If she kept going, however, she was bound to make more mistakes, regardless how careful she was. She was only human. If she made the decision to keep going after Kong—along with the other eight heathens who remained unpunished—and got caught, she’d lose her job. Her medical license. Her freedom. She’d spend the rest of her life behind bars. Except she wouldn’t. She’d already decided she’d die before she went to jail. So she wouldn’t lose her freedom.
She’d lose her life.
Worst of all, she’d lose the first man she’d ever loved.
Veda nibbled her bottom lip with a frown.
If she stopped now, she’d leave the door open for more innocent girls in Shadow Rock to be victimized. She’d already proven that Todd Lockwood hadn’t stopped raping women—one of them her only friend—and she had no reason to believe the other nine had either. If she let this lie, was she making the conscious decision to allow these monsters to strike again? Destroying the souls of countless innocent woman without punishment?
Veda nodded at her thoughts, now biting her lip so hard it was a wonder she didn’t draw blood.
If she stopped now, she’d never learn the identity of her number ten. The one who, on that terrible night ten years earlier, had been the most violent. The most brutal. The most savage. The one who’d seemed to revel in every scream that tore through her lips, every tear down her cheek, every plea from her shattered heart. The one who’d only swelled harder inside her every time she made an outward display of her pain.
Veda sucked in a breath.
She had to keep going, if for no other reason than to find out who he was and put him down for good.
Then, she’d finally be free.
She’d finally be that woman.
The kind of woman who deserved Gage Blackwater.
Still cursing randomly under her breath, Veda finally took the first step toward her bedroom—toward that man—then another, fighting the tears burning her eyes as she began to undress.
She’d let her impatience get the better of her. She should’ve given herself more time to learn Kong’s schedule. She should’ve taken an extra month—maybe even two or three—to learn a little more about his life.
But the sickness roaring inside her stomach, the darkness that only ever seemed to ease up when she was exacting revenge on the ten men who’d put it there, didn’t have a spare moment to wait. More powerful every day, every hour, every second, that darkness was beginning to feel like an extension of her skin. Such a natural facet of her body that it was akin to webbed feet or a lazy eye. Simply a fact of her life. Simply a part of her.
For the longest time, she’d been convinced it would never leave her.
Until that is, she’d paid Todd Lockwood penance a month earlier. Laying upon him the same fate she’d failed to lay on Kong that night. Seeing the sliver of life leaving Todd Lockwood’s eyes when the doctor had told him his dick would never work the same way again, Veda felt like the light leaving him had zoomed straight inside her and lit her up like a Christmas tree.
So bright that light had been, it had convinced her, even if only for a moment, that maybe she could be okay. Maybe she could be okay with giving just one of the men who’d stolen her soul a little retribution. Maybe she could be done, and leave all the others to the God’s of fate. Maybe, she’d thought, she could stop at Todd Lockwood.
She laughed internally, still strolling toward her bedroom. It had been a foolish thought. A darkness as strong as the one that had entered her body at eighteen and lived—thrived—for ten long years, would not go down that easily. Not without one hell of a fight. She knew she’d have to fight to the death.
She’d have to finish them all, stealing a little sliver of light from each and every one of them.
Surely that would be enough to drown out the darkness. It had to be.
She didn’t even realize she’d been frowning into the shadows, a new article of clothing leaving her body and hitting the floor with each step she took. She made it to her bedroom door, now completely naked, and laid eyes on him.
And it hit her, all over again.
She wondered how it was possible that she kept letting herself forget.
Seeing the men who’d brutalized her suffering wasn’t the only thing in the world that brought the light of a thousand suns to her heart.
A soft smile climbed to her lips as she moved to the bed.
Gage, still fast asleep on his stomach, with his head turned away from the door, breathing deep in his sleep, flirting with a snore that always teased his lips but never came. The deep, strong lines in his back swelled every time he breathed in and relaxed when he exhaled. With his muscled arms buried under the pillow, the wings of his back seemed more prominent than ever. The tall hills they made under his skin glowed under the moonlight that peeked through her curtains, just like the rest of him glowed the moment she laid eyes on him.
She tiptoed to the bed, feeling his light encompassing her a little more strongly with each step closer she took until she was climbing in next to him as quietly as she could.
He didn’t stir.
She bit her bottom lip as her eyes fell down his long back, the tight little v that led the path to his ass, half of which was covered by her red sheets.
Her breathing came easier. Her heart—which hadn’t stopped hammering her chest since she’d run out of Kong’s house—slowed. Her fingers, having taken on a mind of their own, slid across the sheets toward him, taking hold of his waist, turning him.
He stirred in his sleep but didn’t wake as she moved him onto his back, drinking in his solid pecs, eight-pack abs, and the trimmed patch of hair that disappeared under the sheets at the V in his hips.
She knew what hid beneath those sheets.
The real light of her life.
She shoved the sheets down past his hips, greedily, feeling her body’s instant response when his dick came into her view. Even flaccid, she couldn’t fit her fingers all the way around it, knowing a few solid strokes, a couple of well-placed licks, would make it swell to three times that size, leaving any woman who looked at it wondering whether or not they cared to tackle that monster. Whether or not it would even fit.
