Chapter 3

People always look startled when you call them fuckface.

-T-shirt

Rafe

4 months later

Things were not always what they appeared to be.

“No fucking shit,” I said to Trace. “This place? It’s a goddamn smorgasbord of crime. And the person I thought was just another asshole in all of this is even more stupid than I originally thought. Apparently, the student has become the teacher.”

This place was a complete clusterfuck. The cops in this town were corrupt. Shit was going on that even I didn’t have the vein tapped on, which was saying something because not a thing went on around me that I didn’t know about. It made me twitchy.

“What do you mean?” Trace asked warily.

“I mean that this entire fucking place is corrupt, and that dumbass, Layton Trammel, is at the epicenter of it all,” I said, rubbing my eyes in a way that made my wariness known. “I haven’t gotten anywhere near as much time devoted to this as I’d like with all the side jobs I’m doing, but I don’t have a good feeling here. Something big is happening, and Trammel is right there in the thick of it.”

“You need to drop the other jobs.” Trace stated what I knew would come out of his mouth the minute I told him that I suspected a whole lot more was going on here than what we’d initially thought.

“No,” I immediately declined. “They need me. I’m doing it; it’ll just take me more time to get shit done. Which might be a good thing. If I’m seen around town more, I might be able to wiggle my way further into Trammel’s operation.

Trace sighed. “Just don’t let the other jobs get in the way of this one,” he ordered.

I gave him a half-salute. “Yes, Daddy.”

Trace flipped me off. “I’m not your daddy.”

“No,” I agreed. “Because you don’t want to be my daddy.”

Trace was older than me by about fifteen years, and I more than trusted his judgment on most matters.

As long as it wasn’t matters of the heart, that was.

Trace had been through five wives. He has twelve kids with four of them and a child from a random hookup in another country during his first deployment.

He loved his kids…in his own way.

I think he saw them twice a year and talked to them about four times that on the phone. Then again, with twelve children, it was understandable that he’d not have as much time for them all as he would if he had a single child.

“So…Janie.”

My eyes flicked up toward Trace and then shifted away. “We’re not talking about her. Ever.”

Trace started to laugh, not stopping even when I’d turned my back on him.

“Oh, come on!” He guffawed. “It’s hilarious, and you know it. Admit it! You fell for a girl whose dad is going to kick your ass when you finally get in there.”

“I’m not getting in there,” I lied.

I was totally getting in there.

As soon as this job was done, anyway.

“You lie.” He sat straight up and looked at me while rubbing his stomach. “And don’t get too deep in this, man. Trust me on this. You won’t like having to fight for her.”

Trace would know. He’d had to fight for his current wife. The one who was ‘the one.’ Marci was a sweet lady, and she was like a mother hen, even to me, a man who was well into his forties.

Forty-one was in your forties, wasn’t it?

I looked at my friend and sighed. “Back to Layton.”

Trace’s eyebrows rose.

“How does he not know who you are yet?”

I grinned. “Free did something good in the beginning. They let me know that my past wasn’t buried quite as deep as I thought it was. They were only able to get a little bit on me, and I buried the rest of it so deep that I don’t think even I can find it again. My previous name is solid, and with the recent additions in the form of the fuckedupness that is my face, Layton has no fuckin’ clue who I am. Did I mention that he’s looking to hitch his daughter?”

Trace snorted. “Don’t marry the chick.”

I wouldn’t be marrying the chick. What I would be doing, however, was getting in there so I could learn more about whatever mess her father had gotten himself into. Then, when I had enough, I’d blow this fucking town sky-fucking-high.

***

The meeting with Trace ran late, and by the time I arrived in Kilgore to speak with the men of Free, they weren’t happy with me.

Six months ago, when they heard I was heading to Hostel, I was tasked to do a little research, and what I’d found while I was down there had been quite enlightening.

Now I was there to educate the men of Free with exactly what they’d been sending their birds into, and I was not looking forward to it. I just wanted to get this shit over with. Yesterday.

Which was why, when I arrived on my bike and tried to input the code, I didn’t bother trying to call anybody.

I did, however, climb the fuckin’ fence.

It was ten feet tall and covered in razor wire at the top, but being who I was, and what I did for a living, I’d learned to circumvent that little deterrent a long time ago.

Arriving on the other side unscathed, I started walking up the main lane, not surprised when a man came out of the garage—which was in the front of the compound—moments later.

