“Craig, what the fuck? You can’t tell me you have nothing!”
“Please! I haven’t eaten properly in days!”
“I don’t believe this.”
I gave him another twenty and started the engine.
“Wait, I can see you again, right?”
“Right,” I said looking straight out the front of the windshield.
I sped away from the curb leaving him standing there.
“Asshole,” I muttered under my breath.
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw he was waving after me, his mouth spread wide into a smile I used to love so much but now detested.
Chapter Three
Lincoln
“Where the fuck is she?” I said to myself as I drummed my fingers along the counter.
“Trouble in paradise?” asked the cop.
“I hate that phrase. It’s cheap.”
Berger shook his head in disbelief.
“Shut the hell up, doc and get that pole outta your ass. Why do rich guys like you gotta hate stuff all the time? Nothing’s ever good enough for you.”
He pressed his fingers to his head and dabbed at the viscous blood that was sticking to the bandages.
“Anyway, where’s that girl of yours? She’s a real cute thing, ain’t she?”
“Don’t talk about her like that!”
A shooting pain shot up the side of my face and I realized I was talking through clenched teeth with my jaw pulled tight. I took a deep breath and turned my back on him.
“So…” Berger said as he shuffled in his restraints. “Are you not going to tell me what this sick place is? Or are you waiting until the moment just before you kill me? It’ll be our little secret right at the end when you’re looking into my eyes, enjoying every second of watching the life fade from me. Just like with all the other girls.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said. “That sounds more like making love.”
He spluttered out a laugh.
“You must be pretty romantic.”
“Only with my favorite victims.”
He fell silent. I turned round to see him rub his bloodshot eyes. Sweat lay thick and cool across his forehead as he licked his lips.
“I knew you were the Ripper.”
“The Ripper? Is that what they’re calling me?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. The Ripper. It sounded so melodramatic. So… cheesy.
“So you’re saying it’s you?”
“Look at you,” I said as I walked over to him. “You’re tied to thewall in an underground laboratory inside a mountain and you still think you can interrogate me like a cop. You don’t have the upper hand anymore.”
“I am a cop!”
“No. Right now you’re just an unfortunate guy who got lost while off duty and found himself as a trespasser on my property.”
His eyes widened and a look of panic crossed his face. It told me everything I needed to know.
“You thought I wouldn’t guess you were here snooping around without anyone knowing? You dumb bastard.”
Defeated, he rested his head against the wall. I watched him for a moment as he struggled with his emotions. A shadow seemed to fall across his gray eyes like a wintery Atlantic wave. Then he glanced away. I knew that look, that posture, that sense of giving up. They all had it when they realized there was no way of getting out of here alive.
“You’re gonna kill me anyway,” he said. “May as well do it now while I’m injured. I’m easy prey.”
I still hadn’t decided what to do with him. The more I stared at him, the more exciting I found the prospect of killing a man, especially a man of the law. My fingers began to twitch as though they had a life of their own. Without realizing, I walked over to the cabinet by the computer and ran my fingertips over the vast array of sterilized instruments.
They all seemed too pure and delicate to push into the flesh of a brute like Berger. He deserved something less subtle, like a sledgehammer.
“Hesitating, doctor?” he asked, his voice gruff and course.
“I’m just deciding.”
Looking over the top of the counter, I could just about make out the top of his bloody head as he rested against the wall. Could I really do it? Had he actually done something wrong? His only crime was knowing too much and that never normally met my criteria.
The girls from the house, they’d hurt people, hurt children. Berger had saved them, had tried to stop it all from happening. If only he hadn’t burst into my house then maybe we could have formed an alliance. We could have helped each other and brought an end to all the pain and suffering.
“I just wish you hadn’t been against me,” I said as I picked up a scalpel.
I ran it along the back of my hand and felt its sharpness as it left a thin ribbon of blood across my skin. Berger watched as he tugged at his restraints, a last futile attempt at breaking free. I was disappointed in his lack of fight. I’d always imagined that if it came down to it, I’d have to fight him inch by inch but with his confidence in the gutter and his head still bleeding, he was weak.
I placed the scalped back down in the drawer and sat on the floor across from him. Now we seemed more equal.
“I just wish you’d come to me rather than come at me. You understand?”
“No,” came his curt reply. “I don’t understand a thing other than you’re a psychopath.”
That hurt. Psychopath… It was a word that conjured images from classic, blood soaked movies. I wasn’t one of them. Those people didn’t feel a thing whereas I felt too much. I believed in what I was doing. Killing wasn’t just for fun. There was a purpose, an obsessive need to keep people safe.
“I’m a guardian angel,” I said, moving further forward.
We were face to face on the cold floor. I could smell him over the antiseptic, sour and soiled as he lay in his own crusted blood.
“Guardian angel,” he spat. “You’re fucking crazy.”
“No. I’m perfectly sane. Saner than you would believe.”
“You kill people.”
“I only take them away to stop them hurting…”
He narrowed his eyes with curiosity.
“Stop them hurting… who?”
He was playing me. There was no way he didn’t know who or what I was talking about. It was an open secret. Everyone in this whole city who wore a suit knew damn well what I was talking about.
