Blood to Dust (21 page)

I explode in pleasure and jerk back and forth on a scream. He finds out just how hard I come by pushing his tongue deep into my channel, meeting the warmth trickling out of me in a wave of satisfaction. He swirls his tongue inside me, licking up every drop of my want for him.

Just when I think I can’t take it anymore, he starts fucking me with his tongue, completely disregarding my current physical state as a human pond of hormones.

I’m a goner. I’m on fire. I’m done. No, wait. I want more. So much more.

“Hand me my wallet,” he says, signaling in the general direction of his jeans next to the bed. I lean down, fumbling with the back pockets, until I find it. I hand it to him and he flicks it open with one hand and pulls out a condom.

“How many condoms do you have in your wallet at any given moment?” Jealousy leaks into my tone.

“One. Which I never use.” He leans down for a demanding kiss, pulling up on his knees above my opened legs and sliding the condom over his cock. I forgot to ask him if they even make them for his size. What is he? XXL?

“Women bore me,” he croaks.

“I’m pretty sure that I’m a woman,” I reply.

“You’re not a woman.” He guides his cock to my entrance, sinking his teeth into his lower lip. “You’re a storm.”

He thrusts into me and I arch my back in pleasure. It’s not as painful as it was the first time, probably because I knew what to expect this time. He’s riding me like the devil’s inside him. I’m holding on to him like he is a hurricane I have to survive, and the bed creaks so loud, I’m afraid its frame is going to break. When he comes, sprawled out on top of me, our foreheads sticking together, both dripping wet in the tiny, windowless room, I actually let out a laugh, my lips searching for his again.

“Can I ask you for a favor?” I murmur.

“Ask away.”

“When I finally get my hands on Camden, I want you to fuck me in front of him with his eyes propped open by toothpicks, like in
Clockwork Orange
. It’d drive him crazy. Think you can do that for me?”

He chuckles, a laugh that fizzes out from the pit of his stomach and makes his abs shake against my stomach.

“It’s on.”

We fuck.

On his bed.

On his floor.

Against every surface in this grimy, horrid house.

In the tiny bathroom where we stole so many small, hauntingly painful and blissful moments.

Against the tiles.

Under the rusty showerhead.

My sex is burning with the relentless friction and my insides feel numb. The majority of my muscles—abs, quads, even glutes—shake under the strain of working his body so hard. But we keep at it.

On the kitchen counter, the shelves behind us shaking, their contents spilling onto the floor.

We’re an earthquake, and we destroy everything we bump into.

The last time we do it, we’re back in his bed. My whole body throbbing and my muscles shaking like I spent the last couple of years working the fields under the sun. But Nate? He has all of his early twenties to make up for, sex-wise. It takes him exactly twenty minutes to get back up again and the minute Nate Junior is ready, so am I.

Because injured or not—it is still Nate Vela.

I’m not supposed to know his last name. . .but I wonder if he trusts me just a little now?

“What’s your last name?” I pant above him. I’m riding him reverse cowgirl-style, his hands on my hips, bouncing me up and down. Reverse, because I can’t chance him having access to my throbbing nipples anymore. He just spent twenty minutes sucking and biting on them until they turned from pink to red, the flesh around them bruised and cracked. At one point, he dragged them so slowly and painfully through his teeth, they pulled like an elastic rubber for about five seconds too long before he let them free.

He halts only for a second before grunting, “No offense, Baby-Cakes, but I don’t trust you with a fucking plastic spoon. No way in hell am I telling you my last name.”

“No,” I pant. “No.” My voice matches the rhythm he thrusts into me with. “If we’re going to do this, we need to trust each other.”

A reluctant grumble leaves his mouth.

“Vela. Nate Vela.”

“I’m Prescott Burlington-Smyth.” I snake my palm behind me for a handshake and peek at him. He cocks one thick eyebrow, shaking my hand while still using the other one to hold my waist and drive my body onto his cock.

“Nice to fuck you, Nate Vela.”

“My pleasure.”

He is just about to show me exactly how much pleasure he is in—I can feel him expanding inside me—when we hear the front door open, then bang shut.

Irvin.

He was supposed to be on a family visit for the next two days. What happened?

