Crowne jewel, p.16
Crowne Jewel, page 16
part #1 of The Crowne Brothers Series
“How?” I say, losing breath before I get out the last sound.
“All planted. Physically planted.” Leaning over a keyboard, he taps a space bar, and the monitor comes to life. The screensaver turns into rolling code and bouncing bars. “Inside the outlets. Every power strip was compromised. And the smoke detectors. You have to be here to do that.”
This isn’t my house anymore. I bought it with my own money, but the name on the deed doesn’t even matter. Someone who hates me has ripped it out from under me.
“I have to get out of here.” I rush to the door and grab my key fob and purse.
Anton’s right there, not quite blocking my way, but definitely in the way. “Where are you going?”
“You lost the right to even ask that when you tried to bash in Liang’s face with a shovel!”
“Put it together, Lyric. One of your friends is doing this.”
I look away and up. There’s a hole in the ceiling, like an open mouth puking wires.
“How do I know it’s not you?” I ask. He hasn’t been around, as far as I know, but maybe I don’t know anything far enough.
“You don’t. But it isn’t. All I want to do is protect you.”
“You can’t ever go apeshit like that again.”
“And you can’t ever defy me like that again. If I say no one visits, no one visits.”
“I’ll think about it.” I slide past him and walk out, hurrying to my car. I get in the driver’s seat, but a second later, he’s in the passenger seat beside me, bent into a pretzel to fit in the tiny seat.
When I open the door to get out and away from him, he reaches over me and snaps it closed. “Starting now, you don’t do anything until I tell you to.”
“Can I breathe?” It’s more than a rhetorical question. I can’t breathe without forcing down my diaphragm to get air into my lungs.
“You have to.” He squeezes my hand. “Lyric, I won’t say I don’t know what came over me because I do. The thought that someone wants to hurt you… it made me crazy. I went blind.”
“Obviously.”
“Yeah.” He lets go of me. “I’ll make it up to Liang. I swear.”
“You will.” I stare at our hands together, unable to wonder about what our connection means without the context of my life, my house, my place in the world.
“Listen,” he says. “We’re going to fix this. The house is clean now. The only problem is he knows you live here.” He takes me by the chin and turns my face to his. “We’ve protected diplomats. Politicians. We cleared the entire Georgian embassy in Kyiv.”
“Like you got everyone out or got rid of a bunch of bugs?”
“The bugs. Exterminated.” He smiles when I laugh a little. “Mike and I—we have this.”
I believe him, but I’m none of those things. I’m not important. I’m a dopey lifestyle influencer.
“What does he want?” I ask.
“We’ll ask him when we catch him.” That seems a million miles and a billion years from the current reality.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.” He cups my face in one strong hand. I used to marvel at the size of his hands—how one could practically touch both my ears at the same time. Now, I’m not marveling. I’m just grateful.
“Is he getting off on me being scared right now?”
He strokes the top of my hand then squeezes it again. The touch lights every nerve ending like a fuse that sparks in a line leading right between my legs. Somewhere, in the helplessness I feel, is the thickly warm, sticky call of sex. He starts to pull his hand away as if he knows what his touch does to me, but he couldn’t help himself. My thumb catches his index finger before it leaves and holds tight.
My fear was simple a moment ago, but it’s reshaping itself—folding into an origami of rage, annoyance, terror, and recklessness.
“When you find him, give me ten minutes in a room, slapping him over and over. Just for the inconvenience,” I say.
“As long as you leave him alive for me. I want him to feel his dick getting ripped off.”
“Did you castrate the guys who bugged the embassy or is that perk just for me?”
He smirks, looking away for a moment. He strokes his lower lip, then stands right in front of me. His eyes are camphor. Cold at first, then deeply hot.
“Get out of the car.” He opens his door, gets one foot out and stops to say, “Mrs. Longbottom.”
