The Kingpin’s Weakness Read online

  Fuck it. Whether I can keep her or not, I’ll do it anyway.

  I’ll help her be successful. Keep tabs on her grades, her career.

  Crave her from a distance…

  Are you deluded? You’ll never be able to stay away.

  Determinedly, I tune out the voice in the back of my head, clearing my throat hard enough to bring Scout’s head up. “Try the blue one. It matches your eyes.”

  She chews her lip. “Oh, but it…it doesn’t cover the butt. Like, at all.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  Scout strips out of the black bikini she’s been trying and I grind my teeth together. God almighty, the ass on this girl. I could take a fucking bite out of it. When she realized I was going to observe as she tried on bathing suits, her entire body flushed, but she’s growing more and more confident. How could she not be when I’m tenting the front of my sweatpants, groaning in appreciation every time she fits the little triangles over her tits?

  I’m not going to make it much longer without squeezing my cock into the tight hole between her legs, but I’m trying to make up for being an animal last night.

  The royal-blue thong bikini is the clear winner.

  Not only because it frames her ass like the work of art it is, but there are gold embellishments between her tits and resting on her hips. And I like her looking expensive. I like her looking like Daddy spoiled her.

  Like she’s done every time, she checks the price tag and gasps. “I-is this accurate?” She stares at the bathing suit in the mirror. “Is the gold real?”

  “You think I’d put you in fake gold, cutie?”

  Without waiting for her to answer, I strip out of my sweatpants and walk naked to the dresser. I can feel her attention fastened to my hard cock as I search for my swim trunks. So I take my time putting them on, making eye contact with her when I fist my dick and position it as comfortably as possible inside the nylon.

  “You ready to go to the beach?”

  “The where?” she asks, sounding dazed.

  * * *

  On the way down the stairs to the beach, Scout takes her scheduled phone call with her sister. “Me?” she squeaks into the receiver of my phone. “Are you okay? The Madman himself carried you out of the arena after giving Banner a concussion and no one has seen you since!”

  She pauses, frowns.

  “It can be about you sometimes, Whit.”

  There is a break in the crashing waves and though it’s faint, I can hear her sister’s next question come down the line. “Has he hurt you?”

  My gut twists. Of course the sister would be worried. Scout is holed up with the devil.

  But Scout answers right away, as if the very idea is preposterous and I relax. “No.”

  “Are you allowed to leave?”

  Scout shoots me a questioning look and I give a firm headshake.

  “Hard no.”

  I don’t hear the next part.

  “Of course I will.” Scout sniffles. “I miss you.”

  Pause.

  “I had sex, Whit,” she whispers dramatically.

  Jesus Christ.

  I’m caught between exasperated and amused. I live in a hard world and I can’t help but be…moved by the obvious love between the sisters. Didn’t I once have something similar with my own brother? Have I hardened myself so much against getting attached that I’m caught off guard when I see this type of familial bond in front of my eyes?

  When Scout hangs up the call, she seems a little lost and I don’t like it, so I tuck her into the crook of my arm. “How is she?” I ask.

  “Conflicted, I think. Whitney is harder to read than me.” She presses her lips together. “She wants to see me. To make sure I’m okay. Can you arrange that?”

  My jaw pops. “I’d rather not waste the time we have together.”

  She stops on the bottom step, right before we reach the sand. “It wouldn’t be a waste.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I just…worry you’ll want to leave early. If you see her.”

  “I won’t, Easton.” She leans in and kisses the center of my chest. “You have my word.”

  Still, I hesitate. We are safe inside my estate, but as soon as we set foot outside, there are variables I can’t always control. Enemies lying in wait. Traps. Violence. If a fucking hair on her head was harmed, I would tear the sun down out of the sky.

  “Easton,” she murmurs, laying her cheek against my rapidly thudding heart. “Just a quick meeting. You decide when and where. It’ll be okay.”

