by Carmen Faye
We spun and writhed in the tub, its confines keeping us close and preventing a quick or easy escape. We snarled at each other as we fought for advantage, the curtain wrapping around us. I had him on his back in the bottom of the tub, blood dripping from my face into his as we gripped each other’s throats. We’d stopped struggling; putting the last of our strength into this one final contest.
I tried to tell him to die, wanting to snarl my rage and pain, but I couldn’t make a sound, as Jonas’ hands were as tight around my throat as mine were around his. I leaned in harder, bearing my teeth as his arms bulged, his face turned redder and redder, and his lips twisted into a defiant snarl. My vision was beginning to go and my head, face and chest felt like they were going to explode, but I hung on, my blood roaring in my ears.
Suddenly I could breathe again, and I sucked in a great lungful of air as Jonas’ grip continued to weaken. I redoubled my efforts, leaning in even harder now that he wasn’t trying to tear my head off. His arms fell away, but I kept my hands around his throat, trying to crush his windpipe under my hands.
“Die you motherfucker,” I said, my voice soft and weak from the damage done to my throat, and still I kept the pressure on, the veins on my arms sticking out as I put everything I had left into that killing grip.
I finally let go with a gasp—exhausted and hurt. I rose up on my knees and drove a right into his throat with the last of my strength. I didn’t know if it was enough to crush his trachea, but I didn’t have the strength for another shot.
I slowly clambered out of the tub, leaving what I hoped was Jonas’ dead body behind. I looked at myself in the mirror as I slowly opened the door. I looked like something out of a horror movie—cut, bleeding and smeared with blood, my shirt hanging off me like a rag.
I staggered out of the bath, my breaths coming in bellow-like pants. I’d expected to see the door open and Leah gone, but she was in the same corner, her hands still over his mouth and pale as a ghost. She stared at me before running to me and throwing herself into my arms.
Thank God the bed was behind me because I was too tired and weak to catch and hold her, and I don’t think I could have taken another fall to the floor.
Chapter Thirty-seven
“Are you ready?” I asked softly.
Leah stretched and groaned then sighed as she settled back into my side. “Just five more minutes.”
“You said five more minutes three times already. We need to get moving.”
“Just five more, I promise,” she murmured as she snuggled in again.
I grinned. In the last two weeks, that had been her standard line when I woke her up in the morning. “Five more minutes.” Normally that’s all she got because when I started kissing my way down her body, she lost interest in sleep and became interested in something else. But I couldn’t do that this morning. We had things to do, and we couldn’t spend all morning fucking our brains out like we’d been doing.
Today was moving day. Again.
It had been two weeks since the showdown at the Sleepy Eye Motel. While at the time, it had felt like an eternity, from the time we stepped off the bikes until Leah was lying on me on the bed, covering me in feather light kisses, was less than ten minutes. Jonas had put most of his men in the woods, and my brothers had taken them out. But Jonas wasn’t stupid and had held a few back in reserve.
We’d sold the idea that it was the Hands that had been doing the shooting instead of the Chasers. We’d played it to the hilt, and it had taken the Hands a moment to figure out the gunfire they’d thought had been cutting down Chasers had actually been the Chasers cutting down the Hands ambush.
We hadn’t known how many Hands there were, and we’d thought we’d gotten them all, but a few Chasers had been ambushed in return. That had turned into a total clusterfuck in the woods as the Chasers tried to run down the few remaining Hands without killing their own brothers. A few brothers had been shot at, but luckily nobody had been hit by friendly fire.
By the time the Chasers had mopped up the rest of the Hands, Leah had gotten over her shock, and we had slid the chest from in front of the door. We were stepping out of the room as the Chasers began to emerge from the woods. I slowly escorted Leah to my bike, my aches and pains making it slow going, as Butch looked me over. I gave him a nod but kept going, wanting to get Leah away from there before something else happened or the police showed up. The Chasers were expert in cleaning up messes like this, and I was going to leave them to it.
I’d just started my bike, Leah sitting behind me, when I saw Butch enter the room where Jonas had held Leah hostage. I was almost on the road with I heard the muffled report of a pistol shot. I didn’t know if Jonas was dead before Butch shot him or not, but I didn’t care.
For the next two weeks, Leah and I were inseparable. She’d spent a couple of days nursing me back to health in her house. We talked, a lot, about her ordeal. Knowing that Jonas, the man that had put it all into motion, was dead seemed to help her more than anything. I told her he was alive when I came out of the bathroom, but it didn’t matter if he was or not. She seemed to need to hear it, so I gave her that.
On the third day, she’d returned to OIMB. She’d been fired, and they weren’t interested in hiring her back. She was dejected at having lost her job, but not as much as I thought she would be. We’d made love that night, and for the first time, I felt like neither of us was using the other. We gave ourselves, and it was the best sex I’d had in my life.
