“I... uh...” I start, but he keeps kissing me, running his tongue inside my mouth, licking my lips, then going down on my chin, then my neck, making me sigh ardently. He tears open my shirt, sending some buttons flying in all directions, and despoils me of my bra with an expert slight of hand behind my back. My nipples are already hard, seemingly harder than they have ever been, and he’s sure noticed it, because the next thing he does is launch his tongue and lips after them, licking one after the other, biting them, sucking on them, closing his mouth around them, covering my areolas with his lips, and taking his time before starting the motion, making me quiver even before his tongue begins going round the nipple, savoring it, bending it down and sending bolts of electric pleasure all over the breast.
Then he fucks me. He fucks me like it’s the last time. Which it might well be.
“Oh, baby,” he says, grabbing my legs and holding them in the air, making my pussy spread open for him, forcing me to prop myself up by the elbows as he sticks his cock in me. I let out a deep moan when his hard rod makes its way inside, impaling me in a lovely assault. For Christ’s sake, he’s so good. Fighting against gravity, I’m constantly sliding down on his rod, as my whole body shakes from the effort. It’s so delightful that I can barely form an idea as I abandon myself to the sensations. “Uh... ooh-ah,” is all I can mutter as my mind collapses into a puddle of pleasure.
* * *
“Before you go...” ... maybe forever, I think, but it’s too painful to say. Heck, it’s even painful to talk, to say anything, and my voice betrays me, breaking down against my wish. “Will you at least tell me your name?”
I need to know, I tell myself. I need to be able to tell the baby the name of his or her father. Whether he comes back or not.
“Of course I can,” he says, bowing down comically. “Sixtus Chappelle, at your service.”
“Sixtus... Chappelle?” I echo, incredulously. “Really?”
“Really,” he says. “Chappelle is my lastname, and since my mother is a fan of Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, well... I thought she decided to pass down her artistic preference. As a name at least.”
“Oh, poor Sixtus.” I pretend to pity him, but I kind of like the way it sounds. It has a weird ring to it, half exotic, half other-brand-of-exotic. “Promise me you’ll come back to me.”
He can’t. So he doesn’t.
And then he goes.
* * *
All the news channels are covering the election. Mark Cross is no longer a candidate; he’s backed down from his campaign once the video of his rape attempt became public. And boy, did it become public. News channels were playing it nonstop from the very day I uploaded it. It went viral, and people were sharing it and discussing it. His campaign said it was an editing trick, but a paper ran an analysis showing that everything in the video matched the scene found by the police so precisely that it would have been impossible for anyone to do the trick. The position of the furniture and papers, the way we moved, the place where the bullet shattered the glass, everything was exactly on point.
And then, of course, the masked stranger jumping on Mark Cross and beating him senseless before he could actually rape me. People were divided. Many cheered for him despite his being a professional killer. In contrast, Mark was universally hated by then. He gave up just three days later.
I guess he’s been aching to call me in his rage, spouting insults until he runs out of air, but his lawyers may have advised him against the idea. He’ll have to answer to a court about the incident, also.
I think of the future. There’s a baby in my belly, the child of a man who saved me and then protected me and then loved me. Our personal future depends on what happens in the next few hours, as Sixtus is out there facing his worst enemy. The future of the country hangs in the balance too, but I’m proud to say that whatever happens today, I’ve already done my part so that the next election won’t be as terrible as it could have been. Choosing your leader between an attempted rapist and an attempted killer is like the end of civilization.
I watch TV and I see red, white and blue everywhere. People wave flags, walk around in “patriotic” clothes. It’s an important day for all. But none of them knows about my personal drama. None of them has a clue about why this day is so important to me.
Six has gotten a message from Nine. He’s going to meet her for their final showdown. Whatever happens in the next hour will change my life. It’s finally being able to be with him forever... or lose him forever.
I hope he comes back to me. A few hours ago I didn’t even know his name. But his essence is tattooed all over my soul.
I only care for him. And I know that deep inside me, our baby cares too.
THE LIVES OF A CAT
SIX
You lose.
It’s all the message says, and it’s all I need.
Nine isn’t using a secure app. She wants to be tracked. And I know why. She craves the instant. She wants to look at my face as she shoots me. Get her revenge for having sent Seven to kill her. Make me pay for my double failure: trusting her, first, and then trusting Seven, trusting that he wouldn’t go soft.
She wants to be tracked, so I track her. The cellphone she’s using is moving around Manhattan, my own device reveals after a bit of snooping. I jump in the car and as I drove away from the house in Grey Gardens, I wonder if it’s the last I’ve seen of Sadie March. If I die today, it will be for her.
My day is definitely not getting better. It started with both of us watching some TV, seeing an election coverage with both Mark Cross and Seth Pryce out of the equation. One of them is in jail already, the other will soon be. Later we had lunch and half an hour later, the first message from Wendy. You lose.
Way to fuck up a day.
