by Sarah Cole
“The final drop is tomorrow. I’m going to meet with Braxton and his ‘associate.’” She does the air quotes before continuing. “It’s going to go one of three ways. I’m going to prison for life for the things I’ve done, I’m going to die, or I’m going to do what I intended to do and then be gone. I came here so you’d know the truth. You deserved that much at least,” she says, edging towards the door, but I cut her off.
“What do you mean for the things you’ve done? Hacking is a federal crime, but if you help, they may lessen it. I know people…” I say, but she shakes her head sadly.
“You don’t even know the half of it. Bye, Carter.” She turns to go again, but I grab her around her middle, my hand brushing against something solid. In a lightning move, she maneuvers out of my hold and has me pinned against the kitchen island by my throat with a lethal look on her face. The sick bastard inside me, can’t stop thinking about how sexy she looks.
“Let me go, Carter. I don’t want you anywhere near this. You’re already in too deep.”
“Why do you care so much?!” I yell at her again. It seems to be the only way to get her to answer any of my questions.
She regards me, her eyes searching mine for something, but I’m not sure what when I see the first tear tumble down her cheek.
“Why?” I ask again, softer this time.
“Because I love you!” she yells at me, landing a solid fist to my chest. Her tears are falling freely now, as her fists rain blow after blow. I take all of them from her until she’s finished.
“Damn it, Carter. Why did you make me love you? I didn’t want to love you. I didn’t want to need you – to need anyone!” she cries, and I pull her tightly to me, and kiss the top of her head. It’s the only thing that feels natural to me. She feels natural and loving her is easy. Hating her is what’s hard.
“Because you can’t choose who you love, baby.” And I love this woman. I love her crazy, I love her smiles, I love her intelligence. Hell, I even love that she’s a criminal no matter how wrong that may be. I’m angry. No, I’m furious. Ten minutes won’t erase that, but the other thing I know is that a lifetime apart couldn’t erase my feelings for her.
We just hold each other while my heart and my head are at war trying to reconcile their differences, and I’m sure she’s busy working herself up for another good bye. She’s mistaken if she thinks she’s walking away that easily. We’ll figure this out… somehow. She shifts against me to wipe her nose on her sleeve, when I’m reminded of the hard object digging into my ribcage.
“What do you have under your sweatshirt, Ani?” I ask, and she lets me go, and takes a step back leaving her hands at her sides. Reaching forward, I lift the fabric and my eyes fall on a large tactical knife she has strapped at her hip, but that wasn’t what I was feeling. Lifting the fabric further, my suspicions are confirmed when I expose a handgun with a silencer in a holster.
“Jesus, Anika.” She doesn’t break eye contact as she unstraps both of the holsters, setting them on the countertop, then reaching behind her back, pulls out yet another gun and sets it on the pile of weapons.
“Is that it?” I ask sarcastically, and once again I’m reminded that there’s so much about this woman that I do not know. “Why are you strapped up like Rambo?”
“Because you don’t know everything,” she says.
“Then tell me!” I plead for what must be the millionth time, as I take her face in my hands.
“Why does it matter? Why can’t we just leave it as this?” she asks.
“Anika…” I warn in an exasperated tone.
“Why can’t we just be two people that fell in love once upon a time? I don’t want to leave with you hating me.”
“Don’t you understand, Anika? You’re not going anywhere. I won’t let you. I’m pissed as hell, but you’re mine and we’ll do this together. I’m just glad you finally told me the truth.” My thumbs caress her cheeks as the tears continue to fall and she squeezes her eyes tightly shut.
“You don’t want me, and I can’t stay.” her eyes open, and I see that she truly believes that. “You’d hate me, more than you already do, but this time you wouldn’t be able to forgive it. I want to remember the way you’re looking at me right now, and not the look in your eyes when you learn the truth.”
Pulling her to my chest, she clings to my faded MIT t-shirt. “I don’t know what has you so twisted up inside that you think I couldn’t forgive you. If I’m willing to overlook everything that’s happened, I think it’s a safe bet you can tell me.” I speak into her wet hair, loving how she smells.
