by Amy Faye
Sarah shrugs. “I don’t know. We’re not exactly under the gun any more, are we?”
“What’s that mean?” My heart thumps harder than it should.
“I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking what you mean that we’re not under the gun any more.”
“It’s obvious,” she says. I’m starting to get irritated. She’s starting to get irritated, too, and at some point, one of us is going to say something we regret. I want to smooth things over, and at the same time, I just want an answer to my question.
“He’s still not following?”
“Nope. And I’m starting to think that he won’t.”
“What do you think, then?”
“I think someone’s got him.”
“Those hunters?”
“Or somebody else, maybe. But somebody.”
“And what are they going to do to him?”
Sarah took another bit of pancake and then shrugged as she chewed. A moment later she swallowed her mouthful and cleared her throat. “Not my problem.”
Nineteen
I blinked. Not my problem?
Then I thought about it. I have a problem with jumping to conclusions, so it’s best if I can try to avoid it whenever possible. In this case, though, I was really having trouble seeing any alternative way to view it.
“What’s that supposed to mean? I thought this whole thing…”
“What? You thought… oh!” Sarah’s face splits into a grin. “Oh, I get it. You thought there was a thing?”
“A thing? Yeah, I thought there was a thing. I mean, he’s… an ass, but…”
“But what? We should wait until he gets tired of us and offs us?”
“Is that what he’ll do?”
“You think it isn’t?”
“I just want to know what you know. You’ve seen him done that?”
“I’ve seen enough,” Sarah says, diffident.
“But you haven’t seen him kill one of us.”
“I’ve had enough of his shit,” Sarah says. Her voice is hard. She looks furious. I’m worried she’s going to hit me right in my nose, no matter how good she thinks I look.
“So we should leave him?”
“That’s what I’m planning on doing, yeah. You want to go save him? Go find him yourself. But I’m not interested, and if you want a ride, you can boost your own car.”
I blink again. “Boost?”
“That’s right. You can go steal whatever. Grab a Focus, they’re popular these days.”
“What the fuck is your problem?”
“My problem? My problem is…” Sarah seems to realize in the space of an instant that she’s shouting, and she settles back into her seat, flexes her jaw and grits her teeth for a second, and then takes a deep breath. “My problem is being cooped up like some kind of chattel while he runs around, pulling on my strings. Playing with my feelings. At first it was all, you know, perfect and great.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing. Then nothing changed. He just kept on being who he was, and I kept on being who I was.”
“So?”
“So that’s bullshit. He was supposed to fix me. Supposed to fix my problems.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Fuck you,” Sarah growls. She seems to forget herself again for a second, and shoots up from her seat. The sound of the chair skidding on the floor brings her attention back to her surroundings and she looks around for a moment, before lowering herself back into her seat, glaring at me. “I’m not going to be judged by some prissy little bitch.”
“I’m not judging anyone,” I say. My hands go up defensively. She doesn’t seem to believe me.
“Oh, sure you’re not. You’re too perfect for that, huh?”
“I’m not trying to say that. I’m just trying to… look, it’s all fine, okay? Just calm down, we’re just talking here, okay?”
“You want to go so bad, Hailey, you can get the hell out of here.”
I take a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going. I’ll figure something out. Take care of yourself, will you?”
She watches me go with a snarl. I don’t know how much time I have, and I know that I’m not exactly in a good position here, as a woman alone walking along the side of the road. But I do my best to flag down anyone driving the right direction, and after twenty minutes I had myself a ride.
It’s a mistake. I know it is, because there’s so much wrong with the whole thing. From top to bottom, Ben isn’t really a good person. I’m not a genius, but I’m not stupid enough to expect that’s going to change about him any time soon. I don’t know how long he’s been alive, but I know that it’s long enough that he’s who he’s going to be.
But I can’t let him die. Not after everything, not after what he offered me. Not after I was so close to having something real in my life. I take a deep breath.
“Here is good,” I say. The guy driving looks over at me. The gold ring around his finger says a lot. The way that he looks over at me, uncertain of himself, says a lot more. But as long as he’s driving, I don’t care.
“You sure? I can take you wherever.”
“No. I’m fine.”
He lets out a held breath. “Sure.”
The truck he’s driving eases to a stop. I don’t have anything to go on. I have a car crash and a vague sense of where I think Ben might be. It’s not a pull, not like feeling gravity or something. I just think I could guess, and I think that I could guess he’s up this street.
I pull my sweater tight around myself and step back out into the cold. It’s been snowing the past week. The street is pretty clear, not worth discussing, but nobody ever bothers to clear the sides of the road. Not this far out. But a pair of wheel tracks run along what I guess is a side road, and I guess leads to a little cabin in the woods, where they can do some work without being interrupted.
