Reaper's Property (3 page)
Authors: Joanna Wylde
“Just Picnic. Thanks again for the food.”
Horse stood.
“I’ll walk you out to your car,” he said,
his voice low and rumbly. Jeff’s eyes opened wide, and he jerked his head, then
stilled. Picnic smirked at me knowingly.
“Take your time, we can wait,” he said to
Horse, reaching down and pulling my keys out of his pocket, tossing them to me.
I walked out into the warm sun of the late-summer evening, Horse following me.
He snagged my hand, leading me to the table. My heart raced with every step. I
had no idea what was about to happen, but part of me really wanted him to touch
me.
Maybe.
Probably not.
Shit.
Horse tucked his hands under my arms,
popping me up onto the table. Then he slid them down my sides, wedging them between
my legs and pushing my knees gently apart. He stepped between them and leaned
into me.
I’m pretty sure I came close to stroking
out.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I
said, glancing back at the house, heart hammering. Jeff wouldn’t like it. Horse
was dangerous. I could smell it on him. Seriously. Under the delicious scent of
leather, light sweat and man was a pungent strain of pure trouble. “I mean,
everyone is waiting for you, right? I can just go, let’s just forget this,
okay?”
He didn’t say anything, just studying me
with that cool, expressionless face of his.
“That how you gonna play it, sweet butt?”
“I’m not your sweet butt,” I snapped,
narrowing my eyes. I hated getting called things like that. Gary did it all the
time. Why did they keep calling me that?
To hell with him and to hell with Gary too.
Men.
“Fuck off,” I said, glaring at him.
Horse gave a bark of laughter, the sound
sudden and loud in the silence, which pulled me back to reality. His hands
tucked around my waist, jerking me into his body where my crotch immediately
came up against what had to be a pretty healthy erection.
He swiveled his hips into mine, slowly
dragging it up and across my clit. I’m ashamed to admit that I creamed my pants
right then and there instead of kicking him in the nuts like a sensible girl.
He leaned over and I held my breath, waiting for him to kiss me. Instead he
whispered in my ear.
“Nice ass. Sweet. Butt.”
I didn’t like his tone, so I bit his ear.
Hard.
He jumped back, and I wondered if he was
going to kill me. Instead he started laughing so hard I thought he might pull a
muscle. I scowled, and he held up his arms to each side in pointed surrender.
“I get it, hands off,” he said, shaking his
head, bemused. “Play it the way you like. And you’re right, we’ve got business.
Go drive for an hour, that should be enough time.”
I slid off the table and darted around him.
He trailed me as I went to my car. I opened the door and almost got in, then
the same stupid streak of curiosity that’d caused me trouble all my life
drowned out my sense of self-preservation. I stopped in the doorway, looking at
him across the roof.
“Horse isn’t your real name, is it?”
He smiled at me, his teeth white in the
darkness, like a wolf’s.
“Road name,” he replied, leaning against
the roof of my car. “That’s the way things work in my world. Citizens have
names. We have road names.”
“What does that mean?”
“People give them to you when you start
riding,” he said casually. “They can mean all kinds of things. Picnic got his
name because he went all out planning some pansy-assed picnic for a bitch who
had him twisted up in knots. She ate his food and drank his booze, then called
her fuckwad boyfriend to come and pick her up while he took a leak.”
I grimaced at his crudity, trying to
understand.
“That seems…unpleasant. Why would he want
to remember that?”
“Because when the fuckwad showed up, Picnic
shoved his head through a picnic table.”
I caught my breath. That didn’t sound good.
I wanted to ask if the guy had been all right but decided I probably didn’t
want to know the answer.
“And Max?”
“When he gets drunk, sometimes his eyes go
all wide and he looks fuckin’ crazy, like Mad Max.”
“I see,” I replied, thinking about the man.
I guess he did look sort of like Mad Max… I decided I didn’t want to see him
drunk.
Silence hung heavy between us.
“So aren’t you gonna ask?”
I studied him, narrowing my eyes. I had a
bad feeling about this. But the words came out of my mouth, completely beyond
my control.
