She took the key from me, and without saying a word, went to her room.

"Lock the door behind you," I called, but the door shut in my face.

I exhaled a long sigh and let myself into the room next door. I'd parked the car to one side, hoping it wouldn't be spotted from the road-not that anyone was likely to drive by.

In the bathroom, I carefully unstrapped the tape and gauze from around the wound in my arm, having to use my teeth in certain places. I winced at the sight of the wound. It was deep, but didn't look infected. The knife she'd used must have been clean, which was a small mercy. I repeated the process with my thigh. The cut looked deeper, but again I couldn't see any sign of infection. Both wounds could have done with some st.i.tches, but they were healing now. It didn't matter. It wasn't as though a few more scars would make any difference.

Standing naked, I heard a sound. From the other side of the wall came a thunder of water. Vee must have shared the same thought I had, and decided to take a shower.

I turned on my shower and stepped beneath the water.

As the water hit my naked shoulders, I couldn't help but think about Vee next door, only a thin dividing wall between us. Was she still in the shower, washing away the grime from the day, and my dried s.e.m.e.n from between her thighs?

The thought made my c.o.c.k twitch and stiffen.

I tried to ignore it, but when I helped myself to some of the cheap shower gel the motel provided and began to soap myself, my hand automatically went down, foaming suds up in my pubic hair and then running the foam down the length of my c.o.c.k and back again. I grew harder under my administrations, the thought of Vee never far from my mind. I put my forearm of my free hand up against the tiled wall to support myself, my forehead rested right above it as my hand worked hard. The muscles in my bicep and forearm bunched, my a.s.s taut, as I worked the soap up and down my hard c.o.c.k. Tingling condensed from my b.a.l.l.s, right down to my a.s.shole. All I could see was Vee in the shower, naked, soap and water coursing down her beautiful body. I imagined her lifting her face to the water, her hands running over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then down, between her thighs. Was she thinking of me, too? Could she hear me in here? Did she have any idea of what I was doing? Was she even doing the same?

I didn't think I'd ever w.a.n.ked to the idea of a real woman before. Normally, I'd watch p.o.r.n or just think about f.u.c.king a nice tight p.u.s.s.y, or shoving my c.o.c.k between a big pair of t.i.ts until I got off. The idea of my fantasy now being an actual person who was right next door was alien to me, and I didn't know how it made me feel. I couldn't process, I only wanted to reach the climax, and only thoughts of Vee would allow me to do that. I'd never seen her naked, but my imagination was surprisingly fertile on that topic.

I remembered how she'd felt when I'd f.u.c.ked her against the hood of the truck, how tight and hot she'd been clamped around my c.o.c.k. I brought back to mind her pa.s.sion, her urgency as she'd kissed me. It was as though she'd been hungry for me, and if she hadn't had me, she would have starved.

The memory of the regret I'd seen in her eyes threatened to encroach, so I switched the scene in my head and imagined her on her knees before me instead. I pictured her looking up at me with those big dark eyes, and I reached out and took her silky hair in a ponytail, wrapping it around my fist and pulling tight to have total control. In my mind, instead of my fist wrapped around my d.i.c.k, I was pushing the purple head of my c.o.c.k between her perfect lips, and driving deeper, forging to the back of her throat. In my imagination, she dealt with my girth and length perfectly, and I pulled out and thrust again.

Faster and faster, my hand circled my d.i.c.k, my a.s.s bunched, as I leaned against the tiled walls of the shower. The tension built like a tightly wound spring, drawing my b.a.l.l.s up into my body, until I finally exploded.

I came hard, white ribbons of c.u.m jetting onto the tiles. One spurt, then another, and another.

The heady bliss faded as I rested, panting, against the wall. I straightened back up and washed the final residues of s.e.m.e.n from the walls. Climbing out of the shower, I wrapped the threadbare towel around my waist. I refused to feel guilty about what I'd done.

Though I would have liked to have slept naked, I pulled my pants back on, and threw my shirt over my shoulders, leaving it undone. I wanted to be prepared in case I needed to move quickly, and anyway, I didn't let people see me even partially naked.

I lay back on the single bed, its twin beside me, my arm across my eyes.

A knock came at the door and I sat up, quickly doing up the b.u.t.tons of my shirt. I got to my feet to answer the door. There was only one person it could be.

I swung the door open and Vee stepped into the room.

My heart pounded.

