Cruel Water (The Dirty Heroes Collection Book 11)

by Dee Palmer

  She exhales, shudders from tip to toe. An audible cue but her sweet little center has already begun to grip, ripple, and contract around me. Fuck she feels so good. My hips jerk, and my jaw is clenched so tight I could crack a tooth. I thrust hard, hold tight, and chase my own release.

  9

  Gently lifting the slender arm draped across my stomach I find I have to force myself to move. I’ve never felt like this, at ease, happy, at peace, with an overflowing sense of fulfillment all at once, calming the tumultuous demons that have plagued my existence for as long as I can remember. Her beautiful features are soft and somehow ethereal as she rests in a deep sleep next to me. Her lips are only barely parted as she breathes, and the desire to kiss her wages a fierce war inside me. If I had a moment to really think, if I was being honest with myself, I’m not sure why it’s a battle at all. What’s stopping me? With every fiber of my being this feels right, so why don’t I trust this is real? Why is there still a seed of doubt when every fucking thing about her is perfect? Everything about the last two days has been fucking perfect. I said it last night, and I feel it in my damaged soul: This is heaven.

  Fuck doubt and fuck the curse, it was broken the moment she saved me. I know it. The moment I was dragged me from that car, I felt different. I didn’t know it was because of her and now I do.

  She exhales softly. Her smile is impish, her lips tipped only at one corner, and she seems to be dancing somewhere between a deep slumber and a dream state, which has her writhing and undulating her sweet body enough to make my cock twitch. Fuck after last night and yesterday, I’m raw. I’m not complaining, but if she is half as sore as I am, I think today is going to be needed for some serious R & R.

  My legs feel like lead weights as I drop them over the edge of the bed and endeavor to slip out unnoticed. My body seems more reluctant than my mind to leave her, and it’s an effort to drag my ass away and put on some clothes. Catching my reflection in the mirror, it’s not hard to guess the cause of this reluctance. Sheer exhaustion aside, I have a huge smile spread across my face, so natural I didn’t even feel it, only the image staring back at me makes me take stock. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that level of joy on my face, honest and unashamed. Yeah, fuck exhaustion, it’s her; she’s done this. She’s the one. I slip my jogging pants on, and barefoot, I silently descend the stairs from the master bedroom to go in search of sustenance.

  “Good morning, sir.” Winston folds his newspaper and stands as I enter the kitchen. He’s sporting the same knowing grin he’s had since I brought my guest into the house. If it was at all possible for anything to irritate me in my current good mood, I’m sure his smugness would be wearing a little thin by now; however, nothing is going to do that, not a damn thing.

  “Good morning, Winston. I’m starving.” I rub my stomach as if he couldn’t hear it growling as I walked closer. I take the paper he set aside and flip it open to check the headlines.

  “Why are you reading last week’s paper?”

  “I haven’t finished the crossword,” he replies drolly, removing the paper from the table before I can annoy him further and offer to finish the crossword for him.

  “Would Sir like some poached eggs and salmon?”

  “Sir would like that very much, thank you.” Perching on the edge of the kitchen table, I notice that there’s no music, no radio. Winston always has the radio on for company. I walk over to the side and switch the retro radio on. It crackles to life.

  “And the young lady?” he asks as I fruitlessly try and find a station.

  “Is this broken?” I give it a shake, because that is my level of technical expertise when it comes to electronics.

  “And the young lady?” Winston repeats, irritation clipping his tone. I replace the radio, deciding it’s clearly not an issue for him. I give it no more thought and answer his question with a wry smile.

  “Is still unconscious. I’ll take something up after I’ve checked my messages. Speaking of which, have you seen my phone?”

  “It’s on the side there, by the bread bin. I took the liberty of removing it from your bedroom suite.” He points his gnarled finger to the oak dresser by the back door.

  “I’d say that was more than a liberty, Winston. What the hell!” I snatch the phone from the side and swipe the screen. The hairs on my neck prickle with agitation. I refuse to get angry. I refuse to let anything kill my buzz. Nevertheless, I feel a fiery glare is justified.

