14. Ivy
IVY
Maybe I need to slow down with the drinking.
Maybe I need to drink more so the know-it-all voice in my head will finally shut up and stop telling me what to do.
I uncap the bottle—really, why do I bother putting the cap back on in the first place?—and raise it to my lips to take a sip. The whiskey burns on the way down. I welcome it like an old friend.
The Jack Daniel’s is doing what Jack Daniel’s does. Smoothing the edges of my rage. Blunting the sharp corners of every thought in my head until the situation is almost tolerable.
Almost.
Because underneath the warmth spreading through my chest is something much hotter. Burning, searing, corrosive.
And the liquor isn’t drowning it. It’s feeding it.
Twelve years. That thing was inside me for twelve years, and I didn’t have the first clue.
I take another drink while the thought sits in my head along with so many others. Buried under my skin. Nestled against my shoulder blade. Transmitting my location to a man who looked me in the eye and told me I was free.
Free. What a joke. I was never free for a single day.
Every city I traveled to, every time I thought I was making my own choice about where to go and how to get there, he knew.
He was watching. Tracking me like a dog with a chip in its neck, except the dog doesn’t have the luxury of understanding, either way. That chip is for its own good.
Maybe Vincenzo told himself the same thing was true of me.
Though really, it doesn’t make me feel much better.
Knowing he thought of me as a dog. The cruelest part?
The illusion. He didn’t lock me in a room or chain me to a bed, the way Nick did.
No, he was smarter than that. He gave me the appearance of autonomy.
My own apartment, my own routines. My own missions planned with what I believed was my own strategy.
He let me think I was choosing. That I was in control.
The whole time, he was looking over my shoulder. I just never saw him.
Another drink. The bottle is more than a quarter gone now, which is only the result of what’s left of my good sense making one last desperate plea at being heard.
Otherwise, I would be much deeper into it than I am now.
My head is starting to feel loose and floaty.
Nick keeps glancing at me from the driver’s seat.
I can see him calculating—how much I’ve had, how much more before it becomes a problem, whether or not he should say something.
He doesn’t, because he’s a smart man. Anything he says right now will come back at him with teeth.
Staring at the road, I’m almost consumed by memories of all the times I felt proud of myself.
The jobs I completed without supervision.
The cities I navigated alone. The moments I thought, I built this.
This life is mine. My apartment in Prague.
The safe houses across Europe. The languages I learned, the skills I honed. The reputation I earned.
None of it was earned. It was allowed. Now I understand the difference, and the difference is eating me alive.
Vincenzo allowed me to have an apartment.
He allowed me to travel. He allowed me to feel independent because it made me a better tool.
A weapon that believes it’s free is more dangerous than one that knows it’s caged.
I was more effective and loyal because I believed I was choosing loyalty instead of having it forced down my throat.
He was the engineer behind everything. Right down to the tracker in my back.
Another drink, and it hits my stomach like a lit match. The eggs and grits from the diner aren’t enough to soak up the damage I’m doing, not by a long shot, if the warmth in my cheeks is any indication.
“You should eat something else,” Nick suggests. It’s the first thing he’s said in over an hour.
“I’m fine.”
“You never finished your food at the diner.”
“I said I’m fine.” I take another gulp to make the point, and the look he gives me is somewhere between concern and resignation. He knows better than to push it.
Another hour passes before he pulls off at a hotel.
Another mid-range chain, like the one before.
Another lot where he parks behind the building, away from the main road.
Another room paid for in cash under a name that doesn’t exist. This routine is becoming familiar in a way that should bother me, but doesn’t, since I’m used to routines.
My old life had them, too. Different cities, same patterns.
At least this time, I know I’m not being watched.
Unless I am, and I just haven’t found that tracker yet.
The idea sends a spike of paranoia through my whiskey haze. I have to physically stop myself from reaching back to touch the bandage on my shoulder blade. The tracker is gone. Nick cut it out. I flushed it. It’s fucking gone.
