Fifteen
Five Years Ago
Ratchet pushed his reading glasses up onto his shaved head and frowned down at the blue Wild Bill tablet in his palm.
“Thoughts?” Ghost asked him.
The secretary set the little pill back on the bar in front of him. “If it’s sending people into grand mal seizures – killing people” – he glanced up at the gathering of brothers around his stool – “then I’m gonna guess this is a mix of prescription drugs, narcotics, and something inorganic most like.”
“And that means what?”
“It ain’t baking soda, that’s for sure.” He scraped the tablet into a tiny paper packet and slipped it inside his cut. “I’ll take it round to Jesse,” he said of his cousin who worked in the lab at the hospital. “See if he can do some tests on it for me.”
“The hospital will have tested what was in the Stephens kid’s blood,” James said, “but yeah, let’s see what Jesse thinks too.” He looked at Ghost. “Fisher broke our arrangement.” He said it in his usual placid style, but everyone present knew what he was getting at.
Ghost considered a moment. “I think he’s still useful. For right now, anyway.”
James nodded. “I won’t have him sell that shit in our district, though.”
“No,” Ghost agreed. “We’ve got too many assets at stake these days.”
There were murmured agreements. Fisher was one of many of his kind – dealers the clubs had liens against, who relied on the generosity and mercy of the club, left alone so long as they kept to the fringes. It was a way in which the Dogs could control the counterculture – bending and manipulating it to suit their own needs, maintaining an illusion of legitimacy with the masses.
“Leave it to my sister,” Aidan said, “to bring shit raining down on the club.”
Mercy squashed his instant spike of anger. He liked Aidan – he loved him; they were brothers – but it was Ava he’d spent nine years protecting. It was Ava who’d talked with him for hours about things his brothers didn’t care about, like the poetry his grandmother had so loved. He remembered Ava at twelve, cross-legged on the floor while he cleaned his guns at the table, reciting Wordsworth to him. Poetry was soothing. Poetry was peace amid the raucous fury of his mind. Ava could read Blake, Yeats, and Robert Frost to him without a shred of self-consciousness. The groupies didn’t want poetry, not girls like Jasmine, no. They wanted to be fucked and slapped and treated like shit.
Just like his mother.
Stop, he told himself. He didn’t need to go down that mental path. It was littered with broken glass and flat tires.
Ghost said, “Watch yourself,” to his son. “This isn’t her fault. Mason Stephens has been after us for a long time,” he told all of them. “This thing with his kid gives him a little more leverage, but that’s all. Nothing’s changed.”
“Right,” James agreed. “It was only a matter of time before the little shit became a problem. The kid, I mean.”
He was met with nods.
Tango gestured to the security monitor and said, “Heads up.”
There was a Mustang parked in front of the clubhouse, and Mercy recognized Ava’s blonde football-playing student climbing from behind the wheel.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “That’s Ava’s football dick.”
Ghost nodded, his trust immediate and complete. Go take care of it. You look after my girl. He didn’t for a second suspect…He didn’t ever wonder…
That trust should have been flattering, but in the moment, it just pissed Mercy off. You don’t have a fucking clue, he thought, conjuring the first ever bitter resentment of his vice president. She’s throwing herself at me and I’m two seconds away from giving in, and you don’t even see it.
The afternoon was blazing out in the parking lot, and Mercy hadn’t properly stowed his pointless energy by the time he crossed paths with Carter Michaels.
“You lost?” he asked, and took satisfaction in the way his shadow fell across the kid, the way Carter’s face blanched.
To his credit, the blonde took a step back, then gathered himself and said, “I wanted to check on Ava. Make sure she was alright after last night.”
“How’s that any of your business?”
The poor little guy had an honorable streak. “She wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me.” He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “Is she here? I wanted to apologize.”
Mercy gave him his nastiest smile. “I’ll tell her you said that. Alright? Now get lost.”
