But he knew from the glare in her eyes that he’d likely be paying for that later.
* * * *
Mark felt exhausted when they finally left the hospital in the dead of night hours later. Leo was critical, but stable. Ed had somehow worked a legal miracle, along with the good fortune that Leo and Eva’s divorce judge happened to be a deeply closeted and long-time member of the Suncoast Society.
Eva’s parents were run off, Eva had inexplicably agreed to finalize the divorce and give Leo full custody of Laurel—and Jesse guardianship of her—and things had calmed down.
I need to talk to Leo when he’s better and see if he needs my help taking care of Eva’s family.
A few things Laurel had innocently said to Jesse while everyone else was in the room, like how Leo had told Laurel she was absolutely not allowed to be alone with her grandparents—especially her grandfather—made Mark relatively certain his suspicions about Eva’s parents were correct. The full details of what had happened in that conference room after Judge Donnelly arrived didn’t matter to Mark.
What mattered to him was Eva’s markedly changed demeanor following those events. She clung to Jesse and Tilly. For his part, Jesse seemed shell-shocked after hearing the details, but had stepped up to take the lead in the situation, with Tilly’s help.
Mark had already volunteered them to take charge of Laurel during the week whenever they needed them to, whether during the day or overnight, shuttling her to and from school—whatever was required. And for June to take turns during the day sitting with Leo at the hospital as needed. Both Jesse and Eva had to work, and it was at least something they could do to help.
Mark didn’t try to get June to talk on the way home. Part of him wanted to confess what he suspected she’d done way back then, and confess his part in the events.
But that had been so many damn years ago. Literally over a lifetime ago.
What did it matter now?
“Thank you, Daddy,” she softly said in the darkness from the passenger seat.
“Hmm?”
“For stopping me at the hospital. Thank you.”
He breathed a sigh of relief and decided to table what he’d thought about discussing with her.
“I can’t have my baby thrown in jail, now, can I?”
“That wouldn’t be good, no, Sir.”
“Were you carrying tonight?”
“No, Sir. We left too quickly. I didn’t think about it.”
“Well, they had signs prohibiting weapons anyway. I know sometimes we conveniently ignore signs like those, but in a hospital, especially when we’re dealing with our friends, you need to obey the signs.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Unlike anyone who didn’t truly know his wife or what she was capable of—meaning most people—Mark was painfully aware that most completely underestimated June and her abilities in nearly every way. People saw a tiny, petite woman.
She wasn’t a Chihuahua, all bark and no bite. She was more like flesh-eating bacteria. Tiny, stealthy, and not noticed until it’d already chewed through some of your limbs and was doing a pretty good job of killing you before you even realized it.
She’d already killed at least one man that he knew of for sure.
And he had…strong suspicions.
With her admission, it meant tonight was not the night to broach that topic.
“How many cane strokes do you think you earned for disobeying me tonight and forcing me to repeat myself?”
He wasn’t sure she was going to answer at first. “Probably a lot.”
Mark smiled, unable to help it. “That’s not a number.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I’ll take as many as you see fit.”
“Do you understand exactly why I grabbed you?”
“Because you didn’t know if I was carrying, and Laurel was screaming. I was reacting and not thinking.”
Wow.
Honestly? He’d thought he would have to slowly draw it out of her. “Exactly. Very good.” He let the silence sit for a moment. “And do you understand why that concerned me?”
“Because innocent people could have gotten hurt. Or worse.”
“Yes. Very good.” More silence. “Twenty.”
He felt her hand come to rest on his thigh. “Yes, Sir. Thank you.”
“Why are you thanking me, sweetheart?”
He could barely hear her over the sound of the car and the road noise. “Because you’re always thinking about me first, even when I don’t think about myself.”
When they returned home she stripped and, without him having to even ask, brought him the cane he used only for this purpose, and knelt in front of him in their bedroom.
Before he took it from her, he stroked her head. “Say it, my sweet little slut.”
“I belong to Sir, mind, body, heart, soul, cunt, and ass. I serve Sir at His wishes, at His whim, whenever and wherever He demands. Everything I have and am belongs to Sir, to give to Him when He demands.”
“Good girl.” The daily mantra, recited morning and night, always helped center and focus her.
Hell, she’d been the one to write it, most of it.
Already he sensed some of the tension flowing out of her, the way her shoulders relaxed and the tight, taut lines in her neck eased.
“On the bed.”
She rose and leaned over the edge of the bed, feet on the floor and ass out.
He didn’t drag it out, giving her twenty hard ones without breaking the skin, but leaving marks he knew she’d be smiling over come morning.
He only wished they’d been given in fun instead of as a reminder to her why she gave herself to him like this so many years ago.
Because she’d been scared.
He knew she was scared of losing control…again.
Except…he couldn’t tell her he knew that. And he desperately wished he could.
Tonight, once she put the cane away, he rolled her onto her back on their bed and went down on her, wanting to make sure he rewarded her. He never punished her like this if he couldn’t immediately reward her after. He’d sworn that to himself when they first started this journey, and he never went back on that.
