by Marni Mann
“You know nothing about me.”
When I got to the far side of the room, I released him for just a second, so I could turn him around. Then, I clenched my hand around his throat and held him against the wall.
“Just like your cunt of a mother. Weak.”
“You’re the reason I’m doing this.” I lifted him higher until his feet were off the ground, and I shifted my weight forward to put all my strength on his throat. “You fucked everything up. You could have gotten out of prison and started over. But you had to go right back to the person you had been before.”
“I’m,” he gasped, “your father.” His face was red. His eyes began to bulge.
“You’re the man who raped my mother and got her pregnant.”
His hands started to loosen on my arm.
“You ruined your father’s life. You ruined Beard’s life. You ruined Toy’s life, and you tried to ruin mine again. I’m doing this for them, Shank—for everyone you hurt and for my girl who’s bleeding on that floor because you’re a sick motherfucker.”
A cough came out of his mouth, and some spit flew into the air.
“Kiiid,” he whispered.
“I’m not your fucking kid. Fuck you, Shank.”
His legs stopped moving.
His hands completely released me.
His body shook hard, like an electrical current had blasted through it, and he became perfectly still.
And then all I heard was silence.
When I straightened my fingers, my hands leaving his throat, Shank fell to the ground. I leaned down and checked his pulse.
There was none.
I didn’t take another look at him.
Instead, I stepped over his body and moved over to Arin. I grabbed one of the knives off the ground. Her eyes went wide when she saw it in my grasp, and she tried to wiggle away from me.
She knew it was me.
She’d seen me come in. She’d heard me talk to her, and she had answered me with a groan.
God, I hope he hasn’t fucking ruined her.
I held the knife in front of her face, so she could see it, and I said, “It’s me, baby. I’m not going to hurt you. I would never do that. I just want to cut the rope off your hands and feet. Okay?”
“Mmm,” she cried from behind the duct tape.
I gently sawed until her wrists were loose enough to pull out. Then, I worked on her feet and got those untied, too. She was trying to get the tape off her lips and couldn’t, so I held her face in one hand and lifted the corner of the tape with the other.
Her tears dripped past my fingers.
“It’s almost off; don’t worry,” I told her.
Her body quivered, and there was blood everywhere, but I was too focused to see all the spots it was coming from.
When I had a big enough piece to grab, I said, “I’m going to rip it the rest of the way, okay?”
She nodded.
Doing it slow would only hurt her more. So, I held her face really still, and I tore it off as fast as I could. The second her mouth was free, she screamed, and I immediately pulled her into my arms.
“I’ve got you.”
“Huuuck,” she wailed.
“I know, baby. You’re safe now.”
She didn’t say anything.
She just cried and rocked, and I held her against me. I wouldn’t let her go.
I’d promised that nothing would ever happen to her again.
And it had.
With my own fucking father.
“I’m sorry.” I buried my face in her neck. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
He’d said I was too weak. He’d said I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
He was wrong.
I was the one who had put that monster in the ground.
And all I felt was relief.
Arin
I inhaled as deeply as I could, filling my lungs and calming my breath to stop myself from hyperventilating. I still held on to Huck so tightly, forcing my body not to shake anymore, and I kept my face in his neck. I didn’t want him to see me, and I wasn’t ready to see him yet. But, as I clung to his body, feeling my naked skin and my bloody wounds press against him, I looked over his shoulder.
Shank sat, slumped on the ground, part of his back almost resting on the wall.
His eyes were open.
His lips parted.
His stare didn’t move.
He was finally dead.
I sighed so hard internally, my limbs shook.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Now that I’d gotten my breathing under control, I could smile.
Huck couldn’t see that.
He could only feel me and hear me, and I knew he had because he squeezed me back.
Huck
We’d been back in Bangkok for over a month now, having skipped the Grenada part of our trip to return home so that Arin could heal.
Again.
I’d found her before Shank could do any serious physical damage. She’d had a stab wound on her arm and several deep cuts across her stomach. Many of them would leave scars, but nothing was as bad as the mental torture of being kidnapped and tied up and told you were going to die.
The memory of that day would forever fuck with her head and mine.
Her recovery wouldn’t be a quick process.
My girl had been through so much.
Two kidnappings, one attempted kidnapping, and way too many fucking hands on her body.
She’d survived each one, and she’d gone back to work right after they happened. For a while, I’d tried to get her to take some time off, and I’d begged her to stay in bed and relax. She wouldn’t. And then, slowly, I’d begun to understand why work was so important to her. She could control the tasks I gave her, she could do them at her pace, and she was the boss when it came to her responsibilities. The things those men had done—they had been out of her control.
So, I’d stopped questioning her. I’d stopped asking her to relax.
And, deep down, I’d expected her to get on a plane and head back to the States.
It hadn’t happened. As more time had passed, I got a sense that it wasn’t going to happen. Almost every day, she would tell me she wasn’t going to leave Bangkok, the brothel, or me. It was as though she knew I needed to hear that.
