Sticky (8 page)

I
lose
track of how many new heights of pleasure I’ve reached tonight. Gage is insatiable, unstoppable. Even when he’s recovering between fucking me black and blue, he doesn’t let me rest, keeping me coming with a finger or his tongue or the more memorable time when we took a breather to shower, and he unhooked my detachable showerhead, pinning me to the tile wall and pressing the jet of water straight against my clit until I could hardly stand, and my throat was hoarse from shouting so loud.

Poor Lacey
, I think as we finally drift into sleep, tangled in each other’s arms, spread across the damp sheets, both of us beyond caring at this point. His heartbeat slows against my eardrum, where my head rests on his broad chest, his curly chest hair tickling my cheek as I close my eyes and drift. His breathing steadies me, anchors me.

I have never felt so close to another person. I’ve never done this whole dropping off to sleep in a lover’s arms thing. It always felt uncomfortable in the past, too stifling and awkward. This, though, feels perfect. I fit exactly into the groove of his body, and his strong, warm arms drape around my waist, keeping me safe.

Is this what falling in love feels like?

I wouldn’t know. I’ve liked guys before, even told a couple I loved them, way back in high school when I was young and dumb and I thought that’s what you had to say after you dated for a few weeks and made out in enough dark movie theaters. Some of them even said it back, but we’d break up a week later and neither of us would cry, so it obviously wasn’t real.

I just assumed I’d never really find out what everyone else was on about. I figured love would always be beyond me. The guys I could like enough to love never loved me back, and the ones who loved me were never quite my type.

But Gage?

Gage feels dangerously close to the real deal. I could fall for him now, I could let myself trip over that cliff right this second. But would he return the feeling? Or am I just a fling, someone to distract himself with for the time being?

I still don’t understand what he sees in me. Why his eyes light up the way they do, every time ours meet. I’m nothing special. I’m no one, really. So it’s hard to believe that he could ever love me too, even as I listen to his slow, steady breath beneath my head.

I don’t know how long I lie awake, staring at the ceiling and wondering. I want to shut my eyes and relax into his grasp, drift off to oblivion with him. But I’m afraid of what it will mean if I do. I’m afraid it will be like surrendering.

The one who surrenders always loses something.

Hours tick past in the dimly lit room. I can only tell by the street lamps outside, the way they click off and plunge the room into utter dark around three in the morning, when all the drunks from the casino will have staggered home into their beds, so there’s no reason to leave the city’s lights blazing.

A while after that—half an hour, more?—the latch on my window cracks open. It’s done this almost once a week since I moved in, a problem I’ve called the landlord about a dozen times, yet he’s never fixed. The window sags open from the top and lets a sliver of cold night air sneak inside. Suddenly even Gage’s body heat isn’t enough to keep me toasty. Heck, even he shivers a little beneath me, still lost in sleep.

I reach for the blankets we tossed aside earlier, but they’re out of my reach. I try to carefully dislodge his arm from my waist, sliding off of him to reach for the blankets.

A strong hand clamps around my wrist as I do, freezing me in my tracks. Gage blinks up at me from the bed, but his eyes are blank, faraway. I think he’s still asleep.

“Gage?” I whisper.

In reply, he flips me under him suddenly, his whole body flinging over mine. His one hand still pins my wrist, and his other catches my leg, sliding all the way down to my ankle and lifting my leg up over my waist until he’s kneeling above me, his cock erect between us, my foot pressed to his cheek.

He lets go of my hand and traces the shape of my leg instead, with both hands, running them from my ankle all the way down to my thigh. One of his hands slides back up to massage my foot, while his other hand keeps sliding down my leg, to the crook of my hip, then across my pussy, his fingers tracing the outline of my lips.

I feel myself growing wetter as he leans in to nip my ankle, then the sole of my foot, his teeth scraping the thin, sensitive skin there as a shiver passes through me. Without warning, he sucks my big toe into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it, and my whole body goes warm, my nerves jangling. No one’s ever done that before.