My stomach twists up. I shouldn’t be here. If Ben couldn’t deal with these guys, then I sure as hell can’t handle it by myself. I wish Sarah were here, but she’s gone now. She’s committed to leaving. The sound of a car driving up draws my attention. Anything would do it, as an excuse to turn my face against the wind.
A blue Ford, one that looked a lot like the car Sarah was driving, is slowing up. I prepare myself to say that I don’t need any help, but my gut twists up when I confirm my suspicions that it’s not some good Samaritan.
“You shouldn’t go in there,” Sarah said. She had a pleading quality to her voice.
“I can’t leave him. I’m not a killer.”
Sarah took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and then pulled forward, unclogging the road, and stepped out of the car.
“I’m glad you decided to help.”
Sarah nodded thoughtfully to herself, took a deep breath, and pulled her hand out of her pocket. The gun in her hand barked, and I felt my stomach rip itself to shreds.
Twenty
I blink. Time seems to slow down. I look down at my stomach. It hurts so bad that I can barely see straight.
“What?”
She looks at me hard, her eyes wide. I don’t know whether she’s scared about what she did, or what I’m planning to do about it. But the joke’s on her, because I’m not planning on doing anything at all.
I can hear the sound of her voice, but the words don’t mean anything. I look back at her again, and then take a step. My weight feels like it’s threatening to go wild. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I fall over. I don’t think I’ll be able to get back up again.
My legs wobble under me. I take another step. I don’t know what I’m looking at precisely; a man. He’s walking down the street. He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry, but he’s got broad shoulders, and he’s tall, and he’s attractive, and I’m afraid of him in a way that I never was before, no matter what he did to me.
Ben’s face is twisted into a mask of fury, and I know with absolute, horrifying certainty that I’m a dead woman. He’s going to come
and he’s going to kill me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Sarah was right.
And then, as my heart starts to beat and my legs wobble impossibly under me, he comes closer still.
“I came to save you,” I say. It comes out as a mumble. My lips hurt. Everything is cold, and I’m losing my ability to stand.
He moves past me. I hear Sarah’s voice again. It’s high-pitched and panicky. I want to turn and see what’s happening, but I sway unsteadily and drop into the snow instead. It’s cold, agonizingly painful where it shoves its way between my skin and my sweater, but it’s no colder than the rest of me.
All of a sudden I feel something hot pressed against my neck. Hands wrap around my body and I’m lifted up from the ground. The world around me is darkening. It’s my eyes closing, I realize dimly. I should just keep them open. I try. My eyelids ignore me.
Ben stands in front of me. He looks into my eyes. He’s got that stern expression on his face. The one that I fucked him for. But there’s something else, too. He says something, but I’m not really listening.
“Did I do alright?” The words are slurred, I know.
He bites me again. It feels good. The cold goes away in an instant, and my blood moves through my body. Like it has every time he’s bitten me. Oh, God, is it good. My eyes close themselves, and I realize dimly that I’m dying. It’s exactly what Sarah said would happen.
And then something pulls my mouth open, and something hot and wet and thick pours into my mouth. I taste blood. I have to drink it down if I want to breathe. It burns, the way alcohol does. All the way down my throat. And it sits there like a warm little bubble inside me. I gasp for breath.
My fingers hurt. I should be dead. I feel myself being picked up, like a sack of potatoes, and carried. The cold feels as if it’s seeping into my bones. It meets the heat in my stomach, and very slowly, the heat fades inside me until there’s nothing left at all. Until I’ve got no warmth left in my whole body.
Then I die.
My eyes snap open. My whole body burns, and my head aches. But it’s not just burning, it’s cold. Everything feels backwards and wrong. My body aches from the cold. A heavy woolen blanket is pulled around me tight.
“You’re awake,” Ben’s voice says beside me. I try to turn my head. It turns like a rusty hinge.
“What?”
“You should have kept running.”
“What happened to me? What happened to you?”
His hand falls on my thigh. Even through my clothes and the heavy blanket, the weight feels good on my leg.
“There’s a lot I’m going to have to tell you,” he says instead. “So let’s take it one thing at a time.”
“You were captured. They were going to… they were going to kill you.”
“They didn’t,” he says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. As if there’s nothing to worry about.
“I was worried.”
“I know you were,” he says softly. “And I appreciate that. Even if you should have known that I wouldn’t have any trouble. Have I had any so far?”
“I don’t know. I mean…”
“What? Because I got ambushed again?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling a little sheepish.
“What do you know about Sarah’s plan?”
“She said she was going to find out who had betrayed you, so you wouldn’t be mad at me any more.”
“You sweet girl. Naive, but sweet.” His voice still sounded sad, and I couldn’t understand the least bit of why.
