A Brother At My Back Read online

  “You gonna come for me a few times tonight,” he said with assurance.

  “I think I’d like that,” I murmured back, and I felt him smile on the side of my neck.

  “That’s a good girl,” he whispered, and I closed my eyes and toed off my boots at the same time I lifted my shirt over my head.

  “You want me to blow you?” I asked.

  “No, I want you to ride my face if you don’t mind.”

  “Not a usual request, but okay.” You’re buying, I added silently. Almost as a way to remind myself that this was business. The alcohol was mellowing me out, my muscles relaxing some, and if I wasn’t careful, my guard would slip. I couldn’t let that happen, no matter if I held a sort of affection for him.

  He pulled back and we both set about stripping down to nothing, quickly and efficiently.

  “Boys don’t know what they’re missing,” he said when I straddled his head, hands on the headboard to help support myself. He wrapped strong hands around the tops of my thighs and pulled my bald pussy to his face, licking me in one long stroke from opening to clit.

  I closed my eyes and bowed my head, trying to let go enough that I wouldn’t focus on the fact that, as attractive as he was, he was old enough to be my dad. So many odd and strange little thoughts went through your head when you took this kind of work, but when you were as broke and as desperate as I had gotten, beggars couldn’t be choosers, you know?

  He stabbed his tongue into me and I gasped appropriately. It sounded good, but what he was doing wasn’t really getting me there, at least, not yet. I needed to let go, and funny enough, I really wanted to let go tonight. I wanted to leave Silas, and all of this fucking bullshit behind for a night. For once, I wanted to feel good and hey, if he was offering and I was getting paid besides? Win/win.

  He slapped my ass and I yelped and looked down at him, offended. He raised his eyebrows and growled out from beneath me, “More tequila.”

  I laughed and that somehow broke some of the tension. He gave me a nudge and I climbed off of him and went for the bottle. I picked it up by the neck, the glass smooth; the paper label slick against my palm and took a mouthful from the bottle. I held it out to him where he lounged back against the bed, his dick standing at attention, the veins in it nearly pulsing.

  He shook his head and I shrugged and took another pull, shaking my head, realizing how this must look from his perspective. Shit, I instantly felt bad. It wasn’t like he was unattractive, he actually was pretty much the opposite. He was smokin’ hot, for an older guy.

  Strong brow, sharp cheekbones, smoldering dark eyes, and super muscular. I mean, he had to be pushing sixty and he still had a six-pack. The epitome of a silver fox. I pushed the thought out of my head when it rose unbidden: Didn’t he just have a grandson?

  “Sorry,” I muttered finally after a third pull from the bottle.

  “For what?” he asked.

  I felt myself blush, which wasn’t that rich? The whore, blushing. I bowed my head and let the curtain of my hair hide my face when I said, “I don’t want you feeling like I need to be drunk to do you. That’s not it, I promise you’re hot.”

  He laughed and said, “Get back up here; bring the bottle if you need it.”

  I got back up on the bed and moved to the top, setting the bottle on one of the nightstands. He smoothed a hand along my ribs and over the angular curve of one of my narrow hips and sighed.

  “What gets you off?” he asked.

  “I don’t know anymore,” I shot back truthfully. I didn’t. If it hadn’t been sex for money I hadn’t had it since before Silas fucked up my face. I couldn’t even clearly remember the last time I got off with a partner. I mean, I really had to think about it.

  “You like when a man eats your pussy?” he asked. I looked him in the eyes and thought about it.

  “I mean, I guess. I never really put much thought into it.”

  “Close your eyes for me.”

  I frowned but he gave me a look like I was being kind of silly, one that asked without words, have I ever hurt you or fucked with you before? Truth was, he hadn’t. If anything he treated me better than any man that had come before which considering you couldn’t really treat anyone worse than Silas had treated me, that wasn’t saying much.