“Don’t fuck with me,” I said, reaching into my pocket.
He watched as my fingers searched my pocket for a weapon and braced himself.
“You know as much as I do what Judge Kennedy does, what your chief does, what all those disgusting fucking pigs do when they turn up and ask for that old witch Phaedra.”
His mouth dropped open.
“You’re saying… You’re saying the girls you murdered, they were all involved?”
I held his gaze and gave a slight nod.
“Killing them was my way of protecting this town but it’s not so easy, is it? Whenever one dies three take their place. They’re vermin. Dirty damned parasites.”
He began to shake.
“You can’t go around killing criminals! Where’s your faith in the law?”
“I have no faith,” I replied. “Not when your boss is as guilty as the rest of them.”
A look of terror flickered across his eyes. Lifting my hand out my pocket, I lurched toward him and he stumbled back. There was a flash of silver as something metallic grazed his face. Then I flicked the knife up and slashed away at his restraints.
He was free but dumbfounded and stared at his wrists.
“I’ll let you live,” I said. “But from now on you’re on my side.”
He clutched his wrists and rubbed where the rope had burned his skin.
“Don’t count on it,” he said. “You gotta tell me everything.”
Chapter Four
Craig
The two twenty dollar bills were heavy in my wallet. The way she'd looked at me whe
n she handed them over made me feel about an inch tall. Still, she'd looked more beautiful than ever as she got angry. There was a newfound confidence in her, a sense of freedom and power than she never had before.
But those were things I no longer possessed. Without her, I'd simply faded away with guilt. Now, as I climbed into the driver's seat, I felt more like a dirtbag than ever.
Before I could twist the key in the ignition, my phone rang.
"Chrissie?"
"Hey, baby."
"I'm just on my way home."
"You see her?" she asked, her voice drifting into my ear like a cat's purr.
"Yeah... I saw her. Followed her when I spotted her coming out the intersection at the bottom of the mountain."
"Clever boy..."
I didn't feel clever. I felt rotten like I was betraying her all over again.
"Clever boys deserve treats. Come home soon and I'll give my good boy a special surprise."
I felt myself become hard.
"Don't talk like that."
"Why? My baby worried he'll blow his load already?"
"Stop it! Look, I'll be home. Just sit tight."
"Oh, I'll sit tight on my hand alright."
"Bye, babe."
"Come home soon baby. Don't make me start without you."
I hung up and pulled out into the alley, looking ahead to make sure Etta was long gone.
As I drove home, I thought about how different she looked. Somehow she was taller, brighter, more radiant. She was everything I remembered and more and now all of that belonged to someone else, a man who had more money that almost everyone in this country combined. She deserved it. She was always too good for me.
As I pulled up outside the apartment, I looked up at the window and saw that Chrissie had her special red lamp on, the one she liked to switch on when she wanted to take things slow.
The girl had entered my life like a tornado and still hadn’t spat me out. Five days after Etta left I'd had one too many beers and fallen asleep at a red light on an empty road and only woke up when Chrissie crashed into the back of me. We both staggered out our cars laughing like maniacs and ever since I'd cursed destiny for making me meet her like that.
With my life down the drain, my heart broken, and my mind inebriated, I'd decided I was falling for her in some sort of despair riddled rebound. Or rather I was falling fast between her legs. I just needed someone to hold me, tell me I wasn't a bad person and she told me everything I needed to hear and made me feel things in a way that let me forget the pit of loneliness that was winding its way around my gut.
As I approached the front door, I could just about make out the dulcet tones of soft soul breezing out from the bedroom. It sounded familiar, one of Chrissie's favorites but I couldn't remember who it was.
As I made my way inside, I was hit by the strong smell of vanilla scented candles.
"Craig?"
"It's me, honey."
The music grew louder as I padded my way through the apartment. The smell was almost making me choke. Why did women insist on covering themselves and their homes in weird synthetic smells?
"Where are you, sweety? What's taking you so long?"
I rounded the corner and arrived at the bedroom. She lay on her side with her head propped up in her perfectly manicured hand. She sure as shit was beautiful. Not like Etta. No one could ever look like her, but she was gorgeous in her own way. She had wide hips that were ripe for grabbing and large pendulous breasts that I could press my face into.
"Hey, baby," she smiled and raised a breast to her lips.
She darted out a tongue from between her crimson lips and swiped it across the top of her nipple before letting out a groan. I grew hard again, then harder still as she reached up onto all fours and began crawling over to me.
"Come here."
In one swift movement, she yanked my belt open and my pants fell to the floor.
"I've missed you," she breathed as she lingered her mouth in front me.
Her breath was hot against my shaft and I twitched slightly as my body begged to be touched. She winked when she saw it and pressed the palm of her hand against me, rubbing my length up and down as I ran my fingers through her hair.
"Let me taste you," she said and pulled me free from my boxer shorts.
I closed my eyes as she clamped her lips around me. Warmth and wetness enveloped me as she worked her magic up and down. She moaned as she sucked, the vibrations from her voice running up toward my stomach.
