by Tia Lewis
I let out a deep sigh. “That was a mouthful.”
“I can’t read. I can’t watch TV... I think I’m going crazy.
She placed her suitcase on the floor.
“That makes both of us,” I answered, rubbing my eyebrows. “Not having a TV is good. It gives me time to figure this shit out.”
“Hitmen think a lot, don’t they?”
“Smart hitmen, yes.”
“And you consider yourself one?”
“At least I did before I saved you.”
I closed my eyes and contemplated what the best course of action would be going forward knowing that at any moment Boss, the Bianchi crime family or the Russians could bust down the motel door.
I thought about that goddamned key and cryptic message: If all else fails and the light turns to darkness. What light? What darkness? What mysteries did this key unlock? Was it a key to a house, a car, or a storage locker? ”429 Finchley Hampstead Road. That street didn’t sound familiar. Was it located in Boston? Was it even a street or was it code for something else? It would be suicide to ask anyone from the Drunk Harpy crew because I had a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach they know what’s going on about the Russians, Tess, and I. A headache was starting to form. My plan needed to be strategic, smart and I needed to come up with one fast.
Yet, I couldn’t help but be curious as to what happened to Tess’s mother and how she died. If there was one thing which interested me the most, it was methods of dying. Just as a carpenter would want to know the type of wood to carve and shape, I wanted to know the type of death.
I opened my eyes and looked down the bed at her. The day had become evening, and her face was clothed in shadow. I leaned across to the bedside table and clicked on the lamp. Dull, yellow light filled the room. Tess sat in silence, emotionless. I knew a lot was on her mind.
“Tess?”
She wiped her eyes as she turned around. In the lamplight, her tears glowed faintly, shining like tiny crystals in her eyes. I found myself oddly touched by it, and I had never been touched by a woman before. I wouldn’t call it sadness, exactly, but I wanted her to stop crying. It was distracting, for one thing. But more than that. Come on, brother, you know it’s more than that. There goes my brother’s voice again. I wondered what Tess would think if I told her I’ve been hearing my dead brother’s voice in my head. I know she already thinks I’m crazy which I probably am. I don’t know too many contract killers who are sane in the head.
“How did your mother die?” I ask.
She hesitated, and we sat in silence for a few moments.
“You know. I’ve always wondered what was more painful. My mother dying or being kidnapped?”
“I don’t have the best experience in dealing with emotional shit, but I’ll listen...” I trailed off, waiting for her to continue.
She laid her hand on my leg, just above my boot, gripped my jeans and dug her fingernails into the fabric. It was oddly comforting, way more comfortable than it should have been, having a woman touch me like that. I didn’t ask her to move it.
“My mother,” her voice choked. “My mother died when I was twelve. I told you that. What I didn’t tell you was the way she died. She was killed by my father.”
"Tell me how?" Now that's intriguing, I thought.
“My father was not a good man,” she added shaking her head. “From what I remember of him, he was evil. He never abused me, but he hit my mother. He did more than hit her… He would beat her until she was barely recognizable. From what my grandmother told me, and from the little I remember, my father made my mother’s life a living hell.
“But my mother was brave.” A note of pride came into her voice. “She finally mustered up the courage and went to the police. My grandmother said my mother was bleeding from a nasty cut above her eye when she went to the station. She was finally going to press charges and lock the bloody bastard up. But the coward ran.”
She shivered, as though her father was in the room with us. If he were, there would be a bullet in his head. I had no time for men who beat their wives. As far as I saw it, a man who would do that was the lowest form of a scumbag. Something was sickening in it. How could a man smash his fist into his wife’s face, watch her bleed, listen to her screams, and carry on? I found myself shivering, too. Didn’t know you were that squeamish, brother. Maybe you do have a heart, after all, once you get past the years and years of darkness, I heard my brother say.
Tess continued. “So he left, and I had some wonderful years with my mother. She was the greatest woman who ever lived. I know how that sounds, but I stand by it. She was the greatest woman I ever met. I wouldn’t have traded her for the world.”
She gripped my leg so tight her fingernails must’ve punctured the denim and pricked my skin; a sharp sensation shot up my leg. But still, I didn’t think about asking her to remove it. I took her grip as an indication she was about to tell me how she died.
“One day I woke up to my mother screaming. Most girls would’ve been freaked out by this, but it wasn’t the first time I’d woken up to her screaming. It had happened before. My mother would have nightmares, dreadful ones. So, when I went to her bedroom, I didn’t feel the need to rush. I knew what I had to do. I had to climb into bed with her and let her hold me until she fell asleep. And then I would fall asleep next to her.
“But when I got to the bedroom, she wasn’t alone, and there was blood all over the sheets and then I saw the knife dripping with blood and the massive hole in my mother’s chest. My father turned, and smiled, and he said he was here to get me, that he wanted to take me away. I don’t know what was inside of me that made me run so fast at that moment, but I ran like there was a fire on my heels. I ran out of the house and across the street to Mr. Baker’s house, and I banged on the door over and over. He eventually answered, wrapped a blanket around me and called the police.”
She stopped, wiped her tears dry and pulled in deep breaths.
