I’m on my way.
“You should know, I’ve been doing this for a while now,” I tell Murray when he gets out of the bathroom. Murray owns a small delivery company and has a couple of trucks and a few employees. He is not a mobster. And he is not that smart. He never checked me for a phone, and the second he left me locked in his house by myself, taking the key and disappearing into his bathroom, I texted Carter and deleted the message. I know Carter will come for me. I just hope he arrives before Murray does anything to me.
“Doing what?” Murray takes even steps in my direction. This place is a pigsty. So fucking cluttered and dirty. Stained underwear adorns most of the cheap, old furniture and the peeling wallpaper suggests the place was deserted a long time ago. But it wasn’t. Murray lives here. He just doesn’t give a damn.
He stops about a foot away from me, eyeing me curiously.
“Selling myself.” I swallow my shame as I let the lie drop from between my lips. “My last client didn’t use protection. That’s why I got out so early today. I may be on the pill”—Another lie. I lick my lips, this time to wet my dry flesh—“but I want to stay on the safe side. One thing is for sure, he is a dodgy man, so you might catch something if you don’t have a condom.”
Murray’s brown, muddy eyes darken. I wouldn’t classify him as a good-looking man, though some might if they didn’t know what kind of monster he was. Hell, I wouldn’t even classify him as a man. What kind of man buys a woman and imprisons her?
His eyes harden, and I’m afraid my attempt to dissuade him is about to backfire.
“Have you showered since?”
I shake my head. No. I don’t want to shower. I don’t want to get undressed, and I don’t want to wash Carter off me. It’s a stupid thought, considering my circumstances. However, taking a shower will postpone whatever Murray has in store for me. Every second counts.
“I’ll take care of that,” he surprises me by saying. I nod and follow his stride to the bathroom. He twists his body in my direction and places a reassuring hand over my shoulder.
“No need to come with me. Stay here.”
I nod again, panic swirling in my gut. This is not right, and I know that. Murray is not a good guy. I don’t know what his next move will be, but I don’t want to be here when it happens. As if something just occurred to him, he tilts his head sideways, a psychotic smirk playing on his face suddenly.
“Your phone, Quinn.” He reaches out to me with an open palm. “I never asked you for it. Have you been a bad girl and used it while I was in the bathroom?”
“No.” The lie sounds convincing from my mouth. And why wouldn’t he believe me? Ever since he started taking me when I was sixteen, I’ve always been weak and obedient. Mostly because I was too scared of him and my dad. When I tried to rebel against the fucked-up world they created for me, he beat me almost to death. That’s why I willingly walked into his car without him even threatening me with a weapon. I know exactly what he’s capable of. Running didn’t work. For a while it did, sure. But I was always looking over my shoulder, waiting for the inevitable. I need to figure out a different way out this time. A permanent solution. One of us needs to die for this to end.
I place my phone in his palm, and he curls his fingers, locking it securely in his fist.
“Good girl. I’ll check while I make you a bath.”
I wait in the living room, sitting down on the sofa, staring at the floor. I trace the marks Carter left on my neck with my fingers. I say his name over and over again in my head, like a prayer.
I want him.
Hell, I need him. I’ve been through so much, and I’m just tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of running. Tired of faking it.
Long minutes pass before Murray appears at the bathroom door and heads to the kitchen without a word. I hear him rummaging around in the fridge, or maybe the freezer, before I hear his footsteps heading back toward me. I snap my gaze back to my feet. It sounds like he’s struggling to carry something heavy, the way he grunts and walks at a quick pace. He’s up to something, I know this, but I can’t make myself look at him. The water is running, and I hear rustling of some sort. My heart rate kicks up even more. I can’t go in there. Something is telling me I won’t survive this.
“Your bath is ready, Quinn. Come on in.”
My legs are quivering as I stand up. You know that feeling after a run or working out, when your thighs shake so badly you can barely walk? That’s what I’m feeling right now. Walking slowly to what feels like death row.
I don’t step inside. I peek over his shoulder at the tub.
