Read The Arrangement (The Blankenships Book 9) Online
Authors: Evelyn Glass
The first thing he brought into her line of vision was a slim little dildo with a flanged bottom. He wasted no time drenching it in her pussy, smearing it with the copious fluids that had accumulated. It slid into her ass with an ease that shocked her. He moved so slowly, his fingers barely resting on her clit now, and she cried out again, needing more contact, needing more fullness, needing more something. “Please. Alex, please. Don’t make me wait. I need you. I need you in me.”
He laughed, and there was something pressing against the opening of her pussy. Not his cock, and not his fingers, but a cold, hard pressure, harder than his cock had ever been. It took a moment for her synapses to fire something harder than pleasure. She looked down, and saw a toy that was new to her. Two steel balls, connected by a narrow piece of silicone, a loop at one end. “What—”
“They’re a modern version of
ben wa
balls,” he said. His voice was ragged with desire, even though his cock was still soft and light behind her. “Someday, I’ll make you walk around with them inside, and feel them buzz around inside you, but not today. Today, you just get to enjoy the sensation of being very, very full while I play with you.”
The first ball popped inside of her, and she gasped at the oddness of the sensation. It felt weighty and heavy, and it was somehow weighted inside, so when she shifted her hips, it moved inside of her in the most delicious fashion. “Oh—oh god—” she murmured, and then he pressed again, and she was full, the second ball was deliciously buried inside of her, and she was gasping, full, and he was pressing into her clit again, not stroking or teasing, just being present. She held still for a moment, for the longest moment she could stand, and then his tongue curved softly around the outside of her ear and she shook against him.
“I want to see you enjoy yourself,” he said. “Show me.”
It didn’t take much. As full as she was, clenching hard to keep the toys buried deep inside of her, pressing against a host of secret treasures, she shifted her hips, feeling the pressure of his fingers move over her clit just a few times, and the building crest of pleasure burst, washing over her. Dimly she was aware that her back bowed so hard that she pushed them down onto the bed, resting on her chest as she spasmed with the pleasure of the entire morning, condensed down into one fine white star of bursting nuclear fusion. He stayed with her, his fingers moving softly as she thrust, and he dragged every single sensation out of her while she quivered and shook.
They lay together for a while after that. He pulled the toys out of her and tossed them onto the floor to be cleaned before they packed. He wrapped his arms around her, and they laid together, face to face, for a while.
“Things are going to get scary from here,” she said.
He nodded. “You can stay here. I’ll send for you once it’s safe.”
She shook her head. She wasn’t really sure he’d thought she’d really say yes, but it was kind of him to have offered it. “We’re in this together.”
He squeezed her hand.
They laid there a little while longer before they got dressed and filled two carry-on sized bags with the things they would need. Alex booked their flights, and Zoey went through the apartment, looking for anything else they might need before they moved on.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Bloody hell, Zoey, I’m glad to hear your voice.”
A weight she hadn’t felt slid off her chest, and Zoey breathed just a bit easier. “Is everything all right? Is it safe that you’re calling me?”
Helen sighed. “Probably not. We shouldn’t speak for long. I waited as long as I could, and then I called the number you’d called me from before. A man named Leo gave me this number. Said a mister—”
“Don’t say his name.”
Helen paused. “A mutual friend had suggested you might be reached here.”
“What’s going on at home?” Zoey asked. “Mama and Daddy okay?”
Helen sighed. “They’re scared for you, of course. I can’t reassure them much without giving things away, but I’ve done the best I can.”
“Thank you for that, sha.”
They were quiet for a moment. Zoey closed her eyes and just listened to her friend breathe.
“Do you think I’ll see you again, love?” There was a sadness to Helen’s voice, and the words were like a hand stretched across an unimaginable distance. Zoey bit the inside of her cheek hard to push back the tears. Had she ever been a good enough friend to Helen? Had she ever really told the woman how much she’d appreciated being taken under her wing once she arrived in New York City? She’d been so overwhelmed, so completely surprised, the country mouse shocked and surprised by the ins and outs of the city. Helen, a London girl born and bred, had never once teased her, never once made her feel like a fool. She’d shown Zoey the ropes, taught her how to get around safely, and helped her find her first job. She’d even gotten Zoey that precious invitation to Chez Vous when she’d wanted to see what it was all about and see if the kind of sex that Helen hinted at could drive something deeper inside of her, give her a level of pleasure she’d never thought possible.
