by Evelyn Glass
“I watched you for a long time, years, as you went about your work, as you got rich and started becoming picky about your jobs. I watched and as I watched I started to wonder how I felt. I wasn’t sure if it was hate or if there was a little bit of love left. I’m still not sure.” She sighs the last words, and something changes in her. She sounds vulnerable, and for a moment I feel sorry for her.
But that feeling doesn’t last long. Her emotions have made her slack; the gun isn’t as firm on my spine.
With one quick movement, I spin, head-butt her, and snatch the gun from her grip. My head pounds as her nose crunches against my forehead, pain spiking, but I ignore it. As she falls back, I leap at her, reach into her waistband, and retrieve my pistol. I aim both guns at her, grimacing.
“It didn’t have to come to this, River,” I say.
She lays curled up on the balcony, her face buried in her arms.
My fingers stroke the triggers. I will myself to fire, end it all here. But then her body starts to tremble. She’s sobbing, I realize with shock. River Mendoza, cold-hearted killer, is sobbing.
‘Fire, fire, fire!’ Black Knight, willing me on. A good man to me, but I know he wouldn’t hesitate if he was where I am now. He would shoot without a second thought, kill her, and push it from his mind.
But there is something horribly pitiful in the way she lays there, like a kicked animal, her body wrenching with sobs.
She looks up at me with puffy red eyes. “Do it, Samson,” she says quietly. “Just do it. I moved the body. I got your little friend involved in all this. Just do it. Put me out of my misery.”
“What happened to you?” I hear myself say. “Where’s your fight gone?”
“It died the first time that bastard cut me,” River says.
But that isn’t true, she fought him and won.
My hands are shaking, my fingers stroking the triggers. “You’ve spied on me, spied on Anna, you’ve disrupted her life and you’ve disrupted mine. If I don’t kill you now, you won’t stop.”
“All true,” she sobs. “All true, so do it.”
I will myself to fire. But her face is too wretched. I feel something twist in my belly. ‘Guilt?’ Uncle Richard roars, his voice deafening in my mind. ‘Is that guilt?’
I try to deny it, but I can’t. It’s guilt, red-hot guilt, guilt twisting my insides. She’s right. Despite everything she’s done, she’s right. I left her. We were partners on a job and I left her. It doesn’t matter that I never loved her, never wanted her in the same way she wanted me. When you get down to the facts, I left her to be tortured and raped.
I kneel down next to her curled-up body, press the silencer of my pistol against her forehead. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t try and push the gun away. Her hands rest limply on her chest. She looks up at me expectantly, waiting. “I won’t stop,” she says. “I’ll never stop. Just do it. Do it!” she screams at me, and the reverberations move up the silencer through the pistol and into my hand, shaking.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, don’t know what’s inside of me that’s stopping me from firing. It’s never happened before, not with any mark. I don’t think on a job, I just do. I try to find my killer’s center and fail. It’s not there. I’m alone, lost and alone with a choice before me I have no desire to make. I think of Anna, sweet Anna, Anna who deserves none of this, and yet I can’t fire.
I shake my head. “I can’t,” I say quietly. “Goddamn, I can’t kill you. You have to stop, River. Just promise me you’ll stop.”
“I won’t,” she says. “Don’t be a coward. I won’t stop.”
Fuck, I think, furious with myself. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I lift the gun, aim, and smack River across the jaw. Her head slumps and her eyes close, but she’s still breathing.
Then I stand up, slide the guns into my waistband, and step over her.
I run down the stairs of the warehouse, desperate to get to Anna. I’ve just made things far more complicated than they had to be, I know.
Anna, I think, as I run. Anna, forgive me.
Chapter Seventeen
Anna
I’m sitting on the couch, looking again at my jewelry, my dresses, wondering how much they cost and if they’ve made even the slightest dent in Samson’s finances. I know it’s not good manners to think about such things; when you’re with a man, you’re supposed to pretend that money doesn’t exist. But how can I stop myself when he displays such awe-inspiring wealth? A few minutes ago, the butler came in and offered me tea. I felt awkward, not knowing what to say. A simple yes or no seemed cruel, as though I was accepting that he was my servant and I had any right to order him around. All of it overwhelms me, confuses me. And yet I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it. I do like it, that’s the truth, like it more than I can completely understand.
Suddenly, the door crashes open. Samson limps in, mouth set into a hard line, and I know that’s something’s wrong. He limps over to where I sit. Blood coats the side of his head and his hands are trembling. He stands over me. “I—” He shakes his head. “I’ve made arrangements,” he says.
“Arrangements for what?” I ask. I jump to my feet and stand close to him. It’s like the anxiety and anger emanate from him in a scent. I breathe it in and all I want to do is make him feel better. “What’s happening?”
“We need to leave,” he says. “There should be—ah, good.”
The house trembles and the blades of a helicopter, sounding like a continuous rush of wind, whirrs around and around from above us. The chandelier rattles and the TV rocks from side to side on its stand.