“You couldn’t call?” Max, one of the men of Free, asked.

I shrugged.

“Could’ve.” I muttered. “But I also wanted to fucking get this over with, and not wait for one of you lazy assholes to let me in. I’m not all that fond of waiting twenty minutes for one of y’all to decide I’ve waited long enough and take pity on me.”

Max grinned. “How do you know we’re not busy?”

I gestured to him. “You wouldn’t have answered my breach as fast as you did if you were busy. I know damn well y’all always have someone monitoring. And you damn well know that at any given time, you have fifteen people here that can press a goddamn button and let me in.”

Max shrugged. “Maybe we do, maybe we don’t.”

They did.

I knew what they had. I’d gone through it within a day of coming here the first time. Each house had access to the gate via a button, and most of them had at least two. They also had monitors that activated the moment that any movement was sensed.

So, no, I knew damn well that they all knew I was there. I also knew damn well that any of them could’ve let me in at any given goddamn time.

But, like I’d told him, I didn’t have the time nor the inclination to wait while they made their fucking power plays.

I kept walking and Max fell into step beside me. A red rag appeared in his hand moments later as he wiped grease free from his hands.

“You’re late,” he said.

I shrugged. “Wreck on the interstate.”

Which wasn’t technically a lie. I just hadn’t taken the interstate. I’d taken the back way, which also added five minutes to my commute. However, there were fewer people, which also meant my patience wouldn’t be even thinner than it already was when I arrived for the meeting.

I knew I’d need to have all the patience I could muster when it came to dealing with these fuckers.

Then there was Janie.

“You suggested this meeting. Is it bad?”

“Yeah.”

There was no reason to beat around the bush.

“Fuck,” Max hissed. “Knew it.”

I didn’t make meetings with these fuckers unless I had to. I usually tried to spend time with people who generally liked me as a person. These men…they didn’t.

They tolerated me, which was more than enough for the business we had together.

We remained silent the rest of the walk to the epicenter of the compound, which was where all their offices were held, as well as conference rooms, barracks for refugees, and the one thing that my heart wanted more than anything else.

Her.

Janie.

Speaking of the devil, she was running at us from another direction, her two dogs at her heels.

She was laughing, not paying attention to what was in front of her, and I swallowed at the joy that was written all over her face.

Or, it might’ve been the fucking pants she was wearing. If they could be called pants.

Really, they looked like fucking paint with how tight they were molded to her ass and thighs. And the billowy whatever-the-fuck-it-was that was supposed to be a shirt that she was wearing was thin as fuck, too. I could see her bra through it. Barely, but I could see it.

My dick started to harden, and I started to do multiplication tables in my head. When those didn’t work, I started to take the square root of the numbers that I multiplied.

And yes, before you say, “That’s not possible!” It was for me.

I was a certified genius. I could calculate things in my brain that people could barely enter into their calculator. I could also see things differently than anyone else. Understand things that baffled most people.

Everything came easily to me. Everything, that was, but relationships of any kind. Emotional. Physical. It didn’t matter. I always managed to fuck them up.

But show me a computer, and I could crack it open and access anything and everything in less time than it took most people to take a piss.

If I didn’t know something, all I had to do was read about it.

Did I also mention that I had a photographic memory?

Came in real handy when I needed to learn how to do something, that’s for sure.

“Look who’s decided to come out of her Bat Cave,” Max drawled.

Janie looked up, smiled, and then froze when she saw me.

“Rafe, where’s your bike?” she questioned.

I pointed with my thumb behind me. “Back there. At the gate.”

She frowned. “I gave you my number. I also told you to call me if you needed in. I would’ve pressed the button on the wall that was literally two inches away from my hand.”

I looked over at Max, who had the decency to look chagrined. “I didn’t deny it.”

No, he hadn’t.

Fucker.

“I don’t have your phone number programmed in my phone,” I said.

Why didn’t I have her phone number? Photographic memory, remember?

I also didn’t have anything in my phone. Not a single saved number. Not a picture. Not an app that wasn’t of use to me. Not anything.

“You don’t need her phone number anyway. You want in, you call us,” Max muttered low enough so only I could hear.

I would’ve rolled my eyes had I not known that he was completely, one hundred percent, serious.

He didn’t want me anywhere around Janie.

They weren’t stupid.