“There was a manhunt, and they eventually caught my father.”
“And Zharkov and Dmitri?” I asked, realizing I was caught up in her web and the threat of caring for her was growing larger. Yet, somehow I was not worried about that at this moment. “You said something about the Russians and your mother.”
“Yeah,” she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened her eyes again. “When the Russians took me, and when Zharkov did things to me, I found myself comparing what was worse: finding my mother dead, my father holding the bloody knife or being used by a repulsive pig like Zharkov?”
“And what did you decide?”
“I didn’t,” she shook her head. “I still can’t. The fucked up thing is that it makes me feel guilty. What was my suffering compared to my mother’s pain? At least I can suffer. She’ll never feel anything again.”
I sensed something was required of me here, but I knew it was something I was not able to give. Maybe she wanted a kiss, a hug, or a tender touch. But these were foreign gestures to me. I could no more soothe her pain than a scorpion could suture a wound with its pincers. All I could do was let her squeeze my leg, let her hold onto me for as long as she wanted. I felt relief knowing she wasn’t working for Zharkov and the Russians to plot against me. As a matter of fact, I feel like a prick that I questioned her story before.
“Liam?”
“Yes?”
“I know this is probably bad timing but now that we’re lovers, what does that mean for us?”
This was a strange question to me. I had never thought about what sex would mean if you were connected to a person because I rarely knew the women I fucked beforehand. I never stuck around afterward because I never wanted to get to know them. A man like me should never want to care for a woman truly or deeply. Women were for cumming in and for their mouths to be around my cock. They were for spanking and drilling hard and for hair pulling, and rough-as-fuck sex. And now here was Tess, asking me a question like this.
“I’ve never thought about what sex woul
d mean. And to be honest, I don’t really wanna start thinking about it. Fucking is fucking. Why complicate it?”
“Because I’m asking you to.”
“And you think that’s enough?”
“I think it’s more than enough when you’re risking everything for a woman that you just met.”
“Well, when you put it like that it sounds less… strange.”
“Strange” didn’t capture just how bizarre this was. I wasn’t a man who got lovey-dovey with women. You fucked them. That was all. But she’s different, she’s different, that wise-ass little whispered in my head. You know she is. You know full well she is, brother.
“Anyway, I think that’s enough chit-chat for tonight,” her gaze snapped to mine, and she bit her lip. After a moment, she didn’t seem to be able to look directly into my eyes any longer. She turned her face away and got up from the bed.
“Maybe you’re right, Liam,” she turned around slowly. “Maybe… I do want to be yours.”
I was bored out of my mind and stared up at the ceiling as we both laid in comfortable silence on the bed. I glanced over to Tess to see she that she was taking a nap. I was restless, unable to clear my mind and find a comfortable position. I thought about what Tess said earlier, and I didn’t know what to think. She had been through Hell and back and for the first time in my life I felt remorseful for being a fucking asshole. She didn’t deserve to be treated like shit, and I didn’t know to articulate my emotions to her. All I wanted to do was show her how I felt. Something was changing within me, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
I rolled over to straddle her petite body, the sheets clinging to my back. She stirred, more asleep than not, but aware enough to laughingly protest when I slid my way down her torso, past her waist, to hover over that sweet spot right between her thighs. I could feel her warmth, even inches away. It called out to me. I answered.
She practically spasmed when I lowered my head for that first, long lick. Her back arched, elevating her off the motel bed, fingers snatching up fistfuls of the sheets. I chuckled darkly into her folds, tickling them with the scruff on my cheeks, delighted to have such power over her, to be able to provoke such a response with so little effort.
“Liam, no,” she gasped. Her voice a faint and heady protest from somewhere above me. “I’m tired.”
I grumbled, digging my fingers into the soft flesh of her thighs. I braced myself to drive my face deeper, thrust my tongue in further, questing inside for her clit. The taste of her was sweet and salty, and the scent of her made my head spin.
“Liam!” She gasped out again, even as she spread her thighs for me, lifted her hips from the bed and pushed herself against my face. I shifted one hand beneath her to cup one deliciously pale ass cheek in my palm, pressing her against me even further. She squirmed against my face. My tongue was a frenzied flicker of motion inside of her, hungry to taste every inch available to me.
I drew back and gathered a deep breath, smiling wickedly and drawing each word out long and deliberate.
“I. Need. You.”
I dove back between her thighs, between her pussy lips, eating her out with a hunger that I hadn’t known I possessed, desperate to sate an appetite that I hadn’t known was possible. I’d been starving for years before I met this woman. And now that I had her, I was going to eat my fill of her tonight and every night after that.
“You’re mine,” I whispered huskily into her heat, tracing the edges of her pussy with my lips and tongue and using light, teasing nips of my teeth. She writhed and whimpered, a tangled web of sheets and long limbs and lustrous hair, like some ethereal figure that had stumbled out of some fairy tale and into my fantasies. I impaled her with my tongue, with my need, and that sweet spot inside her was my holy grail.
I flicked my tongue over her clit, again and again, just to see her respond. Her body contorted impossibly, damn near levitating, and the sound of her high-pitched cries rang out like the noise of a bell being struck by the triumphant swing of a hammer on one of those test-your-strength carnival games.