Her fingers tangled in his hair, holding on as she moaned and squirmed and basically rode his face even though he was on top of her.
Tonight he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get one out of himself, no matter how much he wanted to. He wasn’t a spring chicken anymore.
At least she didn’t care if her orgasms came from his tongue or his hands or a vibrator or his cock. He could keep her satisfied and firmly, lovingly in line.
And safe.
Always safe.
He got her over the first time and settled in, keeping her coming, even as she softly squealed and protested that she couldn’t, not again.
But she did.
Some people might think spending twenty-plus years together meant a boring routine in bed. To him, it meant a well-loved and familiar road map he could use to take her wherever he wanted her to go. His tongue knew every roll and dip and sensitive trigger around her pussy and clit. He could unerringly drive her from meh to more! in just a few excited breaths.
Finally, between the sound of her moans and the friction of his cock against his body and the bed, Mark felt he was able to do her justice tonight. He rose and moved up her body, his cock easily sliding home inside her pussy.
June’s brain had hit autopilot now. Her arms and legs clenched around him as her head rose, lips meeting his, mashing against him as he fucked her up the bed, hard, deep, drawing delicious moans from her in the process. He was about to finally tip over, unable to hold it any longer when he felt one more climax ripple through her pussy. Then he could unleash, filling her, finishing with his tongue deeply buried in her mouth as she held his head against hers with one hand tangled in his hair.
Only after she let out a satisfied sigh and relaxed, falling back to the bed, did he sit up. “Not tired of me yet?”
She sat up an
d kissed him again, her fingers playing with his beard. It was getting a little scraggly, in need of trimming. “Never, Daddy. Where would I be without Scrye the Guy keeping me safe?”
He smiled at the familiar banter. “Never knew that would stick with me all these years.”
“Hey, you’re the one who picked it.”
“I needed a safe nickname for that stuff.”
It’d been a role in a play his first year of college, a wizened old seer prophesying doom to the kingdom, deciphering signs from the heavens and their true portent.
In retrospect, he’d never realized how ironic that was.
The “Seer.”
When AOL had sent them that first little disk, and he loaded it into their computer and discovered the FL-BDSM chat room, he’d needed a fake name and that had been the first thing to come to mind. Scrye.
They cleaned up and returned to bed, June snuggling against him and quickly falling to sleep.
Leaving Mark to wonder if the dark murder in her eyes tonight as he’d had to stop her from interfering had resembled the look in her eyes that day on Manasota Key.
Or that rainy night so many years earlier.
Chapter Nine
Then
June stood in her parents’ darkened garage, rage thrumming through her as she tightly clenched the hunting knife. There was just enough light filtering through the clouds from the obscured full moon to barely see by, but even if someone could see the garage from the road, they definitely wouldn’t be able to see inside it.
She’d unscrewed the bulb in the garage door opener and kept the overhead light turned off, so once Matt shut his headlights off, the interior would once again be dark.
The only illumination in the garage was a tiny nightlight in the far corner, by the side door. It cast the garage in deep shadows and silhouetted her from behind while giving her just enough light to see.
When she spotted the headlights sweep into the driveway, she shoved back all other thoughts than the one driving her right now.
Revenge.
Matt drove up and parked his truck in front of the garage and shut the engine and headlights off when he saw June standing there. She’d even put her hair up the way July always did, a way she rarely wore it, which also helped to keep stray hairs from getting loose. She made sure to keep her right hand behind her as she headed for the garage door, stopping just inside.
The rain started pounding down again, much to her relief. It would mask any sounds and make it less likely anyone would spot what happened.
“Matt!” she softly sobbed, reaching out with her left hand, drawing him closer.
“July, what happened? I don’t understand.” His voice sounded…wrong. Too high, too tight.
“It’s…it’s horrible!” He stepped farther inside the doorway, but she still couldn’t get a good look at his face. He wore a long-sleeved hoodie, the hood pulled up, over board shorts and flip-flops.
She needed to draw him inside a few more feet, just to be sure.
“I’m so scared! I know people are going to think I did it, but I didn’t! We got into a horrible fight this morning at practice at the gym, and June went storming out before I did. Everyone saw and heard it. I didn’t see her the rest of the day.”
“W-what’d you fight about?”
“She wanted me to break up with you and I told her no. She said she’d see about that.” She didn’t have to fake her tears, or choking back her sobs. “I haven’t seen her all day until I went home a little while ago, and now she’s dead and they’re going to think I did it!”
“Have you called the cops or your parents?”
“No!” She looked up into his face. “You have to go home with me. Tell the cops that we were together tonight, here, doing laundry, and that you went back to the apartment with me to try to help smooth things over between me and June. Please? Then you’ll be with me and we say we found her together like that. We can get our stories straight now.”
She’d been very careful before, even in her rage, not to reveal any details to him over the phone.
