Quiver (Revenge Book 1)

by Burns, Trevion

  He would never open his eyes again.

  Veda pressed the tip of the needle into his vein and took a deep breath before she forced it past his skin, letting it sink in deep.

  She tried to breathe but the mask kept getting trapped between her teeth, blocking her lips, smothering her. When her heartbeat picked up, a natural reaction to the illusion of asphyxiation, she willed herself to remain calm.

  Her thumb wobbled on the lever, one good push away from putting this bastard out of his misery for good. Her mind screamed, Do it. He was already on the floor; there was no turning back now. If she didn’t finish this, he would wake up and continue doing exactly what he’d always done—destroying innocent lives.

  He would never stop.

  He would never change.

  The physical and emotional safety of countless innocent women, countless potential victims—countless potential Coco’s—was in Veda’s hands.

  It was as easy as one push. As easy as 400 mg. Straight to the vein.

  Veda drummed up every inch of will she had, took a deep, strangled breath, and went to push the lever down.

  But her thumb wouldn’t move.

  She tried again, unsure if the strong scent of bleach in that bathroom was confusing her mind and making her loopy. If it were responsible for the foolish thunder in her heart. The tears collecting in her eyes.

  “Do it,” she said to herself. “He deserves to die. He deserves it.”

  A still moment passed.

  Seconds.

  Minutes.

  With a moan from the pit of her gut, Veda removed the syringe from Todd’s neck, collapsing against the bathroom cabinets, pulling her knees to her chest. She cupped her head in her hands, letting the syringe fall from her fingers and clatter to the floor as another infuriated groan left her lips.

  She tried to mentally avoid the terrible truth that was hitting her like a rocket.

  Years.

  Years of waiting.

  Years of planning.

  Years of patience. And only now had it become crystal clear.

  No matter how badly they’d broken her, she wasn’t them. She could never be them.

  Regardless, that unexpected clarity didn’t slow the disgust roaring through her heart. No, that clarity burned her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, making the mask feel muggier than a Florida summer.

  She lifted the mask from her face with a gasp, slapping the tears away. She cringed at Todd’s sleeping face. Even then, with revenge in the palm of her hand, this son of a bitch was still getting off scot-free. Not only was he getting off, but he was sleeping like a damn baby.

  She kicked her leg out and caught him right in the stomach. His limp body wobbled under the strike, but that baby face remained as peaceful as ever.

  “I hate you so much right now,” she whispered to him, clawing her fingers into the top of her head. With a lumpy swallow, she tried to convince herself to get up. To take her toys and go home. The party was over.

  When her bones refused to move, she gave herself a minute to let her horrible new reality sink in.

  Once it had, sweet resignation slowly setting in, Veda went to stand, staring at the moonlight shining in through the bathroom window. Just as she planted one foot on the tile, however, she froze in mid-stand. Her eyes shot back down to Todd, widening.

  “No,” she whispered, responding to the new voices charging through her head. She shook her head at herself. “It would never….”

  In the midst of chiding herself, she stumbled. As she thought it through, her eyes moved like a scanner. Over and over she exchanged blows with her mind, until a slow smile began to lift at the corner of her mouth. Soon, it had erased the frown between her eyebrows. The surrender in her eyes spilled over into unadulterated delight.

  As she scrutinized Todd’s sleeping face, she could feel the exact moment her smile grew to Mr. Grinch levels of deviousness, high enough to touch her ears.

  Then she snatched at the messenger bag on her hip, ripping open the zipper and jamming her hand inside, grabbing hold of the kit she always carried with her. A kit she’d procured during medical school and still found of great use today.

  A kit that, to her great frustration, had a plethora of interesting tools—most of which she’d never be able to make full use of.

  Until then, anyway.

  Swallowing thickly, she fingered out the tool she’d been convinced she’d never touch, lifting it into the air and examining it.