And me, well, I liked showing off my strength, and I loved winning, and so when those things combined to please my woman, well, that was a hat trick I could live with. I grinned savagely between her legs again. This was something I could definitely get used to. A whole new kind of torture and an all too willing victim.
“I want you to cum on my tongue,” I said, surprising even myself with the darkness in my voice.
“Yes,” she moaned.
“Good girl.” I laughed into her pussy, my amusement practically a vibrator, and gripped her ass in both hands as I resumed my ministrations. Long, slow licks of my tongue alternating with light, teasing jabs inside of her. Kissing and sucking and licking and tasting, breathing into her, inhaling her. My fingers flexed against the soft flesh of her ass, holding her prisoner against my face, keeping her right where I wanted her no matter how much she moaned and squirmed and whimpered with desperate need.
Somehow she found the strength to add even more frenzy to her movements, her voice finding new octaves to register in, just a high inarticulate whine that sounded like the sweetest melody to complement the feast staining my mouth and lips and cheeks. I sped up my own pace, my desperate hunger the perfect addition to hers.
I could feel it when every nerve in her body ignited, her body tensing against mine and every muscle seeming to lock into place for a long moment that went on and on as she cried out in hoarse ecstasy. Then she collapsed back against the bed like a puppet whose strings had been cut, all of her previous energy suddenly gone and spent in a single instant. She laid limp and gasping, her only movements the steady rise and fall of her chest as I pulled myself out from between her legs and propped myself up on my elbows, surveying my handiwork.
“Liam,” she breathed when she finally recovered enough to spare some breath on speech. I just chuckled, a deep, satisfied rumble rolling up from my stomach, well pleased with myself.
My appetite sated for the moment, I rested my head on her belly, hands lazily drifting up and down the length of her sides, from thighs to tits and back down again, simply savoring the feel of her skin beneath mine.
Chapter Thirteen
“I’m starving,” Tess announced, and they were the sweetest two words I had ever heard. They meant I could get out of the motel room for a little while, get some fresh air and process the whirlwind of a mess that has occurred in the last few days. There was a twitch in my gut, and if I didn’t know better, I would have said it was puzzlement. Why are you confused, brother? I know why. Is it because you’re torn between showing her that you care and seeing her as merely a woman to use for your pleasure? Not now, Kevin, I thought.
“I’m going to grab us some food,” I said. “I saw a Chinese spot a block down.”
She didn’t ask to come, and I was thankful for that. As soon as I stood up, Tess climbed back on the bed and rested her head on the pillow. She seemed genuinely exhausted like she had been carrying a heavy load and needed to relieve herself of the burden. She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her hands around them. Perhaps I was a dirty bastard, but when she got into that position, and her white floral dress rode up, all I saw was her peach-perfect ass. It was begging to be spanked, and my cock all but screamed at me to go to her. I couldn’t help but think that it was just too perfect. I was becoming addicted to this woman, and I was losing my fucking mind.
I grabbed the room key, and told her, “Don’t go out, for anything, and don’t answer the door.”
“I got it. Thank you, Liam,” she smiled.
I walked onto the balcony and locked the door behind me. The motel was transformed in the evening. All over the balcony, short-skirted women and older, balding men walked hand in hand. The men had sleazy grins on their faces like they thought they could actually satisfy these women, and the women had the vacant expression of a factory worker because this was just a job to them.
The motel’s receptionist stood lean
ing against the broken automatic door, smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, sexy. Honey are you coming for a chat or ‘something else’?” she called.
I ignored her and walked toward the main road.
“Well, fuck you then!” she shouted, flicking the butt of her cigarette toward me, the embers flying into the evening air like fireflies.
Now that it was dark, I read Sleepy Inn with the missing e’s in glowing purple letters.
The evening was warm, and I felt sweat coating my body. I needed to shower, and I’d been trying to clear my head, but Tess had made that impossible.
I tried to pay attention to what was happening around me to take my mind off everything. I read the license plates of the cars that hummed by on the road. Most were from Massachusetts, but there was an Escape from Nevada, a Corolla from Virginia, and a Civic from Rhode Island. Trees with dark leaves shadowed me, providing much-needed cover as I took a stroll since the lights from the street lamps were blocked by the foliage. A few pedestrians walked the sidewalk: two elderly women chatted loudly about beef, walking with small dogs that looked more like rats. A man in a baggy silver suit, darted down the road like he was late for a meeting. Farther down the road, a Black man and a Mexican hooker held hands, most likely headed for the Inn.
I came to the Chinese restaurant, Oriental Delight, and walked into the hospital-like white lights. Four table and chair combos with blue faux-leather dominated the room. The material was ripped in several places and exposed the yellow padding underneath. The transparent counter displayed fries, chicken balls, and fish cakes. The place was empty apart from a Chinese man, wearing a white T-shirt stained down one side with red sauce.
“You order?” the man asked.
“Yeah, I’ll have…”
I heard the door swing open, and the Chinese man looked toward the door. That vague feeling of danger kicked in, warning me of an impending threat. My instinct told me that trouble was headed my way.