  God, you’re a pathetic case, Tiff. I told myself, but I did what he asked. I closed my eyes. I jerked back when his fingertips touched my hair, near my forehead and opened them. He was looking at me and frowned and I instantly felt like a child that’d been caught doing something wrong. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, reminding myself that he was a paying customer and that he’d always been good to me. It could buy him a little trust here. Not much, but a little.

  He traced a fingertip lightly along my hairline, sweeping the long glossy strands of my hair over my ear and away from my scar. I felt the bed shift under me as he leaned forward and kissed my lips lightly. I froze, uncertain, and they lifted, lightly scented from my own essence, and touched down on the corner of my mouth. They lifted again but I jerked back, teeth gritted before they could find their intended target.

  His hand tightened into my hair and I froze again, but my gaze fixed on the pillows next to us. I couldn’t look at him, not when hot tears threatened. I wasn’t up for that. I wasn’t up for talking about it, his pity, or his sympathy, or whatever it was he was trying to do. Not when it came to that.

  “You want me to fuck you?” he asked. “Bend you over and drive deep, get some of that anger out?”

  I felt my pussy throb, giving a long, slow, wanting ache at what he offered.

  “Yes.” I hissed and he did what I asked, he drew me up by the hold he had in the back of my hair, not hurting, but I either moved with him or it could hurt. He faced me toward the headboard and I grabbed on, offering myself up, bowing my back. He ordered me not to move and went for a condom in the side drawer and put it on.

  “You want a good hatefuck? That make you feel better?” he demanded and his voice was low, seductive, and inviting and yes, that’s exactly what I wanted.

  The liquid courage of the tequila swirled in my veins, numbing me just right and I ground out, “Shut up and fuck me already.”

  He chuckled darkly and said, “You’re just like my wife,” but he was driving into me. I caught myself and thrust back to meet him and it hurt just right. I felt myself start to grow wet, to open up and I could hear his grin when he hummed out in appreciation. His thick fingers found my hips, his thumbs pressing to either side of my lower back in a smooth, massaging arch and he drew back and it was on.

  He pounded into my pussy from behind and oh, god, yes, that was precisely what I wanted, precisely what I needed right then. It felt so good. I yowled my anger and pleasure and arched down, facing my ass up so that he could fuck me deeper and harder. Each commanding thrust forced a cry from my throat as he stroked over that spot inside of me.

  He kept at it, a punishing rhythm that caused my skin to cool and gooseflesh to break out over my body even as he stoked the embers of my sexuality to life until it was burning bright and cheery and burned all of my uncertainty and misgivings away. I finally, finally, let go and it was perfect. Narrowed down from so much anxiety and fear into this perfect being of pleasure and light.

  I felt like a woman again. All of a sudden desirable and beautiful for that one shining moment until he reached around to the front of my body, pressed fingertips to my clit and pushed me far too soon into the fall of orgasm.

  I cried out and went limp, pressing my face into the pillow and screaming my release into it, but that wasn’t enough apparently. He let me calm, let me settle and turned me onto my side. I gasped and tried to catch my breath, but before I could say anything, he had lifted my top leg up, draping it back over his, the arm beneath my body locking me back against his chest. He shoved gently into my pussy with the head of his cock and worked himself in and out of me, his other arm curving over the top of my body, pressing fingers lightly at the top of my sex and tea
sing the embers of my first release back into flames.

  I closed my eyes and let him cradle me against his chest as he fucked me. Too spent to care, my last fleeting thought before I came again, half-drunk on pleasure and fully-drunk on his tequila, was that I was damn sure getting his money’s worth this time.

  2

  Zeb…

  I was tired as fuck and didn’t want to ride to the club, but when the Pres asked you to come, you went. I always thought it was kind of funny, Dragon’s way. He asked, he didn’t order us about like most blokes would if they were in his position. I pulled up outside and backed into my space, the party pretty well over by this time. Usually, everyone was passed out or off fuckin’ by now, so you can imagine my surprise when D. met me practically right inside the door.

