Chapter 1
Kael POV
The woman on my lap might as well be grinding on a ghost for all I care. She’s trying, moaning, moving like she thinks she’s doing something, but I’m not in it.
My phone is in hand, fingers flying, I’m firing off orders because two of my guys managed to misplace an entire shipment. A shipment. How the fuck do you lose that?
I’ve still got two men stationed in the room, just in case someone gets creative enough to cut through my gate security and actually make it inside. Doubtful, but I didn’t get this far by being careless.
She whines louder, picks up speed. I had planned to use her tonight. Even took something to make sure I could go all night, hell, I was in the mood an hour ago. I figured I could use her and get all that anger out in another way until the fight tomorrow. Not now.
Yeah, I’m hard. But that’s chemistry, not interest. My head’s somewhere else, specifically, on how to make examples out of the idiots currently ruining my night.
I send another message, this one a warning:
Fix it in an hour or I put a bullet in each of you and find someone with a functioning brain.
Let them sweat.
She thinks I’m playing a game. She thinks that if she moans louder or moves just right, I’ll suddenly give a damn, I won't. Her hips grind with more intent now, trying to draw something from me that isn’t there. All I wanted was to fuck the stress out of my system.
That shit didn’t work.
She leans in, lips brushing my jaw, her breath warm against my skin as she whispers something that’s supposed to sound filthy. I don’t catch the words. I’m too busy watching the security feed from the docks, fingers flying over my phone as I shoot off a message to my logistics guy. The shipment’s not just late, it’s vanished. And the excuses are still rolling in. Rather than fixing it, they are making excuses.
Her pace quickens, a slick rhythm that would’ve gotten her a night’s stay if this were any other time. Now it’s just background noise. I glance at the screen again. Something’s off. The timing. The route. The way both drivers dropped off the map at the exact same checkpoint.
She pulls back suddenly, thinking she’s clever, thinking changing the game will grab my attention. Her lips wrap around me before I even look down. She goes deep, eager and focused like she’s performing a service worth rewarding. I rest a hand on her head, not to guide, just to hold it there. It's all about control, and habit. She sucks harder, trying to make it personal.
It’s not.
Another alert buzzes. I check it. One of my inside men at the port just confirmed what I already suspected, someone rerouted the shipment. It wasn't miscommunication, or incompetence. It was intentional.
She moans around me, eyes fluttering up, waiting for some sign I’ve noticed her, and that I appreciate the effort. I don’t give her one. My thumb hovers over the screen as I consider my next move. Retribution takes thought. Precision. I’ll have to gut someone publicly for this. Make it stick.
She pulls back with a gasp, wiping spit from her lips, chest heaving like she just climbed a fucking mountain. She settles back into my lap, grinding again, trying to reignite whatever she thinks she started.
I don’t stop her. But I don’t look at her either.
She’s there. Wet. Warm. Working for attention I’m not handing out tonight.
Let her. I’ve got bigger things to handle than her need to feel wanted. She keeps going until she's moaning and finishing, then she settles against me like she thinks she’s earned the right to stay there, draped across my lap, lips brushing my neck like she’s marking territory. My phone vibrates again, and this time it’s the port manager, finally answering after dodging me all night.
I open the message. Vague apologies. More stalling.
“Still waiting on the manifest. Might be a clerical error.”
Clerical error my ass.
My fingers move fast, typing out a short reply:
Try again. You’ve got fifteen minutes to find it or I start subtracting fingers.
She leans in closer, whispering something into my ear, her voice all sugar and sin. Something about how good she’ll be for me tonight. How she’ll help me relax. I don’t hear the exact words, I catch the tone, the intent. It’s pathetic, really.
I let out a low, humorless laugh, eyes still fixed on the screen. “You think that matters to me?”
She stills for a second, probably confused, maybe even hurt. I don’t care enough to look. She’s a body, nothing more. Temporary heat. Disposable noise. The only reason she’s even still here is because I haven’t bothered to throw her out.
Women don’t last in my world. They never do. They want to be needed, and remembered. They want to be claimed, but there’s no room for that here. The only use they have is between their legs, and right now, even that’s worthless. I’m not in the mood to pretend I care about softness or pleasure.
