Page 35 of Rolling 75 (The Noire Brothers #1)
“I really need you inside me, Ryker.”
She’s half delirious. Her ire wouldn’t have allowed her to admit that otherwise. Pride surges through me as I realize I’ve learned her, that I can sense the rhythm that unravels her, the pressure that tips her over the edge, the filthy words that seep through the cracks in her veneer.
Still …
“Not like this. My cock won’t sink into this perfect pussy until you can give me all of you. Not stolen pieces in a hidden room for one night.” I resume my meal, consuming her with the insatiable hunger rushing over me.
Accepting that answer, she loses herself in us . Her hands fisting my hair. Her hips swiveling to take what she needs. My teeth graze over her clit, my fingers pump in and out, and my tongue licks and laves and swirls until she’s writhing, carnal and crazed.
“Ryker. Oh my … that’s it. Don’t stop. I’m gonna … I’m gonna come.” Her incoherent mutterings prevail as she soars into oblivion, rocking against my mouth to drain every morsel of ecstasy from me.
And I remain laser-focused on her pussy pulsing around my fingers, the gush of her sugary cum coating my tongue, the beads of sweat glistening from her pores. Her whimpers of rapture and the trust she’s offering.
Her legs tremor from the aftershocks, her knees obviously weak.
I pull up her soaked panties and jeans, stuff my erect-again dick into my pants, and scoop her up.
Our mouths collide in another punishing fusion, the elixir of the two of us together exploding on my tongue as she curls herself around me.
“That’s the flavor of forever, Mercy.”
Her chest shudders against me. She hooks her arms behind my neck, thighs squeezing my hips, face buried in my shirt.
I inhale a whiff of her cherry-dessert scent, the aroma of home. “Tell me you get it now. That you feel it. This is how it should’ve always been. Your pain, your past, your heartaches and burdens—all mine.”
“Truth?” she whispers as the dueling pianos show persists beyond the walls.
“Always.”
She sucks in a deep breath and unleashes the honesty I’ve been waiting for.
“I do, but it’s like I’m split in two, and I don’t know how to meld those pieces.
Part tangled in the past and part eager to move on.
Half needing you as a friend and the other half desperate for more.
One second, I’m content with only one more night of this .
The next, I know it will never be enough.
You’re my safe place, but the things I feared most might be true. ”
The idea of us is severed by the fault line of the worst night of her life.
That flays me open. The one fucking time I tried to do things in a manner she would consider right , and it cost her everything, cost me everything.
Except it can’t. I won’t let that bastard rob us again, even from the grave.
“So, there’s a chasm between what was and what will be.
We’ll close it because nothing about this is a maybe.
If I have to wait for your feelings to catch up, I will.
But don’t expect me to accept anything other than eternity with you.
I was fucking dead inside the three years you were gone.
If I didn’t have the hope of finding you and Remy and making you mine to keep me going, I wouldn’t have survived it. ”
She squeezes me, as if she’s touched by my confession, but pained by the words she’s about to speak. “I’m sorry. I’m just not sure I can … It hurts. My head is so messed up. And I have at least one question that might keep that chasm open forever.”
“Before you ask it, tell me about the phone call.”
Maybe we both want to delay whatever else she has for me because she doesn’t argue.
“The memory of it comes and goes, but I have some notes—things I jotted down when it hit me. At some point, Dalton must’ve thought I was dead.
He called someone, asked them for help, said something about it happening again.
I assume that was in reference to Hailey, so it was probably Monroe. That’s why I was nervous about him.”
“I’ll look into it.” I don’t tell her that I’m positive it wasn’t Monroe Montgomery because when I questioned him, there was a clear difference between what he hid about Hailey and what he truly didn’t know about Mercy.
So, that phone call means someone is out there, possibly afraid Mercy can connect them to the crimes Dalton committed. La Lune Noire is still the safest place for her, but New Orleans might be the most dangerous.
Coaxing her into another kiss, I sweep my tongue into her mouth and nip at her lip, needing one more tethering before she hits me with whatever she has in store. “So, what’s your last question?”
“Was my father a member here?”
Fuck. “Yes.”
Her breath whooshes out as if she’d been struck. “Did he falsely testify to let some murderer go free?”
There’s a shit ton more to it than that, but she’s after the black-and-white version, so I give it to her because it’s not worth letting this sully what’s between us. “Yes.”
Her voice quavers through her follow-up query. “Is that why my mother was … was she pushed?”
Where the hell did she hear that?
My chest aches. “I believe so.”
“Shit.” She trembles in my arms, tears soaking into my skin as she cries against me. “He was right. You knew.”
I pull back and study her face in the dim amber light, trying to figure out what the hell she’s talking about. “Who the fuck was right?”
“Dalton. He told me you knew.”
This is making me dizzy. “How in the fuck did Dalton know? I just found out, less than a year ago.”
She scoffs, wiggling free to plant her heels on the floor. “I’d love to believe you. But in one dinner out with my fake fiancé, you confirmed everything he’d said that night.”
That freezes me, my gut churning. “The night he hurt you, he …” I can barely get the words out, a murderous wrath surging through my veins as nausea overtakes me. “You were fighting about me?”
She doesn’t answer, but her sob explains it all.
We’re still on that goddamn floor.
White oak and screams.