Indulgence

by Liz Crowe

  Straddling him, I punched and punched until he didn’t move.

  Weiss didn’t deserve a bullet in his head. He deserved something a lot more special. His fate would be personalized right down to the last detail.

  I couldn’t wait to see the look on his face.

  *****

  I found Weiss’ car a few hundred meters through the forest, parked on a back road.

  Inside I found everything I needed and then some. On the way back, I found the gun in amongst the leaf litter and shoved it into the waistband of my jeans.

  I worked swiftly, ignoring the pain in my hands and stood back to survey my handiwork. I had this thing about standards. Meticulous, sordid, particular. Efficient death. Waste not, want not.

  I’d bound Weiss’ hands behind his back, fixing him and the length of nylon rope to a fallen tree at the side of the clearing. One arm was up over his shoulder, the other below and underneath, fixed together in the middle. His head lolled to the front, knees folded below him like he was praying to some fucked up god.

  It was a reminder, and an omen of sorts, that I remembered the most horrific things they’d made me go through. The human mind was beautiful in a way, the things that scarred it and the things it brought to the surface in your time of need.

  I remembered the hours of waiting on my knees, trying to gather the courage to let the bone pop from its socket. If I stretched one more inch, I could claim my freedom and my reward.

  I knelt in the dirt, the gun hanging in my torn hands, watching as Weiss began to surface into consciousness, waiting for the moment when he’d realize the predicament he was in.

  His eyes opened slowly, obviously glassy even in the silvery nighttime glow. I sneered in satisfaction as he slowly realized what had happened to him. The tables had turned a total one-eighty and it felt more satisfying than it should.

  How easy it was for me to sever the ties of friendship. The mark of a true monster. Selfish, depraved...

  Weiss jerked against the rope, his eyes flashing with understanding. Yeah, that’s right asshole.

  “Did you really think it was going to be that easy?” I asked as Weiss struggled against the rope. “Did you think you could just put a gun to my head and pull the trigger? I’m ashamed that you were ever my handler, Weiss. Pathetic.”

  He spat blood onto the ground next to him and glared up at me. “They’ll come for you once they realize what you’ve done, X.”

  I picked up a hunting knife I’d found in his car and stabbed it into the earth just out of reaching distance of Weiss’ grubby fingers. The only way he was getting free was if someone found him, or he dislocated his own shoulder to get out of his restraints. Knowing how much of a pussy he was, the latter would take a very long time.

  “It was her, wasn’t it?” Weiss asked as I curled my fingers around the muzzle of the gun. “It was Mercy who tried to kill Sykes.” I didn’t blink as I weighed the gun in my hand. “That’s why you’ve gone fuckin’ crazy. You want her, but you have to kill her. It fucked with your head, didn’t it?”

  “You’ll never get to stick your dick in her now, Weiss,” I snarled. “Mercy is mine.”

  I raised the gun and smashed the butt down on his temple and he was out like a light. Blood welled to the surface of an impressive cut as Weiss’ head lolled to the side. Asshole.

  Shoving the gun into the waistband of my jeans, I knelt down and went through Weiss’ pockets. Pulling out his phone, I checked him for other weapons. Satisfied he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, I switched on his phone and scrolled through the messages. He’d sent one half an hour ago to Greggor that got my blood boiling.

  X is compromised.

  My out was gone a long time ago. My out never existed. It was too late to do anything about toeing the line now anyway. I was in this up to my motherfucking eyeballs.

  Taking out the SIM card, I snapped it in two, tossing the useless bits of plastic into the dirt. Then I dropped his phone and smashed the heel of my boot into it, shattering the screen. Then I turned my back on the life I’d known and strode off into the forest, making for the road out of there.

  When Royal Blood inevitably found Weiss, they’d come after me and Mercy. Her secret was out now too, which meant there was only one thing left going for us. We had to become ghosts.

  Sliding into Weiss’ car, I gunned the engine. I had to get to Mercy and figure this thing out before it was too late.