Before I have a second to pick my jaw off the floor, he’s on my side, opening the door to hustle me out. He firmly, but gently pushes me against the car.
“Don’t get smart with me.” His breath is warm and wet on the side of my neck. “Feet apart.”
I am Mrs. Longbottom, free to fuck with only the disapproval of a nonexistent husband to worry about.
“How wide?” I ask.
“Wide like the cheating slut you are.” With his foot, he kicks my feet open. “How does Larry make you come?”
I shrug.
“So.” Anton starts pulling open his belt. “He doesn’t.”
“He says it’s not his job.”
“Looks like it’s mine then.” He looks down at me as if I’m his favorite meal. “Take your pants down so I can fuck you.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?” He takes out his cock and fists it, aiming it at me.
“My legs are open and you’re standing between them so—?”
He yanks up my knees, pulling them apart and leveraging me against the car window. “Like this?”
“Yes, I can’t… it’s not… oh…”
With my legs over his shoulders, he bites inside my thigh, through the fabric of my jeans, to a dull, delicious pain.
“You think clothes can keep me from making you come?”
“It’s just…”
He continues biting inside both thighs, and it’s so good, I want to get these pants off more than I’ve ever wanted anything. So I unbutton and unzip, but he runs his teeth along my center, and all I can do is groan when he bites down. The denim dulls any kind of pain and turns it into so much raw pleasure.
I pull his head into me, whispering, “Yes.”
“I think,” he says, looking up at me, “Larry doesn’t eat your pussy often enough.”
“He doesn’t believe in it.”
“Luckily, I do.”
Anton takes absolute control, holding me up to get his mouth on me. He kisses between my thighs, bites, sucks the tender skin through tough fabric, dragging his teeth along the center seam. He is truly savage. I’ve never been eaten through jeans by a starving animal.
“Now, I’ll taste you.” He drops my legs. We wrestle my pants down to my knees. “Hands on the hood. Fast, Brenda.”
I turn my back to him. He pulls me to him, bites my bare cheeks, spreads me open, continuing the ravishing of his mouth.
By the time his tongue touches my clit, I’m collapsing in on myself. He sucks on it as if he doesn’t have the self-control to tease, and my orgasm is so brutal, hard, and all-at-once, it’s like a bludgeoning.
I jerk and cry out, and when I look behind me, he’s watching me with smiling eyes as I come against his mouth.
Once I’m able to breathe without panting, he pulls away my pants, twisting the shoes off only when he has to. He tosses it all aside, fully dressed with his dick hanging out like an angry red soldier who’s ready to fight.
“Time out.” I make the hand gesture. “Condoms in the night table. Time in.” I change back to a damsel in distress. “Do what you want, but please be gentle with that thing.” I point at his dick.
“You mean this?” He’s trying to stay tough and not laugh.
“Yes. It’s going to hurt.”
He pushes my legs apart at the upper thigh, pinching my labia open so he can see.
“Probably. Yes.” He slides two fingers inside me, and I’m immediately wet again. “You’re tight, and I’m going to fuck you very hard.”
Removing his fingers, he pulls me up by the arms and crouches until I’m over his shoulder.
I put my elbows on his back and fold my hands on my lips. “I’m praying for your salvation, you brute.”
“Officer Brute.”
He slaps my ass so hard I yelp.
“You animal!”
He slaps me again as he takes me up the stairs.
“Show me where Larry fucks you,” he demands with another slap.
“Left.”
Carrying me to the bedroom, he drops me onto the bed and stands over me.
I start to remember things Mrs. Longbottom wouldn’t know about. The tender days. The soft words. The trust with things that hurt just enough.
The days and weeks and months he was gone. Checking hospitals and police stations. The worry turning into a simple, bitter loss.
Officer Everhard has a rod sticking out of his jeans. Brenda’s worried it will hurt. She’s worried it’ll stretch her out for Larry’s needle dick.
Brenda closes her legs and covers herself with cupped hands.
