Half Blood (7 page)

She was swaying where she stood, only staying upright when he took her by the arm. She shrugged out of his grip with a snarl on her lips.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she spat.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, holding his hands up in front of him to show that he was unarmed. ‘Where are you hurt?’ His brown eyes gave her a quick once over, setting her on the corner of Edgy and Pissed Off Street.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied through gritted teeth. He stared back at her for a moment before looking around, checking to see if anyone else was about. Fear crawled up over her skin like a thousand insects.

‘I’m Sam,’ he said, stretching his hand out to her. She stared at it until he took it back. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanted to see if you were okay,’ he added quickly.

‘Pretty words,’ she snarled. But she’d heard them all before and she wasn’t prepared to stand there and put them to the test. ‘I have to go,’ she said, shoving the excuse at him quickly and walking off.

Indi moved away from him as quickly as she could without making it look like she wanted to bolt. If he was the rapist, he would give chase; and the faster the prey ran, the more excited the predator got. With conscious effort, she walked at a pace that wouldn’t be considered running and border-line represented walking.

Indi had had brushes with danger in her life. In fact, her entire life was one big brush with danger. But the rapist doing the rounds of Hell was by far the scariest one she’d ever had to encounter. The men that had come before him were known to her. She knew how their eyelids would droop when sex was on their minds. She knew how they would gently touch her, trying to make her pliant to their needs in a time before she knew what they were really doing to her. The amount of times she had heard the phrase “I’m not going to hurt you” were infinite. But the rapist, he was something different. He was nameless, faceless and scary as all hell.

After a block, she started getting that itch-between-your-shoulder-blades feeling again. Faking having to tie the lace on her boot, she slowly sank down to her haunches and put her back to the wall of the closest building to cast a covert glance behind her. There was nobody there, but the feeling of being eyeballed wasn’t going away. After waiting a few more unnecessary minutes, she growled and stood up again. With cold air sawing in and out of her lungs, she gave up on waiting. The fucker could come to her if he wanted a piece of her. Turning, she stalked away, her senses on high alert.

The rhythm of her steps pounded in time with the thump of her pulse in her ear. The sound was so rhythmic that she hardly realised when it changed. It was a subtle change; nothing you would notice unless you were really listening for it, but it was there all the same. This new beat was heavier than hers; a male’s thumping gait. Her head snapped around before loping into an unsteady jog.

The trailing footsteps became heavier and faster as she ran. Even though the cold wind whipped past her face, a fine sheen of sweat broke out on her brow as the cold air rippled through her lungs with a near-lethal sting. She forced the cough that was aching to break free from her throat down, not wanting to give the sonofabitch following a better indication of where she was.

As she rounded the final corner to her apartment block, her steps faltered and she stood frozen on the spot. Her anger sensed the danger and growled in warning. There was a dark figure huddling against the front of her building; one heavy foot resting on the brickwork at a ninety-degree angle, the hands fisted tightly under crossed arms. And it only took her half a second to realise who had come to pay her a visit.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Buddy’s eyelids peeled open reluctantly. He didn’t know how much he’d drunk, but if the pounding in his skull was anything to go by, he’d have said he’d drunk his weight in whiskey sometime in the last twenty-four hours. With clumsy hands, he probed his pockets for his tobacco and rolling papers, biting back a curse when he found that they weren’t where they were supposed to be.

He hauled his body up into a sit; resting his elbows on his knees while cradling his head between his hands. Running a hand through his short, dark hair, he couldn’t remember a damn thing about what had happened last night, but all he knew now was that he needed a fucking cigarette. He looked down and found himself wearing a football shirt which was really fucking strange since he hated the sport. He stood up, peeling the shirt off his body and dumping it on the floor. He must have lifted off some cocksucker in the bar last night. Some fucking souvenir from a night he couldn’t even remember.