“So why are you called Horse?”
“’Cause I’m hung like one,” he replied,
smirking.
I dropped down into my car and slammed the
door shut. I heard him laughing through the open window as I peeled out of the
driveway.
“I’m so sorry, sis,” Jeff said, the words
muffled from his bloody, swollen lips.
Was he missing a tooth?
I looked
around the room, unable to believe that these men—two of whom I’d cooked for,
one of whom I’d done a lot more than cooking for—were actually threatening to
kill my brother. Could this really be happening?
Picnic looked right at me and winked.
“Little brother’s been a bad boy,” he said.
“He’s been stealing from us. You know anything about that?”
I shook my head quickly. A bag fell off my
arm, apples bouncing out and rolling across the floor. One of them hit Horse’s
foot. He didn’t glance down, just maintained that cool, thoughtful expression
I’d seen on his face so many times. It frustrated me—I wanted to scream at him
to show some fucking emotions. I knew he had them. Unless that had been a lie
too.
Oh. My. God.
My brother knelt in the middle of our
crappy living room, bleeding and awaiting execution, and all I could think
about was me and Horse. What the hell was wrong with me?
“I don’t understand,” I said quickly,
looking at Jeff’s puffy, bruising face, silently pleading with him to burst out
laughing at the big joke they were playing on me.
Jeff didn’t start laughing. In fact, his
breath rattled through the room like a movie sound effect.
How badly was he
hurt?
“He’s supposed to be working for us,”
Picnic said. “He’s pretty good with that little laptop of his. But instead of
working he’s been playing at the casino with our fucking money. Now he has the
balls to tell me that he’s lost the money and
can’t pay us back.”
He punctuated the last four words with jabs
of his pistol’s thick, round barrel into the back of Jeff’s neck.
“You got fifty grand on you?” Horse asked
me, his voice cool and casual. I shook my head, feeling dizzy. Oh, shit, this
was why Jeff had tried to get me to ask Gary for money… But fifty grand?
Fifty
grand?
I couldn’t believe it.
“
He stole fifty thousand dollars?
”
“Yup,” Horse said. “And if it doesn’t get
paid back right now, his options are limited.”
“I thought you were friends,” I whispered,
looking from him to Jeff.
“You’re a sweet kid,” Picnic said. “But you
don’t get who we are. There’s the club and everyone else, and this stupid
fucker is
not
part of the club. You fuck with us, we will fuck you back.
Harder. Always.”
Jeff’s mouth trembled and I saw tears well
up in his eyes. Then he wet his pants, a dark stain spreading between his legs
pitifully.
“Shit,” said the guy with the mohawk and
skull tats. “I fucking hate it when they piss themselves.”
He looked down at Jeff and shook his head.
“You don’t see your sister pissing herself,
do you? What a little bitch,” he said, disgusted.
“Are you going to kill us?” I asked Picnic,
trying to think. I needed to make him see me as human, they said that on all
the TV shows about serial killers. He had two girls, I’d even seen their
pictures. I needed to remind him of his family, of the fact that he was human
and not some kind of Reaper monster. “I mean, would you really kill people you
shared pictures of your daughters with? One of them is about my age, isn’t she?
Can’t we work something out? Maybe we can make payments or something.”
Horse snorted and shook his head.
“You don’t get it, sweetie, this isn’t just
about money,” he said. “We could give a shit about the money. This is about
respect and stealing from the club. We let this pissant fuck get away with it,
they’ll all start doing it. We don’t let stuff like this slide. Ever. He pays
with blood.”
I closed my eyes, feeling my own tears well
up.
“Jeff, why?” I whispered, shivering.
“I wasn’t planning to lose it,” he replied,
his voice cracked and hopeless. “I thought I could win it back, make it up
somehow. Or that maybe I could hide it in the wire transfers…”
“Shut the fuck up,” Picnic said, smacking
the side of his head with his free hand. “You don’t talk club business. Even
when you’re about to die.”
I whimpered, feeling myself start to
tremble.