It’s full of water…and ice. Lots of ice.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. This is bad, but he’s put me through worse. I can work with this.
“You’re right, Quinn. I can’t take you when you’re tainted. Which is why I’m about to scrub you clean. Lose the clothes. I’ll get something to help you scrub away your filth.” Every word is a kick to my stomach. I want to scream. I want to fight him. But I also know what will happen if I try and fail. My punishment would be so brutal, I’d be begging for death.
“Murray.” My voice is weak and brittle, but he is already gone. I am left staring at the full bathtub, my new enemy. He took my phone, so I can’t call the police like I should’ve done in the first place. As far as I know, Murray doesn’t have a landline. Never had before. I don’t make a move to get undressed. I stare at the water, in shock.
Murray reappears behind me, nudging my shoulder, not softly, but not too aggressively either.
“Come on. It’ll be fun. We’ll get to know each other again.”
I chance a look at him, and he is holding a scouring pad. The kind made of steel wool. The man is a monster. A real monster. Carter was wrong about himself.
Carter is not a monster for doing what he does to his enemies. Murray’s victims are innocent, and he gets off on it.
“Undress. Now. Every second you waste is another second I will scrub the inside of your pussy with this. And I promise not to be gentle.” His voice is dry as he wiggles the scouring pad tauntingly.
I take off my coat, placing it carefully over the grimy brown sink. My shirt follows. I’m not wearing a bra, because I thought this was going to be a short trip to the corner store. I hesitate. If I lose my leggings and panties, it’s done. I throw another look over my shoulder to gauge his thoughts. He is sitting on top of the toilet, his legs crossed, cupping his knees with a smile that’s almost sweet.
“Tick-tock, Quinn. You’re wasting time.” He pulls out a utility knife from his belt loop. “Do you need help removing your clothes?”
I close my eyes.
Drop the leggings.
Drop my underwear.
The first sensation I feel when my toe gets into the water is complete numbness dipped in a sharp burn. But as more of my leg slides into the tub, the feeling becomes increasingly unbearable, like a thousand knives stabbing me at once. I scream in pain and turn to step out, but then I feel the utility knife pressing to my spine. The blade digs into my skin. I instinctively send my palm to the injury my father had left in my stomach.
God, make it stop.
“All the way in, baby. You’re not a whore anymore. I need you clean and pure.”
I lower myself in, slowly, but Murray isn’t having that. Both hands land on my shoulders, and he shoves me down so I’m fully submerged to my chest. The cold takes my breath away. I literally cannot breathe, cannot scream, cannot move. My mouth opens in a silent scream. Murray grabs the bar of soap and meticulously lathers me up, while I sit here in total shock from the cold.
“You know,” he muses. “Boiling water would’ve been more effective, but I have plans for you later, and I’d prefer it if you were conscious for them. Personally, I think this way is more fun. But that all depends on you.”
When I feel the coarse material hit my skin, I flinch away.
“Ah ah ah,” he scolds. “I need to wash you.”
Murray spends
an insane amount of time scrubbing my skin raw. I’m starting to shake violently, my teeth chattering audibly. I’ve heard of athletes taking ice baths willingly, but I don’t think you’re supposed to sit in it for more than a few minutes at a time. I sit up as he drags the wiry pad along my back. This is good. I need to keep as much of my body out of the water as possible. I clench my fists at the pain, but I don’t cry out. I don’t have the energy for anything other than breathing. I just need to hang on a little while longer. Carter will come for me, right?
“Time to wash this pretty red hair,” Murray teases.
All hope is shattered as he snatches my hair in a fist and pulls me backward. I open my mouth to scream, but suddenly, I’m under water, and my lungs are filled with it. Panic takes over as I thrash around, trying to come up for air, but he holds me under. My fight is fading fast. I was already feeling weak before I went under, and I can’t hold on for much longer. My lungs feel as if they’re being crushed, and my vision goes black around the edges.
I hear commotion above me, but everything is muffled, and I’m fading.
I’m stepping into the darkness. And I let it take me.