"Do you mind if I stay in here with you?" she asked. Her hair was damp from the shower and twisted up into a knot at the top of her head, loose tendrils hanging down around her cheeks and shoulders. Her skin free from makeup, and utterly flawless, her body barely hidden in the jeans and sleeveless t-shirt. From where I was sitting, I didn't think she was wearing a bra, and my mind immediately went to wondering if she'd bothered putting her dirty panties back on.

No, I had to behave. I had to remember the regret I'd seen in her eyes after we'd f.u.c.ked up against the side of the truck in the parking lot. She was hurt and vulnerable, even if she always pretended she wasn't, and I shouldn't take advantage of that. The low throb in my c.o.c.k told me otherwise, blood engorging the area so I had to adjust my position for her not to notice.

Unaware of my physical struggle. She sighed and said 'thanks' and then crossed the room and threw herself down on the single bed beside mine. I walked over and lay back down on the bed I'd just vacated. There was barely a foot of s.p.a.ce between us, only a small shelf acting as a bedside table separating the two beds.

She twisted to her side to face me and placed her hand under her cheek as a pillow. "I didn't want to be on my own."

I couldn't bring myself to admit to her that I didn't either.

Chapter Twenty-three.

V.

"Tell me about your first time," he said as we lay there, waiting for sleep to claim us.

I looked to him, propped myself up on my elbow, and lifted my eyebrows. "Seriously? It was a quick fumble in the dark with some boy from my neighborhood whose name I barely remember. Is that what you want to hear? It's not exactly some hot tale of kissing my girlfriends, if that's what you'd been hoping to get off on."

"I wasn't talking about your first time having s.e.x, Vee, though I do like the image of you making out with another girl. No, I meant the first time you killed someone."

My body went rigid and I looked away. "I don't want to talk about that."

"Why? Do you feel guilty?"

"Not at all. He had it coming."

"So why won't you talk about it?"

"Because the reason it happened wasn't about me. I did it for someone else. It isn't my story to tell."

"Okay, so just tell me how you felt when it was done."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Do you like talking about death?"

"Not the death itself. But I find it incredibly s.e.xy that you're someone willing to go to such extremes for someone you love."

There was always such a steeliness behind his blue eyes, a hardness. I supposed I shouldn't expect anything else from a killer. Did people see the same thing in me? Was that why I never had any friends, and most people had the good sense to give me a wide berth? I guessed it was.

"And how did it make me feel?" I took a breath. "Strong, fierce, brave, ruthless. Self-righteous and powerful."

"So you understand why people get addicted to killing?"

But I shook my head. "That was only at first. Later, when all the adrenaline had worn off, I felt sick. I replayed it over and over again, how the gun had bucked in my hand when it went off, how he'd had this confusion in his eyes before he fell. The blood smeared across the ground. I replayed it so many time over the next few weeks that I thought I was going crazy, caught in some kind of time loop where I couldn't get my brain to focus on anything else."

"But yet you did it again."

I looked up at him sharply, locking his eyes with mine. "That was different. I was forced to do that."

His eyebrows lifted. "Forced?"

"Yes, forced. Why do you think I went to the police? I couldn't take it anymore. I knew I couldn't live with my father after he'd put us through that. He was trying to get me to prove my loyalty to him, but all it did was push me even further away."

"That's not what your father is saying."

"f.u.c.k him. He's a liar and a murderer."

"Couldn't the same be said about you?"

I pushed myself upright on the bed, anger raging through me. "Are you saying you believe my father more than you believe me?"

Frustratingly, he gave a shrug. "I don't know. I've only heard one side of the story. Your father told me he wanted you dead, not only because you are going to testify against him, but because you killed your mother and stole his only other daughter away. He said you betrayed the whole family. He said you hated him enough to want to take away the two things in his life most precious to him. You went to the cops for protection and asked them to hide you and your sister in return for information about him that would get him put away for a very long time."

I stared at X in amazement, my mouth hanging open. I could barely believe the audacity of the man who called himself my father. To create an image of me that was so sick and pa.s.s it off as the truth. That man lied for a living; no wonder he got people to believe him. How many others thought that was the truth about what happened? There were the other men in the room, who knew what really happened, but they would do and say whatever Mickey Five Fingers told them.

