She gritted her teeth, wanting to kill him but appreciating the compliment. “Aye,” she said. She’d have to wear blue to Silva’s funeral. He hated when she wore black.
Casey sighed and set down the brush. “You’re really upset.”
“I’m fine,” she said. He was a fucking idiot if he thought she was upset about his stupid little joke. And an even bigger fucking idiot if he ever tried that shite again.
“No, you’re not,” he said seriously. “What’s the matter?”
“Just fucking paint me already!” she snapped.
Casey sneered at her and childishly crossed his arms over his chest. “No, I don’t wanna.”
“Why the fuck not?” she yelled. She was about to stab him with his paintbrush to make him do as he was told when he smiled again, having lasted less than sixty seconds. Bella smiled despite herself. “You’re not funny.”
“I would be with the right moustache.”
“You probably can’t even grow a moustache,” she muttered.
He clutched his heart, feigning insult. “You cruel vixen, questioning my masculinity like that. For shame.”
Bella rolled her eyes. She had to admit that he was a little funny. And he went out of his way to amuse her when she was upset the same way Silva did. “I’m out of cigarettes. That’s the fucking matter.”
“I can go get you some. I don’t mind.”
“Of course you don’t mind. I’m pretty.” Bella had learned very early on what a little lipstick and a short skirt could accomplish. It was the most important lesson her father had ever taught her. Men lose control around short skirts. They can’t help themselves.
“It’s not that. Well, not just that. You’re my muse.” Casey smiled brightly. “You inspired me.”
“You would’ve been fine in time. You were just upset about your father.” She looked out the window, not certain which direction she was facing. Whether she was looking toward Silva, or away from him.
Bella thought about her own father, how Silva had taken her back to Glasgow himself so she could kill her parents. Even though he’d loved her as a daughter he didn’t try to avenge her or defend her honor. He let her do it. He’d given her a gun, fresh from his workshop, and he stood behind her as she killed them. It was liberating.
But Casey hadn’t been raped and abused. He didn’t even love his father, and the man’s death took away Casey’s art. Now Bella was there to kill Gideon, Casey’s muse murdering his dad. He would never paint again. “What good is being your muse if you can’t even paint me properly?” she said spitefully. He should pick a new fucking muse while he still could.
“I just haven’t figured you out yet, that’s all. And it doesn’t matter what I’m painting so long as I am painting.”
“You won’t figure me out.” Bella didn’t even have herself figured out.
“Maybe not. But I like you anyway.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know that you kill people for a living, but you’re afraid of Pomeranians…”
Bella smacked him. “I wasn’t afraid of it!”
“I know that you dress up like even getting out of bed in the morning is a special occasion.”
“You’ve seen me when I wake up. Getting out of bed is a special occasion.”
Casey laughed. “I know that you swear too fucking much.”
“That is the fucking truth.” She liked when Casey said fuck. She liked when Silva said it too, but he only ever did once, when they’d first met. She’d climbed through his window and asked who the fuck he was. “This is my home,” he’d said. “Who the fuck are you?” and that made her respect him.
“And anyway,” Casey said, “I feel bad about you being stuck here because of your job.”
“My job?” she asked, feeling a chill. She didn’t want Casey to know about her job. Not this job or any other fucking job. “How the fuck did you hear about it?”
“Vincent said there was a problem with your job so you were going to stay here for awhile.”
Bella smiled. Frankie had some mariticide in his future. “Did he now?”
“Was he lying?” Casey asked casually, as if Vincent lied to him all the time.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you about it.”
“And you always do what you’re supposed to?”
“I never do what I’m supposed to,” she said. “Aye, you could say there’s a problem with my job.”
“Are you in trouble or something?”
Bella had been in some form of trouble her entire life. She endured it and then she got even. Or she endured it until Frankie came for her. “What the fuck would you do about it if I were?”
He smiled and said, “Go get you cigarettes.” At least he didn’t have any delusions of gallantry.