Carter took a step back, his expression fretful, but he didn’t retreat. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
Mercy sighed. “What are you talking about?” But inwardly, he felt the first stirrings of panic. People knew. People were noticing. He was too obvious and he didn’t know how to stop it.
“Ava’s crazy about someone,” Carter said, voice growing wistful. “She’s too distracted and she daydreams in class. She’s into someone, big time. And it’s you.”
“You have five seconds,” Mercy said sweetly, “to get the fuck outta my sight.”
“Tell her, please. That I’m sorry.”
“Four…”
Carter’s eyes widened and he turned away, heading for his car.
“Three…”
He slid behind the wheel, slammed the door and the engine turned over with a snarl.
Mercy stood there a long moment after he’d driven off, long enough that someone came to look for him; he heard the boots on the pavement and didn’t turn, judging by the pace of the stride that it was Ghost.
The VP drew up alongside him, joining in his stare toward the street. He dug a pack of smokes from his front cut pocket and lit up with a certain dramatic purpose of movement. He was magnetic, Ghost. Mercy had never had any trouble wondering how a sixteen-year-old Maggie Lowe had been captivated.
“Kid’s been bitten,” he finally said, speaking of Carter. “I knew that would happen – eventually – that she’d catch someone’s eye. But I’m not ready for it, ya know?” His glance was sharp and sideways. “Nobody likes to watch his little girl grow up.”
“No,” Mercy agreed.
“This just doesn’t seem like Ava, though.” Ghost turned fully, his attention on the side of Mercy’s face. “Did she say anything to you? About this kid, I mean.”
“Nah. Why would she?”
“She likes you.” Ghost made a sound in his throat that could have been contemptuous. “She likes you better than she likes me.”
“No she doesn’t,” Mercy said, because it was what he had to say. He couldn’t say that “like” wasn’t a part of the equation anymore.
“She trusts you,” Ghost continued. “She talks to you – tells you shit a daughter wouldn’t tell her old man.”
If only he knew how terrible that truth was.
“Do me a favor,” Ghost said, and Mercy was ready for the request; there’d been an air of favor-asking about this little moment staring off toward the street. If Ghost was going to grow contemplative and start unraveling the inner workings of his soul, he wasn’t ever going to do it with Mercy. No, it was only ever about the club, about work, with Mercy.
“Go by the house a little later,” Ghost went on. “Mags sent Ava home with her books. I’m worried about her. This thing with the Stephens has got my hackles up. I don’t trust that something else won’t happen.
“And while you’re there, see if you can get her to talk about last night. I just don’t understand how she got herself in that spot.”
Mercy affected a bored expression and said, “Sure thing, boss. Will do.”
Mercy’s bike was a 1995 Dyna Super Glide, with padded leather backrest on the bitch seat, matte black finish on the tank, and aftermarket black wheel spokes. He’d bought it from an old man who’d babied it, and then replaced the handlebars and wrapped the pipes himself. Like the rest of the boys, he was a decent mechanic, and did all the work on his personal ride. It was the single most valuable thing he’d ever owned; he paid to rent a garage in back of his apartment and covered it with a drop cloth every night.
It was fast – Jesus, was it fast – and it was beautiful in a dull, nondescript sort of way. The goal was not to get noticed by the law: no flashy colors, no logos, no speeding, no traffic violations. No one in Knoxville was ever going to catch a Dog disturbing the peace – they had too much at stake to get caught up in petty, punk kid bullshit.
Mercy spent the short ride to the Teague home enjoying the hell out of the wind in his face. Loving the sound of the engine. He’d ridden the bike all up and down the east coast, more times than he could count, and it was an extension of his body, a part of him in every sense. He rode without thought, giving his anxiety over to the pavement, letting the Dyna replace every worry with sensation.
Too soon, he was swooping into the driveway and killing the engine.
