Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

THERON

I start to leave her alone in the safe house. Pissed and worried that something might happen to her. How could this have even happened? I don’t fucking understand it. I don’t know how she got on their radar. It must have been Emmie and Charlie. Nothing else makes sense.

Instead of leaving the building, I head back to talk to Vaughn. I have a bit of a cooler head now and can possibly have a conversation with him. I don’t even have to knock. The door opens, and I walk past him and into his apartment.

“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” I ask.

He presses his lips together, his brows lifting. “I got nothing more. She wanted to know about our past, but I didn’t get the opportunity to say anything before I discovered the black bimmer.”

“This shit needs to end,” I grind out.

He snorts. “No fucking shit. I feel like we’re spinning our wheels at the Willow Club. One mention of Ravet, and we dropped everything. Other than that, I haven’t seen or heard another fucking thing about him. He was supposed to be there the other night, and nothing, not even a fucking whisper of him.”

I don’t know what to say. He’s right. “I’ll be finished setting everything up tomorrow. After that, all we can do is watch and wait.”

“And what about Lucille?” he asks.

Yeah, what the fuck about Lucille. “If I outwardly protect her, there’s a chance I fuck up shit with the Willow Club. I’m not ready to burn that bridge yet.”

Vaughn arches a brow, crossing his arms over his chest as he watches me. I know he can see the wheels spinning inside of my head. He knows me almost as well as I know myself, and without a doubt, he’s ready to make some decisions for me.

“I have no control when it comes to her,” I state. “I’m ready to kill every fucking person who is out to hurt her.”

His lips twitch into a smirk. “Seems like there’s a list now, and it’s growing.”

“You should have done what Merrick did and just married Emmie. It would have made this shit a hell of a lot easier.”

“How?” I ask.

He tilts his head to the side. “You’re loyal, Theron. You would never cheat on your wife with anyone, not even Lucille.”

That is where he’s wrong—so fucking wrong.

“Find out how to cancel the hit,” I state.

“Sell and trade?” he asks. “You know that’s going to cost a pretty penny.”

And that is when it hits me.

“How much to buy?”

“Theron,” he warns.

“How. Much. To. Buy. Lucille?” I demand, enunciating every fucking word.

Vaughn reluctantly takes out his phone. I watch as he scrolls through it for a moment, then clears his throat. “A million.”

A million dollars to buy Lucille. Then I’d own her—forever. “Put in the purchase order.”

He shakes his head. “The kill offer is more than that, and three hitmen have already taken the job.”

“Two million. Offer it.”

He whistles, and then I watch as his fingers move across his screen. I hear a sound on his phone, almost like a single bell, and then his gaze finds mine. “We’ll see if it’s accepted. You got the cash?”

“I never spend money, unlike some of the others,” I say.

Vaughn chuckles, because he does spend money. He invests as well, but he does not want for anything. The life of luxury is one that he always wanted, and he’s not about to live any other way.

“Do I want to know how you are on that site?” I ask.

I watch him for a moment. He clears his throat, then rocks back on his heels. His eyes find mine, and he holds my gaze for a moment. I can tell he doesn’t want to admit how he knows about this.

“I have taken odd jobs.”

“Vaughn?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t do it often, but I have done a few over the years. It is a good way to make a quick return, and I always invest it in something.”

Leaning forward, I whisper as if anyone else could hear me. “You’re a fucking hit man?” I ask.

“Pays the bills, brother.”

He’s right. It does pay the bills. “I’m wondering why you kept it a secret?” I ask. “Maybe we all need bills to be paid.”

“I would never, not fucking ever, put the only people in this world I love in a situation like this. It’s fucked up.”

That’s when I figure it out. It hits me, almost like when I realized all those years ago that I loved Lucille, that I cared about her too much, and I knew that not only would I hurt her, but that she would make me lose control.

“You do it because you like it, but also because you need it.”

“It keeps the monster at bay,” he rasps.

I wrap my fingers around his shoulder and jerk it slightly. “You do whatever you need to do, but we’re going to eliminate the man who created the monster. We are all going to fucking be able to breathe easy knowing he’s dead.”

Vaughn doesn’t respond to me, and I don’t give him the opportunity to, either. Instead, I leave him alone in his apartment. He’ll do the deal for me, but we don’t need to discuss the monster or anything else he does on his own time.

