The feather light, tickling breaths she felt next to her ear could only belong to one person, and Mallory leaned back in silent welcome.
"Then, when we have counted up many thousands, let us shake the abacus so that no one may know the number; and they will become jealous when they see how many kisses we have shared," Dawn translated the last lines before nuzzling her nose into the space between the shell of her Mallory's ear and hair, pressing a kiss there.
"You are a stalwart sneak, amare," Mallory murmured, closing the book. She relished the soft 'plunk' sound that it made in the quiet, and sighed.
Dawn sat in front of her, tucking her bare legs beneath Mallory's own. Her hand slid across the open journal, and she paused before closing it. With a mildly guilty look, Dawn handed it over. "I'm not angry with you," she whispered.
When Mallory opened her mouth to argue, Dawn held up a hand in a request for more time to speak. The hand reached out, and brushed along a piece of hair that cascaded over her shoulder. "I was feeling alone, and I know that I didn't handle it very... well."
Humming in consideration, Mallory reached forward, and slid Dawn between her legs. It earned a giggle, and the sound was music to her ears. "You were feeling neglected, hmm?"
"I suppose," Dawn mused, chewing at her bottom lip thoughtfully. "I needed you, and you were here, but... Not here," she babbled, her brows knitting together. "That doesn't make any sense."
Her amare's simple deduction still pierced Mallory's heart, but she didn't let it show. Instead, she cupped slightly sun-pinked cheeks under her palms.
"It makes perfect sense, and I am sorry for it," she murmured, sliding her nose along its match in a request for affection. "Shall I remedy my egregious error?"
"Please," breathed Dawn's lips, which soon found Mallory's.
The kiss was slow and seductively open, and their exhalations fell harshly into the night breeze.
Taking delight in the small, accentuated moans that came from Dawn during the exchange, Mallory slid her hands into the golden ringlets she wished never to wake up without seeing. Her fingernails scratched softly against the scalp beneath, something she knew would elicit more of the sounds she craved more than air itself.
Bold hands slid beneath Mallory's shirt to move it upwards, and kneaded at her breasts. When Dawn's thumbs rolled over her nipples, she couldn't restrain herself from moaning as well. A hot mouth had found its way to where hands had been only seconds ago, causing a very welcome warmth to pool deep in her belly.
"I'm-" Gasp. "I thought that you needed..."
Dawn nipped at the sensitive flesh where she had been kissing and sucking. "Then let me have what I need," she articulated against Mallory's skin. "Let me have you."
A shiver ran from the top of Mallory's head down to her toes at the declaration of desire, and her teeth began to chatter. She clenched her jaw against her body's instinctual response, not wanting any misunderstandings. Her eyes opened lazily, but soon widened in fright.
Staring back at her was the barrel of a gun, held aloft by none other than the bloke she'd beaten to a pulp in London.
His smile was just as savage as Mallory remembered, and her choked scream was mistaken by Dawn for a ticklish spot.
Her amare's face drew up with a smile. "I love you, but please hold – "
Dawn's request for stillness was cut off by Lenny as he slammed the butt end of the pistol into the back of her head.
She slumped forward onto Mallory's lap, unconscious.
Nerves firing hormones faster than her mind could keep up, Mallory shook like a leaf. Her arms trembled so badly that Dawn's began to tremble beneath her hands as well. Another scream lodged in her throat, but it stayed there.
The edges of Mallory's vision blurred, and her mother's voice filled the space in her mind. Hide.
She couldn't hide now. Her throat strained to keep quiet instead.
"Shame I had to end the little show, Lil'," Lenny sniggered, motioning the gun aside. "Pick 'er up, and put 'er in a kitchen chair."
At his request, Mallory became aware, and dug her fingernails into the woman she held protectively. Anger worked the knot from her throat, and her teeth bared.
"No..." she spat. "You'll not have her."
"Let me make this right clear," the hit man rumbled. "Im'ma shoot you either way tonight. If you want 'er safe, put 'er in the damned chair so she don't go running after us."
When Mallory didn't comply, Lenny cocked the pistol, and aimed it at her knee. "I was gonna be nice about it, Lil'. You're making it bloody hard."
Underneath her hands, Dawn began to groan.
"Now! Bloody now!" Lenny shouted, reaching forward to grab at Dawn's hair.
Once he was in motion, Mallory slid off the window seat. She backed across the living room, hushing the woman in her arms.
The gun discharged into the floorboards, and Lenny's black-brown eyes flared with the promise that next time, the bullet would be aimed well. "Kitchen. Chair." he ground out.
The last thing Mallory wanted Dawn to see was what she knew this night would end in. A tear rolled down her cheek as she kissed the sweet forehead that laid on her shoulder.
Only then did she drag Dawn's body into the kitchen. Mallory placed her onto a chair, and stood back.
