by Nashoda Rose
Jesus Christ. What the fuck were we doing? I was sick of tap dancing around her issue. I was being a saint. A fuckin’ saint. This wasn’t me. And this sure as hell wasn’t her.
I whipped the knife across the room and it embedded into the cupboard above the oven.
I heard her gasp and there was a sudden stillness from both of us.
It was time. Not tonight. Tomorrow. Next week… right fuckin’ now.
“We’re done with this shit.”
She remained quiet, her eyes drifting to the knife, a butter knife in her hand then back to me. “You going to try and kill me with that?” She shook her head. “Too bad. I’d like a fight. What if I took off my belt? Would you fight me then?”
The color drained from her face. Then she backed away. I undid my buckle and slowly slid it from the loops of my jeans.
“What are you going to do this time? Kneel and take it? Let me beat you?”
I stalked toward her while she continued to back away and she still had that ridiculous butter knife in her hand, but it was at her side, the glob of butter getting ready to drip onto my floor.
“Kai… please. I’ll be good.”
I smirked. “Now, that is not the response I was looking for.” Her chin dropped and I stopped her before she bent to get on her knees. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare.”
Her eyes were wild and uncertain, confused. Fighting against what she’d been conditioned to do in order to avoid abuse. It was the same look before a man debated whether to give me the information I wanted or endure the torture I inflicted.
I either broke them or they died.
“Lie over the back of the couch.” Her hands shook and the butter knife clattered to the floor, but she did exactly as I told her. Her hands were on the seat, butt in the air and her hair covering her face, but I saw the trembling. I felt her fear in the air like thick smog.
I approached. Her body tensed but she remained in position. I put my hand on her back and pressed, there was no resistance.
“Is this what they did to you, London? Did they beat you?” Her head bobbed, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I yanked her shirt up. “Answer me.”
“Yes.”
“Did Alfonzo fuck you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“No.” Her voice strengthened.
“Are you sure about that?” I snapped the belt over the couch beside her and she jerked. “What else did he do to you? What else gave you pleasure?”
“Nothing.”
I stroked my hand over her ass. “Nothing? They did nothing else to you?”
“No. That’s not what I meant. He made me… do things. I hated it. I hated him and… I wanted to die.”
My hand stopped stroking her ass and my heart raced as a cold rush went straight from my head down my body. “Why?” She didn’t answer. “Why, damn it? Fuckin’ why, London?”
It happened faster than I expected. I thought I’d have to push her more, but something snapped and she shoved backwards slamming into me as she stood up. With one hand, she yanked down her shirt and with the other she swung her fist at my face.
I took it. And fuck she had one hell of a punch as it plowed into my cheek. Tears streamed down her face, but the blazing fury in her eyes didn’t match it as she came at me with everything she had.
I staggered back as she shoved me in the chest with both hands, using her foot on the bottom of the couch for leverage. “You left me.” She swung again and I ducked while I backed away. But her fists kept going, hitting my abdomen, my chest, my shoulders, anywhere she could. “You left me,” her voice raised, “You gave me hope and then ripped it away. That was worse than dying.”
I grabbed her by the shoulders and she kicked out and tried to wiggle free, her hatred raging through every part of her body. But it wasn’t just for me. It was for who had done this to her. It was hatred for who she was. And there was no doubt she hated me too right now.
“Let me go, you bastard. I want out of here. I want to go home.”
“No, you don’t. You ran away. You can’t stand being home.”
“It’s better than being here with you.”
I laughed. “Don’t lie to me, London.”
Her eyes glared, chest heaving. “Fuck you. You don’t know what I want.”
I raised my brows with amusement. “I certainly know better than you do.”
She became a wild cat struggling against me, and I had to take her legs out from beneath her with one swipe. With my arm locked around her waist, I lowered her to the floor with me on top of her.
“What are you going to do, rape me?” Her laugh was cruel and hysterical sounding. “Because it’s nothing new. Nothing can hurt me anymore.”
Not physical pain anyway. She was past that stage, but she had to learn to deal with her emotional pain. I had her wrists locked in my hands on either side of her head as I straddled her.
“You have that very wrong, braveheart.”
She spit in my face and the warm liquid dripped down my cheek. “I hate you.”
I smirked. “Yeah, I suspect you do right about now, but not as much as you hate yourself.”
That pissed her off and her struggles started again, but I had all the leverage and there was nothing she could do to dislodge me. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
I softened my grip and sighed. “No. You hate what was done to you.”
Her eyes rimmed red with tears and rage. “I hate you more.”
I gave in to her because she needed it. “Okay, you hate me more.”
She pursed her lips together and it was her thinking face, the way her eyes shifted side to side and narrowed. “Why are you doing this? Just let me go home.”
“So you can fade away into your nightmares? That option is no longer available to you.” I leaned closer so my lips were close to hers and her warm breath brushed across my face. “And I hate Raven. I want London. I want the brave girl who wouldn’t back down from a bastard like me. The one that is fighting me right now.”
“Why were you there?” Her voice quivered. “Why did you come to Mexico if you were only going to leave me?”