  The scalpel gleamed under the bathroom light, the glare dancing across its stainless steel body as Veda twirled it in her fingers.

  Her eyes flew back to Todd’s face. Down to the number 23 on his wrist.

  No.

  Her smile bloomed wider.

  She couldn’t.

  Her eyes reclaimed the scalpel.

  Could she?

  —

  The bottom of the sheer white dress tickled Veda’s leopard-print toes. She let them curl up against the slick black rock that was big enough for her to lie on. Remnants of the crashing ocean waves flirted with the edge of the smooth boulder, infiltrating it just enough to trickle on top of it and tickle her toes before retreating back into the water. Since she was a child, this had been her favorite place in all of Shadow Rock. She could put on her swimsuit and sit on this rock for hours, letting the waves flirt with her toes until the tide rose too high and swallowed the stone completely, forcing her off. She smiled down at the white bubbles that tapped at her skin before disappearing back into their home in the ocean, lifting her eyes to the starry night sky.

  As she took in the rocky cliff to her left, so tall and vast it blocked half the yellow moon, Veda didn’t miss the new ease with which her lungs accepted each breath. The new strength behind every pound of her heart. The fresh marrow that filled every bone in her body.

  She could only imagine the woman she’d be once she delivered to the other nine what she’d delivered Todd Lockwood that evening. She knew, one day, she’d look in the mirror and see a different woman.

  A better woman.

  She took another deep breath, letting the ocean scent fill her nostrils before looking over her shoulder to make sure the messenger bag she’d sat on the sand was still where she’d left it. The beach was always empty at night, so she didn’t know what kept prompting her to look.

  But when she gazed over her shoulder and locked eyes with Gage, she finally knew.

  Because the gods wanted to see every pillar of strength she’d built up come plummeting down. And they did at the very sight of him, strolling across the sand, wearing all white as well, with his hands deep in the pockets of his breezy pants, his open shirt and hair blowing in the wind.

  She faced him, opening her mouth to chide him, but was unsurprised when nothing came.

  She spotted a red mark on the side of his cheek and wondered where it came from, but she didn’t have the heart to ask. She was too busy going against that heart. The heart that beat to be closer to him, close enough to breathe in his magical smell, to be wrapped up in the firm cocoon of his arms. To make love to him the way he’d made love to her the other night, looking into his eyes, gasping against his lips, begging him for more of the feeling she couldn’t make sense of herself.

  He broke their gaze to look off toward the massive black cliff where his home glowed in the distance. “Imagine my surprise, after hours of searching this island for you, to walk out on my balcony and see you down here, on my beach.” He stepped onto the big rock but didn’t cross over to her. “Was this the spot you talked about when you were a little girl?”

  “Gage….” She still couldn’t make sense of the feeling rushing through her. “I thought I told you to go home to your fiancée.”

  He began toward her, his bare feet making slow strides along the smooth black rock. “And I thought I told you that I’m in love with you.” His gaze didn’t relent, even as he softly shook his head. “It’s over.”

  Veda slammed her eyes shut.

&nbs
p; He spoke to her lowered lids. “I ended it with Scarlett.”

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  He tried to smile, but it was faint. Strained. “Tonight… was the first time my father ever hit me. Ever.”

  Veda’s eyes zoomed back to the redness on his jaw, and her heart instantly softened as she imagined how hard it must’ve been for him to go against his parents. His family. Their company. “Damn it, Gage—”

  “Afterward, while I scoured the island looking for you, I kept waiting for the regret. The fear. The debilitating sense of responsibility I’ve always been burdened by as their only child. It was inevitable. It always came, eventually, after I defied them. But this time… Nothing. It didn’t come. It’s not going to come. I didn’t know it two months ago, but I know it now. I know now that love doesn’t fade. It doesn’t tire. It doesn’t quit.”

  Veda felt her chest rising with emotion, and she felt that very emotion wetting her eyes.

  “I won’t quit you, Veda.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “I’ll never quit you.”