I wish I could be so sure about the feeling of being watched, because I have to wonder whether that will ever go away.
The room is standard, though this time there’s only one bed.
Neither of us comments on that. A bathroom, a window with blackout curtains.
Nick does his sweep of the closet, bathroom, and under the bed while I sit on the edge of the mattress and take another drink, because what the hell. Might as well get what he paid for.
Once he’s finished, he turns to face me, leaning against the dresser with his arms folded.
Fatigue radiates from him. Not just the physical kind, either, though the dark circles under his eyes and the careful way he favors his injured leg tell that story clearly enough.
There’s something deeper at play. The kind of exhaustion that comes from carrying someone else’s pain on top of your own.
I never asked him to carry it for me. I’m not even sure I want him to.
“So.” His concerned gaze flickers over me. “What do you want to do now?”
It’s a rather open-ended question that could mean a hundred things. What’s the plan? Where do we go next? How do we handle Vincenzo?
But that’s not what I hear. What I hear is a man asking me what I need, and for once, he’s not trying to steer me in one direction or another.
“I need to get my mind off this,” I tell him.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I set the bottle on the nightstand with a heavy clunk and stand up. The room tilts slightly, then rights itself. Whiskey warmth pools in my stomach and begins to spread lower.
I cross the space between us and stop when I’m close enough to feel the heat coming off his body. He’s still leaning against the dresser, arms folded, but his posture shifts. Tenses. I see his throat work as he swallows.
“Ivy…”
“Shh.” I reach for his belt buckle. “Don’t talk. Don’t ask if I’m sure. Don’t treat me like I’m fragile.”
His hand covers mine, stopping me. I look up, ready to go off on him, but his eyes are dark and serious, searching my face for something.
Whatever he finds there must be enough, because his hand falls away.
I undo the buckle. The leather hisses through the loops. His jeans hang loose on his hips, and I push them down, along with his boxers. I don’t give him time to think or hesitate. I sink to my knees and take him into my mouth.
He sucks in a sharp breath, his hand finding the edge of the dresser behind him.
I use my tongue, my lips, the slight scrape of teeth until he’s fully erect, and his hips are making small, involuntary thrusts into my mouth. I can taste him, feel the pulse beneath veined, sensitive skin. It’s grounding… empowering. This is where I control the pace, the pressure, the outcome.
When I pull back, he’s breathing hard, pupils blown wide. I stand up and strip off my clothes without wasting any time, watching his gaze rake over my body. Letting him see all of me—the bruises, old scars—noticing how his expression doesn’t change, doesn’t reflect pity.
I push him back until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, then climb onto his lap. I reach between us and guide him inside me, taking him in one slow movement, the sensation so good it draws a groan from both of us.
He’s so big… thick, filling me completely. I pause for a moment to allow myself to adjust, to feel the stretch and burn. Then I start to move.
I set the pace. Fast, then slow, grinding down when I want to feel him deep, rising up just enough, letting the tip remain inside before slamming back down.
I’m using him. Using his body to chase away the thoughts that won’t stop spiraling.
The tracker. Vincenzo. The twelve years of lies.
I focus on chasing the sensation, the building heat, the way his fingers dig into my sensitive flesh, how his hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise.
“Look at me,” he says, voice rough.
I don’t. I can’t.
I keep my eyes closed and ride him harder, going after the release I need.
The bed creaks, the sound matching the rhythm of our bodies moving in sync.
I’m getting close, feeling the growing tension coiling tight in my belly, and I angle my hips to grind my clit against him with every downward stroke.
“Fuck, Ivy…” His voice breaks as my pussy starts milking him, drawing my pleasure out even more.
I come with a strangled cry, orgasm sharp, sudden, and exactly what I needed. For a few seconds, there’s nothing but the aftermath of pleasure, the empty silence in my head.
