Page 54 of Pistol Whipped

Not for long. Because it takes me four separate tries to get through to Lou. Who sounds like shit when he finally picks up.

“Blue?”

“There you are, mother fucker.”

“Blue.” He still sounds groggy, but he’d have to be thick as pig shit not to hear my frustration. “It’s the middle of the night here. What’s going on?”

“What’s going on, Lou, is that you are shit at your job.”

I spend the next ten minutes railing into him about The Pistols and threatening to fire him if he doesn’t fix this shit.

At some point, I run out of steam and fall backwards into the king-size bed. The ceiling in my deluxe suite dances above me, thanks to my favourite mix of whiskey and drugs. While I watch the patterns twist and swirl, part of me wishes I never sent BJ-girl away, because I could have been getting my cock sucked while my cock sucker of a manager tries to defend himself.

Instead, fucking silence. Silence that lasts long enough for me to say, “Braun, you hear me?”

“Oh, I heard you, Blue.” I’m unexpectedly pleased when he continues, “You might be right. I’ve been prioritizing The Pistols too damn much. They’ve gotten cocky. Especially Rain Gamble. She could stand to be knocked down a peg or two.”

His voice takes on a faraway note. Like, even though we’re mid-conversation, his thoughts are somewhere else. I chalk it up to the drugs in my veins.

“That girl needs taking down a peg,” he repeats almost to himself. Serves me right for calling this late. The fucker is barely awake, except he keeps right on surprising me.

Brighter than before and totally out of nowhere, he asks, “Say, Blue, how’d you like to fly in for a party I’m hosting next week?”

For a second, I’m lost, but it turns out it’s not such a rogue question after all.

End Interlude

Chapter 28

I ’ d Do Anything

Dutch

The second she wakes in my arms, I feel it. Her whole body tenses, and though she’s doing her best not to move a muscle, I feel her eyes rove over my chain-link tattoos, and I even feel it the second she recognizes it’s me that’s holding her and not some stranger, or worse, that asshole Trey. Her shoulders drop from her ears, and she puffs out a breath. It doesn’t mean she’s not still freaked.

I am too. Because I fucked my best friend. Or former best friend. I don’t actually even know if she still considers me her best friend. Even though I consider her mine, I consider her to be so much more than that too, which is why I don’t give a shit that she is freaking out right now.

We were both too caught up in each other last night to think much about what it all meant. When we got up to the apartment, we did little more than strip out of our wet clothes and collapse into my bed. This was always meant to happen, Rain and I. She might not know it yet, but she will, and I will do everything in my power to make sure she does.

In an effort to calm her nerves and my own, I brush my hands through her hair just like I’ve always dreamed of doing.

“Shhhh, you’re spiralling.” My voice is always deep, but right now it’s more gravelly from the minimal hours of sleep we got. After everything that went down in the alley, I hailed us a cab and brought us back to the apartment I share with my brother. Her adrenaline was spiked so high and dropped so fast that she didn’t even stay awake long enough to get here. I paid the cabbie and carried Rain’s sleeping form up the elevator before tucking her into my bed.

I’ve explained it all to her, but it doesn’t do much to settle her breathing. She’s still seconds away from a freak-out, so I twist her body until her head rests on my bare chest and I can easily wrap my arms around her. She’s cool to the touch against my palms, but it only takes a couple of seconds of holding her there for my steady heartbeat to ground hers. Once that happens, I let my hands roam a bit more freely over her perfect skin. My fingers graze the length of her spine.

Just the touch of her is enough. My body can’t help but react. She feels it the moment I get hard. I know because she tenses in my arms again. If I were anyone else, she’d bolt for sure. She’d be out of this bed, and out the door before I could say anything. But because I am me, and she is my Rainy, her default setting is to joke. To play it off like my desire for her is no big deal.

“Want me to take care of that for ya, big guy?” she drawls.

This girl. She can’t just let things be easy. She has to tease. Just like last night, she forgets; I don’t rise to her bait. I won’t let her tempt me into a fight.

“I don’t think so.”

Her cheeks pink. She thinks I’m rejecting her, which I remedy immediately before she can pull away from me. I murmur against the shell of her ear, “Don’t get it twisted, Rainy-girl. I can’t wait to cum down that pretty throat of yours, but right now, I have a promise to keep.”

Damn right I do. I toss her sideways, and revel in the way her body bounces a few times before landing with her back on the mattress. I lent her a T-shirt to sleep in last night, which was obviously so big on her that it reached nearly to her knees. Thankfully, our little tussle means that now it’s sitting just at the apex of her thighs and her pussy might as well be my own personal homing beacon because my eyes are drawn there instantly.

I move slowly, taking my time to kneel over her, bracketing her legs between my knees and leaning forward so I can once again wrap my hands around her thick thighs and squeeze. My fingers dig into her snake tattoos just like they did last night, but actually seeing them—thanks to the sun peeking through my thin curtains—nearly chokes me.