Brazen Mistakes (Brazen Boys #3)

19. Clara

Chapter 19

Clara

H is voice is raspy, tickling my sensitive flesh, as I hesitate.

But when his tongue presses into me, I decide to trust him. I let my weight drop, rocking until we build a rhythm, grinding against the warmth of his mouth, taking the gift he’s offering me.

This orgasm builds like a storm on the horizon, the power of it obvious long before it rolls through me. Peaceful, bone-deep pleasure rumbles from my center, and tears gather at the corners of my eyes, brutal in the clarity it brings me.

Maybe it’s beautiful to feel this much for so many. Maybe I can love more than I’d dared imagine.

Panting, I pull back, eyes struggling to focus as I shimmy down the bed, hauling RJ into a lingering kiss, my release tart on his tongue and lips, a soft smile on his face .

A series of continued aftershocks ripple through me as I reach for the waistband of his pants, but he stops me.

“It’s your turn,” I say, what’s likely a drunken smile smeared across my face.

“About that. I’d, ah, I’d love to, well, you know, but, um.” His hand is searing against my face, both of us covered in a fine sheen of sweat.

“Blow jobs aren’t on the list?”

He laughs and what little muscle control I had dissipates as I revel in the timbre of his joy. “They are definitely on that list. It’s just, ah, it turns out I really liked what we just did. Really, really liked it.”

My brain takes a second to process. “Oh. Oh! Okay.”

He rolls into his pillow with a groan.

“No, no, it’s okay. It’s good. Really good. And flattering. I didn’t even know that could happen.” I burrow into the pillow with him, pressing my lips to his cheek. “Seriously. I feel like I have sex magic or something.”

He huffs against the fluff before turning to face me. “Are you sure? I’m sorry. I was really close, and when you came that second time, I just couldn’t not touch myself, and that’s all it took.”

Kissing him slowly, I try to convey exactly how amazing that confession is. “I’m seriously flattered. Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”

“I definitely would have remembered.” He bundles me against his chest as I laugh .

“I was nervous, too,” I say. “I was so scared I’d squish you, or suffocate you or something.”

“Never. And if you did, I’d have died a happy man.”

“No dying on me. Even during sex.”

“Le petit mort.” He waits to see if I understand, but while the phrase is familiar, the meaning’s not coming to my sex-drunk brain. “The little death. A synonym for orgasm.”

“Is that what they teach you in French class? I might have chosen the wrong second language.”

His lips are soft against my forehead. “Nah. Nothing wrong with Spanish. Especially if it helps you communicate with your family.”

My post orgasm brain runs with the thought. “Part of me wonders if I’ll ever meet my other cousins. I saw them at my Abuelita’s funeral. But it was like there was an invisible wall between my dad and his sisters. And my aunts and uncles only spoke Spanish to each other, and with everything that was going on, I guess they forgot my mom and I couldn’t follow.”

“That was cruel.”

“I don’t know if it was on purpose, the Spanish part, at least. But I could see how badly my dad wanted to join them, and how tightly my mom held onto his arm. At the time, I thought she was comforting him. But now? It could have just been my mom being my mom.”

He holds me tight, and in the silence, I wait for him to talk about his family emergency. He doesn’t take the opening, so instead we cuddle, talking about nothing real, but enjoying each other’s company while the room brightens around us.

“I’ve got a question,” I say, after he shares a ridiculous story about doing surveillance with Jansen.

“About what? ”

“I know Jansen lifts wallets and steals cars for regular cash, Walker sells fake IDs, and Trips runs poker games, but what do you do?”

Instead of answering, he sits up next to me. “Want to see?”

At my nod, he hops out of bed, pulling on clean sweats and a shirt, tossing me one of his sweatshirts. “I’d, ah, if you’d want to, you could wear my shirt?”

I jam my nose into it like the freak I am. Citrus and sage. “Thanks.” Dragging it on, it hits a little lower than Jansen’s sweatshirt, which reminds me of Trip’s roaring silence when we fell to the floor.

