by Skye Warren
“Oh, Kip.”
“Then I get back to find out he’s part of the fucking family now. I was fucking proud when I heard he’d become a cop, and then I find out he’s as corrupt as they come. He always had a fucking thing about those jewels, thinking they were ours, that he deserved to have them.” Kip runs a hand over his head. “I should have put a stop to him sooner. I should have put him down, like the fucking feral animal he’d become.”
“You did,” I say, feeling light-headed, like my world is crashing down around me. Like my father’s stories. Delitto d’onore. “An honor killing.”
It’s one thing to think he planned to use me when I was a stranger to him. Another thing to realize he knew me all along, that he came for me and let me be afraid. I’m desperate now. Desperate enough to make excuses. I don’t want to lose what we had in the bedroom. Fuck, I love you.
He laughs, unsteady. “So you’ll pardon that too? Forget the fact that I didn’t tell you who I was, forget that I didn’t protect you from day one. You’ll let me get away with anything, won’t you?” He takes a lock of hair into his hands, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger, just like he did in the old outdoor ballroom. “My own personal martyr.”
I pull back, stricken. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“But would I let you get hurt, Honor? We both know the answer to that. I let you work in that fucking club. I should have pulled you out the second I found you.”
“Based on what? Knowing me fifteen years ago? I wouldn’t have let you.”
The look he gives me says I wouldn’t have had a choice. “I let Byron stay with you, even though I knew he was using you. He saw it as some kind of karmic retribution for our dad leaving us. I was so relieved when I found out you’d left. Even when I found out the bounty was on your head, and I came looking for you…”
I wait, holding my breath. My heart felt heavy as a stone, sinking. Already underground. “What?”
“I thought that I could be cold with you. I wasn’t the only one with a grudge. I thought I could use you to get in with your father, convince him to see Byron for what he is. And I thought I could use you to get to Clara, to make up for being absent all this time.” He shakes his head. “But I saw you on that stage, and I had to wait. I told myself it was better to wait, to gain your trust. And with the side benefit that I could touch you and fuck you and sink my fingers into that soft cunt of yours.”
That cunt squeezes now, muscles tight and wanting.
“I had principles, Honor. I had plans. But when I looked at you, all I could think about was keeping you with me, whatever I had to do. I threw away everything just to have you, and the only thing I regret is that you got hurt. If it weren’t for that, I’d do it all over again. I’d bind you with sex and money and whatever the fuck else it took, without a single thought to what you want.”
I reach down to the hem of my shirt and lift it over my head. It tugs my wound, and I wince behind the fabric, hiding it because I know he’ll mind more than I do. “Then spare a thought for what I want now, Kip.” My pajama pants go next, shoved down as far as I can bend and falling the rest of the way. It’s far from a sexy striptease. This dimly lit porch is the opposite of a stage. But he is enthralled anyway, watching me, swallowing hard. I see the bulge in his jeans.
There won’t be any lap dances tonight. I couldn’t swivel my body like that if I wanted to. And maybe he’s right after all. Maybe I should be in bed. But I don’t care if I pull my stitches. I don’t care if I hurt. It hurts worse not to be here with him, like this. Not to feel those thick fingers inside my cunt—which is ready for him. I’ve always been ready for him.
He slides a hand over my hip, cupping my ass. His groan is all the approval I need. What is the difference between groping and touching, between stripping and this? The dark heat in his eyes. The hitch in his breathing. Or maybe the way he says, “Is this okay? Am I hurting you?”
The way he cares.
“I’m fine,” I breathe. I’m actually hurting, but not because he’s touching me. I’m on fire, I’m burning up—but his hand on me is cool water, soothing me. I don’t ever want him to stop.
But then he does stop, when his dark gaze lands on my lingering bruises. His jaw clenches. “And you think I’m fucking sorry I killed him. The only thing I’m sorry about is not keeping him alive to do this to him before shooting him.”
And that would only mean more pain for Kip, more guilt. “I’m glad it was quick.”
“You would be,” he says grimly. “You always were too forgiving.”
Maybe so, but I know he’ll never forgive himself. Not for letting me get hurt, not for leaving Clara as a child. Not for killing the monster that was his brother.
I will do what I can for him, though. I’ll give him unconditional support, the best way I know how. All that practice stripping helps for something. I run my hands over my breasts, attracting his attention, offering myself.
He’s staring at them with hunger. With need. His gaze roams lower.
And I freeze, knowing what he’ll see.
I keep myself bare, usually. I shaved when I worked at the club. And before that, with Byron, I waxed. I haven’t been able to do either of those things while I’ve been laid up recovering the past few days. There’s short, stubbly hair that hasn’t been trimmed or shaped at all. Self-conscious, I move to cover myself.
His hand catches my wrist. “Don’t,” he says gruffly.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t hide from me.”
I close my eyes and let my hand fall to my side. Trust. That’s what this is about. He knows it, and I do too. Trust that he’ll like my body when I’m no longer the smooth, sleek stripper he saw onstage. Trust that he wants me for more than sex. I don’t know much about trust. It’s a language I don’t speak. But I hear the sound of it, the heart of it, when I’m near him. I want this badly enough to try. I need him badly enough to shake with the effort.