“There’s another way,” Horse said to me,
still casual. “Paying in blood can mean different things.”
“He doesn’t need to die for that to
happen,” I said, thinking quickly. “Maybe you could burn down our trailer!”
I smiled at him encouragingly. Fuck the
trailer, I wanted Jeff safe. And me. Oh shit, if they killed Jeff they’d have
to kill me too.
I was a witness.
Fuckity fuck fuck fuck!
“Oh, we’re gonna do that no matter what,”
he drawled. “But that’s not blood. I can think of something that is though.”
“What?” Jeff asked, his voice full of
desperate hope. “I’ll do anything, I swear. If you give me a chance I’ll crack
so many accounts for you, you won’t believe what we can accomplish. I’ll stop
smoking, that’ll clear my head, I’ll do a better job…”
His voice trailed off as Horse laughed, and
the mohawk guy shook his head and grinned at Picnic.
“You believe this asshole?” he asked.
“Seriously, douche, you aren’t making a very good case for yourself, telling us
just how much you been slacking.”
Jeff whimpered. I wanted to go to him, to
hold him and comfort him, but I was too scared.
Horse stretched his neck, dipping his head
to each side, and then cracked his knuckles like he was warming up for a fight.
Kind of made me think of an episode of
The Sopranos
, which would have
been funny as hell if I didn’t happen to know how that episode ended.
“Let’s get a couple of things clear,” Horse
said after a pause that lasted approximately ten years. “We’re not going to
hurt you, Marie.”
“You aren’t?” I asked, not sure if I
believed him. Jeff listened anxiously, blinking rapidly against the moisture in
his eyes. I watched as a trickle of sweat rolled down his forehead, making a
track through the still-oozing blood.
“Nope,” Horse said. “You didn’t do anything
wrong, we aren’t pissed at you. This isn’t about you. You’ll keep your mouth
shut about this if you want to survive, and you’re smart enough to know that.
That’s not why you’re here.”
“Why am I here?”
“So you can see just how seriously fucked
your brother is,” he replied. “Because we’re going to kill him if he doesn’t
find a way to pay us back. I think he might be able to pull it off with the
proper motivation.”
“I will,” Jeff babbled. “I’ll pay you back
all of it, thank you so much—”
“No, you’ll pay us back twice as much,
fuckwad,” Picnic said, kicking him viciously in the side with his heavy leather
boot. Jeff pitched to the floor, keening in pain, and I flinched. “That’s if we
let you live, which is entirely up to your sister. If it weren’t for her you’d
be dead already.”
My eyes flew to Picnic’s face. I had no
idea what he was talking about, but I’d do anything to save Jeff. Anything at
all. He was the only real family I had left, and while he was a dumbass, he was
also a sweetheart who truly loved me.
“I’ll do it,” I said quickly.
Horse snorted, his eyes wandering down my
body, lingering on my boobs, then trailing back up to my face. I realized the
rest of the groceries had fallen to the floor and my fists were clenched tightly.
“Don’t you want to ask what it is first?”
he said dryly.
“Um, sure,” I said, studying him. How could
such a beautiful man be so cruel? I’d felt how gentle his hands could be, where
was this coming from? Real people, people who laughed and shared meals
together, didn’t act this way. Not in my world. “What do I have to do?”
“It seems Horse here wants a house mouse,”
Picnic said. I looked at him blankly. He shot an annoyed look at Horse. “She’s
clueless, you sure about this? Seems like work to me.”
Mohawk guy smirked as Horse narrowed his
eyes at Picnic. Tension filled the room and I realized that contrary to what I
would have thought, things could probably get a lot worse pretty fast. What if
they turned on each other? Then Picnic shrugged.
“This is your option,” Horse said to me
abruptly. “You want to keep dumbass alive, pack a bag and climb on my bike when
we leave. You do what I tell you, when I tell you, no questions and no
bitching.”
“Why?” I asked blankly.
“So you can cook dessert for me,” he snapped.
