The Condemned (38 page)

    
Amato closed his eyes, leaned his head back, both of his hands in her hair, gentle this time, caressing her as she worked him; licking, sucking. When she blew lightly on him he shuddered and moaned
,
and then she took him back inside her mouth, pulling him close, his hands moving with her head as she quickened, sliding along his length, her tongue constantly moving.

He grunted, clenching his fists,
and then he was pumping into her, filling her mouth and throat with his seed. Leci moaned, swallowing as he came
,
and then used her tongue to lick him clean. Amato looked down at her, a wide grin on his face, his chin
was
covered in blood.

     
‘Good girl.’

    
He hooked his hands beneath her arms and lifted her
to her feet,
into his embrace, Leci smiled, closing her eyes and resting her head on his shoulder.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, until their heartbeats had slowed to a normal
pace, they had both caught their breath,
and then Leci disentangled herself and got dressed.

    
She looked up at the bed and smiled.

     
‘Remind me why we bothered paying extra for that?’

    
He laughed and stepped back into his pants.

Chapter 35

Leci had found a few clean
-
ish pieces of folded clot
h tucked down at the bottom of Amato’s
pack, Bitsy must ha
ve put them there. She used the last of her water, some she had gathered from a stream a day ago and stored in an empty bottle plastic bottle that she had found along the roadside, to clean Amato’s wounds the best she could. His lip didn’t look too bad once the blood was wiped away, only her front two teeth had gone all the way through, the rest had
just
left angry red crescents below his lip.

    
The marks on his shoulder were little more than deep scratches, shallow gouges. She kissed them better and he flinched but smiled at her.

     
‘So, how do we do this?’ She asked, referring to the reason they were here at all.

     
‘We head out into town, see if we can spot them anywhere. How many bars are there here? Just the one?’

    
She shook her head.
‘No, I remember two. This is the one I saw them in both times though.’

     
‘If they’re still here
,
chances are they’ll still be drinkin’ at the same spot. Old habits die hard.’

    
Leci felt her gut clench, it was drawing closer and
closer, the moment she had been waiting for.

     
‘Amato looked at her. ‘You didn’t see them earlier, when we came in?’

     
‘No... I wasn’t looking, I was just keeping my head down.’

    
He looked slightly irritated by this but chose not to say anything. She was relieved, she knew she should be paying attention, it had just been a shock to the system to find herself here again was all, and she hadn’t been able to concentrate on much else at the time.

     
‘We’ll check out downstairs, if we can’t find them we’ll have a look round the rest of town. We can hang around until dark, some types don’t crawl out of the woodwork until later on, so we can have another check
a
round. If they’re not here, we may aswell stay the night, the room is paid for and it’ll be good to sleep in a bed instead of on the ground listening to you snore, then-‘

     
‘I do not snore!’ She interrupted.

    
Amato raised an eyebrow coolly.

     
‘Yes, yes you do.’

     
‘Nu-uh,
you
snore. You’re so loud you can probably hear yourself.’

    
Amato shook his head, looking amused.

     
‘Then in the morning we’ll head out and move onto the next town, and the next, and the next, until we find those
sons of bitches.’

     
‘You don’t think they’ll be here?’

    
I dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘It seems as likely a place as any other and since you never checked it seems like the best place to start.’

     
‘We could get things done a whole lot quicker if we split up.’ She suggested.

    
Amato didn’t even consider the idea, he shook his head firmly.
‘No chance.’

     
‘Why not?’

     
‘Why not? What happens if they
are
down there, if they see you first and I’m not there to protect you?’

    
She blinked at him. Had he forgotten what she could do?

    
As if to make her point she sent a wave of heat through the
piece of
cloth he held in his hand. He dropped it to the floor and stamped it out as it erupted in flames, then scowled at her, Leci smiled sweetly and feigned innocence.

     
‘That doesn’t mean anything. What if they come at you from behind with a gun, shoot you in the back of the head before you even know they’re there?’

     
‘Well... Ok, but, what use would you be if that happened?’ She countered.

     
‘I’ll be watching out for you, no one is gonna get close enough to try anything like that if I’m there.’

     
‘Fine.’ She sulked. ‘They wouldn’t do that anyway
though.’

     
‘Really? What makes you so sure?’

     
‘It’s been five years, they probably don’t even remember me, chances of them recognising me are pretty low
,
and if they did they wouldn’t kill me. Why bother? What kind of a threat do they think I am to them? They already know I’m not strong enough to defend myself, or at least, they don’t think I am. They’d be lookin’ for some more fun, they might kill me but it wouldn’t be until later on
,
and by then they’d be charcoal.’

    
He shook his head again, his lips set in a firm line and she knew the subject wasn’t open for debate or negotiations.

