by Paula Cox
I normally take care of my injuries myself with a slug of whisky and some self-stitching I learnt back when I started in the life. But when Emily leads me to the couch, sits me down, and starts fussing over me, I’ve got to admit part of me enjoys it. A pretty big part, too. She retrieves the first-aid kit from the kitchen and tends to me with skilled hands.
“Have you done this before?”
She winces. “Often,” she admits. “Though usually I’m doing it in a mirror.”
“Ah.” My blood freezes in my veins every time she mentions her asshole brother, but I fight back the rage. Rage is a tool, to be aimed, to be used with skill. Getting angry at a phantom doesn’t do anybody any good.
She patches me up quickly, skillfully, and then forces me to sit down with her and watch TV. Perhaps forces is a bit of an overstatement. It’s not like I put up much of a fight. In truth, it’s nice to sit down with her, relax, let the madness of the day sink away.
The second time I return with a fresh wound—this time badly grazed knuckles—she doesn’t as much as bat an eyelid. She just walks into the kitchen, gets the kit, and goes about her work. I come to savor the feeling of her hands, even if they are probing painful cuts and scabs. Her fingers are small, thin, but always warm and capable. She never wavers, never flinches. She’s stronger than she realizes, I think, over and over.
As the nights move on—and one of us sleeps on the couch—I begin to wonder why the hell I’m not making a move. It’s not like me to hesitate when it comes to women. I’m usually quick to act and slow to think, but with Emily it’s the other way around. It seems all I can do is think. Most of all, I think about the comparison she made between me and her asshole brother. It whirls around and around in my head until it echoes all over my skull. Neither of you take my feelings into account. Normally, I’d laugh something like that off. Who cares if I take a woman’s feelings into account? But with Emily, I can’t help but care. Whether it’s how breakable she looks, how cute and enthusiastic she is, how caring, how kind, how genuinely good, I don’t know.
All I know is that nights pass and nothing happens.
Maybe, I think one night when she’s bandaging my arm, I should just take her. I went down on her and she didn’t stop me. Maybe if I just took her, right now, she wouldn’t put up a fight, either. And she came, hard. I felt it. Felt the vibrations in her body. She moaned. Damn, she moaned loudly. I’m sure if I took her, she’d enjoy it.
When the bandaging is done and she’s placing the things back in the first-aid box, I tell myself to lean forward, grab her, kiss her. But I don’t. Something stops me, something I’ve never felt before, never dreamed a man like me could feel. Self-doubt, I realize with a shock. Me, Jude Kelly, killer, doubting myself.
We don’t fuck that night. We watch TV instead.
She improves my apartment, too, turning it from a place where I crash and watch TV to an actual home. She’s like a goddamn house fairy. Over the weeks, she buys pictures, beautiful landscapes of faraway valleys and groves, and hangs them on the wall. She buys a glittering purple vase and fills it with fresh flowers. Rugs begin to appear all over the place, soft on the feet and appealing to the eye. New utensils appear in my kitchen.
Seeing her every day is driving me crazy. I need her. That’s the truth. Need her bad. But I don’t want to be like Patrick in her eyes. I couldn’t stand that. I don’t want her to think of me as a monster. I want something else, instead, something I’ve never wanted with a woman before.
I want her to see me as a person.
Chapter Eleven
Emily
Every day, I think about leaving.
I’m at work at the bakery and I think to myself: Tonight, I’ll go to his place, pick up my things, and check into a motel. From there, I’ll find my own way. I’ll make a new start. But no matter how many times I think that, my feet lead me back to his place. Sometimes, they lead me somewhere else first: home decoration stores. I don’t know what fit of madness prompts me to start outfitting his place as though it’s mine, but he doesn’t complain and so I carry on. I turn the place from a series of cell-like rooms into an actual apartment, a place to which we can return with a smile.
I’m shocked by how often he injures himself. But I suppose that comes with the territory when you spend your days and half the evening working as a hitman or beating the hell out of men in the fighting pit. I know a little first aid from my time with Patrick and I help him out. It feels good to help him, make something better.
He doesn’t make a move on me. I don’t know how to feel about that. It’s a two-sided coin with relief on one side and longing on the other. There’s my religion to consider, but that takes a backseat over other thoughts, like my own freewill. Part of me wants him to just grab me, pick me up, take me; another part wants him to wait, be patient. I can never decide which way I want the coin to land.
He comes home after just over two weeks with a nasty cut down his neck, as if somebody tried to slit his throat. He’s wearing a torn shirt and muddy jeans with dirt-crusted workman’s boots. His tattoos are on full display and he looks dangerous as hell, exactly the sort of man a woman like me should stay away from.
I get the kit and we sit at the couch.
He takes a bottle of whisky from the coffee table and sips. He offers me some. I take a sip. It burns my throat but it warms my belly.
“This place looks nice,” he says, voice tight. It’s the first time he’s mentioned it.
“Thank you.”
I dab the wound, clean it, and then dress it.
