Fifteen
Rubin
“We have most of the block clean,” Besnik said a few hours later.
“Good, I’ll come take a look,” I responded, but I was barely paying attention to him.
The men had done a decent job of cleaning up some of the mess, and after I made an example of Davis, there had been no other issues. I didn’t expect any, though I would keep my eyes open.
I’d known I’d have to kill at least one of them, potentially more, but I wouldn’t be hasty.
Violence was a tool like everything else.
Deployed too soon, it would backfire. Deployed too late would be, well, too late.
Davis had given me the perfect opportunity, and I should have been as pleased as I could be given the circumstances.
But I was preoccupied with Simone. As aware as I’d been of Davis, I’d been watching her response.
She hadn’t flinched at Davis’s words or my violence.
She’d stepped over the bloody can of peaches and headed to the kitchen without looking back.
She was just doing as she’d been told, exactly like I wanted her to.
Her lack of reaction was simply a part of what had made her good at her job.
Still…I wondered what was behind that and made it an entire thirty-five minutes before going to her in the kitchen.
She’d found a cheap brown clipboard somewhere and held it in her grasp, staring intently at the metal shelves. She was completely preoccupied, and I got to watch her for a moment without her knowing.
She looked engaged, satisfied, looked like the woman I’d been fascinated with for years—and the one who had betrayed me.
I would never say that Simone was nervous.
Not exactly. But with every second, I could feel her calculation.
I hadn’t thought it was cunning at first. Just figured she was unfamiliar with me and my world.
That calculation was smart and had served her well, given that she had managed to come from where she’d come from and make it out relatively unscathed.
Yet another way she had proven me a fool. Because she was calculating, had been all the time, and I had missed it.
But at this moment, she wasn’t calculating. Something that she proved when she looked over at me and smiled. It was so fucking luminous, it made my chest ache. She tapped the cheap pen with a clear barrel against the clipboard.
“I made good progress here. I’m almost done with my count, and noted which items are close to expiration, though I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.
” She chuckled a little bit at her own joke and then continued to prattle on, her brow furrowed in thought.
“This should be much better stocked. I’d heard on the news that the city was cutting back on bulk orders to save a little bit of money, but I’d hoped those changes hadn’t taken effect.
But apparently they have, so based on a quick calculation at subsistence-level calorie intake, we have enough for two weeks.
A little longer if we stretched it but not that much.
We’ll need to be mindful of what goes when because some of this stuff isn’t gonna last. But I started a tally and have started to mock up a quick plan on deployment.
I hope you like honey buns.” She smiled and tapped the pen against her lip like she’d done all the years I’d known her.
Thankfully, she didn’t wrap her full lips around the cap like she’d sometimes done when she was deep in thought or looking for a way to torture me.
“There’s an infirmary here, right?” she said with a chuckle, looking down at her clipboard. “Of course there is. After I finish here, I’ll go find it and take a look there and see what else there might be.”
She looked up at me, her lips tilted in a smile.
“You seem very excited about canned goods, Simone,” I said.
She still wore that soft smile and every second that I stared at it, I felt my rage increase.
I had split Davis’s head open with a can of peaches.
And Simone didn’t even blink. She didn’t cry.
She didn’t look shocked. She just talked to me about calorie intake and inventory like it was nothing.
It was that pretend innocence, that…acceptance that had gotten me before, and even now, she continued to perform it.
“Come over here, Simone,” I bit through clenched teeth.
That smile, that one that was torture, dropped. Her eyes narrowed slightly, then flashed with anger, and she covered it over quickly like she did everything else, pushing it back so I wouldn’t see. She was preparing to handle me. It set my teeth on edge.
She was quiet for a moment, seeming to consider. Something was on the tip of her tongue, but she thought the better of it. She walked toward me.
“You have a problem with me. I get that, but can we talk like rational adults? You don’t have to—”
She stopped at my glare. “I don’t want to talk, Simone. I want to fuck.”
Her eyes widened and then went to the open door that led to the cafeteria.
For a split second, her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed hot, but then she put that reasonable mask back on, the one that had me in the state I was in as it was.
“Do you think this is the time and place for that, Rubin?” she asked.
She was trying to play trusted advisor and keep distance from me.
That wouldn’t do.
“Yes, and you do too. Come here.”
