by James Tate
You're so full of shit, Talia, I think, rolling onto my back and grinning stupidly at my new nickname. It takes so much effort to roll over that all I can do is think about touching my clit, working off some of the wild frenzy in my blood. But I'm moving in a cloud of THC and it's just easier to lie there and count silver stars where one of the ceiling beams connects to the wall. The moon highlights a bunch of those glow in the dark star stickers that some long ago kid must've put up there.
That's how I fall asleep, counting them and letting waves of desire wash over me, unsatisfied and unfettered.
And my dreams? They're full of handsome priests who are not priests, five handsome men in my bed making me submit at the same time they grant me ultimate power over them by handing over their love. It's a serious fairy-tale and unlike anything I've ever dreamed before.
I'm out before I get a chance to think too hard about it.
I'll be dead before anything like that ever happens.
* * *
Several hours later, I wake up, still high but measurably more functional.
"Jesus fucking Christ," I snap as I sit up and my head spins like I'm on the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair. It was so fun, that one time I went. But then I saw Daddy shoot a man, his wife, and their teenage son for failing to pay a debt. I puked up all of my cotton candy and never set foot in a fairground again.
"Now is that any way to talk in a church?" a voice asks, snapping my eyes up to the heavy wood beams in the vaulted ceiling. Arsen is sitting on one of them, and I'm still too fucked-up to puzzle out why. Instead, I just squint and do my best to push myself up to my feet.
"I need some water," I groan, because I've got the worst of both worlds: dry mouth from the pot and a hangover from all that booze.
"Water? Is that really what you need?" he asks, sliding off the edge of the beam and hanging briefly from it for a moment before he drops to his feet in front of me. Arsen's ice-blue eyes take me in from head to toe, and it's only when I see the fire in his gaze that I realize I'm naked. When did that happen? "Because I might have something else you're interested in."
He reaches out and grabs my hand, putting my palm on his bare chest. He's not wearing anything but a pair of black sweatpants, his tattoos blue-gray and brilliant in the moonlight. My sluggish brain catches on the designs and just flat-out refuses to let go. Underneath my hand, I can hear his heart beating.
"You have a heart," I say, and he raises a single brow at me.
"Do I now?" he asks, sliding my hand over to the peaked point of his nipple. "I guess I needed something inside of me to pump all that blood to my cock. Lord knows it's not useful for much else."
I don't have a lot of inhibitions on a normal day, so when I'm high and slightly hungover? I end up pinching and teasing Arsen's nipple, drawing this ragged sound from his throat.
"I need water," I repeat again after moment, pushing past him and heading for the door. I stumble down the stairs and he follows after me. When I get to the bottom, I find one of the guys' robes lying across the small table near the coffee maker and pick it up, slinging it over my shoulders.
In the kitchen, I find a chipped coffee mug and fill it three times over with cool water from the tap, gasping as I lean over the old farmhouse sink and try not to throw up. Why didn't I just stick to the pot? The pot never makes me sick like this.
When I finally do stand up and turn around, I find Arsen leaning against the larger table, his arms crossed over his chest as he watches me like I'm one of the most fascinating things he's ever seen. And when I say things, I mean things. He doesn't look at me like I'm a woman or even a person. I try not to take it personally; he looks at his fellow team members like that, too.
"Can I help you with something?" I finally ask, leaning my ass against the counter and breathing in the smell of the robes I just borrowed. They have the faintest whiff of pot and something else, this musky male scent that reminds of … Weston? Not like I've spent more than two seconds with the guy, but when I close my eyes and breathe in that smell, he's the one that first comes to mind.
"Something?" Arsen asks, lighting up a cigarette right there in the kitchen. "I thought you wanted to fuck? I waited for Hawke to go to bed and then climbed out my window and into yours." He shrugs his broad shoulders, silver-gray smoke drifting around his face as he watches me through the haze, like a lion stalking its prey. "I hate your family and everything they stand for. So, by association, I hate you, too. If I didn't think Hawke would kill me, I might kill you instead. As things stand, I'd rather we just screwed each other."