Manhattan is all about the election today, and the few people walking about the city do it quickly and with purpose, staring at their smartphone screens once in a while. I drive around, trying to pinpoint the exact location of Nine’s device. A few more messages have been coming as I drove from the Hamptons to the heart of New York. Say your prayers. And: A good finger but a shitty brain. And: Are you here already? She’s teasing me, driving me into some kind of trap. All I can do is follow the signal and try to stay aware of my surroundings so that she won’t take me by surprise.
The beeping dot in my screen is moving along the subway line. I realize she must be down there. I park the car near Central Park and walk around, keeping an eye on everything as I walk down the stairs and enter the underground world the New Yorkers share with the rats.
There are just a few people waiting on the platform. The signal comes from a different station now, two or three stops ahead. She must be riding a train. I wait for the next one and climb inside. Even though the signal doesn’t come from the train itself, I keep looking around, studying everyone’s faces, completely alert, my hand clutching the gun inside my pocket and ready to raise it and fire it at the right moment.
I get off the train when I reach the point of the signal. My heart beats at a wild rate now.
I’ve always been able to remain calm on the job, even when my life was in immediate danger, but now there’s Sadie and that changes everything.
And though she hasn’t told me, I know that she’s carrying my child, too.
I can’t allow myself to die today.
The signal is stationary now. I look up and down the platform, but Wendy’s not there. She must be around, though? Surely she has discarded her phone and flew off somewhere when she saw me climb down the train. She must be waiting for me nearby, maybe pointing a gun at my head already.
But where is that fucking cellphone?
I walk down the platform, passing by a couple of trash cans and a hobo wearing rags and holding a huge bag. The signal gets weaker now. I turn around and start walking in the opposite direction. The signal gets stronger again. I walk past the hobo and the trash c—
The hobo.
I turn around again and start running s
o fast that I’m practically flying. I fall on the guy with all my weight, knocking him down. He drops his bag and its contents spill all over the dirty platform, some of them falling over the edge and on the rails. He looks at me with a terrified expression. He’s an old man, and he might have lost a bit of his mind. He gasps, unable to form a word.
I see the glow in the corner of my eye. There it is, lying on the platform. A brand new cellphone, fallen from the hobo’s bag.
I grab it from the floor and face the guy, still lying there, petrified.
“Who gave this to you?”
He still can’t talk. He flails his arms about, aimlessly, his mouth open in a silent protest. I help him to stand up.
“I’m sorry. But I have to keep this.”
I look at the screen and it changes. In a flash of rage, I realize what’s happening.
Nine has programmed the damn thing to send message after message automatically. She didn’t have it on her. She was not typing the messages as I drove from the Hamptons. She just gave the thing to the poor, clueless hobo and sent him on his way.
I’m so shaken that I don’t recognize myself as the expert killer I have always been. I’m falling in a pit of despair as I realize what this all means.
Nine is not in Manhattan. She’s in Grey Gardens.
I have the cellphone I took from the hobo in one hand, my own cellphone in the other. The new message flashes on both screens.
You lose... her.
* * *
SADIE
My whole being aches for him already.
He’s just gone, driving away through the hill and down to the big city, to meet his nemesis. And my body misses him. The child inside me misses him.
I look out the window for a long time, while the light in the room changes as the sun does his downward dance. It does the same dance every day, oblivious to the joy and suffering of the little creatures who meander around this small world.
We’ve talked to Lottie Harmund, and she says she could get him off the hook for his cooperation. He’d have to change his name and his life, never kill again. But he was going to change anyway. And yet, there must be one more death. There’s no other way.
I resist the urge to call him. He needs zero distractions, especially if he’s using his phone to track Nine. I wonder if he’s still alive. More than an hour has passed, enough time for both of them to kill each other eight times.
My heart flutters when I imagine the happy ending, with Six getting rid of that woman forever. She’s the last remnant of his past as an assassin, the only tie to the sinking ship of his previous life. With her gone, with the FBI letting him go after the Scope’s disintegration, he’s free to be with me forever. We’ll be a happy couple just like any other, far away from that cold, dark world, but we’ll also have each other’s darkness edging in, spicing up our lives, letting us cut directly into each other’s soul. Something most couples have never experienced.
But then I imagine the other ending. The one where I lose him. The one where his child grows without a father. And my heart writhes in pain. Even without the child, I can never be the same woman again that I was before meeting him. That man has changed me forever, for good or bad.
I’m lost in these dark thoughts when my cellphone rings. A call from Six! I pick it up and then I see the woman.
At first I don’t understand what I’m looking at. There she is, faintly drawn on the tiny screen, superimposed over the call notification. Then I understand.
It’s a reflection. She’s in the room, right behind me.
A chill goes down my spine, shaking me inside. But somehow I manage to avoid showing it. Think fast. The woman is holding a gun at waist level, and seems to be smiling faintly.
I raise the cellphone to my ear, to answer the call. She might want to shoot me as I’m talking to Six, to make some kind of point. But I never answer. Instead of that, I turn around as fast as I can, and throw the damn phone to her face. It flies through the air like an arrow, and reaches her nose with a very satisfying crack.
“Fuck!” she shrieks, and shoots her gun blindly. The bullet reaches the bookshelf wall and several books explode in a puff of shredded paper.
