He must be intellectual because by God we cannot rebuild a brain. We can however, reprogram him. Take his photographic memory and use it. Use it—the one quality of his original being kept—but controlled. The only problem she never foresaw—I would remember who I used to be. And I would never forget who I was with her.
Shivering in the cold rain of winter, I collect the sand of my remains and add to the ball of goo—her energy and my ash. I am a globule of clay. I want to spin it on a wheel and reshape myself, but I do not know how. Bitch left no instructions.
“Sal,” a soft murmur trickles from behind as she lays her hand upon my shoulder. In a winter white coat, she appears like an angel, whispering sweet nothings. In my tear-filled eyes, I blink several times through the blur. “Salvatore, come on. You need to get up.”
I have heard this before.
Breaking down, I grasp my hair and pull the strands hard. I need the pain to come back to the reality, recharging the robot to send me back out again…or in this case, just to stand the fuck up. “What are you doing out of the house? You shouldn’t be here.”
“And you shouldn’t be here,” her words caress over my soul like a warm blanket as she kneels in front of me in the mud.
God, those stains will never come out.
Her hands pull at my arms. “Stop hurting yourself! It’s me, Sal! It’s me!”
“You can’t be here. It’s too fucking dangerous,” I say as my program finally kicks in. “You need to go get back inside.” I cast a glance to the road, and I sigh. “Go get back in my fucking truck and get back to Jack’s. I put you there for a god damned fucking reason.”
“Why, so you can keep me sheltered so I won’t end up here? So I won’t see you broken and battered and weak?”
Something about the way she says weak causes my hyperventilation. I am crying and drooling. Snot is flying. And I no longer give a shit if it looks pretty on this ugly mug.
Unable to breathe, I heave and collapse into her arms. I am wailing and inconsolable. Mumbling a slur of incoherent thoughts, I lash out. “She’s gone! She’s gone! Everything I ever had is under this pile of dirt! She is gone!” I roar out, my voice echoing off the copse of trees. “I am so fucked up. I cannot do this anymore. I have done it for so long, and I am so tired. So fucking tired. Bring her back… Bring her back to me…so I can have some motherfucking peace.”
In her arms, she rocks my hollow shell slow as tears stream down her cheeks. “I cannot bring her back to you. All I can do is be here for you now.”
Uncurling my fists, I catch her tears in my hands. “I am poison. I am lethal. And you need to get back where I fucking put you.”
“Lucas Salvatore Raniero,” she mumbles as her water-filled sapphire eyes gaze at my darkened emeralds. “I am not leaving you. You can put me in that house. You can stick me down in that dungeon. Nothing is going to change how I feel about you.”
“You want change?” I yell, grabbing her wrists. “I cannot fucking feel a goddamned thing.”
Speaking my language, she scolds, “Wrong! Asshole! You love me.”
Taking a deep breath, I blink from side to side. She’s fucking right. I cannot deny it.
“The problem isn’t that you don’t feel. The problem is you feel too much. When the heavens made you, they gave you this enormous heart and everything is magnified, blown up out of proportion. I knew this that night at the farmhouse when I found you black and blue and dripping in red. I wrote MINE on your chest. Do you remember?”
“Ya, how could I forget,” I say, taking her hand and staring at the hoop on her finger. “I took this out of my dick and slipped it on your finger.”
Her beautiful smile lights up my world. “Yes, you did.”
“I need you to take your sweet ass back to my truck,” I say, running my sleeve over my face. “Drive careful and slow back to Jack’s. Keep yourself safe because I cannot lose you.”
“Jack isn’t there,” she says, shaking her head. “Jack was never going to be there.”
“You took a contract with Jack…” I attempt to argue, already thinking it is pointless. She knows I did it. She knows, and I am caught.
“Yeah, I did and Georgia answered the door,” she informs, gripping my hands. “She showed me down to the dungeon. Nice touch with a pink five-gallon bucket and a lid covered in lace for a toilet.”