“It’s not that kind of problem. Just an annoyance.”
“Well if there is anything I can do, even if it’s just getting cigarettes, all you have to do is ask.”
“You’re wasting your time, you know.”
“It’s my time. I can do what I like with it.”
“And what about my time?”
“You’re stuck here,” he laughed. “You’ve got all the time in the world.”
Bella grumbled. As if she needed the reminder. Frankie and Silva both wanted her to stay. She had no fucking choice.
“I’ll go get you those cigarettes,” he said sweetly. “Maybe they’ll cheer you up.”
“I don’t fucking need cheering up.”
Casey smiled like he didn’t believe her for a second and bowed to kiss her hand. “Hey, your foot’s bleeding.”
“Fuck!” Her shoe! She rushed to the bathroom and ripped her shoe off, taking some skin with it where it had stuck with dried blood. She yanked open the medicine cabinet, finding cotton balls and rubbing alcohol that she used to clean the blood out of her shoe.
Bella sighed with relief when she found that the leather lining hadn’t stained. She carefully dried the shoe and set it on the counter, only then cleaning her wound while standing on one foot in front of the sink.
She proudly gazed upon her shoe as she shut the medicine cabinet. Even though she had about sixty pairs of black patent leather pumps, these were her new favorite. Then she caught her orange mustached reflection in the mirror. Not even the surprise stopped her from screaming.
Chapter Twelve
After about two weeks, Frank had finally stopped scowling at Gideon like he’d run over our dogs, and even started acting semi-civil to him. I think both he and Gideon were trying to pretend that the only reason Frank was mad at him in the first place was for writing the names of potential clients on Casey’s paper, and not because there were trust issues involved.
Even though they were back on good terms, Frank was avoiding Gideon because he owed him an apology for acting as judge, jury, and brother of the executioner instead of taking his side. But that seemed to concern Gideon very little. For the most part, he spent his days on the phone with his business partners or inches away from Maggie, the two of them whispering about how to free Casey from the clutches of that woman.
Maggie remained a bit jumpy after Bella had fired her gun in the library, the scent of which still lingered in the air with her perfume and the odor of dusty books, and threatened to give me a hard on every time I walked past the room. Now when Maggie swore, a habit she’d taken to the extreme since our guest moved in, she’d say, “hell’s bells,” which was funny until she did it in front of Bella. Then Casey had told her to be nice, causing the polar ice caps to re-freeze right from our living room.
Casey had given up entirely on painting or drawing his new muse. He was more frustrated over his “loss of talent” than he’d been over being blocked in the first place. Her likeness was plain to see. Even his mom, who hated the fact that he was painting her, was keen to encourage him. But he just kept saying it was wrong.
That didn’t stop Bella from being nice to him though. They spent nearly all of their time together
, flipping through magazines and listening to music like two teenage girls at a slumber party. It was the only reason he wasn’t completely miserable over not being able to capture her image as he wanted.
Frank had forgiven me for lying about the car but he continued to brood, sneaking off into the woods with Bella’s cigarettes as if I didn’t know he was smoking again. And sometimes I’d catch him smiling to himself, only to scowl again like he was pissed about whatever inside joke kept occurring to him. But we’d come no closer to figuring out who ordered the hit, and as the forecast began calling for snow, a red Christmas was becoming more and more of a probability.
At least I’d gotten further along with fixing the Peugeot. It actually started now, and would run for a couple of seconds before giving up and smoking like an easily discouraged French sprinter. If not being able to paint Bella was the bane of Casey’s existence, this fucking Peugeot was mine. I’d been working on it since we bought the house, and here it sat in our driveway, rusting away and proving to the likes of Alan Barker how I could remain poor white trash even in France. I forced Frank to come out and sit on the hood for luck, though he refused to do it with his clothes off.
