Indulgence (17 page)

Darting forward, I wrenched the door open and the little
light inside flicked on illuminating a shelf of
Corona
beers and not
much else. Groaning in disappointment, I wondered what the hell X even ate.
Opening the freezer, I found that empty too.
Motherfucker
.

I rifled through drawers and cupboards, but I didn’t find
much of anything. The man only kept clothes, weapons and beer in his apartment.
Typical male behavior, but there was nothing typical about X.

Turning, I cast my gaze across the rest of the apartment.
Two large windows were set into the wall that let in the muted orange glow from
the street lamps outside and there was a modest sofa and coffee table, but that
wasn’t what caught my attention. The opposite wall was plastered with
photographs, newspaper clippings…all kinds of things stuck together like a
puzzle. Like X had sat here for hours on end trying to solve a crime…

My breath hitched as I put two and two together.

Stepping forward, I rounded the kitchen bench and approached
the wall, knowing that I was going to relive the horror of that night all over
again. I’d stood there on the gravel outside my family home as a detective
talked at me, thinking about the beautiful corpses inside. I’d wanted color and
beauty in my life, but all I got was this…pain. The color red would never hold
the same meaning for me ever again.

Red was the color of the blood that stained the cream
carpet.

Red was the color that was underneath the spot right between
the eyes.

I leaned against the wall, my legs feeling like they would
crumple beneath me at any moment. I ran my fingers over the papers, reading the
headlines that described the things that had happened while I was out being a
selfish cow. I was out having a mediocre orgasm while my family got shot in the
head.

A tear slid from my eye and I brushed it away furiously. I
stood there in the semi-darkness and stared at the crime scene photographs,
reminding myself why I was here in the first place.

Revenge. X was...

The front door opened and I spun on my heel, my gaze
colliding with a furious looking X. He was wearing his Royal Blood leather,
which meant he was out doing something for them…continuing his ruse.

“I told you I wouldn’t leave,” I said, pressing my back
against the wall.

He slammed the door closed and strode towards me through the
darkness, anger bleeding through his pores…anger that was directed at me.

“X, please, I-” He went for my neck again, but I swatted his
hand away.

With a snarl, he grasped my wrists, wrenching my arms above
my head.

“Why did you break free?
Why
?” he asked, leaning
against me.

I cowered against the wall, wincing as his fingers bit into
my raw skin. “I was hungry,” I lied. It was a half-truth, but one I’d hoped
he’d buy.

“Hungry?” he scoffed. “
Hungry
?”

I nodded, my gaze fixed on his.

“Liar, liar…” he murmured. “You went through my belongings
didn’t you? What did you hide, Mercy?”

“I didn’t-”

“Don’t lie to me!” he roared.

“I didn’t take anything…”

“Do you want to know about the terrible things I do with the
things locked in my closet, Mercy? Do you want to know what’s in store for you?
Believe me, you’re better off not knowing.”

“I was hungry!” I cried, trying to choke down the sob that
was threatening to escape my throat.

“You want to look at it?” he snarled, letting my wrists go
and pushing my face into the photo of my dead mother.

“
Yes,
” I replied, opening my eyes.

“Yes?” X sounded surprised at my response. “You want to look
at the dead body of your mother? You want to see how her head was blown half
off by Sykes? You want to see her insides smeared on the carpet?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed, pushing against his chest. “It reminds
me of what I’m fighting for.”

“Revenge?”

I stared up at X defiantly. “Revenge.” He smelt like leather
and soap and I arched my back, jamming my breasts hard against his chest.

X let me go, jerking back and separating our bodies. “You
shouldn’t have escaped, Mercy.”

“I didn’t escape,” I said through a sigh. “I’m still here.”

His gaze flickered towards the hall and I wondered how far I
could push him again. What did I need to give him in order to show the master
manipulator how much I meant every word I said? I raised a hand and traced my
left breast through the material of the T-shirt I wore, the same breast that
bore his teeth marks. He’d enjoyed it…the look in his eyes as he gazed down at
the pain he’d inflicted…

“Bite me again,” I murmured, reaching for the hem of the
T-shirt.

