by Evelyn Glass
“Listen to you?” she spits. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I love you!” I roar, the emotion tearing through me. “Don’t you get it? I. Love. You.”
She blinks, studying me closely, as though I have just spoken a foreign language. Then the words register and she shakes her head softly. “Don’t say that,” she says. “Don’t you dare say that, Roma. Not after everything. You made me feel something for you, Roma. You made me feel something I’ve never felt before and then . . . and then . . .”
“I love you,” I repeat. “The kiss, the sex, the laughter, the closeness . . . all of it. That wasn’t a lie. The small moments we shared. Holding each other at night. I’ve never experienced any of that and when I did with you, I was glad I hadn’t before; I was glad you were the first person I ever felt truly close to. Hate me all you like, Felicity, but I love you.”
I see her conviction waver. She glances around the room, as though for an escape. But not from the facility, I realize. She needs an escape from my words. They’re hitting her closely, too close for her to handle. They’re hitting her right in the gut and she won’t be able to keep her determination iron-strong for much longer.
“You don’t love me,” she whispers.
“I do,” I shoot back without pause. “And what’s more, I think you’re falling for me.”
I step forward again, a big pace, so now I’m right up close to her, so close that I can smell the heat and sweat of her, smell the adrenaline. It’s the smell of a woman who wants to survive.
I reach forward and take the barrel of the gun in my hand, direct it to the floor where it can’t do her any harm. Then, softly, I pull it away from her. Her fingers go limp and she lets me take it. She looks up at me with trembling lips and red eyes.
“How can you say you love me after . . .”
I drop the gun on the floor, place my hands on her shoulders, and lean forward. I’m hungry for her. My body screams out for her. I never dreamed I’d need anybody before, never dreamed a hitman could need anybody. But I need her and there’s no denying it.
She looks into my face. It’s like there’s a battle being fought behind her glittering green eyes. Lust versus hate, and as I watch, lust wins.
I lean down and kiss her on the lips.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Felicity
This man was going to kill your father. This man used you as bait. This man used you!
I hear the words, loud in my mind, but even louder and more insistent is the lust whirling through my body like a tidal wave. It spreads down into my belly and out into my arms and legs, causing my toes and my fingers to tingle with lust. His body is pressed hard against mine, his pec muscles solid against my breasts. Without thinking, I reach up and grab his arms, squeeze them, feel the solidness of them. It’s an absurd way to feel, but he makes me feel safe, even now, even here.
I open my mouth, giving myself to the kiss, and Roma lets out a groan. I know he’s as lost as I am. Our tongues touch and battle, brushing against each other, sending a thousand sensations coursing around my mouth, tingling. I stand on my tiptoes and lean into him, pressing my lips harder against his. I feel our teeth click together. It’s like a switch being flipped. We’re on now and there’s no going back.
He moves his hand down my body, over my belly and between my legs. I am confused. He betrayed me. I don’t know how to feel. But my body has no such confusion. My body is awake at the touch of him. My body springs to life at the touch of him. He presses his finger against my pussy and the pleasure shoots through me in a lightning bolt, setting me ablaze. I hear myself moaning and for a moment I don’t believe that it’s me, that any of this is happening to me. I wasn’t kidnapped and I wasn’t sold and Roma didn’t buy me and we didn’t fall in love and we’re not throwing ourselves into passion in the midst of it all. But I can’t deny it. Hell, I can’t deny him.
He presses against my pussy and rubs fast, hungry. I part my legs and move up and down on his hand. The pleasure is hot as though his hand is burning. I moan louder and break off the kiss, looking up into his face. His handsome, strong face. The face of a man who knows exactly what he wants.
He betrayed you! He betrayed you!
But I don’t care, not right now, not in this moment. Right now all I care about is the feel of him, the irresistible pleasure his body offers mine.
“I love you,” he says, his blue eyes no longer veiled. I see into him and I see that he’s telling the truth. He really does love me.
I open my mouth. I know if I speak the words I won’t be able to go back. I won’t be able to stop this. I’ll give myself to him. I remind myself for the umpteenth time that he betrayed me, but it doesn’t do any good.
“I . . .”
I don’t finish the sentence. Instead, I press my lips into him again. I reach down and grab the front of his pants. He’s hard for me, so hard it’s like his cock wants to burst free from his pants. I rub it up and down and feel it twinge in my hand. His chest vibrates as though he is trying to break free from something.
I need him inside of me, I realize with a start. I don’t just want it. I need it.
I yank his pants down and he does the same to me. We step back, stepping out of the crumpled-up pants, and stare at each other for a few moments. His eyes watch me closely, as though he is afraid I am going to run away from him. Doesn’t he know that I couldn’t run away from him even if I wanted to?
“Make love to me, Roma,” I whisper.
