“I parked out back, walked around. I thought I’d see you both in the kitchen or something. I just—” She looked up, and the eyes that had cross-examined a hundred witnesses now couldn’t meet mine. “Then I went inside and saw you sleeping in her bed.”
Her throat worked hard, like she was swallowing a pill that didn’t want to go down. “I didn’t expect that,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to care about her.”
She closed her eyes and breathed in, shallow, measured. “I was going to warn her. That’s all. But then you and her.” A trembling laugh, ugly and raw. “Of course it was you. Why wouldn’t it be?”
I stood and walked to the counter, picking up the glass from earlier and rinsed it in the sink. I needed to move, to keep my hands busy, so they didn’t find her neck.
“Why didn’t you just call?” I asked.
Her voice sharpened. “You think phones work when two separate crime families are hunting you and have a fucking bounty on your head? I burned my last one after the first shooter showed up. I was running, Seneca.”
I nodded, watching the water swirl the soap and grime down the drain.
Jenna’s hands balled into fists in her lap. She stared at them as if expecting to find the answer tattooed on her skin. “I know what you think of me,” she said. “I know I’m the villain in your story. Fine. But I wanted you to know I wasn’t just—” She stopped. “I wanted to see you. Even if it was the last thing I did.”
That should have sounded like a plea, but it didn’t. It sounded like an admission, the kind you made when you had no more moves left.
I looked at her, really looked, and saw what was left of the woman who was supposed to defend me. I came back to the armchair, sat again. She watched every step.
“We had something too, didn’t we?” she said, voice soft now, close to breaking.
Was that true?
She stood, and the movement shocked me with how normal it was. Just a woman getting up from a bad conversation, needing to change the subject before she broke. But instead of pacing oryelling, she walked to me, slow, and knelt down in front of the chair.
I could have stopped her. I didn’t. I would have if Catherine had not walked away so easily. She’d claimed it was to save my life, but I wasn’t so sure. Something in her eyes said she wanted to be back with the Bellini family.
Jenna put her hands on my knees, fingers curling into the denim. I watched her, expressionless, as she looked up at me and found nothing but old pain in my eyes.
“Please,” she whispered, so low I barely heard it. “I need this.”
She undid my belt, slow but not teasing, just methodical. Her hands trembled as she worked the button, then the zipper, and when she reached inside, the touch was cold, clinical, but also desperate. I was half hard already, the friction of the ride and the nearness of her making me swell. She drew my cock out, the shaft thick and flushed, and for a moment she just held it, palm up, like she was offering it to a judge or a priest or maybe just the god she’d stopped believing in.
She bent forward, lips barely grazing the head. Her hair was in my lap, the scent of shampoo and sweat and a hint of something floral that clung even after the day she’d had. She ran her tongue around the tip, slow, then took me in, inch by inch, her mouth hollowing out to fit. She was practiced, but there was no showmanship, none of the theatrics she’d used on me before. This was need, raw and unadorned.
I let her work. My hands found the back of her head, fingers sinking into the roots, not pushing but guiding, giving her the anchor she seemed to want. She took me deeper, and when I hit the back of her throat, she gagged once, then recovered, breathing through her nose, the discipline of old habits making her better at this than anyone had a right to be.
It felt good, god, it felt better than it should have. Her lips were soft, her cheeks hollowed around me, her tongue tracing thesensitive underside until I shuddered. But every time I looked down, every time I saw the arc of her neck and the glint of saliva threading from her chin to my jeans, all I could see was Catherine and the line of her collarbone, the way she’d looked at me in bed, the taste of her still on my lips hours later.
Jenna’s hands worked my thighs, kneading, desperate to pull me further in. I wanted to lose myself, to forget, but the past wouldn’t let me. Even as my hips bucked, even as I groaned, the memory of Catherine—the fucking judge, the woman who’d let me ruin her—clung to the inside of my skull like a tick.
I let Jenna work until I was right at the edge, the pleasure blurring the outlines of the room, the old anger and loss and guilt all fighting for space inside me. When I came, it was a shock, a hard spasm that left me dizzy. She took every drop, swallowing, then letting me slip from her mouth, gasping for air.
She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and looked up, eyes red, face blotched with humiliation and triumph. “See?” she said, her voice hoarse. “It’s not over.”
I walked to the far end of the room and stared out at the moonlit dirt patch, the nowhere we were stranded in. I wondered if Catherine was sleeping, if she was safe, if her father had locked her away behind some five-inch-thick steel door that even a nuke couldn’t open.
Behind me, Jenna’s breath evened out. I heard the faint sound of her standing, of her heels on the ruined vinyl floor. She didn’t speak, didn’t try to touch me. For a while, there was just the humming of the bulb, the faint tick of the cooling pipes, the rawness of two people who’d tried to fuck away their ghosts and failed.
She went to the bathroom, closed the door, and I listened to the sink run. When she came out, her face was scrubbed raw, no makeup left, hair slicked back behind her ears.
“You gonna kill me?” she asked, voice flat.
“No,” I said, and I meant it. I was so fucking confused. Both women were fucking with my head. I studied Jenna for several minutes. Studied her hard, and despite the darkness, I could see it clearly now.
“Let me ask you something, Jenna.” I stayed where I was and crossed my arms. “When you saw Catherine and me in bed, who were you really jealous of?”
Jenna stood and walked toward me. She hugged herself, looking impossibly small. Things were about to change drastically.
