Page 29 of Capitol Matters (Marionette #2)

Donovan and I spent the rest of the week couch surfing at the Bitters’ End. More accurately, Donnie slept on the couch while I laid claim to half of Nash’s bed. While I enjoyed having a warm body pressed against me every night—and some lazy afternoons—my brother found the accommodations far less homey than I did.

No doubt remained. I needed to find us our own place.

I called in sick to work, then turned my phone off and wiled away three whole days watching news reels roll in. The gala remained a hot topic and gave the anchors an excuse to lambast Maximus for hosting it. But it was the plague cure that dominated public interest. Temporary clinics distributed the manufactured antidote, and citizens turned out in droves to partake. Every time I saw images of the tiny vials of clarified fluid, I imagined Ripley’s thick saliva pooled in the soda bottle and couldn’t help but snicker .

Holland took credit for the whole thing, though she did mention “assistance from a consultant” in one press conference. No matter. I didn’t want praise for what I’d decided was a foolish effort. What had it gotten me? Grimm’s anger, Holland’s, too, and no thanks at all from the prick of an investigator who owed me his life.

The Bloody Hex stayed away and so did other customers, leaving Nash dreadfully bored. Fortunately, he found me as good a distraction as any.

Friday morning, when I should have been thinking about the upcoming vote, my mind was on other things. Namely the soft slide of sheets on bare skin as Nash pushed my legs apart.

I almost dismissed it as a wet dream but, by the time he shoved my boxers past my knees, I was fully awake and aware of how damn sexy he looked with his sleep-tousled hair, enticing smile, and his body bent over mine.

“What are you doing?” I asked, cotton mouthed.

“Taking care of you,” he whispered before opening his lips around the head of my cock.

A long sigh eased out as I arched up into him. “I don’t remember asking for a wake-up call…” I trailed off as he took me deeply down his throat.

Slow, rhythmic slides built anticipation that started me squirming. His hand cupped my waist, fingers latching onto my hipbone and pinning me to the mattress.

“Nash…”

He didn’t pause for breath, but I was doing enough of that for both of us; sucking air while his head rose and fell along my member .

I wasn’t used to this kind of attention. We fooled around plenty, but I was usually the one with a dick in my mouth. It started there and ended other places that sounded tantalizing as my brain sparked with ecstasy.

“Fuck me.” I rolled my hips into him again.

Nash pulled off and wiped his lips. “Impatient already?”

I nodded as he leaned toward me, his fingers poised to enter my willing mouth. Two of them slid in and I sucked greedily, imagining it was his cock gliding across my tongue. He pulled them out too soon, but my groaned complaint was cut short by the feeling of those same wet digits teasing my asshole.

I whined and pushed up, quivering with need.

He went down on my cock again, seconds before his fingertips penetrated my ass. I writhed but remained anchored by his near-bruising grasp on my hip.

The suck and slide along my member matched the tempo of his fingers plunging in. My helpless hands clenched, and I drew my knees up, wracked with full-body sensations that threatened to bury me.

“Nash, I want your dick,” I stammered, struggling to keep my thoughts straight amidst the headrush.

He sat back, hovering over my erection. “This is for you, remember?”

“It’s definitely for me,” I said between gasps. “I promise.”

He dragged his tongue along the length of my cock.

I shivered. “Oh, shit… Please.”

His fingers were still in me when he gave them a twist .

A guttural sound escaped me, and I nipped at my lip to stifle further outcry.

Nash worked his way up past my waist, trailing kisses along my stomach as it fluttered with frantic breaths. “Hang in there, babe,” he murmured.

Easier said than done with his hand still toying my ass.

He pulled out of me, then shifted up to straddle my hips. I threw my arms around him and sat up to press my chest into his.

Our lips crushed together while my tongue roamed into his mouth. The slick sensation had me tingling as I delved deeper into him, sucking, kissing, and clinging on blissfully tight.

After several moments, he placed his hand on my sternum and shoved me back. “Turn over.”

Sliding out from under him, I did as told. I was on my hands and knees when I felt him behind me. A glance over my shoulder found him massaging his cock, and my pulse spiked. When he grabbed my waist, I barely thought to relax before he entered me.

Pinching pain mingled with a new kind of pleasure. I exhaled, hissing air through my teeth as he plunged in then out to set pace.

His cock stayed sheathed in me as I braced on all fours, head down, fingers knotted in the bedsheets. He ground his hips against my ass, and I moaned low, moments away from much-needed release. His hands roamed—one splayed atop my thundering heart while the other found my erection.

