Wanted: An Outlaw Anthology

by Lane Hart

  I want to bury myself so deeply in her, I make her forget.

  I want to forget.

  God help me, I lean over her, covering her body with mine. Right now, I’m a masochist. Torturing myself with the feel of her, wanting her so badly that I could get lost with her. Then the cold press of steel meets my neck.

  Makenna’s eyes lose that sexy, unfocused haze, as she stares right into me. She grips the handle of my hunting knife in her left hand, the blade poised at the artery in my neck.

  Fucking hell. I should’ve seen that coming.

  She licks her lips, still so enticing. “Who has the control now?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Sickness

  Makenna Davies

  The knife in my hand feels heavy; the handle too big for my palm. Despite my unfamiliarity of the weapon, I hold it steady. I knew there’d be one second where Easton would drop his guard, and I took it. I acted.

  Now I can’t waver.

  “You’ve always had the control,” Easton says. “From the second you looked into my eyes in that alley, it’s been all yours.”

  I swallow hard. My hand trembles. “I didn’t lock myself in this cellar,” I challenge.

  “No. But you wanted answers. And this was the only way to get them.” Every time he talks, the blade jumps, a red line forming where the steel touches his skin.

  His heavy hips rest between the apex of my thighs. The weight of him bearing down, the pressure and feel of his hard want still prominently pressed to my sex, makes this situation all the more dangerous.

  Am I in control?

  I have the weapon. All I have to do is run the blade across his neck. But there’s a threatening, heated ache that pulls at my attention, making me question why I’m stalled.

  I’m not a killer.

  I might have pulled the trigger at the warehouse. I was wrecked. I was weak and scared and craving vengeance.

  But after everything I’ve uncovered…what am I craving now? Justice? Retribution? Who should pay for all this pain?

  “I just want to leave,” I say. “That’s all. Just let me leave.”

  Easton’s gaze wanders over my features. “There’s the door. You can walk out any time you want.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  I want to close my eyes, to not see his face…that beautiful face marred with scars. But I can’t take my eyes off him; I can’t falter. “Because you’re on top of me.”

  “So kill me.”

  The key. I go to reach for his pocket, and he snaps my wrist against the mattress. “Your choices are telling about you, Mak. The way you could’ve easily stolen the key and escaped, just like this, at any other time. Yet your hunger for the truth won out. How are we any different? How are you any less a monster than I am? Do it. You wanted revenge. Take it now.”

  I tighten my grip on the handle. “I’m not like you.”

  His smile is knowing and beautiful and slices right through me. “Do you want to flip for it? Heads, you slit my throat. Tails, you fuck me.”

  I drag the blade a millimeter, the red growing. “I can do both.”

  “I can avow, both will be satisfying. Addictive, even. There’s a fine line between lust and loathing.” His hips thrust against me just slightly, and a deep throb robs me of my senses. I release a breath, and he stops. “I’m curious if I fuck you hard enough, if I could snap you in half, resolving my dilemma for good.”

  “Give me the key,” I manage.

  “You’re going to have to kill me for it.”

  I try to wrestle my other hand free; I need both hands to hold the knife, but he tightens his hold on my wrist.

  “You can do it. Go ahead. Break the skin. Bear down hard enough so you cut the bone and sever the carotid. I promised you you’d get to take my life. It’s yours. But you have to promise me that you won’t stop with me. Take your revenge, then confront Jennifer Myer. If you end me here, you’ll owe me that. Make her pay for what was done to my sister. If you can promise me that, I won’t fight you. I’ll make this an easy death.”

  “How is death ever easy, you bastard?” I can feel the tears welling, and I bite them back. My emotions aren’t matching what I feel…but I don’t know what I feel.

  “You’re shaking,” Easton says. “You’re scared.”

  I huff a derisive laugh.

  “What do you want, Makenna?”

  I shake my head against the cot. “To be free.”

  “To be free of what?”

  I’m tired of being scared, of questioning my past, of questioning everything. If surrendering control means freeing myself of pain and fear, then I have to face my demons. And I’m looking right into the demon’s eyes now.

