"Better a bitch than a punk, and that's what you are. Rez says jump and you ask how high. Just admit it, he owns you."
"Nobody owns me," he said.
"If no one owns you, you would let me walk away right now. But you know that you can't so you won't. You're Rez's bitch just like that other bitch of his!"
The thunder in his expression told her she'd gone too far. In two steps, he strode to the door.
"You want to leave, here's the door! Go on, get the fuck out!"
He unlocked the door, slammed it open. Stood waiting for her to go.
But shock glued her feet to the floor.
Her feet knew there was no way she could survive out there alone even as her brain told her to leave, to get free of the gang, of him.
"What are you waiting for?" he asked cruelly.
"I…"
"You what?"
"I can't," she said quietly, all of her anger replaced by cold dread.
The sound of her fear was in her voice. In the visible tremor going through her body.
One moment he stood sentry at the door, an angry angel ready to oust her from her only haven. But hearing her voice, the thunder left his face. The storm subsided. With a sigh, he closed the door.
They were at a standstill. She had surrendered but so had he. And neither of them knew what to do next.
She closed her eyes for a second, feeling exhausted and frightened. When she opened them, he was there in front of her just a breath away.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know why I keep fucking up."
"It's because you're scared. I get that. But neither of us can afford to go crazy, especially not now."
His closeness was a palliative, driving all the crazy away. Looking into his eyes, she saw something steadfast, something comforting. As though he would take away her fear if he could. And in that moment, she decided to trust him again. If only for the time they had together.
When she reached for him, she knew that it was stupid, foolhardy. Dangerous even.
This wasn't the place nor the time.
Yet neither of them cared.
With quick, desperate motions he yanked off the jacket he'd given her earlier and maneuvered her out of the bra in as many seconds. Just as desperately, she pulled up his shirt up and over his head, tousling his hair. Within a minute they both stood topless. The cold fact of their nakedness momentarily gave them pause as the enormity hit them. She started to pull away but he grabbed her arm, pulled her into his naked torso.
The muscles of his chest were hard and smooth beneath the palms of her hands. His skin felt hot to the touch and even as she wondered if he was running a temperature, equally searing lips moved over hers, his tongue pushing in. The after taste of beer suffused her mouth.
Even as he took her lips, his body moved hers back, back until the edge of the bed hit the backside of her knees. He pushed and she stumbled onto the mattress. He stood over her, and as she looked upward, she was taken aback just how hard he looked. The unkempt hair, the unshaved jaw, the dark eyes. A tattoo of an eagle straddled the width of his chest. Right now he was as threatening as any of the Demons. And again, she was unnerved at the thought.
He bent and roughly pulled at her jeans and that action pushed away her hesitation. She wanted this. Needed it.
She maneuvered her hips left and right, allowing the material to slide downward. The jeans were tossed to the floor and her panties and shoes soon followed.
Being totally naked should have made her feel vulnerable. Instead she felt freer than she had in days. For this moment, there was no fear, no need to pretend, no shame, all of which she had felt since she'd been kidnapped.
She watched him as he pulled off the rest of his clothes. And then he stood there, no longer a demon but again the thunderous angel she had imagined him at the door.
As beautiful as any archangel, his musculature seemed carved from dark granite, perfect but for one blemish – a whitish scar that ran along his left thigh. It drew her eyes to the mat of hair surrounding his swollen dick.
She didn't have a chance to wonder about the wound for long. He moved onto the mattress, hovering before positioning an arm on either side of her.
His mouth descended over hers again, sucked at her bottom lip, then traced his tongue along its contour. She felt the head of his penis against her stomach as well as a bit of moisture from his pre-come.
A hand spread apart her thighs, allowing his lower body to settle into her crevice. Her legs raised instinctively. She sucked in her breath at the touch of his dick against her opening. But he didn't enter, not yet. Anticipation made her throb, expectation almost made her come.
He moved his mouth down the curve of her throat, down further still until his lips found one of her nipples. His tongue traced along the ripples of the orb causing a sensation that made her walls spasm.
A callused finger pushed inside her labia, then two, then three. They thrust in and out in an achingly sweet rhythm that caused the nerves throughout her body to tighten, retract almost painfully. She needed a release and she needed it soon. From the sound of his ragged breaths, he needed it just as badly.
The desperation in their motions, the way they clutched at one another simply manifested the underlying reality that this might be the last time either of them would ever have physical release again.
By tomorrow, either or both of them could be dead.
That thought pushed her even more as her hands clutched his back, as she tightened her legs around his back and thrust her hips up, a tacit but unambiguous plea for him to enter her.
He heard her plea. He released his lips from her breast as he removed his fingers and looked down into her eyes. His own eyes seemed black as coal in a room that was darkening by the minute. Evening was coming on. In answer to her silent request he shifted his hips until his hard penis thrust deeply inside her, connecting them in one sinuous motion. He shifted his hands to her ass, pushed her upward. The steel of his thighs were almost painful against hers.
"Dele," she whispered as a punctuation to his motions.
