The Token (#10): Shepard (14 page)

I swipe the hand towel over the mirror. Shocked eyes stare back.

A grumble begins again in my stomach.

Food.

My grin chases away the frailty at the edges of my expression.

Then sex.

I pick up a pile of casual clothes. Panties, bra, fresh yoga pants, and T-shirt. I hold them to my chest as I knot my towel underneath my armpits.

When I'm dried off and changed, I pad across the living room and into the kitchen. Following my nose, I walk through the pass-through. I’m assaulted by aromas that make me salivate, and I groan with anticipated pleasure.

Crystal wineglasses are set out and filled with a deep garnet liquid.

Filet mignon, dressed with bacon at its perimeter, rests in the center of old chipped plates with a design of giant pink cabbage roses across their middle. Fresh asparagus is coated with butter and lemon.

I open my mouth to tell him it's too much, that—I don't think—he didn't need to. But one look at his eyes tells me that fixing me this wonderful meal is more than just him feeding us.

It's him taking care of me.

I just have to decide that I can trust someone enough to allow it. Especially someone with Shepard's past.

He holds out his hand, and I take a deep inhale and meet him in the middle of the kitchen. I slip my hand into his.

He pulls me to him and kisses me thoroughly, deep and wet. He's neatly shelved my appetite again, and I softly laugh beneath his punishing lips.

His expression is puzzled as he pulls back. “
Quelle
?”

“You give my stomach amnesia.”

Shepard's smile is a quiet movement on his face. “Come.”

And I do.

Thorn

“Thorn!” He whirls as Tag jogs over to where Thorn's standing. Excitement is etched on every surface of his face.

“Time's of the essence—but I think I got something.” His voice is strained.

Thorn waits—Tag likes drama.

“There's a couple of rough locals who got their clocks cleaned.”

He lifts a shoulder.
So
? Thorn points a questioning look at Tag.

Tag grins. “It's the fucking
best
. The two of them got beat up by groceries.”

Thorn laughs despite his irritation, putting his hands on his hips. “Say what?”

Tag nods excitedly. “No shit. Some foreign dude—”

Thorn freezes.

Tag notices. “Yeah, man, it's gotta be our guy. Anyways, couple of retired geezers give him a hard time, don't take to just any flavor being in the area, if you get me?”

Thorn does.

“Called in the local vigilante gestapo to tap-dance on him—give him the fear of God or whatever bullshittery—and the foreign dude walloped them with, they figure, a jar of pickles. And other assorted sundries.” Tag smirks.

A laugh bursts outta Thorn. He can't help it. Bludgeoning by pickles.
Well, fuck me, I've heard it all.

“Cashier”—Tag grins, glancing at his notepad—“Emily”—he taps the paper with his finger—“she has a record of his groceries. He doesn't hold back on spending, has fine tastes.”

Thorn's hands curl into fists, his humor fading.

“Anyways”—Tag gives Thorn a hasty glance—“one of the vics has a jar-shaped bruise on his cheekbone and is currently getting reconstructive surgery on what's left of his nose.”

Thorn hesitates, the wheels of his mind spinning. He lifts his chin. “But no hand work?”

Tag shakes his head. “Nope. Guy was cool as a cucumber from what the witnesses say. Spun around like a hurricane and handed those guys their asses smoothly. Didn't touch them with his body.”

“So no direct connection to the murders of the men on I-90?”

“No,” Tag says with a grunt, his voice going low. “But I know it's this fucking Shepard. It's all too coincidental, too neat. Those guys were bad news too. Criminal motorcycle club. Nobody's going to search too hard.”

“This was sloppy,” Thorn comments, jerking a thumb toward the
Good Food
store standing at their backs.

“Not really. If ya think about it, this guy's pretty smart. He incapacitated them handily, but he didn't leave any DNA.” Tag shrugs.

“Yeah.” Thorn cups his chin, staring at the ground, getting more pissed off by the second. He jerks his head up. “The guys got maps?”

Tag yanks his jaw back, his lips twisting. “Pope shit in the woods?”