“You know why. For you.”
The tension seeped out of her body as she whispered, “But you left me.”
I let go of her wrists and climbed off her to sit leaning against the wall, bending my knees to rest my arms on them. “Yeah. It went bad.”
“You left me. You left me, Kai. You left me there.” Her body tensed. “I didn’t think you were a coward.”
Normally, I’d kill someone for saying something like that to me, but instead I sighed. “Do you think I’m a coward, London?”
She sat up, her hair a mess from our struggle, but the fight had done her good. I pushed her, knew she trusted me enough that if I did threaten her, she’d push back, and I’d been right.
“No.” She raised her chin. “I think you’re calculating, cold, arrogant and believe no one can hurt you.”
I stilled. “You have most of that right except the last. I do have someone who can hurt me. You.”
Her breath hitched and lips parted.
“Baby, I didn’t leave you. Not by choice. I took a bullet, and the guy I came with got me out.” Ernie saved my fuckin’ life. “By the time I recovered, the compound was burned to the ground and you were gone.”
“You didn’t run.” It was said in a whisper more to herself than to me.
I shook my head when she looked at me, tears still leaking from her eyes. “No, baby.”
Suddenly, a piercing blare wrenched into the air and I leapt to my feet, racing into the kitchen. “Shit.” I pulled the smoking frying pan off the stove and dumped it in the sink. London was right behind me. She grabbed a dish towel, stood on her tiptoes, and waved it in the air under the smoke alarm.
The alarm stopped.
I walked toward her and it was fuckin’ nice because London kept her eyes locked on me. No flinching, no tension, and she even
raised her chin a bit. And that got me hard.
Because nothing did it for me more than London. The girl who had enough compassion for the both of us. The girl who was brave in her own quiet way.
“The belt. You did that on purpose,” she said.
I shrugged and kept coming until I was inches away and she had to crank her neck in order to keep eye contact.
“You were never going to hit me?”
I grinned. “You were ready. So, yeah, I would’ve if you refused to fight back.”
She glared. I grew harder because glaring was good. Glaring meant she had backbone. “And what if I never fought back?”
“Then you’d have a sore ass right now.”
Her mouth hung open, then she snapped it closed.
“It wouldn’t have come to that though. You were ready to fight me. You were just searching for a way to do it. I gave it to you.”
I watched her think about it. London calculated. She wanted every possible solution deliberated before she acted or spoke, except when she got angry. Then she was a missile. I did the same thing. I was dead if I didn’t, because in my business, it rarely went the way you anticipated. And outcomes were variable.
Our outcome was one big variable because she couldn’t stay here forever, and for the first time I was beginning to contemplate the possibility of ending Vault. How to get my sister out? How to shut down the farm and take out the board members? Because doing all that made London safe. It made us safe.
“So, what now?”
I walked over and yanked my knife from the cupboard it was embedded in. “We start over. Grab the bread, baby.”
Then we made grilled cheeses.
Yellow Sheets
WITH MY ARMS crossed, ankles matching, I leaned against the doorframe watching her. A subtle smirk played at the corners of my mouth.
I’d been watching her every fuckin’ chance I had. It was two weeks after our fight in the kitchen and each day she was getting stronger, not in the physical sense, but emotionally.
She no longer moved tentatively and cautiously. Instead, her shoulders lifted and her hips had a natural, delicate sway again. The magnetic draw of my brave little scientist was irresistible. London was the woman who tested all my control.
She was also the one who could hurt me, who would be used against me if given the chance. I could never let that happen again. But for once in my life, I had no plan except keep her here hidden until I did have a plan.
“Are you going to stand there or help me?” she said.
I inwardly smiled before pushing away from the doorframe and stalking toward her. And it was stalking because for the first time in years, I was going to taste her again. She may not know my intent yet, but she would soon enough.
I didn’t bring her to my home on a whim. There was always a purpose and my purpose was to have London again in every way. To make her completely mine.
With London, I had no need to hide who I was. She was the lightness. She was the warmth that built inside me that had been destroyed by the farm. I’d always have parts of who they made me into, just like London would from what happened to her, but both of us were finding a way to live with what was done to us.
She sidled past, completely ignoring me, focused on her project, which was putting together the spare bedroom. We’d finished the floors, sanding, staining, and three coats of varnish. I set up the bedframe and moved the mattress back in and now London was making the bed with fresh sheets.
I strolled over to the opposite side of the bed, grabbed the edge of the sheet to hook it on the one corner while she pulled tight and stretched it to the other.
“It would look much better with yellow sheets. Brighten up the room.” She ran her hand over the cool white surface, smoothing out the wrinkles then tossed one of the pillows to the head of the bed.
“You brighten the room enough. Don’t need fuckin’ yellow sheets.”
Her gaze lifted from the pillow sham she was holding and held mine. “Why did you do it? Put new sheets on my bed that first night?”
I bent, picked up a pillowcase and a pillow and then tugged the sham over the pillow. “Why did you sleep on the couch?”
She tossed the pillow to the head of the bed and shrugged, saying, “Good movie was on.”
