“It’s here?” Dad asks.

I pause in the doorway of the room and nod.

“It can’t be,” he says. “We already searched this room. We searched the whole damn house.”

“Do you trust me or not, Dad?” I ask.

He scowls. “I don’t trust Damon Tell, and he’s the one whose information we’re working with.”

“No. We’re working with my information now,” I reply. That, at least, is true. After all, I already came here ahead of time, got the key, which was exactly where Damon told me it would be, underneath the floorboards of his bedroom. I went to the locker in the bus station, retrieved the bag, counted every penny. It was all there.

Then I dropped it off where it needed to go. To the people who truly deserved it: Mrs. Brown and her daughter. I gave it to them to help them start their new life, far away from here.

But Dad doesn’t need to know that. Not yet.

I step closer to him. “Damon actually talked quite a lot, you know, once I started asking the right questions.”

Dad’s eyebrows rise. “Good, you’re learning. Now where in this room did he say the money would be? Is there a secret panel, a hidden door?”

“A loose floorboard, believe it or not,” I say, a slow smile beginning on my face. Dad’s eyes light up, greed evident behind that shark-like grin. How did I never see it before? How did I never realize what a monster he was? I knew he was a bad person. Knew he had his rages, his fits of anger. I knew he did bad things, stole and lied and cheated people. But not this. Nothing like this.

I should have seen it sooner.

Dad reaches for the floorboards. I plant a stiletto heel on the ground, just over the loose board. “Not so fast, Dad,” I say.

His eyes narrow. “Ashley…”

“I just want to clear one thing up first. Then we’ll get the money squared away.” I lift an eyebrow as I say that.

“Ashley, we don’t have time for this.”

“Trust me, you’re going to want to make time for this.” I catch his eye and hold it, my own gaze steady as steel. “Someone is on to us, Dad.”

His brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, Damon is telling a different story than the one you told me. And I’m not the only one he’s telling it to. People know what really went down in the bank.”

“What people?” he asks immediately, his tone sharpening.

I notice he doesn’t ask what I mean, about what really went down in the bank. “So it’s true then.” I take a step closer to him, chin lifted. “You planned the whole heist.”

“Of course. You think an idiot like Damon could have put this together?” he scoffs.

“Not just that.” I shake my head. “You killed Eric Brown.”

“I didn’t pull the trigger, if that’s what you’re asking,” he snaps.

“But you ordered it done. Ordered one of your men to do it.”

“Ashley, it was nothing personal. A job is a job. I thought I raised you to understand that.”

“Oh, you did, Dad. But I need to hear you say it now. I need to understand just how far you’d go for your jobs. How badly you want this cash.” I stomp my foot on the floorboard I’m standing over for emphasis. It wiggles a little, still loose from when I pried it up earlier. Dad’s eyes flash to it, and I can see the hunger in his gaze sharpen.

“I ordered him killed. To protect us, Ashley, to protect this family. He’d seen my face, he knew my identity. He could have destroyed everything we have, everything we’ve worked so hard and so long to build together.”

“And his wife? His daughter?”

Dad waves a hand, dismissive. “I had some men follow them, told them to keep them quiet if they threatened to talk. But neither of them were anywhere to be found. I guess the wife is smarter than her man, and went to ground. That’s fine by me; I’ll leave them alone as long as they keep silent.”

“You told me they were dead. And you would have had them killed, too, if they hadn’t disappeared. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Why the sudden third degree, Ashley? Why the change of heart? We’ve always been in this together. You’ve been showing so much initiative, investigating Damon for me, taking on more responsibility at the company… This is part of that responsibility. You want to be the heir to this fortune, then you need to understand where it comes from.”

“From bloodshed, from the sound of it. I thought we didn’t kill people, Dad.”

“We don’t kill innocent people. Eric Brown was far from innocent.”

“What did he do beside own a bank that you wanted to plunder?” I snap.

“Nobody is innocent, Ashley,” he replies, face flushing. “Now, I’ve had just about enough of your games. Move aside and let me have the money. This has gone on long enough.”

“Oh, I agree, Dad. It has definitely gone on far too long.” I step aside. Dad bends down to reach for the loose board.

He’s got his fingers wrapped around the loose edge, kneeling on the floor, bent over it like a kid opening a present on Christmas morning, when the door slams against the wall, and booted feet storm into the room.

“Freeze!”

“Hands on your head!”

“Nobody move!”

Cops swarm into the room, at least five of them. I lose count in the blur, as one of them grabs me and whisks me aside to safety. I hear the clink of handcuffs being clamped over my father’s wrists, followed by the sound of one of the other officers reading him his rights.

Dad just stares right past him, right past all of them, directly at me. I’m standing off to one side, untouched, one of the officers at my side giving me a fond pat on the shoulder.