     
‘Alright, fine. And what if we find them?’

    
He looked confused, as though the question made no sense to him.

     
‘How do we go about it? What happens?’ She elaborated.

    
Amato shrugged.
‘We’ll deal with that if it comes to it. I suppose the first thing to do would be to get them alone somewhere, nice and quiet.’ He looked around the room and she had a pretty good idea what he was thinking. She just didn’t know how he planned to achieve it, then his gaze shifted to her, he looked thoughtful and contemplative, Leci narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

     
‘What?’ She prompted, a little nervously.

     
‘It makes sense to get them up here. We won’t be disturbed, got the place all to ourselves.’

     
‘Yeah, and?’

     
‘And... They’re not likely to follow
me
up here, are they?’

    
Leci’s mouth fell open slowly and she stared at him in disbelief as she realised what he was getting at.

     
‘You’re kidding me, right?’

    
He responded with a shake of the head.

     
‘I don’t like it any more than you do
,
baby, but it might be our best shot, you said yourself they probably won’t even remember you.’

    
She wasn’t sure whether to be angry, hurt or pleased. Angry that he was willing to put her in a dangerous situation, hurt that he clearly considered her as someone who could easily be mistaken for a hooker, or pleased that he trusted her with the responsibility. She thought about it a little while and decided to go for indignant.

     
‘So,
let me get this straight,
we can’t split up to look for them because I can’t take care of myself, but it’s ok for me to lure them back here alone when they’ve been promised a free ride? Wouldn’t it just be easier for me to torch ‘em when we find ‘em?’

     
‘You know it wouldn’t. You do that and right away the Officials know you’re still alive. When you do it you need to leave nothing at all, no evidence to show how they died, because if there’s the slightest sign that they got burned
then the whole thing was for nothing
,
and you’re back to being top of the most wanted list. We leave nothing at all then people are just gonna think they left town. It’s safer for us, people leave town all the time, no one will care, no one will even notice.’

    
Leci frowned.

    
He was right and she knew it but that didn’t mean she had to like his plan.

    
Besides, if she were doing things her own way she’d have chosen to get them somewhere far away, out in the middle of the desert maybe, anywhere really that was away from other people. Someplace no one would hear them scream...

She didn’t want it to end quickly for them, killing them instantly seemed somehow merciful, too kind in comparison to the pain they had put her through. She wanted to make them suffer, wanted to hurt them badly, hear their screams and their pleas. She wanted them to beg her for their lives the way she had begged for Xavian’s.

    
She didn’t complain about having this stolen from her because she knew it had always been an unlikely scenario anyway. Even if she did ever find these men she’d never manage to get them somewhere so secluded that she could take her time with them, do exactly what she wanted.

    
Still, there were other ways she could make them suffer
,
and she’d make damn sure she did the best job she could.

     
‘Where will you be?’ She asked him.

     
‘The second you see anyone you recognise I’ll come up here. I’ll be waiting. You won’t be alone with them
,
baby, I won’t let them hurt you.’ He smiled reassuringly and pulled her gently into his arms, touching his lips to hers softly, tenderly, kissing her lovingly despite the pain it must be causing him with his injured lip.

    
She couldn’t help but feel her doubts melt away.

    
She teetered close to the edge of admitting to herself that she may have stronger feelings for him than she had been willing to allow herself, almost opened her mouth and told him she loved him
,
but didn’t, was too afraid that by saying those words she would be cursing him, damning him.

Besides, she didn’t know if it was true or not and she didn’t want to lie to him; he was in love with her, he had been painfully honest about that and she knew he was being truthful.

    
He had waited patiently for four years, just for the chance to be close to her, he had risked, and lost, everything trying to free her. She knew that some large part of that was brought about by his guilt at having been the one who had put her there in the first place
,
but she didn’t think that made the sentiment any less genuine.

    
He had come after her when she had run away, he wasn’t willing to lose her, wasn’t going to let her slip through his
fingers.

Knowing that gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. He told her he would protect her and she believed him. What made it mean more to her was that Xavian had looked out for her through duty, a sense of family, taking care of his kid sister.
Amato was indebted to her in no way, not really, you could maybe argue that he owed her four years of her life but she wasn’t picky enough to hold that against him. He was free to stand up and leave her to her own devices any time he wanted. The fact that he clearly had no intention of doing that was what told her that this was real
,
and she wanted to be able to return that, wanted to be able to give him what he needed from her.

    
She had been naive enough to think that sleeping with him would satisfy him, that he had been fooling himself about his feelings or, more likely, that he had been trying to fool her in an effort to get what he wanted. She knew many men thought they needed to do that, assure a woman he loved her before she’d let him touch her; Leci had never held any credence to the notion of love
,
so it had never bothered her. She preferred not to hear those words.