  “You said you didn’t want to be disturbed,” he explains.

  “I’ve got thirty missed calls, Winston.” I scroll the screen.

  “You seemed to be enjoying yourself, sir. I didn’t want to interrupt you unless it was an emergency.” The dismissive tone would normally send me over the edge; however, the deep sense of calm I have prevents any such outburst.

  “And thirty calls didn’t seem like an emergency?” Sarcasm isn’t anger and is also justified.

  “Thirty calls from Miss Stephanie, regarding work no doubt, so no, I didn’t consider them more important than your happiness,” he states categorically and any aggravation evaporates. I have been happy.

  “I appreciate that; however, she is not going to be happy with you.” I sniff and raise a warning eyebrow. He scoffs and begins the breakfast preparations.

  “Let me add that to the list of cares I could not give.”

  “I’ll tell her that.” He shrugs, the lack of concern rolling off his shoulders as he beats the eggs in the bowl. I press the return call button on my phone and motion for Winston to bring my breakfast into the study as I walk backwards down the hall. Stephanie picks up on the second ring.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Her voice is pitched high, anxious mixed with excitement.

  “Busy.”

  “Well, you are going to want to bring your ass back to the club.” She sounds like she’s grinning from ear to ear with glee.

  “And why is that?” I reach my study and push the door open. The room smells of dying embers and warm whiskey.

  “Because she’s here,” she blurts, giddy, and I get a sick feeling in my stomach. Stephanie is never giddy.

  “Who’s there?”

  “The girl, the woman, more like. The one that rescued you, she’s real!”

  “What?” I stop in the center of the room as if her words have flooded my veins with ice water, freezing me to the spot. I’ve become an ice statue.

  “I said, she’s real,” she repeats. Her excitement is clear as she continues to bombard me with information. I’m numb. “She showed up last night. She’s a doctor or something, saw your car go over and like some sort of super hero, she dived in after you.”

  “What?”

  “Look, I know you can hear me, Eric, get your ass back here and see for yourself.” She sniffs, a short sound accompanied with an incredulous sounding chuckle. I’m hollow. I don’t understand. The numb void is suddenly filled with too many questions.

  “How did she find me? Why didn’t she stay with me after she dragged me out? Where did she go? Why now? I don’t understand.” The last statement is an echo of the confusion messing up my head and dominating every coherent thought my fucked up brain is trying to conjure.

  “How about you come back and ask her for yourself,” Stephanie quips.

  “She can speak?”

  “Yes, of course she can. I mean I haven’t asked her to sing or anything, but I can guess she’s got a killer voice, all salty and sexy as hell. Eric, she’s a Siren, absolutely stunning. You were right all along. And now, I don’t understand, why aren’t I hearing engines revving?”

  “I don’t…I…” I choke on my own doubt. Sweat gathers at my temples, and my heart is racing so fast it feels like it’s about to explode in my chest.

  “This is what you wanted, Eric. You said she eased your demons. Didn’t she?”

  “Yes, but—” I can’t finish my sentence. I look up to the heavens hoping for some Devine enlightenment. What do I do? I close my eyelids, and all I
can see is the woman asleep in my bed, my perfect angel and yet…

  “But?” Stephanie interrupts my inner turmoil.

  “But nothing. I’m on my way.” It’s simple. I have to know for sure. I stride from my study, every step hastening my pace, and in no time I’m at my bedroom door. Silently, I steal into the room, gather my shoes, a T-shirt, a sweater, my wallet and my keys. I’m jogging by the time I reach the front door. Winston appears from the kitchen, carrying a tray of delicious smelling breakfast food.

  “Sir?” He tilts his head with confusion.

  “I have to go.” My vague explanation sounds like an apology to my own ears.

  “Might I ask where?” His calm tone belies the worry in his heavy brow.

  “I have to see for myself. I’m sorry Winston, please give the breakfast to…” My gaze flits to the upstairs, and I have to shake myself. The pull to go to her is almost unbearable. I’m in utter conflict. Torn between truth and my own desires, it’s like a blade slowly slicing into my heart to see if I will bleed. I am bleeding, yet I know I will never be settled, never truly find peace if I don’t see for myself. “Stephanie said she’s real,” is the only explanation I can manage to mutter to my confused employee.

