In To Her

by JA Huss

  And that’s working out pretty well.

  I like AJ. Have always liked AJ. He’s a very sexual man. And we’ve done lots of sexual shit together. I missed him, maybe.

  So am I sad that I have to kill him before I go home?

  Sure. A little bit. Maybe not sad, though. Maybe just… disappointed.

  But I’m not loyal to anyone but myself. I learned that lesson the hard way when I was a kid. You can’t count on anyone to save your ass. Ever.

  My motto is every man for himself.

  Besides, that money did go missing on AJ’s watch. I got heat for that too because AJ and I are both responsible for the money on the highest level.

  So fuck it. Damon told me to kill him and I’m gonna see it through. I’m not done using Damon just yet so I follow orders. It’s just that simple.

  Besides, it’s just business. And if AJ had been told to kill me, instead of the other way around, he’d probably do it too.

  Gotta survive, ya know?

  Except… he’s not really that kinda guy. We have a lot in common—we like to fuck, sometimes together, we both work for Damon, and we’ve both killed our share of people.

  But we’re different in lots of ways too.

  I close the kink drawer back up and visualize all the ways I can make use of it before this job ends, then walk around the other side of the bed to open the other bedside table drawer.

  This one has a book.

  No, I decide, picking it up. A journal.

  Nice find, Logan.

  I open it up and shine a light on the first page.

  My True Confession, it says.

  Jackpot.

  I turn the page and start reading, then stop. Because there’s a single piece of paper stuffed into the middle of the book. I open to that page and I’m just about to pull it out and see what it is when I hear a muffled laugh.

  “AJ?” I say, closing the journal and dropping it back into the drawer. “That you?”

  Better not be. Because the fucking lights are still off.

  “AJ?” I say, walking out of the bedroom and entering the living room.

  Nothing.

  I shine the light on the couch and find it empty.

  “Shit. Yvette?” I call, louder now. No answer. “Yvette!”

  I shine my flashlight all around the room and catch a glimpse of movement outside a large sliding door.

  “Yvette!” I call again. Because she’s outside on the terrace in this freezing-ass blizzard in her fucking underwear.

  I jog over to the door, pull it wide open and say, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  She’s got her back to me, her skin already bright pink from the cold. How long has she been out here?

  “What the hell?” I say. “Get back inside. You’ll freeze to death.”

  Which is stupid, I realize. Because she’s not gonna live long anyway.

  Maybe I should just let her stay out here? Fall asleep drunk and freeze to death?

  That would be a nice way to go. Both for her and for me. No mess. No questions. No body disposal. I think I might do that—for both my targets, actually.

  But then she drops something over the side of the railing and leans over—far over—to look at it.

  I walk up behind her and look over too. “What was that?”

  I can’t see, even when I shine my light down, because whatever it was, it’s disappeared into a tall snow drift.

  “My end,” she says.

  “What?” I laugh. What the hell is she talking about? “Come on,” I say, grabbing her shoulders and turning her around. Her fucking tits are still hanging out of her bra. What is your deal, chick? She cannot be that drunk.

  “Let’s go back inside,” I say.

  Because we still have a drawer filled with kink to explore before I let you die of hypothermia.

  Chapter Seven - AJ

  The building out back is massive and this chick is full of surprises.

  Inside Yvette has a beat-up old Corolla, a beat-up old Jeep, a snowcat, a tractor, an empty chicken coop, two horse stalls—also empty—and a gym.

  It’s a pretty nice gym, and even though there’s no power and it’s about ten degrees inside this place, for a moment I consider taking a turn on the bag hanging from the ceiling.

  Generator, I remind the squirrel inside me. Gotta find the generator.

  It’s in a little room in the front of the building with a big window looking out at the house. There’s also a fully-stocked workshop. I’m talking shit I’d have in my outbuilding workshop if I ever manage to acquire an outbuilding workshop. There’s even a floor lift for a car.

