Savior (31 page)

So I stuck my neck out; I put out feelers; I found an out for him, one that could give him the adrenaline fix he needed, would utilize some of his hard-earned street skills, pay a fair amount of money, let him generally work for himself, but still be relatively legal. Relatively.

"Ever hear of Xander Rhodes?"

"PI in the city?"

"Yeah. He's been expanding his operation. He needs a couple new good men with skills and a willingness to operate just under the law."

"Doing what? Taking pictures of cheating husbands?"

"Won't lie to you, sometimes it will be that boring. But he does other jobs too, ones that get more interesting, dangerous. It's not ideal, Enz, but it's a way out of here. You can start new there. No one will know your past unless you want them to."

"I'm feeling like there's a catch here."

"A small one."

"Spit it out, bro."

"I need to see your face at Ma's Sunday dinner. Once a month. It's not asking too much. Kenz and Re need you around. Ma too. And me. We got some mending bridges to do still."

Enzo looked toward the mirror behind the bar, both of us reflected, as he peeled the label off his beer. "Alright."

"Alright?"

"Yeah, alright. I think it will be good for me to get out of here."

"So long as you come back."

"Fucked up my life for a lot of years. It's about time I start fixing it. Starting with you and the girls. But to do that, I need to get my shit together, get my head in a better place. I appreciate the opportunity." He was quiet for a long minute before finally turning to me. "I owe you a..."

"You don't owe me shit," I said, shaking my head. "The only reason you got into that life in the first place was because I let you in. I could have turned my back, told you to keep yourself out of the streets. You ended up where you ended up because of me. If anyone should be apologizing, it's me."

"We both have done shit. We don't need to harp on it. Let's just move on. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," I agreed, tipping my beer to him.

For that Sunday and every Sunday dinner my mother held for the next fifteen years, he was always there.

Elsie -
3 Months

I got a sketch every morning. Every single morning for three months. Over a hundred pictures that I had finally started adding to a scrapbook. The one he had made me of his family was in a gorgeous silver frame on a shelf in our living room.

Yes, our.

He'd pretty much moved in. He still kept some of his stuff at his apartment in his store, but that was more for convenience in case he needed them when he was working. There was half a closet full of his clothes next to mine. There was a bathroom cabinet with his shaving cream and straight razor that butted up against my perfume and nail polish remover, and a nightstand covered in sketchpads and pencils that used to house my notepad that I really never needed to use in the first place.

See though, as I learned one night when I came home to Paine sitting at the dining room table with all my sealed bills spread across the surface, I realized something else about Paine. He might be willing to live in a house that technically did not have his name on it, sleep on sheets he didn't buy and put his feet up on a coffee table he didn't pick out, but he was
not
willing to do all those things without contributing.

"Don't even bother trying to argue about this," he said as I set my purse down. "You agree to letting me pay half or I'll pay all of them fully behind your back."

I had no doubt he would do just that so we sat down and we figured out what half of all the bills were. Every month, cash for half of each bill would appear on the kitchen counter.

"Now that's settled," Paine said, giving me a devilish little smile that made my sex clench in anticipation.

"Is there... other business to attend to?" I asked with a smirk as I lifted my ass up to sit on the edge of the table, crossing my legs in a way that made my skirt slide up my thigh.

Paine stood slowly, eyes trailing down my body. "Very serious matters, actually."

"Will we be in a good...
position
once we get it handled?" I asked, arching my head up as he came to stand in front of me.

"Great fucking position, but there's going to be a lot of handling first," he promised.

"We should probably get started then, huh?" I asked, making a show of wetting my lips. "What do you need from me?"

His hands went to the button of his pants, pushing it through. "First I need you on your knees."

"Hmm," I said as I slid off the table and moved to kneel in front of him. "This seems like an unusual way to conduct business," I mused as he reached inside his boxers and pulled out his hard cock.

"Are you questioning my methods, Miss. Bay?" he asked, stroking himself twice before settling his hand at the base.

I felt my lips twitch. "No... sir," I said, mostly keeping a straight face.