I gave up for the morning, my hands frozen to my tools, and cuddled against him on the hood. Frank was always warm, and he didn’t even flinch when I put my cold and filthy hands under his shirt. Getting him dirty, especially car dirty, was the highlight of working on the stupid thing. During the summer he’d wear my oil smeared undershirts to give me inspiration, although it usually had the opposite effect, and then the only thing getting done on that car was me.
He kissed my head, being affectionate out of habit. We both knew his mind was elsewhere. He didn’t even deny it, though he did refuse to tell me what was occupying so much of his attention. “I heard it run,” he said encouragingly. These were the only things left that I could do to impress him. Fixing shit that didn't really matter while our relationship got worse.
“I’m sure they heard it run, too,” I said, referring to our neighbors and the beast’s rightful owners. Actually, they probably just thought the sound of it backfiring was me using a handgun to go hunting again. They seemed to think that as an American, I wore chaps and spun my six-shooters at pheasants instead of using a rifle like a proper hunter.
We spent a lot of time hunting. Killing something, anything, was enough to briefly bring us closer. The sex was always better after bloodshed. Rougher. Until the adrenaline wore off and we were back to being civilians again.
I'd even tried slipping him some Viagra that I stole from Alan. Frank just said his coffee tasted funny and refused to drink it. Meanwhile the pill I'd swallowed gave me a massive migraine to go along with my raging hard on, and I was in so much pain that the only thing I could do was use it as a kickstand while I lay curled up in agony.
Hunting also helped with the violent urges, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t have anything against animals. They were cute and fluffy and usually tasted really good. Killing people was life affirming. I would imagine all the men who’d ever hurt me, and blow their fucking brains out.
Frank may have taught me to keep things professional, but I couldn’t switch into killer mode the way he did. Sure, there was the Vincent side of me who watched soap operas and took bubble baths, and the V side who’d get so bloody on a hit that a bubble bath wouldn’t do the trick. But they were both me. When Frank was on a job he was someone else entirely. He functioned at a primitive level, stalking his victims, learning about them, and finally killing them.
Now his personal and professional lives had come crashing together with Gideon’s hit, and our brief moment of privacy outside in the cold came crashing to a stop with Bella racing out the backdoor. Casey was right behind her, which wasn’t unusual in itself, except that she looked especially annoyed this morning, and he looked like he had no idea why.
“Tell your friend to leave me alone, Frankie!”
Casey stopped dead in his tracks, looking utterly shocked and humiliated. But Frank still deemed it necessary to scold him as Bella requested and gently advise, “Leave her alone, Case.”
I punched Frank in the ribs. It was bad enough that she’d waited for an audience to reject Casey, but getting Frank to join in was just mean. “What?” he winced.
Then we both turned to Casey, who after a moment of looking like Frank had poured salt in his wounds had gained a new determination. He set his jaw and stormed after her like he hadn’t heard either of their warnings.
Frank sighed. “Lovely. Now she’s going to hurt him. And I’m going to have to kill her.”
Chapter Thirteen
Considering that she was wearing the absolute worst shoes for tromping through the woods, Bella’s speed was impressive. Casey didn’t dare call out to her. She must’ve known he was in pursuit, getting snagged on the same branches that caught her hair and clothes, a cry of “Fuck!” at every turn. When her heel sank too deep in the mud to be freed by her determined stride, a string of expletives the likes of which he’d never heard rained down like hellfire on the trees all around them.
“If I was bothering you, you could’ve said something. To me,” he said, more confused at her change of attitude toward him than he was angry over being humiliated. They’d been fine just a couple of minutes ago, listening to the punk rock bagpipes of a new Scottish band he’d discovered, their heads together in front of the fire, waiting with cigarettes in their mouths to see whose would light first without getting closer. She ran hot and cold worse than Frank did, but never like this.