"You like that, baby?" she asked as she withdrew for a breath.
"Keep going."
She smiled and ran her tongue around the tip.
"Don't tease me like that."
"You don't like it?" she whispered.
"I love it. Just... Suck hard."
She swallowed me up until I could feel the back of her throat, my eyes closed the whole time. To block out the room, the sound of her voice, the smell of the fucking candles, the sound of the music, I slapped my hands to my face as an orgasm began to flood through every cell in my body.
"Jesus Christ," I gasped.
I tried to focus on the blackness of my hands as I thought about Etta. I imagined her face down there, looking up at me with pure adoration. I thought of her mouth kissing me, her hands caressing me and that sweet voice of hers serenading me as I came.
Seeing her earlier had stirred up feelings I'd been trying so hard to put to rest. She was gorgeous beyond belief and she was now someone else's. All I had was the memory of her, the dreams I kept hidden at the back of my mind until I needed to recall them.
Her name was on my lips as I began to climax but I bit down hard on my lower lip to stifle me calling out. I shuddered as I came into Chrissie's mouth and she pulled away from me, laughing as she swallowed. Still moving her hand up and down my length, she licked up every drop of cum with a smile and rubbed my wet tip around her lips, desperate to not leave any behind.
"You've never been that loud before," she said as I collapsed onto the bed.
"You've never sucked that hard before."
"I've been practicing."
I rolled over to face her and she pulled out her favorite purple dildo from beneath her pillow. Pushing it into her mouth, she showed me her moves before running the rubber tip down the center of her breasts. Holding my gaze, she traced it down her stomach before hovering it above her pussy.
"You wanna watch?"
I nodded, meekly.
She eased it inside her, thrusting her head back as she worked it in and out. I leaned down to kiss her and tasted the sickly sweet stickiness of her strawberry flavored lip gloss.
"Hmmm... that feels too good," she murmured with her eyes still closed. "Touch me."
Rolling on top of her, I cupped her breasts and felt them spill out over my hands before I sucked hungrily on her hard nipples.
"Fuck me," she commanded and I thrust myself inside her.
She raised her hips to meet mind and ground herself against me.
"Harder!" she cried. "I want you to make it hurt."
I fucked her as hard as my body would allow until the sweat dripped from my brow and she screamed louder and louder until her voice was ringing in my ears and drowning out the world around me.
"Fuck!"
"Harder, baby!"
I came for a second time, toppling onto her as I cried out and felt my legs give out beneath me. For a long while, we lay stuck together, the wetness and smell of sex clinging us together as we struggled to regain our bearings.
"It always gets better between us," she gasped as she rolled away to reach for her pack of cigarettes.
I wished she wouldn't smoke. It meant I wouldn't be able to kiss her for a while and the stench of nicotine always added a depressing layer of finality to our lovemaking.
"Yeah," I breathed. "It does always get better. That was the best."
Because I was still thinking of Etta.
As I lay staring up at the ceiling, I wondered where she w
as right now. Was she also being fucked senseless? If she was I doubted she was thinking about me. I saw the way she looked me up and down earlier. She was disgusted by me. Only stayed because she felt sorry for me.
"You've gone quiet," said Chrissie as she blew out a smoke ring.
We both watched it drift up before dissolving on the edge of the lampshade.
"I was just thinking," I replied.
"Oh?"
"About what we're doing. I mean, what we're about to do."
"And?"
"And... I'm just not sure it's right."
She sighed and rolled over to face me, breathing smoke out all over my body like she was trying to cleanse my demons.
"Right?" she repeated as she raised her bushy eyebrows. "Honey, right and wrong's in here," she tapped the side of her head. "Right or wrong is just an opinion and my opinion is that if something's right for me then I don't care if it's wrong."
I couldn't argue with that no matter how much I wanted to.
She stubbed out her cigarette and nestled into the crook my neck. Her hair, hardened from multiple layers of hairspray felt like scorched crabgrass digging into my armpit.
"So, you saw her."
"Yeah... I saw her."
Outside, a car drove by and I watched as its headlights traveled across the ceiling.
"Is it true?" asked Chrissie.
Rumors of her relationship with Lincoln Bosworth had run rampant through the media but, like all rich guys, he liked to keep his personal life a secret. Of course, the paparazzi had taken some distant blurry photos of the two of them but that was all the public were allowed to see.
Still, people speculated about who the lucky girl was. There was something so fantastical about a nurse being taken as a lover by a billionaire and people were desperate to know who the real-life Florence Nightingale was.
All I knew was that this Bosworth guy was rich as shit and was rumored to be living on top of the mountain in some sort of fortified lair. I also knew that only one road went up that way so if I waited there long enough I'd find out if all the gossip was true.
And I needed to know the truth as much as Chrissie needed her money. When I saw Etta come down in that Buick with her pale face almost ethereal in the morning sunlight I felt as though my heart was about to give out. I'd waited so long to glimpse her face again and as I drove behind her all the way into the city, I fumbled over the right words to say to her.
Jewels And Panties: (Book 1-15) Billionaire Romance Series Page 22