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I smile, feeling a blush warm my cheeks. As if he knows, he lifts a hand to cup my cheek, and his fingers that were on the glass are cool and welcome. I continue to pleasure him, his breaths becoming punchier and more desperate. He keeps his hand on my cheek like he needs the connection to stay on his feet, but smacks the hand from my hip onto the glass by my head.
“Come for me now,” I whisper. His abs contract tightly, and a deep rumble builds in his chest, only releasing with the first spurts of cum.
“Fuhh—” He presses his forehead into the wall above my shoulder, breathing against my throat.
“That’s it. Good boy.” I massage the back of his neck and slow my strokes until he begins to soften.
He lifts his head and frames my face with his big hands. Nudging my forehead against his, he sighs against my lips. “I can’t believe you’re real.”
1. Pa Que Me Quieras—Lali, Noriel
Chapter 21
Fuck or Fight
Reggie
I re-examined every body not yet in the field from DSM Transports, scrutinizing each inch of skin for some clue I missed. I came up empty. Now we’re back in the lab, and I’m spinning in my desk chair while staring up at the fluorescent lights.
It’s hard to think with Roan telling me it’s time to go every few minutes. “Come on, there’s nothing new to find.”
“Fuck, there has to be something I’m missing,” I groan.
Roan sounds equally frustrated, but for different reasons. “There isn’t. Let’s go.”
“What happened to you being the patient one, huh?”
“I—” His phone rings and he answers, putting it on speaker. “You’re on speaker.”
“Hey, Reggie.” I recognize Cash’s voice. “I’ve found someone who has information on the Warden.”
I jolt up, planting my feet excitedly. “What’s their name? When can we talk to them? What—”
“It’s a good news, bad news situation,” Cash interrupts my eager rambling. “Good news, we found someone. Bad news, it’s the Oracle—but hey, I gotta go—”
“Text me the details,” Roan says, and Cash ends the call. He looks at me expectantly. “Now can we go?”
Back in Roan’s car, I watch trees blur by like streaks of green paint on a canvas from the passenger seat with my knees tucked into my chest. Roan’s been silent so far, until now. “How much do you trust your brother?”
“I guess that would depend. What are you thinking?” I turn in my seat, angling my bent knees toward him. His hand leaves the gear shift to rest on my thigh. The gesture is so small but feels so big, the impact of which terrifies me.
Oblivious to his effect on me, eyes on the road but thumb tracing circles on my skin, he continues casually, “What if you showed him the faces of the women? If they’re cartel members, he might recognize them. We could get a lot more information if we knew their names.”
I consider this. It’s a risk, showing our hand, especially if he’s involved somehow. The connection to the cartel is what’s eating me up. I know my father and brother have done monstrous things, but it’s still hard for me to accept that they might be monsters, through and through.
“When I was little, maybe five or six, I had to wear these eye-patch stickers to correct a lazy eye.” I don’t know why this memory comes to me, but I feel the need to share. Roan hasn’t outright accused him of anything, but I still need him to know the kind of man my brother is.
“Kids made fun of me the first day I wore it to school. I cried to my brother on our walk home. He told me to man up.” I laugh at the memory, and Roan’s mouth tugs in the corner like he’s recalling similar memories. “But the next day, he and all his friends showed up to school with eye patches covered in princesses and pink butterflies.
“I know he’s not the same person he was at nine, but I can’t—or I don’t want to—believe that little boy isn’t still in there somewhere.”
“We always want to believe the best in family.”
“This is spooky,” I say, and with perfect timing, the weak streetlight above us flickers. Abandoned office parks and businesses with apartments above them line the streets.
“A few years back, the previous mayor had the city buy up all the buildings in these few blocks for a ‘multi-disciplinary arts and recreation community center for the enrichment of June Harbor.’” He makes quotes with his fingers. “Of course, that’s just the sweet-talking name he gave the project to get the communities to go along with it. He got the city to pay his buddies millions for some of these properties, and all they had to do was cough up a percentage of that windfall back to him.”
“And they’ve just sat here unused for years?” I pass a shop with boards behind what’s left of the shattered windows. A sad barber pole has lost its protective glass. The colors are sun-faded, the white stripe now brown and dirty.