  I just shake my head.

  But then I wonder… does she have a boyfriend?

  We didn’t see a boyfriend since we’ve been watching her. But that doesn’t mean much. He could be in the military. Or one of those oil rig workers who live on rigs in the ocean. Or a scientist down in Antarctica.

  But none of that is likely.

  So what is the deal with this place? It doesn’t make sense.

  She doesn’t make sense either.

  I get who she is to Damon and why he wants her dead. She ran away and took something valuable. So this secret mission to get rid of her makes some sense. But not a lot.

  I didn’t know Yvette before Logan and I got this job. Never even met her. I just know Damon married her while she was in high school.

  Which is pretty weird, but then again, not so weird when you’re in a crime family, I guess.

  Still, I don’t get it. Why not just leave her alone? So she took something. Maybe money, maybe information, a car? I dunno what she took. Logan’s in charge of the recovery mission.

  The only way this makes sense is that Damon’s a jealous asshole. He’s one of those guys who figures, If I can’t have her, no one can. Because the dude’s got plenty of dirty money. She can’t know too much about his business or he’d already be in jail. She’s been gone for almost three years, so even if she did know too much, she’s not sharing that with anyone. And no one loves a beat-up old Corolla or a beat-up old Jeep that much, right?

  “Not your job, AJ. So who gives a fuck?”

  On to the generator. She says she’s never turned it on but that makes no sense either. Surely this place loses power enough that she’d want to do that. And it’s one of those generators that has a fucking switch, for Christ’s sake. There is no rolling a dolly out and hooking it up to the electrical box. It’s a massive, whole-house generator, firmly affixed to a concrete pad, that requires two seconds to turn on.

  And she has fuel. Not only is there fuel in it, but bright-blue barrels of diesel sit off to the side. Like whoever set this up was preparing for Armageddon.

  So again, I have to ask myself, who is this chick and why is she so important?

  Damon has known where she’s been. I don’t know how long he’s known, but we didn’t have to go hunt her down. Dude gave us an address. Said, “Go watch her.” Which we did. And then yesterday he calls up, Logan gives him a report, and then he says, “End it.”

  So we are.

  But I’m starting to maybe not like this idea so much. Too many weird things not adding up now that I’ve seen this building.

  This is not her place, I decide. This is an outbuilding a man owns. And there is no man here now and no man returning, of that I’m certain.

  I shine my flashlight on the generator, find the switch, and I’m just about to turn it on when I hear a laugh outside.

  Turning my head to the large window overlooking the house, I see Yvette standing out on the terrace in the thick falling snow, wearing only her underwear.

  Her tits are still hanging out of her bra and it’s clear she’s cold, because her whole body is bright pink.

  I walk over to the window, about to tap it and see if I can get her attention, when Logan comes out behind her. He says something and then… she drops something into the snow.

  It disappears into a snow drift. But I don’t look at that
for more than a moment. Because Logan is turning her around and leading her back inside.

  What the hell is going on in there?

  I go back to the generator, flip the switch, wait for the machinery to come to life, and then the lights go on outside.

  Satisfied I’ve done my job, I feel an urgency to get back inside. So I leave the building and I’m retracing my steps in the snow—which are already refilling, it’s coming down so hard—and I’m just about to pull the back door open when I see the place under the terrace where the object she dropped disappeared.

  I force my way through the high snow drift and stick my already freezing-cold fingers down into the snow until I grab something and pull it out.

  It’s a pill bottle.

  The label is a little bit smeared from the snow, but when I open the cap, sure enough, there’s pills in there. Big ones, too.

  I shove it in my coat pocket, make my way back to the door, and go inside, stomping my feet off on the mat.

  Music is playing in the bar, the jukebox still bellowing out the songs I picked from earlier. But I ignore all that and just go back upstairs.

  So here’s the next odd thing I notice when I pull open the apartment door. Something I didn’t really notice when we dragged her ass up the steps twenty minutes ago.

