by Liz Crowe
I wondered what it was for. A panic room? A hiding place for a safe? It was too small for the former, so it must hold things that were too sordid to keep on display. I peered into the opening and found a narrow crawl space that ran the entire length of the room. It was wide enough for me to stand in, with my chest pressed against the wall and my back against the closet, so I slipped inside.
To my right, a safe had been set into one end. It looked like a locker in the hallways of a high school someplace, except for the keypad on the front. I brushed my fingers across the numbers and wondered what X kept inside. Passports, money, papers, evidence… All the things that could put him away for a very long time…or the things that could help him disappear. Him and me.
Shimmying back into the closet, I slid the false panel back into place and it closed with a click. If things got rough, then maybe I could use it as a place to hide out. Wishful thinking that X wouldn’t check there first, but it was something.
My stomach began to squirm as I turned to the bedroom door and lingered at the threshold. If all those weapons hung in his closet, what was waiting for me out there? I had to grow a pair and take a step. I was still the same woman who’d broken into Sykes’ home undetected and managed to get out unscathed, so this should be a piece of cake. There was no trigger to pull here.
Padding tentatively down the hall, I listened for any movement ahead. It was silent other than the occasional thump from someone in a nearby apartment. From the looks of the place so far, it was modest, much like my own had been. I wasn't sure it fit X's MO of being a hitman. If he worked for cash, wouldn't he have a better place? Nicer things, more security?
At the end of the hall, the space opened out into a joined lounge and kitchen. I saw the refrigerator first and my stomach growled. How long had it been since I’d eaten anything? I couldn’t remember, maybe it was before starting my last shift at The Gambler’s Inn and who knew when that was.
Darting forward, I wrenched the door open and the little light inside flicked on illuminating a shelf of Corona beers and not much else. Groaning in disappointment, I wondered what the hell X even ate. Opening the freezer, I found that empty too. Motherfucker.
I rifled through drawers and cupboards, but I didn’t find much of anything. The man only kept clothes, weapons and beer in his apartment. Typical male behavior, but there was nothing typical about X.
Turning, I cast my gaze across the rest of the apartment. Two large windows were set into the wall that let in the muted orange glow from the street lamps outside and there was a modest sofa and coffee table, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. The opposite wall was plastered with photographs, newspaper clippings…all kinds of things stuck together like a puzzle. Like X had sat here for hours on end trying to solve a crime…
My breath hitched as I put two and two together.
Stepping forward, I rounded the kitchen bench and approached the wall, knowing that I was going to relive the horror of that night all over again. I’d stood there on the gravel outside my family home as a detective talked at me, thinking about the beautiful corpses inside. I’d wanted color and beauty in my life, but all I got was this…pain. The color red would never hold the same meaning for me ever again.
Red was the color of the blood that stained the cream carpet.
Red was the color that was underneath the spot right between the eyes.
I leaned against the wall, my legs feeling like they would crumple beneath me at any moment. I ran my fingers over the papers, reading the headlines that described the things that had happened while I was out being a selfish cow. I was out having a mediocre orgasm while my family got shot in the head.
A tear slid from my eye and I brushed it away furiously. I stood there in the semi-darkness and stared at the crime scene photographs, reminding myself why I was here in the first place.
Revenge. X was...
The front door opened and I spun on my heel, my gaze colliding with a furious looking X. He was wearing his Royal Blood leather, which meant he was out doing something for them…continuing his ruse.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave,” I said, pressing my back against the wall.
He slammed the door closed and strode towards me through the darkness, anger bleeding through his pores…anger that was directed at me.
“X, please, I-” He went for my neck again, but I swatted his hand away.
With a snarl, he grasped my wrists, wrenching my arms above my head.
“Why did you break free? Why?” he asked, leaning against me.
I cowered against the wall, wincing as his fingers bit into my raw skin. “I was hungry,” I lied. It was a half-truth, but one I’d hoped he’d buy.
“Hungry?” he scoffed. “Hungry?”
I nodded, my gaze fixed on his.
“Liar, liar…” he murmured. “You went through my belongings didn’t you? What did you hide, Mercy?”
“I didn’t-”
“Don’t lie to me!” he roared.
“I didn’t take anything…”
“Do you want to know about the terrible things I do with the things locked in my closet, Mercy? Do you want to know what’s in store for you? Believe me, you’re better off not knowing.”
“I was hungry!” I cried, trying to choke down the sob that was threatening to escape my throat.
“You want to look at it?” he snarled, letting my wrists go and pushing my face into the photo of my dead mother.
“Yes,” I replied, opening my eyes.
“Yes?” X sounded surprised at my response. “You want to look at the dead body of your mother? You want to see how her head was blown half off by Sykes? You want to see her insides smeared on the carpet?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, pushing against his chest. “It reminds me of what I’m fighting for.”
“Revenge?”
I stared up at X defiantly. “Revenge.” He smelt like leather and soap and I arched my back, jamming my breasts hard against his chest.
X let me go, jerking back and separating our bodies. “You shouldn’t have escaped, Mercy.”