"That isn't what happened at all," I managed to say. "Yes, I went to the police and told them I would spill my guts about everything I'd ever known about his business, and the next thing I know, I've got U.S. Marshals at my front door, telling us to pack a bag 'cause we're leaving then and there. But I didn't kill my mom to get back at him. He found out she'd been having an affair for the past two years, and it was an affair I knew about. The guy my mom had been seeing spilled his guts right before my dad killed him, and told him that I knew about the affair. In my father's eyes, this betrayal was almost as bad as the fact my mom had been cheating on him. He said I was no longer loyal to him, and I needed to prove my loyalty. He took me and my mom and my sister into this big warehouse. My mom and my sister were crying. He had a couple of his big sidekicks training guns on us and said they'd shoot us all if we tried anything." My voice broke and I swallowed back emotion as I relieved the horrifying events. "He gave me a choice." My voice sounded smaller now. "I could shoot my mom, or my sister. If I chose to kill neither of them, then we would all die. He knew me and my sister didn't get on so great, but I think deep down he knew I would never choose her. He loved her, though he had a sick way of showing it. But my mom knew she'd done wrong. She'd put us all in a terrible position by betraying my dad, and it was never going to end well. I loved her. I didn't want her to die. But I also knew that she wouldn't want me to choose Nickie either. She would want to die before either of her children did. They would have shot us all. So I had no choice. I killed my own mom."

I paused, gathering myself together before I spoke again.

"When it was done, he pulled me into a hug and clapped me on the back, said he knew I'd see sense. I'd been splattered with my own mother's blood, while my sister was wailing over her dead body, and would hate me forever, and he actually hugged me. He told me he trusted me again, but I hated him. I hated him with a fury I'd never felt before. Looking back, I'm amazed I didn't turn that gun on him there and then. I wanted to, believe me, I did, but it was only because I knew both Nickie and I would end up dead in a revenge killing that I managed to control myself. The first moment I got, where I could be sure I wasn't being watched, I went to the cops and told them everything I knew, and that I was willing to testify if they arrested him."

"It's always been about protecting her, hasn't it?" X said softly. "Both times you've killed has been because you were protecting her, and yet she never thanks you for it."

"I don't do it for the thanks. I know I'll never get it. All I want is to see her alive."

He stared at me, his gaze holding mine, as though he was reading every inch of what made me who I was written across my face, then he reached out and grabbed the front of my t-shirt in his fist. With a forceful yank, he pulled me toward him, our bodies colliding on his narrow bed. His lips found mine, his kiss both soft and forceful, his tongue pushing into my mouth, tracking mine down. Then his hand left the top of my t-shirt and reached down to push under it instead, his fingers searching for my breast. His hand weighed the curve of my breast and then his fingers rolled and pinched my nipple.

We became a sudden flurry of movement, a crazed urgency. I didn't allow myself to think any further; I'd done enough thinking. My hands pushed up inside his shirt, feeling his hot, smooth skin. Then my fingers ran over a ridge, and another softer circle, his skin peppered with them.

I pulled away, "What the...?"

He dragged me back, a dark desire in his eyes. "Not yet," he whispered against my mouth. "I'll tell you, but not yet."

I hadn't seen him, but to me it felt like his body was covered in blemishes. Part of me wanted to press him on the topic, but the other, more primal part only wanted to consume him.

I was mindful of the injury in his arm and thigh, both of which I had given him. He was favoring his injured side, understandably, but it didn't seem to slow him down. His kiss melted me, and his caress on my breast sent electric tingles shooting right down between my thighs. Too much time had pa.s.sed since I'd had someone kiss and touch me like this-the time before I'd met X had been with a one night stand whose name I didn't even remember-and even though I knew this was wrong, my body kept telling me it was oh-so-right.

We tumbled to his bed together, a mess of limbs and hands and mouths. X yanked my t-shirt up and over my head and then fell to my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I was on my back, him hovering over me. My nipples were already puckered, and he bent his head to draw one into his mouth. His tongue laved the hardened nub, making me squirm, and then his teeth closed gently around the peak. My hips bucked, my nipple seeming to have direct contact with my p.u.s.s.y, and I wanted more. My fingers laced through his hair, pulling him closer to me, as though I wanted him to take my entire breast into his mouth and devour me.

But instead his mouth left my nipple and tracked a cool trail down across my stomach and to the waistband of my jeans. He was quick to pop the b.u.t.ton and pull down the zipper, then yanked the jeans from my hips. I wasn't wearing any underwear.

He didn't once pause to check if it was what I wanted. He was the sort of man who saw what he wanted and took it. That was fine by me. I was exactly the same.

He used his knees to shove my legs apart, opening me up to him as he settled between them. Like a man starving, he pushed his face between my thighs, his hot breath on my sensitive skin. His fingers parted me, and then his tongue was on my slit, tracing a long line up from my perineum, across my opening and up to my c.l.i.t, where he swirled a circle and then headed back down.

