Andre gently took my shoulder in hand. “I know where she is, and I’ll go with whoever Detective Cortez sends. It’ll be sirens all the way, or I’ll throw the driver’s ass out and drive myself.” He was dead serious.
I hugged his waist then reversed into Tobin’s arms. “Thank you, Andre. I’ll stay Detective Cortez as long as I think you’re truly investigating instead of asking me questions that only mean something to you. The first time you ask when was the last time I saw Eva like I may be a suspect in her kidnapping, I’m out of here.” This wasn’t the time for mental games. Chad had too many of those in play at the moment, and I wasn’t tolerating those well.
“Have a seat, Dr. Johnston. Let’s go over that phone call word by word, sound by sound while my team finds your recording.”
I sat, but it wasn’t happily. My legs bounced, fingers twisting around themselves. Even Tobin’s nearness couldn’t help with the dread coming from not knowing of Malaysia’s true whereabouts. During the hoopla, the alarm company entered the fray. How they did their job with all the cops underfoot was a mystery to me. Eventually, Detective Cortez went away with little to no information that would help his case or mine. Malaysia arrived. I hugged the poor woman like I hadn’t seen her in ages.
When she got me untangled from her, she sat me down between her and Tobin. “What have you eaten, Cherise?”
I had to think about it, but it didn’t take long. “Nothing. I couldn’t eat when worried about you and Athena.” And Eva.
“We should get you home then. It’s my turn to feed us. How about Chinese?”
“I can’t eat, Malaysia. He has Eva. I think I may have motivated him to hurt her.” Guilt was eating at me something awful.
Malaysia took my hands in hers. “He’s already hurt her, Cherise. If he does anything else, it’s still his choice, his fault alone. We’ll do whatever we can to help her, but you have to keep your strength up. You’re bouncing like a baby on granddaddy’s knee. Too much adrenaline is in your system. When it clears out, you’ll crash. Your blood sugar is going to go with it. You need to eat if you don’t want to end up in a hospital.” She was correct on all fronts.
“I’ll get something when the guys putting in the alarms are gone.”
Tobin pressed his lips to my forehead. “I’ll make sure of that, Malaysia.”
She gave him no backtalk. Something was wrong. Too much was wrong. We talked about how to right it all in whispers until everyone started to clear out except a few cops. They would patrol the building. Some would go back to the station and babysit the brothering device connected to my office’s landline. It was tied to my cellphone. Any calls my office got, I got, and they listened in on it. As the minutes ticked by, I grew tired, not hungry, wanting to go home. I only had to say that once to Tobin. Malaysia opted to ride with Andre on her own. Something was definitely wrong—she was being too civil to everybody.
Tobin bundled me under one arm after I locked up. I was lagging so much he carried me partway to his truck. Someone had moved it from the center of the lane to a parking spot. I huddled in my seat, knees to my chest, all the way home with Tobin rubbing some part of me or another. The human connection kept me grounded in the here and now. It was not a pretty place anymore. At the gate, Tobin entered the code. Tires peeled in the distance then got closer way too fast. Next, we were becoming victims of whiplash from being hit from the back. Why did Andre rear-end us?
I attempted to sit up. “What the hell?”
Tobin’s hand lying across my spine pushed me back down into the fetal position. “Cherise, don’t get up! Stay down! It’s not Andre pushing us. Fucking Chad is pushing Andre into us!” No, not Chad. Not right now. I needed to recuperate from this morning’s fiasco. Early afternoon had brought another one.
Tobin was trying to steer one-handed and cover me with the other while we were being forced forward at a breakneck pace gathering speed. Swerving would mean hitting other cars or dogwalkers and joggers watching this disaster from the sidewalk.
“Use both hands, Tobin!” I screamed. “I’m fine!” Not really. The parked cars in the condo lot were starting to go by too fast for conditions in my limited view. Moving at all was too fast in the interim. We were up to five miles an hour, with another quarter mile of road to go. It ended at another section of condos. Mercifully, they were on a steeper hill than my home. The cars and light poles were not.