But now’s not the time to dwell on that strange midnight adventure, so I perch on RJ’s lap in front of his monitors. One of his hands takes a proprietary grip of my thigh and the move makes all the girly bits in me turn fluttery and gleeful.

“When I was in high school, I didn’t really know what I was doing yet. I bought credit card numbers off the dark web, things like that. Later, though, I started scraping social media and using the information there to access bank accounts. It’s crazy how easy it is to find references to someone’s high school mascot or childhood dog’s name. And almost everyone learns to play the piano. I don’t know why that’s even a challenge question at banks when everyone has the same answer.”

He navigates from one window to another, pulling up and closing things so fast that I’m struggling to follow, but he pauses on a familiar face, some guy named Aiden Johnson. “Take this guy. He’s one of Trips’ new players. A whiny bugger who texts on unsecured lines while insisting on entering the game with a fake name, Harrison Grant. He seems to think his privacy and security matter, but Trips and the other players don’t deserve the same respect. I’ve had to clean up after the guy, even after we reiterated the rules. He’s on probation now. But I want you to dig through his socials and tell me what you can learn about him.”

I twist to look at him. “Is this part of my criminal training program?”

“It can be. I’ll text Trips so he’s not pissed you’re in here instead of downstairs learning about his fucked-up family.”

“Deal.”

He pulls up something on his computer and sends a message to Trips on it, getting back a single letter in response.

K

Holding back my eye roll, I scan this guy’s posts, his comments, the things he’s liked and laughed at. I look at photos going back to when he was barely more than a kid, scrawny and pimpled. Then I follow my gut and dig into his parents and his new girlfriend. I’m taking down notes on the back of an envelope, the only paper here besides Post-it notes, while trying my best to ignore the appeal of RJ’s fingers absently rubbing my thigh as I work.

Once I feel like I’ve completed the assignment, I number my points, then clear my throat. “Okay, I don’t know exactly what you want, but Aiden looks like your standard rich, entitled asshole. He’ll soon be single, and his parents are probably going to divorce once his little brother graduates high school this spring, as both of them are cheating. Either that or they’re in an open marriage, but they don’t seem open or loving, so that’s probably not what’s going on.”

RJ’s laugh rumbles through me and I turn, straddling him. “Is that a good laugh?”

“That’s a, ‘she’s such a fucking natural at this, it’s almost freaky,’ laugh. You didn’t pick out the things I would, but I don’t think I would have gotten the girlfriend, and I know I wouldn’t have caught the parents.”

“What things would you find?”

“His cat, Figaro, died this last year at twenty-one. If that isn’t his first pet, I’ll skip out on Mountain Dew for a week. He went to some private school out east, and their mascot was a wildcat. His mother’s maiden name is Jones, his first girlfriend was named—”

“Marcie. I saw that one.”

“And unlike most people, his first instrument was the viola.”

“Will that be enough?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes you need grandparents’ names, childhood best friends, his favorite color, favorite movie, favorite song, or first car. I have a list of common challenge questions. The more of them I can find, the more likely I’ll be able to get into their account.”

“And the answers are all just there, on the internet?”

“Yup.”

“Yikes. You make me want to shut down my socials, like, today.”

“I’ve got a list of posts you should at least set to private, if you’d like. And after the Bryce thing, I have a new proximity alert for your phone.”

I lean into him. “Are you taking care of me? ”

“Of course.”

We kiss, quiet, until he pulls back. “I should probably keep teaching, or Trips will be on both of our asses.”

“Do we mind?”

“Usually, no. But you have a scary amount to learn in a very short period. So for now, we should at least attempt to focus.”

I sigh and turn back to the monitors, RJ’s hand resting higher on my hip this time. “How do you pick your targets?” I ask, forcing my brain back into the game.

“It used to just be rich assholes that I found, both local and not. I didn’t want there to be any major patterns for the feds to sus out. Now, though, I’ve got a hit list, and it keeps getting longer.”

“Isn’t that risky?”

“Yeah. But I want the feds to get suspicious. I want them to dig into these bastards.”

“Who are you targeting?”

His arms band around my waist, his lips warm on my cheek. “Tell me to stop if you need me to.”