Oh, it fit. Boy did it. Veda licked her lips. Not only did it fit like it had been tailor made for her pussy, it always made her life better. Smoother. Easier.
By some miracle, she managed to stop herself from crawling between his massive, muscled thighs and taking the head of his softness between her lips, suckling him until he wasn’t so soft anymore before drawing his hardness between her legs so he could make her forget what a mess she’d made of her life that night.
She moved up his body, dragging her nails over every rock solid dip and valley that screamed to be touched until she’d made it to his sleeping face, cuddled deep into his pillow.
She drew her knuckles over the sharp lines of his jaw, his full pink lips, that straight nose, and those long black eyelashes. She sank her fingers into his feathered black hair, perfectly tousled, even in his deepest sleep.
She tangled her fingers inside it and leaned in close, placing a kiss on his lips so gentle she barely felt it herself.
It didn’t wake him. If anything, it pushed him deeper into his slumber.
So she kissed him again, more firmly this time. She let her lips live on his, reveling in their softness, sighing as the light slowly infiltrated her body.
She dipped her tongue out, hungry for more of that glorious glow, and when she pushed it softly into the warm cavern of his mouth, her eyes fluttered shut.
He jolted under her.
Her eyes flew back open.
His sleepy gaze awaited her, eyelids heavy like boulders were holding them half-shut. The delicate skin under his eyes was heavy with sleep. Brown orbs ripe with a confusion that only existed when a person was still teetering on the edge of consciousness. A soft, gravely groan parted his lips when his body decided he wasn’t quite ready to open his eyes.
Still, the
moment he seemed to register Veda before him, a smile split those sleepy lips. His smile always made his eyes shrink, and the lines beside them deepen. That was even truer when he’d been woken in the dead of night.
He tried to speak but still wasn’t fully awake, so all that left his lips was a croak.
Veda snuggled her body into his and reached down, running the beds of her fingers over his dick. “Make love to me,” she whispered.
His hardness found the palm of her hand like it had been searching for it, and in seconds, he was ready.
She drew a strong tug on his shaft and, holding his eyes, lay on her back.
He came between her legs without a word. Some part of him may not have even realized what was happening, still unsure whether he was dreaming.
Not even when he entered her—forcing her legs apart as far as they would go and burying his lips in her neck to stifle the whimper that tore up his throat—did he seemed to fully understand what was happening.
Even if he was only half awake, however, his body knew what to do, and his hips retreated from her wetness, ever so slowly, before driving back in again. After a few solid strokes, he found a pace. The tired rasp scratching his voice dissipated with each moan that ripped through his lips, until the vocal evidence of his pleasure rang out, loud and clear, into the quiet air of her bedroom, laced with more passion and fervor with every moment he remained planted deep inside her.
She matched the fervency of his hips with her own as he drove in faster, harder, filling her as deep as he could until their skin became slick with sweat, smacking together and joining in with his impassioned groans to make music in the quiet room.
“Yes,” she begged, locking her ankles around his waist, feeling the muscles at the small of his back pulsating against her heels as he gave her everything he had. She dug her fingers into the solid wings in his back and dragged her nails down his skin with such ferocity she was worried she might draw blood. Her eyes slammed shut as his stroke lit a fire inside her, bringing a familiar warmth to her belly, curling it into a quiet ball that she knew was seconds from exploding and spreading to every part of her body. “Yes, Gage. Please.”
His own approaching orgasm made his voice go hoarse again, and as he whispered in her ear, “I love you so much.” Every other word broke, fighting to make room for the cries trapped in his throat.
“Please,” Veda whimpered, cupping his ass and pulling him in, even though he was already in as deep as he could go. “Please.”
She begged him to make it go away. To wash away the darkness.
And as the thrust of his hips picked up, as he lifted his head from her neck and met her eyes, as his heaving lips lowered to take hers, he did.
He washed it away.
Veda knew it wouldn’t stay gone forever.
It never did.
But, for now, the darkness didn’t exist. It wasn’t strong enough to survive the radiance Gage ignited inside her with one stroke of his dick.
It never was.
4
“Morning everybody. I’m, uh… I’m Linc.”
“Hi, Linc.”
“Okay… wow.” Lincoln Hill’s eyebrows shot up, and a sharp chuckle escaped his lips. He eyed the exit door while clearing his throat. “So that’s actually a thing? I tell you my name, and then you all say, ‘Hi, Linc’ back to me, in unison? Thought that only happened on television.” He tried to stop his eyes from falling, from becoming submissive, but down they went, just in time to catch sight of his sweaty hands, slippery on the wood of the podium he gripped with all his might, making the wedding band on his finger lift away from his skin.
Scattered chuckles came in from the few dozen people before him, all situated in plastic folding chairs that had been arranged in the shape of a circle. Probably pity chuckles, giving him a break since the grip he had on that podium seemed to grow tighter every minute, the shake to his voice more pronounced, and his hairline more damp.
“I’m sure you can tell that I don’t come here a lot.” He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes jumping from one face to the next until he settled on her.
Her.
