by K. Webster
Twenty-one.
“Cole,” I murmur, tossing my book to the floor.
He always sits on the end of the couch watching me. As though my presence alone entertains him. “Mmm?”
“I forgot my birthday.” I let out a laugh, but then tears prickle at my eyes. “Who forgets their own birthday? I’ve been counting down to this one in particular for years.”
He smiles crookedly and boyishly at me. “Happy belated birthday, Natalie Dusana. What would you like to do for your birthday?”
His light mood is infectious. “We can do something?”
“You bet your ass we’re going to do something. Question is, what?”
“I want to go to the movies.”
He smirks. “I can make that happen.”
“Your last name…it’s different from your mother’s,” he says as we juggle our snacks on our way to see a romantic comedy.
I stop and look over at him. In his black hoodie and ball cap flipped backward, he seems so young. So untouched by hate and violence. His brown eyes probe mine like we’re on a first date and he’s trying to get to know me. I’ve been denied of such simple things like dates and boyfriends. My life has been a prison. Now that I’ve been freed, by my monster, I realize he’s been living in a self-induced prison. One where he was the warden withholding the keys. He’s been fueled by his revenge and it drove him to me. I’m happy to do such simple things with him that everyone else takes for granted.
I will never take what we have for granted.
It’s too real. Too intense. Too addictive.
“It means ‘soul,’” I tell him. “It’s my mother’s maiden name, not her stage name. She never told me who my father was. I’m sure she knew who it was but for whatever reasons kept it vague. From reading stuff about her life, I knew she dated one of her brother’s older friends off and on for years, even when she was incredibly famous. He passed away from a drug overdose. I’ve looked at his pictures and I see myself in them. I always pretend he was my father. Better than not knowing.”
Cole dips his head down and kisses my forehead. “You look beautiful tonight. Your mother would agree if she were here.”
I smile, tilting my head up to kiss his lips in front of everyone. “She would’ve liked you.”
His kiss is brief and then he chuckles. “I doubt that.”
“She wouldn’t have to know our secrets,” I explain as we continue our walk down the corridor to the theater. “Those will always be ours.”
The theater is dark, but we make our way easily enough to the back. This theater has the fancy seats where the armrest comes up between them. I’m happy we’ll be able to sit close. Once we’re settled in our seats, he lifts the armrest and I curl up against his side.
“Always?” he murmurs, his hot breath tickling my hair.
“Only for you and me to know. No one has to know that horror was hiding something wonderful beneath. They can all think the wonderful is all we know. But knowing the horror makes me appreciate the wonderful all the more.”
He doesn’t have to say it because I can feel it. I’m sorry. I nod because I know. Not a day goes by where I don’t remember the times he hurt me. But hiding behind all that rage and anger was someone worth finding. It was a painful journey, but it’s mine.
“Enjoy the movie, birthday girl. Then later, I have a surprise for you.”
The house shakes and rumbles from the wind. Cole is wrapped around me, his heat keeping me warm as he sleeps. I’m wide awake, though. My arm burns beneath the bandage and I yearn to look at it. Carefully, as not to wake Cole, I peel back the bandage to look at the black tattoo on my forearm.
Heart & Soul
His surprise to me last night. The words are a messy, but beautiful, scrawl. I love the way I feel as if I’m bound to him. Like he’s not going anywhere. That even if Alan got a hold of me, I’d simply look down and remember Cole is coming for me.
I gently press the bandage back into place and smile knowing he’s got a matching one. His tattoos are everywhere, but his words weave through the ones he already has and can easily be seen.
His heat becomes unbearable. My stomach roils and churns. Nausea makes my mouth water and my skin sticky with cold sweat. I close my eyes, lying still and listening to the storm rage on outside, when it finally passes.
Cole kisses my shoulder and then starts trailing sweet kisses down my body. He settles between my thighs but instead of making love to me, his mouth latches onto my pussy. I arch my back off the bed in surprise of the early-morning oral sex. He chuckles, hot and breathy, against my center, making me moan. His teeth tug at my clit to the point of pain and then he soothes it out with his wet tongue. Playfully but hungrily, he devours me until I’m crying out his name.