I snarl and curl my lips, laughing and crying at the same time. “I made a plea, calling in favors to a handful of my Masters. I needed one of them to take you. I didn’t know it would be Jack. I can’t have you out here.”
She screams, “But why?”
“That is really complicated. You just have to trust me.”
“Jack signed the contract for you,” she serves as I close my eyes not wanting to face the verdict.
Opening my eyes, I lift my eyebrows and smile, caught in the lie by the pretty red-haired girl. I reach out and grasp the ends. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I will go, but you have to drive,” she declares, putting the keys in my hand. “Back to yours and Kaci’s house.” Her words make me want to run out of tears like now. I need to stop crying—right the fuck now. “You built that house for her. You built that dungeon for her.”
Cocking my head at her, I snicker as the salty tears burn my raw skin, “I own Serene’s farmhouse, too.”
“I didn’t know that one.”
“Kaci owned all of it. Her family left it to her because there was a huge falling out with Serene. They didn’t like her being a paid whore…their words, not mine. So, they left it all to Kaci. That’s why Kaci and Cas never got along. Kaci got everything; Cas has nothing but a very small trust fund at twenty-five. When we got married…”
“You got everything,” she interrupts, finishing my sentence.
“I got everything,” I acknowledge, holding tight to her hands. Glancing up at the sky, the rain parts, leaving pieces of blue sky and water dripping from the trees. “Everything in Sugargrove including her apartment, the building in Houston, the property down on the coast, and a house in the French Quarter.”
“…New Orleans?”
“Ya,” I say with a sniffle. “I own all of it because of…” My hand pounds the ground, coating it in the wet sludge. She grabs it slow, coddling it like an ethereal butterfly and laying it on her white coat. I am so gonna have to buy her a new jacket.
Her fingers ruffle through my long bangs, pushing them away from my face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I cannot hide from her any longer. She knows too much already. Her curiosity will get her killed, and I cannot have her blood on my hands. I have to either trust or keep her in a box for the rest of her life. Damn girl is too academic to leave it alone. Thinking she will accept things and not go digging is a theory I can no longer put faith in. “Because I keep a lot of secrets.”
Biting her lip, she confesses with the barest of hushes, “So do I…”
“Ya, I know you do,” I spar off, grabbing another smoke, but not before she steals it. I flick the lighter and my eyes dance into hers as I admit the truth, “I have been tailing your ass for five years.”
“You don’t think I know that, Mr. Tolan?”
Her reference to my frequently used alias—Lucien Tolan—catches me completely off guard. Watching her pretty lips on the butt of the cigarette, I snort. Ya, she knows way too much. Keep her hidden. Keep her with you. Keep her hidden. Keep her with you. The thoughts pivot round and round, equidistant from one another and balanced by pros and cons.
“You cannot stop what is coming.”
“I can damn sure keep you out of the line of fire,” I rebuke quick, not letting her dishevel my focus.
“You don’t get to be caught between the barrel and the bullet any more than I do,” she rambles off my words to me. She has been paying attention and learning. She has been studying and practicing.
I want to ask her how she knows so much, but I have a good idea. She is nice and kind and people trust her—right or
wrong. Without assuming too much, I question the unimaginable, “Am I your target?”
Standing up, she smiles in the softest, most virtuous of ways as she drops her hand and tempts, “You were always the intended hit, Raniero.”
Fuck.
When faced with the possibility of execution on top of your wife’s grave or finding the impossible needle in the haystack of answers, a moment passes where the cost may not be worth it. A price Kaci never deemed worth paying for me. I cannot do that. I am not programmed to check out. “Now what?”
“You are going to get up and come with me,” she instructs with a focus I recognize as my own. “Now,” she adds with a deadly smile bathed in sugar, but her expression loosens as she teases, “And you’re driving.”
“If I come with you…”
“I am not going to kill you unless you die when you’re fucking me.”
