What Grows Dies Here
“You’ve had handcuffs in your purse this whole fucking time?” he growled.
I nodded slowly. “You comfortable enough with your masculinity to relinquish all control to me?”
“Sweetheart, I relinquished all control to you when you stood on my porch in a white sundress,” he murmured, then he kissed the absolute fuck out of me.
After that, he got the handcuffs.
ONE WEEK LATER
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” I asked, picking at a piece of Brie.
We were curled up in front of a roaring fireplace, eating from the cheeseboard that I had put together. I was wearing one of Karson’s shirts and nothing else. He was wearing his slacks, commando. I’d arrived in the early afternoon. Karson had met me at the door, torn off all of my clothes and fucked me right there on the floor.
I’d lost track of the amount of times I’d come.
My limbs were still tingly and my stomach still ravenous as we sat in the glow of the fire. Its warmth was nothing compared to Karson’s arms around me. I’d come to learn that he was not content with us being in the same room and not touching.
Usually, I was against things like cuddling and constant affection, but with him, it was something else entirely. I was desperate for his warmth, his contact, his smell. Desperate for him.
I learned more and more about Karson every day, my mind hungry for tidbits about him, how he lived his life. Almost everything about him was a surprise, not at all aligning with the image he portrayed to the world—a handsome, lethal, cold man who worked deep in the criminal underworld and was presumably brutal and heartless. A man of few words. Well, with everyone but me. With me, he was positively chatty. I was giddy about that. Wanted to hoard everything he told me, stand sentry over it like I was a dragon guarding treasure—it turned out Karson was into all those fantasy movies and practically forced me at gunpoint to watch them with him.
Like a greedy dragon, I was not content with the treasures and tidbits I already had. I wanted more.
“If someone looked at my life from the outside, they’d certainly say the worst thing I’ve ever done is kill,” he said, not hesitating to answer. He gave me everything freely, without pause, without games.
“Kill. Maim. Torture. I’m sure a civilian would think that is damnable enough.” His eyes burned into me. “I’m sure you think that’s damnable enough. But I’m numb to that now, for better or for worse.”
He took a drink then paused for a long time, just staring at me. Maybe he was waiting for me to shrink back in disgust, to run from the room screaming, whatever. I guessed my constitution looked a lot weaker on the surface.
When it became clear I wasn’t going to do anything like running or screaming from the room, he continued speaking.
“Part of my job is to oversee the street gangs, keep them from killing each other too publicly, watching for someone we can find use for.” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “They know who I am. In the early days, they thought they could test Jay. Test me. But now they understand. There has to be some kind of order.”
“And you enforce that order,” I deduced.
Karson nodded, still watching me intently.
Although I knew it was not the intended effect, the thought of Karson roaming the streets, enforcing law to the outlaws like some kind of dark sheriff, really turned me the fuck on. I did not say this out loud.
“People know me. People have come to understand the power that Jay has,” he continued. “One day, I was coming out of a meeting with a couple of gang leaders and their lieutenants. One of the leaders couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He’d found himself at the helm after his brother was gunned down.” He spoke softly, eyes still on me.
“He came to me after the meeting was done.” His eyes shifted to the fire. “Came to me begging to get him out. He was the only one left in the family. Told me he knew he was going to die on the streets and didn’t want to, but he didn’t know any other way. Told me he knew I could get people out of the life.”
My heart was thundering in my chest as I saw something resembling sorrow in Karson’s eyes.
No, not sorrow. Shame.
I reached out to hold his hand because it was killing me, killing me in that moment not to touch him. He needed me to touch him.
His large hand encircled mine, squeezing tightly.
“I could’ve.” One of his shoulders lifted, but just barely, the tiniest of shrugs. “We’ve got legit businesses. Contacts. I could’ve called in favors. I didn’t.”
The fire crackled as I waited for him to go on.
“That’s not how this world works. So I walked away from him. He was dead within the month.”
Karson’s voice was devoid of emotion. But I could feel it. I was drenched in the sorrow and regret he felt over that. This was something that followed him.