  I make a hoarse, skeptical sound. “This is important to you?”

  “Yes.”

  My eyes close, my very soul rebelling over the idea of denying Scout anything she wants. Anything in the world. “Then I will arrange it.”

  Her smile makes me short of breath.

  “Until then…” I reach behind her back and untie her bikini top, removing and draping it over the railing, leaving her ripe little tits bared to the sun. “You won’t be needing this.” I take her hand and guide it to my cock, watching her eyes glaze over as she grips me, tests the heavy weight of me in her palm. “This is all you’ll be needing.”

  6

  Scout

  The ocean water is warm, the sun decadent.

  I wade into the surf hand in hand with Easton, marveling over this adventurous person I’ve become. Topless at the beach with a renowned criminal! The most exciting thing I’ve done up until this point is mix Coke and Mentos. How times have changed.

  And truthfully, I can’t look at Easton and see a criminal anymore.

  I see a complicated man with a painful past who created his own trap. The one he is stuck in now. The one preventing us from being together beyond tomorrow morning. He is not satisfied with his world, no matter how much money he has. Or nice things he can afford.

  There is an ache in the center of my chest that has a lot to do with sympathy.

  But more with love.

  I love Easton Brawn.

  And I think that means I have to convince him not to push me away. Even if he thinks it’s for my own good. It’s not. I can’t just go back to my regularly scheduled program now, knowing that he’s sitting here lonely in his mansion by the sea. Broken and tortured.

  I’ll have to be subtle about it.

  I might not have to do too much convincing at all. Didn’t he already extend our association by a second day? Maybe all I have to do is love him. Show him how much. Until the idea of putting distance between us is unfathomable.

  Easton’s hand is in mine and I slow him to a stop where the surf hits me mid-calf. Taking a deep breath for courage, I kneel down in front of him and start to untie his shorts. I’ve never even dreamed of doing this to a man, but ever since I walked into the kitchen this morning and saw the thick trunk of his sex outlined by his sweatpants, I’ve been fantasizing about taking Easton into my mouth, experiencing the taste of him. The texture, the weight.

  His head tips back when he discovers my intention, releasing a groan up at the sky.

  “Fuck yes, baby,” he rasps. “You know what I need, don’t you?”

  Easton is a powerful man. A man well used to taking his due from his subjects. Being served. And I’m reminded by that when he takes over the task of untying his shorts and presents his long, rigid shaft in a confident hand. Feeding it toward my mouth.

  “Good girl, Scout.” He tugs down my chin and slides his thickness between my lips, panting, holding his breath, releasing a guttural sound. “Suck Daddy off.”

  I do.

  Eagerly.

  I’m immediately frantic to please him. The warm surf gurgles up around my inner thighs, arousing me, stroking my senses and I do the same to Easton, pumping my hands up and down his lush inches, trying to get him as close to my throat as possible without choking. I accidentally graze him with my teeth and I start to apologize, but he hisses and grabs two fists of my hair. “Again,” he begs thickly. “Clamp your lips. Fist fuck me hard. Rough. Give me a little tee
th. I’m big and stiff—I can take it.”

  My eyelids flutter and I scoot closer, my knees dragging through the wet sand. I love this position. Him towering above me, watching from above as I service him. I love being a servant, sent to gratify my master. My Daddy.

  “Fuck, little girl. You’ve got me so hard.” His hips roll forward and back in a sensual pattern, but I can tell he’s holding back. Trying not to make me choke. I want to make him wild, though. Want him to lie awake in the middle of the night thinking of me doing this to him. Thinking about how good I am at it. Needing my mouth like he needs his next breath. So I command my throat muscles to go slack, then cram as much of his shaft as possible into my mouth, my eyes tearing when his smooth tip nudges a place that has never been touched. “Scout,” he growls, his abdomen knitting up in front of my eyes, veins standing out, his drum-tight skin vibrating. “Oh Jesus. Don’t move yet. Stay still.”