  Chapter Thirty

  Mercy

  I’m going to end this.

  Those were his last words as he left the apartment and it’d been hours. What was he ending? Was he going after Weiss? Was he going to get Sykes to come and take me? I lay on the sofa in X’s apartment, listening to the silence, listening for any clue that he was coming back.

  I had to have faith in our connection. I had to believe that he felt the same way about me as I did him. I had to believe X was capable of loving.

  I curled my knees up into my chest, wrapping my hands around my ankles. What a fucking joke. Teaching a monster how to love.

  God, fuck, Mercy! Have a little faith in yourself.

  There were footsteps outside in the hall and I straightened up, my heart skipping several beats. I didn’t like feeling helpless, locked in here alone as X faced fuck knew what out there. I knew he could handle it, he’d been doing just that for years before I turned up, but I still didn’t like it. I wanted to be there with him to the bitter end. Was that such a bad thing?

  The door opened as I placed my feet on the floor and X strode in, slamming it closed behind him. Cold air billowed in with him and I knew something big had gone down. Somehow I thought big wasn’t the right word. Huge, ginormous, fucking massive.

  X fell heavily against the door, his back pressed against the wood. He was covered in dirt and blood was caked on his face, hands and collar. Short story, he looked like he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards and fought it on the way through.

  “What happened to you?” I asked, rising to my feet. “Is Weiss…?”

  He glanced up at me and shucked his leather jacket off. It fell to the floor with a dull thud.

  He didn’t answer me and I began to panic. “X? What did you do?”

  “What needed to be done,” he said, pushing off the door.

  He strode past me down the hall and into the bathroom. I followed, watching him discard items of clothing along the way. I lingered at the bathroom door as he undid the button on his jeans and shoved them off his hips.

  Things were obviously dire, but my body still sparked with desire at the sight of him in his boxers. He’d been out fighting, torturing and possibly murdering his best friend and handler…all because of me.

  Stepping out of his boxers, X leaned into the shower and turned the taps on. He lingered just outside with his hand underneath the water, testing the temperature as it warmed through the old pipes of the apartment building. He knew I was there, but he didn’t make a move or glanced at me, even when I stepped into the room behind him and stripped out of his T-shirt.

  Sometimes you just knew, on some unconscious level, when someone needed you. We had this connection that seemed to transcend mere talking. I knew what he needed, he knew what I wanted and that’s all that mattered. Right now, he’d been out doing his dark thing and he needed comfort. He could deny it all he wanted, but I knew better.

  As he stepped into the shower, the water soaking his hair, I slid in beside him, reaching for the soap. He raised a hand to grab my wrist, but I pulled away. I stared at the grazes along his hands and my gaze met his. He was torn up.

  “Let me,” I murmured.

  Washing the grit from his hands, I massaged his skin, working the soap against each tiny cut, treating him like he was sacred. Once his hands were taken care of, I tracked the soap across his chest, tracing the outline of his tattoo and his eyes drooped closed. If it stung, he never let on and didn’t try and pull away.

  Lathering the soap against his skin, I slid my han
d over his neck, washing the blood away. As I reached his face, my movements became softer as I cleaned the dirt and grime out of a new cut on his temple. It’d been a bleeder and I wondered if Weiss had tried to knock him out with something. Maybe he hadn’t tried…

  “What happened?” I asked, probing the cut with my fingers.

  X hissed, pulling away from my touch. “It’s just a cut.”

  “It’s not-”

  I choked on my protest as his lips met mine. Sucking on my bottom lip, he pulled my body against his in an attempt to silence me. Tearing my lips away, I dug my fingers into his shoulders, the soap dropping to the bottom of the shower.

  “What happened to you tonight, X?” I murmured as he began biting and sucking at my neck.

  He ignored my question and continued teasing my skin with his tongue, tracking his hands from my waist to my ass.

  “X.”