“I can’t believe they’d think you’d do something like that, though. I mean, right? Besides, look at your hands. They’ll see you didn’t beat her. It had to be a random intruder. Someone broke in while she was home. She heard a noise, thought it was you, and surprised them in your room.”
Stupid.
Motherfucker.
She reached up with her left hand and palmed his cheek. “O-okay. That sounds good.” She stroked his flesh with her thumb, touching the fresh marks there. “What happened to your cheek?”
He drew his head away from her touch, the hood falling back and off and exposing more scratches. “Stu’s dog got me. I was on the floor playing with him this afternoon and he clawed me in the face.”
June wondered how long it’d taken him to come up with that excuse.
She wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face against his chest and being careful not to let him feel her father’s hunting knife in her right hand. With her left, she lifted the hem of his hoodie and shirt and reached under them to press her palm against his bare flesh.
What she was really doing was lifting his shirt and hoodie out of the way.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Can I ask you one thing?”
He wrapped his arms around her. “Sure, July. Anything, you know that.”
She twisted her right hand and pulled the knife’s tip toward her, plunging it deep into his left kidney and sawing it through his flesh and around his side, to his front. As he tried to stagger away from her, she hooked her left foot behind his right knee and pulled him off balance, shoving him backward with her left hand, her weight sending him down onto the tarp she’d spread over the garage floor.
As she continued gutting him despite his struggles, she clapped her left hand over his mouth and leaned in. “How’d you know July was beaten to death in her bedroom unless you did it, you fucker?” she hissed. “Dog scratches my ass. You really are one stupid fucking moron. College would have been a waste of your mommy and daddy’s money, murderer.”
His eyes widened even as he struggled, but she’d already pulled the knife out and this time she plunged it into his chest, into his heart.
His struggles ceased, eyes open, a trickle of blood escaping the corner of his mouth.
Sitting back on her heels, she stared down at him, resisting the urge to spit on him. Incidental DNA transfer was totally explainable, because, hello, identical twins.
She didn’t want to push it.
Instead, she threw her head back and let out a long, wordless, nearly silent scream of grief and anger.
Finally staggering to her feet and being careful not to step in his blood, she peeled July’s clothes off and dropped them onto the tarps before leaping the short distance over the concrete pad onto the dirt driveway.
No bloody footprints on the concrete, in case she’d accidentally stepped in it. Outside, she walked through the rain and around the side of the house to where she’d left the hose running so she didn’t have to touch the spigot in the dark with blood on her hands.
There, she carefully washed her hands and arms, for the first time in her life grateful her parents didn’t have a paved driveway. For good measure, she rinsed her legs and feet. That done, she turned off the hose and walked around the back of the house to the pool, where she jumped in and scrubbed her body with her hands.
Only after she did that did she get out, wrap a towel around her, and walk around the house again to the garage. He’d left his keys in the truck, so she opened the door and plucked them from the ignition. Then, being careful to step around the tarps, she walked in and punched the button on the wall to lower the door. As it sealed off the remaining dim light from outside, she breathed a sigh of relief.
I got your back, July. Always.
* * * *
Turning on the overhead garage light revealed the bright scarlet blood pooling around Matt’s body on the tarp and more relief tha
t, yes, she’d avoided stepping in his blood and leaving footprints on the tarp or concrete. She knew she’d have to move quickly, but first she examined her hands to make sure no trace of blood remained on them.
When she got a better look at him, she realized he had quite a few claw marks on him, including on his neck, and even on his hands and arms.
July had fought back hard.
And his knuckles looked bruised, scraped. It made her want to take the knife right then and—
Focus!
She couldn’t afford accidentally spreading cast-off blood droplets. Walking inside the house, after checking herself in the mirror for blood, she grabbed Matt’s clothes that she’d retrieved from July’s dresser and put them on, no panties or bra, and rolled the sleeves and legs up so she didn’t drag them through his blood.
Sooo much blood.
She didn’t want it to taint the spots of July’s blood on his clothes, around the collar and cuffs, where she’d dabbed it into some of July’s wounds. Fortunately, the sweatpants had a drawstring waist, and she used it to keep the huge pants hitched around her hips.
She didn’t dare mop up his blood, though. So far, it looked like the tarps, brand new ones from the shelf in the garage, were containing it all. Instead, she used July’s clothes to do it. Her parents, May, and Mark could independently identify the outfit as July’s, and it only added more weight to Matt being her murderer if they were found with him.
June would testify that the last time she saw her sister that morning, she’d been wearing them. July’s classmates would testify to that, as well. The cops would obviously blame Matt for that. That he changed her clothes after beating her to remove traces of his blood from them. Any of his blood found on the clothes July now wore would be explained as transfer from when Mark changed her clothes.
As she wrapped him in the top tarp and securely tied the bundle with rope from the bed of his own truck, she knew she’d have to be careful loading his body so she didn’t spill any blood. It was risky leaving the knife with his body, but she’d used his shirt to wipe her prints off the hilt. And she’d need it again shortly, anyway.
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