TOO LATE : CHAPTER 11 – 20
Chapter 16
Carter’s POV Con’td
“Hey guys,” she says, sauntering toward us. “Anyone hungry? I have leftovers.” She holds out the pizza box and keeps the smile plastered on her face.
Dalton jumps up and meets her, grabbing the box out of her hands. “H’ll yeah,” he says, taking a slice. He hands the box to me, so I grab one, too. I hand the box to Asa just as Sloan takes a seat on the lawn chair with him. She leans in to kss him, but he pulls back.
“Where’d you get this?” he asks, closing the lid to read the top of it. She shrugs, careful not to look at me at all. “Some Italian place. One of my classes was cancelled today and I was hungry, so I grabbed lunch.”
“Alone?” he asks, setting the box on the concrete next to him.
She smiles. “Yeah. I’m so tired of campus food.” She reaches down to the box and grabs a slice. “Taste it,” she says, handing it to him. “It’s really good. I brought it home so you could try it.”
Asa grabs the slice of pizza out of her hands and drops it back onto the box. He leans forward and grabs Sloan by the hand, pulling her to him.
“Come here,” he says. He pulls her onto his lap and grabs the back of her head and ksses her.
I look away. I have to.
Asa stands up with Sloan still wrapped around him. I can see him out of the corner of my eye as he hoists her up by the a$s, kssing her neck. He walks toward the house and I look up, just as she glances at me from over his shoulder.
She watches me wide-eyed until he carries her through the back door and into the house; more than likely all the way up to his bed.
I lean back in my chair and let out a huge a$s sigh, running my hands through my hair. How am I expected to just sit here, knowing what’s going on in that house?
“I wish we could bust his a$s today,” I say to Dalton.
“I don’t like the way she looks at you,” Dalton says with a mouthful of pizza. I glance over at him and he’s still staring at the back door. “She’s trouble.”
I pick up the box of pizza and grab another slice. “Jealous?” I laugh, trying to appear nonchalant about his comment. “You can always have Jess. I hear Jon’s a lot more generous than Asa.”
Dalton laughs and shakes his head. “These people are so fked up.”
Not all of them.
“I think we could use her,” Dalton adds. I look over at him and can see his wheels turning.
“Use her how?”
“She’s into you,” he says, sitting straight up in his seat. “You have to use that to your advantage. Get close to her. She probably knows more about the people Asa works with than we’ll ever be able to find out from our positions.”
Sht. The last thing I want to do is get her involved. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Dalton stands up and says, “BuIIsht. This is perfect. That girl is the break we’ve been waiting for in this case.” He starts dialing a number on his phone, walking toward the back door.
Using women to get closer to cracking a case is nothing to him. He’s done it in almost every job we’ve worked together.
It’s just not something I’m willing to do.
But it may not be a choice that’s left up to me…
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 11 – 20
*****
SLOAN POV
“Your heart is beating so fast,” Asa says, dropping me onto the mattress.
Of course it is. This was probably the scariest five minutes of my life, not knowing if I could pull off the lie. Thanks to Carter, it worked.
“You kssed me the entire way through the house,” I say. “Of course it’s beating fast.”
Asa slides on top of me and presses his lips to mine, kssing me gently. He runs his hand through my hair, kssing down my chin and neck, until he gets to the base of my throat. He pauses and looks me straight in the eye. “Do you love me, Sloan?” he says, his question coming straight out of left field.
I swallow and then nod.
He pushes up onto the palms of his hands. “Well then say it.”
I force a smile as I look up at him. “I love you, Asa.”
He stares at me a moment as if he has an internal lie detector and he’s waiting to see if I passed. He slowly lowers himself on top of me and buries his head in my neck. “I love you, too,” he says. He rolls onto his side and pulls me to him. He holds me, rubbing his hand in soft circles over my back.
I don’t remember the last time he touched me in this bed without it being directly related to sx. He ksses the side of my head and sighs.
“Don’t leave me, Sloan,” he says firmly. “Don’t you ever leave me.”
The fierce, yet desperate look in his eyes paralyzes me. I shake my head. “I won’t, Asa.”
His eyes scroll over every inch of my face. Lying here wrapped in his arms, watching him watch me with such intensity—I don’t know if I should feel loved or terrified. It’s a little of both.
