Rest & Trust (30 page)

But tonight, she wanted more control. She put her hands in his waistband and unzipped his fly. He rarely wore underwear, and he wasn’t now, so when she slid his jeans over his hips and down his legs, folding to her knees as she did so, his thick, amazing cock sprang forward.

“Sadie,” he groaned with a voice already roughened by need.

“I want to take you deep,” she answered, smiling up at him.

“Sweet fuck.” He put his hand on the wall and let her help him step out of his jeans. Then he stood with his legs spread, steadying himself and making the angle better for her.

It was something that she was still learning. She’d hadn’t yet gotten him all the way down, because she always pussed out at the last minute, thinking she couldn’t do more. There was a lot of cock to deal with. The one time she’d thought she’d had it, there had been an unfortunate incident having to do with teeth, and after that, she’d been more nervous again.

She took him into her mouth now, knowing well the way to start, keeping her jaw relaxed and her throat open, breathing deeply through her nose, timing each breath just right. He stood still and let her do all the moving, tangling his hand in her hair, murmuring sweet nothings and encouragements as his breath grew heavier and harsher.

When he got deep enough, he moved his hand from her hair to her throat and held her lightly, as he always did. He liked to feel himself filling her like this. She swallowed, and his knees buckled briefly as he hissed in a breath. She knew he liked that, too.

Usually, this was the point where she could feel the tension in him, when she would start to worry that he’d lose control, and then she’d back off. This time, however, she was determined not to. She pulled back, sucking as she did so, and felt the change in his body as he prepared for her to finish him off with her hands. He liked to come on her chest when she did that.

But instead of backing completely off, she opened her mouth and throat as much as she could and took him in again, slow and steady. She kept going, right past the point of discomfort, past the momentary thrill of fear, that brief certainty that she’d choke, until her nose touched his body. She’d done it. She swallowed—that was harder, it felt like she was trying to swallow a bowling ball, but when she did, he made a sound she’d never heard before.

“Jesus fuck, sweetheart,” he gasped. “Jesus fuck, Jesus fuck. Sadie, back off. Right now. I can’t—”

Instead of backing off, she bobbed. Just gently, back and forth maybe an inch, and he made that pained, earthy noise again. The hand cupping her throat began to caress her, and he flexed his hips—only once, and then caught himself and was still.

She needed to finish him, so she cupped his balls and bobbed a little faster. All at once, he swelled to much too big for her and came so explosively she could feel the pressure of it. He roared and punched the wall behind her—where the mirror was. It rattled sharply but didn’t break.

When he was done, and she eased herself from his cock, he sort of dropped forward and let his forehead hit the mirror, leaving her on her knees, sheltered completely by his body. She reached up and wrapped her arms around his hips.

“My God,” he panted.

Well pleased with herself, Sadie smiled and kissed his thigh. “I love you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

His legs wouldn’t stop shaking, so Sherlock gave up and let them fold. He sat on the floor with Sadie, feeling woozy and spent.

She beamed smug pride at him, that glorious, glorious, gorgeous mouth spread wide across her happy face. “I did it.”

Still panting, he laughed, and put his hand on her cheek, smoothing his thumb over her bottom lip. “Yeah, you did.”

“That was cool.”

“‘Cool’ doesn’t cut it, sweetheart. You rocked my socks.”

The little giggle she made at that charmed him completely and made his sated dick twitch with life. Then she met his eyes and lifted back up onto her knees. Leaning in, she framed his face in her hands and kissed him. As she sucked on his pierced lip, he wrapped his hands around her upper arms and moved to take her over, but she broke free of him.

Still grinning, she shifted and put her hands on his shoulders, pushing until he lay back on the floor. “What are you up to?”

She straddled him and leaned down, laying her chest against his. “I like rocking your socks.”

With her pretty little tits brushing over his chest, she tucked her face under his beard and sucked lightly on his Adam’s apple. He bent his head back to ease her way and felt her tongue twist against his skin, making a silken glide as she inched her way down to the notch at the base of this throat, then along his collarbone. “Sadie,” he breathed. “Fuck.”

She almost never took the initiative, and he liked it that way. He liked controlling her, moving her, being responsible for what she felt. And she liked to give in to him, to do what he told her to do, to let go and trust him.

Still spent from the mind-bending orgasm she’d just ripped from him, he couldn’t muster much effort to take her over now. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to. That proud, happy smile, the light in her eyes—her confidence was sizzling hot.