His eyes seemed to get even darker, as though saying his name wasn't right in that moment.
"Something wrong?" she asked and his expression closed up as he shook his head.
"No," he said huskily. "Everything's perfect right now. Just wished it could stay this way."
He covered her mouth and began to thrust into her in earnest, his rhythm at first even, but then his pace quickened, his hips bouncing against her harder and harder.
Through the discomfort she felt a searing pleasure that was increasing with his motions. The bed picked up the rhythm and for a second she wondered if the guest next to their room was there to hear the bumping, to realize what he or she was hearing, to smirk knowingly or even press their ear to the wall.
Another thrust pushed any extraneous thoughts from her head. The bed was practically shuffling with the violence of the movement. He groaned against her lips as he began to find what he needed, at the same time allowing her to crest upward, reaching for a much-sought release.
Fear, desire, anger all stoked their coupling. Even if they survived, they would only have this one time. They were strangers despite their bodies coming together. Just responding to circumstances that had pushed them into a situation where they needed to reach out to one another.
She didn't know anything about him and that's the way she wanted it. There would be no place for him in her life and she definitely didn't want a part of his existence. Still she sucked eagerly at his tongue, shifted to take more of him inside her, let her fingers tangle in his hair.
This wasn't making love. This was sex. This was sustenance. This was release. This was life.
The eruption shook her body just as his own climax went through him in a violent shudder that caused him to shout out something unintelligible, som
ething that sounded like her name but not quite.
They lay there for a minute, recovering their breaths, recovering their strength.
They were reaching for their clothes when the door burst open and Roach stood in the doorway.
The man, who at the moment more resembled a weasel than a cockroach, smiled at Nailah's nudity then said with glee,
"Having fun kiddies?"
Chapter 13
Dele leaped from the bed, the evening air from the opened door hitting the sweat on his naked body. Roach remained in the doorway, the sick leer plastered on his face as he looked over Dele's shoulder toward Nailah. Dele balled a fist, ready to smash the smile off the idiot's face but the sudden click of a knife stopped him in his tracks.
"Now you don't want to start some shit you can't finish bro," the gang member said, his tone serious despite the residual grin. "Especially when you ain't got no drawers on. Hey, it's all good, bro. You needed to get one last piece of that fine black ass. Well, since we're all saying our goodbyes here, I think I'll just get in my ta ta's, too. "
Dele heard an intake of breath behind him. He'd miscalculated Rez's seeming trust in him and had sent the roach after them to make sure that Dele got the deed done. And the money he'd promised.
Roach seemed to remember that the door was opened and without turning, shut it behind him with his left hand, the knife steady in his right hand.
"Now we don't want nosy eyes peeking in on our private party do we?," he said, the grin back in full force.
Dele knew he was hardly in a position to go against a knife, not while he was naked. But he was damned if he was going to let the piece of shit get at Nailah.
He had to play a Hail Mary.
"Now bro, you can't blame me for forgetting the time. Like you said, I had to get in my goodbye."
A gasp from behind. He ignored it as he continued.
"Rez didn't need to set the dogs on me, or in your case, a no-ball mutt."
"Fucking asshole!" he heard Nailah spit at him, rage and betrayal in her voice. He couldn't afford to worry about her feelings right now. He had a roach to squash. And since he suspected the vermin was the one who'd set him up for the missing heroin, this was a long time coming.
Dele stood between the gang member and Nailah, calculating his next move, estimating how fast Roach could lunge the knife, how quickly he could evade its blade, especially with no clothes to buffer any puncture.
"So why're you still standing in my way, playing some damn Sir Galahad?" Roach asked. "Step aside and let me show you how it's done."
"Where's the smack Roach?" Dele asked out of the blue, hoping the question would throw Roach off.
It did, as Dele watched Roach blink rapidly in sudden fear. The reaction simply confirmed Dele's suspicions.
"What're…what're you talking about? I didn't take those kilos, man. And you got no proof that I did," Roach added belligerently.
"I don't need any proof. I may go down for the smack, but I'm going to make sure you go down with me you piece of shit."
Dele watched as Roach's expression morphed from fear into blazing anger within a matter of seconds and Dele knew he would have to make his move soon.
"Everybody knows you've got a nose problem, Roach, and you should know by now that Rez doesn't have loyalty to either one of us. In the end, he's simply going to kill us both. Can you feel the blade in your back, Roach? Feel the steel going through your flesh?"
Roach stiffened as though he did indeed feel a blade at his back. Rez's Bowie knife ready to plunge deep.
Thrusting his own blade closer to Dele's chest, mere inches away from his heart, Roach's face distorted with anger.
"You think Rez gonna believe anything you say? I've been with the crew for years. He trusts me, not you. You can't even follow simple orders like taking care of this bitch. Rez figured you might punk out, so he sent me…"
"Sent you to do what? What're you going to do Roach? Kill her? You've got to get through me first."
"You really think you can stop me?"