He keeps tracing my toes with his mouth, one by one, licking them each, while his other hand spreads my pussy wide open, his fingers inching into me one at a time, until he has three buried knuckle deep inside of me, swirling them in circles against my inner walls, coating them in my juices.

When he pulls his fingers out of me, I groan faintly in protest. He wraps his hand around his cock instead, coating himself in my wet come, before he lets go of my toes and uses his grip on my ankle to lift me higher, raising my ass off the bed.

My eyes widen.

His fingers dip inside me for more, but this time when he pulls them out of my pussy again, he trails them down to my ass, parting my cheeks, exposing my tiny, puckered hole to the world. His soaked index finger prods at my ass, and I gasp sharply.

He looks at me then, his eyes seeming to clear a little, as if he’s waking up from a trance. He tilts his head to one side, watching me, waiting.

He’s waiting for permission, I realize. I bite my lip, debating for a moment. Do I want to do this?

It’s Gage. He’s only ever made me feel incredible so far. I trust him. So I nod.

That finger presses harder at my ass, until, with a faint spike of pain, the tip glides into me. It burns, at first. I take deep breaths, fighting the urge to clench tight around him, and try to make myself relax.

Once I figure out to watch his face, the light in his eyes as he grazes them across my body, loving every inch of me, relaxing becomes easier. His finger inches deeper and deeper into me, and suddenly there’s a widening, stretching sensation, and the pain doesn’t disappear exactly, but it floods over the top of my senses into pleasure. I moan faintly, and twist my hands into the sheets to either side of me.

He slides another finger in to meet the first, and there is more pain, more tearing at the edges of me, but also a sense of being deeply full, and a curl of pleasure as his fingers hit a hot spot deep in my ass.

“Do you have any lube?” he whispers, and my heart starts to pound all over again in a mix of fear and excitement.

I shake my head, half disappointed and half relieved that I didn’t plan that far ahead. But he doesn’t seem disappointed or even deterred.

“Oil?”

I bite my lip, thinking. “I’ve got coconut oil in the kitchen, but . . . ”

“Get it.”

I swallow hard and have to fight back a soft yelp of protest when he pulls his fingers out of me. But I do as he says, sliding off the bed and padding across my dark apartment into the kitchen, rooting through the cabinets until I find the mason jar full of the oil I use to cook.

My apartment looks different tonight. Both smaller and stranger, as if I’ve stumbled into someone else’s rooms, and they’re so much safer and more comfortable than mine.

Then I cross the threshold back into my bedroom, and it’s nerves all over again as I pass the jar to him.

He swings me onto the sheets again, laying me down beneath him, and kisses me slowly, deeply, even as he unscrews the jar and scoops out a handful, warming the solid chunks of oil in his hot palms for a moment before he coats himself in one handful, and presses the other one between my cheeks. His fingers enter me again, easier this time, and there’s a faint tingling, warm sensation as the oil coats me too.

Without warning, he grabs both of my ankles now, throwing them over his shoulders so I’m helpless on the bed before him. His hands spread my ass cheeks, and his hard cock presses right up against my entrance.

The pain flares again, even hotter and brighter this time. I gasp and dig my fists into the sheets, gritting my teeth as his tip pushes inside my ass. The burn echoes along my nerves, all the way up to my head and out to my limbs, until the tips of my fingers and toes itch with it, as he starts to thrust his way deeper. Small, pushing thrusts at first, inching himself slowly deeper, deeper.

I’ve never felt so full, so stuffed to the brim. He’s so big, and my ass is so tight, for a moment I panic that he won’t fit, but he keeps going, keeps thrusting, and before long there’s a small releasing feeling as he drives all the way into me, his balls slapping my ass cheeks as he buries himself completely inside.

“How does it feel, Sloan?” he murmurs, and I know he’s asking if I’m okay, but I want to tell him more than that.

“Like you’ve claimed every part of me,” I reply, meeting his gaze in the low light from outside, just reflected starlight now that the streetlights have shut off.

“Good,” he says. “Because I have. And you own me, too.”