Uncertain if I can trust this woman I have fallen so hard for, I laugh nervously. “You know I want this…”
Squatting down, Iris delivers a promise of more as her hands close around mine. “Let’s go figure this out. I promise, I am a good time.”
“I know you’re a damn good time,” I mention, rising up off the ground. “Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?”
“Because I would never get over you. You are too unforgettable. You would haunt me forever,” Iris whispers, lacing her mud-covered fingers into mine. “And I don’t want you to be my Kaci.”
SAL
With everything covered in muck, we strip down to the bare essentials and drive to the farmhouse. I ponder taking us over to Jack’s House, but now that she knows the truth, I cannot stand the idea. They all played along so nicely, giving us the land so Kaci and I could build a home of our dreams.
One of many lies Kaci left me to unravel.
The land always belonged to K.M. Hope, I just never looked into it until after her death. I had no reason to. I have an inquisitive nature, one demanding to be fed—I want answers to problems that seemingly have no solutions. The research provokes my thoughts, and I prod until I find justice. It may not make sense, but I aim for fairness. Bad guys don’t always end up dead and good guys don’t always end up heroes.
At her estate hearing, I examine every document, every scrap of paper, every statement and receipt—she left me everything.
After finding out the farmhouse, the house we built, and the land all legally belonged to Kaci, I didn’t stop my search. Taking on the role of archaeologist, I didn’t just unearth her secrets—for which, her holdings included the properties and the biggest deception—but everyone else’s as well.
If I knew them, if I had a connection with someone through Sibyl or Juliet, I started compiling intel. I worked alone at our newly renovated loft in Houston through the night for years. I never finished. Many questions still lingered. Perhaps in my haste for information, I missed the clues on the girl sitting next to me in the passenger seat.
I don’t know that she won’t kill me.
But I know for sure as fuck they will kill her.
It is that guarantee forcing my hand. She will not be a rapid kill. They will grab my pretty, take her, and torture her to death. I promised her dead husband—Lieutenant Chance Ballister—five years ago to keep her safe and maintain a watchful vigil over his lovely bride.
Who the fuck knows why?
I grab our mud covered clothes out of the back and walk to open her door. It occurs to me then that she might try and eliminate me from the game board.
Will I retaliate?
Or will I defend myself?
I don’t fuckin know.
Without saying a word, her hand slips into mine so easily as we walk to the house. I punch in the code for the garage door and it lifts. I unlock the door, and she hits the button as if we are choreographed in the simplest of dances.
Opening the washing machine, she starts our laundry and says, “Message Serene and say… The pappus scattered.”
“She knows?” I say, following her short, half-dressed body through the house to the kitchen. She is in the refrigerator, grabbing juice and downing it from the bottle. I scold, “Give me that.”
She hands it over and I take a gulp as I assess her motivations, forming an impromptu profile quick. I cannot misstep this one. I have to be exact. My intuition screams at me to trust Iris, so I pull out my phone and send a quick text to Serene.
“Who are you?” I quiz as she grabs the juice and slams it down.
“I am the girl you love,” she replies, nailing the bottle into the trash can. “Come on, you need a shower.”
“So do you…” I mention, following her through the house to my bedroom upstairs. She turns on the water and strips down without second thought. Her porcelain skin contrasts her bright rouge nipples. They are pierced with shiny silver bars through the peaks. She steps in the shower and smiles at me before curling her finger with an invitation.
The OCD in my brain is on overload, full-throttled, maxed out, hot, but for whatever reason, I drop the shorts I changed into at the cemetery. I keep an emergency duffle in the Raptor—clothes, ammo, rope, whiskey—you know, the essentials. “We need to hurry,” she implores. “Get clean.”
Staring at the soap bubbles cascading over her body, I ask, “What are we doing?”
“Executing an implementation…”
The warm water feels good and I close my eyes, letting the shower pour over me. Her hand slides around my cock and strokes slow. She feels amazing. I actually hope she doesn’t kill me. I really like this girl. I really like fucking this girl. And fucking with her head. Apparently, I am not alone.