Then he’s moving, flipping me onto my stomach before I can catch my breath. My face presses into the pillow, my knees hit the mattress, and he’s behind me, his cock pushing back inside with one hard thrust that forces the air from my lungs.
This isn’t gentle.
He pulls my hips up, angles me where he wants me, and fucks me rough and relentless, with a force that makes the headboard slam against the wall. Each stroke hits deep, sparking aftershocks from my first orgasm, building toward something more intense.
I push back, wanting it harder, wanting the pain and the pleasure to work together until I can’t tell the difference. His hand slides into my hair, grabbing at the roots, anchoring me as he drives into me again and again.
“Don’t stop.” The words tear from my throat. “Don’t you dare fucking stop.”
He doesn’t.
He pounds into me, the sound of skin against skin filling the room, his breathing ragged and desperate. I feel him swell, then the moment he loses control. He comes inside me with a feral groan that sounds like my name, his hips stuttering through the aftershocks.
“Fuck, Ivy,” he manages, collapsing over me, his weight pressing me into the mattress, feeling his heart hammering against my back. We’re both sweating, both breathing hard, and for a long moment neither of us moves.
He finally rolls off, pulling out of me slowly, and I feel the wetness between my thighs. He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me back against his chest, his lips finding my shoulder, my neck, the shell of my ear.
“Stay,” he whispers, and I don’t know if he means tonight or forever.
I don’t say anything. But I don’t pull away either.
His breathing is deep and slow against my neck.
One arm is draped over my hip, heavy with sleep, and his heartbeat has settled into a steady, unhurried rhythm.
He’s out cold. Whatever tension he carried into this room left his body somewhere between the second and third time I pushed him back down when he tried to take control.
He eventually got the message. This was for me.
I lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling, and take stock of things.
My body is wrung out. Loose in a way it hasn’t been in days, maybe even weeks.
The anger is still there—not that I expected it to go anywhere—but it’s been banked for now.
Turned down to a low simmer instead of the rolling boil it was at an hour ago.
The whiskey helped, but this helped more, though I would rather eat glass than ever admit that out loud.
Nick shifts in his sleep, his arm tightening around me before relaxing again.
A reflex. Even when he’s unconscious, he reaches for me.
I wonder if he knows he does it, or if it’s the kind of muscle memory that bypasses the brain.
The same way my body slid across the bed toward him last night without my permission.
I turn my head to look at him. In sleep, with the tension drained from his face and his guard completely down, he looks peaceful.
Softer. The hard lines around his mouth have smoothed out.
The furrow he usually wears between his brows is nowhere to be seen.
He doesn’t look like someone who’s spent the last four months searching for a ghost. He’s not a man who’s been shot, sprayed, kicked, and chased across two continents either by or because of a woman he claims to love.
He looks like a man who trusts me.
Which is when I notice the obvious. He didn’t cuff me.
No handcuffs. No restraints. No chain linking our wrists. My hands are free, my legs are free. The door is twelve feet away, and the car keys are on the dresser where he left them.
I could leave. I could be really free.
The realization moves through me like cold water.
I could get up right now, pull on my clothes, take the keys, and walk out.
He’s asleep, genuinely, deeply asleep, the heavy kind that comes after physical exhaustion and days of running on fumes.
I could be miles away by the time he wakes up.
I could disappear the way I’ve been trained to disappear, and he would never find me again.
Not without knowing where I was headed, because I don’t know that myself.
I could start over. I could find a new city, a new name. A new life that doesn’t belong to Vincenzo or Liam or to Nick or to a dead girl named Laura. I have the skills and the instincts. I’ve survived worse than this with less.
My eyes move to the door. Then to the keys. And back to Nick.
Either he forgot to restrain me, or he chose not to. The fact is, I’m not sure which possibility unsettles me more—that he made a mistake, or that he trusts me enough to sleep beside me with nothing holding me in place.
I lie in the dark for a long time, turning it over.
The highway is outside, stretching in every direction, and nobody in the world knows where I am.
So what do I do now?