Page 8 of Into the Blue (Shades of Vengeance #1)

Men are so easy.

As a second point to this list of reasons why I underestimated my abilities: it only took three days to settle myself deep in Blue’s mind.

On the other hand, I did have him embedded in my thoughts too.

Far more than I’d like.

Yes, everything depended on this job, but I was finding it hard to separate the work hours from not work hours.

And dammit, he had ruined sex for me. Just one night with him and not a single toy in my drawer could get me close to the feeling I had in his possession.

On that vein alone, I wanted to taunt him.

Just like my orgasm that was evading me farther and farther the longer I was without his touch—he would wait for the time with me he wanted.

“Been busy?” He asks and I chuckle internally. Hurts, don’t it?

Each night, I felt his energy barreling into me—up on the pole, across the floor, even the break room.

My experience was all I had to fall back on to keep me unbothered and present in my tasks at work.

It was like a warmth that held weight unlike any I’ve felt before.

If I believed in magic, I would suspect he had something like it to press you without having to be close.

In this room now, I feel it—feel him.

My baser self wants me to present myself like a feast so I can feel what I felt before. But my more rational self knows, if I can just—for a moment—get my bearings, I can manipulate the situation how I need to.

Men are so easy.

Blue is a man .

“Thankfully,” is how I respond as I trail a hand up my thigh to the garter clip that holds the stocking I’m wearing tonight and open it.

He sucks his teeth, a sign of displeasure though he still sits on the loveseat. He’s not making a move and the restraint is evident in how his angular jaw ticks.

The stocking is quick to relax down toward my calf. “Could you help me with these? They’re driving me crazy.”

His eyes follow the line of my legs to my feet and then back up again.

Come on, Blue. Move when I say because I’m the one in control now.

He just leans back in his seat—half shadow, half man—with the kind of calm that screams predator, and I almost forget what I came here to do, again. His energy is begging me to fold under it, give him what he wants.

I double down in resisting just that.

A few seconds pass before I entice a little more in opening the other garter clip and the second stocking rolls down my leg.

He’s up out of his seat then, taking long strides to get to me quickly. The man smells like sandalwood and sin. A slow burning scent, one that doesn’t beg for attention but leaves its memory to haunt you long after he’s gone.

Like him.

He watches me, strong arms stretching against his sleeves, tattooed fingers clenching in the moody blue lighting. Calculated. Dangerous. Beautiful in the way a knife is beautiful right before it ruins everything.

Or simply changes the way you think about pleasure.

“You’re quiet tonight,” he remarks and it feels like he’s making a point before kneeling in front of the bed. He rolls one stocking down with slow movements, lingering against the smooth skin of my calf. I fight the shiver from the heat his touch leaves behind.

His voice is the kind that curls around your spine and tells your survival instinct to sit the hell down. I hate how easily I want to let it.

“I’m thinking…” I hedge.

He looks up at me from where he kneels. “’ Bout what?”

You.

What it means that I never questioned your authority over me and let it feel something like concern for my well being that curls something low in my belly.

What it means that I wanted to tell you everything about my plans instead of allowing them to weaken your outfit further.

I definitely cannot tell him that.

“About the girls who had you before,” I lie, knowing it’ll make him pause the sensual touch he has on my leg.

He does. Slight tilt of his head, that faint tick in his jaw again. “There’s no girl who’s had me before.” There’s an inflection there that does the heavy lifting of his meaning.

I nod, as if that settles it. But inside I’m screaming because that was a petty question. Why does it matter if there was someone before me? The fact he reconfirms for me without complaining about repeating himself again is significant somehow.

And Blue… Blue smiles at me like he knows.

That unhappy smile is doing dangerous things to me.

He knows there was no reason besides a slight insecurity driving the question.

Like he’s waiting for me to confess to the irrational possessiveness I feel.

I won’t. This is all a game.

I sit across from him, the hem of my sparkly skirt is riding scandalously high on my thighs. His eyes don’t flinch. They never do. He doesn’t ogle. He studies . As if he’s already dismantled me and is simply waiting for the pieces to stop moving.

“You trust me, Blue?” I ask and hate how breathless it sounds as he’s still touching me proprietarily.

He chuckles deep and low. “Trust you to do exactly what you need to make money.”

Right. I’m a dancer at his club.

I swallow hard. That line? That line should’ve put me back on mission.

Instead, it makes me wonder what it will be like to make money with him instead of for him .

Damn it.

I cross one leg over the other to buy time. I hope he mistakes it for nerves instead of guilt.

“I know who you are…” I hedge.

His eyebrow raises, “And who am I?”

“The King.” I roll my shoulders back. “They call you the King of Green and the Dupont name is dangerous in the South.”

His eyes hold mine, still unflinching. “That’s me,” is all he responds with, watching my face for anything that will give him information.

I can’t blow this.

“I should stay far, far away from you. You’re no good for me.”

His head tilts toward the door. “Haven’t left yet.”

I shake my head. “I heard something tonight.”

His brows slam down. “Go ‘head.”

“I heard someone’s leaking info to the Fayes.” There. Simple. Just laying it out. I did actually hear someone. Though the reasons why I was listening were purely selfish.

If I can establish that I can be useful in more than just sex, he will see me as more valuable to him.

At least, I hope so.

I need him to.

The corner of his lips drop and he stands, looming over me.

That’s the moment I realize I’ve pushed too far. Not because he lunges, or raises his voice.

No.

Blue just leans forward, slow as molasses but infinitely more lethal.

“If I thought you would be sniffin’ around my business,” he says, “you wouldn’t be sittin’ in here, teasing me. You’d be in the bayou with venom in your veins and your pretty mouth shut for good.”

Chills race across my skin.

But I’m not afraid.