  This place is the opposite of that shop down there.

  So apparently feminine, it’s clear that regardless of how that shop looks, no man lives here with her.

  What the fuck?

  “Good job,” Logan says.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking off my coat and hanging it on a chair. “What the fuck was she doing outside? I saw her on the terrace.”

  Yvette is sitting on the couch with a throw blanket wrapped around her shoulders, shivering like crazy. She’s got her head tilted back against the cushions and her eyes are closed.

  “I have no clue, man. She just walked out there.”

  “Where the fuck were you?”

  “Checking the place out.”

  I nod. “She dropped something out in the snow.”

  “I know. I saw it.”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the bottle of pills. “She dropped this.”

  “What is it?” Logan asks, walking over to me. He takes the bottle from my hands, swipes the melted snow off it, and squints at the label. “Fentanyl,” he says.

  “What the fuck is she doing with fentanyl?”

  “How should I know?”

  I snatch the bottle back and try to read the label. See who the prescription was written for. But the name isn’t legible. “Yvette,” I say, walking over to her. “Are these yours?”

  She inhales deeply, then opens her eyes and stares at the bottle in my hand. She laughs, closes her eyes again, and shakes her head.

  “Whatever,” Logan says. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that the power’s back on. I’m hungry. You hungry, Aje?”

  “Sure,” I say. But I’m not convinced it doesn’t matter. “That building out there is weird.”

  “Weird how?” Logan asks, opening and closing drawers and cupboards in the kitchen.

  “It’s got a lot of shit in there. There’s a snowcat,” I say.

  He stops his drawer-banging to look at me. Raises an eyebrow. “That right?”

  I nod.

  “So we’re not stuck here.”

  “What do you think we’re gonna do?” I laugh “Ride that fucker all the way into Durango?”

  He shoots me a look that says, Don’t be an idiot. “It’s just good to know we’re not really stuck.”

  “Sure,” I say. But everything about this job is suddenly feeling way off. It seemed so simple. Just come in after all the tourists left, kill her, dump her body over the ravine, and then head out.

  That plan is decidedly off the rails now. I don’t care how much diesel is in those barrels, that snowcat can only hold so much. It’s probably not even enough to get us to the ski resort. And what good is that anyway? Our rental truck is sitting in her goddamned parking lot. We didn’t use our real names, but for sure, that’s a loose end we can’t afford to leave hanging.

  Also… Logan is being weird. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, I just feel it.

  The sex was good. He felt normal then. But ever since he got off the phone with Damon this morning he’s been different. I just can’t place my finger on it.

  “She’s got a whole drawer filled with sex toys in there,” Logan says, nodding his head down the hallway.

  It’s my turn to raise my eyebrow.

  “So why don’t you go get those and we can figure out what to do with them?”

  My cock jumps a little at the suggestion. Because this is normal Logan.

  No, we haven’t spent a lot of time together lately. But all the times in the past have come with lots of good sex.

  I forget about my burgeoning conspiracy theory and go into the bedroom to check it out. “Where?” I call.

  “Bedside table,” Logan calls back.

  I like her place, I decide. Not that it matters. But it’s sorta romantic, I guess. Lots of texture. Velvet and sheepskin. Like the outfit she was wearing earlier, the bedroom feels dressed up for something.

  Her bed is made. That’s the first thing I notice. She’s got a ton of decorative pillows near the headboard, artfully arranged in a pattern of fuzzy cream-colored fur, vintage-looking cotton, and of course… velvet. Only the velvet isn’t yellow like her couch or the hanging drapes that surround the frame of her bed. It’s dark gray.

  I’ve never really understood the purpose of pillows like that. Every woman I’ve ever known just throws them on the floor when they go to sleep. So what’s the point?

  Just decorations.

  I go over to the closest bedside table and pull the drawer open.