His mouth finds mine after my mind-blowing orgasm and then he’s inside me. We live this way and I love it. Always connected. Nothing touches us.
Alan will.
A shudder wracks through me.
“What’s wrong?” Cole demands, lifting up. His hooded eyes are sharp.
“Nothing.”
His dark brow arches up and he quirks his lips up on one side. He’s breathtaking sometimes. Like now. Pink, swollen lips from kissing both sets of my lips. Brown eyes twinkling with adoration and love. Messy, dark hair sticking up in every direction. Scruffy cheeks and a jawline so sharp you might cut your tongue from kissing it.
“I just worry,” I mutter. “About us. About him finding us.”
He thrusts into me, making me moan. “We’re safe.” His teeth nip at my lips as he fucks me hard, like he can convince me with how powerfully he makes love to me. I thread my fingers into his hair and ride out this moment until he’s found his release. He’s barely finished coming in me when he says it again. “We’re safe.”
“We should move,” I tell him, unconvinced. “East Coast. Maine or Massachusetts. I always wanted to live out that way. In a small town with a cute little downtown. To be tucked away in one of America’s hidden gems.”
“We could,” he says, but then his eyes dart from mine. “But I have to see the psychiatrist.”
“We’ll get you a new one there,” I argue.
“Why so adamant? Because of Alan? You don’t trust me to protect you from him?” His nostrils flare and his brown eyes burn with hurt.
“I do, but you don’t know him like I do. He has…resources. Ways. Everyone is in his back pocket. He’s driven by the desire to take my money. If I knew it’d make him leave for good, I’d give the money to him. But he’s not like that. He’s a conqueror. Now that he’s had me, he won’t stop. He’ll want to keep me. He’ll want to be the one who determines if I live or die.”
Cole slides his softening cock out of me and his cum runs out, soaking the bed below. His stare is locked on mine as he strokes my hair from my eyes. “He doesn’t own you, Natalie. No one does. Not even me, honey.” His grin warms me and reminds me that he does own me. Heart and soul.
I cup his cheek and admire his handsome face. “We shouldn’t stay here…” I trail off. “Because of them.”
His brows furl together. “Them?”
“The women. The others before me.” The ones you stalked, tortured, raped, and killed.
“It’s fine,” he grunts out.
But it’s not fine. He practically begs anyone who visits to look at his little graveyard near his shed with how he advertises it with the stones. Instead of pressing him more on the matter of moving away, I ask what’s been on my mind for weeks. “Can you tell me about them?” I know it’s a bad idea. It might set him off. I just need to know about the others. The ones who came before me.
He lets out a heavy sigh. His brows furl together as he seems to consider what he’s about to say. Tortured. That’s the only way to explain his expression. I don’t think he wants to talk about it, which is a huge improvement from the man who first took me and gloated about their deaths.
“Let’s take a shower.”
I don’t like bein
g blown off, but I let it slide. He’s unusually quiet and pensive during the shower and breakfast. When I curl up on the couch with a cup of coffee and a book, he disappears. Eventually, he returns wearing a haunted expression and carrying a bulging folder.
“What’s that?” I ask, setting my book and coffee down.
He sits beside me and shrugs. “You wanted to know about them.”
My heart thunders hard in my chest. Fear makes my stomach roil for the second time this morning. I want to puke because I’m already imagining the horrors I will find. He pulls off the proverbial Band-Aid for me and flips open the file. The first picture is me as I walk down the street, head down and dressed in my mother’s fancy coat. There are notes about me that make me shudder.
Just like them.
Anta. Fucking Anta.
She’s here. I’ll make her pay. Kill her slowly. Make her suffer.
Tears burn at my eyes as I run my fingernail over the words he wrote so hard into the paper he gouged holes out in some places. Written by an utter madman. How could he hate me so much and not know me?