We hadn’t spoken much about Shank since we got home. Neither of us had brought him up or talked about the hours I’d spent burying him on the beach while she had waited in the van. There was a lot about Shank that was left unsaid. I didn’t want to force the information on her if she wasn’t ready to discuss it all, but I wanted her to know that he was the reason I did certain things.
I waited until we were both in bed one night, tucked under the covers, her head resting on my chest. I was running my hands through her hair, listening to her breathing, inhaling her lavender scent as it gently eased toward my nose.
“I want to tell you a story,” I said.
She tilted her head on my chest, so she could look at my face. “Okay.”
“When I was a young teenager, I started getting curious about my father. Jack had told me that Shank was in jail and that we’d all lived together in Venezuela. I didn’t know about the prison or what Jack and Shank did for a living. Jack was trying to protect me, and I respected that. But, still, I wanted more. So, I reached out to Shank. We wrote each other letters, and he told me everything.”
She rolled onto her stomach, so she didn’t hurt her neck, and she stared into my eyes as I described the torture and killing that had happened at the prison. After she’d experienced Shank firsthand, I couldn’t imagine she was surprised to hear it. She was probably more surprised that I had waited this long to tell her. She stayed silent the whole time I spoke, and she let me get it all out.
Just as I finished the part about the explosion, I said, “I wanted a way to give back, to make things right after all the wrong Shank had done. I’d traveled to Bangkok before. I’d been in some of the brothels, and I had seen
how the women were treated. That was when I decided to move here permanently and open a place that wasn’t like any of those fucking holes I’d been in.” I kissed the top of her head, smelling the scent of her shampoo, knowing the harder parts of this story were coming up. “I pay my girls more than any place in this country. I feed them, and I feed their families. I give them everything they need. But, even after all that, it still isn’t enough for me.”
“The girls,” she whispered.
And I knew the ones she was talking about.
“Yes. Those girls. So, I worked out a deal with Chati, who covered the graveyard shift, and he would call me when one came in. Jack had found a connection in Grenada who could hook us up with passports and any other identification we needed. Within a few weeks, I bought my first girl. I got her healed, and Jack got us papers. Soon, she was on a plane and headed back to her parents. Shit, it wasn’t easy. It didn’t always go smoothly, and it cost me a hell of a lot of money, but it was what I wanted.”
“So that’s where all your money went.”
“A lot of it, yeah. The rest is sitting in the bank. As you know, I’m not really all that high maintenance.”
She smiled. “Did the girls work at the brothel?”
“Nah, never. They were here to get healthy and to get their lives back. Once their room was vacant, I would buy another girl. This went on for years.”
Her hand moved on top of mine, and she looped her fingers across my palm. “And you stopped when Jack was killed.”
I nodded. “I didn’t have his connection in Grenada. I didn’t know the guy he’d gotten the passports from. That was his deal; the healing was mine.” I grabbed a chunk of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “At first, it was real hard, having you here. All you did was remind me of what I had done with Jack, and it hurt like hell.”
“You miss him.”
The knife had returned, but it was different this time. It wasn’t sharp; it was just a dull scraping. “A lot. He wasn’t just my father; he was my best friend. I lost everyone but him.”
She ran her fingers over my beard and stopped when she reached my chin. “I think I know how your mother got pregnant. I heard you say it when you were strangling Shank.”
I hadn’t told her. Mostly because it would have made me feel even more of an asshole for not warning her that he was capable of something like that.
“Did he rape her?”
“Yes.”
A pained look crossed her face.
I said, “Shank took whatever he wanted. He never asked for permission. In his mind, nothing was off-limits.” I shook my head as I thought about that fucking bastard. “It’s why I always asked before I touched you. Why I needed to hear your approval before my mouth went anywhere near you. Why you had to tell me you wanted me so many goddamn times before my cock went inside you.” I took a breath. “I know it sounds stupid, but I needed those words, and I needed to hear them over and over because of him. I needed to know I was nothing like him.”
“You’re not your father. You’re nothing like him.” Her other hand went to my face, and she held me. It was a move I’d pulled on her so many times before. “You know that, right? You know that, underneath all your growls and edges and dark layers, you’re the kindest man with such a big, beautiful, protective heart.”
I gazed into her piercing blue eyes and saw a woman I loved so fucking hard. “I know,” I finally said.
She moved higher on the bed until her legs were around my waist and her hands were on my shoulders and her mouth was so close to mine.
“I need you, Arin. I need to feel you on my cock. I need to feel that it’s still you, that he didn’t take you away from me. That you’re still mine.”
She rose over my lap, my cock already so fucking hard, and she moved her tiny shorts to the side, so she could sink down onto my dick. “I’m yours.”
I hissed when my entire shaft was buried inside her. “You’re mine.”
She lifted to my crown and dropped down to the base of my cock again.
“And you’re so tight and so fucking wet.”