Ava’s truck was parked in front of the garage, the repainted Ford four-door that Maggie had wrecked some eight years before, black and shiny and still relevant, a nice chunk of safe vehicle that was appropriate for a kid like Ava to be driving.
Maggie’s garden was, as always, a profusion of seasonal colors as he made his way around the back and to the door off the patio. The sidewalk was flanked with yellow and orange and purple and deep blue flowers he didn’t know the names of. The Harley-Davidson welcome mat awaited the soles of his dirty boots. He would just wipe them, he reasoned; no sense taking them off since he didn’t plan to stay long. The entire walk around to the back door had built an acidic cramp in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to see Ava yet, not after last night. There were only so many more meetings in which he’d be able to spurn her open adoration.
He knocked and saw the sheer curtain flicker at the window: Ava checking to see who it was. When the door opened, he was greeted by the sight of her in one of Aidan’s old outgrown flannel shirts and a pair of black leggings. Her hair was a loose tumble of brown around her shoulders; her feet were bare; in her right hand, a .22 Colt revolver hung limp alongside her thigh.
She set the gun on the kitchen counter as she stepped back and let him come in.
Mercy blinked before he entered and heeled the door shut. He put on what felt like a normal grin. “When did you start answering the door with a gun in your hand?”
“When I was old enough to be left at home alone,” she replied without returning his smile.
There was a pale blankness to her face; she looked tired, yeah, and…something dark and suspicious in her eyes. Wary. She looked wary. And never before in her life had she shown him anything but bald acceptance and love. But now she had doubts; she didn’t know what to make of him, and that hurt – worse than he expected. Couple that with her blonde footballer, with Ghost’s trust, with Fisher’s killer drugs, with Jasmine’s taunt, with his overwhelming guilt…
Anger cycled through him in hot currents.
“You studying?” He gestured to the open textbooks at the table.
Ava moved to close and stack them, making a place for him to sit, if he wanted.
He sat.
“I can’t afford to fall behind my senior year,” she explained in a flat, uncharacteristic voice.
“Right.” He shrugged out of his cut and jacket and draped them over the back of the chair where he sat. “Bet it’s nice not to have to go into class, though.”
She made a noncommittal sound. “Dad sent you to check on me,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “He thinks I’m going through some sort of late-onset teenage rebellion, and he thinks I’ll tell you all about it.”
He snorted. “Are you?”
“No.” She stepped toward the fridge. “Beer?”
He didn’t like this distant side of her, not even a little bit. She wasn’t supposed to act like a spurned lover, damn it. She was a little girl – his little girl. She wasn’t supposed to have hurt feelings, wasn’t supposed to harbor resentment or give him this newly realized cold shoulder.
She brought a six-pack of Michelob in brown bottles to the table and set it before him, taking the seat opposite, folding her hands on the tabletop in front of her.
Mercy uncapped the first beer and took a long pull.
The silence stretched in a nerve-racking way.
Ava stared at him, watchful and judgmental as a cat.
“Rough day?”
Mercy paused with the bottle halfway to his lips. It was his third bottle. Without much thought, he’d slugged down two beers and then opened another. He hadn’t been angry, that’s what he’d told himself. Not even a little bit. He was in good control of that shit these days. He wasn’t some character in a story Ava would write; he didn’t have blazing passions that got the best of his temper.
So why was he slugging Michelob like it was lifeblood?
“Nah.” He forced a smile that felt stiff and set the bottle back on the table, staring at the beaded condensation sliding down the sides so he didn’t have to stare at the way the old worn flannel shirt pulled tight over Ava’s breasts. Not only was he not himself, but he didn’t trust himself, and that was a dangerous state of being. “Just thirsty is all.”
He heard her take a deep breath, and then she said something that absolutely cut him to the bone. “I think you should leave.”
His head lifted at that, eyes finding her delicate porcelain face. She had dark circles smudged beneath her eyes. She looked pale and rattled. And it was his fault.