“No!”
Someone yanks me by my hair brutally. I gasp, my lungs starved for air. My eyes are open, but it takes me a few seconds to adjust. Carter is here, with me, inside the tub. Still in his jeans, fully clothed, with his coat, his sweaty forehead shining as he picks me up and jerks me into his body. I cry. I cry even without realizing that I’m crying. My fists are pounding his chest. It’s not his fault, but in my mind, it is.
He should have never left me.
He should have been there.
“Quinn, look at me,” he keeps repeating. But I don’t. I just cry and throw my useless fists at him. Murray is on the floor, covered in blood. I see him from my peripheral, but it doesn’t move me either way. I’m neither happy nor sad.
“I hate you. I hate that I need you. I hate that you weren’t there.”
The words just rush out of my mind foolishly. My skin is a blueish hue, and my teeth chatter. He ignores my tantrum and reaches to the showerhead above my head, yanking the handle. Warm water cascades over our bodies, but I’m still trembling. I can’t seem to get warm, to stop shaking. Carter leans down and plucks out the stopper. I roar out in pain, the cold and the hot too much to take, and it feels like a thousand tiny needles are pricking me.
My fists turn into desperate, grabby hands, seeking warmth, seeking comfort, seeking distraction.
Before I know it, my hands are on his jaw, then his ass, grabbing through his jeans, and his lips are slamming into mine desperately.
There’s a dead man underneath us, I’ve just nearly drowned, and now we’re going to fuck. Dysfunctional and desperate, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.
“I fucking hate you,” I repeat, my lips ghosting his. He doesn’t answer me. Not with his words, anyway. Two men. Two men he’s killed for me. Two men who wronged me. I’d suffered under their hands, and they had suffered under his.
An eye for an eye, they say.
His hands are on the small of my back, my breasts, everywhere. I’m climbing and clawing, trying to get more of his warmth. Somehow, he lifts me up so my legs are wrapped around his waist and lowers us both down to the emptying tub. The water pounds down on us as Carter lowers his jeans.
He thrusts hard, almost manically, and my body—my traitorous body—is seeking his touch like it’s the very air I breathe. We make unforgiving love, and now I’m suffocating on Carter and the steam, drowning for an entirely different reason.
I moan, but he swallows my voice with his mouth.
“That’s it, baby. Take it, baby.”
“I need you so bad,” I breathe out, helpless. I feel myself clenching around him.
“I need you worse,” he replies, his voice broken.
This is it. This is us. It might sound insane, but when he comes inside me, just as I claw his back with my nails, screaming from the top of my lungs, I know one thing is for sure.
I don’t want to die. Not really. Because Carter has shown me that I can find happiness, even in the darkest of times. Because even though he thinks that he’s a monster, he’s not. Far from it.
He’s my savior. My angel. My light.
“Shut your bake, already, Cole. It was a relapse,” I insist, referring to my shagging Quinn again. My jaw is set and my eyes are dark as I use the adjustable wrench to disconnect the Italian wise guy’s finger from the rest of his hand. It’s actually pretty easy to do. The secret is to catch the finger from its base and twist real hard. I’m good at that. The guy yelps in pain, throwing his head back to the ceiling and roaring from the top of his lungs.
Like it’s going to help him. This is Hot N’ Bothered’s basement. It is padded, secluded, and there’s loud music upstairs. I raise one eyebrow and stare at him silently. I’m not sure what pains this sorry-arse lad more—the fact that I’m breaking him piece by piece or the fact that I’ve just burnt down the restaurant he was supposed to keep an eye on because it pays the Lucky Lucianos’s good protection money.
“Yeah, a vagina relapse.” Cole rolls his eyes and chuckles, slamming another Italian wise guy’s head against the padded wall and growls into his face.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time, and this time I won’t be so nice about it. Where is Stefano?” Stefano is the boss since Lucky’s untimely death. Death caused by Savages, of course. It wasn’t pretty, but then what in this world is? What do I care? My head hasn’t been in the game lately. Not since everything between Quinn and me got so…complicated.
