Blackwood

by Celia Aaron

  “Tell me you wanted it.”

  “I did. Yes.” Just saying the words was like a shot of heroin in my veins.

  He thrust up, his cock hitting my spot, and moved his hand back to slap my ass. “Mine from the start.”

  I quaked, my muscles dancing to the dark music he played.

  “Whose cunt am I fucking?” His grip on my neck tightened. Smack.

  “Yours.” I squeaked past the pressure at my throat.

  “I bet you want me to come in your slippery cunt, don’t you?”Smack.

  “Yes.” I met his wild eyes. “Please.”

  “Fuck.” He squeezed my throat, and all air stopped.

  I kept riding him, my release hovering on the edge of a knife. My throat burned as I increased my pace, getting every bit of friction between us. My eyes rolled back in my head, and I flirted with unconsciousness. I was almost gone when he released my neck, and my orgasm burst through my body like a firework.

  I screamed as I came. High, frothy waves of pleasure rolled over me. Garrett grunted and surged up, embedding himself completely inside me as my toes curled and my mind blanked.

  “Fucking shit.” He grunted and then groaned low as his hips pistoned into me, his cock kicking with each spurt.

  He emptied inside me as I quaked, unable to control my movements as aftershocks shot through me like jolts of electricity. With a final groan, he relaxed down onto the couch and pulled me to his chest.

  I collapsed on top of him and sucked air into my lungs. He wrapped his arms around my back and pressed us together, his rapid heartbeat almost matching mine. I should have asked if he was okay, if his lung hurt, if I needed to move off his chest. Instead, I sank into him, let him hold me as lightness took over my limbs. I snuggled closer as he stroked my back.

  We lay together for a while, long enough for me to blink away the bliss and realize that I’d wantonly fucked a man who’d been in the hospital just a few days earlier.

  I sat up and peeked at his bandage. It was still clean.

  “Red, you have no idea how badly I needed that.” He stretched his arms up and tucked his hands behind his head—the picture of masculine satisfaction.

  He winced as I stood, his semi sliding out of me.

  “We shouldn’t have done that,” I called over my shoulder as I hurried to the bathroom. “And you need to wash your mouth out.”

  “You loved it!” he yelled back as I cleaned myself up.

  I took some tissue and a small tumbler of water back to him. “I may have enjoyed it.” I rubbed my ass. “That’s sore, though.”

  He let out a breath, and his eyelids began to droop. “I love it when you wear my marks.” Reaching out, he ran his fingertips down the side of my breast. “Beautiful cherry red.”

  “Drink this. You need to stay hydrated.” I tipped the water to his lips.

  He took a few swallows, then gently pushed my hand away. “I’m good, just tired.”

  “Rest.” I kissed him and smoothed the tape around the gauze on his chest. “You overdid it.”

  “I want to overdo it again, soon.” His eyes closed. “I’ll be ready to go in an hour, tops, and that’s only because I’m injured.”

  “Sure.” I brushed his hair away from his forehead as he slipped into slumber.

  As soon as I was certain he was out, I dressed and headed to the foyer. My pack waited next to the door. I pulled on my socks and boots, then tucked my pistol at my back before pulling on a heavy coat. With one last glance toward the living room, I took a deep breath and eased the door open.

  I’d be back before he woke. The meds I slipped into his water would make sure of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I sped into the woods, putting far too much faith in the ATV and my helmet. Sapling branches smacked against me as the wheels ate up the rough terrain. I was on a deadline. My shoulder ached with each rough jolt, but my curiosity wouldn’t be denied. Garrett had another week of bed rest before he’d be able to do any riding, and there was no way he’d let me go alone. My need to investigate had intensified each day until I devised a plan—one that Garrett would be pissed about as soon as he figured out what I’d done.

  The frigid air was still, giving no push back as I hurtled toward the biggest discovery of my search. The grave filled my thoughts. What was it doing out there, who dug it, and who was in it? My heart told me I’d find my father there, but I maintained an odd little sliver of hope. Like a splinter in my grief. Maybe it wasn’t him.

