At fifteen I was drawing in my sketchbook to let off steam and blushing if someone cursed in front of me. I don’t mention that though. It makes me sound ridiculously out of place.
“Dash is a tech genius. He could have gone somewhere, been something. He taught me a lot, which gave me the knowledge to create a few of my own inventions, such as with the vehicles. Axle is brilliant, and he’s excellent at mapping out the perfect way to put hiding spots in places where hiding spots shouldn’t be. It’s what we do now. No more transporting drugs. No more transporting weapons. We just tweak the vehicles they have for different runs across the border. The ones most concerned with staying out of prison and keeping their stash, are the ones spending bank to keep making it happen.”
It’s a lot to take in. In fact, it’s an entirely different language. Transporting drugs and weapons? It definitely sickens me.
And he’s telling me all about it. Despite the wrongness of it all, I’m still curled up in danger’s arms.
“So Axle, Dash, and Snake are your best friends?” I ask, moving the topic away from all the illegal stuff.
He shifts, pushing me so that I’m on my back, and he slowly starts working my shirt up. It’s all I have on, so my lower half is bare to him.
“Yes. But my version of friends is different from yours. You grew up sharing secrets. We grew up killing to keep secrets.”
My eyes widen, and he studies me intensely. I’m not sure if it’s a threat or just a candid statement.
Shakily, I exhale, still trying not to freak out. Drex is the kind of guy I should run from, yet I keep running to him. I’d like to blame some psychological breakdown, but I know my mind has nothing to do with the feelings I have for him.
“Axle scares me,” I tell him randomly. At this, he freaking laughs. Loudly.
I’m not laughing.
“I’m sure he does,” he says through his chuckles. “The scars on his face freak people out. You should see the ones he sports under his shirt. But most people think I’m the scariest one. I have power. And according to most of the guys in the club, I shoot first and think later.”
I really don’t like having this conversation as though it’s a casual chat about the weather. Drex shed the shackles of morality a long time ago. I still firmly live in a world of right and wrong.
“Is that true?” I whisper.
His expression sobers, and he blows out a breath before running his hand up my leg.
“Mostly,” he confesses. “But at one point in time, I would have let you be killed just for having ties to the traitor who stole from us. Now you’re in my bed; I’m telling you shit I shouldn’t be; and I can’t stomach the thought of anyone else touching you. So apparently it’s not as true as I thought it was.”
Twisted relief fills me, and a touch of shame joins it. My mind works tirelessly to reconcile the fact I don’t want to leave Drex. It pieces together things that try to make it okay to be a killer, rationalizing it as though it can be logical.
What if the men he killed were going to kill him? What if they were men who would have done something to someone innocent? What if they were abusive sons of bitches?
I push the sight of the FBI agent being shot out of my mind. Drex didn’t kill him. Benny did. But Drex supplied him the incentive to make it happen.
It’s all spiraling now, but I work hard to keep from getting sucked into the cyclone.
“You’re trying to justify my actions right now, aren’t you?” Drex asks, proving his perceptiveness is sharper than I realized.
“Yes,” I answer honestly.
He smirks, but then he pushes my shirt up and over my head, baring my body to his eyes.
“Don’t,” he whispers softly. “You’ll go crazy trying to make a saint out of a sinner. And I’m never going to be a saint, baby.”
He kisses me before I can speak, and everything rolls away except for my need for him. Drex Caine really does own me.
He pulls back, staring down at me, still treating me with a gentle touch I’m still getting used to from him.
“Your mom said some shitty things to you that day that pissed me off. You did what you had to, but you didn’t tell her. Why?”
I shrug, feeling uneasy with talking about this. “She’s a good mom. Hearing what I did to save her and my brothers from destitution wouldn’t go over well. She would have felt guilty and pleaded for me to come home so she could find a way to fix it.”
He brushes a kiss over my lips with a whisper-soft touch. “And no one else could have fixed it without you doing this?” he pries.
