I’d somehow managed to get Rabbit to school and then go back home and dress up like it was just another day at work, giving my mother a cheerful good-bye on my way out the door with a detour past the freezer on my way, like I was taking a burrito for lunch and not a body part.
“I need to see Mark, is he in yet?”
The receptionist had told me he wasn’t, and she wasn’t sure when he would be – I told her to call him for him, to tell him I was here.
I could’ve called him myself – but it was the kind of thing I needed to explain in person. I needed to see his eyes when I told him about the Pack. After the way we’d fucked last night – I needed to believe. So I’d told Mattie to rebook all my appointments for today, and settled down into an overstuffed armchair for the duration.
It was hard to ignore that I was carrying a fucking body part. Literally. The same dick that’d – my jaw clenched. I’d been the one who’d signed Wade’s death warrant by telling Gray what he’d done to me. But him doing that? Had been all him. I found it hard to muster much sympathy.
“Angela?”
Mark pushed in the doors looking worried and my heart leapt in my chest as I jumped out of my chair and flew across the room to him. He held his arms open just in time for me to run into them. I hadn’t realized how close I’d been to crying till just then – but now that I was safe – I bit my lips to stop from sobbing.
“Baby, what happened?” He put his hand under my chin and pulled my head up. I looked around – we were making a scene – I was making a scene –
“Can we go into your office?”
“Of course,” he said, politely detaching himself to lead the way. I grabbed my bag and followed closely.
* * *
Mark sat on the opposite side of his desk from me, though I’d hauled my chair far closer than any client ought to. The box was sitting between us, as yet unopened.
“I was younger then, okay?” I’d told him all about my time with the Pack, and his eyes had widened and narrowed at the appropriate parts of the story. “And – I got Rabbit out of it. So it wasn’t all for nothing, you know?” There was a pile of used tissue in my lap – I’d spent half of the last hour crying.
“I know,” he said. I saw the muscles in his jaw clench and I winced inside. A lot of guys didn’t want to know who you’d been with prior – what if now he thought less of me? “I have to say – apart from all the times Gray was an asshole to you – I like his style.”
“What?”
“If I found out anyone raped you, I’d cut their dick off too.” He nudged the box with a finger. “May I?”
“Sure,” I said, curling up in a ball in the chair, tissues falling to the ground.
He sidled off one end and looked in. “That is, indeed, a severed penis.”
“Yeah.” I held my head with both hands. “Mark, what do I do?”
“You could go to the police.”
“You say that like there’s another option.”
He tilted his head and stared at me. “You wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t.”
He was right. There was a reason I hadn’t called the cops earlier. I didn’t believe they could protect me – but more importantly -- “I don’t want Rabbit to know who his father is.”
“And now I get why.”
I nodded helplessly. “I can’t believe I’m here, asking you for help – I never wanted to be the damsel in distress. I’ve spent so long rebuilding my life into something I can be proud of – but I don’t know what else to do.”
Mark reached out and pulled the box across the desk to him. “I’ll handle it.” He opened a lower desk drawer and set the box inside.
“But Gray –“
“Is in an eight by eight cell. You matter to him, the note says so. He won’t do anything to hurt you or Rabbit.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough.”
“For?” I asked, embarrassed of the quiver in my voice.
“If there’s ways of getting messages out of prison – there’s ways of getting messages in. Very clear ones.”
“Do – do I want to know what they’ll say? Or…how they’ll be delivered?”
He shook his head slowly. “You do not.”
I bit my lips then. Gray was tough – but vulnerable. He was taking silver, just like I was – and I knew he wasn’t immortal – I knew Pack members could die – but he’d haunted Rabbit and I for so long --
Mark stood and rounded the desk to me. “It’s going to be okay, Angela.”
I looked up at him, fresh tears welling in my eyes and the flutter of panic in my throat. “How can you be so sure?”
He went to his knees beside me. “This is what I do.” He took my head in his hands and kissed the teardrops from my eyes. It was such a gentle thing to do it stunned me, and when he pulled back and I opened them, he was staring right at me. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.”