“Is that what I think it is?” I ask.
Samson nods grimly. “It is,” he says.
I place my hand on his shoulders in an attempt to still his skittishness. His eyes glance everywhere and nowhere, never resting on a single place, and his chest rises and falls in big gasping breaths. I have never seen him so panicked. It frightens me. Up until now I’ve assumed that Samson was constantly in control. And he clearly is, if he’s called a helicopter to take you away. That’s true, I know that’s true, and yet he seems slightly unhinged.
“What happened out there?” I say, squeezing his shoulders.
He heaves a sigh, lowers his gaze, and mutters: “I couldn’t kill her, Anna. I just couldn’t. She told me what happened to her when she was taken, and it . . .” He tells me all of it, about the man torturing Anna, raping her, and then her escape. He tells it to me in a cold monotone voice, but beneath the monotone is pain. “I was looking down at her and thinking about all the pain she’s had to deal with. And she’s a woman, Anna. A woman. I’ve never killed a woman in my life. Never even hurt one. I don’t know.”
I move my hands up to his face and pull him down to my chest, stroking his head. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “We’ll find another way to get rid of her. We’ll find another way to be safe. You don’t have to worry, Samson.”
After a minute, a man wearing overalls and a helmet clears his throat from the entrance of the living room. Samson and I turn. It’s the pilot, I guess. He nods shortly to both of us and then addresses Samson. “It’s all ready, Mr. Black,” he says. “Are you sure you can—”
“Yes,” Samson says. “You can go.”
“Yes, sir.”
The pilot retreats, leaves the house. I look up at Samson, a smile tugging at my lips. “Why has the pilot left?” I say.
He shrugs, as if it’s no big deal. “I’m going to fly us. I can’t have anybody knowing where we’ve gone, not even paid-off men.”
“But—you’re going to fly us? How?”
“I was in the military for two years,” he says. “Seventeen to nineteen. But I had to leave because Uncle Richard got himself into some serious trouble. I was almost in big trouble for it, actually. You can’t just walk out of your barracks and never come back. But one of my uncle’s contacts knew some military men, and it was all settled. But I’d already gotten the skills I needed, flying a helicopter being
one of the more exciting ones, I guess.”
I shake my head in wonder.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Samson asks.
“Because you’re so damn full of surprises, Samson, that’s why.”
“Is that a good or a bad thing?”
I wave at the dresses, the jewelry, and then nod up to the ceiling, toward the helicopter. “A good thing, definitely,” I say.
He’s a frickin’ helicopter pilot, too! I think. “I’ve never been in a helicopter,” I say.
“Well,” he replies, tweaking my nose, “there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”
###
We walk up the stairs, me holding a bag which contains my belongings from my apartment and my gifts, to a ladder which leads to the roof. Samson climbs up the ladder and shoves it open. A square of sunlight hits me straight in the eyes so that I have to shield them with my hand.
I lift the bag, he leans down and takes it from me. Then I climb the ladder and emerge onto a landing pad on the roof. I look down at the houses below and see a few people looking up at the helicopter in confusion, a strange disturbance to the normal routine of their Real Housewives life. Samson walks up to the helicopter the same way as a man walks up to his car, with complete ease and lack of fear, as though piloting such a dangerous machine is run-of-the-mill.
He turns when he reaches the helicopter. “Are you coming?” he says.
“Yes,” I say, following him.
He opens the cockpit door and helps me into the seat, straps me in, and puts the headset over my ears. All sound is cut away immediately. The squawking of birds and the laughter of children down the street and even my own breathing, all of it silent with the headphones over my ears. Samson climbs in beside me, straps himself in and dons his own headphones. He flips a switch, and then I can hear him, close to my ears.
“How are you feeling?”
“Nervous,” I admit.
“Don’t worry,” Samson says. “I’ve practiced since I left the army. Every weekend for a few years, and then on and off after that. I know what I’m doing. Do you trust me?”
“I do,” I say, without having to think about it.
My trust for him is so absolute now that I don’t have to give it any thought. I don’t have to question it. It’s a fact which sits inside of me just as the fact of my own heartbeat does; it’s just something I accept. Strange as it is, I trust Samson more than I’ve trusted any man before him. But it started the same with Eric, didn’t it? Trusting him, loving him. But he was pretending all along, wasn’t he? What if Samson is the same? What if all of this—the kindness, the strength, the trust—what if all of it is just an illusion? What if he’s tricking you? But I don’t entertain the thought for long. I trust him, and that’s all, trust him implicitly and completely.
“Good,” Samson says. “Because if you can’t trust your man, who can you trust?”
“So you’re my man now?” I say.
“Yes, and you’re my woman.”
I smile, his words filling my chest with warmth. I’m Samson Black’s woman. No matter what happens, no matter what stress and heartache and drama lies ahead, nothing can take that away from me.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Ask me again when we’re up in the air.”
