by Skye Warren
I take more races and pick up extra shifts to pay for everything, and when I race, I’m more reckless. Everleigh will never say a word but I know that worries her too. Her dad died in a car crash and here I am, laughing death in the goddamn face every time I get behind the wheel. But I can’t help myself. Everything was so perfect until Tiff killed it.
Month after month drags by painfully slow, but Ev is slowly coming around. I know it’s hard for her, and when she sees me eying a tiny, pink pair of Converse at the mall and insists that I buy them for the baby…that’s when I know she’s the real thing. She’d hurt herself just to see me happy. I didn’t buy them, of course. Tiffany just told us she was having a baby girl a few days prior, but when I saw the pink baby shoes, all I could think was how I wish I was doing this with Ever, instead.
Everleigh is at her mom’s for dinner in an attempt to patch things up, and she thought it would be best if she went alone. I…did not. In an effort to keep myself from crashing their little dinner party, I decide to go across town to get cupcakes from Ever’s favorite little bakery. If she comes home later and things went well, we can celebrate, and I’ll lick the icing off her flawless little body. If things don’t go well, what the fuck can cheer you up better than a cupcake? Besides fucking, of course. We’ll do plenty of that, too. It’s a win-win.
I order a dozen in all different colors and flavors, and as I’m walking back to my car, past the bars that are quickly filling up with the night crowd, I hear a familiar, shrill laugh. I freeze at the sound and slowly swivel my head in the direction from which it came. What the fuck? It’s Tiff, with a group of people on the patio outside of a bar, laughing…and drinking. Mother of the fucking year. My jaw clenches and I start stalking in her direction before I notice something is different. I scan her head to toe and realize something is missing. And that something would be her baby. Her stomach is completely flat.
This fucking bitch…
My first instinct is to hulk out and demand to know why she decided to fuck up my life, but I’m just so goddamn happy that I dodged that bullet. The massive sense of relief has me practically fucking skipping over to her. She doesn’t notice me until I’m up against the short railing that separates the patio from the sidewalk, but when she does see me, her jaw, along with her beer, falls to the ground.
“Hiya, Tiff. How’s the pregnancy going?” I ask cheerfully. Her group of friends are clearly shocked, and she shakes her head in denial, assuring them that she’s not, in fact, pregnant. Glorious. She still doesn’t say anything to me—she’s caught and she knows there’s nothing to say—so I open the box, and fish out the least appealing cupcake out of the bunch. Carrot cake. I reach over the railing to hand it to her, and to say that she looks confused would be the understatement of the century, but it doesn’t stop her from grabbing it.
“I hope you enjoy that cupcake, because that’s the last goddamn thing you’ll ever get from me.” I turn around without waiting for another response. It’s over, and I can finally fucking breathe again.
I decide to make one more stop before heading back home to Ever. Today just got a whole lot better.
I throw the door open, and Ever’s head flies up at my sudden entrance. She’s sitting on my couch with her knees bent, painting her toe nails a cherry red. Her blonde hair falls in her face, and she’s never looked more beautiful than in this moment, looking so at home in my house. I throw the box of cupcakes on the counter and make a beeline to her.
“Are those-?”
“Shut up,” I cut her off.
“What the hell crawled up your— “
“I said shut up, Ever.” I drop to my knees in front of her. “I’m trying to propose, here.” Her shaking hands fly up to cover her mouth in disbelief.
“Are you serious right now?” She asks in a shaky voice.
“Yes, baby. I know it’s fast. I know we’ve already been through more bullshit than most couples go through in a lifetime, but I want to be with you and only you. Forever, and ever, Ever.”
She’s sobbing at this point, but still doesn’t respond. I slip the ring I bought on the way home onto her delicate finger. It’s modest, but beautiful. Like her.
“I know it’s not much, but I figured you’d want to get a place of our own instead of a fancy ring. We can always upgrade lat— “
This time it’s her turn to cut me off.
“It’s perfect. It’s beautiful.” She brings her hands up to cup my face. “I love you, Dame.”
“I love you too, sweet girl.”
She just agreed to marry me even though she still thinks someone else is having my baby. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.
“By the way,” I tell her a few minutes later while we’re eating cupcakes, her back to my chest. “I’m not having a baby…yet, at least.” She angles her neck to look up at me.
“What?”
“Tiff lied. She was faking the whole thing.”
And queue the tears, for the second time tonight.
Life is good.
Epilogue
I marry my Christmas angel on Christmas Eve, almost exactly one year after we met. It’s cold, and Kline, my business partner, is busy and Samantha, her best friend, is a bitch, but it’s still the best day of our lives. It’s a small event but we don’t need anything more. Dame and Ever. Forever. We have all we ever wanted. Each other.
We don’t stick around the reception for long, both in too much of a hurry to get back to our hotel room, even though our new apartment is only minutes away. I’m sitting on the bed waiting for Ever to come out of the bathroom. When she finally appears, she looks nervous as hell.