  “If I open that door, where will you go? What will you do?”

  I close my eyes. The hot trail of tears slides across my temple. “Someone has to pay.”

  His coarse thumb rakes the tender skin of my wrist. “I’m tired of paying,” he says. “And I think you’ve paid enough.”

  I release a shallow breath, my chest heavy. His free hand touches my waist, the backs of his fingers graze the sensitive skin of my hip, sending a current through my body, a livewire threading every nerve ending. The monster is still there. I see him in the defiant blue flame of his eyes. Luke will make them pay.

  My revenge…it doesn’t belong to me. It’s not mine to own.

  As soon as I realize this, the weight in my chest lifts. I’m not a victim; I won’t let Hudson make me a victim.

  I remove the knife from Luke’s neck and lay my hand back above my head. Giving him permission. He grazes his hand up along my ribs, a delicate advance over my skin, until he reaches the hand still clutching the knife. His large palm covers mine.

  “Say it.” His mouth is lower now, close to mine. His heated words a dare against my lips. “I won’t move an inch until you say it.”

  I know what he needs to hear, but my voice is trapped. He’s not the same as the men who put us here, who destroyed us. Who made us these fiends, and yet I can’t say this to him, because I still see him in the storm, blue eyes fierce, as he takes a life.

  He steals the knife from my hand and brings it next to my face. The blade doesn’t touch me, but it’s no less threatening. “You trust me?”

  “No. Never. But the only man I trusted enough to touch me was wrong. He defiled me. I was young, untouched. He can’t be the last man to ever have touched me.” I lick my lips. “I want the memory of that last night erased.”

  Luke’s gaze seers me. “First I’m a monster, now I’m a saint? You don’t think I want to defile you? I want to do bad, bad things to you, Makenna. I’m no fucking saint.”

  And I can feel just how badly he wants to do those things. I undulate my hips beneath him, the rough seam of his jeans catches on my sheer panties, and I feel…all the control. This beast of a man towers over me, dominant in every way, and yet I’m the one holding the power over him.

  I can sense he’s on the brink, desire to fight his carnal cravings waning. I arch my back, and watch the way his teeth sink into his bottom lip as he struggles to maintain control.

  I move my hand slowly toward his face. He tries to pull away, but I touch him. I trace the scars there reverently. Feeling the way the skin bevels, how deeply each slash dug. “I wear my scars inside,” I say, as my fingers rest at his lips.

  His mouth catches my fingers, teeth taking hold, then his soft lips nip. He releases me as he says, “And how fucked up do you think giving yourself to me will make you?”

  I can still feel Hudson’s hands on me in the car. He was always gentle, tender. I thought…because he loved me. But now, maybe, it was something else. Just thinking about what he really wanted, what he did in secret—the sadistic and merciless way he tortured his victims… My mind wanders to the darkest place. So much darker than this cellar. And I have to make it stop.

  “I need to know what it feels like to be wanted,” I say. “Sick…depraved…I d
on’t care, as long as you just want me.”

  Whatever was holding Luke back shatters. The dam fragments, and Luke finally gives in, the full force of his weight coming down as he thrusts between my legs, stealing my breath.

  “I want you.” His hand encloses my throat. “I want you so badly, I’m going to fuck that sick bastard right out of your head.” He holds me against the bed, and the knife appears at my collar. I hear the tear of material before cold air touches bare skin. He rips my shirt the rest of the way down with his hands.

  Panic hitches my breath, fearful for a brief moment about what I’ve unleashed. My nails search for purchase in his shoulders, and I dig in, clenching his shirt to find some measure of control.

  His gaze roams over me, taking in my bared breasts, and I see the hunger there—what I’ve never saw in Hudson’s eyes, that raw, wanton desire. Luke looks at me like he wants to possess me, consume me. As if it’s almost painful, if he can’t be inside me.

  And it’s the most intoxicating feeling. I’m drunk on the power of it; that I can own him so completely.