  “Oh, I don’t think you needed Stephanie to tell you that, sir.” His misunderstanding is accompanied with a warm accommodating smile. His gaze follows to where mine had just been, but when he looks back to me I have to drop my eyes to the floor. When I look up again it takes everything I have to meet his gaze.

  “No, not her,” I state flatly. "The woman that saved me. She’s real and she’s in the city. I have to go to her. I’m sorry.” I step outside and falter. My chest feels tight, the pain knotting so much it hurts to breathe. I know this pain. It’s familiar and constant. That call has burst the fantasy bubble as sure as an arrow through soft flesh might cause a fatal wound. This wasn’t real; it was a fantasy.

  How could it be anything other than a dream? It can’t, not if one phone call can so quickly and completely plummet me back into darkness. I felt the light briefly. It warmed my face and warmed my soul. It was heaven, but heaven isn’t real for men like me. I need to see the woman who saved me. I need to know where the fantasy ends and the truth begins. I need to see for myself if she’s the one. And even if she isn’t, seeing her will do one good thing. It will prove I’m not insane.

  The tires screech on the gravel sending plumes of grit and dirt high in to the air in the wake of my speeding car. I glance in the rear view mirror and wish I hadn’t. In the window above Winston, a desolate figure in an oversized t-shirt is banging against the glass. I don’t look back again.

  The tension in the tendons in my leg throbs and aches from the constant pressure I’ve had pressed on the gas for the last few hours. I haven’t stopped, haven’t answered my phone, haven’t even listened to the radio for fear of being distracted. All I can see in my tunnel vision is killing me from the inside. Every time I blink, I hope to see the vision that saved me that night, and all I can see is the angel I left broken in the window of my castle. I’ve never second-guessed myself. Good, bad or indifferent I am always certain of everything I do, yet I have never felt this level of anguish before. Like a dripping tap, I have to constantly remind myself that, that is the only reason I’m driving a hundred and twenty on the freeway, speeding toward the city, for answers, for certainty, for truth.

  The traffic usually gets heavier as I reach the outskirts, the urban areas becoming more dense with tall buildings and people, but today, it’s eerily quiet. Slowing to a crawl, I take the opportunity to check my phone. I’ve had several missed calls from Winston, which I expected and none from Stephanie, which I find odd, considering the last conversation ended with me heading out the door. I would have thought, at the very least, she would’ve checked on my progress. The thought is gone from my head the moment it enters, replaced by the rotating images of the woman that saved me and the one I left behind. By the time I pull up outside the club, my addled brain can’t distinguish between the two and it feels like the morphed image has been burned into my retinas.

  I lock the car and swipe myself into the private entrance at the rear of the warehouse. If you didn’t know the club was here, you would never notice it. It’s the best kept secret in the city for a reason. My members want their kink like I want my personal life, private.

  It’s early afternoon. It’s taken longer than I thought to get here, and now that I am, I’m impatient as a bull in a china shop to get my answers. I tear through the darkened corridor toward my office. It’s empty. I spin on my heel and barge my way into the main bar and mingle room. Since the club doesn’t really liven up until midnight, I’m surprised there are any members at all; however, there are few are gathered around the bar and in booths dotted around the staging area. I walk over to the bar.

  “Where’s Stephanie?” I snap at the server I don’t recognize.

  “She’s with a her sub in playroom B.” The nervous barmaid looks over to her supervisor, someone else new I assume since I can’t put a name to the face. The barmaid is unsure if she’s said the right thing. I don’t have time to set her straight. No, she hasn’t said the right thing, but fuck it, I’m the motherfucking boss, and if she didn’t answer me, the mood I’m in, she’d be lucky to just be collecting her things at the end of her shift.