“I hope so” was all Zoey could bring herself to say.
“This is all my fault. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have ever met him.”
“Not true,” Zoey said, and she had to smile. “We definitely need to blame my editor.”
“That rat bastard.” Helen laughed gently, with a brittle edge.
“We should go,” Zoey said. “I hope we’ll get to talk soon.”
“Me too, love.”
Hanging up the phone felt far too much like smothering. If she died in this quest, would anyone know? It was a frightening thought, that this might be the last time that she spoke to anyone other than Alex who cared about her.
Dark thoughts
, she told herself, but it wasn’t enough to banish the worries. They were too thick, too deep, too embedded. This was a thing she’d feared since she was a child. Disappearing, not being remembered, being forgotten. Was that what would happen now?
She shook her head and turned back to packing the light bags that she and Alex would carry back to New York. There wasn’t really much to bring. They’d already lost so much on this—this trip? This nightmare—that it seemed somehow deeply wrong to bring much back. She was quite sure Zhu wouldn’t have minded, but it still seemed wrong. If they survived, she was fairly sure she’d set fire to everything she owned and start over.
***
Zhu had laid out the problem fairly efficiently. They didn’t really know what they were looking for or even where to start looking. The only concrete connections they’d ever managed to turn up was the email he’d seen on the old man’s computer, and he knew that even with a sympathetic ear and a lot of money, that wouldn’t be enough to connect Schwartz to what had happened. They needed something more. If they didn’t get it, if they went back and didn’t find what they needed, then they were dead. Whether Schwartz killed them as well or the police locked them up, it would be the end in every way that mattered.
He sat still, his fingers steepled, trying to find the way out. He was sure it was there, if he could just find it.
In the end, he picked up his phone again. He dialed the number that Zhu had slipped him a few days before. Leo answered on the second ring.
“
Moy droog,
” Leo answered. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Alex replied. “Any luck escaping your detail yet?”
Leo laughed, but it sounded forced. “Not so far. My wonderful father hired men who know their business this time. But they are more attractive than the last pair. Perhaps I will seduce them yet.” He made smacking sounds, and Alex had to force himself not to laugh. Leo had always danced a fine line, tempting the men around him to challenge him for his sexuality, trusting that he was strong enough to keep himself safe if necessary.
After a moment, Leo’s voice returned, less exuberant and more controlled. “It is their fault that they are this disgusted by a man’s love,” Leo said, quietly. “Tell me quickly, what is your plan?”
“I don’t have one,” Alex said. “That’s the problem.”
Leo made a scoffing sound. “I’ve never known you not to have a plan. This is ridiculous. You got us into and out of every place we ever wanted to be. How can you truly have no ideas?”
“I don’t know enough about what was happening,” Alex replied. “I don’t know how they were communicating, what they were doing, what was happening. I don’t have proof of anything I suspect. The police can’t even tie the murders together. Hell, they still believe my mother killed herself.” He didn’t choke on the words any more. He wasn’t sure if that was actually a good thing. He didn’t think so.
“You need to talk to Luke, then,” Leo said.
“No.”
“Yes. He is the commissioner. He is our oldest friend. He will help you.”
“He was coming to arrest me, Leo. Me, you, Zoey. If he knows where I am, he’ll do everything in his power to come after me. He’ll take me down any way he can, and our friendship be damned.”
“No,” Leo said. “You don’t know him as well as you think you do. He is our friend, Alex. He will help you if you ask him to.”
There had been a time, a long time ago, when Luke Pyramus would have been the first person Alex called in a mess. Luke hadn’t ever had Leo’s money or Alex’s brass, but he’d been a solid kid, and he’d been a good kid. Since he’d risen in the police force, something had changed for him. Within him.
He’d never volunteered what had happened, but to be fair, Alex had never really bothered to ask. He’d treated his former friend pretty badly and assumed some things that had more to do with his skin color than the ten years of friendship they’d shared. Even when everything went sideways with AEGIS. He’d never really expected Luke to help, even when he’d demanded it.
Leo hadn’t led him wrong yet. Alex tapped the phone to get back to the dialing screen. At first, he’d thought that he’d need to look up the number, but he found that he still knew it by heart, even after all of these years.
It took Luke a few rings to pick up, of course. Alex was calling from a number Luke wouldn’t know, and he was the police commissioner after all. It was hardly strange for the man to be concerned.
