by Fox, Logan
She moaned against his mouth and fumbled down his chest. His stomach. Touching him. Squeezing him. Making him quiver with those slender hands of hers.
Their kiss deepened, slowed.
He forced his tongue between her teeth. She fought back but lost.
She’ll always lose. She’s not strong enough to fight you.
He grabbed her hair in a fist, jerked back her head so he could run his teeth down her throat. Her distorted groan made his cock throb and harden even more.
What if she runs again? Best you remind her who she belongs to.
His throat vibrated with a growl. For a brief second, fear scattered stars in her eyes. He was close enough to feel her breath on his lips when she exhaled. The coolness of air moving as she inhaled. His hand went around her throat, pushing her back into the hay. Fear pulsed in her neck. It transformed her breath into uneven bursts of air that warmed his cheeks.
He wanted nothing more than to be inside her right then. To feel her heart pounding against his chest. To have her nails in his flesh. Her thigh bumped against his waist. She opened her legs for him, lips parted in some kind of hushed anticipation. He drew back, sickened at himself, but she caught his wrist before he could take his fingers from her throat.
“Please, Finn.” He hated how her quiet voice trembled. “Please…I need this.”
I need you.
She’d come back from the dead for him.
He sank down on top of her. Kissed her long and hard until she sounded breathless and frantic from it. Her long legs flashed in the sun-soaked light. Was she fighting him, or the discarded clothes twisting between them?
He trapped her either way. Using his legs, his arms. Making a cage from his body from which she couldn’t escape. Tugged away anything that could get between them. He dove down to kiss her again, but her arm snaked out, fingers trembling against his skin as she ran a hand over the scar on his throat. He stiffened, body going rigid. Her mouth parted, a question budding on those pink lips.
A question which, if he answered, he’d know in an instant she would look at him with pity.
She doesn’t get to pity you.
He grabbed her chin, pressing his thumb against her lips, stopping her before she could voice anything. She arched against him, but he couldn’t stand the alternate flickers of fear and want in her eyes. So he twisted a hand in her hair, grabbed her hip, and turned her over. She fought him, but briefly, and then came onto her knees.
He dragged his dick from his underwear and ran a thumb over her pussy.
She’d soaked herself through.
Ducking his head, Finn swiped his tongue over her folds. Cora gasped, fumbled, scraped her nails over the hayloft’s wooden floor, and found his thigh. Dug in. Those pinpricks of pain were delicious, but they had nothing on her pussy. If his dick hadn’t been throbbing so hard, he would have spent longer licking at her, sucking her, pressing his tongue inside her.
But she called to him, and he had to end his own suffering. Hers. She moaned when he pressed the tip of his dick against her, so he sealed her mouth with a hand. Her breath was hot against his palm, his fingers.
A panting; bestial and urgent.
She cried out when he forced his way inside her. Too tight for him to go fast, too wet for him to hold back. When he was as deep inside her as he could be, he folded over her back and urged her hips against him.
Her head sank down to the hay, and his hand fell away from her mouth, gripping her neck, holding her down. She writhed and shook under him, her muscles clenching around him.
Her heat made him sweat. She was an inferno inside, but he welcomed the warmth. Drew it into himself. He pulled her up, rested back on his heels, and forced her legs apart with his thighs.
One hand on her throat, the other now free to slide between her legs.
She jerked, groaned, writhed like a rabbit in a snare to get free. His lips found hers, soothed her, urged moan after moan from her lips. Her body stuttered, her back trying to arch away from him as she came.
He bit his lip and emptied himself inside her. Forced her hips down and ground against her until she mewled for him to stop.
There were tears in her lashes, but he kissed them away. He held her cupped in a hand, massaging her as he pulled out. She shuddered and went limp, letting him kiss her nose and her lips and her chin.
Weak, spent.
But the smile she gave him as she slid bonelessly to the floor was the first to reach her eyes since he’d pulled her from the water. He sank down beside her and wrapped his fingers around her slender throat. Her pulse flickered against his thumb.
“This isn’t what you want,” he murmured. “You think you do, but—”
Cora’s eyes flickered as she scanned his face.
“If it’s a mistake,” she whispered, “Then let me make it, Finn.”
42
Her Protector
She ached where Finn had been inside her. Stung a little, too. And she could smell him on her, radiating up. He was already halfway down the ladder, moving stiffly, not making eye contact with her.
This isn’t what you want.
Cora shivered and hurriedly pulled on her clothes. They itched where they were still damp, and the fabric was much colder than the warm pocket of hay had been. She walked to the edge of the hayloft and sat down, turning around to start down the ladder.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
She fumbled, barely catching hold of a rung before plummeting to the barn floor. When she twisted to look over her shoulder, a boy no older than fourteen stood at the entrance of the barn, hair wild and a deep frown on his face.