  “Oh, fuck yeah.” I pick up the huge teal-green vibrator and fist it in my palm. It’s thick, and long, and has a bulbous head. Then I pick up the other one. Pink, this time. Smaller and more slender than the teal one. I turn them both on and try out the different speeds.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I turn around and hold up both the toys to Logan. “Quality,” I say. “Is she awake? Because I want to use these on her right now.”

  He shrugs. “She’s sitting up. But her eyes are still closed. Did you see the other stuff?” He gives me a crooked smile so I drop the vibrators down on the bed and reach for the clear plastic zipper bag that says Oral Sex Essentials kit, but I drop it just as quick and pick up a cock sleeve with nubby ridges down the length of it. I wiggle it at Logan. “No wonder she’s so hot for us. She dates little guys.”

  Logan smirks, but slaps it away from his face and picks up a clear plastic box with a set of couples toys. “I didn’t see this earlier.” He opens the box and take out the cock ring. “I’m definitely gonna try it,” he says, switching on the attached bullet vibrator. “And look, it’s got a toy for her too.”

  “And a remote,” I say, lifting up the little control mechanism. “Oh, we could have some fun with this, for sure.”

  “Oh, shit, what’s this?” He lifts out another toy and holds it up.

  I snatch it away and nod my head, smiling. “Oh, yeah. I’ve used one of these before. Goes around your cock and this part,” I say, pointing to the thick end, “vibrates along your balls so you can tickle her ass while you fuck her.”

  “What are you doing?”

  We both turn and find Yvette standing in the doorway naked, her bra and panties discarded while we’ve been in here snooping.

  “Making plans for tonight,” Logan says.

  She leans her lithe, toned body against the doorjamb seductively. Her hair is a little bit wet from being outside in the snow, just enough to make her look like she just got out of the shower. And even though I have a ton of questions for her about that little trip out onto the terrace, I can’t stop looking at her fucking tits.

  They are so erect, her nipples practically point to the ceiling. And th
ey are round and firm. So beautiful, in fact, for a moment I wonder if they’re fake.

  But they’re not. I fondled them enough earlier to know.

  “Come over and find out,” I add to Logan’s weak invitation. “We’d like to take all your dirty little toys for a spin.”

  “What makes you think I want you to?”

  “Well, you are standing in the doorway naked. So… you know. We might be men, Yvette, but we’re not dumb.”

  She just stares at Logan with furrowed eyebrows. I laugh a little because he’s so serious. And he never was good at the whole foreplay stuff. That was always me. So I decide to take over now. “You got a favorite?” I ask her. “Come show me.”

  She turns her head to the side and lowers her chin, somehow looking uninterested and totally interested in the same moment. “I’m not really up to teaching you how to pleasure me with toys,” she finally whispers.

  Right. She’s still drunk. And the pills. Did she take any?

  Nah, I decide. I’m not into drugs but I got plenty of friends who are. And I know what fentanyl does. Even in small doses. If she took just one of those, especially with alcohol, she would not be able to walk.

  “Who says we need lessons?” Logan asks.

  She huffs out a very small laugh. “Oooooo, what’s this?” she says, mimicking Logan. “It’s a cock ring, boys. The latest Swedish version.”

  “Yeah?” I say. “You got some kind of sexy toy fetish?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that’s a yes.” Logan laughs, picking up the two vibrators off the bed. “So come on. Let’s do this.”

  I roll my eyes. Let’s do this? Come on, dude. Up your game a little. I get it, she’s buzzed and willing, but a little game goes a long way.

  So I walk over to her, unbuckling my pants with one hand as I hold the new and improved vibrating cock ring in the other, and by the time I stand in front of her, looking down as she looks up, I’m jerking off.

  She glances down, then back up at me, does that little head-tilt look-away thing that I’m starting to like, and says, “So put it on.” But then she smiles. “Better yet,” she says, nodding at Logan, “you put it on him.”