  “Hey, where’s the fire at, eh?” I asked and lost my easy smile when his didn’t appear right away.

  “Asleep in my room. Sit down,” he said, and waved me into a chair across from his. “I know you been on your feet all night.” I nodded and sank down, wondering what it was he had called me in for. He pushed a folded piece of paper across the table at me and said, “Tell me what you make of that.”

  “Looks to me like it’s a letter,” I said, scowling at the typed face of it. “What’s it got to do with me?”

  “Nothing, yet.”

  “I’m thankfully not up on the way your prison system works, but I take it this Silas Grable gettin’ out early ain’t a good thing?”

  “Not where Tiffany Dempsey is concerned.” I watched Dragon knock back a shot of tequila.

  “Who is she?”

  “Stripper down at Sugars. A nice girl. I told her if she ever needed anything to look us up, never thought she’d come to me with something like this. Then again, I probably shoulda guessed it was something like this.”

  “Makes you say that?”

  “Come see for yourself, but try not to wake her. She’s had a tough night.”

  He pushed to his feet and I followed him back to his room where he opened the door, a rectangle of light from the hall behind us spilling inside. I moved in and looked down at the girl sleeping in one of his tee shirts. Well, passed out was more like it, judging by the half-empty bottle on the bedside table, but given the wicked nasty scar along her upturned cheek, I couldn’t say I blamed her for that.

  “He do that?” I asked quiet-like and Dragon nodded.

  “When you came here, you said you were down to lead a different kind of life. One where your people could be proud of you again. I think you might be meant for this particular task for a few reasons.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I’ll leave you two to get acquainted,” he said and finally gave me an order. “Don’t wake her up.”

  I stepped back and dropped into the chair against the wall and he shut us both into the dark. I thought about it, and reached up, pulling on the chain to the lamp over the old recliner. I was in Dragon’s reading chair, an old mountain of paperbacks on a low table beside it. I didn’t pay the books no mind, wondering instead what the crafty old bastard was up to. I took in her features while she slept.

  She was a pretty girl. The ugly that marred her cheek was the kind of flaw that, for some reason, at least to me, made her more beautiful, not less. Like God had made something too perfect, and life or fate or whatever had to mark it, make it just that little bit less so, so that a mere mortal man like me could believe she was real.

  Of course, this was all before she opened her mouth. Who knew what she was like personality-wise? Some women were only pretty on the outside and no amount of that pretty could make up for what kind of ugly they had going on their insides. Still, real men didn’t treat women this way. Leastways, not the way I’d been raised, no matter if they were good women or not. I also couldn’t judge what I didn’t know.

  The room started to fill with natural light and I sighed and rubbed my eyes. I was tired, it had been a long night, and I could use some sleep myself, but Dragon had had me park it here for a reason. I couldn’t deny the view was nice. My eyes kept straying over that lovely face, framed in straight, glossy, dark brown hair, her dark lashes long and forming perfect crescents on her cheeks.

  I turned over what Dragon had said in my head and thought that this maybe was some kind of a test. I trusted the man, I trusted all of these men, and if he said the lady needed help, then she needed help. Likewise, I’d been climbing pretty steady out of the hole I’d dug for myself. Granted, I could never go back home to New Zealand, not unless some gang bosses back home died first and even then, I couldn’t say my family would welcome me with open arms. I’d fucked that up. Been young and headstrong, and had to come here to my uncle in America, only I fell right back into old habits, had burned that bridge, too. Now I was here with a new family, determined not to fuck up again.

  So, with a sigh, I settled in and got comfortable dozing in the chair, resting my eyes and waiting for her to wake up.

