Effie rolled out of bed and started dressing slowly. King grabbed her wrist as she hitched up her shorts.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “I’m not done with you yet.”

“I have to go check on Yaya real quick, see if she needs anything.” King whipped the shirt out of her hand.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “I’ll do it. It’s very important to me that you stay naked.”

Effie looked at him and blushed. “Are you sure? What if she needs—”

“I’ve got this. You stay right here.”

King stood up and pulled his own shirt over his head. He could feel her eyes on him as she drank him in. No matter how often he had her, he couldn’t get enough. She was simultaneously familiar and the most beautiful stranger he’d ever known.

“Start mentally preparing yourself,” he warned. “Because you’re going to ride my face in a little while.”

Effie’s face turned bright red. Her insecurity remained one of his biggest turn ons. King couldn’t believe how easy it was to make her flush, and he aimed to do it as often as possible.

As King wandered down the hall, a feeling of comfort surrounded him. In his grandfather’s last days, this house was one of the few real retreats he could enjoy. It was just a few houses down from his own, but a world away.

He poked his head into Yaya’s room and found her fast asleep. Still, he pulled the quilt at the foot of the bed over her shoulders. She breathed deep and King turned off the little bedside lamp.

He surprised himself by how cozy this arrangement was. He certainly hadn’t planned on rescuing Yaya, too, when they’d stopped by Effie’s house, but what could he do? At first, he thought it might be too much to handle, but it was kind of nice.

Almost like having a normal family, he thought.

King poured a large glass of water in the kitchen. Outside the picture window, one of the neighbors stood in the doorway to their backyard and watched a little terrier run around the yard. The owners’ husband or boyfriend came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

I want that, King realized.

It was a kind of settling discovery, but he didn’t know how to get it. Especially if he wanted it with Effie.

With every step he took back to the bedroom, the desire in him stirred stronger. It had never been like this with any other girl. Usually, the lust was milder and wore out quickly. But with Effie, it was like feeding an addiction. Even years after their first time together, the desire for more was just as strong.

King took a long drink when he stepped into the bedroom. He shut the door behind him and handed the water to Effie with a wink.

“Gotta keep our hydration levels up.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened here?” she asked.

“What?”

Effie pointed to the fading bruise on his chest. “And the other one right here—”

King sighed and sat down on the bed. He rubbed the back of his neck and debated how much to tell her—and how many details.

“It’s not that big a deal,” he said. “I was kind of, well, jumped by four guys—”

“Jumped?” she asked. “Are you serious? Why?”

“It’s complicated. And it’s over now, so don’t worry about it.”

“I certainly will worry about it! I’m kind of trusting you not only with my life, but with Yaya’s. It’s not just the two of us anymore.”

King nodded silently. She was right, of course, but he knew how it would sound. Even when he rolled the story around in his own head, it sounded crazy.

“I don’t know what Thorne said or what you heard, but… I wasn’t in L.A. to take up some fancy job in the city. The reality is that California was sucking the life out of me. I felt—well… alone, to be blunt. Make sense?”

“Sure. I guess.”

“Anyway, when I got there I was in a serious downward spiral. It was like, I’d done the whole routine my parents wanted. You know? College and everything, even the degree they wanted. I guess all of that suppression of my rebellious years imploded.”

“What do you mean?” Effie curled her bare legs underneath her on the bed. King sensed curiosity, but no judgment.

“I—well, I got caught up in some bad shit. I mean, I don’t know if you’d actually call the crew I worked for the mob or mafia or whatever—”

“King, are you freaking serious?” she whispered. “I didn’t… I didn’t think it was that. I mean, did you… like…”

“Kill anyone?” he asked, his brow raised. “No, pretty much everything else though. It was getting close to that. A real organization doesn’t just throw you in the deep end. If a newcomer is happy to kill from the jump, that’s a big red flag that they’re a loose cannon.”

Effie slowly let out her breath. “Okay, go on.”

“Man, Effie, I don’t know why you need to know all this—”

“I just do, okay? I need to know you. Who you are now.”

“What happened in Los Angeles doesn’t define who I am.”

“No, but it’s part of what makes you you. And I need to know. Just because.”

“Alright, well, I did a lot of shit. I mean, I sent some warnings. Broke some fingers, a few limbs.” Effie winced, but didn’t say anything. “I guess I was what you’d call a collector. For the most part, I made sure people paid up what they owed the boss.”

“And how do you know they owed him?”

King shrugged. “I had to trust what he said. Honestly, it was kind of easy work with good pay. I usually didn’t have to rough anyone up. Just showing up, flashing a gun—”

“A gun? Are you kidding me?”

King gave her a strange look.

“I mean, you can’t be the only one at a meetup without a gun. I started to earn the boss’ trust. I did good work, and I always delivered. I could tell the assignments I was getting were getting more serious, but it still didn’t cross whatever semblance of a moral code I still had left.”

“Until?”

“Well, until the whole kill assignment came up. I tried to beg off it, but those guys can sniff that out quick. I—well, I guess I decided I’d finally had enough. I told the boss I wanted to quit, but it’s not that easy.”