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his fingertips running down my spine.
I suppress a shudder. I asked for this and I’m not backing down now. He’s quiet as I flip through all the notes he has about me and the pictures he’s taken. Then I move on to the next girl marked as number five.
Miranda.
She looks like me. Dark brown hair and slender. Difference is, she wasn’t living a lie like I was. There are pictures of her going into the hair salon, the spa, her expensive house. Her car is shiny and beautiful like her. She has an air about her that says she deserves it all.
Did she deserve death?
“How did she die?” I ask.
Cole pinches the bridge of his nose and refuses to say anything. He’s tense. I flip through her pictures and then the notes about her. More hateful scrawlings. Plans to peel the skin from the soles of her feet. Plans to slice her tongue down the middle and sew her back as two parts so she’ll look more like “the snake she is.” There are no pictures of the torture itself. What I do find is a picture of her naked and crying.
“Cole,” I choke out. “I don’t think I can look at these.”
“It’s who I am,” he mutters gruffly. “Who I was.”
His cell phone rings and he ignores it. Now that I’ve started this, I feel like I owe it to them to see it through to the end. Neither of us moves when the house phone rings. His legs start to bounce. My hands shake. He rocks back and forth. I sob. He pulls at his hair and mutters unintelligible things. I curse under my breath. I’m sickly enthralled in this homemade psycho stalker killer book. He has sex with them all. Rapes them. And I can’t turn away from the violence of it.
Miranda. Fiona. Whitney. Cassidy. Joann. Natalie.
Six women.
Five dead.
One who fell in love with a monster.
The final picture is of the big rocks in front of his shed. Each rock named for each woman buried there. So obvious and in plain sight. Just begging to get caught. The sixth rock sits beside the others but no name.
I shiver and swipe away my silent tears.
“Emily keeps calling,” Cole grunts out, breaking the horrible moment. His phone rings again. He sends it to voicemail and stands.
“What does she want?” I ask.
He runs his fingers through his hair as he paces the living room. His brown eyes are wild and darting everywhere. “I don’t know.” She rings again and he answers. “What?”
I can hear her frantic voice on the other line and it sends torrents of unease washing through me. He mutters out a “fuck” a second before the door gets kicked in.
I scream at the top of my lungs.
THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU.
Emily’s words, threaded in with an apology, were all I could process when men dressed all in black gear carrying shotguns and other rifles storm in. SWAT. I don’t have time to react before I’m being thrown to the ground and wrangled into cuffs. Natalie is still screaming but has stood up, the folder flinging to the floor in her terror. Pictures and notes are scattered all over the floor.
When two officers approach her, she bellows and starts to run. They manage to subdue her, but not without a fight. She screams and kicks and squirms.
“Let her go!” I roar, struggling against my bindings as I’m pinned to the floor.
“Take a look at this,” one of the officer calls out. “It’s a fuckin’ prison in here.”
Natalie sobs. “Cole!”
“You’re safe now, Miss Dusana. We’ve got you.”
More people file into my small home. Their footsteps thunder around us. I’m eventually hauled to my feet. Fucking fantastic. I have SWAT and FBI swarming my house. My girl is hysterical as they drag her away from me. My roaring and yelling and raging do nothing to aid in my escape.
“Natalie!” I yell out.
The officers speak to me—probably reading me my rights—but I’m too focused on her voice. Her sobs. The utter terror and despondency in my tone. She’s rattling out her words in a desperate attempt to make them understand she’s here under her own free will. The officers spit out words like murderer and kidnapper and Stockholm syndrome. The FBI team is squatted around my pictures and notes, shaking their heads.
“Time to go,” one of the officers barks at me.
They drag me from my home and I can’t help but look over at my shed. Men and women—part of this operation—are taking pictures of my rocks. Pointing at the names written on them. Radioing for a backhoe. I’ve buried my hate there. With each woman, I buried more demons from my past. I cringe to think what they’ll dig up. How they’ll smear me across every tabloid. What my mother will think.