Then he draws back, a long slow sliding sensation that sets my body on fire, and slams back into me hard enough to make me shout, which breaks the spell that paused us both. We’re on fire again, reaching for each other, my hands clawing down his back, his gripping my shoulders, my calves, holding me prisoner as he pounds into me, harder and faster, pain and pleasure blurring together. He drops one hand to press his thumb against my clit and I come screaming as he keeps going, driving deeper and deeper into me until he finally clenches and releases himself, filling my ass, groaning as he does. I grab him and pull him down onto me, holding him by the hair as I kiss him, savoring the taste of his release.

When he pulls out of me, this time he’s the one who lies down on top of me, and I cradle his head on my chest, the stubble on his cheek grazing my soft breasts as I hold him to me, and this time, I’m the one who drifts off to sleep first, content, all my earlier worries drifting away like so many clouds in a high wind.

I’m safe with him. That much I know.

G
etting
into Sloan’s apartment had been a cakewalk, but her brother Freddie’s place is proving to be the complete opposite. I spend eight hours on stakeout down the block from his place, visor down, shades on, hat sagging, my arms crossed over my chest so it looks like I’m taking a nap. The kid doesn’t budge from his computer desk for the first three hours straight. When he finally does move, it’s to the kitchen for cereal—which I figure out when he strolls back in a minute later drinking straight from the bowl, no spoon or anything in sight.

My biggest struggle is staying awake the whole time. I try everything from headphones blasting music to daydreaming about Sloan. The latter is a lot more invigorating, though it definitely means I won’t be ready to spring into action if anything ever actually happens upstairs here.

Finally, eight and a quarter hours into the stare-down, I startle out of a fantasy about how Sloan would look in a schoolgirl skirt, bent over my knee as I slap a ruler across that thick, juicy ass of hers.

For a moment, I don’t know what woke me. After years of working for Aaron, I’ve learned to set cruise control on my brain, and right now my instincts tell me to stop zoning out and pay some fucking attention to the job at hand, dumbass.

Then I pinpoint it. A car has pulled up out front of Freddie’s place, Pennsylvania plates, rust stains on the undercarriage, tinted windows.

One of Aaron’s?

No way. Even when his guys go undercover, they’d never be caught dead driving an American car, and this one’s a Ford.

I let my eyelids droop to half-mast and study the scene harder. The car definitely wasn’t there a minute ago, and yet I can’t see anyone in the driver’s seat or around the apartment. My muscles tighten, adrenaline starting to pump through my system.

There.

Across the street from Freddie’s place, crossing to a neighboring apartment complex, there’s a newcomer to the field. He’s wearing Dad jeans, flannel, and a baseball hat. Nothing too weird, except something about his gait seems off.

Most people would look at this situation and dismiss him straight off the bat. But something doesn’t sit right with me. That cruise control in my brain again, telling me I’m missing something. There’s a puzzle piece here I don’t see yet.

Like why this guy, who’s dressed so normally as to almost cross over into weird again, parked in front of Freddie’s apartment, only to hike up the road to his complex, when the parking lot at the neighboring apartment building has plenty of empty spaces.

Movement at Freddie’s again catches my eye. He’s standing up again, for only the third time today (seriously, it’s a wonder he hasn’t melted into that chair or turned into a slug already). That alone wouldn’t be enough to make me move, except that he leans over to the window and peers out, up the street. In my direction first, and I hold my breath, making sure not a single muscle in my body moves. Then he glances the other way, lingers on Mr. Too-Normal for a minute, and slaps the blinds closed.

Moving as slow as I can, I unlatch my door and slide out of my seat. Wait until my feet hit pavement, then keep the car between me and Freddie’s window as I let the door fall almost shut, not slamming it completely.

I don’t want to make that much noise.

I wait beside the car, poised on the balls of my feet, until I hear a door slam. I dare a peek through the car windows, and sure enough, there’s Freddie, outside of the house for the first time today, an ugly neon orange jacket pulled around his shoulders and slippers on his feet.

What the fuck
? I have time to wonder, before he slips straight into the car that Too-Normal deposited out front a few minutes earlier.