Mohawk man burst out laughing. My mouth dropped open—all this for dessert? I
knew he liked sweets, but I didn’t get it. Horse shook his head at me, wearing
that frustrated look he got around me sometimes, like he thought I was a crazy
woman.
“Why the hell do you think?” he said, voice
strained. “So I can fuck you.”
My phone buzzed. I grabbed it to find a
message from Jeff.
Krissys 2nite. Dont wait up
If a text could give a shit-eating grin,
this one would do it. I shook my head and laughed silently, shoving my phone
back into my pocket. Jeff was getting laid tonight and feeling pretty pleased
about it.
That worked out nicely for me too.
It was the end of the day and only three
kids were left on the playground. Gabby had started cleaning already so closing
would be easy, and now I would have the trailer to myself. I decided I’d stop
and get a Redbox video on the way home, and maybe some ice cream. Life was a
lot better now that I’d gotten my first paycheck. When the last kid left, I
checked with Gabby and discovered the cleaning was all done, as I’d suspected.
We waved goodbye to each other and I went out to my car. The Redbox was outside
of Walmart, which was busy this time of night but not busy enough for me to give
up on the ice cream. I settled on slow-churned French silk, which I assumed was
practically a health food because the package said it had half the fat and
one-third fewer calories than the regular kind. This, combined with the Johnny
Depp flick in my purse, almost guaranteed an orgasmic evening.
My mood just kept improving as I drove
home.
One of my favorite dance songs came on the
radio, which kicked ass because I didn’t have a plug for an iPod or even a CD
player in my little junker (thus the Def Leppard incident when the Reapers had
come to call). I almost got caught behind a slow-moving farm truck, but they
pulled off to let me by. I car-danced my way down our long driveway through the
orchard to find a single low-slung, black motorcycle parked outside the house.
Not part of the plan.
I got out of the car and looked around
cautiously but didn’t see anyone. Nobody near the table, nobody in the folding
chairs I’d set out in the newly cleared lawn area (I couldn’t call it a lawn in
good conscience).
What the hell?
I walked cautiously to the front door,
clutching my cell phone like a weapon. What I planned to do with it I wasn’t
sure, because if a murderer was waiting inside I wouldn’t exactly have time to
call for help. I debated getting back in my car and driving away, but part of
me wondered if Horse had come back. You know which part—that little nub between
my legs, the bitch. The door swung open at a touch and I found Horse sitting at
my counter, texting, all muscular and tattooed and incredibly hot.
I opened my mouth then snapped it shut.
“You need to get better locks,” Horse said
casually. “It took me about ten seconds to get in here.”
I shook my head, looking around the room,
although I had no idea what I was looking for. Some kind of magical leprechaun
to jump out and explain what the hell was going on?
“I’m here to see Jeff,” he said, setting
down his phone. “He’s got something for me. Where is he?”
“He’s off with some girl,” I replied, still
dazed. “Her name is Krissy, he said he’d be late. I’ll try calling him.”
He watched as I dialed Jeff. Straight to
voicemail. I sent a text, hoping he was just busy and didn’t want to answer.
More nothing. I looked at Horse and shrugged.
“I don’t think his phone is on,” I said. “I
can let him know you came by though.”
Horse gave a short, harsh laugh that had
nothing to do with humor.
“I rode three and a half hours to see him,”
he replied. “He knew I was coming.”
I smiled weakly.
“Um, you know he’s a great guy, but he
smokes out a lot and can be kind of forgetful…”
Horse narrowed his eyes.
“I’ll wait.”
I didn’t know how to deal with that, so I
decided to put away the ice cream. Then my stomach growled audibly. I’d planned
on eating a sandwich, but it felt weird not to offer him something.
“You want an omelet?” I asked, figuring
everyone loves breakfast for dinner.
“Sounds good,” he replied. “Beer?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, opening the fridge. I
was kind of surprised he hadn’t just helped himself, considering he’d already
broken into the place. I handed him a bottle and started on the omelet. I’d
made some cinnamon rolls last week and froze half of them, so I pulled those
out too, along with a frozen thing of orange juice concentrate.