“I didn’t escape,” I said through a sigh. “I’m still here.”
His gaze flickered towards the hall and I wondered how far I could push him again. What did I need to give him in order to show the master manipulator how much I meant every word I said? I raised a hand and traced my left breast through the material of the T-shirt I wore, the same breast that bore his teeth marks. He’d enjoyed it…the look in his eyes as he gazed down at the pain he’d inflicted…
“Bite me again,” I murmured, reaching for the hem of the T-shirt.
X stared at me with a blank expression as I stripped, letting the material fall to the floor.
“Hurt me,” I murmured, hoping that this was the thing he needed from me. “Take me, X… Take my pain...”
Chapter Twenty-Three
X
Mercy stood in the orange glow of the street lamps outside, naked and palming her breasts, and I was captivated.
“How many times do we have to go over this, Mercy?” I asked, resisting the urge to get my cock out.
“As many as we have to until you understand,” she replied, beginning to roll her nipples between her fingers.
“You had your chance to run,” I said, balling my hands into tight fists, trying to reign in the urge to taste her blood again. “You should’ve taken it.”
“We both want revenge…”
“What I want is none of your business,” I snapped, shoving my hands into my hair. This fucking woman…
“You want your freedom,” she said, transferring her right hand to her clit and my cock began to spark into life. I wanted to bury myself into her pussy and fuck her into submission.
“I-” I stared at her hand, watching her fingers swirl around the little ball of nerves.
“You told me,” she said through a sigh.
We can take our lives back.
With a feral snarl, I stepped into her, closi
ng the space between us in seconds. I fisted a hand into the hair at the base of her skull and dragged her towards the sofa. She cried out, but didn’t fight as I twisted her black locks in-between my fingers.
I pushed her face down onto the sofa, wrenching her naked ass up into the air. She had such a perfect little behind, I’d slapped it quite a few times, but… I leaned down, fully intending to sink my teeth into her, but I stopped at the last moment, my lips brushing against her skin. Something stopped me, something I didn’t have the capacity to understand.
I breathed in the musky sent of her arousal and I couldn’t do it.
“Do it,” Mercy moaned, rearing her ass against my lips. “Let me feel you. Let me give you what you need.”
Give me what I needed? I wanted the feelings that were racing through my body to stop. I wanted to go back to the numbness, but she kept pulling me under into a heaving ocean of emotion…
“I can’t.”
“You can, I’ve seen it.”
I grazed my teeth against her skin before murmuring, “Seen what?”
“Feeling. Emotion.”
My entire body stiffened at her words.
“You’re showing it to me now,” she went on.
“What?” I was showing her nothing but weakness.
“Tenderness,” she said, like it was the most obvious conclusion in the world.
“Tenderness?” I scoffed. “A monster, tender?”
She pushed up onto her palms, arching her back and opening her pussy to me. “If you’re truly a monster, then show me.”
Her scent washed over me and my cock strained against my jeans. It would be so easy to take her, hurt her, skin her alive…but I couldn’t. Keep her or kill her. Did I want to keep her? One moment I was hiding the fact that I had her from Weiss, the next I was teetering on the edge of taking her life. Where was the medium? What did I want?
I palmed her ass, massaging her flesh in my hands. Sex…sex was how she did it. It was how we were connecting. I didn’t want to connect. I didn’t fucking need it.
Grabbing her around the waist, I flipped her onto her back, spreading her legs wide. I wasn’t going to fuck her, but I was going to show her what it felt like to get so close to the one thing you wanted only to be denied. Kneeling in front of her, I delved into her pussy, licking her length before sucking on her clit as hard as I could. She bucked against me, rubbing into my face and I bit down, slamming a hand over her stomach to keep her from pleasuring herself.
I thrust a finger into her wetness, not completely sure how I was meant to take the state of her arousal. She was turned on by the dark places inside of me. The places that had never come into contact with my sexual desire. She was turned on by pain, just as much as I was…perhaps even more.
Mercy Reid kept blurring the fucking lines.
I stroked the walls of her pussy with my fingers, tasting her against my tongue while she purred like a kitten in heat. She muttered and moaned incoherently, her fingers curling into the sofa in her ecstasy. Tearing my mouth away, I leaned over her, palming her clit while I fucked her with my fingers, rubbing her to the edge of an orgasm that was going to shatter her. I could feel it through her skin as she writhed below me, giving me all the power.
There was this thing about power though, one moment you had it all, the next it could be taken away. All Mercy Reid had to do was open her eyes and catch me in her gaze and it would be all over for me.
But Mercy Reid didn’t open her eyes.
Her thighs tightened around my waist as her pleasure swelled to unbearable levels and I pulled my fingers from her pussy, breaking all contact. She moaned loudly, mewling for release, but fucked if she was getting it.
“X,” she gasped, her chest heaving. “Give it to me, fuck me. Fuck me.”
She slid her hands down over her breasts and buried her fingertips into her pussy and my hand darted forward grasping her wrists, denying her the satisfaction.