  3

  Tiffany…

  I was sore in that delicious way a good fuck left behind when I stirred. It took me a second to remember where I was, and it took two more to realize I wasn’t alone in here. That someone was sitting in the old armchair by the bed. It took me only a half a second to realize that someone wasn’t the biker president who was my client.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and turned away, letting my hair cascade over the scarred side of my face with an equally sharp turn of my head. I had been sleeping on my stomach, so I slid both hands across the crisp sheets beneath me and pushed myself into a sitting position. I was careful turning, giving the man my back, which crawled with nerves set aflame by the action. I don’t know why I bothered, but it allowed me to pull the sheet to my chest and cover myself, like the thin gray material would actually do anything to protect me from anything but his gaze. It didn’t even register as I did it that I had someone else’s, likely Dragon’s, tee shirt on.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked sharply, before thinking about it. My voice held far more bravado than I felt and I figured at least that was something. He dropped his booted feet off the ottoman to the wood floor in here and I jumped. He leaned forward, and I cringed back. He froze for half a second and moved slowly, leaning, bracing his forearms on his knees as his gaze swept over me and met mine.

  “Name is Nikau, most of my friends call me Nik, the fellas around here call me Zeb,” he said and his voice was affable, his accent rich and melodic. It wasn’t quite British but it wasn’t quite Australian either, although between the two it was closer to the latter. I couldn’t place where he was from but I definitely wasn’t going to ask.

  “What are you doing in here… I’m sorry, I feel like I’m going to butcher your name if I try to say it.” I frowned slightly and he smiled, his teeth very white, set in his deeply tan and ethnic skin. I had no idea what he was, but it was some sort of tribal from somewhere if I had to guess. My eyes were fixed on the deep blue-black ink etched into the skin of one side of his face in these intricate lines and whorls.

  “Call me Nik or Zeb. Whichever you’d like,” he gave a shrug, the leather of his jacket and the vest over it creaking.

  “Okay, Nik.” I swallowed hard. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Dragon asked me to look after yah. Showed me the letter and the like. I reckon you have something to be afraid of with this guy.” He raised a hand and halfheartedly gestured to the curtain of my hair. I quailed, but there was something refreshingly forthright and honest about the way he approached the situation.

  “So Dragon tells you to babysit a stripper from her completely psycho ex-boyfriend and you just do it?” I asked, mystified.

  “Nah, he didn’t tell me to do nothin’. He asked me.”

  I blinked slowly, and rolled my lips together. I had to think about this. I didn’t know what I had expected Dragon to do, but I sincerely hadn’t expected a bodyguard. I let out a breath slowly and I asked, “So, how is this supposed to work, then?”


  He gave another shrug that could mean everything and nothing and said, “I reckon we should start with you getting dressed, yeah? Give you a lift back to your flat and see what you’ve got.”

  “What I’ve got?”

  “Yeah, locks, chains, you near a busy street? Off in the back? These things can make a difference.”

  “I didn’t really know that and I can’t afford to move…”

  “No worries, we can work with what you have.” He stood up in one fluid motion and I shrank back at the sudden movement. He paused, but only for like a half-second, and gave a nod and said, “Be out here waiting,” before sliding out the door and closing it behind him.

  I had some mixed feelings about this turn of events. I didn’t know this guy. Of course, I didn’t really know Dragon all that well either, so I supposed in my case beggars couldn’t really be choosers. I got out of bed and slipped out of the tee-shirt I hadn’t remembered putting on. That tequila was the shit, but I was certainly paying the price for it now that I was moving around. Queasy, mouth and head full of cotton, muscles tight. I wanted a bottle of water and a couple of Advil something fierce.

  As I was lowering my shirt over my torso and back into the waistband of my jeans, the door opened. I jumped and whirled, and as if conjured by magic, Dragon stood there with a bottle of water in one hand, his other curled around what I could only assume was a couple of tablets or something.

  “Figured you might could use these,” he said, holding out his mitts. I took the water and held out my hand. He dropped a couple of brown round tablets into my upturned palm and I smiled a little one-sided.

  “Powered up your extra sensory perception this morning?”

  He chuckled darkly and said, “Livin’ this life, I’ve had a hangover or three. How you feel?”