Janie was a beautiful woman—and she was a woman. Her hips, breasts, thighs, and ass all attested to that fact.

Luscious. Round. Beautiful.

God, she was breathtaking.

I wanted to…

“Rafe?”

I blinked, then looked up at her. “Yeah?”

“Max said to wait out here for a minute. Apparently, they have a woman inside that’s deathly afraid of men,” she repeated. “Shiloh is in there getting her moved to the safe room.”

The safe room wasn’t a typical ‘safe room’ as much as it was a room that the women could go to and feel safe. It didn’t have anything special about it other than the women could input a code to get in, and not anyone—not even the men that owned the place—had the code.

It was more of a ‘security’ blanket than anything.

And I could probably break into that room in less than ten seconds if I really wanted to. Then again, so could the other men of Free.

But the women that came here didn’t really know that. They just needed that security blanket for their peace of mind. What they didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt them.

“Oh,” I muttered, then looked down at Janie’s dogs instead of looking at Janie.

Because when I looked at Janie, I saw things that I shouldn’t be seeing.

Such as her body underneath mine while I pumped away inside of her, spilling my seed and filling her womb with it—that kind of thing.

My eyes narrowed in on the dog sitting at Janie’s side. The other one was sitting next to me, almost leaning into me, but not quite.

“Which one is next to you?” I asked.

“Glock,” she answered. “Glock has the black mask. Kimber,” she indicated the dog at my side. “Has more of a brown one.”

I nodded, my eyes going to the dog at my side.

“Do they know basic commands?” I questioned.

“They do,” she confirmed. “Sit, lay down, leave it, and paw.”

“Hmmm,” I murmured. “Have you tried teaching them anything else?”

She shook her head. “I watched a YouTube video once to try to learn how to do it, but every time I tried it with the two of them, they gave me this blank-eyed doggy stare that clearly said they had better things to be doing besides listening to me.”

I snorted. “You have to give them some sort of incentive.”

And that was how, for the next fifteen minutes while we waited to be given the all clear, I showed Janie how to do something small, but effective, with her dogs.

“How did you do that?” she whispered from my side, staring in awe as the dogs ‘stayed.’

“Gotta find what they want, and that’s your attention,” I explained. “For some dogs, treats work fine, but other dogs are more stubborn. They would much rather have your excitement and assurances that they did good than a tiny partially-satisfying treat.”

I backed away another pace from the two beautiful pups and then winked at Janie.

“Where did you learn to do this?” she pushed.

I whistled, and both dogs came instantly.

Janie bent down and rubbed each pup in turn, showering them with praises and excitement.

I tried not to be jealous of the damn dogs, but I didn’t quite accomplish that feat.

The way she rubbed them all, allowing them to lick her face…yeah, I wanted to do that.

I was a grown ass man…and yet my body was acting like it was sixteen again instead of forty-fucking-one.

Seriously…I was a total freakin’ goner.

Every single time I left and came back, it was like she got infinitely more beautiful.

And I thought a few months ago when I saw her at the airport she’d been beautiful. Now? Well, now she was fuckin’ gorgeous.

Dressed in her tight ass pants, loose white shirt, and simple pale pink Converse sneakers?

She didn’t look special. She wasn’t dressed up, and she sure as hell wasn’t trying to impress anybody.

Which only served to impress me all the more.

It was her semi see-through shirt, that barely revealed a light green sports bra, that was really doing it for me, though.

She looked like everything I’d ever dreamed of.

“All right.” The door finally opened, this time emitting Shiloh. “Y’all can go in now.”

I grinned at Shiloh, James’ wife, and winked. “How are you doing today, darlin’?”

Shiloh shook her head. “You and that sweet talkin’ mouth aren’t going to have any effect on me today. Janie, remember that you’re picking Scout up from school, okay?”

Janie gave Shiloh a thumb up. “Will do.”

Shiloh waved and she was gone, leaving us alone once again.

“I thought she was going to leave this place to the men?”

Janie snorted. “They all say that but then a woman comes in with a cute baby they can snuggle, and they all forget about their promises to stay away.”

“I hear babies do that to women.” I chuckled dryly.

“Not to me.” She shivered like someone had just walked over her grave.

Which intrigued me. Didn’t every woman want children?

“You say that like you don’t want kids,” I observed.

“I don’t,” she admitted. “At least, not anytime soon. I reserve the right to change my mind in the future, but right now, the thought of having kids gives me hives.”

