Chapter 29 – Remi
Twenty-Nine
Remi
Ten, twenty, maybe thirty minutes pass before my body and brain start functioning again. I’m still staring at my ceiling, noticing little grooves I’m pretty sure weren’t there before today. And is that a new color?
I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to clear the daze I seem trapped in.
Fucked nine ways to hell by a cop.
A cop with a dick that had absolutely no business being that fucking big. And pierced. Seriously. Six foot six wasn’t enough? The universe had to make him proportionate too?
Remi, you dumb bitch.
You stupid, stupid, utterly satisfied dumb bitch.
“Say something,” he mutters into my shoulder.
I can’t look at him yet. It will make this all too real, and I don’t think I’m ready to face reality and what it means. My knuckles whiten around the throw blanket on the floor beside me.
“Thank you. I needed that.”
It’s not a lie. We could all use a little soul rearranging now and then, especially after hours in a dingy cell.
Thiago lets out a hearty laugh, and I almost join him.
“My pleasure.” His slight Texan drawl slips out, forcing me to clench my thighs and come to terms with the fact that I really enjoyed sex with Thiago.
Enough that apparently being thoroughly wrecked three times wasn’t enough to keep my body from considering a fourth.
And why the fuck not?
I finally turn over to face him. His curls are disheveled, falling over his forehead, and my fingers itch to touch them. He’s so damn handsome for no reason.
“This isn’t what you think.”
Sliding an arm around my waist, he pulls me closer. “What is it you think I think?”
“This thing between us...it’s just fucking. That’s it.”
“We have a thing? And it’s fucking? As in, more fucking is in our future? Sounds great to me.”
I scoff. “Don’t get cocky.”
“Can’t help that,” he says, throwing one of his enormous legs over mine until our bodies are flush together.
A strange feeling comes over me, one I haven’t felt in...maybe ever.
I’m not the type to ask for help or look to others for safety. Slay your own dragons. Stab your own creepy men. That’s always been my energy. But with Thiago wrapped around me like this, my head finally quiets.
I look up at him. “I’m not looking for a boyfriend, Braga.”
“Good. Me neither,” he says with a grin.
I sigh, stifling a laugh. “I mean it. No strings, no expectations.”
“So friends with benefits.”
It’s not a question.
“I thought I told you, we’re not friends.”
He’s hard again, his dick pressing against my stomach. “This seems pretty friendly to me.”
“You know what I mean,” I say, trying to untangle myself from him, but he keeps me firmly in place.
“You know what, fera? You’re right. We’re not friends yet, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to be.”
Friends with a cop. Is this what my life has come to?
Considering I’m naked on my couch with his dick against my stomach after letting him fuck me into another dimension, I think that question has already been answered.
Yes.
Absolutely yes.
Before I can say another word, he gently takes my hand and brings it into view. His thumb brushes the faint pink marks around my wrists from the cuffs, but those aren’t what hold his attention. It’s the bruises and split skin on my knuckles.
“Can you tell me what happened out there?”
I swallow hard, tempering my rage when I think about Rafe and about being arrested. I debate how much to tell him, or whether to say anything at all.
Am I really about to narc on myself?
He must notice the internal battle because he reaches up and tilts my chin. And I’m disgusted by how intensely he makes my stomach flutter.
“It’s okay if you don’t—”
“Off the books?” I cut in.
Thiago hesitates, then sighs and nods.
“Off the books,” he repeats.
“Someone I thought was a friend betrayed me. He lied. The kind of lie you don’t come back from. And he deserved everything he got.”
All the humor vanishes from Thiago’s face as he listens.
“I’m a firm believer in the saying that when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
“I’m sorry about your friend,” he says, his thumb now slowly brushing back and forth across my lower lip.
I shrug. “He’s dead to me. No second chances.”
Thiago stills. “You forgave me, Remi. Why?”
That’s the million-dollar question.
I don’t really have an answer other than maybe I’ve lost it. It’s my turn to reach up and drum my fingertips against his jaw.
“Don’t fuck this up. Because then I’d have to kill you.”
For the briefest fraction of a second, something flashes across his face, but it’s gone before I can make sense of it. Then he tugs me forward and presses his mouth to mine.
I hadn’t kissed anyone since Ryuji, but now I’m wondering if I’ve ever been kissed at all.
Thiago is the right kind of passion meets dominance. He knows exactly what to give, what to take, and how to leave me breathless and craving more. Maybe that’s why I’ve never stopped thinking about him since the day I climbed him like a fucking tree and tasted his lips for the first time.