“It isn’t just hacking and lying about what I’m doing after work!” she pulls away, and walks across the living room to the wall of windows. I watch like I have so many times before, as she struggles with herself. Instead of leaving her like I usually do, I go to her and wrap her in my arms.
“What could possibly be that bad, Anika?” She doesn’t respond, and I wait.
“I’m a murderer,” she speaks quietly, but it echoes in my head louder than anything I’ve ever heard in my life. I would laugh if it weren’t for the look in her eyes, as she stares into mine. It’s haunting and sinister, and you can tell she means what she said.
As I’m about to ask her to explain, she starts on her own. “I may be a serial killer…I don’t know because I don’t know if I can stop, Carter.”
I unwind my arms from her to distance myself. Oddly enough, not because of her admission, but because I need to process it. I toss theories around my head, and the only conclusion I can manage is she is legitimately in need of psychiatric treatment. She truly believes she’s a serial killer.
“Ok, baby,” I placate her, and she gives me a withering look. “Let’s say you’ve killed people. What makes you think you’re a serial killer? Are we talking self- defense?”
“You don’t believe me. Carter, look at me,” she says seriously, and I do. I look at her, and while part of me believes I should be calling a medical professional, the other part of me is seeing her, and although terrifying, the confession doesn’t seem too far-fetched.
“I’ve killed three people with my bare hands,” she starts. “Four, if you count the one I contracted out, and there are more on my list. It wasn’t self-defense. It was calculated and planned. I researched them, hunted them, and when the time was right, I ended them. I felt their blood spill out of their bodies and onto my hands, Carter.” She becomes almost manic, holding up her hands to me as if she can still see what she’s describing.
“I heard their last words, and their last breaths, and I lived for the look in their eyes when they realized that I was going to be the one to end them. I loved every fucking second of it, Carter, and I would do it again and again just to relive the moment…the rush… the contentment and control. So, no… it wasn’t self-defense. I did it because I wanted to. Because I liked it, and it needed to be done.” Her voice has taken on that eerie calmness again.
I sit down on the nearby armchair and massage my face. What do you even do with information like this? I start by doing what I know, asking questions and solving problems.
“You’re serious?” I ask, my voice sounding tired.
“Remember, my birthday? When you found me walking down the street? I had blood on me?” she questions, kneeling in front of me. A cold realization sweeps through me as I remember her that night. She wasn’t herself, not that I know what she really is at this point.
“Yury Volkov. I beat him to a pulp before putting two bullets into his head,” she confirms.
“When I fell down my stairs?” she questions again and I nod. “Dimitri. Not sure of his last name. After you dropped me off, I woke up to him in my house. The guy you saw me with the next day was just helping me out with him. Then there was Sergei and Timur Mirsky. There are more people on my list, and hopefully by Thursday I can cross at least one of them off. Then there are the dreams, the urges. Hell, I even figured out just how I want to kill Braxton. Do you believe me now?”
“Do you want to kill me?” I ask, and she gives me a weird look. “Just answer.”
“I don’t, but I’m scared I will.” I’ve had nightmares about it she whispers with real fear in her eyes.
“Come here,” I say holding out my arms to her and she looks at me incredulously.
“You have got to be crazier than I am, Carter. After what I just told you? What is the matter with you?”
“Come here,” I say again, and she complies hesitantly, folding herself into my lap like a small child.
“We’re going to talk.”
“Carter…I’m a killer, and I’m good at it. You’ve seen me fight…how I’ve managed to get in here. There is something seriously broken in me.”
“I hear you, baby. Tell me. Who were these men? Why did you kill them? There has to be a reason. It sounds to me like they were all Russian. Did you know them?”
“Don’t act like you’re ok with this,” she says into my neck.
“I’m not ok with it, Anika. But I don’t believe for a second that you’d do anything without a legitimate reason. You’re too smart. I know there’s an explanation. So, tell me why.”
