Page 45 of Rolling 75 (The Noire Brothers #1)
MERCY
P ivotal realizations don’t always arrive like a lightning strike. Happening all at once. But the subtlety of the awakening doesn’t make it any less of a storm.
Especially once the elements are stacked on top of one another, creating an epiphany.
It’s the way the distant waves swell and the sky adorns itself in a violet that is alarmingly beautiful.
It’s the rumble too far away to be considered yours, and yet you can’t ignore it.
And then the stillness. The trees stop swaying, and the rustling calms. The earth holds her breath because what’s in store is a wrecking no one is equipped to handle gracefully.
But until that moment, until the revelation that all the little things so far away and untouchable are in fact headed for you, it’s just an ocean and a sky and someone else’s thunder.
In the eye of the tempest, the anticipation is palpable. There’s a yearning to be part of something so much bigger, even if it decimates you.
Some flee from it, making the storm chase them down. I’ve been guilty of that as of late.
Others proudly ride it out. My brave new plan.
Ryker is my hurricane. My forest fire. My pivotal realization. Not a new era, but rather the epoch I didn’t fully grasp because I viewed each element of us as a solitary entity.
I think I’ve always known that it was all meant to be bigger in some respects, the exquisite ruination that would eventually own me, but it was friendship and butterflies and someone else’s thunder .
His typhoon resemblance is abundantly apparent as he barrels through the ballroom with me cradled in his arms, like a bridal-style fire rescue.
He kisses my hair, darting through the shadows with a sole purpose. Avoidance. “Don’t make eye contact.”
My head falls back with a laugh. “I honestly don’t think that would matter. You look positively terrifying right now. Only someone with a death wish would approach you.”
His brows furrow at me before he kicks his chin to the crowd. “Right. No one here fits that description.”
“Valid. Is it me, or did this ballroom triple in size?”
“It’s a fuck ton bigger than I ever realized.” He peers down at me, narrowly dodging a chair someone pulled out to transform the jaunt into a minefield. Since he’s in warrior mode, he disregards that, captures my lips, and beelines for the closest escape room.
My arms tangle around his neck, returning his fervor with all I’ve got.
As soon as we come up for air, a silver fox pops out of the shadows, attention lasered on Ryker. “Mr. Noire, would you mind if I had a quick mom—”
“Yes,” Ryker answers, leaving him in the dust.
I’m half concerned and half enchanted by that performance. “That’s not very good for business.”
He winks at me, his other sole purpose written all over his face as the booming drums, brassy jazz notes, and clomping steps encompass us like surround sound. “They don’t give me their money because I’m nice, Merce.”
I don’t have a chance to respond because just before we reach our salacious sanctuary, Axel cuts us off, boldly grasping Ryker’s arm.
His sapphires ping-pong between us, and he can’t conceal his glee. “You two aren’t bailing, are you?”
“Nope,” I sing. “I’ve never seen an escape room, so he’s giving me a tour.”
Ryker stares at me, amused and deciding to be a spectator for my pitiful cover.
Traitorous chicken.
Axel nods, equally entertained, but ever the good brother. “Fine. Make it a quick tour .” He smirks, shifting his attention to Ryker. “The cameras are off, but hang your suit jacket on it for extra precaution.”
Ryker might give a nonverbal response. I can’t be sure. The next thing I know, we’re bursting into what looks like a dilapidated prison.
“Jesus,” Ryker hisses, locking the door and lighting the space with his phone.
Dingy walls. Rusted bars. An insane-asylum vibe.
I don my best enthusiastic, virgin-schoolgirl impression, my fluttering hands covering my face. “This is exactly how I imagined it.”
He bellows a boisterous laugh, dropping me on my feet. “Yeah. This is about right. After twenty goddamn years, I’m as desperate as a man who’s been behind bars, so …”
His desperation meets his determination, and an impressive escape-room-tryst plan unfolds.
He sets his phone on a table, the flashlight angled at the faux cinder-block wall for some eerie mood lighting. He shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it on the camera. He loosens his tie, but … stops.
Lurching for me, he crashes his lips into mine in a brutal fusion. He hoists me up to his waist and flattens me against the wall, his tongue tangoing wildly with mine. One hand cradles my face like a precious, stolen treasure. The other seeking to ravage me.
We’re a mess of ravenous lips and teeth and pants and pleas. Voracious moans and frenzied limbs. Fiery yearnings ablaze in my bones.
He rolls his hips, his hard length stroking my aching core with a delicious friction that has me crying out for more.
