Page 148 of Unspoken Lies

“All of a sudden, now is when you decide to be noble,” Ignacio grumbles. “Let me know when you decide to go back to being an asshole.”

Standing, he leaves, his face thunderous and angry.

“The fuck?” I breathe, confused. My gaze swings back to Liliana, hoping that she’ll help me speak Ignacio.

I used to be able to tell what he was thinking without any hesitation. A brow raise, a goddamned wrinkle on his fucking forehead, and I knew what was up. Now, he’s almost a stranger.

“You two, go away,” Liliana barks, pointing at Theo and Elijah. “I need to talk to my girlfriend’s husband.”

Smirking, they stand. “Good luck, man,” Elijah mutters as they walk away.

A tongue lashing from Liliana should be fun.

“Ignacio doesn’t trust your motivation, Jared,” she says. “I see the way you look at her. I know you’re trying, but was it really easier to push her into the mud than to tell her how you feel?”

“Yes,” I mutter. “It was easier to chase her through the streets, smoke her out of her damn apartment, because I forgot that I was attached to her. I’m inexplicably pulled to her smile, her laugh, the way that her eyes light up. Yet, I can’t figure out how to have more than a surface conversation with her. I can show her what she means to me, why can’t I talk to her? It’s ridiculous, I just had a conversation about this with Elijah, and now he’s fine.”

“Fucking Rachelle senseless helped,” Liliana says wryly. “Somehow, it broke the ice between them. He can chat her ear off, and I think it’s adorable. You fucked a different girl all through high school, Jared. Now you’re choosing to keep your dick in your pants?”

“It wasn’t that bad,” I grumble. “Is it so awful that I want to do this differently?”

“Yes,” Liliana decides. “It’s too much pressure. She’ll be able to feel it as an empath, and when it finally happens, it could backfire, Jared. There’s things that trigger her during sex.”

“Like what?” I ask. “If you want me to up my game, I need to know what they are.”

“She has to be able to see your face when you’re giving oral,” she says. “Rachelle needs eye contact during sex unless she’s having a really good time. Toys are encouraged, and she enjoys hints of pain. It keeps her focus on you. That all keeps her from drifting and imagining someone else in your place.”

My eyes unfocus I remember the night she ran from us when I was fucking a girl. Was her name Marsha, Marissa? It doesn’t fucking matter. She was someone I wanted to use to hurt Rachelle. “The night Ignacio was behind her when he was touching her, she didn’t see him anymore when she started to fight him.”

I say it matter of factly, because it makes so much sense. She was so freaked out, when before that she had been seconds from coming for him. The change happened in a blink of an eye.

“Yes, that’s exactly what happened,” she says. “Elijah made her give him a safe word just in case, which currently makes him my favorite out of you all. We have a long weekend as you said. Take her out for a romantic night. You’ve only been out with her for group dates.”

“I’m really afraid of fucking this up,” I confess.

“Good. It means you have something to lose,” she says mercilessly. “Get your head in the game. You’re a competitive fucker. Act like it. Only instead of competing against someone, it’s for them. No one knows what Rachelle wants to major in for school. Find out, talk to her about that. While she loves acts of service, she also wants personal time with them.”

“Okay,” I say before tapping on the table. “I think I need to take a trip to see the Council soon, Lili.”

“What? Why?” she asks, shocked. “They can’t know she’s alive.”

“No, but we’ve been gathering favors, finding shit on each one of them. I only need to find blackmail on one more ofthe members. I think I’m going to need Theo’s help, though,” I explain.

“When the fuck have you been doing this?” she asks.

“The members of my club are powerful, and are chatty during sex,” I explain. “Some of the people who work for me are sex workers. They’ll punish very powerful men in the private rooms, pull information from them when they’re in subspace, and make them forget they said anything. It’s not ethical, but it’s necessary.”

“What’s keeping your staff from saying anything?” Lili asks.

“Loyalty,” I grunt. “There’s also an iron clad non-disclosure agreement that would keep them from working anywhere other than as a hooker on the street. These women are better than that and they know it. I may have also mentioned that these men are taking advantage of teens who don’t have the sense God gave them. That’s a very loose quote, of course.”

“Huh. Well, look at you,” she mutters.

“I may be scared shitless of fucking things up, but I’m not inept,” I remind her, standing.

“Good to know,” she says as I walk away.

She doesn’t have to know that my hands are shaking or that I’m sweating. Liliana Cruz will fuck me up if I mess up, and with good reason. Rachelle is worth showing up and continuing to fight for.