“God, you’re so ridiculous,” she muttered. But she walked toward me, her chest heaving with each heavy breath, her body practically vibrating with want. It had been mere hours since I’d been inside her, but if anything, I wanted her more now than I had then.
She stopped in front of me, and I lifted my hand and let it hang there, fingertips barely grazing her skin. I stared at the faint throb of her pulse at her neck, and then pressed my fingers there, the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of her heart the most alive thing I’d ever felt.
A thud that beat in time with my own.
She lowered her lids and then looked up at me shyly. Her soft eyes offered me everything, and I wondered if she knew that.
You fucking fool.
I curled my fingers at the thought.
Of course she knew.
She’d used those big brown eyes, that soft smile, she’d used her—the unremarkable Simone she pretended to be—to get under my skin, only to show me the extraordinary woman I craved and denied myself, only to betray me and prove that I was a fool.
I used my body to trap her against the wall. Pressed my thumb against her lips for a split second before I pulled her pants down and loosened my own.
I didn’t test her readiness and instead pushed inside her with one unrelenting stroke. She was soaked, her cream coating my shaft and her wet tight heat making my legs buckle.
She cried out when I rocked my hips and I chuckled then licked the shell of her ear before I whispered, “You want them to hear me fucking you?”
Her pussy clenched, and she let out a little moan and I smiled against her ear. “You like that? Too bad. Because you’re mine and I don’t share. No one touches you. No one even thinks about you but me.”
I drove in hard, no finesse, and certainly no mercy.
Just my hips driving up into her over and over, slamming her back against the concrete hard enough to rattle the shelf beside us, the heavy cans sliding on the metal.
She took every stroke and dug her nails into my shoulders and pulled me closer. Her tits were crushed against my chest.
The second time I’d fucked her and I hadn’t even seen a peek of those heavy mounds I’d fantasized about for years.
How many times had I dreamed of Simone beneath me, licking the tip of my cock as I fucked those gorgeous tits?
I buried myself deeper and pulled back just enough to pop open the buttons on her shirt.
I wanted to rip it but refused to let her see me lose control.
I would see her, though. Looked down at the heavy flesh spilling out of her cheap white bra, her brown skin covered with a faint sheen of sweat.
She harshed out a breath, and I caught a hint of the darker skin of her nipples.
My mouth watered with the need to taste, and that want again made me pull back.
I speared her with three quick thrusts, and she melted against me, her pussy clamping down and fluttering around me, trying to milk me.
Fuck.
I slammed my fist against the wall and Simone’s eyes flew open and her pussy clamped down harder, threatening to pull me over the edge.
Then she huffed out a low moan, her breath warm against my ear as her hands gripped my shoulders.
I snaked my hand under her ass and pulled her closer, every cell of my body wanting to let go and fill her with cum.
No.
I dragged myself out of her wet, gripping heat, fisted her hair, and pushed her to her knees.
She went without a word, and looked up at me with needy eyes.
I dragged my cock across her lips, and she opened for me.
I shot the first spurt of cum before I was fully in her mouth.
She traced her tongue down my shaft then clamped her lips around me.
Her eyes were on me as I emptied myself down her throat.
It took me longer than it should have to notice the hand she’d buried between her thighs, her nimble fingers working her clit as she swallowed my cum. Her lips pursed around the last spurt and on a long moan, she came, her body shaking with the intensity of it.
I stayed in her mouth as long as I could, then made quick work of adjusting my clothing. I reached down to help her, but pulled back at the last second and watched her impassively.
She wasn’t wearing the same soft little smile anymore. There was a flush under her dark skin, her eyes wide with satisfaction and awe.
Longing too. I could see her desire as clearly as I would have heard her words. Her eyes asked, begged, me to kiss her. They pleaded for the tenderness that she didn’t deserve.
I stared at her, letting the unspoken question hang.
Seeing the exact moment she realized her pleas would go unanswered.
Waited for happiness when the flash of pain crossed her face.
She circled her lips into an O about to speak. Then she looked at my face, one that was expressionless if she were lucky, menacing if she wasn’t. She lowered her lids and stood up taller, trying to pretend I hadn’t seen the split second of sadness that had marred her features.
But I had seen it.
Had anticipated it.
The happiness didn’t come.