Mashing his brakes to the floor with both feet, Tobin stole a look at the rearview mirror. His tires were squealing and burning from the punishment. “The son of a bitch must’ve been parked at the house’s across the street from the gate.” This was the lesson Chad was teaching me, by trying to kill us all. “Cherise, take the wheel!”
“Are you crazy? I’m not a defensive driver!” I didn’t think Tobin was on drugs, but now, I was starting to wonder.
Tobin glanced down at me pleadingly. “Cherise, take the wheel and brakes before that motherfucking psycho makes us hit the cars coming up! I need to get out!” Indeed, he had smoked something today if he thought he’d abandon me in a truck being guided by somebody two vehicles back.
“No, dammit! I’m not letting you out, Tobin!”
“We are going to die in here, Cherise, if we hit something just right! Will that work better for you?” Not in the slightest.
“Fuck!” I unbuckled, crawling over his lap. “I swear if you die out there, when I die, my spirit will find your spirit and haunt yours for eternity.”
Fumbling beside him for something, Tobin moved his feet from the brakes. “I’m coming back to you if I have to bring Chad with me.”
“Please don’t bring him back,” I begged, feeling like a toddler trying to take her father’s place and wear his shoes. His seat was so far back I had space to stand up on the brakes. Bracing my weight on the steering wheel helped me to hold it steady and gave him room to slide from beneath me. He sprung out the truck like a rabbit with a gun in his hand.
I had to let that tremendously disturbing sight slide. Just holding the wheel straight was a tussle between machine and woman who didn’t have the muscles for the job. My adrenaline was pumping at a grueling rate as I fought to stop and steer the truck. Those two things should not ever be occurring at the same time. Gunshots discharged behind me. Brakes screamed. I ducked on instinct. The truck slammed to a stop, throwing me back into the driver’s seat.
Praise God, I had stopped moving. It got eerily quiet like on a normal day. A bellow full of rage packed in a single word, “Tires!” broke the silence as fast as it had arrived. I remember why the silence sounded so eerie; a few seconds ago, my world was nothing but car parts protesting about being mistreated. Tobin had gone to stop it.
“Oh, God, Tobin.” Malaysia and Andre quickly emerged in my mind. I pushed and kicked open the door, barely getting my feet on the ground before Malaysia charged at me.
“Cherise, get back in!” she shrieked as I glimpsed Tobin and Andre with guns drawn, chasing after Chad’s white truck reversing out the gate at full throttle. He had just whipped around to face the street when she collided with me in full frontal. We fell together half in, half out the truck under the steering wheel. There were squealing tires, and more shots fired, more bellows of rage in rapidly-fired words. I struggled under her to get up. With the advantage of being on top of me, she fought to keep me down.
“Dammit, Cherise! They’re unloading on a bulletproof truck. Bullets are ricocheting everywhere!” My neighbors were out being nosy as usual too.
“Malaysia, make them stop it! We can catch Chad another day!” It shouldn’t happen at the expense of innocent, nosy bystanders. After this, Malaysia and I were possibly going to be harshly evicted. I would worry about that another time. Too many people were at risk now.
Abruptly, the shooting, rageful cursing, and peeling tires decreased to nothing. Malaysia was whipped off me. I was in Tobin’s arms. So help me God, I would never leave them again.
Tobin
Two minutes earlier
Andre and I were of the same mind when I sprang out of the truck, witnessing him do the same a split second later. He let fly from his Desert Eagle. I couldn’t join him until I safely passed by Malaysia at the wheel of his truck. Chad stopped attacking and started backing up. On my way to the backside of Andre’s rental, I watched his rounds bounce off Chad’s windshield. The fucker was bulletproof, likely the windows too.
“Tires!” I roared. Andre redirected. We ran toward the truck, pumping the wheels full of lead together to no avail. Chad had spent major coins on rubber that didn’t go instantly flat when pierced. Dammit! There had to be a way to get to him. Then, he wheeled around to race up the street, giving us the perfect bullseye. “Doors!”
We emptied our weapons on the truck’s body to the tune of shells hitting the ground at a fast tempo. Bullets sparked off the body but didn’t penetrate. No matter where we aimed, we couldn’t hit Chad, who was hauling ass away. Andre leaned back and slung a curse up to the sky. An almost irrational urge to check on Cherise built in my chest. I couldn’t and wouldn’t defy it, whirling around to the scene of two pairs of legs sticking out of my truck. Cherise and Malaysia were on top of one another in the floorboard fussing.