  I focused on my path, following the trail we’d blazed a week before, then splitting off toward the shack. Digging the grave would take half an hour. I counted on safety for that short window of time. Even if the shooter had seen me leave the house, he’d have to have wings to make it to the spot of woods near the shack in time to do any damage.

  Hunkering down, I picked my way through the undergrowth, aiming for patches of sun and avoiding marshy areas. The smell of damp earth clung to my nose as I rushed through the crystalline air and bitter cold. My thoughts flitted back to Garrett asleep in the house. I’d locked all the doors and made sure he’d be comfortable. Assuring myself that he wouldn’t be too mad when I got back home safe, I turned my attention to the thicket up ahead.

  Heading to the left, I veered among the dark tree trunks until I found the opening in the twisted vines. I powered inside, my wheels following the faded tire tracks I’d left before. I pulled to the right, away from the shack, and toward the dig site. After about ten more minutes of riding, I slowed as I approached the dented ground, the dead limbs hiding nothing from my trained eye.

  I rolled about ten feet from the depression and killed my engine. Then, I pulled off my helmet and listened. Minutes passed as my breath fogged in my face, and the tips of my ears began to ache from the cold. No sound, no breeze, just the infrequent sound of a woodpecker in a distant part of the forest. Satisfied, I slung my leg over the ATV and walked to the indentation. Dusky green moss crept along one side, covered here and there with brown leaf litter. One corner had a deeper depression—maybe due to normal settling or perhaps an animal trying to get at whatever lay beneath the ground.

  The limbs around and on top of the grave had hidden it for maybe a season. After that, the leaves rotted off and left only interwoven branches, like two hands crossed over a dormant heart. I pulled them away and grabbed my rake to scrape the site clean of any other debris. The ache in my shoulder grew with each movement, but the burning need to know only glowed brighter.

  I pulled my small hand spade from my pack and knelt at the edge of the grave. The cold earth seeped through my jeans to my knees as I shoved the wide edge of the shovel into the damp dirt. It sank in easily. My heart thumped with heavy beats, as if filled with tar instead of blood. Putting pressure on the handle, I turned a small bit of earth up and out of the depression. I dug the way I’d been taught, the way I knew would preserve whatever I found. Slowly, methodically. Another slice into the earth, another push deeper into the mystery. Five turns of the spade later, each one creeping inward, I hit something springy. Something unnatural.

  Wiping the sweat off my brow, I shucked my heavy coat and tossed it onto the ATV. I stepped into the grave, careful to plant my feet where I’d already dug, then took a small hand shovel to the spot. I dug around the anomaly, trying to be careful despite my desire to hurry, to finally discover what I’d been searching for. I excavated around the shape until I hit something hard. Scraping the dirt off the top, a sob rocketed from my lungs and tears overwhelmed what little resistance I had put up.

  A shoe. I’d found a shoe. Blue canvas with a white sole. The only type of shoe I’d ever seen my father wear. I’d found him.

  “Daddy.” I choked on my grief. Bottled for too long, it had fermented into something uglier, something bitter, and I hated whoever had done this.

  Bile rose in my throat, and I darted out of the grave as my breakfast pushed its way into my mouth and out onto the unforgiving ground. Acid burned my throat, my m
outh, and I didn’t stop retching until I was completely empty.

  I stood and leaned my head on the nearest tree as I tried to calm the shake in my hands. Who did it? I breathed deeply, forcing myself to go about this more rationally. I needed to find clues, something to point me to his killer. The grave was the only place I could look for them, but the thought of digging him the rest of the way out horrified me, sent my skin crawling. I dry-heaved and clenched my eyes closed as endless tears streamed down my cheeks.

  A scuffing sound at my back caught my attention. I turned and reached for the gun tucked in my jeans, but someone grabbed a handful of my hair, yanked me back and then shoved me face-first into the tree.

  I crumpled, blood streaming down my face.

  “I told you to stay out of these woods.” The scratchy voice, the unkempt beard. Recognition flared right along with a burst of fear. Danny loomed over me, my pistol in his hand. He flipped it so he had it by the barrel. The butt of my own gun was the last thing I saw.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Hey!”

