Page 18 of Rolling 75 (The Noire Brothers #1)

“You’re the one who isn’t opening your eyes, Ryker. You are on that floor with me. And all I want is to leave it behind.”

Fuck, I shouldn’t have said that.

Hurt flashes across his face. This is what I was so desperate to avoid. This is why I ran. He should’ve moved on. Ryker is every dream I wish I could hold and the epitome of everything I lost, all at once. And that devastation in his eyes will haunt me for the rest of my life.

When you’re reduced to shards, it’s impossible not to slice those around you.

“I can’t do this.” I bolt up, ready to storm the last flight to the penthouse entrance. “I thought I could make it work for a while, but I need out of the contract.”

“Not happening,” he says.

In a blink, he’s a step below mine but still towering over me. He clasps my hip and hauls me into him until I’m pressed tightly to his chest, his arm snaked around my lower back to secure me in place.

And his lips are on mine.

Much like it did downstairs, my mind empties, my body soars, my core tightens, and my nipples pebble, begging to be noticed. Touched. Pinched. Sucked.

He fists my hair and groans into my mouth before lowering us to lie atop the rickety stairs.

Every inch of him is taut and sculpted, larger than life.

Rigid and demanding. Perfect. I always thought he was beautiful, ever since that first day on the playground when my heart fluttered because he chose to hang out on the merry-go-round with me.

But this was never something I allowed myself to consider. It was always too messy.

I wish he were a random guy I could have a one-night tryst with. That I could revel in this can’t-wait-another-second electricity I haven’t felt surge inside me in … forever.

Ryker kisses with fervor and emotion, which shouldn’t be surprising.

It’s how he approaches anything with the people he cares about.

But as his tongue guides mine and his cozy-corruption scent infuses the air and his embrace on me is sure and unrestrained, desperate for more, it’s as though he’s reaching into those cavernous parts of my soul, the pockets of aspirations so covered with cobwebs that I forgot they existed.

No one else would feel this safe and alluring at once.

He tastes like a rite of passage and a forbidden door.

The celebratory spirit that escorts life’s milestones and the chicory coffee that fuels the next step.

Dusk to dawn. Roots to branches.

Moonbeams at midnight and the Sahara at noon.

Heat pools between my legs. I’m about two seconds from shamelessly grinding against his hard cock, which is currently saluting my abdomen. But this will already cost me. Anything more would be utter annihilation.

Breaking our kiss, I turn my head to say my piece before he can coax me into more. “I can’t, Ryker. You … everything that happened that night and now everything you’re doing … it’s too much. I’ll talk to Ty about a new placement. You can know where we—”

“I think it’s just enough, Merce.”

His scruff grazes my cheek, and his fingers slink beneath my skirt with resolute intentions.

They swiftly glide to my inner thigh, dusting over the bare skin as tingles rocket through me.

I’m not sure if I slip on the step or if my back arches of its own accord or if I’m drunk on that champagne toast, but a subtle tilt has him grazing my pussy.

With a sharp intake of air, he seizes the opening, skimming over my wet panties with a delectable sense of pressure that has my hips aching to buck into him.

His lips move against my ear, showering me with an eruption of goose bumps.

“It might be confusing to let me in, but we can figure this out. It’s time to feel something other than the agony of that night.

Like it or not, you do with me. I’m the man you fantasize about, the one you can’t get out of your head, the one who makes your heart pound and your thighs clench. Your weeping cunt shouts it.”

His words set me on fire. He’s never spoken to me like that. And yet he’s been privy to all my turn-ons over the years. All my confessions of what was missing in my sexploits. A filthy mouth is a hot commodity and far too rare, was likely one of them. Dangerous information.

He pulls back to gauge my reaction, but when I neither confirm nor deny his assumption beyond my feverish cheeks and the sopping material he’s caressing, he turns to granite. “Call who you want. Get a whole goddamn army. Doesn’t matter. You’re mine, Viper . From now until the end of fucking time.”

My tolerance for whatever is going on here wanes with his threat, so I sacrifice the budding inferno between my legs to spit out my rancorous retort. “I tell you that you bring me back to that floor, and your answer is to hold me prisoner?”

“I deserve that—your wrath, your resentment.” The same hand that was stroking my panties brushes my hair back, his thumb sweeping over my cheek and the smell of my arousal fading the lines that used to be solid.