“Sit down,” he says, gesturing to the porch swing.
I sit down on the smooth wood, feeling the slats press into my skin. Sitting straight and prim doesn’t last long. With one finger under my chin, he lifts until I’m looking up—and leaning back. The bench creaks a little as I do, but I don’t doubt it will hold. Even if we fuck on this, it will hold.
Like the ballroom, like the Grand, everything in this place is built to last.
“Are you afraid?” he asks. He must feel me trembling.
“Yes,” I whisper.
He places a kiss on my cheek. Then lower, down my jaw. On the side of my neck. “Afraid of me?”
After a beat, I jerk my head in a nod.
He moves along my shoulder, dropping kisses while his hand slides down between my legs. “Afraid I’m like my brother?”
“You’re nothing like your brother,” I say on a gasp, because he’s got his fingers against my pussy, rubbing gently, and it’s too much. Even this light touch is too much. How will it feel when he fucks me?
Kip kneels, watching my pussy intently. With a firm hand, he pushes my legs apart. Then he leans in and places a kiss on my clit. I buck my hips into him, but then he’s gone, leaving me bereft. I let out a soft whimper.
“He didn’t do this?” Kip asks.
“Never.”
Kip leans in and licks my pussy lips, and I shudder at the feel. I’m already strung out, tight and close to coming. Then he circles my clit with his tongue. “Kip.”
His eyes flash up at me. “You’re going to stay very still so you don’t get hurt. Just sit. Let me take care of you. Understand?”
I bite my lip. Not really an answer.
He presses two fingers inside me, and I moan. “What is it, Honor? Tell me what you’re thinking. Don’t hide from me.”
“He never did that either,” I whisper.
His fingers curl inside me, hitting a certain spot. “Did what?” he asks, voice low.
“Took care of me.” I tell him what I know he needs from me, just
like he gives me what I need. “You’re nothing alike.”
Kip doesn’t respond. He just leans forward and sucks my clit, twisting his fingers—hard—and I’m thrown headlong into orgasm, unable to buck my hips or fuck his hand, unable to move at all while he wrings pleasure from my body, as he pushes me over the brink and then catches my fall, making sure I don’t twist my stitches or hurt myself as I go.
“Why are you afraid of me?” he asks quietly before I can even catch my breath.
I answer him though. I wouldn’t dare not to. “Because I need you.”
I’ve always needed him. Even before I knew who he was, when I saw him in the Grand, I needed him to be real. Needed the promise of help, of relief, of safety to be real. I needed a savior. Not to get me out of danger. I ran away myself. I survived myself. I needed a savior, because I needed someone to care.
His lids lower. He looks like a big satisfied lion, licking up the cream I’ve spilled. He still has a bulging erection—it must be hard as steel, and painful too—but he doesn’t seem to mind. No, he’s far more concerned with sucking my sensitive pussy lips into his mouth, running his tongue down my slit, turning me on again when I’ve barely come down.
He doesn’t mind that I haven’t shaved or that I have scars on my body. He doesn’t mind anything about me. And I understand what he means now. I don’t have to hide from him. I don’t have to run and hide—not ever again.
Chapter Twenty
A week later I am still reading the large book of Rudyard Kipling’s stories. The old binding and yellowed pages hold the same appeal as this house, as the Grand—the same as Kip himself. Battered and beautiful.
Banging is coming from outside. Kip has been busy restoring the fascia around the house. I’ve been meaning to do this for years, he said to me. But I never felt inspired to until you.
They aren’t the only ones battered here. I’ve made it through too.
Clara is not in the house. We were able to enroll her back in school once I legally got custody of her. The judge was initially suspicious of the circumstances we’d been living under. A ratty motel room and a job stripping didn’t exactly inspire confidence. But it turned out he had taken bribes from Byron back when he’d been in Tanglewood. Kip privately reminded him that some scandals were best swept under the rug.
And so Byron’s corruption actually helped us for once.
As I’ve done many times before, I flip to the beginning of the book and look at the poem inscribed there. The jungle is a scary place for those who wander in… Written by Kip’s mother, who loved poetry. There are a few notebooks full of scribbled thoughts—a stanza here, a phrase there. There aren’t many fully formed poems in verse, much less rhyme. This one is different.
The phrasing is simpler than her usual, less dense. Simpler. More childlike? The subject matter isn’t childlike, though. Life and death. Being lost and never found. So why write it in a book of stories for children? In this book she’d given her son?
It holds its secrets tightly furled, locking out the wind.
It wasn’t always there. I’d asked Kip about it. All the times he’d read the story as a child, this page had been blank. Only after his mother died, when he’d been paging through the book for memory’s sake, had he first seen the words.
The jungle is a scary place for those who wander in…
There’s something that brings me back to this poem, to this book. Like she’d left a message for Kip. Or me. As strange as it sounds, I feel like this poem is meant for me. I know how scary the jungle is. I know how it feels to wonder if death is the only way to get out.