  When he stepped forward, everything in her soul told her to step back, but she knew stepping back meant stepping over the edge of that rock and tumbling into the water. There was no escape. No way out.

  And the closer he got, the closer he allowed her to get to him—his emotional brown eyes, his hair growing wet from the mist, his lips already parted for the kiss she hadn’t yet granted him—she knew she didn’t want to.

  Once again, she was confused at herself. Did it mean nothing to her that, in the messenger bag she’d left in the sand a few hundred feet away, sat a photo of the men she hated? Did it mean nothing that she’d discovered Gage in that photo as well? That he’d been at the party when her life had been changed forever?

  She lifted her eyes to his when he came within arm’s reach, unable to stop her mind even as his fingers grazed her jaw.

  Her thoughts didn’t stop at his touch but they did slow, reminding her of just how dangerous this man was to her psyche. Her sanity. Her clarity.

  Her eyes searched his, unable to maintain the last shred of sense that still remained in a body that now yearned for little more than his touch, his kiss, his dick.

  Did he know?

  Did he know the dark side of his friends? Of his family?

  Was he one of them?

  Could she ever return the love of a man who sent those kinds of questions blasting through her mind?

  When Gage leaned down and covered her lips in a tender kiss, she sucked in a breath that came so clean, so sharp, and so easy that she had her answer with that one simple brush of his mouth.

  He hadn’t pulled back for even a second before she warmed his lips with a whisper. “I love you.”

  His eyes expanded at first but then shrank with relief, followed by a shy smile.

  “The Lockwoods… The Blackwaters… They’re dangerous. They hurt people.”

  Veda heard Coco’s voice, even if it was now but a distant echo, but when he breathed back, “I love you too,” even Coco’s voice faded away. And when he took her lips again, that time teasing hers with the tip of his tongue before drawing them deeply between his own, his words won over.

  The kiss grew deep in just a few heated, panting moments, and Veda locked her arms around his broad shoulders when he bent his knees to ease her down onto the rock. The ‘itchy thing’ she’d been sure she could kill months ago seemed stronger than ever as he moved between her splayed legs, pressing the bulge in his pants against her humming pussy as if he knew it too.

  He knew every inch of her belonged to him.

  “I love you.” He whispered the words over as over as he undressed her, never breaking the invisible line that kept their eyes locked as he removed her bra and panties.

  Veda’s chest heaved when he sat back on his heels and took in her naked body, her pert brown nipples hard as a rock and reaching toward the sky. Her slim legs parted, begging for him to take his rightful spot nestled in the swollen mound between them. Her leopard-print nails, digging into the rock when the torture of being without his touch went on for longer than she could bear. Her heart pummeled her ribcage and traveled straight to her pussy, making her believe he could visibly see her cunt pounding for him as furiously as she could feel it.

  She wondered how long he planned on torturing her, but in the next instant his trembling fingers took the open flaps of his shirt, biceps flexing with his own frustrations as he tore it down each of his arms. Abs contracting with evidence of his desire, he tore the tie at the waistband of his pants apart, coming up to his knees to push them down.

  Veda licked her lips as his length sprang into the night air, gasping when he didn’t even bother to finish removing the pants before he was between her splayed thighs again, reaching between their bodies, gasping as he grabbed his shaft and guided the aching tip to her channel.

  He seared a flaming kiss on her lips as he entered her, breaking them away only to make room for the strangled moan that jumped forth in its place.

  Veda gasped with him, tangling her fingers in his hair at the instant flex of his hips that drove his column as deep as it could go. Every nerve ending in her body prickled to life as the pleasure in her pussy spread through her like a wildfire. Even as the tide picked up and the waves came farther onto the rock, soaking her curls and saturating their bodies in its salty essence, it wasn’t enough to cool her down. As she rocked with him, letting the white-hot pleasure take over her body and leave her eyes, which were locked to his, she knew the only thing in the world that could douse the flame burning inside her was him.