In the months he'd gone undercover with the Demons, he had made a mental assessment of each of the gang members, their hierarchy, their strengths and weaknesses. He'd sized up Roach almost immediately. Not so much for the drugs and drinking, although that was obvious from the beginning but for his sycophantic knee-buckling whenever Rez was present. He hoped his ingratiating ways would somehow protect him.
Roach was not a warrior in any sense. During the usual gunplay that went on among the gang, the knife feints, the one-upmanship bullshit games, Roach rarely participated and when he was forced to play, he rarely won.
The two or three times he might have gotten the upper hand, he was straight-out stoned. Powder courage. Sometimes the courage came in a 180-proof bottle.
He hadn't stocked on enough courage today, at least not so it was obvious. It showed in the way the hand holding the knife trembled just a bit. It was enough of a pass for Dele to get his Hail Mary.
With lightning speed, Dele shot out his hand and grabbed Roach's wrist and wrenched in an unforgiving twist until he heard an audible snap. The knife clattered to the wooden floor as the man yelped in agony, his good hand grabbing for his broken wrist.
"Aw shit, aw shit, you broke it!" Roach cried out in anguish as he dropped helplessly to his knees, tears streaming down his face.
Dele looked down at the man, knowing at that moment that Rez would never have sent Roach.
Roach had simply followed them on his own, hoping to catch something on Dele to take back to Rez. A brown nose attempt so he could later persuade Rez that he was useful and gain an upper hand when it came time for Rez to parcel out punishment for the missing drugs.
Too bad for him he'd overplayed his hand.
A sound from behind made Dele turn around. His first thought was to comfort her.
The sight of the gun in her hand aimed at his chest pushed that thought out of his mind. The sound had been her cocking it, safety off. It was ready to blow a hole into him.
"What the hell Nailah…?"
"Fuck you Dele! You played me for some fool…"
Her anger was palpable, her eyes blazing. Beautiful eyes, he thought, totally inappropriate given the circumstances. She was about to shoot him and he foolishly had shown her how.
"Put the damn gun down! I didn't play you! If you'd use your brains you would've understood I was buying us some time," he said, his anger growing.
Her eyes wavered just a bit.
"I don't know what to believe anymore. You have no real reason to keep me alive. Maybe all you were doing here was getting a last lay, like you said."
"Lady, if I was that broken I simply would've taken what I wanted that first day and killed you for the hell of it. I wouldn't have waited all this time going through all this bullshit."
Another sound from behind him made him remember the wounded Roach. Even as he turned to find that Roach was no longer on the floor (how the hell had he gotten up with one hand), had recovered the knife in his good hand and was already in mid lunge.
The knife plunged into his chest and the pain seared.
Still he reached through the agony in an effort to grab Roach's throat. If it was the last thing he did on this earth, he was going to finally get rid of this useless parasite. But Roach jerked out the knife, exacerbating Dele's wound in another blaze of pain and was now aiming directly for Dele's heart. Roach's useless wrist was obviously not causing him enough pain to totally incapacitate him. Through the haze of his own pain, Dele noted how fast the man moved. Fast enough to be lethal.
But not fast enough in the end. A gun report took both of them by surprise. So did the hole that suddenly appeared in Roach's forehead. Center position and clean but a small trickle of blood.
The smell of gun powder added to the surrealistic scene of the now-dead Roach collap
sing to the floor in front of him.
Dele turned to see what he already expected to find. Nailah's hand shook but she still held the lethal weapon. He didn't move, not sure where her mind was at, whether she saw him as friend or foe.
The gun lowered and she collapsed on the bed sobbing.
He pushed his own pain away as he strode to the bed. Every movement burned, but he reached out a hand to place on her shoulder. During this whole time he hadn't registered that she was still as nude as he was. That fact would have made her feel particularly vulnerable, especially with Roach's promise of violation. She'd killed Roach as much to protect herself as to also prevent his certain death.
She shifted at the touch, lifted her face, tears streaming down.
"I killed him," she said quietly.
"Yeah, he's dead," was all he could say at the moment. He wanted to comfort her, say something that would take away the shock he knew she was experiencing. He remembered the soul twisting he did after his first kill as a rookie. At least the police had counseling to deal with that. Nailah only had him and right now he was useless. Already he was having trouble breathing. He didn't know how he was going to prevent the carnage sure to take place later that night. Didn't know how he was going to stop Rez for good.
The thought of Rez and the gang overwhelmed his brain. Once the Demons found out that Roach was dead, they would be gearing for revenge. Even a useless piece of shit like Roach required some vengeance otherwise the gang would lose face.
There was no way he could ever let them find out that Nailah was the one who pulled the trigger. Just another feat he was going to have to accomplish somehow against impossible odds.
For a second, he thought about coming out from under, calling it quits and handing over what he had already gathered on the Demons. Enough to stop the gang's trafficking but not enough to bring charges for the Mojave bodies, mostly gang members, but not all, not all.
He realized he was willing to drop everything just to keep her safe. She'd need full police reconnaissance simply to stay alive in the next few weeks while they gave her a new identity, set her up with a new life in another state.
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