“I watched those men tie my father to a chair and nearly beat him to death. I watched as they raped my mother and tore her apart piece by piece before slitting her throat then taking another go at her as her body cooled. That was my thirteenth birthday. They never got the chance to finish my father because the cops showed up, but only one of them went to prison. Then after five years of watching my father drift through life as a ghost of himself, I got the honors of watching him put a bullet in his brain. I didn’t know the full truth until he died, but once I did, I couldn’t stop. They needed to be stopped, and I needed to feel something.” The pieces of her story slowly start to click into place, and her voice breaks. Finally, the last part of her wall crumbles, and years’ worth of feelings she’s been holding inside tumble out as her body is wracked with crippling sobs.
“I think I’m crazy, Carter. Please tell me I’m not crazy. I don’t want to like it. I don’t want to be a monster, but I am and I don’t know how to make it stop now.” Her tears soak through my shirt and I don’t know how I can tell her that it will be ok, when I don’t know it myself.
“Listen to me,” I say. “You’re not a monster, Anika. I’ve seen you. I know you. You’ve made mistakes, you’ve sought vengeance because you’re hurt and scarred, but you aren’t broken. I think you just need a little bit of help. These men were terrible people. I don’t know who I am to justify ending a life, but if I were in your shoes I could see myself doing something similar. I know what it feels like to want that fear and that pain to stop, baby. I know what it’s like to want to crush something until it ceases to exist.” I’m dancing on the edge of my own admission.
“When I was sixteen, I was abducted and held hostage for ransom. I was held for four days, and during that time, I was tied up, beaten and sexually assaulted.” My confession has her stiffening in my arms. “Believe me, those four days not knowing if I was going to live or die, just hoping it would be the latter, changed me. For worse? For better? I don’t know, but I do know that not a day goes by when I don’t wonder what it would be like to get my hands around that man’s throat and just squeeze.” Letting Anika in, and letting her see this part of me that I refuse to share lifts a certain weight off of my shoulders that I didn’t know I was carrying around. She doesn’t respond in words, but in the most tender of ways, the devil herself tilts her face up and kisses my lips, and it feels like heaven. I’ve come to the conclusion that she may burn, but if she does I’ll follow just to burn with her.
Anika:
“I love you, Carter,” I whisper as I break the kiss. I want him to hear me this time, and to feel it the way I do. I want him to understand how the love I feel for him is so strong it hurts as it carves out a piece of me to make room for itself.
He studies me for a moment and it feels different somehow- more honest. “I love you too. We may be wrong, but together we’re more than right.”
“Carter, I’m no good for you. I’m no good for anyone. I want to explain everything in a way that makes me sound less crazy, but I can’t,” I object because I know that sometimes love just isn’t enough.
“You’re not as lost as you think you are.” he regards me intently, brushing my damp hair over my shoulder with his fingers. “When are you going to realize that I’ve already walked a dark path of my own? Ani, I’d follow you into the fiery pits of hell if it meant I was walking beside you.”
His eyes never leave mine, and the desire I see burning there reflects my own. It wouldn’t matter if the world was crumbling to the ground around us, I’d still want him in the most carnal of ways – owning me, worshipping me, over me, inside of me, filling me up in every way imaginable. Carter leans forward slowly, almost as if he’s hesitant of my reaction. His lips meet mine in another tender kiss, but the instant our lips meet it is like a struck match to gasoline and our passion ignites. In one swift motion, he pulls my damp tank top and sweatshirt over my head before pulling off his own t-shirt. His hands slide down my stomach, gripping the elastic of my waistband and pulling them down over my thighs. Standing, he rids himself of his shorts, letting his arousal spring free.
He sits back down and lifts me up, pulling me over his lap. His fingers twine through my tangled hair, and I know what a sight I must be with smeared makeup, red rimmed eyes and dried blood on my face.