Thorn rolls his eyes. “I say we get a radius within, say, thirty miles and start searching for any structures.”

“On it.” Tag races back to the tight knot of Feds. Crossing state lines and shit. The feebies are on board whether they like it or not. The fedsʼ asses are so tight, they gotta shit diamonds.

He smirks, deciding to walk over there and flesh this fucking swine out of hiding.

He's close, Thorn can feel it.

Shepard's reprieve is nearly over.

*

La Famille

The men surround the small cabin in the woods, speaking in hushed French through their mics.

If Shepard could hear them, he would already be fortifying his defense—protecting the cherry.

Instead, he is intimately coiled around the property of
la famille
. And that stance, the new
roi
will not abide. A fresh face now leads
la famille,
and they had hoped to reacquire Shepard. But he'd been stubborn, leaving France and traveling to America to live amongst
the vulgar natives.

It was a bad choice—not to return to their flock.

Thomas makes a circular motion with a finger, and the five other men of
la famille
begin to move closer, using the thick woods as cover. The day wanes, twilight only an hour away, he'd estimate.

They will move then.

Shepard has killed his own. He will die for that transgression. Thomas and his associates will strip the house and take the woman.

His intel tells him the likelihood of Marissa Augustine's virginity being intact is less than zero.

Shepard always deflowers.

Always.

But she still has uses.

*

Shepard

I am pleased.

Happy with Marissa—with this place. I lay my fork on the plate, tines down, and smile at Marissa across the table.

My hand finds hers, and our laced fingers lay on top of my old family pictures. “I see you found something interesting.” My eyebrows give an amused lift as I use my free hand to take a final sip of wine.

“Yes. Why is your family”—she laughs—“in a cookie jar?”

I spin the wineglass by the stem, looking down at the ruby stain washing the bottom. “I have only just returned. Before—I would rarely visit America. My duties in France kept me busy.” Bitterness creeps into the words, though I made an effort to keep them at bay.

Our eyes meet.

“What made you that way, Léo?” she asks softly.

I glance down, having known this conversation would come. Hating the necessity of it. “There is nothing I can say that will make me into the hero you hope for.”

Marissa's chin kicks up. “I don't
want
a hero. But I want honesty. I care about you”—pink spreads across her cheekbones—“and we obviously combust together in the sack.”

I allow myself a moment of pride that I please her, and I cannot deny her words. Marissa appeals to the most basic part of my maleness. I desire her pleasure—to care for her. Worst of all, I feel a near-compulsion to protect her. That last frightens me more than everything else combined.

Yet at the same time, the emotion is invigorating. Vital. Pumping me full of the will to live instead of merely exist.

“I have been raped and beaten since the age of eight and a half.”

Her solemn eyes regard me. I unlatch our fingers, but she grabs at mine. I silently steal the strength that she lends.

Inhaling deeply, I let it out slowly. “When I began to look like a man, they no longer touched me.”

Tears trail her face, but she does not wipe them, clinging to my hands instead. “How old?” she asks.

The room feels thick, squalid. My exhale is a raw breath in the middle of the stillness. “Fourteen.”

Marissa sucks in a breath. “That's awful.”

I lift my chin, tilting my head and observing her horror as though what I confess happened to a stranger.

She shakes her head, as though trying to slough off the filth of my confession. “Why—
how
?”

“There is no
why
. My parents died, while I survived. My relatives were too distant to be concerned with my care, and I went to a public orphanage. However, it was not a regular orphanage but one in search of a specific type of boy.”

Her shoulders slump. “Let me guess. A boy who is bright, full of promise, good-looking.”

I nod. “Yes, I was all of that.”

“You never had a chance.”

She squeezes my hand—and squeezes the truth out as well.

“
Non
.”

“How did you survive?”

The same way you did,
I imagine.

I look at our hands. My knuckles are white from my grip on the edge of the table, my other hand holding hers.

My eyes begin burning, and my chest feels as though something has crushed it.

“Shepard,” Marissa says, her voice faraway.