“What’s the problem, baby? You do realize you’re not a virgin anymore, right?” She bites her lip and in her white silk robe, still looks just as innocent as the day I met her. But I’m not fooled. She’s way too dirty to look this sweet.
Ever pulls a little bag from behind her back, and gingerly walks towards me.
“A wedding present?” I take the bag from her hand, rubbing her wrist with my thumb as I do so. Her eyes lock onto mine, and I sense the seriousness in this moment.
I reach into the little black bag and pull out a tiny, pink pair of Chucks.
What? My head jerks up and with tears in her eyes, she gives me a shaky nod.
“You’re having my baby, Ever?” My voice is thick with emotion. She nods, once again.
“Are you happy?” She asks in a small voice. My smile feels like it’s splitting my face.
“Fucking ecstatic.” I pull her to me, and untie her robe to kiss her belly. When I pull back, I realize she’s wearing a red strip of fabric…and not much else. Fuck me. I stand up and slowly push her robe from her shoulders, revealing what’s underneath. She’s wrapped up in a silk bow, like a present. She’s literally my Christmas present.
“I got you one more thing,” she says, licking her lips seductively. She nods toward the nightstand drawer, and I reach over to grab whatever it is so I can just be insider her already, but what I don’t expect to find is a fucking Santa hat.
I throw my head back and laugh, loudly. She wants to role play? I can give her role play. I put the silly hat on and wink at my kinky girl.
“Has my baby been a naughty girl this year?” She nods, her lips puckered in an exaggerated pout.
“So bad,” she says, already breathless, and I pat my lap. “Come sit on Santa’s lap and tell me all about it.” She straddles me, and with nothing but a giant ribbon and my boxers between us, I can feel her warmth and her wetness.
“I’ve been a bad girl, Santa. I’ve been lusting for a much older man,” she breathes, as she grinds herself against me. “Don’t tell my mom.”
I pull her bow loose, letting her beautiful tits fall free, the scrap of lingerie floating to the floor. Are they already swollen? Or am I imagining things? Her cotton candy pink nipples are extra puffy, and I suck one into my mouth. She throws her head back and whines. So sensitive.
“I won�
��t tell your mom, as long as you do something for me,” I grunt, pushing my boxer briefs down far enough to free my cock.
“Anything,” she promises.
“Be a good little girl, and put my dick inside you.” Her eyes darken and she wastes no time obeying. I grip her hips as she slides me inside her.
“That’s my good girl. Now ride me.” She rocks her hips back and forth, slowly at first, while I suck her nipples and squeeze her ass. Soon, she’s pumping her hips faster, losing her rhythm, and it’s all that I can do not to blow my goddamn load. She feels amazing. I want to live inside her.
I reach down to play with her clit, and bite her nipple hard. I feel her pussy start to contract around my cock violently, and it’s more than I can take.
“That’s it, baby. Milk that fucking cock,” I grit out around her breast.
“Fuck! I’m coming, Dame!” She shoves my chest and I fall backwards onto the bed while she rides—literally—the last of her orgasm out on me. She collapses onto my chest, exhausted, and I brush sweat-damp hair from her neck with my fingertips. I can feel goosebumps in their wake.
“I love you, Ever.”
“Forever?”
“Forever, Ever,” I promise.
THE END
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Part XVIII
The Ski Mask by Annika Martin
Bianca Moreland
Footsteps echo behind me in the night.
I thought I’d imagined it a block back, but now I know. They’re real.
Just five more blocks.
I want to speed up, but I’m afraid.
I have this stupid thought that maybe whoever’s back there will change their mind and disappear into the night if I just pretend everything’s normal.
I pull my coat more tightly around my blue cocktail dress.
I didn’t realize how late it was when I dismissed my driver. How lonely the walk would be. No cars on the street.
I’m used to being ignored. Nearly invisible. If only I was invisible now.
The footsteps speed up. It seems surreal, but my pounding pulse knows it’s real.
With fumbling hands I pull out my phone to call 9-1-1.
The sound of a stone kicked across the pavement is what tips everything over.
Instinct kicks in and I just run like hell, pounding pavement in my heels.
Footsteps closing in. A man’s breath sounds behind me.
Arms grab me from behind. The ground flies out from under me. I’m lifted, like I’m nothing.
His arms are tight. His breath stinks of onions.
He pulls me into an alley, pushes me against a wall.
A needle in my neck.
A face red with fury.
Hands under my coat.
It still seems surreal, even as he slides my skirt up over my legs, I can no longer move.
Yuri Ivanyenko
I watch Bianca Moreland through windows at night.
I watch her at her coffee shop. Out on her run. Always from afar. She doesn’t know me and she never will. It’s better that way.
She’s perfect; I’m everything wrong.
After every kill I go find her. I watch her.
Because she’s my oblivion.
Some men go to the gym, train to exhaustion after a kill. Some men fuck their brains out. Some hit the bottle until they black out.
That’s what I used to do back in Moscow, an orphan boy trained for a bloody job. I would drink vodka after, as if it would wash away the blood.
But now I’m a man and it’s the sight of her I need.