  Pushing off of the bar, I stride across the main room toward the back rooms, dungeons, and playroom B. I don’t knock, and crashing the door wide open I don’t even bother glancing through the modesty panel. Stephanie has her arm pulled back high and loaded with a cat o’nine tails. Her bare assed sub is bent and tied over the spanking bench. Stephanie spins at the sound of the door, her face like thunder, lightning, and a little of the fires of hell in her scowl.

  “What the fuck, Eric? You don’t just barge into a scene uninvited,” she spits, fury coating every word.

  “I was invited. You invited me, well, not to the scene, but back to the club, now where is she?”

  “Where’s who?” Her hands are on her hips, the whip still held tight in her white knuckled grip, anger mixed with confusion. Anger is winning, and if I wasn’t so wholly pre-occupied, I might feel bad at pissing her off quite so much.

  “Not the fucking time for games, Stephanie,” I growl

  “Really? Because this is a playroom and you’ve just barged in—”

  I bark my interruption. “Stephanie!” Her lips snap tight, eyes wide as waves of fury roll off me and surge toward her. Grinding my jaw, I clench and unsuccessfully force myself to tone the anger down a notch. “I swear to god, tell me where she is.”

  “Eric, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The woman, the woman who saved me is here. You called, you told me she was here. You told me to come and see for myself.” Each word of explanation seems to bounce off her as if it’s the ravings of a mad man. Only this mad man is also someone she clearly pities.

  “Eric, I didn’t call. I wouldn’t. Not when you’re having a break.” Her soothing tone feels like a rough abrasion on raw nerves.

  “You didn’t call? But I spoke to you.” I mutter. A swirl of nausea threatens and I have to swallow down the acrid taste forming at the back of my throat. I feel dizzy, dazed. I think I’m swaying on my feet. I can’t focus, ground myself. Is anything real anymore?

  “Eric, I didn’t call. I’ve been in scenes all day. Well, this morning I was doing the shopping but I am hardly likely to call you with that riveting information. Eric, Eric, are you all right?” Stephanie reaches for me, a comforting hand that seems to burn my skin when she touches my hand. I snatch mine away, out of her reach. I don’t deserve her kindness.

  “What have I done?” I buckle with the sheer weight of pain punching me in the gut.

  “Eric, you’re scaring me.”

  I stumble from the room, dazed and ricocheting off of the narrow corridor walls as I try and make my way to fresh air. The eerie luminous green of the fire exit glows, gui
ding my way out of this hell. My vision blurs, and nausea rolls in my empty stomach. Bursting through the door, I collapse to my knees, retching only saliva and air from my hollow stomach. I can’t breathe. My skin feels itchy, cold, like a sickness is coating it, suffocating me from the outside.

  “What have I done?” I call out to no one, howling to the empty sky as panic claws at my raw nerve endings. Sucking in large gulps of air, it feels like I can never get quite enough to quell the panic, to feed my oxygen-starved brain.

  Think Eric! Think!

  I reach in my pocket for my phone and speed dial Winston. It rings and rings and rings. I don’t dial again. I’m on my feet, racing back to my car. This time it’s Stephanie in my rear view mirror, looking distraught. The angry roar of the V12 engine is thankfully drowning out the turmoil in my head that threatens to unhinge the tentative grasp I have on this fucked-up situation. What grasp? I have no grasp. I fucked up, I was tricked, just as I felt the first a slither of happiness, real happiness this…this happens. Well, I won’t let it ruin me. I won’t let it drag me back to the darkness. I found my light. I just have to get back in time to tell her, to show her.

  My phone buzzes beside me and the hands free system in the car kicks in.

  “Winston, is she there? Tell me she’s still there.” I can hear the desperation in my voice. My fingers grip tighter on the wheel, and my foot pushes harder on the gas.

  “Yes and no.”

  “Really not the time to be cryptic.” My low growl weighs my comment with a threatening tone.

  “She is no longer in the castle. She’s standing on the bridge. Has been there since you left, sir. I tried to get her to come back in side.”

  “The bridge?”

  “Yes, exactly where the barrier is broken, where your car tore through and plummeted into the ocean. You know the place.”

  “I am familiar, yes.” I briefly close my eyes at the ridiculous remark and my equally flip response. “You have to get her back in the castle.”