My next gasp stuttered, an unspoken plea .

Nash’s arm tensed across my chest, holding me to him while his curled fingers worked my cock.

“Come for me, baby,” he said.

Euphoria spiked. It would have laid me out flat, but Nash clung on, cradling my sweat-slicked body to his. My arms quivered, dotted with goosebumps that went all the way down my spine.

He rode me through the high, then let me down gently and rolled off to collapse onto the mattress beside me.

I sprawled on my stomach, panting. My eyes had closed and, when I opened them, I saw Nash’s open hand beside my face, puddled with jizz. Pulling it to me, I lapped up the cum, then threaded my tongue between his fingers with a fervor that started him laughing.

“You little deviant. Come here.” He grabbed my face and drew me in for another kiss.

He finished with a brush of his lips across my forehead. I scooted close, wrapping my legs around his and tangling our bodies together.

All was quiet while Nash tugged the deep, green sheets up over us both. I nuzzled into the curve where his neck met his shoulder and breathed him in, relishing the familiar smell of his cologne.

“You seem better,” he said, combing a finger through my hair.

This wasn’t the first time he’d danced around the subject of my tenuous emotional state. Apparently, if you have one good cry next to a melting cadaver, everyone thinks you’re a basket case.

A sigh escaped through my nose. “It takes more than seven kidnappings, a murder, and a suicide to get me down.” Tilting my head back, I gave him a wry smile.

In response, he frowned. “That math doesn’t add up. Weren’t there supposed to be eight people?”

There were, in fact, but I quit. After dropping off Daddy Longlegs in the wake of the ruined gala, I’d lost all motivation. I had seen no improvements to the state of things at Lock n’ Roll—no relief from the extended isolation or the pizza-exclusive meal plan. The rows of closed metal doors reminded me too vividly of Thorngate’s isolation wing, which made the kidnappees prisoners and me one of their jailers. I wanted no part of that.

Still, Nash’s inquiry peeved me, and I slipped out of his embrace. “I could go now if you want. Grab that last one.”

He caught my elbow as I rolled away and tried to pull me back. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

I flicked my hand at his fingers, peeling them off my arm one at a time. Swinging my legs off the edge of the bed, I sat up and stretched. “I need a shower. Breakfast…”

My stomach gurgled as though it understood. I had spent the majority of the past seventy-two hours drunk or near to it, and my insides were beginning to protest being filled like a gasoline tank.

Nash rolled onto his stomach behind me. The sheets snugged around his bare body, striped with sunlight that cut between the parted drapes.

“I’ll order delivery,” he said. “No need to go farther than the front door. ”

Tempting. All of it. This place was like an island, detached from the real world. Nash himself rarely ventured beyond these four walls. A recluse by any measure, he relied on Pippa and local delivery services to supply groceries and other necessities. But I couldn’t live like that, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I’d languished too long already; stuck my head in the sand while my problems multiplied in my absence.

I dragged a toe through the dense pile rug peeking around the perimeter of the bedframe.

“Nash, I can’t stay here,” I said softly.

“Why not?” He rolled to the opposite side of the bed and grabbed a towel off the table to wipe his hands.

“It’s not my home, for one thing. Or Donnie’s.”

I was currently doing all I could to convince my brother that Grimm wouldn’t find a way to drop a bomb on the bar and destroy us all. I was, as I’d told Holland, a suspicious son of a bitch, but Donovan was outright paranoid.

“And I have a job,” I added.

“You hate your job.”

I huffed a laugh. “Which one?”

Nash’s brow furrowed in mocking contemplation. “That depends. Is criminal gang member a job or just a hobby?”

“Most days it feels like a punishment.” I grinned, having meant it as a joke, but Nash’s features pinched.

“I meant what I said.” He pinned me with a somber look. “I want better for you.”

I stood and rubbed my arms, trying to physically shake the feeling that crawled across my skin. “Yeah, and people in hell want ice water.”

He gave no reply as I retreated into the en suite and pushed the door closed. I didn’t lock it this time but waited with one hand on the glass knob. In the pause, I caught a glimpse of myself in the vanity mirror. I was the visual definition of “criminal gang member.” Scars and tattoos accompanied all the hallmarks of reckless living. I was too thin, too rough, too damaged. And, while I’d been told my whole life that I was the spitting image of my father, I saw less of him in me now than ever before.