He darts forward, grabs my ass cheeks, and lifts me off my feet as though I weigh nothing. I scream out in surprise, in pleasure, as he presses me against the wall. I’m so wet I can feel it on my thighs, warm. He holds me up with one hand. With the other, he reaches down and takes his cock in his hand. He lowers me onto it, guiding himself inside of me.
Then—
Pleasure pours into me like water filling a jug. More and more and more until I am overflowing, until he is buried deep inside of me, obliterating my insecurity. We are no longer in a cell. We are no longer anywhere. We are alone, completely alone in all the world. Our passion has separated us.
He pulls out of me slowly, and then thrusts back in quickly, passionately. He fills me entirely and I grab his muscular shoulders, digging my fingernails in. Propping myself up on his shoulders, I bounce in time with his thrusts. His cock reaches my sweet spot. He fucks me hard, but there’s a tenderness behind it, a tenderness which wasn’t there last time. We’re truly lovers this time.
I bounce, bounce, bounce, clamping my mouth shut so my moans don’t come out too loud. He grabs my ass, holding me up, and thrusts up inside of me. I look into his face. It’s twisted, completely consumed in the act. Just the sight of him so absorbed in me triggers something inside of me. He needs me, I think. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me!
My pussy goes tight, lust builds for a split-second, and then, abruptly, it releases. I can’t stop myself. I open my mouth and a moan pours out of me, a moan of complete lust and release, a moan of undeniable euphoria.
I lean forward on his shoulder, exhausted, and then he grunts and buries his face in my neck. As he comes, he moans and his breath is warm on my skin, making my hairs stand on edge.
Then he falls away, lowering me to the floor, looking down at me with a shaky expression.
“Felicity,” he says, staring at me. “I love you. I want you to know that. No matter what, I love you.”
I walk across the cell to him. I mean to reach out and merely touch his face, but at the last second something grips me. I slap him, hard. Thwack! And his face twists to the side.
“I love you, too, you silly man,” I say. I slap him again, across the other cheek. Thwack! His head twists the other way. “But you hurt me.”
“I know.” His skin is red from where I slapped him.
I reach up and touch the skin, rubbing it softly with my fingers. “But I love you,” I say. “God help me, I love you, Roma. I never knew how much a person could love, h
ow quickly, until I met you.”
“You love me so much you want to slap me until my neck breaks?” He winks, and it’s like we’re transported someplace else for a moment. No, we’re not in this dark dingy cell, in this dark dingy complex, deep under the earth. We’re standing in our garage on a Sunday morning and later on today we’re hosting a barbeque. We’re married, or engaged; our lives stretch wondrously ahead of us.
“Something like that,” I say.
I manage a smile.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Felicity
Roma turns toward the exit.
“Wait,” I say, still half-stunned by what we just did. It all happened so fast. I’m still processing it. But the last thing I imagined was that Roma would leave me. “Where are you going?”
“To orchestrate your escape,” he says.
“Shouldn’t I come with you, then?” I nod in the direction of the storage cupboard where Daniel is knocked out. “There’s a guard down there, out cold.”
A smile touches his lips. “I guessed as much. You’re amazing, Felicity, you know that?”
I roll my eyes. “This isn’t the time for compliments. This is the time for explanations.”
He sighs, and then launches into a quick explanation.
“Bear?” I gasp, when he’s done. “I thought he died in the fire!”
“So did I.” Roma shrugs. “It seems the old bastard is harder to kill than we guessed. Must’ve nearly choked to death in that little cubby hole of his, but he’s been through worse.”
“So, what . . . he’ll come and get me?”
Roma nods. “Just wait. This is the best way, I promise.”
I grit my teeth. “Then go,” I say. “And get me the hell out of here.”
He makes for the door, hesitates, and then comes back to me. He touches my face, running his finger along my jawline. “You’re the best woman I’ve ever known,” he says.
Before I can reply, he darts to the door and jogs up the hallway. I watch the empty doorway, mouth falling open. What the hell just happened? I think. The sex . . . no, the making love . . . it was like I was powerless to resist. I remember friends from college sleeping with men they shouldn’t—cheaters and drug addicts and assholes—and complaining about it afterwards. I always thought they had no right to complain. If you didn’t want to sleep with someone, surely you should just not sleep with them. But now, standing here, I take it all back. There was very little I could do to stop my body responding to Roma’s.
I shake the thoughts away, kneel down, and pick up the gun. I stick it in my waistband and then go into the hallway to the storage cupboard. I peek inside and see Daniel, still knocked out, breathing softly. Assured that he’ll be no trouble, I return to my cell.
What if this is all a trick? a voice hisses in my mind, after around ten minutes of waiting. What if he isn’t coming back? What if he just wanted to fuck you again?
I swallow, wondering if it could be true. I meant what I said to Roma. I love him. But you don’t always trust the people you love.