He sits up, pulling me with him until I’m straddling his lap, the same position that got me into this mess in the first place.
“Hey, Braga,” I murmur between kisses.
“Hmm,” he all but growls.
My hair is in his fist again, the delicious sting forcing my eyes shut as he tips my head back and kisses along my chin, down the front of my throat to my clavicle.
“You can’t fuck anyone else while you and I are doing this...thing.”
I roll my hips against him, imagining what he’d feel like without any barrier between us.
“So we’re exclusive?”
This time, I can’t suppress a laugh fast enough, but it dies the moment he grabs my jaw.
“No one else.” His expression turns serious, sending shivers down my spine.
“No one.”
“Then that answers your question then.”
“What question?” I manage to ask just as his thumb flicks my nipple piercing.
“Mine.”
My heart stutters at the gravel in his voice as he says it.
“Yours?” I tease, my tone surprisingly composed despite feeling like I’m melting on the inside.
“Yeah. You asked who you belonged to. If I’m exclusively fucking you, then that makes you mine.”
Fuck.
“Does it now?” I murmur as his teeth clasp the metal of one of my nipple rings and tug just enough to make me gasp.
“Your cum is still drying on my face, Remi.”
My eyes just might migrate to the back of my head.
Get a hold of yourself. He’s just a man. And two can play that game.
I reach between us and wrap my fingers around his thick cock, pumping twice as my thumb presses against his piercing.
“For now.”
“We’ll see about that.”
The teasing fades as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I pulled some strings for you last night.”
There it is.
“What? That was you?”
I tap the arm wrapped around me, and after a moment of hesitation, he lets me go.
I grab my clothes from the floor and turn to face him, my pulse racing for an entirely different reason.
Thiago has only been in Philly for two months.
He told me so himself. There’s no way in hell he has that kind of pull.
He rises to his feet with a look of confusion.
“What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy that—”
“That wasn’t just pulling strings, Braga. Those were serious charges.”
My brain starts firing a mile a minute, connecting dots that refuse to form a picture.
“Remi—”
“No.” I shake my head. “You told me you were SWAT. You told me you were new here. So explain to me how a guy who’s barely unpacked his boxes somehow has enough influence to make aggravated battery, fleeing and eluding, and reckless driving vanish in a matter of hours.”
The room suddenly feels smaller because, for the second time since I met him, I’m wondering what else he hasn’t told me.
No second chances.
I should make him leave. Call it all off. Forget it ever happened. But goddamnit, I don’t want to. I look at him, silently pleading for the truth, no matter what it looks like.
He draws a deep breath and takes a step closer.
“I told you who my father was. Using his name, his legacy, to bend the rules isn’t something I’m proud of. But if it meant getting you out of that cell, reducing your charges, or eliminating them altogether, then so be it.”
“You barely know me.”
Thiago slips his hand into mine. “And I already told you that I want to change that.”
I stare at our joined hands, wanting to believe him. Maybe part of me already does. But there’s something in all this that still doesn’t fit.
“Your father was a detective in Miami. A good one, from what you’ve told me.”
“Yeah.”
“And somehow his name reaches all the way to Philadelphia and gets felony charges dropped overnight?”
The question burns between us as I study his face, waiting for a twitch, a nervous tell, anything that might give him away. Yet his expression never cracks.
“People still respect him.”
He could be right. But respect and influence aren’t the same thing.
My gut twists, and that same instinct that warned me about Rafe starts whispering again. Not loud enough to drown out everything I feel for Thiago, but loud enough that I can’t ignore it.
“Hey,” he says, pulling me against him. I make no effort to pull away.
“There are things that happen behind the scenes, things I don’t want to get into with you.” His fingers slide beneath my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes. “People owed me favors, Remi. That’s all I can say.” He pauses, his jaw flexing. “And I hope it doesn’t change how you see me.”
“As a cop?”
“Yeah.”
Just as I start to answer, the front door swings open.
Only four people have biometric access to my unit: my parents, Gio, and Valentina.
The first three know damn well they’re supposed to knock, so, with my ass on full display and Thiago very, very naked, I send up a quick prayer that the person standing behind me is the only one who routinely ignores that rule.
“Oh, shit. Bad timing.”
A wave of relief washes over me.
Valentina.
Thiago immediately shifts behind me, using his massive body to shield mine and giving her an eyeful of his ass cheeks in the process. Then he looks at me like I’m supposed to know what the fuck to do about this.
“Ah, V, can we get a minute?”