“Don’t pretend you’re not a slut, Brenda.” He pulls his turtleneck over his head, leaving his hair mussed and the tight musculature of his body exposed. “Pull your shirt over your tits.”
Exposing myself to him, I wonder how we managed to not spend sixteen hours a day fucking. I’m an object under his gaze. An expensive cut of meat. He’s considering which corner to cut off and consume first as he undoes his belt. His pants fall away, releasing a throbbing, thick cock that terrifies Mrs. Longbottom as much as it excites Lyric.
“Just finish with me. Do your filthy business.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“I have to make dinner.”
“Close your eyes, Brenda.” I do it because he’s Brad Everhard. I feel him take out a condom and put it on while he speaks. “Keep your legs open so I can see what I’m about to destroy. Now open your eyes. That’s right. Look at me.”
Pushing my hips off the bed, he takes his time spreading my cheeks wide, inspecting everything. I’m so turned on I barely need him to touch me.
“You ever take a cock so deep you could taste it on the back of your tongue, Mrs. Longbottom?” He sits with his back to the headboard and his sheathed cock sticking up like a flagpole.
“Oh, dear, no, Larry can’t reach that far, but you…”
I let my eyes drift between his legs. He reaches that far.
“Come here.” He grabs my arm and pulls me to him, then turns me so my back is to him. “Leg on either side. That’s right.”
He guides the head of his wrapped dick along my seam with one hand, then with the other, he pushes down my hips, impaling me on him. He pushes me down slowly, then stops before he’s all the way. I drop to get another inch in, but he holds me.
“Please,” I whine.
“Begging already?”
“Please fuck me all the way. Do all your dirty things to me. Go ahead.”
He reaches around to put his hand between my legs. “Who’s doing what, Brenda? If you want to take it all, just take it.”
I push down, and he doesn’t stop me this time. He’s buried deep. In the mirror, I see us. Me with my T-shirt pushed up, and him with his right hand over my clit. Our eyes meet in the reflection. For a moment, he seems like my old Anton, with all the warmth and passion he used to show me. It’s terrifying.
Then his expression goes hard. His left hand grips a handful of hair.
“Get to work.” He pulls my head back and murmurs in my ear, “Earn it.”
He lets go. I jolt up and down on him, fucking him while his fingers circle between my legs. He thrusts hard, burying himself, and I’m immediately so close to orgasm I let out a shout and grip his legs like a lifeline.
“I can. Take. It.”
He rocks against me, then shifts, hitting new places every time, pressing his lips to my cheek.
“You want to come?”
“I’m going to.”
“No, you’re not. This is business. You don’t get to come until your boss says you come. You got that?”
“Please.”
“Say your name.”
“Lyr—”
“Brenda.”
He must know how close I am to coming, so he’s making me talk to distract me. I don’t know how much longer I can bear it.
“Mrs. Brenda Longbottom.”
“Say, ‘I am getting used like a filthy slut.’ Say it now.”
I repeat the words, and they’re freeing. I am nothing but that. I can just fall through this thick pleasure without worrying about when I’m going to hit the bottom. He’s going to orchestrate that down to the precise moment.
But it’s too far. Too much. I’m about to start crying in frustration.
“Use me more,” I say, gripping his neck. “Use me harder.”
“Like this?” He pounds into me once.
“Yes. Please.”
Again. “Will this make you come?” Again.
“Yes.”
“Good woman.”
Three more strokes like that and my entire body fills with molten fire. I tighten, clench, pulse around him, grabbing the muscles of his arms when I scream.
He lets out a long exhale into my neck, and says, “You are good. So good,” as if it’s the most complex sentiment he can put together.
I appreciate that. It’s the most powerful one I can hear.
“Anton.” I say his real name, assuming we don’t need to time out.
“Lyric.” Reaching over my shoulder, he takes my jaw tight in his fingertips and murmurs into my neck, “Please come back where I can watch you.”