Her matted, dirty blonde hair, her deep smile lines, and her overly tanned, almost leathery skin helped him breathe deeper. He locked onto her. The only face in the room with the power to slow his racing heart. “I don’t come here at all, actually. So bare with me if I fuck this up.”
More tittered laughter, with a few genuine smiles mixed in.
Linc swallowed and let his eyes leave her, traveling to the various middle school art projects that lined the walls of the small art gallery in downtown Shadow Rock. The faint hint of mold assaulted his nose as his nostrils flared in tune with his pounding heart, which had picked up its breakneck speed the moment he’d broken his eyes from the one person in the room who brought it ease.
“I’m one year, six days, five hours and…” He checked his wristwatch before staring back down at the podium. “Three minutes, sober.” He paused before checking his watch again. “Three minutes, six seconds.”
The laughter that rose that time was heartier. More honest. No longer laced with pity for the new guy sweating bullets.
“I started drinking…” He dropped his head and lifted his hands, slamming them back down on the podium with enough force to make some of the people in the room do a quiet jump. He dug his palms into the edges until it became painful, lifting his green eyes back up to her.
She smiled from across the room, but her eyes told a sadder tale. She straightened up, giving him the tiniest nod, wringing her hands from where they were nestled in her lap.
Linc licked his lips. “I started drinking… two months after my wife disappeared. Looking back, maybe that was the day I realized that she wasn’t—” His voice broke, and he took a moment, blowing out a short breath. “That she wasn’t coming back.”
He’d never known silence could be violent. Not until the one that fell seemed to pummel him.
He looked up and into her eyes again. His own eyes widened, and he began to bounce on one foot, baring his teeth.
She exhaled, making her chest collapse, and gave him another nod.
His eyes stung. She blurred in his vision.
“Take your time…”
His gleaming eyes flew to the new, whispered voice. Landing on an elderly man with deep scars in his skin, gaping holes where his front teeth used to be, and a pair of downturned brown eyes that had seen far too much.
Linc exhaled. “She asked…” He tightened his hands into fists. “She begged me to just call off work after they denied my vacation request. She was so furious that I’d waited until the last minute to put it in. ‘I’ve been planning this cruise for months’,” he mimicked her, lowering and softening his voice, still able to see her angry face like it was yesterday. “We argued.” His eyes grew hazy as he gazed off into the distance, momentarily silenced by the vision of her face. “I said some… pretty terrible things—” His stomach heaved, and he stepped away from the podium, covering it with one hand. He shielded his mouth with the other, unable to tell if the venom racing up his throat was a sob or vomit. As he fought to swallow it back, he realized it didn’t matter. Either way, this wasn’t going to happen.
He couldn’t do this.
“You’ve got this, babe.”
His eyes shot back up to her just as his cell phone vibrated in the back pocket. The unexpected sensation, tickling—almost burning his butt, caused him to jolt in shock and sigh in relief all at once. He nearly took the podium off its feet in his haste to shove his hand in the back pocket of his jeans.
“S’cuse me,” he grumbled, producing his phone. He checked the display and held it up so the room could see it ringing. “The boss.”
More nods, more smiles, but Linc was no fool. Their support was no longer about keeping him comfortable. The tiny glimpse he’d given them into the worst day of his life had left them all parched for more juicy details.
Across the room, her expression grew
pinched. She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, sighing heavily at him. Tilting her head, she raised an eyebrow and folded her arms tight across her chest, scoffing when he brought the phone to his ear.
“Hill,” he answered, holding her gaze.
“Linc, you’ll never fucking believe it. Another rich prick almost got neutered. This time at the Masterson Manor.”
Linc cringed. “Shit. Another one?”
“Almost. Perp got chased away when the guy’s girlfriend showed up.”
“Any evidence?”
“Nothing yet. Can you start early? Got my hands full at the crime scene and need someone to question the victim down at the hospital.”
“I’m on it.” Linc hung up without another word and smiled sheepishly, circling the podium, not unaware of the piercing gazes blasting through him as he hurried toward the exit. Talk about saved by the bell. “Gotta go.”
As he made his way across the room toward the exit door, which seemed to be shining like an angel beckoning him into the gates of heaven—or anywhere that wasn’t there—he wasn’t blind to the dubious looks he found himself on the receiving end of. With the characters that came and went from those meetings every week, he couldn’t blame them all for being skeptical. He really did have to cut his story short because of work, but to them, he was just another recovering addict too cowardly to face his demons. Too weak to do any real legwork.
Maybe they were right.
He slowed to a stop when, on his way to the door, she shot out of her seat. The angry look on her face proved she still had no idea that she stood at just 4’9”, 90 pounds soaking wet. She threw her body in the path of his 6’5”, 225-pound frame without fear. Like she was seconds from snapping his neck if he dared walked out of that door. When he was close enough, she took a fierce hold of his biceps, stopping him, shaking her dirty blonde hair from her eyes.
“You swore,” she growled, her voice perpetually raspy—gravelly like she’d just been choked. Linc knew it was simply a byproduct of almost a decade of hardcore partying. Her brown orbs widened, showing the bloodshot veins that naturally colored the whites of her eyes.
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