I smile, just for Dad’s benefit. Because I’m enjoying the shocked, gut-punched look on his face right now. “You’re right, Dad,” I say conversationally, just loud enough to be heard over the officer still reciting Dad’s rights. “You did teach me a lot. I’ve learned that a job is a job, all right. And I’ve learned what kind of jobs I want to take.” At that, I reach down and raise up the hem of my shirt. Just far enough to reveal the wire taped to my stomach, and the little speaker on my side that’s been transmitting our conversation to the police waiting outside the house.

“Excellent work, I might add, Ms. Marrón,” says the officer beside me. “Was that really your first time involved in a sting like this?”

Dad grits his teeth, lets out a growl through them. “You little traitor. You’d turn on your own kin? Your own blood?” Dad spits on the ground at my feet as the officers lift him to his feet, one on each side, and begin to haul him away toward the stairs. “You won’t get away with this,” he shouts after me. “There will be a reckoning.”

“There already has been,” I reply, grinning. “The reckoning is me.”

“Thank you again for everything,” the officer is saying. “If there’s anything more you need from us, any extra protection—”

“I won’t,” I answer, confident. “Dad can’t hurt me now. But thank you.”

It’s only later, after I’ve taken off the wire and given the my statement to the police, a statement as to my father’s character, the way he constantly threatened and abused the people around him to get them to do his bidding, and the way he’d threatened me with violence at times, his own daughter, that one of the cops thinks to ask.

“The money…” he starts.

I shake my head, biting the inside of my lip to maintain the straight, sorrowful face. “I looked everywhere. Damon guessed at where he thought my father’s other men would have hidden it, but…”

“That’s all right, Ms. Marrón. You’ve given us enough. Suppose we can’t look to you to do all of our jobs,” he replies with a chuckle.

I flash another broad smile and sign a few more statements, and then, just like that, by late afternoon, I’m free to go. And not a moment too soon. Because I’ve got a meeting to make.

* * *

“How,” is all he says as he walks out of the main gate of the prison.

The smile on my face is so wide it actually hurts my cheeks. “Don’t underestimate me, Damon,” I reply.

“Never again,” he swears. And then he’s at my side, sweeping me up into his arms, his mouth colliding with mine, claiming mine, and I lose myself in his kiss. His familiar scent fills my senses, and I wrap my arms around his neck, tilt my head and part my lips to let his tongue slide between my lips, tangle with mine. I lose track of time, of space. I don’t even think about where we are until someone in the distance clears his throat sharply.

“Might I suggest you get a room? A private one, perhaps?”

We turn to find one of the prison guards watching us, a single brow raised, and we both burst into laughter.

“Don’t worry,” Damon answers, one hand looping through mine as he speaks to the guard. “We’re out of your hair now.”

“Thank God,” we hear him mutter as we turn toward my car—the only one I managed to save from Dad’s garage before the cops came and seized everything as part of his arrest warrant.

Me, I got off easy. Made a deal for a complete pardon as long as I told them everything I knew about my father and his business, which at this point, I was more than happy to do. Every inch deeper the cops dug into his files, they uncovered new depths of depravity. There are more murders hidden in there, more cover-ups, more despicable things than I could have possibly imagined. I can’t believe I went along with it for so long, naively believing that I knew my father, that he would never sink so low.

Until Damon opened my eyes. Until I finally took a long hard look at the life I was signing up for.

As for Damon… “I don’t understand,” he says under his breath as we climb into my car. “How did you get me out of here? Even without the murder charge, I should be in for at least a decade for armed robbery.”

“Dad took the blame for that too,” I say, a sly smile curling my lips.

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I… shall we say, persuaded him that it would be in his best interest to claim he blackmailed you into participating in that robbery.”

Damon tries to keep frowning, but his expression gets the best of him. A little smile starts to tick at the corner of his lips. “You’ve gotten better at bargaining since we first met, I take it.”

“I prefer to call it negotiating,” I reply with a flip of my hair, as I reach down for the keys. “And it wasn’t difficult. All I had to do was remind him of the men I have at my fingertips. His men, who would be very displeased with my father if I were to, say, call and tell them my father went to the cops and named names…”

Damon laughs softly. “Beating Marrón at his own game.”

“I’m a Marrón too,” I point out. “What can I say? I learned from the worst.” I grin, hard and pointed.

Damon leans across to cup my chin in his palm. His calloused fingers are rough against my soft skin, and it sends a shiver of delight up my spine. “Just promise me you’ll use your newfound negotiating powers for good,” he whispers.

“Always,” I murmur. Then he leans forward, and this time, when our lips meet, it’s soft and sweet. I close my eyes, let myself sink into him. And then, engine still idling, I let him wrap his hands around my waist and draw me up out of my seat. I slide across to the passenger side and straddle him, both hands buried in his thick hair. He runs his hands down my sides and slides them under the hem of my tight sheath dress. With a naughty grin, he starts to inch the dress higher on my hips.