X stared at me with a blank expression as I stripped,
letting the material fall to the floor.

“Hurt me,” I murmured, hoping that this was the thing he
needed from me. “Take me, X… Take my pain...”

X

Mercy stood in the orange glow of the street lamps outside,
naked and palming her breasts, and I was captivated.

“How many times do we have to go over this, Mercy?” I asked,
resisting the urge to get my cock out.

“As many as we have to until you understand,” she replied,
beginning to roll her nipples between her fingers.

“You had your chance to run,” I said, balling my hands into
tight fists, trying to reign in the urge to taste her blood again. “You
should’ve taken it.”

“We both want revenge…”

“What I want is none of your business,” I snapped, shoving
my hands into my hair. This fucking woman…

“You want your freedom,” she said, transferring her right
hand to her clit and my cock began to spark into life. I wanted to bury myself into
her pussy and fuck her into submission.

“I-” I stared at her hand, watching her fingers swirl around
the little ball of nerves.

“You told me,” she said through a sigh.

We can take our lives back.

With a feral snarl, I stepped into her, closing the space
between us in seconds. I fisted a hand into the hair at the base of her skull
and dragged her towards the sofa. She cried out, but didn’t fight as I twisted
her black locks in-between my fingers.

I pushed her face down onto the sofa, wrenching her naked
ass up into the air. She had such a perfect little behind, I’d slapped it quite
a few times, but… I leaned down, fully intending to sink my teeth into her, but
I stopped at the last moment, my lips brushing against her skin. Something
stopped me, something I didn’t have the capacity to understand.

I breathed in the musky sent of her arousal and I couldn’t
do it.

“Do it,” Mercy moaned, rearing her ass against my lips. “Let
me feel you. Let me give you what you need.”

Give me what I needed? I wanted the feelings that were
racing through my body to stop. I wanted to go back to the numbness, but she
kept pulling me under into a heaving ocean of emotion…

“I can’t.”

“You can, I’ve seen it.”

I grazed my teeth against her skin before murmuring, “Seen
what?”

“Feeling. Emotion.”

My entire body stiffened at her words.

“You’re showing it to me now,” she went on.

“What?” I was showing her nothing but
weakness
.

“Tenderness,” she said, like it was the most obvious
conclusion in the world.

“Tenderness?” I scoffed. “A monster, tender?”

She pushed up onto her palms, arching her back and opening
her pussy to me. “If you’re truly a monster, then
show me
.”

Her scent washed over me and my cock strained against my
jeans. It would be so easy to take her, hurt her, skin her alive…but I
couldn’t.
Keep her or kill her
. Did I want to keep her? One moment I was
hiding the fact that I had her from Weiss, the next I was teetering on the edge
of taking her life. Where was the medium? What did I want?

I palmed her ass, massaging her flesh in my hands. Sex…sex
was how she did it. It was how we were connecting. I didn’t want to connect. I
didn’t
fucking need it
.

Grabbing her around the waist, I flipped her onto her back,
spreading her legs wide. I wasn’t going to fuck her, but I was going to show
her what it felt like to get so close to the one thing you wanted only to be
denied. Kneeling in front of her, I delved into her pussy, licking her length
before sucking on her clit as hard as I could. She bucked against me, rubbing
into my face and I bit down, slamming a hand over her stomach to keep her from
pleasuring herself.

I thrust a finger into her wetness, not completely sure how
I was meant to take the state of her arousal. She was turned on by the dark
places inside of me. The places that had never come into contact with my sexual
desire. She was turned on by pain, just as much as I was…perhaps even more.

Mercy Reid kept blurring the fucking lines.

I stroked the walls of her pussy with my fingers, tasting
her against my tongue while she purred like a kitten in heat. She muttered and
moaned incoherently, her fingers curling into the sofa in her ecstasy. Tearing
my mouth away, I leaned over her, palming her clit while I fucked her with my
fingers, rubbing her to the edge of an orgasm that was going to shatter her. I
could feel it through her skin as she writhed below me, giving me all the
power.