  His head dips down as he moves in to taste me. I hold my breath in anticipation, the feel of his hair grazing my jaw sending tremors of lust to my belly. He starts at my neck, the softest kiss…and it’s torture. I’m shaking, whether from nerves or fear or panic, I don’t know. But as he presses me into the mattress, his mouth trails over my jawline before his thumb tilts my chin up and he captures my mouth.

  All thoughts cease as his tongue delves deeply, tangling with mine in a sensuous kiss that is in complete contrast to the coarse feel of his palm mapping my body.

  I moan into the kiss, and that’s all it takes—one desperate sound to send him over the edge. He grips the hem of my panties, pulling them into a tight fist. His hips bear down hard against mine, pinning me to the bed, as he tears the thin material from my hip. Then he’s tracing a path across my pelvis and thigh, before he cups my ass firmly in his large palm, his fingers seeking lower…

  Luke moves to my ear, his breaths heavy. “Are you a virgin here?”

  I expel a frantic breath, my eyes sealed closed at the feel of his finger pressed to my anus. “Yes.”

  He groans and nips my earlobe, making my thighs flex at his hips. “No gentle,” I tell him. Hudson used me to fulfill some twisted need, and I thought it was normal. To be treated so delicately. But it was a rouse. I was his cover, to protect him. “Do what you want, as hard as you want.”

  I need to feel what it’s like to be ravished, overwhelmed in all the wrong ways when a man can’t help himself. The stuff romance novels are made of. Hot, dirty sex that makes you scream.

  As if I needed to give him permission, Luke’s weight disappears, the sensation making me gasp, as he gravitates down my body, his mouth and hands worshipful as he seeks the apex between my thighs. He spreads my legs wider and, with the heel of his hand, presses against my clit, making my hips buck off the mattress.

  Then his finger sinks inside, his thumb pinned to the nub, the sharp sensation keeping my ass lifted. I push my hands above my head to find the wall. I hold myself there as his mouth surrounds my sex, and his fingers work to open me up to him.

  Pressure builds; I feel everything, everywhere, and that’s probably the point. Too much stimulation and I can’t focus on the pain in my rectum. His tongue flicks over my clit with pulsing rhythm, lighting me up inside. I’m a bundle of electrified nerves as I pant to control my breathing.

  My chest aches in the best way, every stroke of his tongue fuses with the feel of his probing fingers, and I’m a livewire for pleasure. Every erroneous thought enters my mind. How this should feel so wrong, dirty. How I should be in pain—but I’m on the cusp of a fucking climax.

  All sensation stops, and my back falls against the mattress. Luke lifts up and reaches behind his head. He tugs his shirt off, revealing the hard planes of his chest, the sinew and muscle I’ve only felt. The sharp curve of his V muscle dips below his jeans, and I follow that erotic path as he crawls over me, simultaneously lowering his zipper. That sound sparks a throbbing ache, then the feel of his smooth cock pressed to my center makes me flex deep inside.

  “I want you…and I want you wrapped around my cock when you come.” His mouth descends on mine, stealing my reason, and I wrap my legs around his hips and use my feet to push his jeans down.

  He only breaks the kiss long enough to shove my torn shirt up my arms, where he fastens it around my wrists, holding my arms captive above me. Then his body is covering mine, his hard length rubbing against my clit, slicking my lips as he opens me and then thrusts inside.

  I clench my eyes shut against the feel of him pushing in—all the way in. His dark groan rumbles against my ear, and my body reacts, taking all of him. There are heated curses escaping our lips as he pulls out just enough before he drives inside me again. And he’s not gentle. He tightens his grasp on the shirt, sealing my wrists together, as his hips slam against mine. He circles his other arm around my thigh and hooks my knee, dragging my leg up so that he can fuck me as hard and as deeply as he wants.

  I beg him to keep going. I don’t understand the words falling from my mouth, but they’re a impassioned rush of pleads and commands every time he pulls out, cries of pleasure each time he thrusts deeper.

  His branding touch cleanses my mind and body of any thoughts of the past—of any and all touches from Hudson. I understand what Luke meant now at the burn sight. How fire purifies. I feel as if I’m being seared from the inside out; all the tarnished pieces, every bit of damage, burned away, so that new growth can happen.