  “I haven’t decided what to do with you,” he murmured from someplace far away, licking at the water that had beaded on my shoulder.

  Digging my fingers harder into his skin in an attempt to bring him back, I said, “You’ve already made your decision, X.”

  His gaze met mine and it was hesitant, like he was thinking over a million and one things to come to one simple conclusion.

  Stepping out of the shower, I pulled a towel from the rack and held it up. “Come on,” I coaxed. “You can’t stay in there all night.”

  He turned off the taps and the room fell into silence as he stepped from the shower and into the waiting towel.

  “Keep her or kill her,” he murmured and I cocked my head to the side.

  “Keep her,” I whispered and his gaze rose to meet mine and it was full of emotion. Pain, exhaustion, longing… I was right to have faith.

  I rubbed his crotch through the towel and pressed my breasts into his chest. He flexed into my hand once before letting his lips drop to the crook of my neck. He began sucking and biting at my skin, his cock growing harder as my pussy began to flare.

  “Take me to bed,” I whispered, letting the towel drop to the floor.

  “You want to go to bed?” he whispered, nipping his teeth at my bottom lip.

  I nodded, rolling my hips forward, my clit rubbing against his cock. “Let me care for you.”

  X took a deep breath before fisting his hands into my damp hair. He walked me backwards out of the bathroom with deliberate steps, his chest heaving with a sudden spike of desire. I knew that look in his eyes, that dark look that warned me to hold on for dear life. I was about to be thoroughly fucked.

  As we entered the bedroom, his mouth came down on mine, his tongue swiping through my mouth greedily. I opened up to him, allowing him to take what he needed and I had a wicked thought.

  He gave me control once before, perhaps he would do it again.

  I placed my palm against his chest and pushed him hard. He fell back onto the bed, an annoyed gleam in his eyes, but his breath caught as I crawled over the edge of the mattress and straddled his waist. Covering his body with mine, his hands clamped down on my ass, spreading me open. Then his cock was sliding between my ass cheeks, his fingertips playing with my puckered opening.

  “Do that again,” I murmured against his lips.

  “Do what?” he asked, pressing a finger into my ass.

  I gasped, my body tensing, but unlike the first time he went for that forbidden place, I didn’t jerk away.

  “You like that?” he murmured, a piece of X the alpha male that had taken me over Weiss’ desk coming back to the surface.

  I nodded, biting on my bottom lip. “Soon,” I panted as he increased the friction against my clit from underneath, “I will let you claim it with your cock.”

  X let out a moan, pumping his dick between my ass cheeks harder. “Soon?”

  “Soon…but first I want to claim you.”

  X’s gaze fixed on mine. “You already have.”

  “Not quite,” I said through a heavy breath.

  Pulling away, I raised my pussy over his cock, circling my fingers around him and guided the head towards my opening. Reaching up, he palmed my breasts as I slid down his length, taking him as deep as I could. It was my turn to control our fucking. It was my turn to claim.

  I raised myself off him, feeling him slide out of me before he thrust up to meet me. Shaking my head at him, I whispered, “Let me take care of you.”

  His hips settled back onto the mattress beneath me as I began riding him. Slowly at first, but before long, I felt heat prickle my skin as an orgasm began building in my core. His gaze rested on my breasts as they rose and fell with my movements and I felt powerful. I had this dangerous, handsome, strong-willed man underneath me and I rode him hard. I rode him as he moaned and pulsed inside my pussy…he was responding to me.

  As if he couldn’t take it anymore, he sat up, latching his mouth onto one of my breasts, licking and sucking. Pleasure spiked through my nerve endings as I pounded my clit into his pelvis.

  “You brought me back to life,” I said with a moan as I slid down his cock. “You give me hope.” X’s hands bit into my hips as I rode him, his lips hard against the breast he’d marked with his teeth. “You give me what I need.”

  “And what’s that?” he asked, grunting as he flexed up to meet my thrust.