And I won’t tell anyone because it’s not my fucking place.

Instead of going back to the Willow Club, which is what I should be doing, I head back upstairs to the safe house. I can’t leave Lucille again without being inside of her.

LUCILLE

I’m not even sure what to do here. I’m in a strange house. The location is beyond me because I was scared as fuck as Vaughn raced through Nights and then pulled into a dark parking garage, and then shuffled me to an elevator.

Walking over to the window, I look out, and all I can tell is that I’m somewhere downtown, which doesn’t surprise me because this is a really nice building. The nicest I’ve ever been in before.

There is a sound behind me; the door opens and then closes. I hear the automatic lock click into place, but I don’t need to look behind me. I know who is there. I can tell by the way the atmosphere around me shifts.

Theron is an enigma. He fills the atmosphere with something that is indescribably him. And I love it. If I could consume it, that’s what I would do. I would consume any and every part of him.

“Lucille,” he rasps.

I think about ignoring him, but I’m not that strong. I turn around, my gaze lifts to find his, and I hold it for a moment. We stay where we are, him several feet away, too far to touch me, and yet I want nothing else.

“Theron,” I whisper.

He takes a step toward me, and I let out an exhale. My body trembles. I want him to touch me. Anywhere and everywhere. It’s been too long. Then, he finally does what I want. He lifts his hand, his index finger extended as he touches the center of my chest.

Slowly, he drags his finger down my body, stopping at the waist of my pants. He doesn’t slip it behind the waistband. He doesn’t do or say anything else.

Instead, he just holds his position as his gaze searches mine, and then he takes another step forward right before he hooks his finger in the waist of my jeans and hauls me toward him.

Falling slightly, I lift my hands and place my palms against his chest as I dip forward, never breaking my gaze with his. His lips curve up into a smirk. I open my mouth to ask him what’s happening but snap my lips closed when he shakes his head once.

His head slices to the side, and then I feel his lips on my mouth. Whimpering, my lips part as his tongue fills my mouth. Sliding my hands up his arms, I wrap one of my hands around the back of his neck while sliding the other down his back.

Theron tastes like sex and sin.

I want that.

I want it all—forever.

Then he reaches behind me, and I feel his hands grip my ass before he picks me up. Expecting him to take me to the bedroom, I gasp, my head falling backward with a thud as it hits the glass behind me.

He releases my ass and sets me down on the floor. Then his hands reach for the button of my jeans. He pops it easily and shoves them down my legs. He straightens, placing his palm on the glass beside my head.

“On your knees, sweetheart,” he rasps. “And thighs spread. I want you to play with your cunt while you suck my cock.”

My thighs tremble. I have to press them together at the mention of what he wants. They’re demands. And the only thing I can think to do is follow said demands, mainly because I’ve been thinking about this moment for weeks.

I have wanted nothing more than to taste him, and now I can.

Sinking down to my knees, I spread my thighs before I reach up and unbuckle his pants. Sliding them down his thighs, watching as they pool at his ankles. I lift my gaze up to his, looking up at him through my lashes.

Opening my mouth, I wrap my lips around the head of his cock and gently suck. Theron grunts, his fingers tangling in the back of my hair. He doesn’t pull me toward him, though. Instead, he presses his lips together, rolling them a few times.

Pulling back slightly, I open my mouth wide and lean forward, slipping my hand between my thighs. I don’t say a word. I know this is what he wants—submission. And I will always give it to him.

Slowly, he sinks down my throat. Closing my eyes, I relax my throat as much as I can before I begin to move my fingers between my thighs, breathing through my nose. He slowly pulls out of me, then sinks back down again.

Over and over.

My fingers move faster and faster between my legs. I focus on my clit, swirling and applying just the right amount of pressure. It’s everything I’ve been dreaming of when I watched him with Emmie.

Jerking my hips, I rise closer and closer to the edge. It doesn’t take me long. One thrust of his hips, one pinch of my clit, and I come. My hips buck, and I moan. Theron groans as he buries himself down my throat and comes.

Closing my eyes, I let his salty cum slide down my throat. I have missed this so much. More than I could have ever imagined. I thought I knew, but I had no clue how much I craved him—how much I missed this.