Finn paused in the act of sliding back her Taurus’s magazine and turned to face the boy.
He lifted the gun.
“Finn, no!”
The boy fell back with a strangled gasp, scrambling on hands and knees to try and run away. Finn pulled the trigger, and the world froze.
Click.
The boy howled in sheer terror as he fled.
Finn turned and looked up at her where she clung to the ladder as he shoved her Taurus back behind his belt.
“Coming?”
Her legs shuddered under her as she made her way down the last few steps. Bits of straw crunched under her bare feet when she followed Finn from the barn.
W
Dawn painted the field outside the barn in the hues of an acid dream. Cora had come to a stop at his words but hurried up after him again. She hobbled a little on her bare feet.
“Why’d you want to shoot him? He’s just a little kid.”
“Knew you were out,” Finn said.
“So? You scared him.”
“That was the point. Now he’ll be more careful.”
“He’s just some kid in the middle of nowhere, Finn. He doesn’t have to walk around with a gun, always wondering if someone’s going to attack him. He’s not us.”
Us.
“So the cartel’s given up looking for you? They’ll scour this area for anyone with intel. Think they’d let that boy live?”
“A lot of people have seen us. Are you going to go back and kill Jimmy too? The guy who owns the inn? The waitress at the diner?”
He made a noise in the back of his throat but stayed silent. It would be like arguing with a rock. He’d only meant to scare the kid, and they both knew it.
“My job is to keep you safe. I’m doing my fucking job.”
She spun to him, jaw stuck out. “So this has only ever been a job to you? Is that all you’ve thought about this whole time? The money? Were you waiting for this to be over so you could—”
He grabbed her arm, cutting her off. She gasped, and he loosened his grip instantly.
The anger surging through him dissipated when he looked into her eyes. Strange, how one person could make him so furious, yet prove so capable of soothing him a second later.
Like a snake charmer. Or a lion tamer.
Sunlight glittered white her raven hair.
&nb
sp; His mouth twisted. He’d broken her like a fucking piñata — the goddamn candy lay everywhere now, exposed to greedy fingers and sticky mouths. They were far beyond this being ‘just a job’. He’d pledged his ink-black soul to her, for what good it did. She’d never know it, but she didn’t have to.
He started forward again, and she caught up with him a few seconds later. “So, what…we just keep running?”
“No. We’re going someplace safe. Somewhere we can regroup.”
“And then?”
He shot her a frustrated look, but she just blinked innocently at him. He looked away, grinding his teeth. “I don’t know, Cora. I’ve never had to protect a fucking cartel princess before.” He gave her a quick scan, narrowing his eyes. “And you’ve been a far from exemplary soft target.”
Despite everything — every—fucking—thing — she’d been through, more in a week than most people lived through in a lifetime, a smile painted that wide, plump mouth of hers. “I thought that’s what you liked about me.”
Finn grabbed her arm, drew her close, and crushed his mouth against hers. She stiffened in surprise and then leaned into him. The kiss softened. Became as gentle as the brush of silk against skin. He cupped her face in his hands, wiping hair out of her face and staring down into her eyes.
Her irises were as gold as the dawn and glittering with dust motes. He hadn’t stolen her sunshine after all. It had just been a passing cloud blocking out the light. The world glowed again, more vivid after the darkness had retreated.
Epilogue
Shoes crunched on gravel, the sound almost drowned out by the repetitive bark of a dog. Tires had left trenches through the shale, some of those gravel stones still bloodstained, but the vehicles that had made those marks were gone. As were the bodies that had bled onto them. All except three were being sent back to Mexico.
Zachary West, capo of the Plata o Plomo cartel, surveyed Noah’s whitewashed farmhouse. He’d been here once before to meet Noah, even though the man had just been a halcon, one of his many eyes and ears. Meeting them in person before recruiting them was the only way to gauge their loyalty — if he couldn’t see respect shining in their eyes, then he refused to use them.
Noah’s respect had run deep. Perhaps too deep.
A man with a bandanna over his nose and mouth opened the screen door for Zachary. He nodded, and the man stepped through, holding the door open from the inside.
The farmhouse reeked of death and decay.
Zachary’s footsteps and the ceaseless barking from outside were the only sounds as he moved to the bedroom door. It had been broken apart; splintered wood lay everywhere.
There was a pair of men inside the bedroom, swatting idly at flies with assault rifles dangling from their hands. Zachary walked up to Noah’s body. Flies had turned what was left of his face black. A quick scan revealed only a duffel bag stowed half under the bed.
He drew it out, set it down on the bed, unpacked it.