I stop moving on top of Nate and swivel my head. Our eyes lock. Wordlessly, Nate jerks his hips forward in one go and squeezes my waist, his fingers digging into my flesh, and comes inside me. He opens his mouth in a mute moan, rolls me over so that my back hits the wall by his bed and stands, pulling on his briefs and black, ripped jeans. I lie on his bed, watching his every move. For all I know, he could throw me back into the basement any minute now. Just because we fucked for the past three hours doesn’t mean he really is on my team.

But this time, I’m not going into the basement, even if it means shedding blood. No matter whose.

We hear his roommate moving around the house. His Crocs squeaking in the hallway while he mumbles to himself. He’s taking a leak with the bathroom door open, then moves to the kitchen, raiding the fridge.

“What are we going to do?” I mouth, my head propped on my hand. Nate throws me a calm look.

“Stay here. Don’t move.”

Don’t count on it, buddy.

I watch his shirtless figure walking out of the room, shutting the door behind him. As soon as he does, I jump out of the bed and yank open the drawer to his bedside table.

Perfect
. Thank you, Nate. Lying there and waiting for me to embrace it is an old- school dagger. I slip into my underwear, pick up the weapon and slide it into my waistband. I pull my dress on to hide my new best friend. After I’m done, I press my ear to the door. I hear their muffled voices and my heart picks up speed.

Please don’t betray me like everyone else.

I hear furniture creaking and the sound of Irvin getting pissed off.

“You want me to take care of the bitch? That ain’t fair! I wasn’t even supposed to be here. Not my fault my fucking mom came down with the flu.”

My pulse thickens against my throat.
Take care of me?
What?

“Do it,” Nate prompts.

“No.” I hear Irvin’s voice approaching Nate’s room, the thuds of two sets of feet on the carpet. Shit. They’re both going to come for me. I can maybe take one of them, though even that’s farfetched, but both? With just the dagger? That’d be damn near impossible.

I stumble back until my knees hit the edge of Nate’s bed.

“You better do it,” I hear Nate’s baritone. This is a nightmare. I let the guy into me—
again
—and now he’s going to have his roommate throw me into the basement?

I pull out the dagger and wait in a southpaw stance in front of the door. I hear their footfalls going back and forth, some more shuffling, and after a while—who knows how much time’s passed—the door swings open, and I run straight to the body in front of me and stab the dagger into his flesh.

Nate.

“Fuck!” he growls, stumbling away, his back hitting the wall. I rush out, about to stab him a few more times as he nurses his bleeding bicep by squeezing the wound. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I heard you.” I point the bloody dagger at his face, seething. “You sent Irvin to deal with me.”

“I sent him to the fucking
basement
so I can lock him in there. What in the actual fuck? You talk about trust, but you give me none.”

“Of course I don’t trust you,” I shriek, hysteria closing in on my throat. Which part of our encounter together so far would have made me trust him? The part where he took me in as a hostage, or the part where he fucked me and then disappeared for a few days until showing back up to the gates of my own, personal hell? It’s been a long time since I trusted a man, and just because he said he switched teams, doesn’t mean that I fully believe him.

“Well, that’ll have to change.” He makes a tsking sound, looking down to his right bicep and slowly peeling his hand away to assess the damage. I managed to cut deep. Well, at least I have that going for me in case I find myself engaged in a knife fight.

Only now I feel bad about doing this to him. Not overly bad, he deserves some kind of punishment for my captivity. But it was probably not the best idea to injure the guy who is about to help me run away and take down three of the most dangerous men I’ve ever come across.

“Fine. I’m willing to admit that there may have been a bit of an overreaction on my end.” I fold my arms around my midsection.

“Ya’ think? Wow, it takes a big woman to admit that.” He bites every word, pushing his healthy hand through his hair.

“Hey, Pea, are you going to stand in the hallway with the knife pointing at me for much longer or are you ready to hit the fucking road?” he nearly barks. “Go get the first aid kit. It’s in Irv’s room.” Nate nods his chin to the door right in front of his. “On his desk.”

I quickly grab the kit and sit my sexy partner-in-crime on the kitchen counter while I take care of his wound, bandaging it up tight. The orange of the iodine leaks around the white fabric and his arm looks like crap, but I think he’s stopped bleeding. I’m standing between his thighs as I tend to his wound, grateful for every second that I touch him but knowing that this is exactly why I should get rid of him as soon as possible.