“Better than executing me,” I mumble as she sucks my erection down whole.
She spits me out and informs, “We have to hurry and get me back to the dungeon next door. Georgia is delaying Jack as long as possible, and Serene went to pick him up.”
“Jack doesn’t know you’re….” I stumble with my words unsure of what to call her—is she an assassin? A hit woman? A specialist?
“Playing for the other side,” she blinks up at me.
Fuck.
Stunned, I question, “You are?”
“Researching my husband, Mr. Raniero,” she answers quick as her thumb rubs over the head of my cock. God, I wish she would stop that. I can’t fucking think.
Fuck.
Running my hand over her hair, I contemplate yanking her up and calling this done. “Did you kill him?”
“No,” she assures, stroking my cock. I gaze down and drift my hand from her hair to her cheek. “Did you?”
“Hell no. Why would I kill one of the janitors?”
She laughs. “You wanna fuck me?”
It goes against my better judgment. She is dangerous—a potential threat. A hazard to my life and those I care about. Perhaps I should eliminate her first. I hoist her up quick and shove her against the shower wall before sinking balls deep into her hot cunt. Thrusting hard, I maim her body with my own. It is rough, yet passionately intense. I have never fucked a girl I might have to kill afterwards.
“You are too fucking much,” she whispers, sinking her teeth into my neck and pushing back as she drops to the shower floor. “Where is your chip?”
“In my fucking jewels…” I admit way to readily. “Yours?”
“Left foot,” Iris whispers, licking my dick like a goddamned lollypop and taunting my balls with her fingers. “Serene had to make all of the x-rays disappear.”
I furrow my brow confused as she returns to sucking my shaft. I give her a quizzical gaze.
Sucking on my cock with long slow strokes, she lets go with a slight frustration and says, “When I broke my leg,” she replies unable to hold back and engulfing her lips around me once more. She ejects me from her mouth fast and adds, “That was a hit by the way.”
I feel betrayed and pissed. Grabbing her up off the floor, I thrust into her puss again. “We are going to fuck. I do not want your blow job.”
Her fingers d
ig into my ass. “Don’t want to put a gag in my mouth?”
“I didn’t say that,” I growl, pumping into her like she holds the world in her hands. Maybe she always has, and I am just dense. “So, what is the plan?”
“The plan is simple—act like everything is normal,” she informs, rolling her hips against mine. “Pretend none of this ever happened. We go about until Serene has an opportunity to take us to the next stage,” she pants, riding my cock like the best thing ever.
I am seriously trying to keep my composure. I don’t know if she is the best thing to ever happen or the absolute worst. “What next stage?”
“You’ll know when it happens, but we need a cover,” she asserts, making perfect sense. “We cannot just run off together. That puts targets on both of us.”
Dropping my hands around her bottom, I dip my dick deeper into her glorious hole. “From who?”
“Your family, my family, other entities.” Her lips are all over me, begging to take her to a place where neither of us can see straight. “Can you shut up for a second so I can come?”
I rocket us away and shoot her full of my milk. Hopefully, that is all I ever have to shoot at her. With heavy breaths, I mumble into her hair, “You know I am fucking impressed, right?”
“Kaci said you would be,” she moans as her fingers claw at my back. “And by the way, Nero… I love you.”
Keeping her propped against the wall, I back away slightly and gaze at those eyes. I could drown in those eyes. Those blue eyes cried into my gray ashes, igniting a charge within me that I never thought would happen. I come in close to her lips; I can feel her breath upon my own as our tongues dance and spark wild like lightning zipping across the sky.
I want to give everything to this girl in my hands. I cannot let anything happen to her. It is my sworn duty to keep her safe, and if the order comes to put her between the bullet and the barrel, I will override my programming and go off the grid.
It’s just that simple.
For now, I have to follow her lead. She understands things I do not. She knows truths I cannot imagine. So, I will fall back—just this once—and take the lesser road, but I will do it cautiously.
Salt Kissed Love (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 1) Page 7