I don’t know why he’s prying. My life is all in one folder.
“There was…is an uncle. He’s loaded, but… I never asked him for help.”
“Why not? Why didn’t your mom ask him for help? And how the fuck do I not know who’s in your family after all the research I’ve done?”
His exasperation and confusion is actually kind of cute. Obviously I don’t tell him that. Instead, I shrug while tracing some of the tattoos on his arm.
“Dad apparently buried any trail of him and his link to our family before he ever started working for you. Unless you have someone better than him on your team, you wouldn’t have found anything.”
It’s crazy to think my father could have solved all our problems with a few keystrokes by simply hacking some rich people’s accounts. Yet he didn’t. Instead, he tried to live an honest life. Or so I thought. Now I’m just confused with the whole deal.
Drex is staring at me, and I remember I’m supposed to be explaining yet another hidden family member he was unaware of.
“My uncle is my dad’s brother, and they’ve hated each other for years. He went to law school, and my dad was constantly bailing him out of financial jams, thanks to all those student loans he was struggling to pay back. Then, when my uncle’s law degree finally started paying off, he refused to pay my father back the money he owed. Dad was working a lot and so was Mom. They had four kids and it wasn’t easy as an accountant—not a major one either—and a waitress to make ends meet. I was too young to work at the time. Dad and Uncle Marshall had a major falling out about the money he owed Dad. After that, Dad said he was done with him.”
He slides his hand up my leg then back down, as though he’s trying to keep me relaxed.
“After Dad died, Mom asked Uncle Marshall for help. He told her to put me to work—I was already working. He didn’t even come to my sister’s funeral back when she died. Her death was when finances really got tight at home because of all the medical bills and funeral costs. Uncle Marshall came to Dad’s funeral, but he didn’t stick around. I’m not even sure why he showed up.”
“His loss,” Drex says softly. “I’m glad he didn’t bail you out. This way, I got to have you.”
That might as well be Shakespearian poetry coming from Drex Caine.
He kisses me again, and I smile, making it harder for him to keep kissing me.
“I think I promised to kiss every inch of you,” he murmurs against my lips. “How about we skip to that part?”
He runs his finger up from my hip, over my stomach, between my breasts, and then toys with my neck. His lips move down, and he follows the path of his finger in reverse, starting with my neck, and working his way down to my right hip, flicking his tongue, kissing a path, and nibbling lightly.
“I like that idea,” I moan—yes, it’s spoken through a moan. My body seems to be so attuned to him that it becomes pliant in his hands under the simplest of touches.
He reverently kisses his way back up, dragging his lips across my flesh in slow, unhurried motions. It almost feels wrong to enjoy something so much from someone I should fear.
But there’s not a trace of rational thinking when it comes to him. It’s freeing and seductive in its own right.
His lips trail over one nipple before his tongue flicks across the pebbled surface, stealing all my thoughts. He abandons it before I’m even truly teased and moves to the other one, showing it more attention when he sucks it into his mouth.
I shiver against him, and a growl emanates from his chest in response. When my hands go to his hair, his motions get a little rougher, losing the sweetness he had seconds ago.
And I love it.
He bites down just hard enough, sending a shot of painful pleasure that I can feel all the way down to my toes. When I whimper, he returns to the other side, showing it the same rough affection.
I’m in sensation overload by the time he starts moving back down my body. Just the heat of his breath licking across my skin is enough to have me aching, needing him closer.
He spreads my thighs wider before propping my legs over his shoulders, and I barely manage to lift my head enough to watch. It’s so damn erotic to see him catch my eyes before his lips fasten around my clit, sucking hard while flicking his tongue across it at the same time.
He doesn’t tease; he goes for the kill. I try to move, squirming reflexively, but he pins me down with very little effort, keeping my hips from moving.
Whimpers, cries, moans… all of it combines, creating unintelligible sounds that flow from my mouth in an endless stream. It only fuels him, and he aggressively devours me, owning me like only he can.