I watch him drive up the street, pull right into the neighboring complex, and wait, idling in the driveway, his head darting around the way guys who are nervous about being spotted do, making their alertness way too obvious. Another minute passes, then Too-Normal strides out in a different shirt this time, a baseball jersey and his hat turned backwards. From this distance, I don’t get a good glimpse of his face—just nondescript, tan, and muscular.

He climbs into the passenger seat of his own car, then the two of them roll off down the road, leaving me scowling in their wake.

That’s either some kind of deal, with a contact I don’t recognize—definitely
not
one of Aaron’s—or there’s something about this job that Aaron isn’t telling me.

Who the fuck is Frederick Casey really?

Time to find out.

I speed across the street, hands already fumbling for my lockpicks. This is a terrible plan. I should wait longer, map out his schedule before I go breaking into his place. For all I know, he’s taking his neighbor to the corner store and he’ll be back here inside of ten minutes.

But I’m running out of time. For myself, for him, but most importantly, for Sloan. I cannot let Aaron send one of his dogs after her. No matter what, I will make sure that never happens.

The first door is easy. It’s Freddie’s actual apartment that gives me pause. I undo the doorknob lock easily enough, then the bolt lock, but when I try to open it, I feel three other bolt latches stopping me.

This kid is ten kinds of paranoid. He’s got painted-over locks for the lowest of the latches, so it blends into the door, looking the same pale white. At a glance you’d never even notice it. Once I pick that one, the other two are even harder to spot. A false panel in the door hides the second, and the third one has a fake lock over it, which I have to pick just to reach the real lock so I can spring that one too.

The whole time, sweat trickles between my shoulder blades, gluing my T-shirt to my skin. There’s too much riding on this job. Every time I blink I see her face, and that’s making me sloppy. It takes me three tries to free the final bolt, and when I do, the sound of a car in the driveway has me flattened on the floor, creeping toward the communal apartment window to double-check.

Mailman.

Fucking hell.

Then I’m back at Freddie’s door, swinging it open at last.

At first glance, the living room looks normal. Sagging couch the color of dog shit, gray shag carpet that looks like one of those extra-hairy dogs up and died in the middle of the room. Guy definitely does not share his sister’s taste for home-making.

I skip right past the living room anyway and beeline straight for the bedroom. More specifically, for the computer that’s still idling beside the bed, a monster of a machine. It’s got to be the most expensive thing in this whole apartment—probably worth even more than that junker of a car he just drove off in.

Lucky for me, Freddie seems to have been in a hurry. I catch the mouse before the computer goes totally idle. It’s unlocked, and with a half dozen browsers still open too.

His email account is full of spam about video games, new movies out online, and Nigerian princes offering vast sums of money in exchange for his help with one simple problem. It doesn’t look like he uses this account for much beyond eBay purchases, and even when I click into a few of those, it doesn’t look like he’s buying anything more expensive than $15 special editions of comic books or $7 special discounts on vitamin D.

Not exactly the inbox of a guy sitting on $500,000.

Not the inbox of a guy who blew through $500,000 he can’t pay back, either.

Crunching tires. Another car.

I’ve been kneeling on the floor beside the computer so my head won’t show in the window. Now I cast an eye around the room desperately and spot a mirrored photo frame, inside which a picture of young Sloan, Freddie, and a woman I don’t know (though judging by the similarities, she has to be their mother) all smiling at the camera. I try not to think too hard about the way Sloan leans against Freddie’s arm, her smile so wide and trusting. Did she know when this photo was taken what her brother was going to get into?

Would she forgive me if she knew what I was doing in his place right now?

No time to worry about it now. A car door slams outside. I lift the photo frame and angle it just right, aimed at the parking lot outside. If anyone looks up at the window now, they won’t see me peering out; they’ll only see a flash of silver, the sun catching the edge of this makeshift mirror.

Shit
.

Outside sits the junker Ford, Freddie and Normal in the front seats. Still talking, for now.

I tap a few keys to send the computer into idle mode and cast my eye around the apartment one last time, memorizing. I’ll think harder about the scene later, review what I do and don’t see. For now, I just cement the contents of the room in my memory as I place the photo back on the side table.