And for the first time, in my entire post-Gray life, I believed. I leaned forward and kissed him desperately. He resisted for a second, then kissed me back just as hard – harder even, his tongue pressing me back into the chair with the weight of him close behind. And as he leaned over me a heavy weight fell into my hips and my pussy ached -- O
h God yes please this again now here
– and deep inside my wolf howled, then he pulled back.
“Angela – we shouldn’t.” I must’ve looked stricken then because he took my hand down the front of him to where his hard cock sat inside his suit slacks. “I do want you -- I want to keep you here all day.”
“Good, because I want to stay,” I said, stroking him eagerly. “Mark -- you make me feel safe. You don’t know how long it’s been.”
His expression warmed – but he started shaking his head. “You have to go – you need to pretend to be living your life normally. They can’t know anything’s changed.”
I followed him bodily, and kept rubbing my hand. “I wasn’t followed on my way here. I was careful.”
He swallowed, his chest beginning to rise, and I could see him torn between his duty and his need.
“Make it fast. Make it hard,” I pleaded – and he reached for his belt buckle with a growl as I hitched up my skirt.
I barely had it above my ass when he took my ankles and hoisted them high, setting one on each shoulder, and then he was on me, pulling my panties aside to push himself in. He slid in all the way to his hilt, and I felt myself stretching deliciously around him – and then he started to pound, taking me at my word, no time for tease or build up, just the ferocity of desperate fucking, when one person needed to give and the other needed to be filled.
I bit my lips to hold back the sounds I wanted to make, the small cries of surprise, the satisfied moans of pleasure – he wanted me – after everything I’d told him he still wanted me – wanted to be with me – wanted to be so deep inside. His hands were holding the chair over my head, and I was curled into a comma, it was all I could do to hold on. But I didn’t even need to come – I just needed to feel him inside me – then one of his hands snaked between us and he started to play with my clit with his thumb.
“Mark –“ I protested in a loud hiss.
He chuckled, but he wouldn’t stop – he redoubled his efforts, until his pounding was a steady rock and his thumb kept rubbing till it found the right spot which he knew when I kicked up against him, trying to get more of his thumb as he fucked me.
My eyes closed and my feet pointed and my whole body tensed until I came for him, biting on my own hand to stop from screaming.
He, however, had no such compunction – “Angela,” he growled, and I felt his cock stiffen inside me, ready to fill me with its load. “Angela – baby – Angela –“ he shouted, his hips spasming against mine, his cum pouring out, so much I would’ve sworn I could feel its heat pooling inside.
He collapsed over me, breathing hard. We’d only taken less than five minutes, I knew, and yet I felt like I’d been safe for hours. Mark hauled himself up to kiss me. “How can you do that to me, every time?” He pulled back, sliding out, taking a tissue off the desk to clean himself.
I lowered my legs more slowly. I loved being filled – I didn’t want to lose the sensation. “Won’t you get into trouble?” I was already wondering what kind of walk of shame I’d have to do outside. Mark’s office had windows. All the blinds were pulled, but there was no way a secretary hadn’t heard.
He smiled and rose back up onto his feet, setting himself inside his slacks again. “It’s called Carrera Law for a reason. Also the walls are sound proof.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” I protested, standing up to set my skirt back down. My panties were too thin a barrier to protect my skirt from his cum – I’d have to change clothes the second I got home.
“It was too hot watching you try to be quiet. Which you weren’t, by the way, but the trying made me harder.”
I flushed. “I’d have thought that was impossible.”
“Then wait till the next time you’re in here, when you’re bent over my desk and I’m taking your ass on it.”
My thighs pulsed together at the thought of it and warm things inside me sank. “Goddamn you, Mark.”
He laughed and leaned forward to kiss me, far more chaste than anything that’d come before. “I want you thinking about that all day, Angela. None of your other problems, you hear me? The second you start to worry, I want you to start thinking about me taking your ass and filling it with my cock.”
I wanted to tell him that was impossible, that the things I had to fear were far greater than the primal urge I felt when we were together. But right now, half-panting, with his cum leaking out and slicking my thighs, I genuinely couldn’t.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Good,” he said, and grabbed my ass hard enough to help me imagine. “Go home, have a normal day, and I’ll talk to you tonight.”
