Page 84 of Fearless

A moment – a shared memory – burst to life between them, full-color, each detail laser-etched.

The two men coming through the bedroom window. Ava’s scream. Flash of the knife. The blood all over Maggie’s carpet. Ava eight and trembling, staring in open-mouthed shock at the gutted corpses.

As he shoved the memory back in its mental filing cabinet, Ava stepped in close, through the fuzzy projection of the past, and slipped her arms around his waist, inside his cut, laying her face against his chest.

“My hand’s okay,” she whispered against the running black dog silk-screened onto his shirt. “You know it is. Don’t be mad.”

It wasn’t just about her thumb, he acknowledged with an inward sigh. It was boys giving her hassle at school; it was her future jeopardized by this suspension bullshit; it was the idea of her going to college, a place he could never go, that would never accept the presence of someone like him; it was football douchebags smiling at her; and it was his own taint, his regrettable influence on a life that would have been better off if she’d never been associated with this club, or him.

“Mad,” he echoed, smoothing a hand down the back of her head, through her silky hair. “Fillette, you haven’tseenmad. This is overjoyed.”

She chuckled and he felt the small reverberations through his chest.

The faint swell of voices filtered through the walls from inside.

Mercy had never, not in his memory, been content to exist alongside a woman like this, the way he was with Ava. Women were treacherous, slippery creatures; he didn’t trust them. He didn’t dislike them, didn’t fear them or resent them – not most of them, anyway – but he was too smart to let them get to him. He knew their games, their favorite lies, the way their lashes batted when they were trying to flatter him. Ava, somehow, miraculously, was still the child he’d half-reared, underneath the woman she was growing into.

Her hands shifted at his back, slid under his shirt so she was touching skin. She had narrow palms, skinny fingers; he still wasn’t quite used to the familiar feel of them in this new unfamiliar capacity. He loved it.

“What are you doing?”

Her hands shifted up, moved forward, as she traced his lowest rib, nails scratching lightly, teasing. “No one can see us out here,” she said, mischief curling in her voice. Up, her hands climbed, up the ridges of his abdomen, pushing up his shirt under his cut, going for his chest. The fast glimmer of moonglow in her eyes told him she knew he liked it.

Little brat.

“Isn’t is supposed to bemeputting a hand upyourshirt?” he asked.

“Probably–”

He spun her around, so her back was against the wall, his shadow closing over her and sealing them in.

Ava could see the moon-silvered yard, swaying shadows of trees, and the outline of Mercy’s broad shoulders. But right in front of her was all darkness, this pocket of space that was just theirs. And when he made good on his word, and put his hand up her shirt, it was all the more stirring because she couldn’t see what he was doing.

They didn’t kiss. She could sense his face hovering above hers as she tilted her head back and let the wall support its weight. She wasn’t distracted, that way; she was attuned to every pass of his fingertips as he pushed her bra straps half-off her shoulders and tugged down the cups, stroked her breasts until they were heavy and tight.

“Can we?” She reached through the dark and found the waistband of his jeans. “Out here. Just…quickly. Merc.”

“You’re trying to get me in trouble.” But his voice was that low French-flavored purr that meant she was going to get her way. “You just want your old man to try and beat my ass, dontcha?” He flicked one hardened nipple with the pad of his thumb, back and forth again and again, rasping it until the sensation was so acute, she bit down hard on her lip and thrust her chest against him.

Her voice was a high, thin tremble, but she said, “You afraid?”

“I said he’dtryto beat my ass.” Her other nipple got the same treatment – she was squirming now, as she unbuttoned his jeans, daring him. “That’s how you want it?” he taunted as she worked the zipper down. “Up against the wall in the dark like some groupie?”

If there’d been anything but desire in his voice, she might have stepped back and slapped him for that comment. But he was all Cajun loverboy at this point, and he was hard for her; she felt his cock against her knuckles, heard the little catch in his breathing.

“Up against the wall in the dark,” she said, “like you want me too bad and you can’t help yourself.”

That did it.

She barely had time to toe off her boots before he had her jeans undone and was skimming them down her legs, pulling them off her feet. He lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, felt the gooseflesh as the cool air chased across her bare skin.

Rustling of his clothes, some arranging, his warm finger sweeping her panties to the side, gliding against her wet sex.

And then he entered her on one hard thrust, drawing her down the length of his cock until it hit deep and she gasped.

His hands latched onto her ass and he pressed her hard into the wall.

“Brat,” he said, breathless, and nipped at her throat. “You manipulativebrat.”

---