I glanced up to watch him taking a long
pull on his bottle, eyes following me, throat muscles working as he swallowed.
I could lick right from that little dip at the base of his throat up to his
jawline…
Maybe not juice, I decided. Now
I
needed a beer.
Horse just watched me as I cooked, not
saying anything, which creeped me out and turned me on at the same time.
“What kind of work are you guys doing with
Jeff?” I asked.
“That’s club business,” he replied. “Don’t
ask questions like that, you’ll get yourself in trouble.”
Noted. So much for conversation.
The omelet was done and I’d microwaved the
rolls, so I dished up for both of us, thinking of my movie wistfully. I didn’t
get to watch movies very often and it wasn’t like I’d invited Horse over. But I
had the feeling he might not be quite as into Johnny Depp as me. Should I bring
it up? He decided for me, sitting down on the couch and grabbing the remote.
“You coming?”
“Um, yeah,” I replied, following him into
the living room. I planned on taking the armchair, but he patted the couch next
to him with an air of challenge.
Never could resist a challenge.
He clicked through channels, stopping on
another one of those fights with the big cage. I sighed and decided I wouldn’t
share my ice cream with him.
“You don’t like MMA?” he asked, taking a
bite of his cinnamon roll.
“Not really,” I replied, leaning back into
the cushions.
He nodded.
“Lotta chicks don’t,” he replied. “But a
lot do. All those sweaty bodies, you know?”
He glanced over at me, the slightest trace
of humor in his eyes, and I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or not. I
decided to just go to my room and eat there, but he reached out a hand to catch
my arm, stopping me.
“What’s the problem?”
“I’m tired,” I said. “And I know you have
business with Jeff and I’m really sorry he flaked on you, but I don’t have the
energy for this.”
“This?”
I waved a hand around, encompassing him,
the TV, etcetera.
“This,” I said. “I don’t understand if
you’re teasing me or not and it’s confusing. And you took the remote.”
He shrugged.
“So you pick what we watch,” he replied
lightly. “It’s not that big a deal, Marie.”
He handed over the clicker, giving me a
smile that actually reached his eyes. I studied him—this was a new side to
Horse and I liked it. He was still a big, tough bad guy (or at least not a good
guy, I was pretty sure of that) but he honestly seemed relaxed and ready to let
me out of whatever little mind game he was playing.
“Actually, I got a Redbox movie,” I said
after a pause. “It’s the new Johnny Depp.”
He smirked but gestured magnanimously
toward the screen.
“Pop it in.”
Unexpectedly, watching the movie with him
was fun. During a fight scene he told me why it wouldn’t have worked in real
life (sort of scary that he knew so much about hand-to-hand combat), but he
didn’t tease me or anything during the sex scenes. When it ended we ordered
another one on PPV. This time I let him pick, and to his credit he went for a
thriller with a touch of romance that looked good to both of us without even
pausing to scope out the porn. About halfway through I started getting a little
cold, so I got up and grabbed a blanket. I figured I might as well share my ice
cream too, so I filled bowls for both of us. When he finished he grabbed the
bowls, set them on the table and pulled me across his lap, then sort of rolled
over until he could lie back on the couch with me and my blanket on top of him.
I didn’t protest. He felt good, and while
one hand rubbed up and down my back slowly, he didn’t cop a feel, which made me
feel safe. In fact, I really didn’t want to get up or even acknowledge how much
I was enjoying being held.
A man’s arms around me felt good.
In fact, they felt so good I fell asleep.
That woke me right up.
Horse lay in bed with me. I didn’t have any
pants on, just my shirt and panties. No bra. I brushed my leg against his to
discover he didn’t have pants either, and I felt his giant, erect penis poking
my ass.
“Horse” indeed.
It’s just morning wood,
I told myself.
He’s probably not even awake.
“Good morning, sweet butt,” he whispered in
my ear, the warmth of his breath sending blood straight to my naughty bits. His
words annoyed me though. Opting for the safer emotion, annoyance, I tried
wrenching away from him. He hardly noticed my attempt, which bugged me even
more.
“Don’t call me that,” I muttered sulkily.