Lenny pulled a roll of paracord from his pocket, and threw it directly towards her head. It bounced off, and he wheezed a chuckle. "Tie 'er up, and make it right quick. The copper outside ain't gonna stay knocked out forever."
Crouching to pick up the coil of cordage, Mallory looked up at Lenny with disgust. "I- I can't do this to her!" she argued.
Nodding as if he seemed to agree, Lenny pointed the gun at Dawn. "Ah, reminds you does it? But, you either do it, or I put a slug in her. Boss won't mind the collateral damage, so long as she lives. So, it's your choice, doll."
Dawn's head lolled backwards as she moaned in pain. "What's going on?"
"Meeeeeeeeemory," Lenny began to sing tauntingly. "All alone in the moonlight! Bah, c'mon already."
An idea came to Mallory as her hands shakily wrapped the cord around Dawn's legs. Lenny was invariably stupid, and might not know the difference between knots. He was certainly no Boy Scout.
"I'm here, darling," she murmured, testing the slide of her first knot while the meathead's gaze stared at his surroundings for a moment.
"Why are you..." Dawn whimpered as her eyes focused on the hulking, bald man behind Mallory. "Oh, oh God."
"Put your hands behind the chair," Mallory whispered, her eyes pleading for obedience.
The blood-curdling scream that erupted from Dawn only served to anger Lenny further, and he made a show of waving the gun around before placing it against the side of Mallory's head.
"Yes, put yer hands be'ind the chair, Miss Rose," he sneered.
Dawn put her hands together behind the chair as she blubbered, begging the man she knew to be her father's bodyguard not to hurt the woman she loved.
Mallory's heart was destroyed incrementally – with every plead from Dawn, and with every wrap of the cord around the delicate wrists that she had held in her hands so many times before. Many times, but not nearly enough.
"Haven't you hurt her enough!" Dawn cried. "You all took her dignity, and now you're doing this!"
The cold pistol barrel lifted from Mallory's head to smack at Dawn's cheek.
"Shut yer trap!" Lenny was offended by the insinuation. "I never fooked her; bloody hell! I told your father to put her down proper that night, I did! When I saw 'er breathing, still!"
Taking a shuddering breath, he muttered to himself. "I knew she'd be cracked in the head. She'll turn on you – when you don' expect it. That's what animals like 'er do, when they're beat down."
Lenny well and truly meant to off her tonight, and the hairs on the back of Mallory's neck stood on end.
During his display of conscience, she saw an opportunity to duck and roll. Unfortunately, Lenny saw it coming, and laid a kick to her ribs.
Before she could regain her breath, Lenny's hands twisted her wrists, and zip tied them behind her back. A familiar jingling dangled near her ears, and Mallory's legs kicked out to get as far away from it as possible.
"Ah, ah, ah," Lenny rebuked her as he grabbed a handful of her hair. Forcing her to stand, he yanked her head back roughly. "You gonna calm down now, or do I have to put your pretty collar on already?"
Crumpling at the prospect of that particular method of torture, Mallory could feel the crazed fear burning in her eyes.
During the entire scuffle, Dawn had bounced her chair around and hollered. The same fear was mirrored back.
Her amare was being tortured, even more than her. It was something that she couldn't allow to continue.
"Just stop," Mallory gulped back the last of her tears, and more blood from her lip. "I'll go with you. Just... stop."
"Smart bird," Lenny grunted into her ear, and shoved her towards the front door.
_____________________________________
Dawn called out for help for what seemed like forever. She slid the chair across the floor, but stopped when she felt the rope that bound her sliding tighter, and then looser. It didn't take her long to realize that Mallory had tied slip-knots.
Forcing herself to relax enough for the cord to loosen was hard. The bindings slid down her wrists and ankles as she wiggled slowly, becoming more slack with each movement.
Once they fell away, she sprung out of the chair and into the night.
Stella was found useless, slumped over in the cruiser and bleeding from a gash near her hairline. She was alive though, to her immense relief.
Following the footprints through the gravel and towards the woods, Dawn disappeared into the trees.
"Mallory!" she cried. "I'm coming! Don't give up!"
The tree branches bent away from her pushing, and snapped back into her face. Blindly, Dawn stumbled through the low brush. She had been in such a rush to follow that her feet were bare, and twigs stabbed at them with every step.
Those pains were all a lover's caress compared to the agony and emptiness growing in her heart.
Her lungs burned with the exertion of navigating the overgrown terrain. As she came to a small clearing, Dawn spun in a circle. When she heard a shout coming from the east, followed by a scuffle, she launched herself back into motion.
Only seconds after she had, a gunshot pierced the air.
A strangled whine could be heard as well, and it took Dawn a moment to comprehend that the sound was coming from her.
Another shot echoed through the trees.
Her feet moved towards the noise, traveling along in the dark until they were slick with blood, just beneath a huge tree. Dawn didn't need to see in the pitch black to know who she had found. She'd failed.
She fell alongside the warm body and gathered it into her arms, rocking back and forth. "No! You promised me that you'd never leave."