I sigh and take a sip of my tea. Lukewarm. I’ve been sitting here a long time, staring. I run a finger over the ink, long dried. Her handwriting is sweetly slanted and looping. It makes me feel hopeful. From what Kip has told me about her, she was hopeful, despite what her husband had done, despite what Byron had become. So why write something so dire while her other son, Kip, was off fighting in the military?
I read through the poem again, lingering on the last line. The key is underground.
What if she had been talking about a literal key?
Everyone had thought my mother had the jewels. Or Kip’s father. But what if his mother had them all along? I feel a sort of kinship with this woman I’ve never met, enough to guess she wouldn’t have wanted to use what had come from her husband’s affair. She had remained in this modest house. Would she have been able to give up the jewels entirely, though? Would she have been able to throw them away, give it away, knowing her son might benefit from it someday? I’m not sure I could have done that, thinking about what Clara could do with that money. Just like I resorted to using Byron’s name with the judge to make sure Clara could stay with me. We’ll do anything for the people we love, even rely on the ones we hate.
Standing up, I gather the book in my arms and run outside. “Kip!”
And then immediately feel contrite when I see him on a ladder. What if I’d surprised him into falling? He doesn’t look surprised though, doesn’t wobble at all. Instead he leans against the metal ladder as casually as if it were a wall, as if he weren’t fifteen feet off the ground.
“Morning.” He is wearing those boots and those jeans that I love. His legs look impossibly lean and gorgeous.
I stop and ogle him for a moment, appreciative that he is mine. He is the one onstage now.
He notices, of course. His smile is small and smug and male. “Need something, honey?”
He likes to call me that when he has sex on his mind. The first time he watched me closely, thinking it might offend me. Watching that closely, he could see what the word did to me instead—it got me hot. What can I say? I’m an animal when it comes down to it, and I’ve been trained to like that word on his tongue, to like what he does to me when he says it.
But I can’t be distracted now. I hold up the book. “I need to go to the Grand.”
His expression darkens. “Why?”
“I think I know what the poem is about. I think I know where she put the jewels.”
* * *
We stand in front of the fountain. It had been cracked before, the statue missing with only a hole where it would be. A hole that someone could drop something into. It takes construction equipment to break it apart. The stone crumbles into pieces. It will never be rebuilt.
Both Candy and Lola are there, even though the Grand won’t open for another few hours. They’re here to see me off. It feels like the end.
It feels like the beginning.
I hug each of them. We are friends. That is one real thing that came out of this. It’s friendship born of survival and strength, of darkness and fire. We walked through that fire together. I came out alive but not unscathed. There are burns on my skin—some that are visible, like the dark red wound where the bullet went in. Some that you can’t see, only feel.
Lola’s lower lip is trembling, but I am the one who cries first. I am the one leaving. Even though I don’t want to go back, it’s still sad to say goodbye.
“Come visit me,” I say. There’s a part of me that wants to say come with me. Leave this place. But that would be a form of disrespect.
We all have our reasons for working at the Grand. Mine are gone now.
She gives me a sad smile, pulling back. “You should find different friends.”
Rich friends, she means. Girls who aren’t strippers or prostitutes or druggies. I squeeze her hands, keeping her with me. “I’m doing all right with the friends I have. I never got to thank you for watching out for Clara.”
After a little more interrogation I had been able to rest easy. Clara hadn’t seen too much that night—and Ivan had kept his hands off.
Lola brushes it off. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”
“I do.” Then in a lower voice, I ask, “Do you think it was wrong of me to keep her hidden like that?”
Her dark eyebrows shoot up. “What? No way. You kept her alive. You kept her safe.”
&n
bsp; “Yeah.” I know it’s true, but there’s a part of me that feels guilty anyway. Our father had kept us locked up under the guise of protection too. Maybe he meant as well as I did.
Her look is knowing. “Take it from someone who was bounced around foster homes her whole life. Being with family, no matter how much money you have or where you live.”
Then I can’t help it. I have to give her another hug. “Oh, Lola.”
“Be proud, that’s all. And get some of that.” She nods towards where Kip waits for me. “You deserve happiness too.”
“And you,” I say softly.
“Of course.” Desolation flashes through her eyes before she hides it.
I catch sight of Blue watching us. Watching her. His expression is unreadable, and I can’t help but wonder if he wants her.
Then why hasn’t he taken her?
She’s stage Lola again, flirty and smooth. “Maybe I’ll come visit you,” she says with a wink. “We can show your boyfriend that thing we did. In the VIP room. Together.”
She says that last part loud enough so Kip can hear. His expression turns both forbidding and curious, a dark look that gets me hot.
Lola, being Lola, notices and laughs. She heads back into the club. I frown when I notice Blue follow her in. Something is up with those to. I’m going to insist she really does visit me—and find out what the deal is.
Then there is Candy. She’s stiff in the hug I give her.
I step back quickly, not wanting to push. “Thank—”
“It was all Lola. Trust me, if it was up to me I would’ve had her strung out and on the pole in two hours flat.” Candy looks bored, but then again, that’s how she looks whenever she’s around me and Lola. She’s like the inverse. She can fake interest onstage or in the lap of some asshole. But put her in front of people she actually cares about and she turns into an ice queen.