“We’re in public,” I point out, glancing through the windows at the other cars in the parking lot. Most are empty, but there’s still the prison guard in the distance, standing outside the back gate where they released Damon.

In response, Damon leans over to turn up the heater, so the windows begin to fog. “Your point?” he asks, grinning wider.

“You’re dangerous,” I whisper, leaning back down to nip at his neck as I reach between my legs to grab the buckle of his jeans and start to undo them slowly. I can already feel the hard press of his cock straining beneath me.

“Oh, I’m just getting started.” Damon pushes my dress up over my hips to expose my bare ass to the world. Because, of course, I forewent panties again today. One last panty-free prison visit for the road.

He chuckles softly at finding me bare, and bites my shoulder, just hard enough to make me gasp. His fingers slide between us, spreading my pussy lips, as he starts to stroke my slit slowly, building the pressure inside my belly. I finish undoing his jeans and wriggle them down his hips, only to find him bare as well, no boxers beneath.

“I took a page out of your book, dirty girl,” he says with a smirk.

I grin and catch him in another long kiss, even as my fingers slide around his cock and start to stroke his long, velvety length. He’s already rock hard for me, and the feeling of his hard length, knowing that I have this effect on him, only makes me wetter.

He rolls his thumb across my clit, and I gasp into his mouth, which makes him laugh, a low, throaty sound that sets off a thunderstorm in my chest. “I love how wet you are for me, Ashley.”

“I love how hard you are for me,” I reply, sliding my hands along him, up and down, savoring his width, already picturing how it will feel when he spreads my pussy wide and thrusts his thick cock inside me.

“Tell me, how have you been spending your nights away from me?” He grips my hips, draws me down toward him, until my pussy is poised at the tip of his cock. I groan with want, but he doesn’t enter me, not yet. He starts to slowly stroke back and forth along my slit, coating the tip of his cock in my juices, pressing just hard enough that I can feel him almost, almost inside me, and it drives me wild with lust. “Have you been thinking about my cock? Wanting me to fuck you again?”

“Every night,” I confess, my voice a breath against his cheek.

He grins and bites at the edge of my jawline, right where it meets my neck. Hard enough to leave a mark this time. Hard enough to mark me as his. “Good. Do you touch yourself when you think about me?”

I swallow hard. Nod, just a little.

“Show me how you touch yourself.”

I lean back to catch his eye, and cast another glance around us at the car windows. But they’re completely foggy now, the heat inside the car competing with the air outside to shield us from the public view, at least a little bit. Still, if anyone walked too close, peered through the fog, curious about what was happening inside this idling car…

I decide I don’t care. Fuck it. A prison guard nearly walked in on me naked with this man—how much worse could it get? Besides, there’s something a little… exciting about knowing that we could get caught at any moment. So I lean back from Damon and slide one hand down the flat plane of my stomach, until my fingers are gliding across my shaven mound, and spreading my pussy lips.

He drinks me in with that hungry, insatiable stare of his that only makes this moment hotter. “You are so fucking sexy, Ashley,” he murmurs.

I grin as I circle my finger around my clit, pressing just hard enough to make it ache with want. “I’ve been doing this every night, Damon. Touching myself, and wishing it was you. Remembering all the things you did to me in that visitation room…”

He slides a hand up to grip his cock, and starts to stroke himself as well, eyes still locked on me. “Every night in my bunk, I thought about that sexy, tight little pussy of yours. I thought about fucking you on top of me, your big tits bouncing. I thought about pinning you against the wall and taking what I want from you.”

I gasp a little as my fingers hit a particularly sensitive spot. My head tilts back, though I try to keep my gaze locked on his, as I finger myself faster now. “I think about your big cock inside me, how you make me stretch and ache so fucking good.”

“I think about bending you across the desk of my bunk and fucking you from behind. Filling you with my cum, and feeling your pussy tighten around me when you come, the way your voice gets so sexy when you scream.” His hand moves faster, pumping the length of his thick shaft. It’s so sexy to watch him get himself off—to know he did this every night while he thought about me. To know that I drive him this wild.

My breath hitches, and I slide one finger inside my pussy, feeling how wet I am, how close to the edge. I’m nearing it, about to climax…

When Damon grabs my hands and pins them behind me in a single fist. I gasp in protest at first, but that quickly shifts into a long, drawn-out moan as he pulls me forward, onto his lap, and presses his cock against my pussy once more. This time he doesn’t tease. He’s too hungry for me. The same way I ache for him.

