Read Online Elicit by Rachel van Dyken - Free Book Online Page A

and not making my headache any better. Cursing, I rolled to my side, trying to figure out where the pounding was coming from and who I had to shoot to make it stop. I officially had a hangover from hell. As I rubbed my eyes, I glanced at the night stand. A glass of water was waiting along with two painkillers.
    Mo wasn’t in the bed with me anymore. Not that I blamed her. Lying next to her was torture anyway. Feeling the curves of her body. Even when I was too drunk to do anything about it? Sheer hell. Swear, I almost grabbed my gun and ended myself right then and there. But Mo had given me such a loving look, and though I pretended to pass out. She’d touched my face.
    Damn we were bad for each other.
    Like an addiction we couldn’t quit. I wanted to put her on the shelf and walk away, but that’s the thing about perfection. The sinner in you wants it so desperately, hoping it will make all the dark go away, that instead of walking away, like you should, you take it, you stare at it, and you devour it until there’s nothing left. I wondered if Mo realized how much I was doing that to her… how I used sex with her as a way to make myself feel whole, less tarnished.
    Groaning, I rose to my feet, popped the pills in my mouth and slowly made my way towards the door.
    I opened it softly and glanced down the hall.
    Sergio was standing in the kitchen talking to Nixon in hushed tones. Mo was in the corner eating cereal, her eyes about as big as the Cheerios she was trying to choke down. Great, someone probably died.
    Cursing, I stomped down the hall, fighting the urge to ram my body into Sergio’s causing him massive blood loss, and grabbed a bowl from the cupboard.
    “Someone’s not a morning person,” Sergio said in low clipped tones. The fact that the bastard was still speaking with his slight accent, which frankly made him sound like a giant ass, didn’t help matters.
    “Yeah, well…” I stretched my arms above my head. “I had these weird nightmares where I was holding a really sharp knife to someone’s neck and then all of a sudden he’d piss his pants. I never did see the guy’s face, though he screamed like a bitch, had a slight accent, six-foot one, with the tattoo of a cross on his left hand.”
    Sergio rolled his eyes.
    Nixon glared at me.
    Mo coughed next to me.
    “What?” I shrugged. “I can’t share my hopes and dreams with you guys?” I poured the cereal into my bowl. “Some family.”
    “Ten million,” Sergio said smoothly. “Makes you feel like less of a man, doesn’t it? To think, that’s the price of your measly little life. Hell, last year a made man went down for twelve.”
    “It’s too early for me to kill you.” I yawned and poured some milk into my cereal.
    “You think I would let you?” Sergio chuckled, sounding amused as hell.
    “I think you’d have no choice.” I chomped down on a bite of cereal, the crunch the only sound in the kitchen except for Nixon’s teeth clicking against his lip ring. For whatever reason, he knew this was my battle not his. “And ten million is still ten million. Think of all the surgeries you can pay for after I rearrange that pretty face, hmm?” I pointed my spoon at him. “Now it doesn’t sound so bad.”
    Sergio smirked, his eyes roamed from me to Mo and then back to me. “It’s cute really… how you can’t really take a hint. All brawn no brains, isn’t that what people say?”
    “Girls.” Chase walked into the room and yawned. “Stop fighting or Mil’s gonna come out here with a gun. The woman’s exhausted, let her sleep.”
    “Maybe if you didn’t keep her up all night…” I laughed.
    Chase held up his hand. “So dehydrated taking a piss was like trying to find water in the Sahara.”
    “Details I didn’t need to know,” Nixon piped up. “Ever.”
    “You guys always talk about your women like this?” Sergio asked looking around the room.
    “Actually,” Mo said with a sigh, “this is tame.”
    I grinned.