He chuckles, and then starts flicking switches rapidly, so quick it almost looks like he’s flicking them at random. But when I look into his face I see that he knows what he’s doing, see that he’s done this before. The uncertainty which gripped him only minutes ago when he stumbled into the house is gone. Even the blood matted to his hair doesn’t worry me. I think Samson Black could do many things with a bloody head most men couldn’t do when unharmed. He’s an anomaly, a man apart from other men, the kind of man a woman rarely meets in real life.
Perhaps absurdly, I find that I’m glad Eric was stuffed into the trunk of my car, that his psychotic, tortured ex-girlfriend chose me for her games. Because if she hadn’t, if she had chosen another way to torment him, he never would’ve showed up on my doorstep one evening with a bottle of wine and a box of pizza.
Then the blades start revolving, and all thought is pushed from my mind. Chh-chh-chh-chh, they sound above us, around us, penetrating even the thickness of the headphones. Quicker, quicker: chh-chh-chh-chh-chhchhhhhhhhhhhh! The helicopter rises from the roof of the house. There’s a moment where it seems stuck to the surface, and then it breaks away and we’re ascending so fast my belly drops.
###
It’s difficult for me to track where we’re going. Every time I look out of the window, down at the landscape below, a horrible sense of the height grips me. I see the city, and the next time I look, we’re hurtling over forest. I try and think where that might be, but I can’t. There are too many possibilities. Somewhere wild, somewhere hidden, that’s for sure.
Samson pilots the machine expertly, not once making me wonder if he knows what he’s doing. His two-year stint in the army and his training afterwards has paid off. I watch him as he holds the joystick, watch his strong face and his impossibly bright blue eyes, watch as he makes minor adjustments.
As I watch him, heat presses between my legs, the kind of heat which cannot be ignored. He’s in control again, I think, and the heat presses with more urgency. He’s in control. He’s not panicked. He’s at ease. He’s so damn cool.
“You’re staring at me,” he says, his voice a phantom in the headset.
“Am I?” I ask innocently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, sure,” he grins. “I bet you don’t. Thing about killers, Anna, is that we have good periphery vision. You’ve been staring at me for five minutes now. And—what is your hand doing?”
I bring my attention to my body. He’s right; my hand is between my legs, rubbing as I watch him. “Oh,” I giggle, head swilling with pleasure. “I didn’t even realize.”
“I’m jealous,” he says. “I’m sitting here and you’re having all the fun.”
“Well . . .”
With my free hand I reach across and slide my hand down his pants. He groans, a deep, animal groan which sounds loudly and maddeningly in my ears. I pull down his pants and his underwear, tuck them under his balls, and look at his rock-hard cock.
“You’re always hard for me,” I say.
“I can’t help it. You’re too damn sexy.”
Still rubbing my pussy, I lean over and take his cock in my mouth. I suck it hard, all the while rubbing my clit, massaging it, thinking, he’s flying a helicopter and his cock is in my mouth, his huge hard cock is buried deep in my mouth. Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck!
His moans get louder and louder, urging me on, and I suck him harder, pushing my head down, feeling the huge bulk of him. My pussy is on fire, my fingers toying with my clit. Then Samson reaches over keeping one hand on the joystick, and pulls my hand away from my crotch. He slides his hand down there and presses down on my clit with his fingers. I feel the wetness of myself; he pushes his fingers up and inside of me, burying them deep, so deep they touch my sweet spot. Three fingers in my pussy, stretching me.
“Fuck,” I moan, taking my mouth from his cock, spit and pre-come falling from my lips. “Fuck, fuck.”
“Come for me, Anna,” he says calmly. “You’re not allowed to suck my cock again until you come for me, do you understand?”
“Y—yes!” I cry, as his fingers wiggle inside of me, pushing my sweet spot.
He keeps going and soon it’s like the tips of his fingers are fire, fire deep inside of me and all I can feel is heat. I close my eyes and I see red, bright red, and I feel the juddering of the helicopter, feel the way it travels up his arms, his fingers, and inside of me. Soon it’s like the helicopter is shifting just to pleasure me, the immense vibrations of the machinery reverberating deep in my pussy.
“Come for me,” he commands, his voice strained. “Do it. I need your lips on my cock. Come for me and then suck my fuckin
g cock.”
“Yes—yes—y—y—y—!”
Words are impossible. I can’t speak. I can barely think. All I know, all that exists, is the trembling heat between my legs. I bite down so hard I feel blood in my mouth, but I don’t care. I’m in his helicopter and he’s going to make me come. I’m in his helicopter and he’s going to make me come. I’m in his helicopter and he’s going to—
I don’t even know what the heat is anymore. It’s just there. I’m floating atop the euphoria, buoyed up by it, utterly lost in it. I bite down harder and a fresh wave of blood touches my tongue but I can’t feel it, can’t taste it. All I can feel is the heat, his hand, the quivering, the reverberations. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