  Soon the sounds of their lovemaking grew just as loud and ferocious as the crashing waves, and as her spine left the rock, body convulsing at the familiar tightness in her stomach, she couldn’t tell if the wetness streaming down her legs was from them or the ocean water. She didn’t know if the dew on her skin was sweat droplets accompanying her spine-bending orgasm or the residual water trickling on and off the rock. She didn’t know if the scream that filled the space between their sealed lips was hers or his as he reached his peak too.

  “Oh, Veda,” he moaned, brushing the tips of their noses together as he unloaded everything he had, his hips flexing and flinching from where he remained buried deep, forcing quiet yelps of surprise from his lips for every shot that left his dick unexpectedly.

  Veda held him close, her breasts heaving against his solid pecs, kissing him tenderly as he slowly came down from a wave that left his bones convulsing, a wave that gave the ones saturating that rock a run for their money.

  His eyes fluttered shut, a small smile taking over his face as he collapsed on her chest, pressing his lips to her ear. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  She drank in his words, thankful to the gods above when she was able to stop herself from saying it back.

  Little did he know, she wasn’t the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  She may not have been the killer, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t just served Todd Lockwood a platter of irreversible justice that would slowly bring him to his knees.

  That didn’t mean she didn’t have every intention of ensuring every last one of Gage’s friends paid the same price for their sins.

  And they would all pay.

  Or she would die trying.

  Epilogue

  The next morning Veda shot Gage a look from the corner of her eyes, tightening her fingers around his. He didn’t look at her, but a smirk lifted the corner of his lips as he tightened his fingers right back. She made a mental note to ask him what kind of moisturizer he used, as his hands were way softer than hers.

  She’d never been so happy to be distracted by the aspects of her boyfriend’s body that were more feminine than hers because it was keeping her attention off everyone around them. There wasn’t a single employee in the lobby that early morning who didn’t stop in their tracks or slow their stride at the sight of Veda and Gage.

  “People are literally t
ripping over themselves staring at us. They’re about to bust their heads open.”

  “Stick to the plan,” Gage said from the corner of his mouth, smiling tightly at every stunned face, every slack jaw, and every widened eye that passed silent judgment on them.

  As they approached the welcome desk, Latika was already watching them over the rims of her glasses.

  “Do you ever take that judgmental smirk off your face?” Gage smiled down at her.

  “Mmmmhm—”

  “Let me stop you right there,” Gage said. “I’m very honored this morning, Latika, to inform you that your patronizing mmmmhmmms will no longer have their desired effect on us.” He lifted his and Veda’s clasped hands.

  Latika’s lazy gaze shot to their intertwined fingers, unmoved.

  “Veda is my girlfriend now,” he continued. “And yes, HR has given us the green light, just in case you’re thinking of getting creative about extorting the pension plan improvements you never stop hassling me about.”

  Latika’s eyebrow shot higher. “Sweetness, did you think HR didn’t know? Did you think this entire hospital didn’t know?” She didn’t even give Gage a moment to answer before she was howling with laughter. “Did you think Javier Lopez didn’t know?” she cried.

  Gage’s face fell as she spoke the name of the young Mexican boy who’d been in a coma for almost a year.

  She stood and circled the desk, her laughs moving to roars, throwing her head back as the glee overtook her and clutching a chart to her chest as she sauntered off.

  “First time I’ve seen you leave that chair since the day you started here!” Gage cried after her, scowling when she responded with a lazy wave in the air as she meandered away from them, still tickled by deep belly laughter.

  “Well….” Veda adjusted his tie. “That was just as painful as I imagined it would be.” She came to her toes to kiss his cheek, her body rolling with warmth when a little love from her lips immediately softened the tightness in his jaw muscle. She smacked his ass and went to walk away, shooting him a look from over her shoulder. “I can hardly wait for what the rest of the day will bring.”