“Why?” he asked, swallowing.
“Because…” She bit her lip and took a deep breath, the shirt stretching tighter as her chest lifted. “Because I don’t know you anymore, Mercy. And it scares me.”
“I scare you? Me?” He scared every damn body, but not her, not his fillette. She’d never been scared of him for a second, and that was a safe harbor, he realized now, one that he needed badly.
“No. It’s just–” She shook her head, but she didn’t break eye contact. Her irises were a rich chocolate in the sunlight, same as her glinting hair. Tears welled up in their depths. “You treat me like a child, and you never did that before.”
Fuck her. Fuck her perception and her round tits and the way her mouth trembled and the way she’d turned into a woman before he could detach himself properly. Fuck her for that – for becoming someone he wanted when he still loved her for the little girl she’d always been.
He felt his muscles leap, felt the dangerous tension wind through them. “You are a child,” he said, coldly on purpose. “You’re seventeen goddamn years old, Ava, and you don’t even have sense not to get tossed outta school.”
His insult struck home, as hoped. But when she surged to her feet, she came around the table toward him, a move he hadn’t counted on.
“Stop!” she said as the tears started to pour down her cheeks. “It’s not fair! You know what you’re doing. You know how I feel…” She closed her eyes tight, the anguish in her doing devastating things to his self-control. When she opened her eyes again, they were bright and wet. “And you…you tease me. It’s fun for you! It’s not fair – you know I love you and you throw it in my face–”
She sucked in a gasp as he rose to his feet. Mercy was moving faster than he could think. He stood and he gathered her arms up in his hands and pulled her in close to him. He hated the crying so much. He hated being the cause of it.
“Stop,” he said, giving her a little shake even as he tucked her into his chest. “Hush, stop doing that.”
“You’re doing it again!” She struggled a moment, her efforts comical, and Mercy was this frustrated knot of protector and soother and suitor as he bent to kiss her cheek.
She was five-five, but that still left her a foot below him, and he did indeed have to bend. Her face was hot and damp with tears, her skin like satin against his. She went utterly still as his lips touched the tearstains. And without even breathing, she invaded him.
The clean smell of her shampoo. The taste of her tears. The feel of her body pressed to his. The faint thunder of her pulse against his own where they were skin-to-skin.
She loved him, and he’d known it for a long time now. Just like he knew that there was a deep place carved in her heart that she would leave open for him, waiting, hoping. She hadn’t chosen to feel the way she did. All those years, all those talks, all those moments her father had abandoned her into his care. This, her against him like this, was nothing like the coy invitation of the groupies, the dare of the thrill-seekers who wanted to snag a piece of a bad boy. This was the little girl he’d helped to raise growing up and flowering into a woman with a sex drive who didn’t want anyone to touch her but him. She was beautiful and fragile and ferocious. And she was honest – Ava was maybe the only honest thing in his life. And he’d watched her for too long, and he’d wondered too much, and she was this precious creature whose safety had become the point around which his existence pivoted.
“Mercy,” she whispered, and it was his final undoing.
He turned his head and captured her startled mouth with his own, his hands coming up to cup the delicate back of her skull, crushing her silken hair as he latched onto her and felt the most acute lust of his life burst with molten fervor in his veins.
She gasped; he felt her breath against his lips as he pushed hers wide and dove between with his tongue. Her mouth was so hot, so slick and wet. It was too sudden and uncertain and he’d let things build for too long – he couldn’t be slow and delicate and patient. He clutched her close to him and invaded her mouth, pulling her up higher, bending lower. God, he attacked her, without a shred of rational thought.
But then he felt her hands, clumsy with nerves and excitement, tangle in the front of his shirt. She stretched up on her toes. She was the one who tilted her head and changed the angle, giving him deeper access, opening her jaw wide to accept him.
He had to have her. He was volcanic with painful, frantic need. And she was giving herself to him, without a shred of reservation. He could read it in the way her body pressed to him: Please. Please, I need it too.