“What made you do it?” he asks.
I finish the wound and pack away the kit, and then sit next to him on the couch. Our legs are touching and tiny sensations skitter over my skin, up my thigh, up higher to that sweet place that makes my whole body warm. With the whisky to prop it up, I feel like I’m on fire.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I guess I wanted this place to look nice.”
“But why?”
We face each other. He’s let his stubble grow out a little, a close-cropped red beard, and his eyes are hard. But beneath the hardness, I think I see something else. A glint of humanity, maybe.
I search my mind in earnest. “Oh.” I giggle when it hits me.
“What?”
“Maybe it’s because Patrick never lets me decorate. We end up moving every couple of years and he always says there’s no point. Why bother when we’ll be moving? When I point out to him that just because we’ll be moving, it doesn’t mean we have to live like prisoners for two years, well . . . He doesn’t like it when I say that.”
“He hits you.” He winces, as though aware he might’ve crossed a line. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No.” I place my hand on his leg without thinking. “It’s fine. I’ll tell you a little about all that, if you want.”
Jude nods. “I want to hear it.”
I take a deep breath. I’ve never shared this part of my life with anybody before, but I feel comfortable with Jude, far more comfortable than living with somebody for two weeks should make you. Maybe it’s because I know he’d never let anything happen to me.
“My parents died when I was very young, too young to remember. I must’ve been one or two years old. All I’ve ever known is Patrick. We were at the same foster home together. He protected me from the other kids. You know what kids can be like. He was my cool brave older brother; that’s how I saw him at the time. He didn’t let anybody push me around. And when he hit me?” I laugh grimly. “Well, to be honest, he’d been hitting me for as long as I could remember. It wasn’t new and I didn’t question it until I got older. As soon as he was old enough, he took me from the foster home and we jumped from apartment to apartment. I was in and out of dozens of schools; maybe that’s why I love those documentaries so much, because I can catch up on some of what I missed. When I was seventeen—this was a couple of years ago, I’m nineteen now—I got a job at the bakery and my life has been Patrick and w
ork ever since, with a few beatings here and there.”
I stop, taking a deep breath, shocked by how much I’ve spoken. “Sorry.” I grimace. “I didn’t mean to overshare.”
He lays his hand atop mine, pressing it into his leg. “You don’t have to say sorry to me. I’ll protect you.” His tone is fierce. “I’ll protect you from Patrick, that creep Barry, I’ll protect you from the whole damn world if that’s what it takes. I swear it.” He speaks intensely, clenching his jaw, and anger burns in his eyes. I wouldn’t want to be the target of anger like that.
“What about you?” I ask, eager to change the subject. I feel like I’ve just pried open my ribs and flashed him my heart. Deep secrets aren’t unearthed easily and my life spent under Patrick’s thumb is my deepest, darkest secret without a doubt.
“What about me?” he responds.
I flip my hand, interlock my fingers with his, and give his hand a squeeze. “Men don’t become hitmen for no reason, Jude. And I remember the night I walked in on you with the photograph . . . You were muttering in your sleep, something about your parents.”
“Oh.” He flinches. “That.”
He pauses. I say nothing, giving him space to open up. After a while, he sighs.
“It’s not a particularly exciting story. We were driving and they skidded off the road into a lake, all of us. I managed to get my seatbelt off. I didn’t think, Emily. I was like an animal, spurred into survival. I just unclasped Moira’s belt and dragged her out of the lake. Moira’s my little sister. When I go her to shore, I resuscitated her. By the time she was coughing up water, the car was deep in the lake. But I tried.” He smiles tightly, as if the memory brings him both relief and pain. Relief that his little sister lived, pain that his parents died. “I dove, but the car was too deep and they were already dead. I tried to drag them up, but my air started to run out. I was almost seeing black by the time I resurfaced. By then there were adults on the shore, shouting at me to get back. I tried to dive again. Some trucker leaped into the water and dragged me out.”
He lets out a shaky breath.
“It was just me and Moira after that. We clung to each other, protected each other. I promised I’d never let anything hurt her and I’ve kept that promise. She works as a nurse now.”
“You protected each other,” I whisper, imagining what that would’ve been like. Sure, Patrick stopped the other kids from hurting me, but only so he could hurt me himself.
“Just like I’ll protect you,” he says solemnly. “When I promise to protect somebody, Emily, I keep it. I promise you, I’ll never let anybody hurt you again.”
“Thank you.”
We stare into each other’s eyes for a long, long time. Outside, New York throws up its nighttime sounds, a cacophony of shouting and honking and screeching, but inside we are in a bubble, silent, alone.
I feel safe, I realize. It hits me with a thud. I’ve never really known what safe—really safe—feels like.
“Thank you for opening up to me, Jude.”
He shakes his head. “No, I should be thanking you. Look at this place. You’ve done a great job. It looks like a real home—”
I don’t plan it, but I’m incredibly attracted to this man. Not just his body, his tattoos, his strength, but his emotions, too.
