by R. J. Lewis
“You’re already about to come. Do you like when I fuck you from behind?” he asked me, his voice tight with need.
“No,” I groaned, weakly. “I hate it, Nixon, you should stop.”
His chest rumbled with laughter. When he pulled out of me completely, I felt my entire body deflate. Okay, I didn’t actually want that to happen. He was supposed to know that, though, it was part of this fucked up game –
SLAP!
I jumped and yelped, shocked by the smack he’d delivered against my ass. It felt like fire. My fingers gripped the sheets as I seethed, “What the fuck, Nixon?”
He rubbed the cheek he’d smacked as he shoved his dick into me again. He groaned at the easy access. My pussy literally opened for the bastard, welcoming him in.
“You liked that,” he breathed, delighted. “You are full of surprises, Victoria. We are going to have a lot of fun, I think.”
He gripped my hips then and fucked me hard and fast. He didn’t stop to consider I was still aching. He didn’t ask if I was hurt. He didn’t wonder if I was even enjoying it. He fucked me like he was taking me for his own enjoyment, for his own pleasure, and I came so hard at that, pulsing around his cock over and over again.
He came inside me, groaning through his orgasm, uttering my name. When he pulled out, he flipped me on my back and told me to push his come out of me. I did. He stared at my pussy, his mouth parted, his breaths heavy. His fingers brushed along my tender hole, a look of fascination on his face as he smeared his come all over my folds before pushing it back inside me.
I buried my face into my hands, overwhelmed with emotion.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, soothingly.
“Because I throb,” I said in horror. “I don’t know why my body is acting this way.”
“You want more.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“You feel betrayed.”
I nodded, wiping my tears, but they wouldn’t stop falling. “I do.”
“I’m so loathsome, you feel disgusted for liking my touch.” It was stated so calmly, like it was fact and he was just acknowledging it.
I tensed. “I don’t know if it’s that.”
“What else could it be? You lived your whole life being told what’s right and what’s wrong. Here I am, a murderer, fucking you, my captive, in this hellhole cabin in a place no one will ever find, and you…you pine for it. Your pussy gushes for me. You bend to me like you’ve always belonged right here, beneath me.”
He was right, and I couldn’t bear it.
He wrapped his arm around me then and picked my languid body off the bed. He sat down on the edge and settled me into his lap. I cried in his arms as he shushed me gently, making my chest swell with indescribable emotion.
I asked him through sobs, “How am I supposed to put this behind me? How am I supposed to live knowing we did this? Everything is different. The world doesn’t feel the same anymore, Nixon.”
“Shh, it’s okay,” he responded every time I let out a string of emotional words. “You’re alright, baby.”
He stroked me, kissed my forehead and rode out my sadness.
I remembered feeling like…I wasn’t so alone anymore.
*
As Nixon began to drain the tub and clean up, I sat on his bed, looking out the window, at the falling snow. I could tell from the swaying branches of the tall trees that the wind was still abhorrent, but the snow itself wasn’t blizzard-like.
I didn’t bother covering myself with the blanket. There was no such thing as modesty anymore. Nixon had seen every inch of me, tasted places I didn’t even know existed.
He’d rode out my breakdown and then I shamelessly wanted more.
He’d delivered. Fucking me to oblivion until there was nothing left of me.
I was burst open, soul scattered in all directions…utterly lost to the cosmos.
And now my mind was quiet, and I was grateful for the silence.
I felt sticky between my legs. He came hard every time. I had to thank God I’d taken my birth control shot last month, because his explosions? They were hitting the bullseye every time.
I glanced at Nixon from over my shoulder, catching the red marks I’d given him today. He looked less bulky than he did just yesterday. I was aware he wasn’t consuming as many calories. There couldn’t have been much nutrition in the basic camping meals he’d been supplied with, and there was only so much of that crap you could eat without feeling bored to death by the repetitiveness of it.
“I could go for a burger right now,” I said longingly.
“We’ll get a burger when this is all over,” he replied, sounding amused. “What else, baby?”
“I’m craving Cajun fries.”
“And for dessert?”
I hummed in thought. “Chocolate. Any kind of chocolate. Big blocks of that cheap Belgium crap you get from Walmart, even.”
“I’ll get you all the chocolate in the world.”
My heart ballooned as I smiled at him. He was in the kitchenette, stuffing the garbage pouches in the box he’d used as a bin. Fucking suited him. It relaxed the stress lines around his eyes and forehead. Made him look youthful.
“How old are you?” I asked him, curiously.
“Thirty-two.”
“Is Nixon your real name?”
“No.”
“What’s your real name?”
He stood up straight and shot me a playful look. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
My laugh was forced. That joke was not cool. “Too soon, Nixon.”
“I let my old life go, vixen. Who I was is gone now, erased from the books. I’d have to go back to that life completely if I ever went back.”
“You let go of who you were to be part of some underground mafia?”
He smirked now. “I’m not mafia, but that’s cute.”
“What are you, then? You’re part of a gang, right?”