When there was no response, Dawn bent over and pressed her face into Mallory's silky hair, ignoring the leaves that were woven through it. This is what Hell was, she was sure.
"I love you," she mourned her beloved. "I'm sorry. Oh God, I'm so sorry."
Chapter 19: In Somnis (In Dreams)
All was pain, both blinding and revealing in its intensity. She felt every cell inside of her body thrumming with it. It was better to take shallow breaths, and she did so.
Her left arm laid useless against the cold ground, and she wondered why. An attempt to move it brought more of the agony that she thought was already at its zenith. Instead, it rushed from her aching lungs to the shoulder that knit the arm to her body, throbbing with a pulse of its own.
A pulse. Was she alive?
"Is he dead?" Mallory asked the stillness around her, the forest air dank, and dark.
"Is he dead?"
She shook her head, and rubbed her right hand against a pain near her hairline. It felt wet.
When she pulled her hand pulled away, the fingertips were smeared with bright red blood.
"Is he dead?" the voice asked again – much like her inner monologue, but girlish and excited.
She remembered being both pushed and carried by Lenny to this clearing in the forest, and made to kneel in the clover and moss that grew beneath a large tree. Laying beneath it now, Mallory was confused that she did not remember more.
Closing her eyes, she tried to recollect what happened after the twigs and brush had bit into the thin skin of her knees. If she pushed just hard enough, perhaps?
There it was! Just beyond her reach, the memory was swathed in filmy gossamer.
She had twisted her arms over her head – that explained the pain in her shoulder – and kicked out at Lenny. The shot he had loaded went off, and then...
"I did it! I kicked him!" Giggles filled the memory before it cut off. "Then what happened, Mallie?"
The voice was almost gleeful now.
Opening her eyes, she sat up and groaned from the quick motion. "What?"
Directly in front of her face was her own, mirrored. Inquisitive green eyes searched hers for recognition, widening as their brows furrowed in curiosity.
What was this?
"You don't remember sod all, do you?" the mirror's pert little mouth laughed. "But blimey, you can see me."
The girl leaned back and sat with legs akimbo. She was either unaware or unbothered by the fact that she was nearly naked, save the underwear and spaghetti strap undershirt that Mallory recalled wearing beneath her oxford button down.
Running a hand through her blonde hair, the girl picked a few bloody leaves from the top of her head. "Eww.”
Mallory stared, gobsmacked. Her hand pulled the same bloody leaves from her hair. “Eww.”
If what she suspected was truly happening, then smacking her own cheek would garner the same results across the way.
Smack!
"Oww! What the bleedin' hell did'ya do that for?" the girl howled, clasping a hand against her stinging cheek.
"That's for the prison stunt you pulled," Mallory seethed as she rubbed her own sore cheek. Her body was propped up and cradled against something soft. Twisting to see what it was, she saw only air.
She turned back to the girl before her, and narrowed her eyes. "That was you, wasn't it?"
The mirror self had the good sense to look mildly guilty, but the girl's eyes still flashed with indignation.
Mallory made that face, all the time. She copied it.
"Duh," the mirage muttered. "He was there, and you weren't protecting us. I had to do something."
Mallory tsked. "I've done just fine without your meddling, thank you." This was bad, she knew – very, very bad. She had really gone off the deep end; she was certifiably insane. "Go away."
It was one thing to leave the girl behind all those years ago; to step in and take the all the hurt away from her fragile, innocent mind. It was quite another to acknowledge that she still existed.
To Mallory, the person that sat twiddling their thumbs and looking around like they never saw a starry sky had died that night, all those years ago.
Every bit the fourteen years she was frozen at forever, the girl rolled her eyes and snorted inelegantly. "I only go where we need me, an' you were doing a shite job without me tonight! Just gonna give up and let him shoot us, huh? For what, Mallie – a girl?"
A girl – simply put, an unnecessary obstacle. Mallory snorted back. "Her name is Dawn. You're a girl."
“You're a girl. We're a girl. We're all girls!”
Dawn's sweet face entered the space like a projected image. Breathy sighs; a flash of her blonde hair in the sun, deep blue eyes as she danced around the living room. Soon the images turned personal, and as a sliver of Dawn's skin was revealed by Mallory's hands pulling at their blankets in bed, the memory winked out.
"Stop! That's not for you – "
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As if the recollection beckoned her invisible presence, Dawn's sobbing echoed the leaf littered clearing. She had found Mallory.
"She's worried about us," the mirror girl chattered on, folding her arms around tucked knees. "Maybe we should go back? I'll drive!"
Memories of Mallory looking into a foggy bathroom mirror flashed before her mind; a hand wiping the condensation away before slapping angrily at tears on her cheeks, tossing and turning in bed, swallowing pills dry.
Peccatum in Carne: Sins of the Flesh (The Three Sins of Mallory Moore Book 1) Page 29