“A relapse,” I repeat, pivoting in place and making my way in the darkened room toward the mini fridge, from which I retrieve a bottle of water. I unscrew the top and take a generous gulp, clucking my tongue. The sex with Quinn after I came to save her was a mistake, a beautiful disaster, but a mistake nonetheless. I just need to keep my distance. Watch her from afar.
Every time I thrust into her, all I thought about—all I saw—were the marks on her neck. The marks I made. Not her dad. Not that wanker Murray. Me. Part of me is repulsed by my actions, but another part of me, that I don’t want to acknowledge, realizes that it satisfies the beast inside me when I see her pretty, pale skin marked by my touch. I’ve never felt so out of control before. Never felt the need to ravage a woman. Sex was mechanical at best. A way to release tension. With Quinn? I need claim her, mark her, make her feel me for days afterward.
I need to protect her. The price is irrelevant.
Which is why, after I made sure she was out of harm’s way, I bolted. Again. She’s got to fecking hate me by now, maybe she does, she said so herself, but that’s a good thing. If I have to make her hate me to keep her safe, then so be it.
“I’m thirsty.” The guy Cole is torturing is whining like a little pussy. Feck that. Ma was wrong. These guys are not more dangerous or sophisticated than us. Not at all.
“Please tell someone who cares, because I’m not the guy,” Cole answers him, his voice cut and dry.
I walk over to the man I just fucked up. His eyes are swollen. Lucky for him, I’m about to remove his eyeballs and he won’t have to worry about all that. Unless he cooperates, of course.
“Where is Stefano?” I ask again. He doesn’t answer.
“I’d really rather not get dirty if I can help it. Eyeballs get messy. But, that’s your call.” I hate this part. I’m good at it, no doubt, but I’m itching to get home so I can scrub away the germs in the hottest water I can stand. The thought has my mind drifting back to Quinn for the thirty-seventh time in forty-five minutes. I counted. Not that she’s ever far from my mind in the first place.
“Please.”
“Answer me,” I bark.
“Why are you even fighting this thing with Quinn in the first place? Are you still having issues about your performance in the sack?” Cole inquires from the other side of the room, and my head twists in surprise as I take him in, wide-eyed.
&
nbsp; Is he fecking mental?
Why would he breach this subject when we’re torturing our enemies?
“Go feck yourself,” I mutter.
“I have a wife for that. She is pregnant and hormonal as fuck, by the way, so we’re at it all the time. I think my dick might fall off if she doesn’t give it a day or two of rest. You didn’t answer my question.”
“Because it’s none of your bloody business.”
“Like hell it isn’t.” He gets frustrated, slamming his fist in his guy’s gut. The guy yells out loudly and starts crying. Producing actual tears. What the feck? We haven’t even gotten started yet.
“It is my business since you used my wife to help you get over your issues. It’s my business because you’re my motherfucking brother. You’re not going backwards, man. You got this. Don’t shut me out.”
“It has nothing to do with my performance,” I finally bite out. Jesus. This lad. I don’t even care that we’ve got company anymore, because this heart-to-heart he’s so insistent on having will not leave this room tonight. These guys will be dead before dinnertime.
Am I really going to tell him the truth? That my confidence isn’t an issue anymore? That my connection with Quinn transcends my fear and insecurity? That I’m afraid for her, not of her? Quinn has had enough villains in her life. I refuse to be another one on her list.
I’m not going to share her secrets with him. That’s for sure. It’s her story to tell, not mine. But maybe Cole will have a new perspective on this.
“I choked her…once. While we were…” I clear my throat. Cole raises his head from the guy he was concentrating on and grins like an idiot.
“Oh, Carter.” He shakes his head like I’m a fecking wee child, and why is this so upsetting to me? I become beet red, I know that, so I look away, focusing on shoving my thumbs into my guy’s eyes and pressing hard, threatening him with what’s to come if he won’t start singing.
Savage Savior (Savage People Book 3) Page 6