Bella glared up at him, her body crooked as she leaned over to inspect her shoe, pouting at its mud-soaked ruin. She looked the very epitome of haute couture, if a designer would ever deign to ruin their product for an ad. Then her face softened, if only slightly, and she straightened up, her head lowered like a sulking child. “You’re not bothering me.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
She raised her eyes to him, green the color of absinthe number five hundred. The drink that kills you. “That is the problem.”
He wanted to kiss her, to grab her the way he’d seen Frank grab Vincent when they were arguing, to make her swoon with that brutish gesture of strength and affection and stop fighting something they both wanted. He might’ve even gone through with it, asserting himself and taking the lead. But he didn’t. He took one step toward her with the intention on his face, and was shoved backward, landing flat on his back so hard that his imprint would likely be left in the mud until spring.
Utilizing the defense mechanism of categorical lovers who find themselves in violent situations meant for their fighting counterparts, he apologized and only briefly considered the chance of seeing up her skirt. Bella straddled him, giving him an erection despite the knife she pressed against his throat. Where had she been hiding that? Her breathing was heavy, inhaling sharply as he exhaled, the two of them panting in perfect accompaniment. “Move and I’ll kill you.”
“Okay.”
“And no talking.”
She removed the knife, stabbing it into the ground and leaning back so she squatted over his legs. She skillfully attacked his belt buckle with both hands, hurriedly freeing his erection as he stared in surprise. And horror. Bella briefly surveyed him, her expression unreadable. Then she smiled, wider than he’d ever seen, a smile that scared him further. And she said, “Okay,” almost sounding indifferent, like a girl consenting to go to a movie she wanted to see anyway. “Do you have a condom?”
He shook his head, quite honestly ready to cry.
“Are you clean?”
“Yeah,” he said, then remembered her order and nodded enthusiastically, knowing this was unsafe, against everything he’d ever been taught, against everything he’d ever done.
“If you get me pregnant, I’ll fucking kill you.”
He swallowed and nodded again, watching as she lifted her skirt with one hand like a curtsy—no panties, a perfect tiny triangle of trimmed rust-red pubic hair—and hov
ered over him, pausing to replace her knife against his neck. “Don’t move. I mean it.” And then he was in her, the inside of her warm and silky around him, her body stretched over him to hold her weapon, one hand roughly gripping his shoulder.
He tried to breathe as little as possible, paralyzed at her command. He gazed up at her as she more or less ignored him, his existence at that moment meaningless apart from her pleasure. She did seem to be enjoying herself, and for what it was worth, he had no complaints. But despite the soft, breathy moans coming from her throat, her grip on the knife never faltered. The fact that she felt she needed a knife at all concerned him more than having it pressed to his skin, and it kept him out of the moment, no matter how good it felt for her to be grinding against him. “Bella?”
“Shut up!” she cried orgasmically the way other girls would yell “Oh, God!” or “Harder!” or one who used to scream “North Dakota!” for some strange reason, “North fucking Dakota!”
“Bell—”
“Shut up, Casey.” She finally looked at him and laughed a little, her eyes bright. She moved her hand to his hair and pulled, continuing to ride him and gasping in short, sharp bursts of noise. Her thin body quivered and then he was right there with her, finally forgetting about the blade against his neck as he came.
Bella sat up, her knees in the dirt around his body, her skirt settled almost modestly over where they stayed conjoined. Her hair was damp with sweat against her face and neck, and there was the most perfect amber leaf entwined in the red strands. She was more beautiful in that moment than she’d ever been. Than anyone had ever been.
“Oh, it’s been a long fucking time,” she laughed. He would’ve liked to have taken credit for her content, but even though she smiled and said, “You were really fucking good,” he couldn’t allow himself the glory.
His brow knit with concern as he asked, “Are you all right?”
Her expression grew dark, ominous the way storm clouds look over otherwise clear skies. “If you expect me to get all weepy and pour my fucking heart out to you for sympathy then you’ve got the wrong fucking girl.”
Les Recidivists (Chance Assassin Book 2) Page 10