Page 39 of Bad Men

“Yeah?” he said again with a large dose of desperation.

It was tempting to let him stew, especially for making the decision on his own to hurt her. That alone made me want to hang up and make him wait. It made me want to drive home and punch him in the face. That was the only reason I was stalking the aisles of some shitty shop. I probably could have called him in the car during the drive, but I was a pacer. I needed movement and space when I was as furious as I was.

“Dav?”

“Were you really going to kill her?” I asked instead, brain taking a whole other route on the call.

I heard the hesitation before Nero spoke. “I don’t know.”

“Were you?” I snarled out, fighting to keep my voice down. “If she hadn’t let you fuck her, would you have killed her?”

“You know it’s not that simple.”

“Tell me.” I stood in the middle of the cereal aisle, empty basket bumping into my hip, glaring unseeing at a cardboard cutout of some giant chicken in a cape. “You fucked up. You took her with you. You told her things you knew better than to tell anyone, even me. You made that call, but you were going to take her away because you’re a fucking idiot?”

“Dav—”

I hung up.

It was either that or pitch my phone across the store. It was shoved into my back pocket instead.

To keep from decapitating the bird, I grabbed the nearest box of some sugary flakes and stuffed them into the basket. I added a few different items from the next aisle, a sponge, a pair of rubber gloves. Things I was fairly certain we didn’t need, but the mindless task of focusing on something else helped take my thoughts off Nero and his betrayal because that was how it felt. His decision to just handle the matter without talking to me first didn’t just hurt. It pulverized something inside me.

“Hey! Dav.”

The sound of my name in some random quickie mart had me turning to face the man lumbering up the aisle in my direction. My annoyance spiked at the interruption to my thoughts but also at the sight of Darnell sauntering up to me like we were friends.

Eduardo had a lot of guys working for him. We each had our uses. Some of us had zero use, except a big mouth. He kept those, too. That was the case with Darnell. No one liked the guy. He was a snitch and only protected because he was good enough at it that Eduardo considered him useful. That was the only reason no one had taken him it yet.

“What do you want, Darnell?” I demanded, in no mood to be dealing with this idiot.

He bobbed a bony shoulder under the filthy fabric of his muscle top. The once white material bore signs of grease and dirt. It hung on his skeletal frame, making his arms appear even thinner dangling at his sides. He hiked up the soiled state of his jeans by the frayed belt and grinned at me with teeth practically rotting out of his mouth thanks to years of crack abuse. He was a pale, sickly looking fucker with acne scars and something orange always staining the corners of his mouth. Being near him always made me want to take a shower.

“I thought that was you,” he prattled on. “I was in the next aisle and I thought I heard you talking.” His watery blue eyes danced around me. “No Nero?”

I didn’t have time for this.

“Did you need something?”

He bobbed that shoulder again. “Just seeing what you were up to.”

“Same thing you are. See you around, Darnell.”

I turned and started in the opposite direction, hoping he wouldn’t follow. He didn’t. I dumped my basket on a nearby shelf and left the store, abandoning the idea of peace and quiet for the sweltering streets. Bodies moved around me, sticky and flushed with perspiration. Women wearing next to nothing flounced by. I felt their eyes moving over me, but I was too focused to notice. I found myself at the park on a shady bench overlooking a pond with no memory of ever being at the park as an adult. What did people even do there? The place was packed with kids feeding ducks and teenagers throwing a football around. A few adults sat under patches of shade with ice creams and books. Several were on bikes or jogging, two things that made no sense in that heat. I spotted a couple crossing the winding pathway and wondered if Mia ever went to the park. I wasn’t about to ask her to take a moonlit stroll around the pond, but she seemed like the kind who would like that sort of thing.

In my pocket, my phone chirped. I freed the device, expecting Nero. It was a text from Mia.

“I want to try this next time we’re together,” the message said under a loading gif.

Curiosity had me poking at the screen to make it play faster. But the moment it did, I snapped my phone off before anyone caught sight of the pornographic image I was watching in a park surrounded by kids.

I bolted off the bench, my boner a painful bump cutting into my zipper and hurried to where I’d left my car. I didn’t check the message again until I was slouched behind the wheel and not at risk of getting hauled off as some pervert.

The up close scene of two cocks pounding into a woman’s vagina and ass left no room for misunderstandings. Her request was unmistakable. The animation looped on repeat, a perfectly timed display.

Two more appeared underneath. Same concept, but in different angles. In all three, the woman was in the middle while her two male partners pounded her tight holes. The thought of doing that with Mia made my cock throb. It was a fantasy I could definitely get behind … or in front. It made no difference to me which position I had. Which hole.

“Fuck baby,” I wrote back. “Shouldn’t you be working?”

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