Perversion (Perversion Trilogy #1)(44)

I step to the side, and Tricks’ reflection appears in the mirror. She’s behind me, pushing her white sunglasses up to her head to reveal her blue-green eyes and the small dents on each side of her nose where they’d been pressing into her skin.

“Nothing…yet,” I grumble, snagging a towel from the rack and drying my face.

“Anything I can help with?” She saunters over. Although her frame is microscopic compared to mine, she’s suddenly taking up every inch of available space in the bathroom.

“No,” I say. It comes out rougher than I intended. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need anything from you.”

She doesn’t scowl. Doesn’t react in any way.

“That’s where you’re wrong. Let me fix this. Let me fix you,” she offers. Standing up on her tiptoes, she presses her chin against my shoulder and looks at my reflection in the mirror. “Let me help you feel better.” She reaches around, placing her palm flat on my chest, slowly trailing it down my abs.

I meet her gaze in the mirror. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“I’ve been waiting for you. Always for you,” she says, darting out her pink tongue and wetting her even pinker lips. She’s the perfect mix of innocence and defiance, and I can’t turn around to face her. Not yet. I’m…afraid?

Afraid.

ME. AFRAID.

The thought causes me physical pain, from my chest all the way down to my throbbing cock

“I’ve been waiting for you, too.”



I wake from my dream covered in sweat. I reach for the whiskey on the table only to realize it’s empty. I head into the main house and tear open the liquor cabinet in the living room.

“Something troubling you?” Marci asks.

“Nothing that drowning myself in liquor won’t fix.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Marci says. “This about Emma Jean?”

I freeze at the sound of her name.

Marci sits on the couch and pats the sofa. “I know everything, Grim. More than you.”

“You don’t know everything,” I mutter. Turning back to the liquor cabinet, I locate a full bottle in the back and twist off the cap. I chug from the bottle, not bothering with a glass.

“And here I thought that Tricks being with Marco and Los Muertos was something.”

I spit the liquor in a spray all over the floor. I told Sandy and Haze but not Marci or Belly.

“You’re cleaning that up,” she remarks. “Now, I think it’s time for you and me to have a little talk.”

“There’s no point. I didn’t find out until this afternoon, or yesterday afternoon, at the sit-down at Marco’s. Then, she came here. I sent her away. You won’t have to worry about her being around.” I wipe my mouth and take another swallow from the bottle.

“You sent her away? How?” Marci narrows her eyes.

“The only way I know.” Guilt, regret and anger boil up inside of me. “I can’t break the truce over a piece of ass.”

Marci looks at me, and for the very first time, she looks disappointed. It burns in my gut along with the whiskey.

“Sit the fuck down, son, and listen to Marci,” Belly says.

“I take it you know, too,” I say.

He nods. “I know what she knows. We’re a team. A unit. We don’t have secrets between us,” Belly explains. “You should know that. And LEARN from that.”

“I’m not the one keeping secrets,” I tell him, my words a double-edged sword.

“Sit,” Belly says. “It’s not a fucking request.”

I sit down on the couch with my bottle and light a cigarette, rubbing my temples with my hand holding my smoke.

Marci lights a joint and passes it to Belly. “Emma Jean Parish is being held against her will by Marco and Los Muertos.”

Belly perches on the side of the couch and takes the joint from her hands.

I shrug. “She said she didn’t want to be there, but she should have thought of that before she joined up with those motherfuckers in the first place. You don’t get to have regrets after you join. She had to know what she was getting into. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” I say in disbelief.

“She is. But you’re not,” Belly says. “She never joined up. She was taken against her will and forced to earn for Marco. She’s there under the threat of death or being whored out along with Gabriella, Marco’s own sister. The only way she’s been able to escape those things until now was to earn.”

“For how long?” I ask. My throat dries, and I’m finding it hard to swallow. I assumed she joined up after she went to the new foster home she told me about, but dread washes over me as the realization that I was wrong takes hold. “How long has she fucking’ been there?”

Marci sighs. “Since she was twelve. Since she disappeared from foster care.”

“Oh fuck,” I bend over and set the bottle on the table. I feel fucking sick. I feel murderous. “She tried to tell me. I didn’t fucking listen.”

“Like you said, the girl is smart,” Marci says, taking a long drag off her joint. “And those smarts have bought her time. She’s managed to keep Marco’s paws off her for five years and to keep her and Gabby safe. That’s a lot of burden to bear for a kid.”