There was this thing about power though, one moment you had
it all, the next it could be taken away. All Mercy Reid had to do was open her
eyes and catch me in her gaze and it would be all over for me.

But Mercy Reid didn’t open her eyes.

Her thighs tightened around my waist as her pleasure swelled
to unbearable levels and I pulled my fingers from her pussy, breaking all
contact. She moaned loudly, mewling for release, but fucked if she was getting
it.

“X,” she gasped, her chest heaving. “Give it to me, fuck me.
Fuck me
.”

She slid her hands down over her breasts and buried her
fingertips into her pussy and my hand darted forward grasping her wrists,
denying her the satisfaction.

“What are you doing?”

“Denying you,” I snapped, pulling her roughly into a seated
position.

“You can’t-”

“I can do whatever I fucking want with you, Mercy,” I
murmured, lowering my lips towards hers.

“You wouldn’t.”

I didn’t move to kiss her, I held still, my cold gaze boring
into hers. Her blue eyes looked like hellfire in the unnatural orange glow from
outside, hellfire and brimstone.

Sucking in a sharp breath, I stood to my full height.
Flinging her over my shoulder, she squirmed against my grasp as I hauled her
lithe little body back into the bedroom.

“No,” she gasped as I dropped her onto the mattress. “Don’t
tie me up again. Please, X.”

Ignoring her pleas, I took the rope that she’d escaped from
and began winding it around her wrists, binding her hands together. I secured
her to the bedpost before standing over her. She was bruised all over, the
black marks my hands left behind standing out against her creamy skin.
Beautiful pain.

She watched me as I stripped, dumping my clothes on the
floor and winced as I climbed into bed behind her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her body reacting to my
nakedness by rubbing against my cock.

“Letting you feel what you won’t get.” I flexed into her,
driving my point home.

I held onto her as she tried to squirm against me, a hand
splayed across her stomach, the other arm wound underneath her neck and under
the pillow.

I held onto her until sleep eventually took her once more.
Her body slackened against mine and I breathed in her scent, vanilla mixed with
the musk of sex, before sliding off the bed and retreating to the sofa.

I could deny her, but I couldn’t deny myself if I remained.

Mercy

I wasn’t sure when I woke again, but the room was still
dark, the curtains closed tight.

But one thing was different. The blackout curtains weren’t
so blackout. Grey light streamed in from a crack around the edges where the
material didn’t sit flush with the wall. Light that fought against the thing
that was trying to keep it locked out.

That was a fucking metaphor if I ever saw one.

My skin hummed with the continued frustration of pent up
sexual frustration, but something else sang across my skin. Without moving, I
glanced down towards the bedroom door, but that’s not where I found him.

X sat on the floor, his naked back pressed against the side
of the bed, his long legs stretched out across the carpet. He wore a pair of
sweatpants, but even the sight of his tattooed chest was enough to flare my
frustration into life again.

He had the switchblade in his hand, the one he’d used to cut
me free the other night, using the tip to pick at the dirt underneath his
fingernails. I swallowed hard, not liking the fact that he had a weapon at the
ready. X with his bare hands was formidable enough.

“I know you’re awake,” he murmured, flicking the knife
closed.

“How do you know?” I asked with a sigh. “I didn’t even
move.”

He glanced back at me, his eyes flashing in the muted light.
“Your ability to bite back when you’re at the mercy of a killer is
un-fucking-believable.”

I pouted, pulling against the rope around my wrists. “Thank
you.”

Knowing a strange fascination had brought him back into the
bedroom to watch me, I lay on the bed, watching him in return. He came to say
something or to ask me a question and I had all the time in the world to wait
since I was his prisoner and all.

“What stopped you?” he asked after a moment.

“Which part?”

He leaned his head back against the mattress and closed his
eyes. “Pulling the trigger.”