He pushes the tip of his cock between my lips, thrusting into my pussy inch by inch. I cry out at the sensation of him filling me so completely, stretching my walls wide as they accommodate his girth. He doesn’t stop drawing me down onto him until he’s fully inside me, his cock buried deep in my pussy. My clit, already swollen with want from both my ministrations and his, presses against his hip bones when I lean forward, and sets off a wildfire in my nerves.

“That’s it, baby. Come for me, you dirty girl.”

It doesn’t take long, with him thrusting up into me, and pulling me down against him at the same time, for that pressure to build toward a peak. Damon starts to move faster, fucking me harder, and I gasp and twist against him as his cock thrusts deep into me with each motion. He tilts his hips, angles himself so the head of his cock drags against my front inner wall, and with one last cry, I start to come, twisting on top of him.

But Damon is far from finished with me.

“God you’re so sexy when you scream.” He reaches up to yank off my dress, his fingers deftly undoing my bra before I can move. It falls between us, and he tosses it aside with a growl. He lifts both hands to grip my breasts and leans in to circle his tongue around first one nipple, then the other, making them harden beneath his warm, wet mouth. He bites down gently on my breast, just below the nipple, and I gasp at the mingled sensations of pain and pleasure. “I’m going to make you come over and over, until you can’t even think straight…”

He keeps thrusting into me, so hard it makes my breasts bounce against his face, and with his other hand, he caresses my mound, thumb just barely grazing my sensitive clit, though pressing hard enough to make me come again before I can even catch my breath from the first orgasm.

“That’s it, dirty girl. Come again for me, come hard…”

I lose count of how many times I come on top of him, caught between the sensations of his cock thrusting over my G-spot and his fingers caressing my clit. The orgasms blend together into one hot rush of pleasure in my memory, and then, eventually, I feel Damon start to tense under me. I arch my back and rock my hips against him harder, as he nears his own peak. He comes with a growl, his hot juices coating my pussy, dripping down my legs onto his thighs, and making us both gasp.

“Fuck, you were hungry,” I murmur into his neck with a faint laugh. He grins and nips my ear, then kisses his way along my jawline to catch my mouth in another long, slow, burning hot kiss.

“For you? Always.” His dark eyes snag mine as he says that, promising that he means it with every fiber of his being.

At that moment, someone knocks on the now thoroughly fogged windows. I gasp and grab for my shirt, while he laughs and shields me with his body, pulling me tight against him.

“Come on, what did I ask you two to do?” calls the prison guard through the window, though at least he has the decency not to wipe away the fog. “Get a room, not a ticket in this parking lot.”

We both laugh faintly, and Damon gazes down at my face with a sly smile. “Well, this is familiar.”

“We’re starting to make a habit of getting caught at this, aren’t we?” I grin back, and pull my dress on, trying to turn my mess of a body into some semblance of normalcy, for at least as long as it will take me to drive him home with me.

By the time I slide back into the driver’s seat and wipe the fog clear from the windows, the guard is back at his post, though he eyes us across the lot with a narrowed glare. I wave cheerfully as we pull out of the parking lot, and I swear I catch him rolling his eyes in the rearview as we pull away.

“One question,” Damon asks, as we reach the stoplight down at the bottom of the prison exit.

I expect him to ask where we’re going, or what the plan is. The truth is, right now I don’t have one. The police are still cleaning out Dad’s files, but they’ve finished with the bedroom wing at least, and told me I can continue staying there as long as I don’t interfere with their investigation in the rest of the house—which I have no intention of doing, clearly. The more dirt they can find on my father, the better. He deserves to spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars for what he’s done.

So my loose plan was, take Damon home. The rest, we can figure out from there. Together. At least, that’s what I’m thinking. I don’t know that he’s thinking the same.

So I tighten my fists on the steering wheel, prepared for whatever he’s about to ask me.

But all Damon says is, “What happened to the money?”

My mouth quirks a little into a faint smile. “I gave it to Mrs. Brown,” I say. Then I cast a sideways glance at him, nervous again. “Was that wrong?”

But he’s smiling wider than ever now, relief evident in his eyes. “No, Ashley.” He catches one of my hands, draws it off the steering wheel so he can kiss the back of my hand. Then he spreads my fingers, turns it over and kisses my palm too. “That’s perfect. It’s exactly what I would have done.”

I smile and relax into the seat. “Good. Now, about tonight. I was thinking…”

“Would you mind if I stayed with you?” Damon blurts, before I can even propose it.

I laugh, any remaining tension I was still carrying flooding out of my shoulders. “I was just about to ask if you wanted to.”

“Of course I do. I’m with you, Ashley Marrón.” He tightens his grip on my hand, and I squeeze right back. “Wherever you want to lead, I’ll follow.”

We share one last grin before I pull onto the highway toward the house. “Then let’s go clean up our acts, Damon Tell.”