As we drifted into sleep, she’d snuggled into my chest, and it had felt like the most natural thing in the world.
I returned to my apartment only once to collect my clothes. We talked about our future, and over the next two weeks, we made plans. She told me about her idea to move to Minnesota or Arizona, and after looking at our options, we’d finally settled on Biloxi, Mississippi because it was close to the water for Leah, a total change from Coquille, and the Harley Davidson dealership there was looking for a salesman. I’d talked to them on the phone, and while they hadn’t hired me, they were very interested in talking to me in person.
As soon as I was able, I put Leah on the back of my bike, and we’d made the 2,600-mile ride. It took us four days, and they were, without question, the best four days of my life. We rode during the day, stopping when and where we wanted, and fucked ourselves to nirvana at night.
When we arrived in Biloxi, I cleaned myself up, cut my hair, and walked in there wearing a sport coat and attitude. Two hours later I was the latest member of the team, and I was scheduled to start in two weeks. I made up my mind as I strutted out of the dealership, I was going to fucking own that place by the time I was forty.
We spent two more days in Biloxi, looking at apartments and finally found one we could afford in D’Iberville. As we’d looked for a place to live, Leah had applied for jobs at several places. She hadn’t landed anything, but two places had called her, and so she was excited about the prospects of either one.
We’d returned to Coquille and set about the task of moving. Where Leah had mostly nice stuff, I had shit. The only thing from my apartment I kept was my television. The cheap furniture I sat on the curb, with a sign that said it was free, and listed my washer and dryer on Craigslist. In less than forty-eight hours my apartment was empty, and I was sleeping in our bed in Leah’s house.
We’d spent last night in a motel, the rented moving truck parked outside. Coquille was the only home I knew, and it was tough leaving, but I was ready for a fresh start. I’d thought long and hard about the move, but the Venom Chasers would never be the same. I wanted to be more than a cog in a machine, and that’s all I’d ever be in the Chasers—that’s all any of us would ever be. I realized now there was so much more to life than I dreamed was possible. It was because of Leah. She’d shown me another way; a way of companionship and kindness, and yes, maybe even love.
We were still feeling our way along, but what I was feeling for her was strong enough to make me make the leap of faith and leave b
ehind everything I’d known for the chance to find something better with her. And I didn’t regret it even a little bit.
The Chasers hadn’t been pleased that I turned in my colors, but even then it felt like it was because they would have to replace me as the snoop—the info guy and man who found out who was doing what to who, and when—not because they actually wanted me to stay. So fuck ‘em.
Once I’d made that decision, the rest became easy.
We’d sold Leah’s piece of shit Honda, and with a little cash from me, she’d bought a two-year-old CRV that she found. We’d packed it full of clothes and breakables, put my bike in the back of the moving van along with the rest of her furniture, and put the Honda on a trailer. Today we headed south and then east, toward our new home and our new lives.
I didn’t know if it would work out between us, but I was going to fight like hell for it, and harder than anything else in my life. She was digging herself out of her dark place, and I was there, helping her dig. She still had her moments—times when I could see the darkness cloud her eyes—but I’d learned that a warm hug and a gentle kiss could drive the darkness away.
I smiled because she smiled. I was smiling more and frowning less now than at any time in my life, and it was all because of the warm softness tucked into my side.
“Your five minutes are up,” I said.
She stretched again. “Fuck.”
I snickered to myself. She was still the sweet innocent girl I’d met, but only when we were in public. Otherwise, when she was alone with me, she showed another side. An angel in public, a devil in bed, and goddamn, she made me pant for her. Her mixture of sugar and spice made it hard for me to walk because I was always nursing a hard-on.
I kissed her. “Later. Tonight.”
She smiled then stretched up for another kiss, her hand going to the back of my head to hold my lips to hers. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
She looked at me as a small smile played across her lips before she pulled me into another kiss, her mouth opening and offering me a chance to explore. She knew exactly what she was doing, and it got to me every fucking time.
I rolled her over onto her back as I took over the kiss, her hands traveling down my body, her nails scratching gently and leaving behind trails of pleasure. I kissed down her jaw to suckle her ear, and she moaned, her nails biting into my back.
I smiled. We couldn’t seem to get enough of each other, and I could feel her passion spooling up. So, I stopped.
“That’s enough,” I teased, rolling out of bed. I was sporting a raging boner, but that wasn’t unusual, and she’d seen it plenty of times.
She groaned, her hands traveling up her body. “Please?”
“Nope. Get up. We have to hit the road. We only have four days to make 2,600 miles, and that’s going to be harder to do in the truck than on the bike.”