Andre ran over with me to my truck. “Those two are weird.”
“They’re sisters of the heart,” I explained the best I could while picking up Malaysia by the hips. I passed her to Andre then liberated Cherise. She soared up my body, wrapping around me like a boa constrictor.
Sirens began blaring off in the distance. I groaned into her hair. We’d have to deal with the always-late authorities for the second time in hours when all I wanted to do was take her away from it all. Chad could not have her regardless of how much he coveted her.
“We meet again,” Detective Cortez announced himself.
Trembling and regarding him angrily, Cherise dropped down to her feet, linking our hands. “He’s broken the law this time, Detective. He almost killed us. What are you going to do about him now?”
“Catch him if your Marines don’t kill him first. I’m not going to tell you not to defend yourselves the next time he comes for you. But a good place to do it would be at your office. No collateral damage, you know what I mean?” He had just given us the go-ahead to take Chad out, but we didn’t need it. “In the meantime, let’s go inside and get all your accounts on what happened here while my men investigate.”
We were instructed to leave the trucks where they were. Cherise and Malaysia invited Cortez in, supplying us all with refreshments. After making sure each person’s thirst would be quenched, a still trembling Cherise sat down beside me and told her side of the story. Malaysia ordered food and waited until it was her turn to give testimony. Detective Cortez kept us for two hours. Long enough for Cherise to eat and calm down. She hardly did either. It was up to me to get her to relax in the middle of a shitstorm. I wished myself good luck with that.
Andre offered to take care of the trucks and find us other modes of transportation. After the detective left, I took Cherise upstairs to her room, where I hoped to get her to lay down and talk some if she felt like it. That wasn’t what she wanted in the least. The second I closed her bedroom door, she was on me. My hands snaked around her waist and held her in place as we took turns devouring each other’s mouth savagely.
Somewhere in between, “Fuck me, Tobin,” flowed from her softly.
All my good sense evacuated my mind as I palmed the sides of her face and drank her in. “Sweetheart, are you sure about this? We don’t have to do this now.” That wasn’t what my erection believed, but I wasn’t ruled by that part of me. Yet.
When the clothes came off, all bets were off. I had to know Cherise was in her right mind prior to me fucking her brains out.
Cherise
I was only going to explain this once to Tobin. “I’m having an after-disaster primal reaction, Tobin. It’s a way to cope with terrifying feelings of fear, vulnerability, and the end of the world, so to speak.”
My survival instincts were on overload. I was frenzied to connect with him. The primal side of me was petrified that this could be the last and only time to know him fully, biblically. End of the world sex happened a lot more commonly than people thought. Tobin should understand more than anyone as a Marine. Soldiers going to war would marry on a whim for the sake of continuing their bloodlines. An influx of babies always came nine months after a catastrophe that affected many.
As far as I knew, it was about to be the end of my world if Chad had anything to do with it. I was taking Tobin for myself before my adversary struck again. Realistically, neither of us knew how we’d come out in the next altercation. Chad was becoming ruthless in his pursuit. Refusing to let him dictate one more aspect of my world, I reversed from Tobin to tug my dress up my body. The dress went flying over by the chest of drawers near the bathroom’s entrance. His face exploded with shock, mouth falling open as if this was the first time he’d seen a woman in black lace bra and panties. Or, no one had come onto him.
Noticing he wasn’t removing his clothes too, my nerves start to lag, fingers stilling on the rim of my underwear. “Tobin, if you don’t want to do this, we don’t have to.”
He invaded my personal space, taking ahold of my jaw in both hands. “Oh no, don’t stop. I’m enjoying the hell out of this, but you can stop thinking this is your last hurrah and ultimate ‘fuck you’ to Chad before the final showdown. I’m going to make damn sure he isn’t the reason you leave this earth.” Damn, he knew me well.
I took his waist hostage in my hands. “So, you do understand what I’m feeling?”
“Crystal-clear on it,” he endorsed. “I wanted to make sure you’re conscious of what you’re doing.”