“I thought I was going to die.”
“You were. You did.”
My face screws up. “What?”
“Well. Mostly dead, anyways.”
“What’s ‘mostly dead’ mean?”
“You’re awake now, aren’t you?”
I shiver as my body starts to feel more normal. “I guess? Did you…”
“I don’t generally prefer to turn people. There are all sorts of reasons that it’s not a good idea. You’re going to find out most of them over the next few weeks.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re going to feel like hell for a few weeks.”
I feel like hell now. “And… what does that mean about… us?”
He looks over at me for a moment; we’re driving at highway speeds, so he doesn’t give more than a second or so. Then his hand tightens on my knee. “We’ve got a lot of time to figure that out, Hailey. Just settle in. We’ve got a long road ahead of us.”
I nestle deeper into my blankets and keep my mouth shut. I want to tell him I love him. But damn it, he’s refused to tell me enough things; I can be mysterious, too. He pulls his hand away from my knee and wraps his fingers around the wheel.
“I love you too,” he says, smiling.
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His hand slackened around her throat and she slipped a little ways down, still pressed hard against him, and she almost let out a little mewl of disapproval. Then his arms, lined with muscles as hard as steel, wrapped around her and picked her up easily off the ground. Her legs wrapped easily around his waist and hooked on the other side.
The big man's body slammed her against the wall and his lips found hers once more. His hard cock found something of hers as well, in spite of the layers of fabric between them, and a gasp forced its way from between her lips when it rubbed at just the right spot, just the right way.
God damn. He couldn't possibly have known what he was doing to her, but she couldn't stop thinking how fucking much he was giving her exactly what she wanted. He smiled, then, against her lips. Feral. Violent. Sexy as hell.
That smile dipped down and a kiss pressed against her throat. A kiss that became a bite, and that bite lit her skin aflame once more, sending confused signals to the brain with the only constant being pleasure. She wanted more, and needed more, and he was going to give it to her.
"Ahh–Fuck me." The words came out of her mouth breathy and desperate, in spite of her hopes to sound more in control. She wasn't in control, though, she knew. She was his, and she would be until he was finished.
His teeth sunk in deeper into her throat. Signals flashed through her body that it hurt. Her brain interpreted it as pleasure anyway. He pressed her against the wall harder and ground his hips up and into her hot core. Even through his jeans and her slacks she could feel him, could feel his size. He was big, bigger than anything she was used to. She'd seen pictures on the internet, but never anything like this in real life.
He pulled her back and tossed her easily onto the couch. Like a rag doll. She fell and twisted and landed in a moist, aroused heap. "Jesus," she growled. "You know how to use that body, don't you?"
He smiled and grabbed her by the neck again, pulling her up. She tried to help but he was rough anyways. Demanding. Needy. She shuddered again, and when she was aware of what was happening again for a brief moment, she was sitting face-to-face with his cock. Her mouth was actually watering a little at the thought of what was going to come next.<
br />
Her mouth was full before she'd taken half of his length, it felt like. She tried harder, his hand encouraging her to keep trying until she had it all down. Then she started to move.
The sound of his breath, ragged and low and approaching a moan, pushed her onward. His fingers dug into her hair, forcing her to take it deeper and deeper. To Brianna's surprise her throat relaxed more and more until she could feel him pressing down her throat and her face nuzzled into his pubic hair with every thrust. She'd never felt so completely used, and she wasn't even to the best part yet. Her insides twisted up in a knot that wouldn't untie itself until he had something that big inside her.
And then he pulled out. She gasped for air, coughing. He didn't wait for her, and she was surprised to find that she liked it better that way. She'd had it rough before, and she'd always thought she liked it that way, but this was something else entirely.
Her pants came off easily, her fingers moving as quickly as they could and barely managing to get the fly undone before he managed to roughly pull them down. She flipped over and he thrust inside roughly, filling her up in ways Brianna wasn't aware she could be filled up. Her vision went from blurred to black in an instant, and all she could feel was that intrusion inside her, taking everything she wanted and giving it back twice as much.
He wrapped one strong arm around her chest and used that grip as a handle, pulling himself into her over and over again. She felt his lips press against the back of her neck. His teeth dug into her flesh until she thought she could feel him break the skin.
For reasons she didn't have the available brain power to think about she loved that. Wanted more of it than anything. His cock drove deep into her, deep enough to mix pleasure and pain all by itself, and then she felt him spasm hard, warmth spreading through her belly. His little movements as he came sent shocks deep down into some primordial part of her and her pleasure amplified again.
And then he pulled away and she was nothing more than a broken, ruined, orgasmic mess, and she found that was all she'd ever wanted to be after all.