My head becomes lighter, and I whisper, “I became someone else when they used me. I left—Léo was not there when they—” I cannot finish. I lift my hand, and it trembles.

Marissa releases my other hand and comes to me.

She lowers herself on my lap, and I spread my legs to accommodate hers between them. “You poor baby.” She brings both of her palms to cradle my face, and she raises it to look into her eyes.

“Get off me, Marissa.”

Fear strangles me. I cannot breathe—suffocating with her nearness, with the revelations of my past.

“No,” she says, gripping my face tighter.

I begin to shove her off, and she wraps her arms around my neck in a stranglehold. She will not let go, and I do not wish to hurt her.

“Let it out, Léo.”

I cannot.

“Do it—they can't hurt you anymore. It's me. And you. I'm here, and I'm not leaving you.”

Not. Leaving. You.

I breathe through the panic that steals my oxygen. After a solid minute, my hands find their way to creeping around her back.

When the sobs come, I feel as though I'm breaking in her arms.

Marissa is stronger than I knew. She doesn't let a single piece of me fall.

*

I kiss each one of her knuckles, smelling her delicious juices on my chin from the moments before when I devoured her.

I was relentless, eating her until she screamed her orgasms into the room so loudly they echoed.

“God—how do you do that—with your
tongue
?” she asks in a thready whisper, flopping back breathlessly, her eyes on the ceiling.

I begin to kiss up her arm. “Practice makes perfect, is that not what you Americans say?”

She gives me an amused smile, barely turning her head to look at me. “I don't think that expression is meant for what you just did to me.”

“Perhaps not.” I finally reach her face, hovering above her mouth, and she caresses the back of my hair.

“I think I love you, Léo.”

I become a statue above her.

My former wife never told me she loved me. My parents who died over two decades ago might have—though I do not remember.

Marissa's words gut me.

Not because I do not like them but because I might feel the same way as she.

I cannot love a cherry in a handful of days. In this circumstance. It is not real—but surreal.

Yet these feelings Marissa provokes inside me are not unfamiliar, but they are unprecedented when combined with romance.

I had a kind of love for Juliette. Enough love to let her go. I loved my parents. But corpses do not reciprocate.

Marissa might very well be my first true love.

I press my forehead against hers, breathing in her confession. I want her to take it back.

I want to hear it again.

“You don't have to say you love me, Léo. Actually, you never have to say it. You loving me isn't going to change whether I love you. It just is.”

My hands fist the sheets next to her head. Her words are true, and they surface my feelings.

“I do not know if I can love anyone. I do not know if I am capable... of loving.”

She lays her hand on my bare chest, right above my rapidly beating heart.

“
I
think you are.”

Opening my eyes, I dare to let my feelings fill them. “Perhaps”—I sweep a stray kinked tendril from her face—“with you, all things are possible.”

She smiles. The happiness touches her eyes. “Definitely.”

A tentative smile seats on my face.

Then a booming crash sounds from the front, and I leap off Marissa.

Her nudity spears me, but I am steady under pressure and chaos. “Get dressed. Inside the bathroom is a trapdoor underneath the rug. Use it.”

Marissa lurches to her feet, picking up her clothing as she runs to the small bath.

I follow, and she moves aside. After tearing off the lid on the commode tank, I remove my illegal automatic weapon out of hiding and pry the extra clip from the back of the porcelain. Adhesive remains from the duct tape.

Marissa grabs my forearm over the bundle of her clothes, her eyes wide, narrowly missing the wound she gave me with her teeth.

One of her beautiful nipples is erect, peeking out over the top of the clothing, and I close my eyes against the image.

What if we cannot be together again? What if this is the last time I feast on her beauty?

Why could I not tell her how I truly felt? My eyes open.

“Is it them?”

I nod. Another answer does not make sense. “
Oui,
” I say into the hush of the room.

Tears hover at the corners of her eyes, scattering with her movement as she whips the rug off the top of the door installed integrally into the bathroom floor. A looped handle is flush with a divot carved out of the latch in the center of the square doorway.