He presses his mouth to mine and ksses me hard. There’s nothing tender about it, and when he tears his mouth from mine, he’s gasping for breath. “Tell me you love me, Sloan. That you’ll never leave me.”
“I love you. I’ll never leave you,” I whisper, praying the latter will soon be a lie.
He brings his mouth back to mine and runs his hands down my stomach until he reaches my pnts. He’s kssing me with such intensity, it’s hard to catch a breath.
He tries to pull my pnts down, but he can’t seem to break away from my mouth long enough to do it. I lift my h!ps and remove my clothes, just like the wh’re I’ve become for him.
Because is this not the definition of a wh’re? Someone who compromises his or her self-respect for personal gain? Even if my personal gain is something selfless and has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my brother, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m having sx with him in exchange for something. Which…by definition…makes me a wh’re.
His wh’re.
And from the possessive look in his eyes, that’s all he’ll ever allow me to be.
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 11 – 20
*******
CARTER POV
There are few things worse than my sense of timing. As soon as I open the back door to walk inside the house, my ears are met with the final sound of Asa’s grunts coming from upstairs.
I pause in the kitchen, not even sure why I’m listening to what he’s doing to her.
Just the thought of it makes my stomach turn, especially after knowing what he just did to Jess a matter of two hours ago.
When I hear footsteps upstairs and the bathroom door shut, I snap out of my trance and walk to the refrigerator.
There’s a magnetic dry-erase board, covered in phone numbers, stuck to the front of the fridge. I grab one of the markers and press it to the board and write.
Footsteps descend the stairs and I snap the marker back into place, then turn around just in time to see Asa round the corner.
“Hey,” he says. He’s barefoot and the only things he’s wearing are his unbuttoned blue jeans. His hair is in disarray and he has a smug grin on his face.
“What’s up?” I lean against the counter and watch him as he walks to the cabinet and grabs a bag of potato chips. He opens it and leans against the counter across from me.
“How’d it go last night?” he asks. “I haven’t even had a chance to ask you.”
“Good,” I say. “But I was curious. What if we could get to his supplier directly? There really isn’t a need for a middleman anymore, if the only reason you were going through him was for translation.”
Asa pops another chip into his mouth and licks his fingers. “Why do you think I brought you in?” He sets the bag of chips down and turns to the sink, running his hands under the water. “My hands taste like pssy,” he says, scrubbing them with soap.
This is one of the few moments in my career I wish I would have chosen something a little lamer. Something a little less emotionally draining. I should have been a poetry teacher.
“How long have you been dating that girl?” I ask. Part of what I’m here for is to pry, but the only questions I seem to want to know the answers to are questions related to Sloan.
He dries his hands on a towel and grabs the bag of chips, then takes a seat at the bar. I stay where I am.
“A while. Two years maybe?” He shoves a handful of chips into his mouth and wipes his palm down the leg of his jeans.
“Doesn’t seem like she approves of what you do,” I say, treading lightly. “You think she’d ever out you?”
“H’ll no,” he quickly replies. “I’m all she has. She’s got no choice but to accept it.”
I nod and grip the edge of the counter behind me. I don’t trust a word that comes out of his mouth, so I’m really hoping the fact that he’s all she has is just another one of his lies.
“Just making sure,” I say. “It’s hard for me to trust people, if you know what I mean.”
Asa narrows his eyes and leans forward. “Don’t ever trust anyone, Carter. Especially the wh’res.”
“I thought you said Sloan wasn’t a whore,” I challenge.
He keeps his eyes locked with mine—unmoving and angry. For a moment, I’m worried he might do to me what he did to Jon earlier. Instead, he brings his hand to his jaw and pops his neck, then leans back in his seat again.
The flash of anger in his eyes dissipates with the sound of Sloan’s footsteps descending the stairs. She walks into the kitchen and comes to a pause when she sees both of us.
Asa takes his eyes off me and looks at Sloan. He laughs and stands up, scooping her against him. “People have to earn my trust,” he says, looking over her shoulder at me. “Sloan earned hers.”She puts her hands against his chest and pushes against him, but he doesn’t release her.
He sits back down and pulls her against him so that she’s standing between his legs with her back to his chest, facing me.
He wraps his arms around her stomach and rests his chin on her shoulder, making eye contact with me again.
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 11 – 20
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