  My right cheek stung, and my ears rang.

  “Hey, wake the fuck up!” Someone yelled and slapped me, the sound like a shot.

  I opened my eyes and tried to back away, but I couldn’t move. My wrists and ankles were bound.

  Danny reared back to slap me again.

  “Stop!” I struggled away, but bumped into something sturdy and fell to my side. I blinked hard, but only one of my eyes opened. The dim interior of the shack greeted me as Danny yanked me upright and shoved me against the wall.

  “Stay put.”

  I sucked in air to scream.

  He clapped a filthy hand over my mouth and leaned down into my face. “Scream and I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

  I breathed out hard through my nose.

  “Nobody would hear you anyway.” He sat back on his haunches, the dim light seeping through the doorway only illuminating half his face. The matted beard seemed even filthier, the spit streaks forming two dark lines from each side of his mouth. He scratched at his sallow skin with one hand and pointed my gun at me with the other.

  “Let me go.” I glanced toward the door.

  “Nowhere. That’s where you’re going.” He scratched harder. “I told you to stop digging. Told you to leave well enough alone.” His voice grew to a shout. “I told you to go back!”

  I cringed against the wall as his face contorted into a mask of rage.

  “Please, just let me go.” I coughed. The pain in my head blossomed like the cruelest flower, and I tasted blood. “Please.”

  “I can’t! You done found your daddy.” He yanked on his beard. “That’ll get back to me. I can’t have that. No I can’t.” He shook his head. “Sure can’t. No, no, can’t. No.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.” I leaned forward, trying to look into his eyes, trying to convince him my life was worth more than a bullet and another shallow grave. “Please.”

  “Stop saying please!” He stood, but kept the gun trained on me. “I can’t change it. Not now. Too late.” He sagged against the opposite wall. “Why didn’t you listen? Why?”

  “I had to find him.” Dizziness took hold, and I dry-heaved. The effort felt like a spikey sledgehammer to my face.

  “You found him. So what?” He bent over and stared into my one good eye. “You think he wanted you to die out here, too?”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “Does it matter?” He shrugged.

  “Yes!” I screamed with what little force I had left. “Tell me why.”

  “You want a story before bedtime, is that it? You want to know it all before I kill you and bury you in the same grave?” He mumbled under his breath too quickly for me to follow. “You know what curiosity gets you?” He cackled, his missing teeth like the holes in his sanity. “Come on. I’ll show you.” He pushed off the wall, and I tried to make a move toward the door. All I managed to do was make it easier for him to rip me off the ground and drag me out of the shack.

  He took hold of my hair and yanked me toward my father’s grave. “I’ll show you. I’ll show you all you need to know about curiosity.”

  Agony and disbelief punctured every soft tissue of my body as my knees hit the forest floor and he dragged me along by my hair. My screams didn’t stop, but he wasn’t concerned with the noise anymore. He sped up, rushing through the woods. I skittered along the ground, kicking and twisting as the pressure on my hair increased until I feared it would rip out. He threw me into the grave, then grabbed my wrists. After a few moments, he grunted, and the pressure on my wrists eased; he’d untied me. He scrambled out of the grave, my gun still in his hand. He grabbed the small spade and threw it to me.

  “Dig!”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Fucking dig or I’ll put a bullet in your forehead right this second.” He shook the pistol at me. “No loss now that I’ve fucked up your pretty face.”

  He stepped closer and stabbed his tatty shoe into the dirt. “His head was about here if I remember correctly. That’s where I want you to dig.”

  Tears coursed down my cheeks as I took the spade with trembling hands. I thought of throwing it at him, but I knew I was kidding myself. One shot and it was over. I was going to die here.

  “Dig!” His scream was animalistic as he began muttering to himself again.

  I pushed the spade into the earth and hit something only a few inches down. A tink of the shovel blade and all forward progress halted. I knew the sound, the feel. It was a skull. My father’s skull.

  “Please, don’t make me.” I stared up at him as horror ripped through my mind. “Please.”