I snorted.

“You’re young yet,” I agreed. “Give it a couple years, though. You’ll change your mind.”

“It’s not likely to change. I may be young, but I know what I want.” she grunted.

The reminder of her age was enough to cause my dick to harden.

I didn’t know what it was about her being that much younger than me, but every single time I thought about our age gap—at least since she’d turned a legal age of consent—I’d done nothing but think about having her.

I’d stayed away for so long that it was almost out of habit now, but each time I came back, it got harder and harder to deny.

I wanted her.

Badly.

And I wanted her bad enough that I didn’t care what happened later on—namely what her father and her uncles would do to me if they ever caught on to my attraction.

Because, although everyone knew—even me since I’d seen her shoot—she could protect herself, that didn’t mean that they weren’t overly protective of her.

Hell, for the first five years I’d known them, they’d kept everyone away from me—women and children included.

It’d only been lately that I’d started seeing Janie more often.

She’d made herself an integral part of their operation with her computer skills.

Computer skills that I knew she used to check into me—but consistently came up empty each time she tried to dig deeper.

I think I was beginning to frustrate her, though, because she’d been doing it more and more lately.

“Rafe?”

Shit.

I hurried to the door that she was holding open and took it from her grasp. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said softly, then gasped when her dog cut her off, causing her to jerk backward and to the side.

I caught her before she could hit the wall and pulled her into my chest.

It was only for a few long seconds, but having her body pressed against mine had made my world shift on its axis.

I felt everything in the thirty seconds that she was pressed to me.

Her heart pounding in her chest. Her breasts pillowed on top of my arm. Her ass pressed against my dick—my very hard dick that stayed hard whenever she was in the vicinity. Her hair brushed my neck and face, and her hand automatically went to my arm to help keep herself from falling.

She gasped and turned, then smiled.

And I realized that I was fucking gone.

Absolutely and completely gone.

She owned me.

But then her father’s voice coming from the conference room made me come to my senses, and I set her away from me.

“Gotta work on that with them, too. Personal space is important when it comes to dogs like that. You want them to protect you, not trip you up,” I told her, acting for all I was worth as if I wasn’t affected by her proximity.

Janie licked her lips. “Yeah.”

“Yo!” Gabe yelled out. “We have shit to do today, Uniball! Let’s get a move on!”

I growled.

Janie frowned.

And then I went into a meeting and told them what had occurred.

All the while I tried not to keep my eyes trained on the one thing in the room that was vying for my attention.

“You’re telling me this motherfucker repossessed her car,” Sam leaned forward in his seat.

“Shit.” Janie hissed. “We discussed that we were going to pay off those car payments, but it never happened. Goddammit.”

“Janie…”

Janie rolled her eyes at her father’s quiet admonishment.

“Dad.”

I would’ve snorted, but it would’ve brought attention to me, and I liked watching Janie without the men in the room being aware of my obsession.

“Tell us the rest,” Sam muttered.

“Little Harold has his fat fingers in the cookie jar, and up his own ass. Skimming from the top, and from the bottom,” I continued. “Impounds their cars, loses payments. Then he collects the late fees and keeps the cycle on repeat. Your newest bird down there got herself turned around but was so scared to say something and ruin what she had, that she took it for way too long.”

There’d been another ‘bird’ there before this one, and she left rather abruptly. We’d received some independent reports that we had a problem down there. Not knowing what the exact problem was with Lark, one of their girls that was just relocated down there and not wanting to send another ‘bird’ to that area without knowing what that problem may be, he’d hired me. Reluctantly, but he’d hired me.

And, since it worked with everything else I already had going on down there, I agreed to take the job.

What I didn’t expect was what I actually found, which I relayed to them.

“The bird has protection, though,” I admitted. “She found a man there who will protect her—is already very protective of her—but Harold still needs to go.”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “I need another point of contact there then,” he admitted. “Once we see if it’s still safe, we’ll find someone new as a point of contact down there.”

“I have a suggestion,” I started.

“Oh, this should be good, Uniball,” Max muttered.

“It will be,” Gabe snorted.

I sighed, then stood up.

“If y’all are done, I’m ready to go,” I said. “I had to take time off to do this, and I don’t have time to play y’all’s stupid games today.”

“Temper, temper,” Jack muttered. “Tell us who you think will be good.”

I started heading toward the door.