A fly batted against his cheek, but he’d long ago learned to ignore life’s small annoyances.
A girl’s clothing.
Votive candles.
Items Noah had taken from the overturned SUV when he’d gone to the accident scene on Zachary’s instruction. This falcon had been following Cora and her impromptu bodyguard for the past few days. It was something Noah was impressively talented at. When he was sober, he could coax information from anyone without resorting to violence. But high…
Eleodora Rivera should never have graced this disgusting farmhouse with her presence. Noah had been sent to watch her, report back. Not snatch her and drag her to his hidey-hole. Noah was an animal when he was intoxicated on meth — and Zachary could hardly bear the thought that an animal like him had been so close to his precious Eleodora.
Zachary laid the girl’s trinkets out on the bedspread, folding the clothes neatly on a pile. Two votive candles; one white, one black. He lifted the votive candle in a gloved hand and wiped his thumb over the cheap imitation of a skeleton dressed in feminine robes. One skeletal hand held a globe, the other a scythe.
He’d heard talk that El Calacas Vivo worshiped Santa Muerte. That the death saint had a part in how successful the cartel was in annihilating its enemies.
Zachary smiled to himself.
It had taken a strong man to get through the bedroom door. A vicious man to ruin a junkie’s face like this. Apparently, Santa Muerte employed questionable help.
He set down the votive candle and gestured at everything on the bed.
“Bring it.”
One of the sicarios came forward and quickly packed everything back inside the duffel bag. Then he left the room, strap over his arm.
“Knife.” He held out his hand, and a knife appeared in it a few seconds later. It was warm, like it had been hugging the sicario’s body.
Zachary walked over to Noah’s body and flicked his fingers so the flies would unsettle. One of the bullets had torn away a part of his jaw and lips, exposing the inside of his mouth. Flies hurriedly crawled out when Zachary pushed the knife inside to scoop out the halcon’s tongue. He lopped it off as close to the base as possible, speared the thick piece of flesh on the tip of the knife, and rose.
The two sicarios followed him outside. A white, heavily-scarred pitbull strained at the end of its choke chain, jowls foamy with saliva. It hadn’t ceased barking since he’d arrived. Not rabid — just angry. Frustrated.
They had that in common, him and the dog.
He’d had everything planned for months. And then Swan had suddenly decided Bailey could no longer be trusted. Had brought in a stranger capable of smelling a trap a mile away. Zachary had regrouped, and Noah had picked up their trail like the bloodhound he was, but… then Noah had gone rogue.
If Santa Muerte was challenging him, then she’d better have a better hand to play than a muscled bodyguard and some dumb luck.
He crouched a few feet away from the dog and held out the knife with its graying chunk of meat. The dog barked a few more times, and then caught scent of the meat. It blustered, gave another bark, and then sat on its haunches. Its ears had been clubbed, but not its tail. That swished through the dirt, raising a plume of dust behind it as it ran a foamy tongue over its maw.
Zachary moved closer. The dog made to snatch Noah’s tongue from the tip of the blade, but he pulled it back with a “Tsk.”
The dog watched him; wary, drooling. When he held out the meat a second time, the dog took it between careful, yellowing canines.
It didn’t bother tasting that morsel — it swallowed it down whole.
Zachary scratched it behind a disfigured ear, making a crooning noise in the back of his throat.
He let the dog lick Noah’s blood from the blade and then rose, dusting his hands after he handed the sicario back his knife.
“Let him feast on his master,” Zachary said in his slow, Alabama drawl. “Then bring the pup to me.”
One of the sicarios followed him around the side of the farmhouse, and back to his SUV. He climbed inside and then leaned out to the man.
“You find her,” he said.
~ The End ~
Grab the next book in the series by clicking the link below:
CLAIMED BY THE BEAST
Dark Twisted Love (Book 2)
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&nbs
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About the Author
L. D. Fox writes deliciously dark and twisted stories for people that, like her, enjoy reading it.
Having grown up on names like Graham Masterton, Dean Koontz, James Herbert, Stephen King, Robert Jordan, and Terry Pratchett, her stories are an eclectic mix of the sadistically twisted, the epic, and the darkly comedic. She strives to create characters that are as immersive as the worlds she raises around them. Expect more than your average amount of plot twists, superb dialog, characters you'll either love or loathe, and a book hangover that's guaranteed to last at least few days, if not longer. She doesn't hold any punches - nor should she, for that's what she expects in the books she reads and what she offers to her readers in return.
She hails from the four-seasons-in-a-day suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. She's so busy writing she doesn't have time for much else except the occasional indulgent Netflix binge. She loves hearing from readers, so don't be why to contact her and tell her what you thought of her writing.