“And that’s… that’s when this…”

King nodded. “Four guys jumped me in a parking deck late at night. I knew two of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“We worked together. They weren’t exactly friends, you didn’t have that in the organization. But they were the closest thing I had to it.”

“Oh, my God.”

They sat in silence for the longest minute of King’s life. He could see Effie was processing the little he’d told her. King had censored it drastically for her, but maybe it wasn’t enough.

If I’m going to lose her, it’s going to be now. And I can’t blame her for it. Finally, Effie took a breath and looked at him.

“Do you want to know how I ended up with Thorne?”

King stiffened. The sudden subject shift threw him.

Do I want to know?

“Well, now you’ve got me curious…”

“After you left, I was a mess.” She held up her hand when King tried to apologize. “I’m not looking for apologies or excuses. Let me just get this out, okay? I kept… I kept thinking you’d come back. I was certain of it. I spent days looking out the window thinking every car that slowed down was you.”

King nodded and fought the urge to shower apologies on her. But he knew that if they were going to move forward, for better or worse, this needed to be said.

“When Thorne came to me, honestly, at first I thought it was you. The fancy car and all… and besides, in the time we were together, I certainly never got the idea that he liked me in any way. For the most part, he ignored me.”

King nodded again. “Trust me, I knew. I just thought it was a crush, though. Not…”

“He told me that dating him would really get to you. That’s why he approached me, and he was really upfront about it. So don’t think that he swooped in and swept me off my feet or anything. He was… surprisingly professional about the whole thing. At first.”

King cocked his head. That, he hadn’t expected. He’d always imagined Effie fell hard for Thorne’s cockiness, not his greasy underhanded manipulations.

“I said no at first,” Effie said. “I swear.” She started to tear up and her voice broke. “But he was so persistent.”

Effie wiped her nose on the sleeve of her shirt that still splayed across the bed.

King reached over to console her, but she held up her hand.

“I need to get this out. I can’t be distracted,” she said as she pulled herself together. “And I’m not going to lie. There was a part of me that liked the idea of hurting you just a little bit because of how much you hurt me.”

“Effie, I didn’t—”

“This is my experience, okay? Yeah, part of me liked the idea, but I would never have gone with him just for that. And I guess he figured that out.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wore me down. He said—he said he’d ‘take care’ of my mom and Yaya.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “Basically he said he’d take over the remainder of the mortgage on the house. Pay all the utilities and bills, give my mom a generous monthly stipend.”

“Are you—are you serious?”

Effie nodded. Tears threatened her eyes again.

“I know how it sounds. God, I’m so stupid. Like I can’t even manage to take care of my own family. But my whole life, everything I thought would be, had just fallen apart—”

“So, wait. When you say he’d take over the mortgage, does that mean…”

Effie nodded slowly. “My mom… she put the house in his name. Signed it right over. And her car, all the utilities, everything. She… God, I’m an idiot. She gave him power of attorney over Yaya.”

“What?”

“She tried to get me to sign myself over too, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t even know about Yaya until after it was done.”

King pressed his eyes shut. He knew Thorne was an asshole, but this was more tangled and fucked up than even he could have imagined.

“It meant my mom and Yaya could stay in their house!” Effie cried. “I know how ridiculous it sounds now, but at the time it felt like… I don’t know. Like I was doing what’s best for them. Besides, my mom was like head over heels for Thorne. She refused to hear anything bad about him.”

King clenched his fists. All this time, he thought Thorne was just trying to piss him off, a game that went too far.

He didn’t know that Thorne had taken over her entire life, made Effie and her family financially dependent on him. King had money, sure. But not buy-multiple-houses kind of money. He wouldn’t be able to take on a separate mortgage, bankroll an entire family, while also living so decadently himself.

Shit. There’s no way I can keep Effie in the kind of comfort she’s accustomed to.

King had never wished so much that he’d just followed exactly the map his parents had laid out for him. If he had, he’d have Thorne-level money and this wouldn’t even be an issue.

“Say something,” Effie said with a sniffle.

“Huh?”

“Something! Anything. Signal if you’re okay. I mean, I know I just dumped a crapload of stuff on you—”

“Effie, I probably can’t buy you a house and cars like Thorne can—”

“Oh, King, that isn’t why I told you—”

King grabbed her thigh and flipped her onto her back. Effie let out a squeal of delight, one of the sounds he’d grown so addicted to in the past few days.

“You didn’t let me finish,” he said. “I may not be able to buy you fancy houses and cars, but I think there is something I can do for you that my little brother can’t.”

“Oh, is that right?” Effie asked, breathless.

“That’s right. Do you want me to tell you?”

“Yes, please,” she said as he braced himself over her. King lowered his lips to her ears in a whisper. “First, you’re going to straddle my face while I hold your thighs down tight. I’m going to explore your clit with my tongue until you can’t take it anymore.”

“Then what?” she asked as he nipped her lobe with his teeth.

“Get on and find out.”