“I’ll shoulder it all, but that’s also the reason I won’t let you go.

If I had done things my way, neither of us would be stuck on that floor. This is my fault.”

His way would have likely amounted to him killing Dalton long before that horrific night.

I would have hated him if he had, and he knew it.

I asked him to back off, so he did. Well, I guess I did.

I gradually cut off communication throughout the pregnancy and after to keep things smooth at home.

How could he take responsibility for that?

“I don’t blame you. That’s not—”

“You might not view it like that,” he interrupts, his intense blues meandering all over my face, “but it’s the truth.

This time, you can hate me. It’s clear that even though part of you craves more from me, the rest of you never will.

And we’ve established that the friendship was lost to the carnage of that night.

But someday, you’ll let me carry your wounds.

I have to believe that because the only way I get off that fucking floor is to save you from it. ”

He kisses my temple, pulls us both to a standing position, and leads the way to the penthouse, waiting until we’re almost at the top to add to the emotional bomb he just detonated.

“Even if you don’t want to face it, you know I’m the one person who will do whatever it takes to keep you whole.

There is nothing more important to me. So, for both of us and for Remy, you’re mine now. ”

I’m dumbstruck, staring at his back as he treks down the hallway and scans his iris to obtain entrance. And it hits me how much this clandestine passageway—a backdoor route into the Noire palace from their coveted establishments—isn’t so different from where I’ve been the past three years.

Isolated between two overwhelming destinations.

Shackled to the past. Barred from the future.

Purgatory.

Axel’s voice shakes me out of my daze. It’s merely a hiss, probably to spare Remy, but an angry reprimand in essence nonetheless. “You threatened Vander Floros?”

“And his brothers,” Ryker roars with enough bite that it’s evident homicide is still on the table.

“Oh, and the entirety of everyone at the Blind Tiger. You seem pissed, so maybe I’ll add the warning to our stationery, going forward.

Make things crystal fucking clear. They stay away from what’s mine. ”

“So much for not goddamn bulldozing, Ryker. Amy is like family. Everett is getting a massive UV tattoo tonight. He’s had it booked for months. The Floroses? Fucking hell. And where is Mercy?”

“In the hall, refusing to join us because things got too heated and real .”

“Okay.” Axel’s tone is placating and emphasized by a sigh so loud that it might as well be a news broadcast that he’s more than aware of what that coded message from Ryker meant.

He ambles out to see me, empathy cloaking his features. “C’mon, Mercy.”

Everything crashes into me.

Guilt for dropping all my baggage on Ryker—the person who’s shown up for me the most in the world.

Rage for how he is blatantly ignoring that I can’t be here.

Relief—this one is baffling—that he seems to have it all under control, that he’s adept at taking decisions from me and seeing the big picture. I’m just so fucking tired.

Thrill because my body is capable of feeling things I feared I’d never experience again. I think I could have come on that staircase if he hadn’t pissed me off.

Sorrow because I don’t know where we go from here.

Even if I could make sense of what this is between us, I’m too broken for a romantic partnership.

And he’s too … Ryker. Too intense for anything casual—obviously, since he threw out the phrase end of fucking time when referring to me being his and it didn’t sound like hyperbole.

My honesty here will be our final straw, no matter how much he wants to hang on.

I could settle into any of those emotions, and they’d fit like a well-worn shoe, albeit some less comfortable than others. But as Axel’s eyes line with pity, I choose the one that won’t cause me to crumple to the floor—rage.

Fuck the Cinderella slipper. Let’s go with a combat boot.

But first, I’m a mom, so … “Where’s Remy?”

“Sleeping,” he says.

“Speaking of Everett”—my jaw stiffens as I strut into the penthouse kitchen, harnessing every bit of fury I generally stifle—“he got pulled over for a DUI, was found to be within the legal limit, but got charged with marijuana possession. From what he told me, it’s a nuisance case based on a personal vendetta from the arresting officer.

I agreed to take it.” I fling my hand toward the fuming Noire brother for exhibit A.

“But after a psychotic outburst from the J?ger police, I’ve been informed that’s not happening .

He also keeps reminding me about that ludicrous contract though, and based on that, it’s your decision, Axel. ”

Ryker growls. Like a deranged lunatic.