His hand slid to the back of my neck and I opened my mouth. "Good, then get to fucking work already," he demanded with a smirk before jerking my head forward and burying deep into my mouth, making my throat clench hard once before my gag reflex settled.

Paine liked rough the vast majority of the time.

There were times he could be unexpectedly sweet and soft and gentle, like the first time we'd had sex after I'd been beaten up. He'd slid inside me slowly from behind as we spooned and made sweet, gentle love to me until an orgasm moved through me with enough intensity to make me cry.

But, that wasn't the usual.

The usual was fast, rough, uninhibited, spanking, hair-pulling, demanding sex.

And I was greedy for every bit of it.

Even when he had me on my knees, holding my head still by the back of my neck as he fucked my mouth fast and rough as he pleased, taking every bit of control from me, which was exactly what he was doing until he released my head.

I sat back on my ankles, wiping my face of spit and pre-cum for a second before his hand sank into the hair at the nape of my neck, curled, and dragged me upward.

"On the table," he growled, reaching behind his back to pull off his shirt as I got up and sat at the edge of the table. He moved in to stand at my knees, my skirt too tight to allow me to spread my legs for him. His hands grabbed the front of my shirt, jerking it out of my skirt, holding it at each side, and pulling hard, making the buttons open. And by open, I mean pop off, scattering noisily around the room. I sucked in my breath at the carefully contained violence of it, my pussy clenching hard in excitement, as his hands grabbed the cups of my bra and dragged them roughly down, exposing my breasts. His thumbs and forefingers took my hardened nipples, squeezing and twisting them hard, making a half-groan, half-gasp escape me as my system sparked with the erotic twinge of pain and pleasure. "How hard are you willing to work on this, Miss. Bay?" he asked, doing another twist.

I sucked in a slow breath. "I can be worked as hard as you need to work me, sir."

"God damn right you can," he growled, releasing my nipples, grabbing me behind the knees, and jerking hard, sending me flying backward as my hips left the table. As soon as my back was on the table, his hands grabbed the hem of my skirt and tugged it upward, reaching between my thighs and ripping off my lacy panties. He wasn't in a teasing mood and the second after I was exposed to him, his cock slammed into me hard and deep, making me arch up off the table and try to plant my heels to allow me to thrust up into him. "No," he snapped, grabbing my ankles as my feet finally hit the table and pulling my legs upward, settling them both onto his left shoulder. One hand held them there, the other pressed down hard on my lower stomach, making me feel him deeper, more intensely.

Then he was thrusting, fast and deep, his pace the manic, unrelenting, predictable pace that made my orgasm build strong and fast, leaving me panting for breath as he pistoned inside me, demanding the kind of climax that threatened to make me dumb.

"Come babygirl," he demanded as his hand released my ankles and closed around my throat, just hard enough to make my head start to get fuzzy as he thrust in and jerked up, hitting that spot deep inside that pinched in the most delicious way.

Then I came, my legs jerking so hard that my shoes smacked into the side of his face, which in no way slowed him as he slammed inside me through it, dragging it out as I cried out his name. As I collapsed back onto the table, he slammed deep, growling out my name as he came inside me.

He pulled my legs off his shoulders so he could press forward over my chest, claiming my lips with none of the demands or violence of his fucking, kissing me sweet and deep, before pulling back. "Never gets old," he said when I opened my eyes.

"Never will," I agreed, wrapping my legs around his hips and my arms around his shoulders, knowing deep down in my soul that that was the absolute truth.

Elsie- 6 Years

"Mom!" I heard bellowed as the front door crashed into the wall, footsteps running toward me in the kitchen, completely unconcerned with the loud bleeping of the alarm system. "Mom, guess what?" I heard as the alarm stopped beeping just as four year old Jackson barreled into the room, his muddy sneakers dropping dirt everywhere as he came to a skidding stop right in front of me. He was an exact, perfect, tiny replica of his father (and Uncle Enzo) with his tan skin, light green eyes, and uncharacteristic height and shoulder-width for his age.

