Page 59 of Velvet Chains
If she thought this was over, she didn’t know a damn thing about me.
I’d be back.
And next time, she wouldn’t be able to push me out so easily.
I sat there, staring at the ceiling, chiding myself for acting like a teenage boy. What the fuck had gotten into me? Couldn’t I just masturbate in my bed like a normal human?
But I had wanted her so much, I’d been almost surprised I hadn’t done it in the car. If I just…if I got to taste her again, maybe that would scratch this itch. Yeah, that would definitely do it. Once that happened, everything would go back to normal and I would stay away from her…
My phone buzzed. Once. Then again.
I ignored it at first. Still breathing like I’d run a mile, skin hot, mind wrecked.
Then I saw the name flash across the screen.
Liam.
I scrubbed a hand down my face, still sticky with sweat, and answered.
“I’m busy,” I said.
“Doing what?” Liam asked. “Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
“What do you need?”
“Rude. I call you, on the day of my daughter’s wedding—”
I rolled my eyes. “Liam. I’m serious. Cut the shit. What do you need? Shouldn’t you be off driving a vacuum truck somewhere?”
“Funny. Hope you enjoy prison,” Liam said.
“I’m going to hang up now,” I told him, but I didn’t.
He sighed heavily. “The quarterly drop,” he said. “It’s delayed.”
I groaned. “Why am I hearing this from you and not from one of my guys?” I asked.
Liam also groaned. “Okay, don’t get angry.”
I tensed. "Liam."
“There was an incident,” he said quickly, like if he just spat it out fast enough I wouldn’t yell. “At the port.”
I sat forward, pulling my pants back up one-handed, heart rate spiking for the second time in ten minutes—this time for entirely different reasons. I could hear traffic in the background, which meant he was in his car. I wondered what he was doing. Where he was going. What kind of mess he was cleaning up.
“What kind of incident?”
“Look, there’s a reason they didn’t call you. They called me. They thought it was federal.”
I blinked. “What?”
“One of the couriers spooked. Ran before the exchange. Left the container sitting. Whole thing’s sitting in secondary inspection now.”
“That’s not possible. It was, uh, automobile parts.”
“I know what it was,” Liam said, sharp. We really should talk in code more often, I thought. And then Liam kept speaking. “That’s why it’s a problem. They’re not flagging containers like that unless someone tipped them.”
No. Fuck. “Who?”