Run, Sadie. Run. Reach a good point and attack again. Now is the time you act like a finger.
I never actually used the gun I took from Six, but this is a very good time to start. I rush up the stairs as Nine recovers from my surprise attack and follows me. There’s a point where the staircase takes a turn before reaching the upper floor, though –if you fall over the railing, you’ll end up near a corridor in the bottom floor. There is a gun in a room down there. No gun upstairs.
“Do you love him?” the woman asks, and takes a shot. She ruins a painting that’s hanging from the wall beside the end of the first flight of stairs, sending some plaster over my head.
I jump on the railing and let myself fall.
It could have been a better jump, but I’m in a hurry. I barely land on my feet as Nine looks down, aims hurriedly, and takes a new shot. She puts a hole in the wooden floor beside me just as I fall on my ass, sharp pain lancing through my body. I sit up as quickly as I can and make for the corridor, just as a third shot shatters the wood right where I’ve been three seconds earlier.
“Does he love you?” she asks, jumping down too, and reaching the bottom floor with a muffled sound. She must be wearing some extra silent sneakers, or maybe she’s a ninja. This is the woman who shot five people while jumping in the air in Coney Island, so everything’s possible. I guess she made a three-point landing like the assassins and heroines in the movies.
I’m on the room now, and there’s only one thing I need to do: get the gun. I crawl under the bed and look for the small opening in the floor. There’s a loose plank that...
Fuck, she’s here.
“You know a finger can’t love, right?” she asks, mockingly. I can only see her shapely legs walking in. “People tend to forget that. Big mistake.”
One of the first things she’ll do is look under the bed, of course. I’m here, disarmed, and I can’t find the fucking loose plank.
Maybe it was one of the other rooms.
Fuck.
Quick. Think like a finger. Act like a finger.
I haven’t forgotten my taekwondo classes. She’s walking around the bed, and I can see her legs moving to my side. I can’t escape moving forward or backward –that would be too slow, and she would take me out with a single shot. But maybe... maybe I can do a version of a kick while lying on the floor.
“Do you think you can hide?” she asks, without trying to hide the contempt in her voice. She despises me as she despises all people who aren’t seasoned killers. I can hear that in her voice as clearly as if she was spelling it out. “Come on, there’s no esc—”
I shoot my left leg and reach the heel of her right foot, pushing it ahead with all the force I can muster. She loses her balance and takes a step back with her left foot, instinctively, to avoid falling. But my leg is still sweeping ahead and catches both feet in the same motion. I see Nine tumbling down, falling on her back, cursing as the floor receives her body with unimpeachable hardness.
“What the f—”
I’m coming out from under the bed now. The first thing I see is her gun. She’s still wielding it, although she isn’t aiming now. I roll over her arm, smashing it against the floor. I climb on her and punch her nose as hard as I can. Then again. I’m using my right hand for this, as my left hand is busy holding her wrist, stopping her from using the gun.
“Stupid bitch, you—”
I punch her mouth now, a bolt of pain shaking my knuckles as they meet her teeth and break them. My hand is bloody now, and her face (quite a beautiful face in its coldness, I must say) is now a half-red mess.
“Unnggh...”
I stop and breathe. And that’s a mistake. Because she’s already pointing her gun at me once more. She’s caught my left hand with her own as she keeps the gun in the other hand. I just
can’t...
Kill like a finger.
I don’t know where the command comes from. A deeply hidden inner zone of my brain, I guess. But it’s kill or be killed now. So I let go of her arm, freeing both hands, and I roll over her arm again, breaking the aiming line. I keep rolling until my back is smashing her arm, and the gun it’s holding, against the floor. And I clench both hands around her throat.
“I love him. And he loves me,” I say, as I hold her firmly, increasing the pressure and blocking her attempts to get free from my clutch.
It doesn’t take much. She spits some blood on my face at first, then gargles a bit, then turns weak and blue. She stops fighting my grasp, and soon she’s only a physical thing, a body hanging inert over mine, devoid of any strength or will or personality.
I push her aside, remove the gun from her hand just in case, and lie there, catching my breath.
That’s how Six finds me half an hour later.
“Oh, pretty face,” he says, stepping over Nine’s corpse, kneeling down in front of me and embracing me in his strong, muscular arms. The cold metal of his gun caresses my back as he squeezes me in a hug of love and relief. “I’m so happy that you’re OK. I thought I’d lose you. I thought I’d lose our child.”
THE DAY I STARTED BELIEVING
SADIE
Two months later
Election day is the day I could believe again. Today is the day we can finally start our life together.
I had asked Six not to kill anymore –and even though he couldn’t promise me that, he actually followed through. He didn’t have to kill a single person since the first time I saw him, when he came to me like a savior from heaven or hell or both.
He’s changed –and I like to think it’s because of me.
Lottie made good on her promise of getting Six off the hook. As for me... it was pretty easy that I had acted in self-defense, so I was never really in trouble. After the whole ordeal, none of us felt like coming back to where we were living before, so we moved to a new house, where we now wait for our child’s arrival.
A Vote For Lust: A Bad Boy Political Romance Page 10