  And then he exhales in a rush and pulls himself from my throat.

  “You think you’re sore now?” I’m being pulled to my feet, the bikini bottoms ripped down my legs. “Get your legs around my fucking waist.”

  I’m whimpering his name as I comply, my extreme wetness more obvious now that I’m no longer kneeling in the water. I’m damp and dripping and it has nothing to do with the ocean. “Easton,” I sob, climbing his hard body, and lock my thighs around his hips, biting my lip in anticipation of being filled up. Filled completely. “Please, please…”

  The head of his sex nudges inside me, his hands going to my buttocks and rifling me down every hard inch until he’s reached the hilt. My gratified scream echoes down the beach, off the rocks, even as Easton stumbles, groaning, going down on his knees in the water.

  “Tighter? How are you fucking tighter?” He leans back and rolls his hips, using his hold on my bottom to pull, pull, pull me onto his throbbing girth. “Find your clit, baby. That little button I licked last night. Find it and rub it on Daddy.”

  “O-okay,” I hiccup, pulling myself higher against Easton’s body and tilting my hips back—and explosions go off in my ears. That sensitive bundle of nerves he exploited with his tongue last night finds the meatiest part of his manhood and I ride it there, up and back, dragging the tingling flesh faster, faster. “Feels so good, Easton. Oh my God.”

  “You feel so good to me, too, baby. So goddamn perfect.” He grips my hips and grinds me down, heightening the incredible pulsing pleasure. “Jesus Christ. Your mouth has me so fucking horny. Now this little wet pussy?” His hips slam upward into me, his hands bruising on my hips. “I’m already going to come.”

  “M-me too,” I cry out, not realizing the truth of it until I speak it out loud. But the pleasure twines inside of me, wrapping around everything and preparing to snap. Soon, soon. It’s coming. I can’t bear it. I can’t live without it. “I love you, Daddy,” I chant, finding that final hint of friction against my clit and flying off the handle. “I love you. I love you.”

  Easton’s mouth molds to mine, capturing my screams of pleasure and mingling them with his growls, the wet heat of his pleasure fountaining into me, his lower body hefting me up and up relentlessly. I’m consumed. In his arms, I’m broken into tiny, little pieces and put back together, welded by a sense of desperation. Belonging. Coming home.

  His male release rolls down my inner thighs and we don’t come up for air, our mouths in a continuous dance of wet hunger. Until finally we break away, sucking down gulps of oxygen, his eyes locked on mine like he might tackle me backwards into the surf. Even on the heels of mind-blowing release, he’s feral. An animal. And I’m the one who incites him.

  He crushes me to his chest and bellows a tortured curse toward the heavens.

  Several seconds tick by. And then…

  “I love you, too, Scout,” he breathes unevenly in my ear. “I love you.”

  In that moment, I’m so positive he could never let me go.

  Not when we love each other.

  If I was thinking coherently, I would have remembered the saying about loving things. And how letting them go is often the only way to express it.

  * * *

  Me and Easton swim in the ocean. He peppers me with questions about myself that I’m all too happy to answer when he’s holding me close, his fingertips lazily stroking ocean water up and down my spine. The sun warms his skin and I rub my face against it, breathing his scent and sipping salt off his shoulders.

  We’re both naked and the moment feels bare, too. Unguarded. He tells me about his brother and father. How they were killed coming out of a restaurant on his twenty-fifth birthday. They were targeted on purpose and Easton was spared, specifically so he’d have to live with the knowledge of what his lifestyle had wrought. The rivals he’d tested by rising to power and usurping them as number one.

  Their killers were dealt with.

  He says the words easily, but the brief tension that rides through his muscles is not simple. Or detached. He still feels the loss—and it’s obvious that the deaths of his loved ones is why he planned to keep me at a distance.

  The reason he still might still be planning to return me to the real world.

  Without him.