  “You need to learn.” What might have been remorse passed across his face. “This is what happens when you keep pushing and pushing and pushing. Now dig. Learn your last lesson. Dig.”

  “No.”

  He fired a shot into the dirt. “Dig!”

  My body turned to ice, my heart to forgotten stone. I had no way out. Digging was the only thing that would prolong my life, give me some semblance of a chance. I gripped the shovel with freezing fingers and moved a few inches to the left of where I’d just planted the spade. The shovel blade sank into the dank earth, nothing halting its progress. I twisted it slightly, then leaned on the handle.

  A skull pressed up through the earth, pushing through the secrets and the lies until the dappled sunlight hit the dingy bone. I sobbed as bits of flesh stayed behind and strands of hair just a few shades darker than mine snaked through the dirt. I sat back and threw the spade away.

  “See, girl? See?” He walked over to me. “Your daddy, he asked too many questions, too. Wanted to know things. Him and Lillian.” His voice cracked. “My Lillian.”

  “You killed her.” A tremor went through me as he wrapped one arm around my shoulders. “Both of them.”

  “I’d never hurt my Lillian. No. No. That wasn’t me. That was him. Not me. No.”

  “My dad?” I closed my eyes, refusing to look at my father’s skull any longer. The cheeks I’d kissed, the face I’d loved before I even knew what love was.

  “No, fool woman! The one who runs things around here. The one who told me to do this.” He pointed the gun toward my father’s skull.

  “The mayor?”

  He cackled, the sound sick and wrong in the cold, quiet woods. “Try a little closer to home. Cozied right up, didn’t you? Did you know he likes to chase ‘em through the woods? Hunt them?” He ended his laughter on a wheezing note.

  Did he mean Garrett? No. “Garrett had nothing to do with his sister’s death. You’re lying.”

  “You think I’m just some mad dog killer, don’t you?” He tapped the barrel against my forehead. “That I just killed your daddy for kicks.”

  I winced, but he kept me still, his arm tightening around my shoulders.

  “I’m not a mad dog. No, no, no. I’m a kept dog. I get table scraps if I behave. But you, you were like a little bunny out here, running through t
he woods, whee! And I chased you, but instead of snapping you up in my jaws”—He shrieked and clapped his remaining teeth together—“I warned you.” His voice lowered to a hurried whisper. “I tried to tell you. Just like your daddy, you didn’t stop asking questions. Just like Lillian, you have to die. Just like both of them, your blood will be on my hands.”

  “You said you didn’t kill her. Lillian. You said—”

  “I didn’t stop it. I haven’t stopped any of the killing around here. Done a fair share myself. Now I’ll add you to my list.” He sighed and pressed the barrel to the center of my forehead. “I really do keep a list, you know? It’s long, longer than my beard, longer than your pretty brown hair, longer than Lillian’s was.” He mumbled quick words.

  “The mass grave in the woods.” The photo from Lillian’s memory card resurfaced, though this time my body was piled in with the others. No.

  “Seen some of my handiwork, eh? I didn’t know you’d ventured over there, but I guess a gal like you gets around.” He cackled and pressed the metal harder into my skull. “Lots of graves in these woods. Lots of señoritas and señors and whoever I can get for cheap.”

  I couldn’t follow his words, only the shine of his barrel. “Let me go.”

  His finger rested on the trigger. I couldn’t see anything else. Just the cold metal and his dirty index finger flirting with my death.

  “They always say that.” He chuckled, then stopped abruptly. “I never do.”

  I shoved my elbow into his side with all the strength I had and grabbed for the gun. A deafening shot went off, and my right ear burned and rang. I fought with him, both of us grunting as I tried to wrest the gun away from his bony grip. He shoved me to the ground as we struggled, my hands around his on the butt of the gun. He punched me in the jaw and ripped the gun away from my desperate fingers. It was over. I stared up at him as he leveled the pistol.

  Another, quieter shot went off, and warmth sprayed across my face.

  “Drop it!” Someone shouted through the constant scream in my ears. More pops, like fireworks going off on the next block.