  As he loses control, he finally releases my arms so I can touch him. I find the back of his neck and hold him against me, or me to him. We’re together so tightly we move as one. I feel the moment he’s on the brink, his thrusts coming faster, his cock inside me growing harder, and I’m there also—my body clenching around him as he drives inside me one last time and stays there, his harsh growl rushing through me as I shatter.

  “Christ…” he says, his breathing hot against my shoulder.

  I splay my hands through his hair, gripping there for a moment as I crash.

  “I want more,” I hear myself say. Just the once…and I’m an addict. I’m not even embarrassed to admit it. Being desired is addictive to someone who’s never truly felt it. “I want you to touch every inch of my body,” I whisper.

  He lifts up onto his elbows, his blue irises so clear it’s startling. “You’re going to wreck me.”

  I stop breathing, but then his mouth catches mine, and air blasts my lungs. Like the moment he gave me mouth to mouth, I feel resuscitated. Alive. I let Luke roll me on top of him, and I ride him until I’m spent. We fuck up against the walls, the cellar door. I claw my nails over the hard concrete as he penetrates me and drives all the lurking demons from the dark corners of my mind.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rabbit Hole

  Makenna Davies

  I listen to Luke’s slow and even breaths as he lies next to me on the cot. It’s the sound of heavy, deep sleep. I’ve been lying here, restless, for at least an hour. Just staring at the rafters.

  I feel like I’m outside myself. There’s probably a number of things I should be dealing with, confronting, feeling. But I’m pleasantly numb. For the first time since I lost Hudson, I feel nothing.

  All this is a conversation to have with a therapist. Much later. Once I’m finally free, and had time to process. When I’m secure in my life again, flipping through TV, bored. That’s when we start the self-evaluation. Trying to fix what’s broken, trying to figure out how to be normal.

  There’s no such thing, but it’s a good goal.

  For now, I look at the ceiling, tracing the rafters to the seam of the wall. Listening to Luke breathe beside me. When I’m confident that he’s in some part of the REM cycle, I dip one leg over the edge of the cot, then the other.

  I test my legs as I ease off the mattress. I’m shaky and sore, and as I walk toward Lu
ke’s discarded jeans on the floor, a heavy ache presses at my pelvis. It’s not the bad kind of pain—it’s the kind that let’s you know you’ve been properly fucked.

  I keep ahold of that thought, pushing any lingering thoughts of Hudson to the far back of my mind. I toe Luke’s jeans, hearing the jangle of his keys in the pocket.

  I take the keys and the knife that still rests at the foot of the cot.

  I slip my shirt over my head, and shimmy on a pair of shorts. Then I layer jeans over those as I search for…

  What?

  My jacket? What do I need to take with me?

  This wasn’t the plan. When I felt the keyhole on the cellar door, while Luke buried himself inside me, there was a moment of elation—that prickly sense of triumph.

  I stare at the cellar door now.

  I can walk out of here…and go live a different life.

  I can leave Luke Easton. Leave Hudson, and this cellar, and my loft apartment that I never finished unpacking, and my tarnished career… I literally dodged a bullet. And I can leave it all behind.

  Because if I don’t, I won’t have a life to live.

  I glance at the board, wondering who is out there now trying to track down my whereabouts. Who did Jennifer Myer send to look for me? How long will it take them to find me?

  I walk toward the door, my fingers trailing along the wall. Bone and ash, buried within, and the secrets hidden in this cellar. That’s engraved on me now. Wherever I choose to go, the cellar will be there. When I close my eyes, in my dreams. Whenever the lights go out. During a storm.

  Truth is inescapable.

  I could take my story to the department heads. Tell authorities about Easton and Hudson, and Jennifer Myer. But, I’ve already been labeled as crazy. My file holds a psych eval that will haunt me longer than the ghosts lingering here.

  How long would it take them to put me in a straight jacket? Who else could Jennifer Myer have on the inside? I might not even make it through the precinct door before the bullet I dodged finds its mark.