I tore her tank top off and sucked one of her nipples into my mouth, using my teeth to grind the edge. Her hips bucked over me as I gave her the pain she needed.
Even this wasn’t enough.
I needed more.
She had given me her body, and I knew it was still mine.
But I needed to be so deep inside her that nothing would ever reach the spots I hit.
I needed to ravage her pussy.
And not a goddamn thing would hold me back unless it was her words telling me to stop.
I released her nipple and said, “Arin…”
She looked into my eyes as my hands clasped around her waist. “I’m yours, Huck. Now, fuck me.”
That was my girl, always giving me the words I wanted to hear.
I lifted her off the bed and moved her to the closest wall. I held her against it. My hands slid to her thighs, and I spread them wide while I slowly plunged into her. My balls slapped against her ass, and I pulled back to do it again.
“Yes,” she gasped.
I arched my back, driving in while I circled my hips at the same time, pushing until I couldn’t get any higher. “That’s the spot,” I told her. “The one I want to live in.”
Her nails reached the back of my shoulders and stabbed straight into my skin. There was no teasing, no taunting. She went straight for blood. And, when I looked at her eyes, they showed me how hungry she was.
She hadn’t felt anything yet, but I was about to feed her cunt.
“Baby, don’t let go of me,” I demanded. Then, I reared back, and I pumped into her.
Her nails sliced into me so fucking hard, I knew they’d leave scars. But I wanted them because I wanted them to match the ones she had on her stomach and arms.
So, I said, “Cut me deeper.”
My hands glided underneath her, and I held her weight with one hand. With the other, I swiped some of the wetness off her pussy, and I rubbed it around her ass before I slid a finger inside.
“Oh my God.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d been in there, but it was the first time that I’d given her more than one finger since, now, a second one was slipping in and out.
“Mmm,” she moaned, her breath vibrating across my chest.
The short hairs above my cock were rubbing against her clit, and I was filling each of her holes. I could feel how close she was getting as she clenched around my dick.
I pulled back, knowing it would be the last slow movement she got from me, and I pressed my lips onto hers. When she sucked in my breath, I couldn’t wait anymore. I tilted back and popped forward, and I fucked her with everything I had.
Short breaths burst through her mouth, each one ending in a moan.
My fingers twisted and pumped. The top area of my cock ground into her. Long, deep, forceful strokes filled her pussy.
She was about to get a kind of pleasure she hadn’t felt before.
And, just like I wanted, she came so fucking hard.
I felt it.
I heard it.
I kept on thrusting, driving into her, until my balls clenched, and the orgasm worked its way through my cock. Just as I shot my first stream into her, I felt her come again.
“Arin,” I growled as she milked a second ribbon out of me. “Fuck, baby.”
Each spasm that shot through her caused her to tighten around me, and a whole new sensation came with each wave.
When I finally stilled, I held my lips right above hers and tasted the air she was panting over my face.
“You’re a fucking savage,” she said.
I reached down to her clit, scooped some of the wetness, and sucked it off my fingers. “I can taste how much you liked it.”
She dipped her head in my neck and kissed up to my ear. She stopped when she was over the opening. “Now, tell me you’re mine.”
Fuck.
They weren’t words I
’d been expecting.
But they were what I wanted to hear.
Arin
Six Months Later
The lease was up on my apartment, and the landlord had emailed me, asking where to return my security deposit. I still had all of my things in storage. Most of it didn’t matter, except for a few pictures and a ring that was in the shape of a lion that I really wanted to keep. Instead of having her ship it, I thought it would be fun to take Huck to the States. He’d never been, and I wanted him to see where I had lived and spent the later part of my life.
The first few days we were there was mostly all sightseeing. Huck had been to cities all over the world, but none were quite like New York. I fed him pizza and bagels and pushcart hot dogs—things we could get in Bangkok, but they weren’t nearly as good.
On our last day, I set up a little surprise.
We both had appointments at a tattoo shop in lower Manhattan, and we were finally going to get inked together.
I was so nervous when I walked in the door of the shop. My body buzzed with energy. My eyes darted around the room until I found what I had been looking for.
And then I smiled.
I smiled so hard, I knew my face was red, and my feet were practically bouncing.
“Do you know what you’re getting?” Huck asked as he stood at the counter behind me after telling the woman we’d arrived for our appointments.
I closed my smile, shutting my lips, and I turned around to face him. “I do.”
“You’ll be up first, and your artist’s name is Steve,” the woman at the counter said to Huck. Then, she looked at me. “You’ll go after, and your artist will come and get you when he’s ready.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Huck and I took a seat on the couch.
When Steve came and got us, he brought us into his room.
Huck sat on the table and held out his hand and said, “I’d like a snake. Just a small one, orange-and-black stripes, and have it start here”—he pointed just above his thumb—“and end here.” It would go all the way to the nail on his index finger.
“You good if I freehand it?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, go for it,” Huck replied.
