Monster (16 page)

“Use your
imagination,” I suggested, planting both my hands on his chest,
enjoying the strong muscles beneath my palms.

“Imagination?”
he asked, brow raising. “Why use that when I can use this?”
he asked. Then before I could see his hand moving, it was between us,
his finger tracing up my slick cleft and working firm, slow circles
over my clit.

My entire body
convulsed once, hard, at the contact as a strangled whimper forced
its way out of my throat.

I swallowed hard,
watching the satisfied smirk settle on his face. “I thought I
was the one who was supposed to make the first move.”

“Doll, you
planted your sweet little ass on my lap wearin' just my t-shirt and
no panties. I consider that a first move.”

I couldn't argue with
that logic.

Besides, his fingers
were causing all kinds of chaos between my thighs. His finger changed
pace or direction every time I felt the coiling inside tighten,
threaten to unleash. On the forth time of him sensing the release and
pulling away, my fist slammed down hard on his shoulder. “Damn
it,” I growled, sucking air into my lungs.

“More fun this
way,” he said, shrugging, a smile tugging at his lips.

“For you maybe,”
I said, lowering my eyes at him.

“You got
complaints 'bout how I handle business?” he asked, sounding way
too conceited for his own good.

“At this mome...
fuck
,” I cried out, his finger sliding down and
thrusting inside me, curling and scraping across the top wall, making
my legs jump reflexively. “Oh my god,” I choked, my hips
raising up off of him slightly, giving him more access as his finger
kept up it's unrelenting exploration of my g-spot.

“What were you
saying?” he asked, his voice a low grumbling sound.

“No... nothing,”
I said, my breathing coming out fast and shallow.

“Didn't think
so,” he said, watching my face as he drove me up. And I was
going
up
. And it was strange and foreign and so consuming I
felt like I was going to explode if I ever made it to the top. My
hips started moving of their own intuition, stoking my desire and
Breaker made a growling sound in his throat. “That's it, ride
it. Come for me, baby,” he urged, his thumb pressing down on my
clit.

I wasn't wrong.

It was like an
explosion.

Every muscle tensed.
Every nerve ending fired. My breath hitched, hissing out his name as
my sex pulsated hard around his finger in a seemingly endless wave.
His finger kept working me through the whole thing, dragging it out
until I wavered forward and collapsed against him.

His hand pressed in
between my shoulder blades, holding me to him as I shivered through
the aftershocks.

“Deep breaths,
doll,” he said quietly as I struggled to calm down the erratic
strobe-like pull of my breath. “Christ, you come that hard from
my fingers... just think of what it will be like when it's my tongue
or my cock.”

Some sort of sound
escaped me, half moan, half objection.

I honestly couldn't
even think of such a thing. I was barely holding it together from
that orgasm. I couldn't imagine another one.

I was set.

For the night.

Or month.

Or my entire lifetime.

Yeah, it was
that
good.

“Did I make it up
to you?”

“Make what up to
me?”

“I'll take that
as a yes,” he chuckled, his hands moving to grab my ass,
holding it hard. “Come on,” he said, moving to stand,
holding me to him by my butt, “let's get you some food.”

“Food?” I
asked pushing back from his neck to look at him as he walked to the
kitchen, dropping me down on the counter, and taking a step back.

He smiled, pressing his
hips into my knees until my legs parted around his body. “Yeah,
doll. Food. I'm going to feed you and then I am going to fuck you
until you can't walk right for a week.”

Well then.

Eleven

Alex

He worked silently for
a while, chopping potatoes and throwing them into a pan with garlic
and olive oil and dropping a steak into the broiler. I watched on in
a sort of fascinated wonder. For one, because I had absolutely no
culinary skills in the least (unless cooking ramen counted. Which I'm
pretty sure it didn't). And also because it was borderline amusing to
see someone like Breaker- a huge, hulking mass of muscle and
testosterone doing something that didn't involve general murder and
mayhem.

“Tell me why you
want to take down Lex,” he said abruptly, his body half turned
to mine as he stood at the stove, mixing the potatoes as they
sizzled.

Maybe it was the
bone-deep tiredness that was setting in. Or the weird weighty and
satisfied post-orgasm drunkenness, but I didn't even think of not
answering or hedging around the issue.

“He's the reason
my mother killed herself when I was sixteen.”

Breaker dropped the
wooden spoon into the pan and turned fully to look at me. “What?”

It had been such an
ever-present part of my life for so long that it barely even occurred
to me anymore that it was a shocking thing to know. But there was
Breaker, the biggest, baddest guy I had ever met looking positively
stricken at the news.

I felt my shoulder
shrug a little, pushing the image of her in that bathtub out of the
way. “Let's just say that once upon a time, Lex got his hands
on my mother. And she never really recovered. She was always really
fragile. Physically and emotionally. I never understood why until I
found her after school that day. She took a bottle of painkillers,
got herself all dressed up, and laid down in the tub.”

“Alex...”
his voice broke in, a strange raspy whisper.

“It was then that
I found the note. Which was really more of a six page letter, backs
and fronts, explaining what happened to her.”

“What happened to
her?” he asked, staying where he was as if maybe sensing my
need for space.