He says it so matter-of-fact. Like he’s talking about drinking tea instead of coffee. He’d rather coffee, but he’d settle for tea.
I continue to sip my water, the long dark sleeves of the robes falling over my hands as I gaze across the chipped rim over to Arsen and his pretty boy face. He's too beautiful to be so crazy, too damaged to be gorgeous. And yet, I find that I can't look away.
"Okay," I say after a moment, setting my drink aside.
Arsen raises a single brow at me, but he doesn't stop smoking his cigarette, holding it between two inked fingers as I take a step closer to him. He's so still for so long that I start to wonder if the pot's still messing with my brain.
In the blink of an eye though, he's tossing his smoke into the sink and grabbing me, shoving me face first over the surface of the table and pushing the robes up around my bare hips. No words pass between us as Arsen shoves his sweats down and then finds my opening with the slick tip of his cock.
He shoves his way into me and I scream, clutching at the edges of the table as I'm filled up and stretched to the edge of my usual limits. Wow. Of course the crazy man would be the one to be packing.
My nails curl into the wood of the table as Arsen pauses to light up another cigarette—I can't see him, but I can smell it, can hear the flick of his lighter. He holds the smoke between his lips, grips my pelvis with a bruising hand on the left side. His fingers tangle in my hair, yanking hard enough that I let out a small whimper.
The sex between us is rough, messy, and broken. It highlights everything wrong in both me and him. We're not using protection; we didn't even talk about it. We don't know each other. We don't like each other. I'm high, and he's crazy, and we shouldn't be doing this.
But it feels so damn good.
Arsen pumps into me hard and fast, pulling zero punches as he goes balls-deep. He isn't gentle or careful when he pulls my hair and drives into me, doesn't care about boundaries or shared pleasure. He just takes. I let him do it, too, thrust into me so hard that I know I'll have bruises on the front of my pelvis come morning.
My moans are ragged and broken as Arsen speeds up his movements and comes with a harsh, rough sound, spilling himself inside of me and pulling away abruptly. He leaves me cold and wet and pulsing, my empty inner walls aching to clench down on something, on someone.
"That was … interesting," he says, smoking his cigarette as he yanks up his sweats and retreats around the table. I watch him go, listening to his feet on the stairs. And then … I turn and head for the door that leads outside, ripping it open and making a run for it while I have the chance.
Chapter 9
NATALIA
The grass is wet and dewy under my feet as I sprint across the churchyard and toward the sidewalk. I have no idea where I'm going, but my emotions are suddenly mixed up, so twisted that I can't seem to see straight anymore. Cum leaks down my thighs as I run, but I don't care, I just keep going until I find myself at a playground six blocks away.
That's about when it hits me, that I have no money, nowhere to go, no family except for the father that pointed his gun at the chest of a man who was still inside of me. I sink down to the ground, huddled inside the robes and then collapse against the side of a green bench, folding my arms atop it and resting my forehead against them.
It feels like I'm trapped, and I don't want to be trapped. For the first time in my life, what would it be like if I were free?
"I come here every once in a while to think," a voice says, drawing my head up. I see Weston with his wild green hair and piercings sitting on the next bench over. How I missed him, I have no idea, but all I really want to say is teach me. When he stands up and walks toward me, his footsteps make no sound. "Are you leaving?"
"Will you try to stop me if I say yes?" I ask as Weston takes a seat on my bench and looks down at me with his dark eyes. He doesn't look sympathetic, but he also doesn't look like he's judging me either. I like that. I sit up and haul myself onto the bench. My feet are now mucky and wet, and my thighs are slick with Arsen's cum. All I want to do right now is slink back to the church, hope Hawke didn't notice me missing, and climb into the shower.