“No. I’m not chained to any side. I’m an opportunist. I take jobs. When a contract is up for dibs, depending how good it is, I take it through my employer.”
“Through Hobbs?”
“You’re attentive.”
“The mortality rate must be very high,” I dryly said, hinting at the bloodbath I’d survived.
He laughed and settled his elbows on the counter, facing me. “That’s why you have to be good at what you do.”
“You’re good at killing.”
“Among many things.”
“You scare me.”
“I know.”
My smile was faint as I wrung my hands together. “It’s surreal being here. My life was so ordinary. People like you existed in the news, removed from me, from my world.”
He looked solemn. “You weren’t supposed to be dragged into this mess.”
“Don’t you miss normal life?” I wondered, studying him. “Having to do this all the time, living under a false identity, it sounds… exhausting.”
He nodded slowly, the light faded from his eyes. “You have no idea.”
I’d stifled the urge to ask him this next question because I was unsure of his reaction, but now I couldn’t help myself. I’d never been good at shutting up or picking the right moments. Mom called me a steamroller. She said mystery was never my forte. I couldn’t mask my curiosity, even if it killed me.
“Who’s Leona?” My question was sudden and out of nowhere, and his eyes flickered to mine briskly. It was the only noticeable reaction I got from him.
With a soft expression, he said quietly, “My twin.”
My lips turned down with sympathy. I didn’t expect that response. I could hardly keep my eyes on him when I whispered, “What happened to her?”
He swallowed hard, keeping a straight face. “She was sick. She’d been sick her whole life.”
“Like cancer?”
“No,” he said gruffly. “Cystic Fibrosis. She’d fought it to the end. She didn’t tell me she’d worsened…She’d had a lung transplant less than a year ag
o, I thought…I thought she was okay.”
“When did she pass?”
He turned his back to me and grabbed at his sweater. He threw it on, answering numbly, “I buried her three days before I took this job.”
I was about to tell him I was sorry for his loss, but he said something about needing to go outside.
I knew he was looking for an excuse to flee.
I’d triggered him.
The second he’d thrown his boots on and exited the room, I buried my face in my hands, damning myself.
It’s not my fault. I tried to reason with myself. How was I supposed to know that happened to him?
But I’d known he lost someone dear. Even Roz and Tucker – two fucked up psychos – had offered their condolences.
I’d pried and I shouldn’t have.
His loss was so fresh. You wouldn’t have thought it by how composed he was. It made me realize Nixon wasn’t all that he appeared. He hid himself, buried the emotions deep, and yet when he was with me, I felt a spark in him.
Wrapping the blanket tightly around me, I got off the bed and slipped into the gumboots beside the door. I yanked the door open and trudged out into windy hell. I stomped through feet of snow, circling the cabin, searching for him.
I was already numb and shaking when I found Nixon on the ground, his back against the cabin wall, staring fixedly ahead. He wore a vacant expression, but his face was red and wet from the cold.
“Nixon,” I called out to him, standing over him. The wind howled viciously around us, swallowing up my sounds. “Nixon, get up!”
He looked up at me and frowned. “Get inside the cabin, Victoria,” he demanded.
I shook, hair whipping around my face and said contritely, “I’m sorry about Leona. I’m sorry I pried.”
He chuckled incredulously. “You should never pity a man like me, baby.”
“I’m not pitying you. I’m…sad for your loss.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged his shoulders, looking bitter now. “She died alone, Victoria. She could have wanted me there, and she didn’t. She hated me by the end.” What he said next was muffled by the wind, but I caught the movement of his lips. You will too.
I knelt to his level, already drenched in snow. I rested my hand along his cold cheek and said, “I wasn’t there for my mother. I treated her like crap for a few years. I was a teen with her head in the clouds, always dreaming of leaving, and I pushed her away. I blamed her for everything. She’d discipline me and I’d rebel, and we would always butt heads. I thought I knew everything. I thought…no matter where I’d be, I could always return to her. I abused her unconditional love, Nixon.” I swallowed hard, fighting back tears. “I understand regret. It takes a toll on you. It makes you grieve for the time wasted rather than the future that was robbed from them. Because, when you face death, you look inwards and accept that your time here is limited, and they did that. My mom and your sister, they already accepted what was going to happen to them. We didn’t, did we?” Leaning closer to him, I whispered, “I don’t think a sister could ever loathe her brother to her core. He’d have to have done irreparable damage, and I get the impression you’re just self-punishing, that…you took this job to avoid confronting her death, that…it’s easier for you to believe she didn’t want you there at the end. I think…on a deeper level, you know that’s not true.”
He watched me, his eyes red, his lips parted. His chest rose and fell rapidly as thoughts blazed behind his eyes. “Where did you come from?” he whispered finally, sounding confused. “It’s like you fell from heaven and into my lap.”
“I told you already,” I said, smiling sheepishly. “The bus driver drove on by.”
He didn’t respond. He just stared at me like I might disappear any second.