“Stop what?” I ask, leaning into him.

“Explaining.”

I twist to look at him, and his face is grim. “How bad?”

“You know how Bryce was part of some kind of pedophile co-op ring?”

The shiver that courses through me has nothing to do with the temperature. “Yeah.”

“Well, I’ve been tracking down the members, finding other groups like Bryce’s, mapping them out, getting every detail possible, and then robbing them. ”

My heart stills as I turn to look at this man. “You’ve been hunting down pedophiles and leaving them penniless?”

He nods.

I’ve flung myself at him before I’ve fully turned, scrambling to press my lips to his, tears damp on my cheeks as my mind spins. He’s been hunting them. And I’ve never been so glad to have stumbled onto the wrong side of the law as I am right now.

Warrants and ethics handicap the police, the rule of law, jurisdiction and evidence beyond a reasonable doubt stall them. Justice stymied by the need to convince twelve strangers to agree with them.

RJ’s free to find a thread and pull until it unravels.

And while he can’t put these monsters in cages, he can strip them of their power.

Without funds, these guys won’t be able to buy videos of girls like me. Girls and boys younger than me, who never consented to be a part of this. Who couldn’t consent.

The monsters still need to be tossed in a windowless box, though.

Squeezing RJ tight, I wipe my cheeks on his shirt. “RJ, this is amazing. Are you passing off any of the threads you find to the police?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know how I could get the info to them without incriminating myself.”

Some of my joy deflates.

RJ continues. “This is what I can do, so it’s what I’m doing. I think I’ve started the ball rolling on at least three divorces in the past few months. These monsters need to lose everything. More than everything. But their money’s a good start. ”

I pull back far enough to see the sincerity in his amber-flecked eyes. “Thank you.”

His hands slipped under the sweatshirt during my grateful attack of him, and my skin burns where his fingers brush beside my spine. “Clara, I did this for you. But I also did it for me.”

My confusion must be clear on my face because he explains. “When I started as a kid, I wasn’t careful, and I probably stole from people no better off than my family. I’m sure of it, even if I never checked. Now—God, this sounds so fucked up—but now I feel good about stealing. It’s justified when they’ve already taken so much, and it has nothing to do with making a quick buck. For the first time, I’m almost moral, and I’m confident that I’m doing the right thing.”

He presses me closer, my throat tight. “It’s like, maybe I learned all this shady shit just so I could do this work, so I could protect these kids. I know I’m not a hero. That choice was taken from me years ago. But now? Maybe I can be somebody’s secret dark knight. Maybe, if I can keep just one more kid safe from these predators, then maybe all the bad shit I’ve done will be wiped clean, you know?”

Our foreheads rest together as I try to put into words how I feel about him, about how big this is. “RJ, you are a hero.”

“No, I’m not. I can’t be. But I can be a hurdle. There were a few guys that looked like they were searching for real-life meets, and I’ve blocked their messages. I won’t catch all of them, even though I check every day. Usually, a few times a day. There are too many of them to police solo. But I can slow them, delay them, and financially decimate them. I’m more of a digital bear trap than a hero. I can’t kill them, and if they try hard enough, they’ll get free, but it delays the danger, at least for a while.”

“That makes you a hero. You can’t see the people you’re helping, and they may never even know they were in danger, but you’re saving them, just the same.”

“It’s not enough.”

“It’s more than anybody else is doing for these kids.”

He’s silent, staring at the screens. Wrapping my arms around him, I squeeze as tightly as I know how, trying to show him how big this is. Because it’s huge. And he didn’t tell me for months. This wasn’t meant to impress me or to exact vengeance on my behalf. No, he saw a problem and realized he had the skills to fix it.

What was it Jansen said? That being a crook is just having a collection of ordinary traits used in extraordinarily illegal ways?

Because that’s what RJ did.

If your illegal actions keep kids safe, are you still a criminal? Probably.

But it’s not that simple. Good and bad, they’re a broken paradigm, simple rules we teach children that don’t apply in the real world.

Here, things are gray at best.

And I’m getting a hell of a lot more comfortable with that.