I’m eventually shoved into the back of an SUV. A man with a black mustache glowers at me. He holds out a card to me and I stare at it.
“Oh,” he says with a fake laugh. “I’m sorry. I suppose you can’t take that. I’m Special Agent Hopkins with the FBI. The one responsible for profiling you.”
My eyes narrow. “Fuck you.”
“You’re a ball of terror,” he grunts. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you murder five women, Captain Cole Heart?”
I look away and grit my teeth. “I didn’t murder them.”
“And you didn’t kidnap her either, did you?” He shakes his head and tsks. “Your lies won’t get you out of this one. We’ve spoken to your psychiatrist. She says you’re delusional, Captain. A sex addict and a pathological liar.” He rubs at his mustache in a thoughtful way. “Tell me their names. The women you kidnapped and murdered.”
The car door opens and an officer hands him the file. My file.
With a satisfied smirk, Agent Hopkins holds up a picture of Cassidy. “You raped them too.”
Ignoring him, I search out the windows for Natalie. She hasn’t come out yet. The officers are like ants on a lollipop. Swarming my house and picking it apart.
“What happened in the Middle East?” he asks abruptly.
“Classified,” I sneer.
He grunts. “You’ll honor your NDA like you’re an honorable man, yet I sit here holding all the proof I need showing you kidnapped, raped, and killed five women. Get the fuck over your false sense of morals, man.”
“I didn’t kill them,” I bark out. Then, I glower at him. “They all begged for my cock, the whores.”
He makes a sound of disgust. “Your note here says, ‘I will cut her fingernails off and force them down her throat.’”
“I want a lawyer,” I bite out.
“You don’t get a lawyer,” he lies. “They don’t let psychopaths have them.”
I grit my teeth and refuse to say another word. I know how the law works. His bully tactics of trying to get me to speak about what happened won’t work. I sat for four months under Anta’s ruthless rule and never cracked once. This mustache motherfucker can try all he wants, but he’ll fail.
A scream jolts me from my thoughts and I see
them dragging Natalie from the house. She’s crying out for me. I let out a roar and kick the window with my foot. Agent Hopkins curses and radios in for assistance. I get a few hard kicks into the glass, but it doesn’t break. Before I get another one in, the door flings open and then they bind my feet. Her sobs echo through the air until they’re silenced as she’s shoved into another SUV.
“Where are they taking her?” I demand.
Agent Hopkins sneers. “If you want to know, you’ll tell me what I want to hear.”
I spit at him.
“You’re kinky,” Fiona says, a grin playing at her lips.
“Is that what they call stabbing a woman in the cunt and letting her bleed out these days?” I snarl.
She laughs. Fucking laughs at me. “Pretty sick in the head. But you’re hot, so I’ll allow it.”
I want to strangle her. Pin her to the floor and watch the life bleed from her features. I will kill her. Eventually. Just not today.
Gripping her throat, I push her against the wall. I bite her until she cries. Then, she takes every hard inch of my dick like she deserves.
I hate it when she comes.
Slap!
The sound of a palm hitting the table, jerks me from my memories. Agent Hopkins is pissed. Beyond pissed. His lips press into a thin line and his neck burns bright red. For nine hours I’ve been stuck in an interrogation room as he drills me. They want the women’s last names. The ones I murdered. I refuse to give them another word.
He threatens me. A lot. Mostly with my weakness. Natalie. But everything he says is bullshit. The things he says they’ll do to her to make her tattle on me are lies. She’s safe with them. His words roll off me and I doze off again.
“Ow!” Miranda screeches. “Owwww!”
“You deserve this for what you did to me, Anta!” I bellow as I savagely fuck her ass.
She cries and the chains rattle, but her fingers rub feverishly at her clit. The whore comes hard. I jerk out of her and yank off the condom. My cum hits her ass with a splash as a satisfied groan escapes me.