“I know. I knew last night. I knew the day before. I think I knew the night we met.”
He coasted his lips over mine teasingly, stealing my lungs’ ability to function. “I know that I knew the night we met, Cherise, that you should be mine. That moment has come.”
His lips reached for mine. I reached for his pants. We multitasked, undressing swiftly and tasting one another thoroughly, frantically. Naked and on the bed with him layered over me, I skimmed my fingertips along the V above his hips, exploring his body. His abs contracted under my thumbs. His hips rolled. The tip of his dick raided the slit of my womanhood. He stared down into my eyes, a wealth of emotions in his.
“Damn, you are beautiful!” as he slammed inside me.
“Fuck yes!” I panted, my heart skipping several beats. Rough was what I needed to balance the animalistic state of mind I had. If I wasn’t half in love with him, I was now. Palming the sides of his face, I fought back emotions threatening to overwhelm me. “This is what I’ve been waiting for.”
His mouth was on mine again as his thick shaft rampaged in and out me. It filled me up from end to end, attacking erogenous zones within that no one else had breached. He was too much. Tidal waves of extremely violent sensations roiled through me, bowling me over. I wasn’t sure if there was any coming back from that type of devastation. My limbs started to seize up, heart stopping when he bottomed out inside me.
“Fuuuuuck, that’s deep, Tobin!” I yelled, back bowing off the bed.
Reaching for something, anything to hold onto, I dug my nails in his back as something sidewinded through me, looping in my center like a snake. I exhaled through my mouth, breath hot as lava on my lips. I thrashed beneath him, trying to get used to his size and whatever was collecting in my core. Wondering if there was a way to outlive his lovemaking, I didn’t think so.
Neck corded as if in pain and sweat forming along his brow, he grunted, “Your body is like a glove heated up in hell. If you keep moving like that, I’m going to lose it and fuck you at warp speed.”
I couldn’t keep still. The tempo his hips were set at was ruining me. Whether he was withdrawing or pushing in, he hit hypersensitive nerve-endings, running my mind ragged.
Tobin
Fisting my hair with bo
th hands, she convulsed and yelled out, “I’m coming!”
I figured as much when she almost snatched me bald. Bending back at the neck, she chanted my name. I hung on by a thread, suffering through the most unreal tension growing in my middle and spreading throughout my body. She started topping from the bottom, her pace twice as fast as mine. Nothing was hotter. Nothing was going to drive me more insane. Grinding my teeth, I battled the yearning to hammer her into the bed.
“Harder, baby,” she demanded.
The bestial side of me unleashed. “Dammit, Cherise!” I couldn’t have stopped from fucking her fast, furious, and deep if I tried. Flesh clapped together like music. Her channel constricted around me then released only to do it repeatedly, milking me. She flung herself down my dick, engaging in hard thrust for hard thrust, my equal. I couldn’t get enough of it. Losing control for a split second, I pumped into her harder, faster. She gasped. I stilled, afraid I’d hurt her.
“Don’t stop, Tobin!” She locked her knees between our bodies, nails scoring my back.
Up and down, in and out, I pounded into her like a man possessed until something violent twisted in my abdomen then detonated. Off I went into the clouds, like a missile too fast and too far. My head buzzed, blood rushed, and more cum than any man had the right to expel blasted into her.
“MINE!” I howled and shook like a schoolgirl. This woman owned me.
Air sawing in and out my lungs, I suckled a dark-nipple into my mouth as I surfed currents of excruciating pleasure. Each wave was equal to an earthquake unmeasurable on the Richter scale. Finally, the seismic activity ebbed to just tremors. I collapsed on her. She rolled us, taking the top. We both were sweaty. I was too thin-skinned to be handled. She kept rocking, impaling herself on my cock. Her back and forth pattern was broken up by the sporadic circle of her hips. When her pussy spasmed around me, I cursed her heat and tightness on my sensitive erection, which refused to die.
I suffered beautifully as she rode herself to another climax, taking me with her. The storm stopped tearing through us at the same time. She fell on my chest that was laboring to take in air. Cherise wasn’t doing so well with breathing, either. This was the wrong time to ask about birth control.
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