Just the sight of her washes me in a way the vodka never could. It’s hard to explain if you have never killed, how badly you need beauty afterwards.
Even just the color of her hair—dark red, dull shine like a penny—even a glimpse of her hair helps to wash my soul.
She’ll never know.
She was at a charity ball tonight—in a historic mansion on Lake Michigan, just north of downtown Chicago. The Chicago elite have many such balls. So different from Moscow.
I moved through the shadows toward the window, limping from a harsh kick to the knee. Sometimes the men I kill get in a blow or two. I should’ve iced it, but I needed to see her.
I watched her, looking in from the outside, like so many times before. Men in tuxedos. Women in colors. Bianca a goddess in a blue cocktail dress under the high chandeliers. People ignored her, as usual. Not me.
I watched her and for a little while, I forgot the blood.
I used to kill because I had to. A kid on the Moscow streets, too little food, too much knowledge.
Now I’m a boss running half the crime in Chicago alongside my childhood friend, Viktor Dragusha. I order the hits, but often I do them. These American enforcers underneath us, they don’t yet know how to be vicious. They think killing is a video game—put a bullet in a man’s head and be done.
I show them how to make a man pay, how to make cowards of our enemies. We’re fighting a war right now, and killing is for the living as much as it is for the dead.
I was unhappy when Bianca sent off her driver, decided to walk home like she sometimes does. It seemed dangerous.
The rich are so confident of their safety in their own neighborhoods. If I wanted to fuck with somebody, this is the first place I’d go. A place full of soft, rich people.
I left my car and followed at a distance, keeping to the shadows.
She moved quickly, a dark cloak covering her beauty.
My knee made the walk hard. Swollen to the size of a pineapple—a pineapple with glass inside of it.
I was surprised when she sped up, as if she felt me. I fell back, not wanting to scare her.
Only too late I saw the stranger emerge from the shadows. He headed across the street toward her, something glinting in his hand.
Blyad! I was so mesmerized by her, so focused on my pain, that I didn’t see him.
She took off running.
So did he.
So did I.
Bianca is a runner—fast for a woman.
But he’s a man. He runs after her. Every bit as fit as she is.
My knee feels like its crumbling inside my leg, but still I run.
The stranger catches up to her first. He grabs her from the back and pulls her into the shadows between two mansions, out of sight.
I pour on the speed. I pull my black ski mask from my pocket and shove it over my face. I wear this mask for killing. I thought I would wear it only once today.
When I arrive, I see the needle he stuck her with on the ground. He’s pulling at her clothes. Already she’s unable to fight.
I drag him off and slam his head into the wall.
She slides down the side of the wall, eyes wide. She’s immobilized by the drug. Fury rips through me. I pull my pika from my pocket and flick out the blade.
“You would touch her?” I growl into his startled eyes. “You would hurt her?”
He shakes his head, fear in his eyes. My accent tells him that I’m one of the Russian gangsters. The reason other criminals lock their doors at night. “I didn’t know she was yours!” he says.
I pin him to the wall and push the blade into his belly as I hold his gaze, let him know who is killing him. I drag it down, across, and back up, gutting him in three quick moves, a triangle into his torso. He weeps as his guts spill onto my sleeve.
“I didn’t know,” he whispers.
“Now you do.”
She whimpers, frightened.
I unzip his neck with one strong slash and push him aside, watch him crumple.
She gazes up at me, horror in her eyes.
“It’s okay, moy zaychik.” I pull off my bloody jacket, stripping down to my black T-shirt. I don’t like her seeing me bloody.
I hear something—a voice. So faint. Somebody else?
Then I spot her phone on the ground.
Can I get your location?
> I pick it up, using my jacket. A clean crime scene is as natural as breathing to a man like me. I speak into it, giving the location of a nearby a bus bench.
I kneel down in front of her and slip the phone in her coat pocket. She’ll want it. The Americans love their phones very much. “Little rabbit?” I whisper. “Can you walk?”
She’s trembling, gray eyes on the crumpled corpse of the man who wanted to rape her. He lies just feet away in a widening pool of blood, eyes frozen open, intestines like snakes from a basket.
I take her chin and turn her head to me. “That’s what I do to men who hurt you.”
Fear in her eyes--my black ski mask is scary. I can’t take it off.
I brush a wisp of hair from her forehead, then I gather her numbed body into my arms and I hoist her up.
She needs to be out in the light where she belongs.
But I need to hold her, for just a moment.
It’s a dream, having her in my arms. I tighten, gathering her to me. She seems to shake less when I do that.
Her gray eyes are beautiful in the moonlight; they have tiny lines of white inside, like trapped starlight. I didn’t know this about her eyes.
Sirens in the distance.
“Help is coming, moy zaychik,” I say. Little rabbit, this means.
She moves her lips.
“I know. Your limbs feel like wood, but it goes away. When your fingers start to prickle, you know it’s going away then.”
I was on the receiving end of such drugs, as a boy in Moscow. Before I was a criminal. Before I moved from hunter to hunted.
