Hammer: A Dark Romance

by Loki Renard

  It was different with Jake. He has an animal passion and grace, an intensity that made me forget myself when he was inside me. It was like I became a part of him, my pleasure was his pleasure. Every time he thrust, I felt things I’d never felt before.

  Now I’m feeling similarly new feelings, but these are not good. This is a horror I’d love to wake up from, but how? How do you escape the fact that you’re fleeing a crime scene after watching one man kill another in your defense?

  It’s sick, but this is the most romantic thing anybody has ever done for me.

  I reach out and turn the car radio on, just for some sound to block out the thoughts in my head. Maybe I can pretend that things are normal, just for a while. We’re almost at the city limits. There’s a brief attempt at suburbia before the world opens up into open fields. In the distance, the mountains are standing sentinel, and Jake turns the car that way while strains of the best music the 1980s could produce fill the air.

  I’m starting to relax, and with that relaxation comes a new feeling. One I haven’t had in a long time. A sense of freedom. Rodney is gone. The narrow little world the city creates with the buildings that hem me into straight lines and right angles is gone too. There’s nothing but space and air and a winding ribbon of road that stretches from here out into what feels like eternity.

  “How big is the United States?”

  “Hmm?” Jake grunts the question.

  “I mean, if you were going to drive all the roads, how long would it take?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Years, I think. Maybe even decades. Maybe a whole lifetime.”

  “Maybe.”

  He’s preoccupied with driving and probably with trying to work out our next move, but my mind is moving on to the next stage of life. I’m going to be on the run for a very long time. Maybe forever. I always wanted to travel, but not to distant countries. This land, right where I was born, this is more than big enough to swallow two people up and hide them forever.

  I don’t think we’re going to find the other girls Rodney used. And even if we do, I don’t think they’re going to talk, and even if they talk, what use will that be? Just because you were asked to fuck cops for money doesn’t mean you can just kill the cop that asked you. And neither Jake nor I have the kind of money it would take to get off that charge.

  We’re outlaws. In the very real, Wild West sense of things.

  “Do you know the names of any of the other girls?”

  “Not really,” I answer him. “He was pretty careful about keeping everything insulated and separated. And then he’d get them to leave town when he was done with them, so what he was doing wouldn’t get around. There are probably dozens of girls out there, but he made sure we wouldn’t know each other. I don’t even know how we would start to find them.”

  Jake nods, not taking his eyes off the road for a second. “There’ll be a way.”

  He’s so confident, like this is just a parking ticket we can probably sort out if we just do a little legwork. I’m not going to argue with him. I’m clinging to what feels like a very remote hope that he is right.

  “We need gas,” he says, pulling off the main drag and into a small gas station. There’s one pump and nobody else around, which makes me feel better and worse at the same time. I don’t want to be around people. I feel like they’d be able to see everything all over my face. I’m a suspicious person of interest on the run. I’m a criminal. I’m fucked.

  At least, I think I am. I don’t know what will happen once Rodney’s friends wake up and find him dead. Will they run? Will they panic and try to hide the body? Will they call it in and say they were attacked totally unprovoked while investigating a disturbance? I’d put money on them doing the last one. Not one of the people Rodney hung out with had anything like morals. They were so proud of themselves because they thought they were the law, and everyone else had to bow down and suck their dicks.

  Except Jake. Jake doesn’t bow to any man.

  I look over at Jake as we pull up by the gas pump. I stare at him. He’s so fucking handsome. And it’s not just an aesthetic thing. Everything that makes him attractive, his powerful build, his hard stare, it’s all part of his practical ability to destroy others. He could be a predator like Rodney was, but he chooses to be a protector.

  Before he can get out of the car, I reach out and grab his hand. He looks back at me in surprise. I lean across the car and press a kiss to his lips.

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “You’ve saved me.”

  A broad smile appears on his face. He reaches out with his other hand and cups my cheek, kissing me back with a rough passion. “Anytime, baby. Was my pleasure.”

  Anyone else would be freaking out right now, but Jake doesn’t give a fuck that he just abandoned his entire life at a moment’s notice. He was ready to.

  “Why...” I try to form the question. “Why are you so fucking cool?”

  He chuckles. “Cool?”

  “I mean, how are you so calm about this? Your life just got ruined.”

  “Naw, baby,” he says, patting my cheek lightly. “I’ve seen lives ruined. This is nothing. A hiccup. We’re gonna be fine.”

  I don’t know that we are, but I have to believe him. I don’t have anything or anyone else to believe in. Rodney was the monster who stalked the shadows of my world, and now the darkness he shed seems to have overwhelmed me. It’s a sunny day outside, but I can’t quite feel the heat. Jake’s touch is the only thing that feels fully real to me, a warm lifeline to the world I am still part of, but feel so disconnected from.

  “Are you okay?” He asks me the question seriously. I notice for the first time since waking up that his eye looks much better today. It’s bruised, but half-open, so when he looks at me earnestly I am treated to one and a half bright blue eyes.

  “I... think so? I don’t know if it would be more fucked up to be okay or not to be,” I answer honestly.