So hot that he was fully hard again already. Sadie felt him and, with a laugh that landed somewhere between wry chuckle and a girlish giggle, shifted on him, settling his rod against her folds, wrapping him in her wet, velvet heat. His muscles contracted so hard at the decadent pleasure that he nearly sat up.

But she pushed him back, her hands flat on his chest, then moving downward in soft sweeps. “I love your body,” she whispered.

“I love yours.” He slid his hands up her arms to emphasize his point, and she went shy on him, her eyes sliding sideways, away from his. She brushed his hands away.

“Sadie, don’t.” He sat up, bringing their bodies into perfect contact, and picked up one slender, pale, scarred arm. “You are beautiful to me. Every scar.” When she tried to pull away, he held on and pressed his lips to the new pink line closest to her left wrist. Then he moved to the next, and the next. “Every one.”

Watching him, she shook her head.

“You think I’m lying?”

She didn’t answer.

“Scars are the story of survival. Don’t you know that?”

“But I made them. I did it to myself.”

“The pain must have been terrible to need to show it like this. That’s what I see—more pain than I’ve probably ever known. But you survived it. That’s strong. That’s beautiful.”

She stared into his eyes, her head tipped down just enough that her short, dark hair swept forward and almost obscured her face. Then she lifted off his legs, and, while her blue eyes held his, reached down and wrapped her hand around his cock. Holding him steady, she came back down, taking him into herself. She moved slowly, her pussy pulling him in by scant inches at a time, until Sherlock couldn’t stand it any longer. Groaning, he grabbed her hips and thrust into her until he was fully seated. She cried out.

Needing to be even closer, he tried to catch her mouth, but she swayed from his reach and pushed on his shoulders. She wanted him to lie back again, but he couldn’t be that far away.

“I want to do it.” She pushed more firmly.

He shook his head. “I need to touch you. Let me stay close.”

Again, she pushed on him. “No,
you
let
me
.”

He gave up and fell back onto the floor, but he kept his hands around her hips.

Once freed of his control, Sadie closed her eyes and began to sway and rock. The movements were subtle and fluid, and what captivated Sherlock first and most of all was the sight of her. She had closed her eyes, and he could see that she was letting her body free to find its pleasure. His hands slid up from her hips to her breasts. She was wrong—her body
was
changing. The petal pink of her nipples had taken on a shade more rose, and when he lightly brushed his thumbs over them, she reacted as if he’d touched her with live wires. Her tits were very sensitive normally, he’d gotten her off with nothing but a devoted attention to them, but that full-body clench at the merest touch—that was new.

And it pushed her to the next level, where she wasn’t content anymore to simply rock and sway. Her eyes popped open, and she folded forward, landing with her hands on either side of his head. As before, she stared into his eyes with an intent to lock him in place. She surged down on him, each pulse harder than the one before; now she was chasing her climax, and pulling him along in her wake.

It wasn’t easy for Sherlock to let go; every part of him wanted to grab her and roll her over, to make her move the way he wanted, but the intent in her eyes, the demand she’d made, held him. As she moved yet faster, her body squeezing and milking his, her skin sliding over his, her breath caressing his face, he took a breath of his own and relaxed as he let it out.

She must have felt him surrender, because she smiled right then and kissed him. Her release overcame her while their mouths were joined, and as he took her moans and cries, he wrapped his arms around her and came again, his body strangely still and loose as ecstasy punched him in the gut.

They lay together on the floor, Sadie limp on top of him, until their breath was steady and quiet. Then Sherlock took over. He collected her slight body into his arms, stood, and slid into bed with her, pulling the covers over them both and tucking her snugly inside the curl of his body.

To know that he could sleep like this from now on, every night that he was home, nestled with the woman he loved—that was family, and it would get him through whatever the future held.

She sighed sweetly, already drifting into sleep. Sherlock rested his open hand on her soft, still bumpless belly and closed his eyes.

~oOo~

Over the four years they’d been working with La Zorra, Sherlock had only met her three times. Neither a top officer nor an enforcer, he wasn’t usually called on to sit down with her—and he preferred it that way. He was always walking a tightrope with her, trying to get as close as he could to the inner workings of her organization without standing up and pissing over her fence. Her tech team was better than he was—they’d see him coming if he got too close, and she would take it ill to know the Horde was snooping.

But to serve his club and do all he could to keep them in a strong position with her and all their other black hat associates, he needed to know as much as he could. So he was always right there, looking for cracks, peering through the slats in her fence.