“The bird’s new man.”

Then I walked out without another word.

Or tried to, anyway.

I made it about halfway down the driveway before my name was called, and I was stopped by a hesitant voice that made my heart race.

“Rafe?”

I put one foot in front of the other again.

Bad.

Bad, bad, bad.

Don’t do it, Rafe.

Don’t do it, Rafe.

I lectured myself for the two minutes it took me to make my way down the driveway and hit the ‘exit’ button.

I slipped through the barely cracked open gate and then felt her hand on my shoulder.

I halted beside my bike and turned, trying not to betray the way she made me feel by being this close to me.

“Yeah?”

My voice didn’t just fucking squeak, did it?

She’d been absolutely killing me during that meeting, and it’d taken everything I had in me not to betray the way I felt. The way I wanted to throw her onto any available surface and suck her fucking soul straight out of her pussy with my mouth.

“I’m sorry that my father and uncles say the stuff they say to you,” she apologized. “Swear to God, they have more manners than that. I hope they didn’t hurt your feelings.”

I snorted. If I pussied out every single time someone called me a bad name, I’d be dead and gone a long fucking time ago.

“Your father can’t hurt my feelings,” I said. “Everything he’s had to say so far isn’t anything I haven’t heard before.”

Janie’s eyes narrowed. “You hear this all the time?”

I laughed at that. “Honey, I’m the son of a man who screwed over military families, took their life savings, and left them desolate. I’m known far and wide. I might not have been the man behind the schemes, but I was the boy who was benefiting from their money. Military men have long memories, so believe me when I say, anything your family says to me, I’ve heard worse.”

She frowned. “Rafe, just because you’re used to it, doesn’t make what they’re saying to you all right. You should say something.”

“I’m not going to say anything,” I laughed.

Janie narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, and I couldn’t help but to allow my eyes to go to her mouth. That succulent, beautiful mouth with her pretty, puffy lips.

They were shining today with a sheen of lip gloss, and my hand twitched. It ached to wrap around her wrist, yank her to me, and lick those lips until they didn’t shine anymore.

Goddammit.

My eyes moved away, and I found my eyes tuning into Janie’s dogs.

“Your dogs are trying to dig under the fence,” I muttered.

Janie turned and ran forward, bending down to the dogs’ level to scold them.

She had her finger pointed at Glock’s nose, and she was lecturing him on why he shouldn’t do that, but all I could fucking look at was her ass in those pants.

I found my feet moving forward despite my brain screaming at me to stop.

I walked up until the large pillar hid my body from view and said, “Do you think that’s going to help?”

Janie screeched and whirled, losing her balance.

I caught her before she could so much as tip slightly to the side.

And that was how I finally lost control.

Feeling her body pressed against mine, having those soft curves pressed against my sharp angles…I lost it.

My mouth found hers, and suddenly I lost the ability to make rational decisions.

My tongue moved out the moment our lips met and licked at the gloss. Apple. Her lips tasted like goddamn apple.

My. Fucking. Favorite.

I had a thing for apple.

It was my weakness.

The actual fruit. Apple muffins. Apple Cake. Apple ice cream.

Anything apple would do. I didn’t discriminate against anything apple.

And Janie’s lips tasting like my favorite thing in the world?

That was what caused me to do things I would’ve never normally done—at least that was what I kept telling myself.

My hands went up to her lower back, and I pulled her even tighter against me.

I’d never, not once in my life, lost control like I had in that moment.

I backed her up until she was pressed against the large stone pillar and plastered my body to her from chest to knees.

Janie’s hands went to the fabric of my shirt and fisted, pulling me impossibly tighter.

My tongue tangled with hers, and I was so fucking turned on that I knew, had what happened next not happened, I would’ve taken her right then and there.

“Janie?” Sam called out. “Your fucking dogs better not be digging a hole in my wife’s goddamn flower beds, or I’ll never hear the end of it!”

I pushed off with a snarl and stared at Janie.

She stared right back, wide-eyed, mouth swollen from my kiss.

Her chest was heaving, and I nearly fucking came at the sight of her so disheveled.

Then, without another word, I turned my back on her—which was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do—and went to my bike.

I didn’t look at her again as I started it and walked it backward out of the driveway.

Why?

Because I knew if I did, I’d be making the same mistake again, but this time, I wouldn’t be stopping no matter who or what interrupted.