Please.
Please…
An image of her at age ten flooded his mind, with her hair braided and her smile pleading as she asked to ride on the back of his bike, just to the end of the street and back, not very far at all, pretty please.
Mercy shoved her away, violently. She gasped again, this time as their lips broke apart, and he watched her clutch her mouth, her eyes liquid with desire and huge with panic. He was so aroused that the sight of her like that almost propelled him back to her.
But he backed away, one step and then another. “No. No, no, no. Jesus. No.”
Ava reached for him. “Mercy–”
“No!” Distance, he needed more distance. Snatching his jacket and cut off the back of his chair, he shrugged back into them both at once, his back to her. “This is fucked up,” he said without looking at her. “Beyond fucked up.”
She took a shattered breath that pulled at him hard.
But he walked to the back door. And then opened it, stepped halfway through it. “Lock this behind me.” He finally risked a glance toward her, saw her standing with one arm banded around her middle and a hand still pressed over her mouth. She looked shell-shocked. “You hear me? Lock this door behind me.”
He stepped out and slammed the door. Took a pained, pitiful moment to brace a hand against it and collect himself. He didn’t move until he heard the deadbolt slide into place.
Ava closed her eyes tight and pressed her forehead to the cool painted wood of the door. Her pulse was beating at a pace that robbed her of oxygen, throbbing hardest in her breasts and between her legs, stirring urges in her that were elemental and hormonal, and didn’t need experience to fuel them. She felt weak, like her neck wouldn’t support her head, or her legs her weight. She braced her palms on the door and concentrated on breathing.
His mouth against hers. The way he’d all but attacked her.
Oh, she wanted to dissolve right here and now. She didn’t want to take one step away from this door and know that he’d kissed her like that, and then walked away from her.
She waited for the sound of his bike starting.
Instead, she heard his voice, just on the other side of the door. “Ava.”
Her throat was too tight to respond.
“Ava. Fillette.” His voice was calmer, more composed. “Open the door again,” he said, almost pleading. “Come on, sweetheart, unlock it.”
She forced her tongue to move. “Why?”
“Because…I didn’t do it right.”
Ava threw the locks, fumbling with the deadbolt, and then pulled the door wide.
Mercy’s tall, broad shape blotted out the sunlight. He crossed the threshold with slow, purposeful steps, backing her up, easing the door shut behind him. His eyes looked black here in the kitchen. It was with slow reverence that his hands lifted, and then settled at the sides of her head, his palms cradling her cheeks.
For the longest moment, he studied her face, and she held still, afraid he’d change his mind if she so much as breathed. Finally, one corner of his mouth twitched.
“I’m going to hell anyway, right?” he murmured.
And she closed her eyes as he leaned in and kissed her again.
She’d never kissed anyone before. It was so much messier than she’d always thought it would be. It was so undignified and basic and unrefined.
It was glorious.
Mercy kissed her and held her face and backed her up a step at a time until she hit the counter.
Heat poured through her. Her clothes chafed her skin. She wanted so many things, to touch and be touched, and her lack of experience was painfully embarrassing as she dug her fingers into his leather jacket and opened her lips for him.
“Easy, baby,” he whispered against her mouth. “Easy.”
She broke away from him, far enough to catch a breath, close enough for his face to be an indistinct blur.
His lips touched her cheek, cruised along the edge of her jaw. She felt his tongue at the artery along her throat and she shivered, fingers tightening in his jacket.
Was this happening? Had she fallen asleep and this was a dream? Or was Mercy truly kissing her neck? His hands migrating down her shoulders, her arms.
She closed her eyes and felt tears catching in her lashes.
Maybe this was just pity. Maybe this was just the next step in his game of keep-away, a natural progression.
She reached up, until her fingers knotted in his hair. “Don’t tease me,” she whispered, holding him to her. “Don’t, Mercy.”