I couldn't help the little 'ah' of pleasure that escaped my throat, and my hips lifted again, seeking more. He licked me like that again, long and slow, driving me crazy, and then pushed a finger inside me. My body reacted to the penetration instantly, wetness flooding my channel and coating his digit. He pumped into me a couple of times and then added a second finger, and then a third, stretching me open. His mouth remained on my p.u.s.s.y, his tongue flicking over my c.l.i.t in little laps. I felt like I was captured by him, holding my body, mind, and this climb toward the peak of pleasure in his sole grasp.

I was close to coming, reaching for it now. I didn't want to let go of the high I was on, but the desire to topple from the cliff's edge gripped me. His teeth grazed against my c.l.i.t, making me squeal, and then he did something with his fingers, curled them inward as he stroked, which pushed me over the edge. My o.r.g.a.s.m hit me hard and fast, every muscle taut as the waves shuddered through me again and again, leaving me gasping.

He looked up from between my thighs, his blue eyes smiling with smug satisfaction.

I reached for him. "Now it's your turn."

I wanted him naked, too, not only because I was curious as to what he was hiding under his shirt, but also because I wanted to feel skin against skin. But he didn't let me touch him, and instead his hands went to his own waistband. The size and shape of his erection pressed against the inside of the material, making me eager for what was in store.

He freed himself, his erection springing out into his hand, long and thick. His fist closed around it, and I watched slack-lipped as he pumped his hand up and down the shaft, his eyes never leaving me. I reached for him again, but he batted my hand away with his free one.

"No," he said. He was still wearing his shirt, his pants only slightly hung from his hips. "Turn over."

"I want-"

But he didn't let me speak any further. He reached down and grabbed my thighs and yanked me over, so I flipped onto my front. Then his fingers closed roughly over my hips and he pulled me up so I was on all fours.

His knees pushed between mine again, and then the solid weight of his c.o.c.k thudded on my a.s.s, and I caught my breath. My heart was racing, partly from my recent o.r.g.a.s.m, but also in antic.i.p.ation of what was to come. I could smell s.e.x on the air, that slightly salty musk, a combination of us both, and it made my mouth water.

He took no prisoners, grabbing my hips, his c.o.c.k nudging my entrance. He felt so big and hard, but I was wet and ready for him. With a surge of his hips, he thrust b.a.l.l.s-deep, giving a grunt of satisfaction as he did so.

His movements grew faster, his hips pistoning as he slammed into me. Flesh smacked against flesh. He reached beneath my body and between my thighs to strum my c.l.i.t at a speed that matched his own. The low ache in my belly began to build, and I experienced that tightening. My inner muscles gripped him, and his hand on my hip dug into my skin. I dropped down onto my elbows, my a.s.s in the air. My b.r.e.a.s.t.s crushed against the bed. I glanced back over my shoulder to see his face tense and almost angry looking with concentration. I wished he were naked so I could see the taut muscles of his body as he f.u.c.ked me.

"Ah, f.u.c.k ... Jesus ..." he moaned as he slammed me harder, and then pulled out and slammed into me again. He held himself deep, and I felt him jerk inside me.

My o.r.g.a.s.m hit, my p.u.s.s.y pulsating around him, as though milking him for more c.u.m, even though he'd already shot his load inside of me. It shuddered through me, sparking all my nerve endings with little shocks that had my eyes rolling. I squeezed my inner muscles together, wanting to eke that last little bit of pleasure from the act, holding him tighter.

But he pulled out of me and we fell together in a tangled heap, me naked, him still fully dressed. I felt exposed, and I wasn't the kind of woman who automatically wanted to snuggle after s.e.x, even though X tried to pull me into him. I gently unraveled myself from his hold and grabbed my clothes, ignoring the trickle of him down the inside of my thighs, and headed to the bathroom.

I washed up and then dressed. Taking a deep breath, I headed back out into the bedroom to find X sitting up in bed, his gaze focused solely on me.

"Vee ..." he said, and I knew what he was trying to ask me before he'd even said it.

"It's fine," I replied. "We're fine. I just need to be ready, you know, in case something happens and we need to move quickly."

He gave me a smile, but I saw sadness in his eyes. "No time for romance in our world," he replied.

I climbed onto the single bed beside him, not bothering to pull the bedcovers over my body, and turned away from him to face the wall. "No, I guess not."

I heard him sigh and roll over as well.

It wasn't that there wasn't time for romance; it was more that we didn't have the luxury of forming those kinds of attachments. s.e.x was s.e.x, and it didn't need to come with any kind of emotional ties.

I'd turned away because I knew I couldn't look at him or my heart would slowly start to fall, and once it started falling, it would be impossible to stop.

Chapter Twenty-four.