He stalked around the kitchen looking for his cigarettes; agitation and addiction taking its toll on his temper. They weren’t where they were supposed to be, and he fucking hated it when things weren’t where they were supposed to be. He lashed out, kicking a pair of red high tops out of the way. As they thumped into the paper-thin wall of his apartment, his tobacco and rolling papers tumbled out. He stalked over to them, shaking his head thinking that it must have been some fucking night … or day … Ahh, who the fuck knew. Rolling a fresh cigarette with practiced precision, he lit it and took in two deep drags.

With his cigarette still balanced between his lips, he kicked off his shoes and stripped off his jeans. He sucked in another drag, stumbling towards the shower as the smoke drifted after him. He pulled the cord hanging from the ceiling, turning on the bare bulb and started up the water while he finished his hand-rolled. When steam was billowing out from behind the shower curtain after a few minutes, Buddy flicked the butt of his cigarette into the sink and got under the spray.

Water barrelled over his head and neck, sluicing over his muscular chest and stomach. He was still surprised that he’d even been able to get this body after all the nutritionally defunct food he’d had to eat when he was on the streets. He’d been wiry then––sinewy and lean––but that was always an advantage for him. People didn’t see him coming in a fight. He was always the first to pull a knife, and always the one who finished the scuffle with a payment of blood. He had a lot of firsts out there on the street, including his first whore.

He remembered that he’d been scrounging around the dumpster at the back of a Chinese restaurant when she came out from further down the alleyway with the john she’d just sucked off. She’d caught him staring at her and offered him a freebie because she liked the colour of his eyes. The whore was good. She let him dominate her, restrain her; slap her around a little too.

‘
Choke me,’ she breathed as his body pounded into hers. The sound of flesh slapping flesh was music to his fucking ears. With a growl, he’d wrapped his hands around her throat and applied a little pressure. The whore’s lids grew heavy with arousal. Where his cock pumped in and out of her, her core became more slippery. With a sneer pulling up his top lip, he squeezed a little harder.

He felt his erection form from those vivid memories. Taking the familiar weight in his palm, he ran his hand up and down the smooth shaft, feeling it grow even harder still. He began pumping his hand along the length of his cock, thinking about the last time he had fucked someone––someone completely nameless and faceless to him. That was the only way to do it as far as he was concerned. Women were only good for one thing from his experience. His favourite fantasy while jacking off was having the girl bound and gagged. He didn’t like it when they could touch him. He did like to hear them scream around the ball gag in their mouth though.

The ache of his orgasm was coming. He could feel it deep down in his body––a tingle of pleasure warming up his skin. He picked up the pace, stroking himself from the base of his shaft to the tip, twisting his wrist to crank out a little more pleasure, his balls tightening from the extra attention. The intensely warm feeling that had started travelling up his shaft began to burn like liquid fire until his orgasm pulsed out of his body in slow hot waves all over his hand and stomach. He milked his body until the rest of him was shaking. With one final shudder, he released his cock and washed himself off quickly before killing the water.

Water dripped from his hair and slid down his chest as he stood in the steam for a long time waiting for his cock to go soft. But it was just as hard as it had been before. When he wrapped a towel around his waist and stalked out of the bathroom, he realised what he needed to do.

Throwing on some clean clothes, he slid his feet into some old shitkickers and left the apartment, determined to find one of two things; a whore or a fight. If he was lucky, it would be both at the same time.

‘What do you want?’ Indi demanded, still keeping a safe distance away. When the guy didn’t answer, she tried again. ‘How did you know this was where I lived?’

‘Oh Kitten, you didn’t think I’d give up so easily, did you?’ Mr Wright, the prick from the café, was sporting two partial black eyes and a swollen, misshapen nose. Indi couldn’t take credit for how he’d brained himself on the table, but she had helped him on his way and that made her smile.

‘What. Do. You. Want?’ she hissed.

Running a finger across his chin in thought, his top lip curled up into a sneer and he said, ‘I want to teach you a lesson.’

She laughed dangerously. ‘If it’s about how I shouldn’t beat the shit out of people when they touch me, you’re wasting your time. That ship hasn’t just sailed, it’s sunk.’

