Usually, anyway.
Tonight, I’m fucked out but mentally restless. My mind keeps going over the funeral and that meeting in the parlor earlier. All the things there are to do. Daniel had a lot of shit going on, and now Killer has to decide what he wants to do with it all. It’s going to mean rounding up the foot soldiers. The dealers. The working girls. Showing them all there’s a new boss and hoping no one gets mouthy about it, because there’s also this:
Examples will need to be made.
It’s not pretty, but it’s how shit’s done. Tristian isn’t going to like it, because he’s used to being a fat wallet and a pretty face. He’s the guy we trot out when we need a sweet-talker. He maneuvers with his mind and all that shiny Mercer influence. But Killer’s going to need to cultivate some fear.
He finds me just as I’m finishing rolling up the blunt.
I pause, eyes flicking up to watch him enter his bedroom, but it takes him a second to notice me because his eyes are glued to the bed—to Story’s naked, unconscious body, draped over Tristian like some kind of erotic blanket. He takes her in with a tick in his jaw and a hand reaching down to squeeze his crotch.
Then he sees me, eyes skittering past the window and jerking back.
I stare at him, frozen, the blunt halfway to my mouth. “Don’t be a dick,” I whisper. Killer has this really hardass rule about smoking in the house, and he won’t even relax it for poor old Ms. Crane, who hauls her rattling bones out to the garden every morning. “It’s cold as fuck out there,” I reason, gesturing to my boxers. The rest of my clothes are stuffed somewhere below his bed, probably. “We left you a present and everything.”
He glances back over to Story’s sleeping form, and the way she’s got her thigh hiked up on Tristian’s belly has her legs spread nice and wide for him. His chest expands, contracts, and then he walks toward the window, muscles jumping as he heaves it open a couple inches. “Me first,” he says, brows crouched all low and ornery, like he didn’t just walk into the living manifestation of his goddamn wet dream.
Rolling my eyes, I hand him the blunt and the lighter.
This is the good part about Killian being off the team. No drug tests. No coach looking over his shoulders. No trainers or teammates. Just the two of us, hunched on either side of his cracked window, puffing a blunt. For a moment, it’s just like old times.
He catches my gaze when he passes it back, throat jumping with a restrained cough. “We’ll go find Nick tomorrow?” he asks, voice all business, even though his eyes keep wandering back to the bed.
Nodding, I assure, “We’ll track him down.” Lionel Lucia came to us with intel as to Pretty Bitch’s whereabouts. Hiding out in some gambling den on the Avenue. It’s like he’s not even trying. When I watch him nod, eyes tracing the milky curve of her thigh, I fight back a laugh. “Jesus, just go. Can’t fuck her from all the way over here.”
But he takes one more long drag off the blunt before handing it back and approaching the bed. He undresses more slowly than I’m expecting, drawing it out as he observes them. Can’t say I blame him. Tristian and Story look hot as fuck, like something straight out of a porno. I bet she’s still slippery wet with our cum.
His cock’s already jutting hard when he shoves his pants down, and when he climbs into bed, it’s a sophisticated operation. Slow and careful. Barely even jostles them as he settles in behind her, hand stroking over his cock. Killer isn’t exactly the most expressive guy. I know his dad dying shook the foundations of something I can’t possibly understand. I don’t know if it’s grief or uncertainty about the future, but there’s been a weight in his eyes that I haven’t missed.
As soon as he hovers above her, it melts away.
It makes me wonder how many times he’s done this. How familiar is this to him that it’s as solid a constant as coming home?
Slowly, he reaches out to touch her, palm resting lightly on the swell of her ass. The ember of my blunt glows bright when I take in a long drag, watching Story’s shoulders shake with a shiver.
“Shhh,” I hear him whisper, “go back to sleep, little sister.”
She murmurs and sighs, nestling all up into Tristian’s warmth.
It feels dirty to watch, the way he spreads her, fingers disappearing as he explores what we’ve left inside her. He only spares me a brief look before slotting himself up against her back, cock in hand. He moves swiftly, with expertise, pushing his cock between her legs without waking her. His muscles tense under the restraint of doing it like this; slow and careful. Killian’s body is a work of art, both literally, with the tattoos inking his skin, and figuratively, from the intensity of his training and honed physique. He’s the picture of brawn, muscles bulging and flexing, but he doesn’t use it. Not here.