"What?" I asked, turning from the spaghetti on the stove. It was the only real dish I had in any way mastered. I was still pretty handy with a take-away menu when Paine wasn't in the mood to cook.

"Uncle Roman is taking me on his sailboat!" he declared, eyes huge, mouth open like it was the most amazingly shocking thing that had ever been uttered. To say Jack was an extrovert would be putting it mildly. He was an endless bundle of energy attached to a tongue that never struggled for words, and a brain that was way too curious and mischievous for any of our good.

"Oh he is, is he?" I asked, looking up over my son to Rome who stood in the doorway of the kitchen, his hair more mussed than usual, his pristine white shirt with the unmistakable splattered stain of a fruit juice box. I couldn't tell you how many times I had warned him to stick the straw in out of reach of Jack who was way too impatient to wait for you to finish and had a tendency to grab the box and squeeze, ruining one too many nice shirts with bright red stains in the process.

Rome gave me a smile, soft, familiar. "Come on, Mom," he drawled in a little-kid voice. "Don't say no!"

"Yeah, Mom! Don't say no!" Jackson chorused and I felt myself laughing.

"You know you stand no chance," Paine said, coming up behind Roman with eight-month old Willow (named after Lo), head to toe in pink, propped up on his hip. Whereas Paine's genes were strong in Jack, my genes were prominent in our daughter. She got my face shape, my nose, and my blue eyes. Her hair was just a whisp of a dark brown, unlike her brother's black.

"Come on. You guys could use a day off. Ship off Willa to Kenzi or Reese. Let me have Jack. You guys can have a whole day to yourselves."

"What a novel concept," I mused, smiling at Paine. It wasn't that we were ever short on babysitters. Between Roman, Enzo, Kenzi, Reese, Gina, Amelia and Shoot, Breaker and Alex, and even Cash and Lo, we never had to look far for someone to give us a few hours of quiet. But since the very unexpected appearance of Willow, we truly hadn't had more than an hour away from both Jack and her at a time. I had been breastfeeding and it was just too much of a hassle to pump and worry about leaking to leave for any extended amount of time. But since Willa started eating food a few months ago and my milk started slowly but surely drying up from disuse, a date night was looking more and more like a possibility.

"Okay, but listen, Jack... you do not, under any circumstances lean over the side of the boat. Do you understand me?"

"Man overboard!" Jack yelled, squatting, jumping, and pretending to crash down into the water.

"I hope you know what you're getting yourself into," I said to Rome with a smile.

"He'll have a life jacket and I know better than to take my eyes off him."

"Still mentally scarred from that time you lost him at the park?" Paine asked, moving into the kitchen to deposit Willow into my arms and take over at the stove to save the food I had already forgotten about.

"I didn't
lose
him," Rome objected, shaking his head. "He was hiding behind the water fountain."

"Don't let him fool you," I smiled. "He lost him in a clothing rack at the store. Twice."

"You staying for dinner, Rome?" Paine asked and Rome nodded, moving toward the fridge to grab a drink.

I stood back, kissing the side of my daughter's head as I watched Rome pop the top on a beer as Jack prattled on endlessly to whichever man would listen about his plans to be a pirate when he grew up. With a
parrot and everything!

The goofy smile spread across my face, a smile I had found on my lips every single day for six years, a smile I knew I would never lose. Not when I had Paine and the evidence of our love in the form of a rambunctious almost-kindergartner and the, hopefully a sight less rambunctious, almost-toddler as well as the strong supporting cast of characters Paine had brought into my life. New friends in his guy friends, men I could always count on lounging around in the living room on game nights, pretending to watch the kids: Jackson and Willa, along with Shooter and Amelia's two little girls, Bri and Alexis (who got their names from Breaker and Alex), and Breaker and Alex's one and only blond-haired giant, Junior. His name was actually Johnnie, named after Shooter's birth name, but everyone called him Junior, though there was nothing junior about him. He was the only kid around the same age as Jackson who could give him a run for his money.