  He pulls me across the car and kisses me again, passionate and deep, driving all dark thoughts from my head.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he promises me, his lips against mine, his hand behind my head as he pushes his forehead to mine in a gesture of solidarity and comfort. “We’re going to be okay.”

  I breathe in his belief and nod. He gives me another kiss on the forehead, and I find myself wondering how someone can be that brutal in one moment, and this tender in another.

  A fifty dollar bill appears under my nose. “I’ll pump, you pay,” he says. “Grab some snacks.”

  “What kind of snacks?”

  “I’m not picky,” he says. “Something with gluten in it. Something not keto. I’m calling today a cheat day.”

  I give him a little half smile and go into the store.

  Be normal. Be normal. I repeat the words in my head, a mantra of borderline panic.

  The gas station has a little store with a few shelves of product, a little glassed-in box where the cashier sits, and an old television mounted to the ceiling that’s playing baseball.

  “Need help?”

  “Argh!” I jump at the question, clutching the big hoodie I’ve somehow acquired during the course of events around me more tightly. Did Jake put this on me? Did I put this on me? It’s not mine. It smells of Jake, and that helps calm me.

  “We’re, uh... gas. I mean, I need snacks.”

  “Kay,” the guy says, snapping his gum. He couldn’t give less of a fuck about me. He’s wearing a gas-branded ball cap and shirt, both of which are super stained, neither of which has ever been cleaned, I’m pretty sure. He is not the kind of guy to notice details, so I’m probably safe, even if by some chance cops come here and question him.

  I start looking at the shelves. Like Jake, I normally watch what I eat, but I figure carbs don’t matter when you’re a ruthless criminal. I load up on stuffed cookies and chips, grab some sodas in a range of flavors and head for the counter.

  “All this and the gas for the car at pump two.”

>   “Cool,” the guy says. He starts to ring my purchases up slowly as hell.

  Breaking News: A Brutal Attack On Police Officers Leaves One Dead And Several Critically Injured

  The television takes a break from broadcasting sports to fuck me over at the worst time possible. I can’t help but crane my head to look and when I do, I see Jake’s face splashed across the television screen. They’ve used his military headshot, which doesn’t look exactly like him, but it’s still too fucking close for comfort. I find myself kind of glad that he was in a fight last night. The bruising and swelling changes his face enough that maybe he doesn’t look exactly like that picture.

  “Do you guys, uh, have that gum that comes in the blueberry flavor?” I ask the question by way of distraction, which turns out to be unnecessary because I’m pretty sure the television could announce that the world was about to explode and he wouldn’t pay any attention.

  “We got what’s on the counter, lady.”

  He shifts in his seat and I see the reason for his preoccupation. He’s more interested in the porn he has cued up on his phone than what’s playing on the shitty old TV jacked up at the far end of the little station. I can see the corner of a barely legal boob perkily displayed at the edge of his grease-marked screen.

  “Okay, never mind. I’ll just take that stuff.”

  “That’s forty-two.”

  I push the fifty dollar note over the counter and get eight bucks back.

  “Okay, thanks. Have a nice day,” he grunts at me.

  I glance up at the TV. The game is back on. Crisis averted and maybe even bullet dodged. Jake is waiting for me inside the car when I get in, armfuls of snacks spilling everywhere.

  “We are fucked.”

  “Why?” He quirks a brow at me as he starts the car and gets us back out on the road.

  “They played a breaking news alert on the TV in there. They showed your military picture as a person of interest.”

  “But not yours?”

  “I don’t have a military picture.”

  “You know what I mean,” he snorts at me. “Were you on the alert? Did they mention you at all?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I didn’t see myself. I was trying not to look, you know, not draw attention?”

  “Good, and good,” he says, not disturbed by the fact he is a key suspect in what is obviously a murder case, and that everybody in the county, maybe even the country, is going to be looking for him.

  “You’re not worried?”

  “Are those corn chips?”

  He changes the subject, and I let him. I open a bag of chips and settle them in the center console between the two of us. He starts snacking one-handed. I pop open a soda, and we head into our uncertain future, consuming empty calories we might not get the chance to burn.

  Chapter Three

  We drive and eat, and eat and drive. The radio plays the songs I used to enjoy when I was a kid, innocent of everything. They make me nostalgic for riding bikes and craving ice cream and thinking cops were people who told you the time if you asked. Growing up was a huge mistake.

  I shift uncomfortably in the seat. My ass is still aching. I hadn’t really paid much attention to that before. With everything else going on, physical discomfort doesn’t really matter. I guess I’m starting to relax. That’s good. It also means I’m starting to feel my body again. Starting to feel the ache Jake installed there earlier.

  “You alright?” Jake looks over at me.

  “Yeah, you just, you know, whacked my ass pretty hard.”

  “Yup.” He crunches a chip between flashing white teeth and winks at me. “You needed it. I’ll do it again if you deserve it.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he says firmly. “I need your total trust if we’re going to get through this. You can’t hide things from me. You have to be completely open and utterly honest. Hiding things from each other will get us both killed.”