“What are you doing?”
“Denying you,” I snapped, pulling her roughly into a seated position.
“You can’t-”
“I can do whatever I fucking want with you, Mercy,” I murmured, lowering my lips towards hers.
“You wouldn’t.”
I didn’t move to kiss her, I held still, my cold gaze boring into hers. Her blue eyes looked like hellfire in the unnatural orange glow from outside, hellfire and brimstone.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I stood to my full height. Flinging her over my shoulder, she squirmed against my grasp as I hauled her lithe little body back into the bedroom.
“No,” she gasped as I dropped her onto the mattress. “Don’t tie me up again. Please, X.”
Ignoring her pleas, I took the rope that she’d escaped from and began winding it around her wrists, binding her hands together. I secured her to the bedpost before standing over her. She was bruised all over, the black marks my hands left behind standing out against her creamy skin. Beautiful pain.
She watched me as I stripped, dumping my clothes on the floor and winced as I climbed into bed behind her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her body reacting to my nakedness by rubbing against my cock.
“Letting you feel what you won’t get.” I flexed into her, driving my point home.
I held onto her as she tried to squirm against me, a hand splayed across her stomach, the other arm wound underneath her neck and under the pillow.
I held onto her until sleep eventually took her once more. Her body slackened against mine and I breathed in her scent, vanilla mixed with the musk of sex, before sliding off the bed and retreating to the sofa.
I could deny her, but I couldn’t deny myself if I remained.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mercy
I wasn’t sure when I woke again, but the room was still dark, the curtains closed tight.
But one thing was different. The blackout curtains weren’t so blackout. Grey light streamed in from a crack around the edges where the material didn’t sit flush with the wall. Light that fought against the thing that was trying to keep it locked out.
That was a fucking metaphor if I ever saw one.
My skin hummed with the continued frustration of pent up sexual frustration, but something else sang across my skin. Without moving, I glanced down towards the bedroom door, but that’s not where I found him.
X sat on the floor, his naked back pressed against the side of the bed, his long legs stretched out across the carpet. He wore a pair of sweatpants, but even the sight of his tattooed chest was enough to flare my frustration into life again.
He had the switchblade in his hand, the one he’d used to cut me free the other night, using the tip to pick at the dirt underneath his fingernails. I swallowed hard, not liking the fact that he had a weapon at the ready. X with his bare hands was formidable enough.
“I know you’re awake,” he murmured, flicking the knife closed.
“How do you know?” I asked with a sigh. “I didn’t even move.”
He glanced back at me, his eyes flashing in the muted light. “Your ability to bite back when you’re at the mercy of a killer is un-fucking-believable.”
I pouted, pulling against the rope around my wrists. “Thank you.”
Knowing a strange fascination had brought him back into the bedroom to watch me, I lay on the bed, watching him in return. He came to say something or to ask me a question and I had all the time in the world to wait since I was his prisoner and all.
“What stopped you?” he asked after a moment.
“Which part?”
He leaned his head back against the mattress and closed his eyes. “Pulling the trigger.”
“Fear, I guess,” I replied without hesitation.
He tilted his head and opened his eyes, fixing his gaze on mine. “Fear? You can’t have fear in this game.”
“I wasn’t born that way. I wasn’t born to do those things.”
X stilled, raising his head.
&nbs
p; “Neither were you,” I went on.
His shoulders tensed, which was a glaring indicator that I was toeing the line and he narrowed his eyes. “Why didn’t you leave?”
His other question kind of blindsided me. Why didn’t I leave him when I had the chance? He still didn’t get it and probably wouldn’t for some time. His mind seemed to be in a constant state of flux and I wondered if that meant he kept forgetting things. You know, like a goldfish had a memory of only three seconds. When I was growing up, I’d watch the fish in the tank at my parent’s house and wonder if they ever got bored, swimming around the same three feet of water day in day out. I’d even begged my mother to buy new fake rocks and castles to put in there so they’d have something new to look at. Then my brother ruined it and told me that by the time they’d gone around for another lap, they’d forgotten where they’d been.
It was a poor analogy, but X was fighting against the changes inside him, forgetting then remembering every time he laid eyes on me. A repetitive battle, but one that I seemed to be gaining ground on. He’d go out, forget, then come back and remember, each time his newfound feelings deepening. Or so I suspected.
“Because I believe in you,” I replied. “I believe in us, together.”
He snorted, picking up the knife again.
“Why would I lie to you?”
“To save your own skin you would,” he said, flicking the blade out. He tilted it from side to side, inspecting the sharpness.
“No. It’s more than that.”
“I don’t know more.” He emphasized the last word, meaning that he couldn’t understand that what he could be feeling was the beginnings of love. Fuck, he couldn’t understand a lot of emotions and asking him about the most difficult one of all? That was suicide.
“Regardless,” I said, my voice firm, “I’m not leaving you.”
He muttered something that sounded a lot like 'silly little girl’ and began picking at his nails with the knife again.
“How old are you?” I asked, desperate to keep him talking while he was in the mood.