I sprint into the living room, take another mental photograph, and ease the door shut behind me. In the hallway, I freeze, assessing. One staircase, leading up from here into the rest of the building. From the outside, it looked like it was five stories tall, and Freddie’s on the third floor.

I’ll have to go up. But in order to do that, I’ll have to make sure it doesn’t look like anyone was here.

I take a deep breath and hold it, my ears throbbing as I listen for the downstairs door, and insert my picks into the first lock.

Re-locking a door is a helluva lot harder than locking it initially, especially from the outside. I get the doorknob done, then the main bolt. I’m halfway through re-bolting the third one, set into the floor, when the jangle of keys against the apartment entrance sends me moving again.

I jam the lockpicks into my pockets and take the steps up to the fourth floor two at a time, my feet balanced on the outer edges of the steps to distribute my weight, preventing them from creaking beneath me.

The fourth floor is empty, but I keep going anyway, up to the fifth. My breath comes faster now, not so much from the stairs as from the adrenaline pumping through my veins, my heart throbbing in my chest.

Below, the stairs creak as Freddie reaches his floor. There’s a distant jangle of keys, again.

Please don’t notice the other locks,
I think.
Please just assume you were in a hurry, you forgot to lock them.

If he finds me up here, in this building, if he calls the cops or worse, Aaron . . .

I reach the fifth floor. Also empty. And there, in the corner, salvation: a ladder leading up to the roof.

I swing onto the metal rungs, keeping most of my weight on my hands so my boots won’t clang at every step. I move up, up, up, until I’m eight feet above floor level, and I pause to unlatch the roof door.

It’s not locked, I note, just barred with a simple hook latch. Good to know in the future.

Downstairs, the jangling has stopped. I hear a door slam.

I push the roof hatch open, and the harsh wind up here slaps me in the face.

Maybe he went into the apartment again. Maybe he didn’t notice.

No such luck. A minute later, the door crashes open again, so hard it hits a wall downstairs.

Fuck.

I haul myself off the ladder onto the roof, and even though every instinct in my body wants to run, flee the scene as fast as I can, I force myself to move slowly. Close the roof door an inch at a time, easing it shut, so the rusty hinges won’t scream out and give me away.

Finally, after what feels like forever, but was probably only a couple of seconds, just as I hear footsteps begin to thunder up the apartment staircase, I ease the roof hatch completely closed.

Then I do the only thing I can think of, up here on top of a five-story building, my car a distant dot on the street, and no sign of a fire escape in sight.

I sit on the hatch and pray.

It takes longer than I expect. Judging by the amount of locks on his door, I would’ve pegged him for a quicker study than this.

The seconds tick past, and I keep myself perfectly still, trained by years of practice. Eventually, there it comes, the thud underneath me, and the pressing weight of Freddie shoving up on the trap door. Of course, I weigh too much for him to get any purchase while balanced on that rickety ladder up here. He shoves against the door a couple of times, until, unable to make it budge, he gives up. I press my ear to the crack in the trapdoor and listen to him trudge back downstairs, and only then do I stand and creep toward the roof’s edge.

Ten-foot drop onto the nearest balcony, someone on the top floor apartment’s bedroom porch, from the looks of it. I let myself fall, and land hard in a crouch, my eyes on the window beside it. No movement inside, and gauzy white curtains shield me from view.

I curl up on the porch to wait it out. If I run right downstairs now, Freddie will be on high alert. But if I sit here, cool off a little, give him time to go outside and check the front of the building, then trudge back up to his apartment, I’ll be able to climb down the couple of porches along this face of the building until I reach the ground.

It’ll take longer than I expected this errand to take, but I don’t have much choice, really. I check my watch and grimace.
Shit
. It’s already 5 p.m. This is running way late. Sloan gets off from the day shift she’s working today in a few minutes. I promised to meet her at work, pick her up for a movie date.

Much as it pains me, I have to put the thought out of my head, lean back against the railing, and wait.