I laughed.
It took her a second and she did, too. She already knew the answer and that was why she’d avoided the bed. I’d done it for the very reason she’d slept on the couch. I wanted her thinking of me when she climbed between the sheets.
“Kai.” Her voice was a breathless whisper. “I hated Raven, too.”
“I know.”
“I never want to feel that helpless again.”
“You won’t.” She didn’t ask me how I knew that or argue. She accepted what I told her.
“I want to….”
“I know exactly what you want.” Her body twitched like I’d stroked a match and set it on fire. “Take off your clothes, baby.” A flush rose in her cheeks and it was cute that she blushed at that. After all she’d been through, that simple ability to make her blush settled deep.
Nothing about us could end well, but time had never mattered before, and now there was a reason… because what I had with London was timeless. There wasn’t an end.
Her arms crossed, fingers curling around the bottom edge of her shirt, which was my shirt. With a slow, sexy glide, she pulled it over her head, her hair lifting then falling to settle down her back.
God, I’d missed her. I needed my hands in her hair again, my lips on her skin, her naked writhing body beneath me as she screamed with pleasure.
I raised my brows when she stopped and she got that little defiant look to her face that made my cock jerk. Yeah, she was my braveheart again.
“It’s only fair.” She nodded to my chest.
I grinned. “Then come undress me, baby.”
I remembered how her fingers played with the buttons, fitting them through the holes before they popped out that night in her loft. The way her hands had slid up my chest over my scars without hesitation. How her head fell back against the door, neck exposed as she moaned when I sucked, licked and tasted every inch of her pussy.
“London. Now,” I growled.
She crawled across the bed toward me, kneeling on the edge and then reached for the bottom button of my shirt. I couldn’t stop myself from touching her any longer. In the beginning, she had been easy to resist being Raven, but over the last few weeks as the pieces of London shone through, it had been hell. And now, seeing the smoldering desire in her eyes, it took everything I had not to just throw her down and sink inside her.
I slid my hand up over her collarbone to beneath her hair, curling my fingers around the back of her neck. It was a power position, holding her like this and I wanted to see her reaction.
But there was no fear or submission as her eyes sparked with need. Her knuckles brushed against my chest as my shirt parted and my skin tingled. “Fuck, I missed you.”
Her breath stilled along with her hands and our eyes met. It was the same look as the one that made me walk out on her on at her loft. Beneath the heat was the unmistakable need for something else.
I abruptly grabbed her wrist and put it to my back jeans pocket. “You feel that?” It was the piano wire in my pocket. She nodded, her eyes wide but still burning with desire. “I’m still a part of that.”
She pulled her hand away and I let her. “But if you left—”
I chuckled, but there was no amusement to it. She was going to say, if I left the people I worked for. “You don’t leave them. If you do, it’s in a body bag. Although, that is too polite.” I had to be cruel to get my point across. “That is after they’ve cut you up and made you beg for the pain to stop.”
Surprisingly, she took what I said well, but I did see the mild shiver. London had seen and experienced pain and knew that this world wasn’t filled with fairies and white flying horses.
Her fingers went back to undoing my but
tons until my shirt fell open and she slid it off my shoulders. “Do you… like what you do?”
Hmmm, did I like it? Did I enjoy killing people? A question I never cared to contemplate before. Never cared enough about anything or anyone to consider it. “Yes,” I replied and that made her back stiffen and her hands pause. “And no. I enjoyed killing Jacob. I enjoyed watching Alfonzo die and wished I’d been the one to kill him.”
She lowered her head. “Kai, why are we here? What happens now?”
I slid my hands down her back to the clasp on her bra and undid it. The white lace slipped forward and dropped between us. “I’m going to fuck you and make you quiver beneath me. A few times.” I picked her up under the arms and tossed her down on the bed. “No more questions, baby. Not now.”
“Okay,” she said. “But you’ll tell me about them. About what’s happening with my dad?”
“Yeah. London. I’ll give you everything.”
Maybe I hadn’t meant to, but saying those words had more meaning than I intended. There was no going back. Bringing her here… I’d never let her go. And when I gave her everything, she’d know that, too.
I undid my jeans, dragged them down my legs and kicked them aside. I was naked beneath and my cock was hard and ready… more than ready.
I knelt on the bed and straddled her, thighs on either side of her hips. Her breath hitched as I ran a hand up over her abdomen to her breast, cupped it then ran my thumb over the sensitive surface of her nipple. Once. Twice. Then I pinched it before doing the same to the other one.
There was a hint of fear in her and it was something I’d fight to get out of her. I scooted down the bed. Slowly, I dragged her panties down her legs and tossed them on the floor. “Open your legs. I need to taste you again.” She did. “Wider.” I held her ankles, pushed them open more, and then lowered my head.
The first taste of her on my tongue was like sinking into a heated pool of comfort. Fuck. I’d missed her taste, the scent of her. I’d never forgotten the way she made my insides clench with an intense need, a need that became an obsession. Fuck, who was I kidding? She was my obsession before I even fucked her.