I lean across the couch and kiss him on the lips.
I feel a jolt move through his body. Surprise, maybe. I can’t blame him. I’m just as surprised by myself. The surprise doesn’t last long. I feel his passion open up, passion which has been pent-up for weeks. He groans and presses his lips harder into mine. I return the pressure, savoring the rough feel of his lips, the manly feel. I breathe in through my nose and smell his cologne, musky. This man shared himself with me. He protected me. I don’t care if he’s a killer. To me, he’s just Jude.
He moves his hand down my chest and cups my breast. Sparks dance on his fingertips as the fabric of my t-shirt rubs against my nipple. I hear myself moan, muffled by his lips. With his other hand he reaches up and slides his fingers through my hair, pulling me close to him. I roll over, sit in his lap. His cock is hard, pushing urgently against his pants. I sit on it, grinding my lips. It’s like there’s a creature of lust inside of me which has been waiting a long time to come out and play. It’s playtime now and it can’t stop itself.
We stay like that for a long time, me grinding my hips, him massaging my breast. And then he breaks off the kiss. He’s red-faced, as red-faced as I must be.
“I want you,” he moans. “I’ve wanted you since the first night you stayed here.”
I kiss him softly on the cheek. His beard tickles my lips. “You have me,” I say.
He climbs to his feet, pushing me onto the couch. I’ve barely sat down when he scoops me up, bridal-style, and carries me into the bedroom. We walk over plush new rugs and past beautiful new paintings and then he lays me down on brand-new sheets. My heart is a jackhammer, pounding through my body. My chest is like a bellows, compressing and opening in huge movements. My body is warm, tinged with lust, and my eyes are fixed on Jude, standing over me.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he says.
“Prove it,” I shoot back. I’m shocked by the strength in my voice, but it’s welcome. It’s been a long time coming.
He leans over me, kissing my neck. I grab his strong back, massaging the muscles. The power of him. He’s like a wild animal.
I can’t take it anymore. Lust overtakes me. I tug at his shirt, pull it over his head. He throws it into the corner and then pulls at my clothes. In a matter of seconds both of us are stripped, naked, and panting with anticipation. He looks down at me for a moment. His naked body is intimidating and magnificent at the same time. His arms and legs, his chest, his belly, his shoulders—every inch of him is covered in well-defined, corded muscle. His cock is huge and hard, at least nine inches, and his tattoos make him look like some Viking raider.
He stares down at my naked body, taking me in, my lithe limbs and my pert breasts.
“Fuck,” he mutters.
He goes to the bedside table, takes a condom, and returns to me.
Then we’re lost to the world.
He lies on top of me, propping himself up with one arm, and with his other hand he reaches down and slides his middle finger inside of me. He buries it deep in my pussy, right to that spot which drives me crazy. He circles it with his finger, and with each stroke, my pussy gets hot. After less than a minute—I think, though time has gone loopy—I’m squeezing my legs around his hand, desperate for him to keep going. I’m wetter than I’ve ever been, soaked.
I close my eyes. Everything pauses. And then—
The orgasm releases. My body gyrates. I pant, gasp, moan.
Then the orgasm is over and Jude slides his finger from me.
“Do you want it?” he asks, voice deep. The hunger in his eyes makes my mouth dry.
“Yes.” I don’t have to think about the answer. “Yes, yes, yes.”
He tears the condom packet with his teeth and slides it on with a one-handed expert movement. When he pushes inside of me, I think I might break. His cock is huge, not just long, but huge around the base, a massive weapon of a thing. He pushes deep, deep, deep until he hits my sweet spot, still tender from his finger. He holds himself inside of me for a second, and then, slowly, I open for him. I feel my pussy loosen. Pain is replaced by pleasure. Searing pleasure. Steaming pleasure.
“Fuck me,” I moan, my voice no longer my own. “Fuck me, Jude. Oh, fuck me. Hard.”
“Hard?”
“Hard.”
Like a starving animal finally thrown a meal, Jude unleashes himself on me. He slides his considerable length out of me, pauses, and then pounds into me with all his killer’s strength. He hits that special place inside of me over and over. It’s like his cock is made for my pussy. With each thrust, he hits the spot, until all I can feel is the mounting warmth in my pussy.
I stare into his face and he stares into min
e. His teeth are clenched and moans come like the rumbling of an earthquake in his chest.
I claw my hands down his back, feeling the hard-packed muscle.
“Harder,” I breathe, barely able to speak. “Harder—”
His body goes into overdrive. When he moans, spit flies into my hair. I don’t care, not now, not here with Jude. We’ve wanted each other all this time, a distant part of my mind thinks. We’ve longed for each other every single night. Every touch has been leading to this. We’ve been desperate for each other. And here it is, finally. Oh, it was worth the wait.
I grab the back of his neck, tugging on him, pulling him inside of me. I bob up and down with the motion of his thrusts. The sheets stick to my back; my body is coated with sweat. But I don’t care. Right now, all I care about is the animalistic power of his body.