He pushed himself off the wall. There was a small snick and when he uncrossed his arms there was a small switchblade in his left hand. ‘Now, you’re going to play nice Kitten, or I’ll be sure to cut you up a little to remind you what happens when you don’t do as you’re told.’ The blade flashed in the little streetlight available as he twisted it menacingly from side to side.

‘And if I don’t?’ she asked boldly, raising her chin a fraction. She’d been threatened with knives before so she was strolling through achingly familiar territory.

‘And if you don’t,’ he replied teasingly, ‘it’s nothing a bullet can’t help.’ He opened up his jacket and revealed a holstered gun on his right hip. Oh. That’s why he was so damn confident. He tapped it with the tip of the knife––a ringing metallic sound pealing around them.

Indi swallowed thickly. Gun trumped knife. It was as simple as that. As if the weapon was a signal to her body, her pulse began racing again––her heart hammering against her ribs, pumping much needed adrenalin around her body. It cleared her head, allowing her to think through her options properly.

Indi wasn’t in the habit of running from a fight, but she knew when she was beaten. If the fight was between a gun and knife then the loud, bullet-ridden thing would win every time.

One point for run.

She knew from the café that he was a south paw. If he wanted to draw the gun, he’d have to drop the knife first, unless he just also happened to be ambidextrous … which she was suddenly praying he was not. She was sure she could get her blade out of the holster before he could reach for the gun though. Her reflexes had always been good.

Indi glanced around at the buildings. They were all very well sound-proofed thanks to the flight path they were living under. Nobody would hear the fight between them, which meant that if she had to resort to screaming for help nobody would hear her.

Three points for run.

Madness bubbled in his dark gaze as she met his black eyes again. Rage, greed, lust and revenge were the fuel to the fire that lit him up from the inside. And that was the deciding factor.

Four points to one: she ran.

Taking off in the opposite direction she’d come from; her lighter frame and longer legs carrying her a lot faster than his could. She rounded the corner, seeing that the alleyway to her left was the one that ran behind her building. She knew that it was a dead end, but maybe she would be able to find a fire escape left down at random. If she couldn’t find a way out, she’d have to hide and launch a surprise attack. She’d done it before and there’s a lot to be said about the element of surprise.

Her footsteps echoed all around her, amplified by the brick walls soaring up on either side of her like the walls of a prison. Her breath caught in her throat when she heard his footsteps stop. After some frantic searching and no fire escape later, Indi dived behind one of the dumpsters and waited for her opportunity. If this guy had half a brain, he would know that was where she was hiding, especially since she was panting from so much adrenalin. Forcing her breathing to slow, she held her breath and waited.

A few seconds later, his footsteps echoed through the alleyway. ‘Kitten, I know you’re hiding back here,’ he called. The sound of his steps competed with his words, making it difficult for her to pinpoint exactly where he was. ‘Where are you?’ he called in a sing-song voice.

Indi shifted her right leg forward, being careful not to make a sound, and pulled her knife from its sheath. She took comfort in the feeling of the blade in her hand. Taking a deep breath in, Indi retreated in on herself to find that place that was quiet and cold. This was her angry place––her safe place. She removed her fear completely, replacing it with her perpetually-raging anger. She stroked the imaginary cat that represented her rage. It pressed its head against her palm, nudging her to attack, but it wasn’t the right time yet.

Grit crunched under Mr Wright’s shoes, edging him closer to her and further into the alleyway. With the blade out and ready, Indi let go of her held breath and felt complete calm sluice over her head, across her shoulders and down her back.

‘If you just come out here Kitten, I’ll take it easy on you. I promise.’

Indi rotated her neck until every vertebra cracked individually. He knew exactly where she was. He was just playing with her. His shuffling footsteps ended around the corner of the dumpster, no more than a foot away from her. He was so close that she could hear him breathing. She steeled herself, ready to lunge for him. A trickle of anticipation burned through her body, stirring a low growl from her cat.