“Who calls a woman that?”
He laughed, the sound low and warm in my
ear.
“You don’t really want to know,” he
replied, kissing the back of my neck and reaching down with one hand to press
against my stomach. My panties went moist, and I wiggled against his big tool,
wondering if I’d lost my mind.
Body and brain fighting for control, winner
take all.
“Wait,” I said, brain pulling ahead for the
moment. “What do you mean I don’t want to know? I want to know.”
“You don’t want to know,” he repeated. “It
doesn’t matter.”
“If it doesn’t matter, why won’t you tell
me?”
In answer, he slid his hand lower, catching
the hem of my shirt and pulling it up, running the tips of his rough, calloused
fingers across my belly. Oh very nice… My brain decided we could talk about the
sweet butt thing another time. I squirmed my rear and he flexed his hips,
rubbing his now-epic erection against the crack of my ass. His hand moved
north, cupping my breast, plucking at the nipple as he kissed the back of my
neck.
“Oh shit…” I murmured. “That feels amazing,
Horse.”
“Just getting started, babe,” he murmured.
He sucked my earlobe into his mouth and I moaned. My brain switched off
entirely, ceding control to my body, which wanted him inside me.
Immediately.
I turned and slid down so my back lay flat
on the bed, wrapping my hand around his neck and pulling his mouth down to
mine. He’d been tender so far, so I didn’t exactly expect what happened next.
He took my mouth hard and fast, rolling on
top of me and wedging between my legs. I opened for him and he thrust his
tongue in forcefully, plunging it in and out as his hips started grinding
against mine. Just two layers of thin fabric separated us as his cock smashed
against my clit, almost brutal in intensity. I shivered, lust and desire
bursting through me, trying to see if I could lift my hips and move with him.
In the process I accidentally pushed against his chest, which he apparently
interpreted as me trying to push him away.
Horse pulled away from my mouth and
growled, eyes dark with desire and a need so strong I froze. He looked like an
animal in heat, a point his hard prick seemed to be determined to impress in
its own way.
“I’m in charge here, don’t forget it,” he
stated.
I nodded, mesmerized. I didn’t complain as
he reared up just enough to rip my shirt up and over my head, taking my arms
with it. Instead of pulling it off all the way, he tangled it around my wrists,
holding them captive with one strong hand above my head as he slid lower, mouth
taking my nipple and sucking it in deep. Sensation exploded through me and I
moaned. Loud. Aching emptiness grew between my legs and I imagined him
thrusting into my body, stretching me open wide as he took his pleasure.
Horse fumbled at his waist with his free
hand, sliding down his boxers. Then he thrust his hips between mine again. Oh
shit, that felt so good. Now his cock head pressed right against my slit
through my panties instead of stroking the length along my clit. This created a
whole new sensation as the thin fabric stretched against the unbearable
pressure, actually pushing into my body with the tip of his cock before the
fabric stopped up.
I bucked against him, desperate for more.
He pulled his head up from my breast and
leaned up and over me, still holding my hands captive. I twisted, aching and
raw.
“Fuck me, you’re a hot piece of ass,” he
muttered. I closed my eyes, trying to catch him with my hips, whimpering for
him to take me.
“Hold your hands over your head or you’ll
pay,” he ordered, pinning me with his intense, green gaze.
“Okay,” I said, more than willing to do
anything he asked. I hadn’t felt this turned-on in forever, hovering within
spitting distance of the Big O in less than five minutes.
It had never been like this with Gary.
Horse let my hands go, sliding lower,
rubbing his nose along my belly as I twisted, then his hands caught the sides
of my panties and tugged them down. I kicked one foot free, spreading my legs
wide. He didn’t hesitate, latching on to my clit with his mouth as he thrust
two fingers into me hard. No warning, no preparation, just the rough pads of
his fingers attacking my G-spot.
Goddamn. This was better than my special
pink vibrator, the one with two heads and the wiggly thing. My body stiffened
and I grunted, toes curling. It was right there, just out of reach.
He pulled his mouth away and laughed.