Seeing absolutely nothing she didn’t want him to see. But he had to try.

When she made a specific request for a full leadership meeting, Sherlock got nervous.

When she wanted to meet in Mexico, Sherlock got scared.

The whole club was on edge about that; never in their association had La Zorra expected them to cross the border. She moved freely into the U.S. and had one of the finest hotel suites in  San Diego at her disposal. Generally, the Horde met her there. Infrequently, for certain kinds of business, she met them on the road.

Never before in Mexico.

Hoosier had balked; she had insisted. There was no clearer signal of the power differential between the two of them than the fact that the officers of the Horde had ridden to a seaside resort in Ensenada.

Not that there had been any question about where the power resided in their business.

The officers were only four men: Hoosier, Bart, Connor, and Sherlock. After Jesse’s  betrayal and Lakota’s death, they no longer had a PR officer or a Secretary/Treasurer and had no plans to fill those roles again. Bart was keeping the S/T work, and Sherlock, already in charge of websites, was doing whatever PR work could not be avoided.

They were seated at an impressive oaken table. As usual, Dora had provided refreshments; she took hospitality seriously. Though she had called a ‘full leadership meeting,’ she was the only person in the room who wasn’t Horde.

She served them drinks and then sat down next to Connor with a gin and tonic of her own.

Hoosier took a drink of his Jameson. “You delegate nothing, Dora?”

She smiled. “I delegate, yes. Of course. But I don’t share. Everyone in my organization answers directly to me. In this country, the business that we do has a long and complicated history. Families are ensnared it in for generations, and loyalties are…layered. I think you’ve noticed that, even after years and waves of change, the cast of players seems familiar.”

Connor nodded. “Zapata, Castillo, Leandro.”

“Exactly. Trust is a difficult resource to maintain. And so I am careful where I use it.”

Hoosier finished his whiskey and pushed the empty glass aside. “Trust is becoming difficult between us, too, Dora. There is too much of your map you’re not showing us. We’re holding your front line, we’re losing men, and we need to know why.”

“And if you don’t like my answer?”

“Then we’ve got something to talk about. Have we ever given you a single reason to think you can’t spend trust on the Horde?”

“No. I have great respect and affection for you all. You have my trust. And that is why I’ve asked you here. Because it’s time I shared my map with you.” She turned to Sherlock. “Sherlock, you’ve…become acquainted with some of my dealings. You and Bart. What do you think my plan is?”

He wasn’t surprised at all that she knew he’d been poking at her edges. Though he was nervous, he was careful not to show it, and he met her gaze with steady eyes and a still expression. “I think you mean to salt the earth.”

At his periphery, he could sense his brothers nodding; he’d brought it to the table weeks ago.

He went on. “What’s going on northward is distraction. You’ve got your enemy—it’s Zapata, right?”

With a mildly impressed incline of her head, she smiled. “It is.”

“You’ve got him thinking he can overextend you if he fights your agents—like us—up north. That’s what the Immortal Sinners are about. Were about.” Over the course of the past weeks, the Horde had killed all the Sinners they knew about, and the landscape had been quiet now for nearly two weeks. They’d either killed them all or run the rest off. “They were Zapata’s cannon fodder.”

“Like we’ve been yours,” Connor said, his tone conveying their collective displeasure.

“No, Connor,” Dora answered. “You are my captains, my generals. Not, as you say, cannon fodder. That has been one of Emilio’s worst errors, thinking that I didn’t value you. The other error he made, of course, is thinking that I don’t know the business. I know it very well. I come from a family that has been farmers for many generations and has grown these particular crops for fifty years. You’re right. I mean to salt the earth.”

Hoosier shook his head. “You think you can destroy the entire Latin American narcotics trade? Even for you, Dora, that’s…arrogant.” The words they used privately to describe what they’d anticipated her plan to be were more synonymous with “insane.”

Her smile in response was tight. “Perhaps. No, I don’t presume I can do quite so much. But I have consolidated a great deal of power in Mexico. My home. I’ve watched the trade destroy this country. It destroyed my family—my parents, siblings, everyone. My children live in Europe, away from me, so that they can be safe. I haven’t seen them in five years. I am alone in the world, in every way that matters, because so many people would hurt those I love to cause me pain. This beautiful country is being turned to ash by men who fill whole rooms with money, who slaughter whole villages to get it, and then do nothing with it but count it. I want Mexico back. And in that, I am not alone.”