God help me, I should be afraid.

Instead, I look into his eyes and wonder what it would feel like if that intensity was for me instead of aimed at me .

I’m losing control and daydreaming about things he could do with me too often.

And when he reaches for his knife, stopping in front of me with his presence swallowing me whole, I do something stupid.

I look up at him with hunger instead of fear.

He reaches down, fingers catching the hair at the nape of my neck, the blade’s edge a breath away from my throat.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t do just that,” he demands.

You have to play this right, Rocky. You have to. “Because I can help you.”

“Careful, Diamond,” he sneers.

I should back away.

I don’t.

I breathe him in—sandalwood, weed smoke, and something rich and ruinous. Then I whisper the words that will damn us both.

“Maybe I don’t want to be careful.”

Because even though I came here to dismantle him and take what I deserve… Part of me is starting to wonder what it might feel like to belong to the King himself.

“I don’t mix business and pleasure so if you aren’t one, then you’re the other. And I’m in no mood to fuck around with my business.”

Fire blazes in his eyes, hot enough to burn me where I stand. The control he has over me is intoxicating and addictive.

I want to surrender to him.

But I can’t. This is where I need him.

Too emotional to think straight—to get sloppy and let me in.

“Neither am I,” I breathe.

He has to take me.

I’m held with his grip in my hair, too off balance to do anything but let him hold me here. Any sudden movement and his knife will end whatever ambitions I could have had.

So I stay there as Blue’s gaze burns over my vulnerable form as he thinks about what he will do next.

My heart is thundering in my ears.

I’m at his mercy and he has a reputation for showing none .

Finally, he lowers his knife and returns it to his hip. Before I can feel relief, his lips crash into mine. My back meets the bed, but the weight of his big body pins me in place. The hard feel of him, making a place for himself against my soft curves.

His tongue is battling with mine as we fall into whatever has been stretched thin between us like taffy. Everything we haven’t said or done since that first night here becomes inconsequential.

Goddamn, this man can kiss.

He’s just a mar—

My skirt rips with ease from my body. His hands are burning a path to my top to rip it off of me next. His mouth hasn’t left mine, all while I’m one tiny g-string away from being naked for this man. Again.

It feels so good to have my body in his hands. I’m burning from his touch and how he brands himself into my skin.

His fingers find my center and I was wrong. That g-string doesn’t mean shit when it comes to this man. His fingers enter me without any hesitation.

No.

Not enter. Fill . Two of his fingers are filling me because of how big they are and how tight I’m already squeezing them.

He hisses and grabs my breast roughly. “This pussy is beggin’ to be full of me. Fuck, you’re so tight.”

His lids are heavy as he watches me take his fingers.

There’s something crude about being naked while he’s still in his clothes again.

The self control he has in not pulling his dick out and just fucking me like he so clearly wants to is another turn on I wasn’t expecting.

I moan as he manages another finger inside. It’s a stretch. It’s too much I think.

He sees my expression, “You’ll need at least one more to fit me,” he clarifies.

A shiver runs down my spine. My lower belly clenches and clenches.

Four fingers.

Oh. My. God .

So big.

“I know, bae. Even if I wanted to, I’d hurt you tryin’ to fuck.”

He tries for a fourth finger anyway and I never make it.

I’m too far gone.

I’m over the edge and cum rolls down his hand over those snake tattoos freely.

“Look at how juicy this pussy is for me.” He slides me up the bed to make room for himself between my legs.

I have to be able to see him.

I’ve been spoiled from my first O on his face. My hands carefully gather his locs so they don’t get covered in my cum and he looks up at me for a moment with an emotion in his eyes I don’t know how to name.

I don’t get long to wonder about it because his mouth covers my clit to my opening, tongue dancing from top to bottom, driving me into another plane. My hips buck off of the bed and he does nothing to keep me in place.

Instead he slides those three fingers from earlier back inside me.

I’m a little more relaxed now. He’s able to get his index finger into the second knuckle while his middle is putting pressure at the top of my channel.

It is a kind of dexterity I didn’t know to be aware of.

I’m stretched and stuffed—bordering on coming again when I know it hasn’t been enough time.

“I ca-can’t! Blue! It’s too much.”

He backs off, only to take his pinky out of my pussy and slide it into my ass.

“Ohh,” I exhale as he easily fills both my holes. All while my clit is still being tormented in his mouth.

He hums, that deep rolling sound that comes somewhere from his chest, and I break.

A scream tears from my throat from the magnitude of this orgasm and the shock of how responsive he makes me.

I don’t get a chance to come down from the high before he’s pressing me .

“Tell me who’s snitchin’,” he says, the command rolling easily from his lips. He thinks he’s got me in his hands when he couldn’t be more wrong.

He’s playing exactly into mine.

Body boneless and still on the high, my words come out in a sigh. “Dejuan. I saw him talk to Jay last night in a booth in the back. Isn’t Jay a LaFayette?” I knew he was. And I also know Dejuan was only working under someone else’s orders.

I need to know Blue trusts my word and what he would do when I give it.

“He is.” He scratches his beard and the movement is agitated and quick. “What you hear?”

“He was confirming a drop? Jay slid him an envelope and left quickly after.”

Blue gets off of the bed, going for the wipes to clean his face and hands again. This time, he doesn’t just leave to get my money and go.

He leans over me, our noses brushing as he cleans me with one hand and the other on my face. It’s gentle and affectionate. So out of place here even though it feels right.

“Don’t care if you don’t want to be careful. You will be careful in whatever it is that you’re doin’ sniffin’ around the Fayes. Don’t trust any of them around what’s mine.”

His.

I don’t answer, too stunned that my plan is working so well. I nod instead and he leaves again, only returning briefly to leave my stacks on the table.