And then I saw something else in him.
Something that I’d spend too long recalling and picking apart.
In that moment, a fleeting look of fear crossed his face. It made my body tense because I suspected I knew what he was afraid of.
Nixon, in all his abhorrence, in all his greed, in all his raw pain and mourning and self-punishing, looked at me like I was his.
I felt grief for my former life. I felt sadness and horror and a pain I couldn’t describe.
At the same time, I felt…relief. I wouldn’t have to return to that gruelling life and pretend.
In some ways, I chose to be a captive.
I had relinquished control far too quickly.
I had given in to Nixon within days.
I’d known all along, didn’t I?
I cried in the backseat of the car, because I understood the truth I’d fought so hard to ignore.
I belonged to him.
In some ways, I was also the captor.
Because over time, his desperate need for me gave me power.
Power to defy and fight back.
Power to make him battle me, to prove me wrong, to view me as a challenge he had to conquer because he needed to know he was getting to me.
He needed to see me pine for him, and when I didn’t – when the power control flipped, when I fought back and spewed venom – he grew more desperate to tame me.
In the end, all he wanted was for me to want him back unequivocally.
My poor Nixon.
I’m sorry I chose to forget.
*
When we returned to the cabin, Nixon had been quiet that evening. He’d stared out the window every so often, his eyes scanning the clearing sky.
I fed the fire for him and we ate at the table, with me turning over the Queen piece he’d been carving out. He’d done a phenomenal job of it.
“Tell me about your life,” he said suddenly.
I wasn’t aware he’d been watching me this entire time. Taking slow bites, I said, “There’s really not much to tell.”
“What were you studying to become?”
“I was going to be a teacher, like Mom.” I shrugged. “Seemed like a way I could be close to her.”
His smile was warm. “And how was your social life? Did you go out a lot?”
“Not really. I didn’t have the money to live it up.” With another shrug, I added, “I deleted all my social media right before you guys took me. Funny that.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I felt like my mother wanted me to be more present with the world happening around me. Who knows, if I’d been buried in my phone, I might have been too distracted to want to document the explosion rather than run toward it like a fucking idiot that I am.”
His expression was serious. “Maybe life put you right where you needed to be.”
“In the arms of a psycho who dragged me into the back of a van?”
“Into my arms.”
I didn’t respond. I watched him as he seared me with that soul devouring look. Then he pulled away and got up, cleaning up the table, giving me distance to calm my heart down.
I didn’t know until a long time afterwards that Nixon was mining out information from me. That he was getting a better idea of who I was so he could disappear me.
He wouldn’t have needed to do much work.
I’d done a good enough job living a lonely life that no one would have noticed me gone.
Nixon…
He spent most of the night seated on the edge of the bed, watching Victoria sleep, naked, red and bruised and fucking beautiful.
She’d entered his life and in such a short amount of time he couldn’t remember what it felt like to be without her in it.
He wound up pacing, muttering under his breath, speaking to Leona, asking her what to do.
“Should I let her go?”
He might be able to cover her up. The men were dead, after all, but he didn’t know if there had been witnesses to see her being dragged into the car.
If so, he couldn’t let her go.
And suddenly he wished the whole world was after her, because that would give him no choice in the matter.
; “I don’t want to let her go,” he said to Leona. “I want to keep her.”
Could he do it?
He kept telling himself she was his, but could he physically take the girl for himself and live with it?
It didn’t take more than a few seconds to answer that question.
Yes.
Yes, he could do it.
Leona wouldn’t have been happy, but Leona should have loved a little before she went. She should have opened her heart up. If she did, she’d learn that one in love was capable of crossing endless boundaries.
He stopped to look down at Victoria, whispering, “Don’t hate me for what I’m about to do.”
But he already knew what Leona would say.
You’ll hate yourself.
He slid into bed and kissed Victoria awake. She was languid and receptive. She was also not her usual defiant self. He made her look him in the eyes as he fucked her, slowly, thoroughly.
She didn’t glare.
She didn’t fight it.
She held him to her, kissing him everywhere. Mouth and tongue and greedy grips.
When they came, they stared at each other, panting, and spent and it was just perfect.
He sensed her struggle, but he also saw the way her eyes lit up when he leaned in to kiss her, to caress her, to feel the skin he’d marked.
The feelings, they were there inside her, and he would unbury them. He would drag them to the surface, until she was so entwined in him she could never distinguish herself from him.
Nixon was bound to her. He would never be released from these chains, nor did he think he might ever want to be.
He only pleaded he was not alone in this.
41.
Nixon…
Nixon awoke to the sound of heavy pounding on the cabin door. He didn’t move straightaway. Victoria was dead asleep in his arms, so used to the loud sounds of howling wind, that this was nothing to her.
He’d known it was time. He’d seen the weather change. The wind had long ended, the blizzard had tapered off, and the sun had been out plenty.
It was time to face the inevitable, and that made him feel…tired to his bones. If it were up to him, he’d be locked in this cabin with her forever.