felt like all I’d been doing lately is crying.
Rune pushed off the wall and moved toward me, crouching down in front of me and resting his forearms across my knees.
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you were going to actually do it.”
“I’d been planning to. I wanted to.”
“But then you saw I was a person and you couldn’t do it.”
“If you killed her, you would have deserved it, though.”
“As someone who was there, I gotta say I agree with that. But that doesn’t mean you are someone who is capable of enacting that kind of justice. There’s nothing wrong with being too soft for that. Soft is underrated.”
My heart stuttered as he looked up at me.
“No one has ever thought of me as soft.”
“That’s just because you’re comparing yourself to your sister. She’s gooey. In comparison, you feel hard. But you’re not.”
“And, what, you’re hard?” I asked.
“Again, compared to my brother, yeah. But I think it’s important not to let yourself get calloused. No matter how much life tries to demand it of you.”
His arms were still resting on my thighs, and his hands shifted slightly to give my thighs a quick squeeze.
My focus narrowed to that contact. It was meant to be chaste, reassuring.
But try telling that to my body. It was a five-alarm fire blazing through my body, making my breathing go quick and shallow as my heartbeat thrummed in all my pulse points.
Up so close, Rune would have needed to be clueless to miss the change.
Testing my reaction, his fingers drifted up ever so slightly, inching up my thighs.
A shiver slid down my spine as a small gasp escaped me.
That was all he needed.
His fingers slid upward, tracing the edge of my shorts until my hips were rocking restlessly.
His finger pressed between my thighs, dragging out of me a gasp that transformed into a moan as his thumb moved side to side over my clit. The friction of my shorts and panties against me had soft little whimpers escaping me as my gaze stayed fixed on Rune’s face.
“No,” I whimpered when he pulled suddenly away.
“Sh,” he murmured. “Lie back.”
Maybe I should have resisted, fought the attraction to a man I’d nearly murdered just a few days before.
But, God, the look in his eyes had my belly flipping. I was helpless but to do exactly what he wanted.
As soon as I was flat, his hands slid up my thighs, over my hips, then grabbed the waistbands of my shorts and panties and drew them down.
Anticipation sizzled across my nerve endings as he freed the material. And Rune didn’t give me a second to have the uncertainty take root.
He grabbed my knees, spread my legs wide, and pressed them to the mattress as he moved between, his tongue tracing up my center.
The sensation had my thighs trying to snap shut, dragging a little chuckle out of Rune as he wrapped his arms around them, holding them in place.
His tongue slipped upward, finding my clit, and flicking his tongue over it. Once. Twice.
My back arched off the bed as a deep moan escaped me.
There were no thoughts then, just sensation, just the slow, careful circle of his tongue.
My hand slid down, grabbing the back of his head, holding him against me as my hips rocked against him.
His own hand moved, slipping between us to slide two fingers inside me.
A moan slipped between my lips as his fingers started to thrust.
Need bled into every second, every breath, every sound that escaped me. The pressure grew tighter, more insistent.
“Rune,” I whimpered, my thighs started to shake.
His free hand slid up, reaching for mine, holding on as the pleasure sharpened, tightened, then released.
I came, trembling, breathless, overwhelmed.
I was still gasping for breath when there was a soft, tentative knock on the door.
Rune jerked away as I shot up in the bed, wide-eyed.
“It’s me,” Sofia whispered.
Sensing my panic, Rune held one hand up at me while he handed me my panties and shorts.
I struggled into them and watched as Rune walked into the bathroom.
I was confused for a second before realizing that while I’d gotten off, he was clearly still struggling with his own desire.
He shot me a devilish smirk before closing the bathroom door.
I rushed to unlock the main door, not wanting to leave my sister alone in the hall for long.
“Hey, sorry. I should have left a note,” I said as I pulled it open.
“Like I didn’t know where you’d be,” she said with an eye roll.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“I think Hammy wants to go pee. But I don’t want to take her alone.”
“Oh, yeah. I can go with you.”
“No, you can’t,” Rune called from the bathroom over the running tap. “Wait for me. We’ll all go.”
Sofia sent me a thrilled smile.
“I’ll just go grab Hammy. Be right back.”
Rune walked back out and reached for his t-shirt. “You don’t have to go with us.”
“Yes, I do.”
“We walk Hammy all the time by ourselves.”
“Back before I was around, sure,” he said, sliding his feet into shoes.
I rolled my eyes but was secretly charmed by the show of chivalry.
“Wait. One more thing,” Rune said when I reached for the door handle.
“Yeah?” I asked, turning back.
His hand grabbed the side of my neck, yanking me against him, then ducking his head.
I wavered on my feet, my heart swooping, my belly flipping.
But his lips just lingered a breath away from mine.
“I’m not done with you,” he murmured.
Then he reached past me, yanked the door open, and waited for me to move on my jelly legs.
“We’re ready!” Sofia declared as I moved away from Rune and his wicked little smirk.
So then… we all took a walk.
And went back to our separate beds.
Where I sat awake… wishing I was across the hall.
With the man I tried to kill a few days ago.
What the hell had my life become?