My body feels exhausted. I want nothing more than to curl up in a ball and let sleep take me. But I won’t leave myself vulnerable.
I hold the gun in my hands, stroking the trigger, waiting.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Felicity
Around twenty minutes after Roma leaves me, an explosion vibrates the walls of my cell. At first, I think it’s an earthquake. I scream and throw myself to the floor on instinct, drawing in desperate breaths, covering my head with my hands. Then, when the walls don’t collapse, I climb to my feet with a grim laugh. He did warn me, I think. A moment after the explosion, a screaming alarm resounds throughout the facility. I poke my head out of my cell door and see red, a flashing light from an alarm set high in the wall.
I look toward the elevator. The indicator beside it glows yellow. Somebody is coming down.
I point my gun at the elevator, praying it’s Bear but unable to take the risk. Perhaps it’s one of Mr. Black’s men rushing down here to make sure I don’t get away. Perhaps Bear has been taken out. He’s tough, sure, but is any man so tough he can fight off a whole army of paid henchmen?
The elevator takes an age to descend, the indicator flashing every few seconds. The trigger is cold against my finger, clammy with sweat. Sweat from fear and sweat from Roma, the confusion and lust of it all, the explosive medley. I’ll shoot if it’s one of Mr. Black’s men, I tell myself. But I’m not so sure. I saw Roma kill Barinov like it was nothing, no big deal at all, but I don’t know if I have that same killer’s instinct. I’m sure it has to be bred or beaten into you, trained into you over long years of hardening.
Come on!
The elevator judders down, the doors slide open.
One of Mr. Black’s men stands in the center of the elevator. His face is as scarred and messed-up as the rest of them. His arms are bulky. But his rifle hangs from a lanyard around his neck, waving loosely around his midriff. He stands oddly, as though something is poking him in the back, pushing his chest out at an odd angle. But no matter how strange he looks, it doesn’t change the fact that one of Mr. Black’s men is here, and not Bear. I tense up, aim the gun, and will myself to fire. He’ll be on you soon! I think. But he doesn’t move. He just stands there in that bizarre stance.
Shoot him! I will myself. Shoot him before he gets to you!
But he makes no movements.
That’s when I notice the blooming circle of crimson in his belly, a wide patch of blood which soaks into his clothes and grows wider by the minute. After a moment, I look behind him and see Bear.
Bear withdraws the machete and the man drops. The big white-haired—no, black-haired now—man wipes the machete clean on the man’s jacket. Then he leans down and places the man’s body between the elevator doors, stopping them from closing.
“Girl!” he calls, voice booming above the sound of the alarm. “Come with me! Now!”
He was telling the truth, I think with an immense sense of relief. At least he wasn’t lying to me about something.
Glad I don’t have to shoot the gun, I stuff it into my waistband and jog down the hallway. The dead man throws up a metallic smell, potent and off-putting, and I step over him as carefully as I can. When I’m inside the elevator, Bear pushes the corpse into the hallway and smashes his fist down on the button for the first floor.
The doors close and the elevator begins to rise.
The man standing beside me is nothing like the man I met at the cottage. His face is set in a grimace and his single eye flits around without pause. He looks at me briefly. “You know how to use that toy in your waistband?” he grunts.
I shake my head. “Not very well,” I admit.
He nods shortly. The elevator moves upward in a series of stops and starts.
“Well, let’s hope you don’t have to. But I won’t lie to you, girl. It might come to a fight. And if it comes to a fight, a bad shot is better than no shot at all. Just make sure you don’t shoot me, aye?”
I swallow, and then nod. “Okay,” I say, voice weak.
“Roma came to the rescue then, aye?” He smiles weakly. I notice that his chest rises and falls in big gasps and I guess he must be tired. After all, he’s retired. But he doesn’t look as though he’s going to collapse. I guess a man like Bear could go for hours.
“How did he cause the explosion?” I say.
“Doesn’t matter,” Bear says. He reaches behind him and takes out a large rifle, the kind you see in movies about SWAT teams. “All that matters is the results. That’s all that ever matters.”
He points the rifle at the door to the elevator.
“You ever seen Star Wars?” he says.
“Uh, I think so,” I reply, caught off guard.
“You remember that scene when all the rebels are pointing their guns at the door and Darth Vader comes in? I remember when Roma saw that when he was a kid. I was so proud of him when he said to me, ‘Bear, what if they come into a
different door?’”
“Okay . . .”
He shakes his head. “Rambling. Haven’t been around people for a long time. What I’m saying is, there are no other exits for us. Chances are, when this door opens, we’re going to have more guns on us than Clint Eastwood in a town full of bandits.”
“What do you want me to do?” I say, seeing that we’re almost at the first floor.
“Take out your gun and press yourself flat against the wall to make yourself a smaller target. Then . . . shoot.”
Shoot, I think, terrified.
But there’s no time to be terrified.