He had on a plaid shirt in light blues, grays and greens mixed with white over a white t-shirt, faded jeans and light brown boots that had an almost yellowish tinge to the suede. His clothes were clean, they hung on him well but they were not new or fashionable. He bought them for the purposes of covering his body, comfort and nothing else.
His hair was a mess and I felt a sting looking at it because it always was a mess, even back in the day. He rarely got it cut, it hung well past his collar and was always flopping in his eyes. That was no different now, except it wasn’t flopping in his eyes. Though I knew, if he bent his neck forward even a fraction of an inch, it would.
Although he wore the years that passed from top to toe, his eyes had not changed. Sky blue, bright, the color so stark in his tan, rugged face that it seemed to glimmer.
Eyes I saw in my dreams, even now, if I admitted it to myself.
Eyes I saw in my head on the rare occasion I let my mind wander and it went there, to the glory days tarnished with betrayal.
Eyes that I remembered trusting as he looked down at me and moved inside me. The first man I took and when I did I was sure he’d be the last.
He was not.
Not by a long shot.
“Were they going for the eye?” I asked, dipping my head toward his, my eyes on the scar on his cheekbone and I noted his entire body gave a weird jolt.
Then he answered, “Brain but their path was through the eye.”
My gaze moved from his scar to his. “You jerked.”
“I like my brain as it is.”
“Good call,” I noted.
He began to push from the wall. “Sylvie –”
Oh no. I didn’t know why he was here. What I did know was that we were not going to do this.
The time to do this was sixteen years ago.
The time we would never f**king do this was now.
I began to move around the bed. “Got a cat to feed, a shower to take and shit to do. What I don’t got is time to talk.”
Especially not with you, I finished but only in my head.
“Sebring’s meeting is at two and before that, we gotta talk.”
Fuck.
Fuck!
I stopped dead and looked at him. “What?”
I asked the question even though I knew the answer.
Last night, Knight had told Rhash and me he’d heard rumblings of trouble. A takeover.
The work I did for Knight was rarely trouble. It was legwork, checks on clients and girls. Providing security, presence, escorting girls to and from appointments. Sometimes stuff went down in his club and he needed a team to take care of. Shit happened and did, if someone was stupid enough to try it or thought they could pay or bully the girls into keeping their mouths shut after they’d misused them. But usually work for Knight was a mundane payday.
The meeting that included the boys had mostly been Knight wanting to know how the shit with Serena got so f**ked. Live had reported he’d done the routine and didn’t cut corners. Knight had interrogated the rest of the team about all new clients and their background checks.
After that, he’d dismissed everyone but Rhash and me and shared that he had a gut feeling Serena was the beginning. He’d had someone come to him on the hush-hush saying they were hearing something was brewing. An old nemesis was back in town, Knight had f**ked him over years ago and he was setting up to f**k back. Knight’s brother was also back in town and although he seemed to be towing the family line, they’d had issues and Nick, Knight’s brother, used to work for Knight. He knew the operation and Knight wouldn’t put it past him to sell information.
Knight was also concerned about a mole.
That meant, he’d told us, he’d brought in outside talent. Someone objective. Someone not on the team.
Someone Knight wanted me to partner with to investigate Knight’s operation and assess the danger, inside and out, and neutralize it if we found something while Rhash kept an eye on business.
The outside talent Knight brought in was Tucker Creed.
“Talked with Sebring after your meeting earlier,” he stated, confirming what I knew. “He told me he told you. After that, I shared with him we had history and I was gonna have a word with you ‘cause if we’re gonna work together, we need to talk about that history.”
I stared at him, my brain moving fast.
I did what I did for Knight Sebring because I knew how it felt, to spread your legs for someone because you were forced to take him for whatever reason forcing you to do it. I had no Knight Sebring to protect me from his bullshit, his demands, his temper. I had no Rhash or Live or Tiny to swoop in and teach him a lesson on one of the numerous occasions he did something I did not like.
There was no denying Knight and his boys operated outside the bounds of law.
In my mind, there was also no denying what they did was providing a needed service.
Until I learned the hard way how to protect myself, I would have done anything for the kind of protection they provided the girls.
Now I provided that protection. I got paid for it. I broke the law to do it. I conspired to break the law, making it safe for them to do it. And I did not give one f**k.
This meant, if there was some ass**le out there that wanted to take over Knight’s operation, I had to do what I had to do to stop it.
Even take a partner.
I was down with that.
Until now.
“We’re not working together,” I told him, moving out of the room and feeling him following me.
“He considered assigning this to you but you’re tight with his team, might not be able to be objective but more, Sebring doesn’t want you out there on your own,” Creed said to my back.
“He’s protective. He’ll get over it,” I said to the bathroom as I walked into it.
I went right to my toothbrush.
Creed stopped in the doorway and leaned a shoulder against the jamb.
“Sebring strikes me as a man who likes things to go the way he wants ‘em to go,” Creed noted and he was not wrong.
“I’ll have a chat with him,” I muttered to the basin as I grabbed my toothbrush and turned on the faucet.
His voice changed, it was deep, there was roughness to it with an edge of smooth and that was also a change. It had been deep and smooth back in the day. Now that hint of rough said he smoked. It said he drank. It said he lived as jagged as his voice.
But when it came at me just then, there was a vein of soft that brought back the raw.