CHAPTER 27
LYRIC
Cleaned up, clothed, and ready, I’m faced with the question of where exactly I’m going.
“You’re going to tell me I shouldn’t stay with Liang.”
“You cannot.”
“He’s not the hacker, you know. Like, I’ll eat my Jimmy Choos.”
“You eat one and I’ll eat the other. But I’m playing the odds anyway, and knowing what I know, I’m a little on edge.”
“A little,” I scoff. “You owe him a dozen yellow roses.”
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “If you want to stay with your parents—”
“Are you trying to kill my mother?”
I sigh and take out my phone to tell Liang I’m not joining him. I don’t tell him why. The thought that my whole house has been a Lyric Crowne surveillance station is too much to explain without bursting into tears. He’s going to have to trust me for now.
We pass Butterbomb sitting pretty in the driveway. I tap her hood to let her know I’ll be back. Anton walks me to the street and we walk down the block to where his car is parked.
“If I go back to your house,” I say, “there are going to be rules.”
“Really?”
I’m not sure if he’s deeply offended that I’m going to make rules for his house, or just surprised I’d attempt to.
“You don’t come into that house unless you’re invited. Pretend you’re a vampire or something.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You’re prohibiting Officer Everhard?”
It’s such a relief to laugh. Almost better than sex in a stranger’s skin. Almost.
“And I come and go as I please,” I say.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“How long am I supposed to stay in prison?”
“You’ll tell me where you’re going, and if I say you don’t go, you don’t go.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
“Security bullshit. Safety. My job.”
I scoff. His job. Sure.
“Was spanking me and fucking me your job?”
“It was a betrayal of your father’s trust in me and completely unethical. I could lose everything we’ve built, and I’d deserve worse.”
I want to ask him if it was worth it, but I’m afraid he’ll say it was.
“Let’s go.” I start across the street for his Range Rover, but he stops me with a word.
“Buttons.”
The nickname knocks the breath out of me.
“What?” I say with what little I have left in my lungs.
He meets me in the middle of the street.
“As long as my heart beats, nothing will happen to you. Do you understand? It’s my job to make sure you’re safe, but don’t fool yourself. This is not just a job or business. It’s everything. I won’t have a world where you’re in danger. It’s incorrect.” He opens the passenger side door. “It’s offensive to me.”
I get in and he closes the door. His words hang in the half-darkness.
I try to remember a time when I’ve seen him like this, and I can’t. Maybe I was too wrapped up in my misery to notice, or there was never a situation that pushed him hard enough.
He gets in and starts the engine.
“You meant all that?” I ask.
“I’m not leaving you.”
I wait for a qualifier. There is none. We’re crossing into Beverly Hills when he finally speaks.
“We’ll find him,” he says more to himself than me.
“Can I help?”
“No.” His answer comes too quickly, and he seems to know it. “Did you add anyone to the enemies list?”
“Ugh! Totally spaced it.”
“Who had that much access to the house?”
“No one. I mean, I have parties, but the smoke detectors? I’ve never had a party that wild.” I’m grateful I’m already sitting because my legs cannot support this level of betrayal.
“Have you had a house sitter?”
“No.”
“What about the cleaning person?”
“She’s been with my family forever. No way.”
“Is anyone jealous of you?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Of course. But not my friends.”
Am I being naïve? What about Liang, who I’m helping but who’s always chasing my followers? Or Jake, who gave up finally? Or Colleen, who’s always telling me how much prettier I am than her? What about Cole, or Kelly, or Rachel, or anyone in the entire universe?
“I need you to think,” Anton demands.
“I am thinking,” I say through a tight jaw. “I’m thinking of everyone who cares about me. Who got me through the worst time of my life by just being fun and happy. I came back here, and my old friends accepted me without asking a ton of questions that made me feel bad and I made new ones from social media who don’t even know what a failure I am. So, yes, but everyone loves me, okay?”