It wasn't a story I
shared. Not fully. I had given tidbits to Glenn when he offered to
help me, greatly editing out the gory details. But I didn't want to
do that this time. I wanted to purge it all. Maybe because of the way
Breaker lived, I thought he would understand. Or because of his quiet
strength, I thought he could handle the grim reality. But whatever
the reason, I let it spill.

“My mom was like
I was after her death, in and out of foster care. But she went in
when she was eight. Her parents were heavy into drugs and she was
taken away. When she was sixteen, she was staying in a group home.
And so was Lex Keith.”

At this, Breaker's arm
shot out to turn off the stove, his brow raising. I guessed Lex's
history of being in the system wasn't widely known.

“And, believe it
or not, they became friends. My mom,” I said, running a hand
through my half-dry hair, “was really beautiful. Like... she
could have been a model if she had a different life. Maybe that's
what drew him to her. Or maybe it was her softness. She was always
way too nice for her own good. From what I could tell though, they
were only friends. He was like a big brother or mentor to her,
helping her get through the system. Who knows... maybe back then, Lex
wasn't the monster he turned out to be. From her story, he was
nothing but good to her.”

“Until,”
Breaker prompted, knowing the ball was about to drop.

“Until she was
twenty. Lex had been long gone from her life for like three years.
She had found a job at a diner, had a little apartment. She was
trying to get her life together. Then one night, in walks Lex. Older.
More sure of himself. And he walked right up to her and pulled her
out of the diner, told her she'd never have to work again. She was
going to go with him and he was going to take care of her.” I
shook my head, looking out the darkened window. “As you can
imagine, Lex's idea of taking care of someone was warped.”

“Alex, you don't
have to...”

“He took her back
to his house and he beat and he raped her,” I went on, needing
to get it out. “Not just that night. Every night. For years.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Like I said, she
was soft and sweet. And when he wasn't abusing her, he was providing
for her. So she was kind of trapped. Then he was you know... slowly
rising up in the ranks and I guess that stress made him more and more
vicious until one night, he beat her nearly unconscious and she went
to the hospital and got help. There was a detective who really went
out of his way for her, got her away, got her a safe place, helped
her try to get her life back on track.”

“Lex just... left
her alone?”

“I
think he just couldn't find her. She kept her head low. Eventually, I
think
he moved on to other targets. Since she
never filed charges, I guess he figured she wasn't worth any more of
his time.”

“She held on for
sixteen years?” Breaker asked, brows drawing together.

“Maybe it was for
me. A selfish part of me wants to believe that. That she was trying
to take care of me until I was old enough to take care of myself. It
could have been a part of it. Because she was doing okay. Not great.
She had trouble keeping jobs and making normal connections, but she
smiled and laughed. Maybe not daily. But she did it and it wasn't
forced. She sang to me. We had nothing, but we had each other and in
a lot of ways, it was enough. Anyway I think... I think there was
something that triggered her reaction that day. She was unstable, up
and down with her moods, leaning more toward paranoia than
depression, always terrified about something happening to me... but
she wasn't suicidal. I was at school so I don't know what she did
that day. She wasn't working. Maybe she was going to an interview or
something. I think she saw him. I think that's why she did it. She
saw him, she was worried he would come after her. Come after me
because of her. She couldn't live through that again. I understand
why she did it.”

“Oh, doll,”
he said, shaking his head, coming toward me until he was standing
between my legs again, his big hands going around my back and
crushing me to him.

It was different than
the hug earlier. The one I had given him, awkwardly putting an arm
around his shoulders. This was full contact. This was bodies touching
everywhere. This was him lending me some of his strength. And I
just... melted into it.

Who would have thought
that something as tame and workaday as a hug could feel so good?

I took a deep breath,
breathing him in, then slowly inched my way back, feeling
uncomfortable. Something was passing between us. I didn't know what
it was, but some pure, primal instinct told me to shut it down.

“So are you
feeding me or what?” I asked, attempting a small laugh.

Breaker looked down at
me, his brows drawn together for a moment before he stepped away.

He turned the potatoes
back on and peeked in on the steak. “So that's why you want to
take down Lex. For your mother.”

“That's how it
started, yeah. But it didn't take long for me to realize he has been
doing this for a long time to a lot of different women. Some he let
live. Many he killed. He killed my mother too in a way. It just took
him close to twenty years to do it. They all deserve a little
vengeance.”

“And you are
planning on doing it how? Through a computer screen?”

I chose to ignore the
hint of condescension in his tone and shrugged. “You'd be
surprised what you can find out from behind a screen. Like no matter
what business meeting he has going on, no matter how important the
people he is meeting with, he will take three cigarette breaks.
Alone. You pinpoint the right location and let the right people know
where it is and when they would have a clear shot...”

To this, he grunted and
gave me some chin lift thing that I didn't know quite how to
interpret.

“You can also
figure out the locations of all of his little torture camps. He and
two men behind a closed and soundproof door. Also a good opportunity
to catch him unaware. You could also find out who is in his pockets
and who isn't.” “Like the Mallicks. You knew they weren't
his pockets. That's why you put your stuff in a locker in Shane's
gym.”