It made me wonder what Nash saw, especially after Grimm decided to drag me through the mud right in front of him. Sex had never been a sacred thing for me. It was easily found and given from the time I was too young to accept it. Devoid of emotion, it filled one of two needs: entertainment or payment for services. Maybe I was whoring myself out for a bar tab, after all. Or maybe I was a novelty Nash would soon tire of. He claimed he didn’t need what the gang had to offer, but I brought even less to the table.

Moving forward, I cranked the brass shower faucet on to full blast and scalding. Steam thickened the air before I stepped into the tub. As soon as my foot touched the porcelain, I remembered the thick ooze I’d last seen running down this drain. Coagulated goo studded with clumps of dissolving hair.

The memory staggered me, and I dropped to sit on the edge of the clawfoot tub, both hands white-knuckle gripping the slick surface.

Sweat beaded on my skin as I struggled to put space between anxious breaths. One panic attack might have been a fluke, but two made a trend, and not the kind I could allow. After another hesitant moment, I yanked both feet out of the tub and spun to stand on the cold, tile floor.

The rapid change in temperature shocked my thoughts back into order. I turned off the water and grabbed a towel from the hook beside the door, winding it around my waist. There were other bathrooms in this house with showers I could use. Mentally, I mapped a beeline back through the bedroom, hoping to avoid Nash and Pippa, who had made her opinions known about my habit of wandering the house in various states of undress.

When I flung the door open, the last person I expected was Donovan. He stood so close that I jumped back and nearly slipped on the wet tile.

“Jesus Christ, what?” I blurted, grasping at the knot that loosely secured the towel around my hips.

He stepped away, and I peeked around him into the bedroom to find no sign of Nash.

My follow-up question was slightly more coherent. “Who let you in here?”

Donovan tipped a thumb toward the hall. “Door was open.”

I sniffed, ready to dodge him in my quest for a bathroom that didn’t give me PTSD flashbacks but, when I took a moment to look him over, his drawn features and the cell phone clutched in his hand made me reconsider.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Friday,” he replied. “Vote’s today. ”

“Yeah, and?”

“I have to take ballots to the people in storage.”

A laugh rumbled out of me. I shook my head. “No, you don’t.”

He’d been checking in on our captives, or so he claimed. Since I’d sworn off the whole endeavor, I tried not to ask. But the vote was the last step. The final moment of torture before we could wipe clean the memories of those unfortunate souls and send them… where?

Not back home, to explain their lengthy absence to friends and family members who’d presumed them dead. Not anywhere Maximus would find out, since he had fallen into the same trap I had. He assumed I completed the assignment I was given in the way I was told to do it, and I hadn’t corrected him.

Even the investigators, who must have been instructed to turn a blind eye to the multiple disappearances, could only ignore so much. We couldn’t release these people, and Grimm must have known that. Judging by the way Donovan stood before me, shifting on the balls of his feet while avoiding eye contact, he knew it, too.

“Wait, you’re going there now?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Great.” I stepped around him. “I’ll come with you.”

“What?” he yelped. “Why?”

Moving across the bedroom to the chest of drawers, I dug through Nash’s clothes in search of something that would fit.

“That’s why you told me, right?” I glanced at Donovan. “You want backup? Moral support?”

“I haven’t needed those things so far,” he replied, then added in a mumble, “and if I did, I wouldn’t expect them from you.”

I whistled low. “Nice dig, Donnie. I taught you well.”

He rubbed a hand across the nape of his neck.

The second drawer yielded results in the form of a pair of gray sweatpants and a tee shirt I’d never seen Nash wear. Letting the towel drop to my ankles prompted a groan from my brother.

“Come on, Fitch. Gimme a heads-up, at least.”

I stepped into the sweats and tugged them up, cinching the drawstring and knotting it.

“How about some muscle, then?” I asked as the shirt fell loose around my neck. “In case those miserable motherfuckers try to rough you up? You deserve it.” My meaningful look failed to elicit a response as Donovan stood aside with his arms crossed.

“The only reason I said anything was so you wouldn’t worry when I was gone. That’s all.”

“Yeah well, I was just telling Nash I need a break from this place, so you’re stuck with me.” My boots were against the wall by the door, and I stuffed my bare feet into them.

Halfway through the doorframe, I swung back in to ask him, “Can we go by the dock while we’re out? The one with all the houseboats?”

“I guess. Why?”

I shrugged. “No reason.”

I had reasons, but not ones I was willing to share with him. Bridges were burning all around me—with Grimm, Maximus, and probably Holland, too—and the wall around our city only encompassed the land. If my brother and I were in the market for a new home, I could think of none better than the kind that could ferry us away from here.