“Ride me,” he says, and when I start to position him he shakes his head no. Instead, I slide myself up and down his length, and I watch as his eyes greedily observe. He pulls my hair tighter, and I moan at the pain needing more. His other hand finds my clit as his thumb expertly strokes the taught bundle of nerves. The warm, familiar tingling fills my body, and just when I think I’m about to shatter, pulls away, effectively halting my orgasm.
“Not yet, baby,” he admonishes.
Frustrated and needing more from him, I yell at him in frustration. “Fuck me like you mean it, Carter! Hit me, punish me… I need it. I deserve it. You know I do!” My breath comes in shallow pants, waiting for him to do something- to take control like he always does. Instead, he smirks at me and lifts me up along with him. Cradling me in his arms, he scales the steps to his bedroom one by one.
He lays me on his bed softly. “I’m not going to fuck you, baby. I’m not going to punish you either. I’m going to love you like you deserve to be loved. I’m going to show you the side of me that no other woman will ever get. Only for you.” His lips brush mine softly and work their way down my neck. His thick erection brushes against my bare thigh, and I press my legs together, feeling the slick heat between them that is aching to be filled.
“Please,” I say again, but I’m not sure what I’m even asking for at this point. Carter slides his smooth hand behind my leg and pulls, opening me to him. Grabbing himself, he rubs his length through my swollen sensitive sex, and my hips lift with my body’s need for relief.
“I need…” I begin, but I’m silenced abruptly by a soft, but passionate kiss. He ends it almost as quickly as it began.
“I know what you need, Anika. I always know…let me give it to you.” His eyes don’t leave mine as he slides slowly inside of me. The feeling of relief is nearly overwhelming as he begins to move.
The intensity of his gaze is almost too much that I want to shut my eyes because I feel as if every second that passes, brings him one step closer to understanding how tainted I truly am and walking away for good. It would be better that way, but not for me. I know myself and my mind. I’ve made friends with all of the black corners and the evil things that lurk there. They lie in wait just to pick me apart at the first sign of weakness. Losing Carter would be the end of me, and with all certainty, I know the end is near.
“Open your eyes, Ani. I want you to watch me love you, and I want to see you love me back,” he says, and my insides liquify with the sincerity of his words. His fingers find mine an
d wind them together as he places our interlocked hands above my head and continues to fill me at a slow sensuous pace.
He doesn’t say a word, but we continue looking at each other communicating with our bodies and our love. He drives into me relentlessly, always knowing exactly what I need and how to give it to me. Soon, a delicious heat begins to fill me starting in my toes and working its way up, drawing a curtain of pleasure over me and with only my name on his lips in a whisper, we fall together not knowing where and if we’ll land.
Never pulling out, he rolls on his back pulling me with him and drawing up the covers.
“Promise me something, Anika,” Carter says quietly, stroking lazy lines down my back.
I wish I could tell him that I would do anything for him, but there are some promises I can’t keep. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that sometimes promises can bind people together, but if broken, can tear them apart.
“Hmm?” I hum against his neck, not willing to commit.
“Promise me you won’t do this alone. I’ve got friends that can help you- help us. I don’t want you to risk your safety, and I don’t want you doing anything you’ll regret.”
“Carter…”
“No, you’re not doing this alone!” he lifts his head, shifting me to the side.
“I don’t want you any more involved!” I argue.
“And I want to keep you close,” he says softer this time, and tightening his arms around me.
Neither of us say anything for several minutes, me not able to make the promise and him silently accepting it.
“I can’t lose you. The past day has been hell thinking I never even had you, and the sick part of me was trying to think of ways I could still have you even though I was trying to hate you.”
“I don’t want to lose you either,” I whisper, rubbing my lips against to smooth skin of his shoulder.
Slowly he slides back inside me as shivers break out across my skin. My fingers grip his hair as I shift my weight on top of him, feeling him deep inside me. Our breaths mingle and our limbs tangle as we lose ourselves completely in each other. There are no demands or pain, only two broken souls repairing each other from the inside and two hearts beating together and for each other.