But he did pick up, and his voice was brusque but curious when he said “Hello.”
For just one moment, Alex seriously considered hanging up without saying a word. The consequences if Leo was wrong—even if it were an event basically without precedent—were astronomical. “Luke? I’m calling in a favor.”
What struck Alex later, when he thought about it, was that Luke didn’t hesitate, not even for a moment. “You got it, Alex,” he said. “Name it.”
It felt like the first thing that had really gone their way in days.
CHAPTER FIVE
And then—well. After that, they were going to need to rely on wits and luck. Wits they had in abundance. Luck? Well, that was going to be an entirely different problem.
He wanted to reach down past the soft waistband of her loose jersey pants and dip his fingers into her pussy. She’d be wet and eager for him, he knew it. But there were other passengers in first class, and although Zoey had done some wild things with him, based on how she was nervously tapping her fingers against the armrest, she wouldn’t have appreciated it if he tried, which was a shame. Taking the edge off their anticipation and worry would have been better for both of them.
It wasn’t as simple as that. It wasn’t ever as simple as that.
Zoey noticed the attention that he was pouring towards her and gave him a small smile. “Sorry,” she said. “Was I making the seat bounce again?”
He took her hand, pressed her fingertips delicately to his lips, and then released it again. “Don’t worry about it.”
The smile turned a shade sheepish. “Oops.”
“It’s really okay,” he said. “You’re nervous. I understand.”
“What are we going to do when we get there?” She asked. “Do you really think that calling Luke was the right move?”
The same questions had been twisting up his gut for hours. He tried to give her a knowing, strong smile, but it didn’t work. “Even if it wasn’t,” he said, aiming for a middle ground, “there’s nothing we can do about it now.”
“So he keeps the cops off our back, for a little while at least. And we do—what?”
“Head to AEGIS, I think. There has to be something on my mother’s computer.”
“But what if there isn’t?”
He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from snapping. She wasn’t trying to push, and he couldn’t blame her. Hell, if she had been risking his freedom on such a shitty hunch, he would have been pissed beyond measure and used sharper words to talk about it. “Say the word,” he said. “We ditch the identities in Hawaii. Use the money Zhu gave us to set up something else. Live out our lives on an island paradise. Travel the world on a yacht. Something equally off the grid.” He kissed her fingertips again, and this time, the inside of her wrist as well. He meant it when he said it.
She was quiet for a moment, and then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t at least try. For Claire, if for nothing else.”
That choked him up in a way that thinking about his mother hadn’t. “Yes,” he said. He had to close his eyes and take a moment to just breathe so that he wouldn’t lose his calm entirely. Her fingers were still in his, and she squeezed hard. It gave him something to focus on.
“I told you that we’re in this together,” she said, and this time she brought his fingers to her lips. “That doesn’t change just because things are getting scary. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. We need to go into this together if we’re going to make it through.”
He pressed his eyes open, blinking away the wetness, and the smile came easily to him this time. “When I looked at her files before, I didn’t know what I was looking for. This time—if she was involved, there has to be a connection. No one’s perfect. No one erases everything. And we don’t have to find everything. We just need to find enough to justify Luke getting a warrant.”
She shook her head again. “I know you trust him—”
“No,” he said. “Leo trusts him. And that means more to me than I can explain.”
She nodded. “I know. And I trust that you trust him. But—”
“I get it.”
They were quiet for a while, and then she turned her head, resting it against his shoulder. He stroked her curls gently back from her face. She leaned up into the caress, her eyes half closed, a little bit of the tension leaking out of her body.
“We never actually did join the mile high club,” she said.
He chuckled. “That’s a very heteronormative view, don’t you think?”
She looked up at him, one eyebrow raised. “I’m sorry; did you just throw down ‘heteronormative’ at me?”
He flashed the little sideways smile that he knew made her melt. “If the shoe fits.”
“And now with the Cinderella comments!” She poked a finger between his ribs, and he made like it hurt, rubbing at his side and casting sad puppy eyes in her direction as he bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing at her.
“You weren’t ever going to fuck me on a plane,” he said, loving how her eyes darted around, nervous and worried that someone would hear them. “You talk a good game, but you’re too uptight.” He let his eyes coast down her frame, taking in the narrow swells of her subtle curves, and wondering why anyone ever told her she was anything less than exquisite.