I leaned up on my toes to kiss him, then picked up my much lighter bag.
Chapter 3
I parked down the street from the Hogg’s Heaven, far enough that no one would associate me with my car, and walked in.
My hair was done differently tonight, as were my clothes and my attitude. I wore my black cowboy boots, my darkest jeans and a black t-shirt under a leather jacket that was form fitting, utilitarian, not ostentatious. I scanned the bikes for clues, but members of the Pack weren’t fond of personalized plates, so I walked in.
Amber wasn’t there, which was a good thing. But neither was my mark for the evening, Wade – one of the other members was behind the bar. I bellied up, well aware of the stink-eye I was getting, and leaned over when the bartender came to tell me to go.
“I have a business proposition for Murphy – is he here?” I picked another of the Pack’s leaders at random, pushing my blood-luck.
One of his furry eyebrows rose, disbelieving me. “Tell me and I’ll tell him.”
I shook my head. “My boss said only me – and only in person.”
“Your boss being?”
Who was the scummiest currently? Vegas had a lot of churn, it was hard to keep up. “Jayson. From New York.” I’d done a tattoo on one of his underlings recently, who’d talked up his boss’s dark side, and I’d smelled the gun oil on him.
The bartender measured me, as did the men in earshot on either side. “And the business?”
I pretended to be bored. “Import, export. Your sort of thing. I’ll tell Murphy the specifics.”
He wanted with all that was in him to blow me off, but instead he went into the back. After a few minutes he returned, smelling like a Cuban cigar.
“Murphy says after the last time, your boss can go fuck himself – and you’re lucky that we don’t fuck you.”
I leaned in to protest. “Come on, I can’t go back to Jayson with that –“
The man to the side of me pulled out a knife and planted it into the wood between us. “You do, or you don’t go back at all.”
I looked from him to the bartender, and pushed back in the way I thought a petulant criminal underling might, then walked outside. I had what I needed – Murphy was here.
Under the streetlight outside a group of bikers were talking shop, holding beers in one hand and cigarettes in the others. You could still smoke inside in Vegas, especially at a place like this – but a lot of places had smoking pavilions out back, where one could shoot the shit in a civilized fashion, smoking underneath the stars. I walked down the street and then pulled left, coming up behind the rest of the strip mall. After a cursory glance to make sure I wasn’t seen, I jumped up and caught the edge of the GOLD 4 CASH’s awning and pulled myself up.
The strip mall’s roof was sun battered, with a few scattered tarps held down by rocks to keep intermittent rains at bay. I kept low and near the center where anyone on either side would be hard pressed to see me, until I knew I was over Hogg’s. Then I crept towards the back and was rewarded with a plume of cigar smoke. Murphy. I smiled cruelly and leaned over to sight him.
He was a short red-haired red-bearded man – looked almost like a dwarf from one of those fantasy movies – and he was pacing in a small circle, clearly agitated, listening to someone on his phone without answering except to say, “Yes. Yes.”
When he was done he pocketed it and turned to someone under the awning where I couldn’t see.
“You’ve gotta calm down, Murph.”
“Easy for you to say – you didn’t have to do it.”
“You could’ve said no.”
Murphy stopped pacing. “Don’t pretend that –“
“You’ve got free will –“
“Fuck you, Daziel. You know the plan.”
“Yeah. And Wade was in on the plan until Gray changed his mind.”
“He’s in there because of us. I’m not turning my back on him.”
“I wouldn’t either.”
There was the soft sandy sound of a cigarette being quenched and the other speaker emerged. Daziel was long and lean and rugged, everything about him looked well-worn, from the bends in his boots to his shaggy salt and pepper hair. Well-worn in a prepared way -- and another of the ‘big-dogs’, according to Amber.
Murphy came over and jabbed a finger up at him. “You picked a hell of a night to be out of pocket.”
“Sorry for wanting to find someone a little taller to blow me.”
“Goddammit, Wade’s dead, stop joking.”
“Joking’s how I cope, brother. Always.” He fished in his vest and pulled out a fresh cigarette. “I don’t envy what you and the others had to do. Glad I missed it, honestly.”