He stilled, his body curled over hers, his hands at her waist, his mouth at her collarbone. She felt the slow, deliberate sweep of his tongue against her clavicle and fine tremors passed beneath her skin. “You don’t like it?” he asked, his voice cold and dark.
She pressed her fingertips against his scalp. “I’ve had dreams about this.” She blinked hard at the tears, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. “But I’m so afraid you’ll push me away.”
Mercy straightened, and then his hands were at her hips, and he was lifting her up to sit on the counter. He lifted her like she was weightless. He stepped in closer, in between her knees, and he towered over her, one forearm braced on the cabinet face behind her head.
“Look at me.”
She did, head tipping back against the cabinet.
Never had she seen his face illuminated like this, with the harshness of the kill, but with his eyes wide and black and dilated. His voice was almost mocking, but in a gentle way, his words tight and full of humor all at once.
“Ava, how much have you done with your football boy?”
“What do you – oh! Done? No. Nothing.” Her chest was too tight and when she sucked in a deep breath, Mercy’s eyes shifted to her breasts.
“Not anything?” One of his big hands came up to the V of skin exposed by her shirt. His thumb toyed with the top button and his fingertips played against her leaping pulse. “You didn’t make out with him? Let him touch you?”
She wanted to shut her eyes, but she didn’t want to look away from his hand as it pressed between her breasts. “No. What do you think ‘nothing’ means?”
His smile was more of a grimace. “Has there been anyone else?”
“No. No one.”
She couldn’t tell if that pleased him. It was mortifying for her; she wanted nothing more than to be like Jasmine, to have some skill and wit to offer him in this moment. All she had was herself, and she hoped that was enough.
“Then take a good look, fillette.” Mercy’s eyes lifted to hers, and their intensity was unfathomable. “Because this is what it looks like when a man wants to be inside you.”
She took her look, and then another, her heart hammering hard, trying to work itself through bone and blood to reach the palm of his hand.
“Have you got any idea how bad I want to have you?” he whispered as he held her pinned on the kitchen counter. The same kitchen in which they’d had breakfast that first day, nine years ago.
Her throat ached as she swallowed. “So have me.” And she wound her hands in his hair and pulled him down to her.
He kissed her and kissed her, until she felt drunk. She leaned into his hands, dominated by the urge to press the whole of her body against the whole of his.
Then she felt his fingers at her buttons, and with a few deft moves, he had them undone and her shirt was parting, the air cool against her skin. He smoothed the halves back and passed his rough-skinned hands across her belly, up her ribs. They closed over the black cotton cups of her bra and Ava’s spine bowed as she arched into the contact.
He withdrew and she thought she must have done something wrong, that he was displeased…but then he took hold of her hips and pulled her to the edge of the counter, until his hips were wedged between her thighs and his cold belt buckle was against her belly. And through their clothes, his erection was against the throbbing place that craved its touch.
It shocked her a little. She gasped and her hips moved. She wanted so much more.
“Come on.” There was impatience in his voice as he slid his hands around and scooped her up, clutching her ass.
Ava dutifully wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and clung to him as he carried her. Through the kitchen, the living room, down the hall, his long legs took them to her room in a matter of strides. Ava nuzzled her face into his throat – he smelled like Gillette shaving cream and cigarettes and the autumn outdoors – and caught a blur of her familiar, personal space: the bed, fluffy and inviting and waiting for them, her paintings and her laundry hamper and the wash of pale light through the open blinds.
Mercy set her down on the end of the bed, and he kissed her, passing his tongue into her mouth, scraping at her bottom lip with his teeth. She was lightheaded when he pulled back, her lips swollen and her eyelids heavy. He was a drug, this man, and she was more than happy to OD at this point.
The look he gave her before he stood was loaded with more of that supreme intensity from the kitchen. “Get naked,” he said, and shrugged out of his jacket, letting it hit the floor.