"No," Weston says, surprising me. He's wearing faded jeans and an old band t-shirt that's so old I can't quite read the name of the band anymore. "If you want to leave, I certainly won't keep you." He stares straight ahead, across the street at a row of historic homes, all lovingly restored with big wide porches. There's a split-second there where I wish I lived in one of them, so I could sleep in a king size bed in silky Victoria's Secret pajamas and cuddle up to a husband, get up and have coffee and toast with him.
Like that'll ever happen for me.
"Do you want coffee and toast?" I ask when I can't think of anything else to say. It's super fucking embarrassing to have a breakdown you think you're alone for, only to find out someone's been watching all along.
His brow quirks and a small smile pulls up the corner of his pierced lip. "I don't know if we have any bread at the church, but we could go pick some up? It's about damn time we refilled the fridge anyway." I rub my thighs together, trying to figure out some way to tell Weston that I'm not quite fit to go shopping at the moment when he seems to read my mind. "I've got some spare sweats in my car if you don't want to go back to the church?"
I give him a small, embarrassed smile. "That'd be great, thank you."
Weston says nothing more, just shrugs and leads the way out of the playground and down the block, stopping beside a sleek black Dodge Challenger. He pops the trunk and pulls out a pair of grey sweatpants and a black hoodie with frayed cuffs.
"Here," he holds them out to me, "they'll be huge, but probably better than running around in a clergy robe."
"Thanks," I whisper, accepting the garments then looking around awkwardly. Am I supposed to just strip down here in the street? I'm no stranger to nudity, but this is a bit much for public scrutiny.
"Change in the car, idiot," Weston snickers, pulling the passenger side door open for me and ushering me in. Blushing, I take the offered seat and let him close the door firmly behind me.
The windows are tinted dark enough that I feel no shame stripping the billowy black robe off my naked flesh. Until the driver’s door opens and Weston climbs inside that is.
"Um," I hesitate, half-heartedly covering my breasts with the cloth of his hoodie.
"Problem?" He challenges me with a quirk of his pierced brow. "You don't strike me as the shy type, Natalia."
I snort a laugh. "You're right, I'm not." It must be the lingering effects of pot and alcohol that’re making me bashful. Weston is fucking hot, and I know full well how great my tits are, so why am I covering them?
With a shrug, I drop the black fabric and allow him an unobstructed view of my full breasts and tight pink nipples. He takes the opportunity, too, sucking in a breath and catching his lip ring between his teeth while I dress ever so slowly.
When I'm done, he makes a noise somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. "You sure do know your own power, Natalia. I fucking hope Hawke knows what he's doing, bringing you onboard."
I grin at the compliment. "Are we going grocery shopping or what?"
"Yes ma'am," he replies, giving me a sly grin and starting up his engine.
We don't speak again for the few minutes it takes to get to the grocery store, and when we arrive Weston opens my door for me. Manners I didn't really expect from someone with so many pieces of metal in his flesh. Is that a stereotype? Probably. But I'm a rich party-girl daughter of a mobster, so I think I'm allowed to stereotype sometimes.
"You know," he murmurs close to my ear as we cross the parking lot, "those nipples of yours would look great pierced."
I gasp at the suggestion, but before I can respond, I hear heavy footsteps behind us.
I don't have to be a genius to know that nothing good will come from that sound.
Weston stiffens up and glances casually over his shoulder.
"Hey man," he says, just before the barrel of a gun is being pointed at the side of his head. I'm pretty sure I'm about to see his brains splattered across the pavement when, in a lightning quick movement, he knocks the man's arm aside and breaks it. I can hear the snap of bone as I jump backwards, almost tripping on the too long sweats.
The man screams and his gun skitters across the asphalt while Weston follows up with a swift fist to his face, once, twice, three times. Blood sprays across the soccer-mom van we're standing beside, and the man’s head drops unconscious to the ground.
"Weston!" I scream a warning, split-seconds before another gun is pressed to the back of his head by our attacker’s friend. A man I recognize all too well.
My blood runs cold, and I fight the urge to vomit.
They found me. How have they found me, so soon?
I'm screwed.
My mind is working a million miles an hour as one of my father’s men, Dmitri, leers at me with a triumphant grin.