She poked him again, and this time he captured her finger, tickling at her palm. “I am not uptight,” she scolded in what was supposed to be a stern whisper. He managed not to laugh at her.
“Oh? So if I told you to get a blanket from the flight attendant and then crawl into my lap, so I could sink my hard cock into the scorching heat of your wet pussy, what would you do?”
She didn’t even have to answer. Her cheeks flared scarlet—but he noticed as well that her teeth closed on her lower lip in a way he’d learned to think of as interested contemplation.
Maybe in a year
. God, how was he even thinking a year from now? He needed to be thinking a few hours from now.
Only, no. No, that was how his parents had lived, never considering the next stretch of the road, because they were too busy hating each other right now. Never considering what their lives would be like down the road, what it would be like for their children to grow up in a life where their parents couldn’t stand each other.
He yanked his brain out of that rut and back on track. “Maybe on a private jet. Maybe. But yes, heteronormative, because I have fingered you until you came, eaten you out until you screamed, and I know an awful lot of lesbians who would be very pissed if you told them that they weren’t having sex.”
“You know a lot of lesbians?” She gave him a raised eyebrow, and he laughed.
“I know enough.”
“Marry me.”
He blinked, fast. The scarlet had faded from her cheeks, and she was watching him with her cool gaze. There wasn’t a haze in her eyes; she didn’t look drugged. She was just watching him, her eyes light and steady. “I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be my line.”
She gave a little shrug and a bright laugh. “We haven’t done much according to expectation. And, I don’t know, I feel like you’re going to hem and haw about it for years. I want you to meet my parents.”
“Meeting your parents isn’t the same as getting married. In fact, I kind of feel like I’m probably supposed to meet them before.” His palms were actually sweating. Holy crap. His brain was on a rampage, steam rolling his fear and concern of what might be coming next with fear and concern about what she was asking him.
Marriage was a thing he’d always enjoyed in theory. Two people who loved each other enough to put up with each other’s crap and trusted each other enough to mingle their finances; it seemed like an incredibly sensible institution in which to raise children and enjoy mutually beneficial legal protections and tax breaks. But he’d never really bothered to think about marriage in the idea of the specific, which was to say him.
“Don’t say anything about it now,” she said, and she didn’t seem offended or concerned by his silence. “A proposal in the face of near certain death, or at least likely incarceration, hardly seems fair. Don’t say yes just because you think we’re going to die.” She blinked too fast this time. “That’s assuming you’re going to say yes. I didn’t mean that. You might not. I would understand if you said no. It’s been weeks, and we’re in a pretty dire situation, and—”
He leaned forward and kissed her, his hand cupping the back of her head and neck, his fingers tracing along the nubs of her spine. “Shut up. Yes.”
She pulled back, her eyes blazing, and slapped lightly at his hand. “I said don’t answer.”
“Then you shouldn’t have asked.” He leaned in to kiss her again, but she dodged him.
“Aren’t you still busy being all male, and how dare I ask, and whatever?”
He shrugged, and laughed at her panicked expression. “What can I say? I’m a progressive guy.”
“I’m scared, Alex.” She seemed to deflate just a little bit as the words finally came out. He’d known them for a long time; hell, he’d been feeling them for just as long. And it was hard to believe that what they had was going to survive once the stress and pressure were off. Saying yes was just as reckless as her asking, but he found himself listening to the words in his head and nodding along. He didn’t care about any of that. He cared about the woman sitting beside him ignoring him when he offered to take her to a tropical paradise and avoid the authorities’ condemnation for something they didn’t do.
Instead, she chose the path of most resistance, pushing to prove that a mixed Black man was innocent. She chose the path of introducing him to her Southern parents and accepting whatever they might have to say. They’d never talked about her parents. He had no idea what their views on racism might be, and if they had them, how they might apply to their daughter. His mother had once quipped that Northerners didn’t mind uppity Blacks, so long as they didn’t live close, and that Southerners didn’t mind Blacks living close, so long as they weren’t uppity. Of course, the word she’d used wasn’t as polite as Black. And he’d found out the hard way, that people could be as anti-racist as you could imagine in theory, but their expression changed when it came to their daughters. Or their sons.
“I love you,” he said, because it was the only hope he had to change everything that was laid out in front of him, ready to destroy him.
The fear softened, and she leaned into him again. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and let his eyes drift closed.
“I love you, too,” he heard her murmur, and then he was falling slowly into sleep.