“Shh. Be a good girl for me and stay quiet.” His warning is soft, a brush of his placid redirection, but a prelude to his commanding demeanor.
Swinging us around in a dizzying spin, he sets me down, whips off his tie, and pins me with a smirk and his fervent gaze.
“Hands on the bars and spread ’em, Miss Phillips. ”
And so our jailhouse rendezvous ensues.
This is so ridiculous, and yet so us . I stifle my laugh and do as I was told. Curling my fists around the cell bars beside my head and spreading my legs shoulder-width apart.
He wraps his black silk tie around my eyes, blindfolding me. “Now you can imagine anyplace you want, baby.”
Despite the atypical setting and the traces of fear and anguish still lurking in me, I want him to know I’m in this, that he won’t ever be a regret. “Still here. Anywhere with you is perfect.”
He hums to that, and I suspect his muted response is because that’s what he longed to hear. At least, I hope so.
In the dark, everything heightens. The graze of his fingertips as he rucks my dress up to my waist. The rush of air greeting my bare ass beyond my sopping thong. The hushed growls he can’t contain. The cacophony of the crowd and band and delightful depravity beyond our blissful imprisonment.
Kissing my hair, he melds himself to me, his zealous cock spearing my lower back and his lips tickling the shell of my ear to bathe me in goose bumps.
“I’m going to fuck you hard and fast. We both need that.
I know this doesn’t change everything, so I have something else planned for later. Touch the wall beside you.”
He waits for me to comply, his authoritative bravado flowing once I slap the faux cinder block to my right. “Good girl. That’s your safe word tonight. But other than that, do not move those hands.”
“Yes, Officer Noire .”
Using only one finger, he traces the seam of my thong with a torturous tease. “Am I a law enforcer in your fantasies?”
“You are frisking me.”
“Which would imply the opposite. The fun stuff happens in the dark.” He rakes his teeth down my stretched upper arm while palming my bare ass with a tantalizing squeeze until my breaths are shallow and needy.
“Show me,” I whisper.
Another thundering rumble tears from his lungs as he rips my panties down, tapping my calves to instruct me to step out of them, before he’s looming behind me again.
With an arm slung around my chest, he anchors my body to him, his fingers plunging in and out of me. The sloshing melody trumps all the noises of the forgotten party.
His scruff prickles my cheek, and his praise awakens parts of me that only rouse for him. “So wet for me, Viper. Was it the promise of hard and fast, the blindfold, the knowledge that anyone could bust in here and see how filthy you get for me, or the two decades of foreplay?”
“All of it,” I confess.
He nips my earlobe with a hum of approval. And suddenly, the scent of my arousal wafts under my nose, satin and lace skimming my chin.
“No ball gag, but these will do. Smack the wall if you need to stop.”
My breath catches as I murmur my consent. All of this is for me. He remembers.
Like always, he reads my mind, rasping in my ear while he’s shoving my panties in my mouth. “Of course I remember, Merce. You’re the entire highlight reel for my story.”
The wet fabric wraps around my tongue as vehemently as his words coil around my heart. And as the taste of my own desire fills my mouth, saliva pools at the corners, escorting a need burgeoning from the depths of me. A hungry beast clawing her way to freedom. To him.
My hips wiggle with a hurry-up taunt. A raw, gruff chuckle emanates from him as the grinding hiss of his zipper resounds. And the cool metal of his piercing swipes through my heat seconds before he slams into me with all the roughness promised.
A curse blares from him in unison with my muted groan.
Pain wars with pleasure due to his size, but it’s a battle I welcome.
For a few seconds, he stills, his thick cock twitching inside me while we both soak in the stretch. The burn, the overcrowding, the sense of completion—staggering. It’s been years since I’ve been filled, but still, it was never this , and he hasn’t even begun.
His nose trails along my jaw and down my neck, teeth sinking into my bare shoulder with an unforgiving bite, no doubt leaving his mark. His lips and tongue dust over the spot to soothe the sting. His hands rove, one sweeping across my pebbled nipples, the other dropping to my clit.
“Fuck, Mercy. This … I knew you’d feel like this … so goddamn good, so tight … mine … worth every agonizing second …” He trails off, and then suddenly, his thrusts are savage and punishing and all-consuming.
And pleasure wins the war.
My lack of sight only intensifies every pump, every brush with the bars of our self-imposed cell, every remembrance of the ways we both let go when we should’ve held on. The escapes we sought in ill-fated harbors that were far from one another.