  I nod silently. I don’t know what to say. There’s not that much to tell anymore, at least I don’t think there is. His threat to spank me again though, those words are making their way through the little crevices of my mind, all the way down to my soul.

  I look out the window and replay the whole thing over again. I remember what it was like being thrown down over his thighs, feeling the power of his body used to punish instead of pleasure. It was a shock.

  If Rodney hadn’t just attacked, I would have reacted a lot worse than I did. I was too shaken to be as horrified and offended as I probably should have been, being treated that way. I’m not sure he has any right to punish me. I didn’t do anything wrong.

  Or maybe I did.

  I don’t know. I just know that he hits fucking hard, and if he does it again, it might not go so easy for him.

  “You sulking now?”

  “Nope.” I grab a snack and start eating so I don’t have to talk him about this. This is all so overwhelming. I never thought I’d be a criminal. I never thought I’d see the kind of things I’ve seen today. I guess I got off lightly getting my ass smacked. He could have broken my neck just as easily. Not that he would. Jake isn’t the sort of guy to hurt a woman. Not like Rodney was. Rodney took pleasure in his ability to overpower me and others. He liked telling me that he could fuck me any time he liked, if he liked. He walked a nasty line between legal and illegal, and I knew, just like the others before me would have known, that there was nothing I could do about it.

  Jake’s threat to spank me feels a bit like that, but different. I don’t get the feeling he’s saying that to try to scare me. At least, not in the way Rodney would have. I think he’s trying to make me be open with him. But there’s so much I’m embarrassed about. I’m not a weak person, but I was someone else with Rodney. It was only six months we were together, but he leached away my self-respect and I don’t want to think about that time, much less talk about it. I really hope we’re done dissecting my past.

  “You’ve gone quiet,” he notes.

  “It’s been a long day. And I’m not really much of a chatterbox anyway. Sorry. I’m kind of boring.”

  “You’re anything but boring, Jazz,” he says. “I’ve never had a date end like this before.”

  I give a little laugh, but I know we’re not actually on a date. It was a one-night stand. It might have become something else, if not for Rodney, but I know there’s no way I can expect him to want to continue a relationship with me after this. Rodney might be dead, but he’s taken my chance at a happy relationship with him.

  At least, I assume he has. I don’t know what Jake wants. I doubt he’s really thinking about romance now. He’s probably much more concerned with survival. It’s hard to know what anyone is thinking, but it’s really hard to know what a stranger is thinking—and that’s what Jake is to me. A stranger. I don’t truly know him and he doesn’t truly know me.

  We’ve been thrown into this fucked-up situation, and I don’t know how it’s going to end. I can’t see any way it doesn’t end badly, but I have to trust him, if only because there’s nobody else to trust.

  * * *

  We drive for hours. I don’t know where we’re going. He says we’re going to stay with friends. What friends? Where? Is it even worth asking? The longer the trip goes on, the more my mind spins, and the more I realize that I’ve kind of... sort of... totally been... kidnapped?

  It’s a paranoid thought, but it quickly takes hold of my mind. I didn’t ask to run. Jake made me run. And now he’s threatening to punish me if I don’t do as he says. His words keep playing around in my mind.

  He’ll spank me if I deserve it. But how do I deserve it? By not behaving as he desires. What does that mean? It could mean anything. It could mean that I’m sitting next to a man who is going to become a tyrant, just like Rodney was. Jake seems nice, but Rodney seemed charming in the beginning too. I’ve lost my ability to trust a man based on surface observations. I’ve lost my ability to trust myself at all.

  As I think in
silence, the paranoia and concern grows. Rodney started this by attacking us, but since then Jake has been in full control of me. He spanked me when I didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. Maybe that was a reasonable thing to do. Or maybe he was forcing me to do what he wanted. What if he decides he wants me to do something dirty and deviant just like Rodney did?

  The more I think, the more I worry. Jake didn’t even let me walk out of the building. He carried me out of the building. He didn’t give me a choice in running. He took me with him, even though he said himself that I wouldn’t be the one who got blamed. Why did I have to run? Why couldn’t we have gone to a different police station? Why didn’t we call an ambulance, or the news?

  I think I know why. If we had called the police, there wouldn’t have been a case against me. There would have been a case against him. Seen from one perspective, he rescued me from Rodney. From another, I’ve been abducted by a murderer. A man who is sitting next to me eating corn chips like he’s not eaten in days. I glance over at him and he gives me a wink.

  How many other people has he killed? He did it so easily. Almost casually. And then he didn’t seem to care. He didn’t react. He did it. And then he went through Rodney’s pockets and...

  I’m starting to freak out. Who the hell did I fuck last night? And who has me in his car now, driving me fuck knows where?

  “Uhm... Can we pull over somewhere?”

  “Why?”

  “I need to pee.”

  Just as I say the words, we pass a rest stop sign that indicates there’s one three miles down the road. Hopefully he’ll stop there. I just need a minute to think. The corners of my vision are starting to get fuzzy, and my breath is coming shorter and shorter. There are so many thoughts in my mind, all crowding over one another, all competing for my attention. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know if there’s anyone in this world I can trust. History tells me that there isn’t, but I want to believe in Jake, even if I can’t.