Story barely stirs when I roll her into Tristian, waiting until she’s curled into his chest, thigh slung over his hips, to creep out of bed. I spend a second watching them, memorizing the way they fit together, Tristian making a snuffling sound into her hair as his palm finds the swell of her ass cheek.
I swear I see him flex a pec.
Blame it on the South Side childhood, but I’ve never been a deep sleeper. This is unlike Killian, who’s spent years sleeping on busses or planes, wherever he could get the chance. Tristian exercises and masturbates his way to exhaustion every day, so he’s always been pretty good at passing out the moment his head hits the pillow. This all came in handy when we moved in here together, because there was no way I’d find myself living in the same room with a piano as sweet as the one upstairs and not play it all hours of the night. That’s how I get to sleep; music or a fat blunt to chill me out. I require a certain level of peace to relax, and those are the only two things that help me achieve it. Until Story came along, that is. Baby girl knows how to soothe a guy into sleep.
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.
He enters her with a gentleness I didn’t know he possessed. I take a drag on the joint and stare at the place where their bodies connect, her pussy glistening in the pale light as she takes him in. He pauses there for a beat, lips resting against her shoulder, and I feel the nudge of arousal press at my balls. Goddamn, this girl is going to kill us. I’d warned her about demanding that all of our spunk go inside her. There aren’t enough hours in her day.
Fuck, there aren’t enough hours in our day.
Holding the joint between my lips, I push my hand under the waistband of my shorts, idly indulging in the slow rhythm Killer starts fucking her with.
The thud downstairs stops me before it can get too ambitious.
I pause, listening, trying to hear over the subtle squeak in Killian’s mattress. Beyond that are his shallow breaths and the chilled wind blowing in through the crack in the window. But there’s something else. A muffled, distant voice that must belong to Ms. Crane.
The fuck is she doing up this late?
I sigh, remove my hand, and take a final drag before stubbing out the joint. It isn’t until I straighten, stretching my back, that I realize Tristian’s awake. His eyelids are just barely lifted, gaze fixed on Story’s tits, all smashed up into his chest. Killer’s basically fucking her on top of him, but Tristian is… Tristian.
His response is to palm at the thigh she has hitched over his hips and spread her wider.
Killian’s too engrossed in fucking her to notice me crossing the room, but Tristian and I make eye contact and his forehead creases in question. I shake my head and flap a hand—enjoy your show—and head out into the hall to check.
It’s not like Ms. Crane to be up and about this late. Once her clock is punched, she locks herself up in that room downstairs like she’s sealing a tomb. But it’s not like me to be spending my night in Killer’s room, so what the fuck do I know?
Well, I know it’s cold as fuck, for one. The temperature of the hallway is roughly arctic and makes my balls want to climb up inside me, and the staircase isn’t much better. I huff warmth into my fists as I scamper down, too stoned to question any of this.
I’m not too stoned to freeze at the lumpy shape of a body at the foot of the stairs.
Since I am stoned, it takes me a second to parse the reality of what’s in front of me. She’s laying there, lifeless in the shadows, a dark pool of blood blooming from beneath her head.
“Ms. Crane!” My muscles kick into gear so fast that I’m landing on my knees before I really understand what I’m seeing. “Shit!” My hands flutter uselessly over her, because I’m struck with the uncertainty of moving her. If she fell down the stairs, her neck could be broken or something. “Hey,” I say, reluctantly shaking her. “Wake up, you fucking Life Alert cautionary tale.”
I touch her cheek, and it’s still warm, but I don’t exhale until I hear her low, annoyed moan.
“Oh, Jesus ass-licking Christ.” Breathless, heart still trying to jump out of my fucking chest, I look around the hall, toward the foyer, trying to remember where I left my phone. “I’m going to call you an ambulance or something. Just—” My voice sticks in my throat, because this isn’t Daniel. He deserved it. The only thing Ms. Crane has ever done is survived—helped her girls to survive—and I still hear her voice in my head from the talk we had that day.
“Death is coming for me just as sure as it is you. All that matters now is what I’m dying for.”
“Well, you aren’t fucking dying for this,” I growl, climbing unsteadily to my feet.
I’m halfway up off my knees when I see the movement in my periphery. I could be stone cold sober, and I still wouldn’t have time to react. That’s what I tell myself when the blow comes, a blunt smash right into my temple, sending me crumpling to the floor.
The last thing I see before my vision blanks out is Ms. Crane’s feet, shoes laced tidily.