She didn’t want prettier words than those. She pulled the shirt off her shoulders, skimmed off her leggings, her panties, unclasped her bra, all in a feverish daze, aware of Mercy shucking his clothes, but not seeing it clearly in her own haste.
When she finished tossing her bra onto her dresser, Mercy was suddenly on her, his mouth finding hers as he eased her back to lie across the bed, climbing up over her. The mattress dipped dramatically under his weight. His knee slid between hers and she opened her legs, giving him space to settle between.
It was all so spectacularly new for her: the roughness of the hair on his legs, the thick satin of his skin, the sense of absolute surrender as all six-feet-five-inches of his grand height covered her with the elegance and savagery of a panther. And all their comfortable familiarity vaporized. Because this wasn’t just the two of them anymore, but the intentions that lay between them, and that both frightened and excited her.
Mercy pulled back, bracing up above her on his arms. She wanted to touch his biceps, and she realized she could, passing her hands up the hard bundles of muscle, tracing the ridged veins that laced them, as her eyes followed, up the thick column of his throat to his face. His features were harsh, but his eyes large and soft, a glittering shade of amber in the incoming shafts of afternoon light.
“Are you afraid?” he asked, his voice a low, Cajun-heavy purr she’d only heard once or twice.
She wanted to remember the sight of him this way, with his hair failing across his forehead and the tattoos on his left arm glimmering. She wanted to memorize the sculpted contours of his chest and neck and arms suspended above her.
She wasn’t afraid. She was a jumble of so many thing, but afraid? No. She would never be afraid of him.
“No.”
“Shut your eyes, fillette.”
She did, and then she felt his hand on her. She felt the mattress dip beside her, felt him settle in right next to her. Her arm was pressed to the hard wall of his chest. His knees touched her calf. And he was breathing right in her ear, the rhythm increasing, breath by breath, as he began a trail at her throat and moved downward.
He palmed her breasts, one and then the other, squeezing, shaping them. He traced her nipples with his fingertips until they were pebbled and aching.
Ava tried to roll toward him – she wanted her hands on him – but he held her gently down with his hand on her sternum.
“No,” he said in her ear. “And eyes shut, remember?”
Gooseflesh erupted across every inch of her skin and she felt him smiling against her face.
Down he moved, tracing the delicate lines of her ribs. Across her belly in unhurried strokes that left her trembling and made her wet.
Then he reached boldly between her legs and covered her sex with his hand.
She did roll toward him then, burying her hot face in his chest, flushed and breathless and unable to keep still.
“Poor little thing,” he murmured against her forehead. “I know, I know.”
He stroked her until she was slippery, and she bit down hard on her lip when he thumbed her clit with a staggering delicacy, given the size of his hands. Then he entered her with a single finger. He stretched her and tested her. He worked her, in and out, again and again, and it was painful, but the tight spiral of fire in her belly was downright crippling.
“Here, kiss me,” he said, and when she did, his tongue came into her mouth and it mimicked the thrusting of his finger.
On her tidy white comforter, in the bold daylight, Mercy brought her to orgasm, and she twisted against him, her sex clenching around his finger, the pleasure bursting through her in warm waves.
Mercy withdrew his hand and rolled her onto her back, covering her body with his own as she was still coming down.
“You ready, fillette?” He spread her thighs with his palms and settled over her. He kissed her throat and she felt something against her wet sex: his cock, as he aligned them.
Her eyes didn’t want to stay open. She was deliciously warm and satiated. “Hey, Merc?” She passed her hands around behind his neck and down between his heavy shoulder blades, feeling the tension in his spine.
She felt the first pressure.
She tasted the salty skin of his cheek.
“I never asked – not in all these years,” she murmured. “What does fillette mean?”
She felt his entire body gather, a great wave of energy moving through him.
“Little girl. It means little girl.”
And then he entered her fully on one fatal thrust, and her whole world was pain.