My phone buzzes again, finally, something useful. One of my enforcers got into the back office at the port and found tampered records. A ghost route slipped into the system yesterday morning. That's not an accident, or a mistake. Someone’s been playing the long game.
That narrows it down.
She shifts in my lap again, trying to recapture my attention, muttering something about wanting to please me. I finally glance down at her, just long enough to offer a smirk that’s all teeth and no warmth.
“You’re not even useful right now,” I say, voice quiet, like I’m sharing a secret. “You can moan, beg, do all your little tricks, but you’re not the kind of problem I’m trying to solve tonight.”
Her mouth opens slightly, then shuts again. She doesn’t know what to say. Good. Maybe she’s learning.
I look away before she gets the idea that I care. My focus shifts back to the screen. One of my boys just sent me a name, a low-level dock worker who signed off on the ghost route.
Perfect.
Now I know where to start.
For some reason though, she stays. Even after the words I gave her, the flat, clear, final words, she stays. Still naked in my lap like she thinks being skin-on-skin will change something. Her arms wind around me again, desperate now, clinging like some kind of wounded thing looking for mercy that doesn’t exist here.
Why do women need to be so damn needy? Did my words not fucking hit her right or something? Anyone else with a brain would have climbed off me, got dressed and left.
Hell, a woman with guys might have even slapped me... That might have got a reaction out of me. Sure, it could have been me killing her, but it's still a reaction, right?
I don’t even sigh. Don’t waste the breath.
“Axel,” I call, voice sharp but calm.
One of my men shifts near the wall, already moving before I finish the name. Loyal and efficient. He doesn’t need instructions twice. Which is what I need right now, not this woman, whose name I can't even remember anymore.
“Get her out.”
The woman stiffens. Looks up at me like she thinks I’m bluffing. Like she’s waiting for me to soften. She really doesn’t understand how little space there is for her in this world, or in me. They are all the same.
I'm a fighter, they assume that means I will fuck them all night and take control, and typically I would. It's not for them, though, that's where they make a mistake. I do it for me, I do it because I enjoy seeing women where they are meant to be, beneath me.
Axel doesn’t speak, he doesn't say he will, instead he crosses the room and grabs her by the arm, lifting her off me like she weighs nothing. She gasps, legs flailing as she’s hauled up, completely bare, still trying to twist back toward me like there’s something unfinished between us.
There isn’t. Had she listened to me, she would have been dressed, now she's out in the street naked, as Axel didn't grab her clothes and I'm not about to go chasing her down with them either.
She calls my name, soft, almost pleading. Like there's a heart in my chest that will reach out to her. I laugh at that, if her calling out my name as she orgasms doesn't get a reaction, her crying, weak and pathetic sure as shit isn't going to get me reacting to her.
I don’t look at her.
Sitting here, I let Axel drag her toward the door, one hand on her arm, the other grabbing his phone and no doubt telling the guys on the gate to open it ready for him to take out the trash. She’s whining now, asking what she did wrong, why I’m doing this, what happened. As if she was ever part of the equation. Why can't they realise this is sex, not for them, for me, I don't care if they never get pleasure from it. That's not my end goal, it never is.
My end goal is to use their body in between fights.
The door shuts, and finally the room goes silent. I fasten my trousers and push her out of my mind instantly.
Finally, I'm alone, without some woman crying on my lap like she needs me I lean back and let the quiet settle. Then I pull up the name I was just given, Rodriguez, he's a dock worker. Right now, he's only got middle-tier clearance. He's a nobody with just enough access to screw me. Which is the worst mistake for anyone to do. He's going to regret it, slowly, and painful he's going to wish he never did this.
Why is it always the low level ones, that's what I don't get.
I tap the screen, flipping to his personnel file. Lives alone. No family local. Took a cash deposit three days ago that doesn’t line up with his payroll. Sloppy.
I make a mental note: cut off his thumbs first. Pain teaches better than panic.
I open another thread, this one to Levi, my quietest, meanest problem solver.
Find him. Bring him alive. I want the truth slow.
My pulse doesn’t spike. My expression doesn’t shift. There’s no pleasure in it. No rage. Just routine.
Someone thought they could steal from me and walk away.
They’ll learn how wrong they were, one broken bone at a time.
Kael