  “Pleasure, satisfaction, revenge…” I buried my fingers into his hair and tugged, raising his face to mine. “Pain…”

  His gaze met mine and I didn’t understand the emotion I saw behind his eyes, but he stared right through me and into my soul. He got it, he fucking got it, and that was all the answer I needed.

  With one swift movement, X had me on my back, his cock filling my pussy. Resting his forehead against mine, he pulled out to the tip and filled me again, pressing hard against my clit. He didn’t move to bury his face into the crook of my neck, he didn’t close his eyes, he held firm as he pumped his cock into me.

  For the first time since we’d started this thing, he looked at me while we fucked. He looked me right in the eye as we both came in tandem. He gave me the one thing he’d denied me all this time.

  He gave me a connection and I knew that we were finally in this together.

  He’d allowed me to claim him.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  X

  I’d held Mercy Reid after sex one time before.

  I was a different man then, cold and unfeeling… I was different now and I was sure I would be something else tomorrow.

  I knew that I was made into a monster and that I wasn’t born this way. I dreamed often about a dark room, unbearable pain and the man in the hood that I shot in cold blood. I always suspected that it wasn’t a dream, and some part of me understood that it was a reality too terrible to fully comprehend. Now that Mercy had opened up the floodgates and emotions were rushing in, I began to wonder if I had a family someplace. If they were looking for me, or if they thought I was dead. I wondered who I was before.

  And that might be the most dangerous piece in this game we were about to play.

  Mercy stirred beside me, her hand running over my stomach, tracing the scars that were latticed through my tattoo. Scars I knew that they put there.

  “They know I have you,” I murmured.

  She brushed her lips against my chest. “So we leave. Regroup.”

  She said it without hesitation and it was the proof I was searching for all this time. She wasn’t afraid of me anymore. She was completely and utterly with me until the end. I was hers and she was mine. It was the most alien sensation in the world, caring for another human being.

  I tilted her chin up and caught her lips against mine, teasing them apart with my tongue. She sighed into me, licking deep and I lost myself in her taste and in the promise of something else, something unknown.

  “We should go straight away,” she whispered against my mouth.

  She was guiding me, knowing that I was lost, that my mind was elsewhere. It was my mind that was regrouping, not us.

 
I nodded, knowing that it was only a matter of time before Weiss got free. I should’ve killed him, but he was the only way of finding out exactly what had happened to me.

  He knew something, but it was more than that. When I was coming to, out in the forest, a memory had tried to resurface through the haze, trying to force itself out of my subconscious. Weiss had been there.

  “Sykes will come looking in a few hours,” I said. “We have to strip the apartment.”

  We had to clear out the closet and pack some clothes. There wasn’t enough time to get rid of everything. Usually, I’d clean the entire place down to the bare bones. Scrub the bathroom with bleach. Wipe the place clear of prints. There was no time to do any of that. This time it was just take the essentials and go. I just had to be careful about the things I touched in the future. Maybe I could burn the prints from my fingers...

  “Okay.”

  I doubted she knew what I meant, but I’d teach her. She wanted to know.

  “What happened to you tonight?” she asked.

  “Weiss tried to kill me,” I said blandly.

  Mercy propped herself up on an elbow. “What?”

  “I left him out in the middle of the forest,” I went on.

  “He’s still alive?”

  I nodded. “I couldn’t do it. He knows things about me…”

  “I gathered as much,” she said. “He was your-”

  “Handler,” I finished for her.

  “We’ll find out what happened to you X,” Mercy said, sitting up. “We’ll both get what we want, one way or another.” I watched as she stood and began rummaging around in her bag, pulling out clothes.

  Sliding out of bed, I dragged on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. “You really want to run with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I snap again Mercy? What if I turn and kill you? What then?”

  “I don’t know,” she said and I snorted. “X, I don’t know, but I’m willing to try. At least that’s something.”

  I ran my hands over my face. “Still willing to try after I’ve hurt you so much? It’s a dangerous game you’re playing.”