That would put us in Biloxi on Friday. While I didn’t start until the following Monday, if we didn’t turn the truck in on Sunday, we were going to get charged an extra day, plus we needed time to unload and get settled. Leah could unpack while I was at work, but we had to get the furniture and boxes into the apartment, so we’d have a place to sleep.
“Speaking of harder,” she purred as she rolled over on the bed and reached for me.
I wanted her so bad I let her touch me, but when she moved to take me into her mouth, I backed away. If she did that, it’d be an hour or more before we hit the road.
“Later. Get up.”
She grumbled good-naturedly as she got out of bed. She padded into the bathroom, and I watched her ass swing as she moved. After a moment, I heard the shower start. From the suitcase that contained our traveling clothes, I threw out some clothes for her to wear, adding a pile of my own. I then gathered up our sweat stained and dirty clothes we’d worn yesterday as we loaded the truck and stuffed them into a plastic bag. I made sure everything was in a neat pile so we wouldn’t forget anything, and then went into the bathroom.
As I shaved and brushed my teeth, I watched her moving behind the translucent shower door. I couldn’t see much, but I could see enough. I finished brushing and rinsed my mouth out, then watched the reflection of her figure in the shower.
“Fuck it,” I said, annoyed that I was letting her lead me around by my cock again. I opened the shower door and stepped in.
“What are you doing?” she asked, but the smile on her lips told me she knew exactly what I was doing, and why.
“We’re just going to have to be late leaving.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” she replied as she took my lips.
THE END
LASHED
Chapter One
Darcy didn’t think she could win the race now. She pedaled harder, if that were possible. It seemed like everything was going in slow motion as she burned through her reserve energy supplies, fighting to keep up with her number one rival: Aubrey. That’s right: she was in second place and the crushing realization that she just might lose this important race was making it hard to stay focused on what really mattered.
It had been too many grueling hours of practice, too much sacrifice of time, money, sweat, and even tears. This race was just one of the last and most important tests on the way to making it big as a professional cyclist. Now it was going to be totally lost because of a few seconds, and a different that was almost nothing between the two women. There was no way it could end this way!
“Come on, Darcy, come on,” she mouthed to herself alongside steady breathing. The words almost hurt and it was difficult to say them without risking interruption of her breathing. But they needed to be said – out loud, as well; that was important, because just thinking them wasn't enough.
Everything, absolutely everything, was perfect up until that last moment. She had done it all right this time. Darcy had started out in the lead, along with the prime contenders. Then, she had done something that wowed her just as much as it probably did many people in the crowd: she'd actually gotten out in front, and found it wasn't much of a race at all. Her heart was soaring and it was an effort to keep the silly grin off her face as she maintained the lead for the duration of the race. Suddenly, just a few minutes from that finishing line, Aubrey had gotten out from second place and gone just a little ahead of Darcy.
Aubrey…It was difficult to be mad at another cyclist who showed such skill and sheer determination in everything she did. Still, though, it wasn’t fair! Just a bike’s length in front of her was the confident and athletic object of both Darcy’s friendship and competitive nature. If there was just one person she would have wanted to beat her, it was the lovely Aubrey. That didn't mean Darcy was about to just lay down and let her snatch victory right at the last minute. A good friend was one who made you earn your wins. In that regard, Darcy and Aubrey were best friends. In every other way, they were best friends, too.
Darcy's concentration broke apart for just a few seconds, thinking about all of these things. It was hard trying to stay focused when her body was being pushed to its absolute limits. Things often crept in, when it would be much easier to strive for that finish line with an emptier mind. Meditation helped, but it didn't do too much when things really became stressful in the heat of an important race. Yeah, they were all important, but there were only so many more until the big qualifying race, and then things would either go up, or way back down.
Then, without any warning signs, Aubrey couldn’t maintain her speed. It was like watching one of those bad movies where the hero was about to do something incredibly stupid, which would allow the baddies to take over and get their way, at least until the happy ending took hold. What the hell was she doing?! She slowed just slightly, enough for Darcy to easily get in front of her without speeding herself up.
It was almost embarrassing to watch; no, scratch that, it was terribly embarrassing to watch. Darcy went by Aubrey and wanted to ask what the hell she was thinking. She wanted to know why her friend was just slowing down for no particu
lar reason. It was almost like she was letting Darcy get in front of her, but that would never happen, no way. To do such a thing would not only be screwing herself over, but it would be totally disrespectful to the race, the other cyclists, and most importantly to Darcy.
Still, she went over the finish line first, and Darcy had won the big race! The thoughts of Aubrey's suspicious slowing down went away very quickly as soon as the large crowd of cycling enthusiasts started to cheer for Darcy as the winner. She would have to get to the bottom of this…maybe. But first, there was a lot of excitement to come; one of the best parts of winning was that everyone made you feel like number one.