“Are we all set? Should we run over our plan one more time?” I ask quietly as I roll another clean white cloth over his muscular arm. I can hear Irvin banging on the basement door, screaming and shouting and swearing like a madman.

“We pack our shit, get the money and fake IDs and disappear to different places and time zones.” He shrugs, his husky voice tickling my hairline. “Simple plan.”

“We need to kill them first.” I’m hoarse, yet determined. “They’ll follow us anywhere, down to the pits of hell.”

His eyes meet mine, and for a brief moment, I want us to be something else. Something normal. A boy and a girl who live in neighboring cities and met somewhere neutral, somewhere safe, a club or a park or a flipping Starbucks. Our options are unlimited. I’m not broken by previous, awful men. He’s not broken by a previous, awful life. It’s just us, and the scent of opportunity, of first dates and picnics and rolling on lush summer grass, laughing into each other’s mouths.

For one brief moment, I imagine that he walked into my world without tearing it apart, bloodily and messily, and that I stormed into his without making him face the dilemma of his life.

I shake my head when I realize where I let my mind drift off to.

“It’s either us or them.” My pulse quickens with urgency.

“You know, Prescott, if you wanna mend your soul, killing people is not the way to do it.”

“Of course it is.” I kiss his wrapped arm without breaking eye contact. “Because each of these men still hold a part of my soul. I need to take it back, don’t I?”

A hint of a smirk finds Nate’s face, but it disappears just as quickly as it came.

Our heads snap in unison at the deafening sound of shattered wood, and it takes us less than a second to realize that Irvin has managed to kick the door down. Nate shoots up from the table, sidestepping and shielding me behind his back, charging out of the small kitchen and toward the hallway. The gesture doesn’t escape me, but I don’t allow myself dwell on it.

You’re safe
, he said before we had sex tonight. Maybe I am.

I follow his steps as he stalks to the hallway, where Irvin already scrambled for his cell phone, which Nate must have tossed across the room before he threw him in the basement. He’s clutching the phone and the discarded Guy Fawkes mask Nate had left on the floor, a dirty Crocs footprint flattened the plastic and disfigured the smiling face. This is the first time I’ve see Irvin without his ski mask, and he’s got the face of an albino eel.

“I’m calling Godfrey.” He averts his eyes from my face and back to Nate’s, his jaw quivering wildly. I’ve never seen someone so manic in my life. “You guys are done, you hear me? Fucking done!”

Forget the packing. We have to run away now.

“Nate,” I say, touching the massive back that shields me from his roommate. “It’s time.”

Nate is still staring at Irv and I wish he’d stop. We haven’t got time to dwell on betrayal.

I slide into my boots, yank the keys from the fruit bowl and grab Nate by the hand.

“Come on. He’s deadweight. Godfrey will never keep him alive after our escape,” I bite, happy to see Irv’s face behind Nate’s shoulder twisting in surprised horror. It’s the truth, and he knows that.

Nate grabs his mask from Irv’s hand and we storm out. He shuts the driver’s door to his Tacoma and punches the wheel three times, honking loudly in the process. I watch him wordlessly, knowing that it’s not only Irvin he is mad at, but also himself. He’s running away from his only chance at normalcy. From a parole officer. From the real world, and from his real identity. He can never undo what he’s doing right now. Me? I haven’t been a part of the real world in such a long time, I barely miss it anymore. It doesn’t miss me, either. Case in point: I was locked in a basement for two weeks, and other than a few crackheads who are probably wondering why I haven’t shown up with their supply, nobody gave a damn.

Other than him.

“Do you want me to drive?” I try not to sound too panicked.

His face is buried between his arms against the steering wheel, and I see him shaking his head.

“Where to?”

“West. We need to stop by my place, get a credit card, go to the ATM and drive to Concord to get a new ride. Your license plate will be easy to detect.”

He starts the car and throws it into drive, heading for the Stop sign at the end of the street and passing through it unblinking, speeding forward as the highway and darkness swallows the truck. I buckle up, treating myself to a glance at his profile. Magnificent in his beauty and peaceful in expression. Whatever got into him—he overrode it.