He sneers something to me, but my mind doesn't comprehend it. It's fight or flight time, and I am not ready to give up. Not on their terms.
I dart my eyes around, and spot the gun dropped by the other man. It's under the next car over, too far from where I stand.
I dive for it anyway, a gunshot lighting up the dark night as I skid across the pavement and roll, my fingers curling around the grip of the gun just before I get a boot to the back. My spine curves in agony and my mouth opens in a silent scream. The gun is still in my hand, but whoever it is that's standing behind me doesn't let up, kicking me again and again and again, until the pain is so great that my fingers uncurl around the weapon and it drops back to the pavement.
"Your father is mighty disappointed in you, Natalia," Dmitri says, dragging me out from under the car and lifting me up with a fistful of fabric. He slams me into the trunk of a nearby car, the streetlamps painting his face orange as he smiles at me. It's an icy, cold smile, the smile of a total psychopath. There's nothing in that man's face that says he ever was or would ever be human. This is the same man who killed his own wife in cold-blood for watching porn. So what the fuck is he going to do to me?
The last thing in the world I'd ever want is to find out the answer to that question.
I throw my knee up as hard as I can, nailing Dmitri in the crotch, but whereas a normal man might scream or howl or let go of me, all that move does is get the crazy psycho to laugh. I can't see Weston, but the dark parking lot is quiet now. There are no more gunshots, no screaming bystanders, no distant police sirens.
We're all alone out here, in a pre-dawn dark parking lot outside a shitty market with hand-drawn sales signs in the windows. This is not the place or the way I will die.
Since Dmitri is still holding me up by the front of Weston's hoodie, I drop down and slide out of it. It's so loose that it comes right off, and I'm blessed with a few precious seconds to lunge for the gun. The pain of my bare nipples and breasts scraping across the pavement when I lunge … Well, nobody can ever say I'm not at least a little bit of a badass.
I roll onto my back as Dmitri grabs my ankle and yanks me toward him, firing off a shot that hits him right in the ear, blood spraying across the trunk of the car he just threw me up against.
"You fucking bitch!" he screams, whipping his own gun from a holster inside his jacket. There's zero hesitation when he lines it up to take a headshot. I have good aim, so I fight to get my round out first, planning to nai
l him dead center in the skull.
Instead, a body smashes into Dmitri's, knocking him to the pavement. Weston! I think as I scramble back to my feet, my breasts bleeding from my heroic dive. But it's not Weston that's wrestling with my father's favorite assassin: it's Arsen. Who better to fight a psychopath than a sociopath, right?
I flick my eyes around the parking lot and spot the green-haired faux priest bleeding on the ground next to his car. Several men are lying still around him. He might be down, but he took several others out with him. I'm torn between whether to stay here and give backup to Arsen or see if there's anything I can do for Weston. As I'm making my decision, one of the men rises to his feet and stumbles against the hood of the Challenger. When he lifts up his weapon, I have a single instant to take action.
Lifting my gun, I let out a long, slow exhale and pretend that I'm back at the shooting range with Mace, aiming at a paper target.
Only this paper target has hair and eyes, and I know for a fact that he's got a family and a name. I've met this man before, and he's only ever been nice to me. But he is my father's man, and he'll kill me in instant if those are his orders. I have to be as ruthless if I want to survive. If my father taught me anything all these years, it's that.
I'm going to have to become a nun after this; surely I'm going to hell.
I line my aim up and fire off a single shot, hitting the man directly in the side of the head and dropping him before he gets a chance to kill Weston. I just sacrificed the life of one of my father's best men for a guy I don't even know.
Shit, shit, shit.
Arsen rises up from the tangle of arms and legs on the ground and spits blood at Dmitri, whipping out a knife from his belt and spinning it around his fingers. The way he looks at the other man … I'd piss my pants if I were Dmitri. When I lift my borrowed weapon to focus on my father's right-hand man, Arsen puts up a palm and stops me.