  But I try not to think of that. Instead, I bask in the sunshine with this man I love, telling him about the antics me and Whitney once got up to. He laughs, kisses my neck, holds me while I float on my back, tracing every inch of my body with his fingertips.

  A picnic basket with sandwiches and cold drinks seems to magically appear on the beach and I eat mine cuddled in his lap, wrapped in one of the towels that were also conveniently left for us. After that, we spend the rest of the day in bed.

  Easton makes slow, heated love to me in the center of his king-sized bed, never breaking eye contact while riding my body, reaching deep into me with every long stroke. Our warm breaths mingle between us, his hard-packed muscle sliding up and over my soft valleys, my knees pressed wide on the mattress, our skin still hot from the sun, his back flexing under my fingertips. His pace doesn’t pick up until I’m gasping and writhing, sweat beginning to gather on his upper lip, his forehead. And then I’m pressed face down into the mattress and fucked. The bedroom fills with the sound of his masculine agony, the erotic slap of his sex entering mine. My hair is wrapped in his fist, his teeth embed themselves in my neck, my shoulder, chastisements filling my ears.

  Bad little girl making Daddy so hard.

  You tease me just by existing.

  Your pussy asked for this.

  By the time he’s done with me, I’ve been wrung out.

  I’m limp and gasping and made of gelatin.

  We fall asleep sometime in the late afternoon wrapped in each other’s arms and I can’t imagine not spending every day with Easton, just like this. Forever.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have wished for it so hard, though.

  Maybe I offended fate trying to will a certain future.

  7

  Easton

  Scout is still asleep when the sun disappears from the sky. Boneless in the sheets looking like an innocent angel who has been assaulted by the devil.

  There is some truth to that, isn’t there?

  Although I don’t want to leave her soft warmth, I told her I would arrange a meeting with her sister, Whitney. So that’s what I’m going to do. I want to wake her up with good news and see her smile. This girl’s happiness feeds my soul. This girl who loves me.

  Who I love in return. Desperately. Obsessively.

  Who I have no idea how I’m going to let go.

  Maybe I won’t be able to. Maybe I was an idiot to think it was possible in the first place.

  I pace my kitchen in my robe, phone pressed to my ear. Through my head of security, the time and location are decided on. A safe place, away from the city. No weapons. Drivers only, no one else. Still, I’m unsettled by the idea of taking my Scout outside of these walls, even to meet her sister. Too many accidents can happen. To say nothing of non-accidents.

  Determined to
calm my nerves, I nurse a glass of whiskey and tell myself to be calm, collected for her sake. And with resolve squaring my shoulders, I’m getting ready to go wake up Scout when my phone rings again.

  Once again, it’s my head of security calling.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Brawn.”

  Already, I don’t like this.

  He says my name like he’s nervous to say what comes next.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose tightly, until I feel pain. “What is it?”

  A short pause. “There has been some…rumblings. Underground. About a contract being taken out on…”

  My pulse starts to thud up against my ear drums. “On who?”

  Why am I asking? I already fucking know.

  Jesus. Jesus. Already?

  “Her, sir.”

  The confirmation turns my spine to ice.

  Scout. There’s a contract out on Scout. To kill her.

  “Who ordered the hit?” I choke out.

  “Conrad.” My foremost rival in the gambling trade. He, too, wanted a piece of the fighting federation, but I outbid him. I should have seen this coming. But how? How? When I didn’t see her coming. Goddammit. Scout. “He was at the fight the other night. Saw you bring her to the box. He might just be guessing how…important she is to you. But a stab in the dark is worth hurting you, I’m guessing.”

  Hurting me?

  If something happened to her, it would end me.

  My world would wink out like a light switch being flipped off.

  Not going to happen. Nothing is going to touch her. I won’t allow it. “Find out where Conrad is this evening. I want an address. I’ll handle it myself.”

  “Sir…”

  “That’s an order,” I bark, hanging up the phone and slamming it down on the counter.