Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Colm
“That was phenomenal,” he says, as if he hasn’t been babbling about it since we left Trigger’s. “Seriously. They swallowed those bodies like I can swallow a cock. Best thing that’s happened to me all week.”
He pauses to look at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Well,” he adds. “Maybe the second-best thing. Snake food or your dick? It’s a tossup. I can’t decide.”
“How flattering,” I mutter, tightening and relaxing my grip on the steering wheel as I focus on the road.
The bodies are gone, at least. And it wasn’t not funny watching Trigger and Lucky fish them out of the water. Especially when Lucky slipped, making a splash that attracted the gators’ attention, then fucking shrieked as they came a little closer.
I’ve definitely never seen Trigger laugh, but he came damn close. I did laugh. Watching Lucky flailing and flapping in the water as the biggest gator decided it was hungry after all and snatched the body out of his hands is a memory I’ll cherish for a while.
That left us with only two to dispose of—one wet, one dry but blood-covered.
We threw one to each python, both of them in separate oversized enclosures, and then waited patiently on the other side of the fence to see if they would take to it.
Trigger said we were lucky it’s feeding day for them, and we came just in time.
Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait forever.
I didn’t really have to wait at all, but by that point, I wanted to see it through.
It was… grotesque. I have a strong stomach, but watching those things unhinge their jaws and slowly start digesting the bodies got to me a little.
I found myself watching Fallow instead, who was taking in the whole scene with an almost religious level of rapture.
“Please tell me wherever we’re going next is going to be as much fun as that,” Fallow says, still thrumming with energy.
“What else could eat a human? Piranhas? You should make Trigger start raising piranhas. You can eat piranhas, too, so if you keep feeding them people before you eat them, it could be this weird, niche form of pseudo-cannibalism. Cannibalism lite. That would be pretty sweet.”
He only stops talking when he can feel the force of my gaze boring into the side of his face, when I should be watching the road instead. I think my mouth might be hanging open a little.
How? How am I so attracted to this walking, talking red flag of a human being?
He seems to parse my bewildered expression before giving me this half-smirk that’s unacceptably sexy.
“I’m kidding,” he says, his voice practically a purr.
Then he sinks down a little lower and rubs his thigh—salaciously, like he’s thinking about going for his dick, making mine immediately perk up in response—before adding, “Well, mostly kidding,” as if I haven’t already forgotten what we were talking about.
The silence sits heavy between us this time, and it doesn’t help that Fallow leaves one hand resting gently over his dick, right where I can see it.
“Where to now, boss?”
As soon as he breaks the silence, I realize I was looking at him more than the road, and my eyes snap back forward.
“More work? Or more werk?”
“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” I say, but that only makes him laugh.
“At least I try. Better than looking placid all the time. You’re like a loaf of American white bread. Bland, tasteless, and secretly sweet in a way you don’t really want.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I’m not yelling, but I can feel my temper being pushed to its edge.
“Whatever you want it to mean.”
There’s more silence as I try to figure out why he’s so good at getting under my skin, before I give up and change the topic instead.
“We’re going to a strip club.”
“Oh la la,” Fallow says, but I cut him off before he can spew more bullshit.
“It’s technically our territory, but the Aryans have been making a play for it. I’m trying to show up there in person as much as possible to remind them who they belong to.”
“That doesn’t sound like human trafficking at all,” he says with a hum, looking out the window, a hard edge to his expression.
I try not to sigh with exasperation for the thousandth time today.
“It’s not, actually. We run a clean place.
We have fucking standards, which means we run drugs and guns, and nothing else.
Well, technically also brothels, but all our girls are there by choice and they’re all fucking adults.
That’s where the line is drawn. Unlike the Aryans, who really do use this shit as a front for human trafficking. ”
Fallow is looking at me again, but the hardness to his expression hasn’t changed.
“Do you want a prize for being the most moral criminal or something? You know my father would murder you if he caught you trafficking, anyway.”
“As if he’s not going to kill me anyway. You’ll make sure of that. I might as well stick to my own ethics in the meantime.”
His eyes narrow, but he stays silent for once.
Minutes pass. Then tens of minutes. The strip club is a ways out of town behind a truck stop on the interstate, so it’s a lot of flat, empty landscape and wide empty roads, nothing to distract me from my enigmatic passenger.
“Did you know that alligators’ dicks are always erect?”
His voice finally splits the tension, and I’m so shocked at my own palpable relief that I barely hear what he said at first.
“What?”
“Their dicks. They’re always hard. They just sit there inside their bodies and pop out when they need them, then get sucked back in.”
He’s not looking at me, but I don’t need to see his face to know that he’s not teasing me anymore. It seems to be his favorite pastime. I make a point of not looking at him either.
“Can you imagine having a permanent hard-on?” He says, his voice getting a little lower and more seductive. “I’d go completely mad. No wonder they’re so aggressive.”
“Are you telling me your constant horniness doesn’t drive your bloodlust? Because I’ve seen you killing, and it’s pretty fucking sexual, if you ask me.”
There’s a pause, but I refuse to look at him. Even when his breath gets louder and hitchier, like he’s making a point of how turned on he is.
“Maybe. Or maybe you just think everything I do is sexual because of how much I turn you on.”
The words are accompanied by a faint wet sound, so I finally break and look at him.
And of course. There he is, dick in hand, slowly moving his foreskin back and forth so the pink, glistening head is peeking out.
At first, I’m too shocked to say anything. Then I’m abruptly aware of the sensation of leather under my fingers, and I remember I’m holding a steering wheel because I’m fucking driving.
“Fallow, what the fuck? This is not the goddamn time.”
I’m not looking, but I can hear him snort and pick up the pace a little, the sounds becoming more slick and less subtle.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice the living embodiment of seduction.
“You’re distracting me while I’m trying to fucking drive, that’s what wrong. You can’t just go around jerking off in the passenger seat. It’s fucking feral behavior.”
Another low, throaty chuckle escapes him, but he doesn’t stop.
“What did I say? Stale, boring bread. Just like I expected. You should try being a croissant for once in your life.”
“Do I look like I eat fucking croissants?” I bark back, but still don’t manage to regain my focus.
I can see his hand moving out of the corner of my eye the same way I can see the blushing pink color of his cock that looks so delectable all I can think about is getting my mouth around it.
No. Stop. Bad thoughts.
I squashed the worst of my internalized homophobia a long time ago, because flesh is flesh and who cares what parts people are sticking in each other, as long as everyone is on board. But there’s a difference between the occasional dabble and something that actively makes me shitty at my job.
My job is all I have. The Banna is all I have. I’ve never even come close to putting my job performance at risk for someone, girl or guy. It’s not what I do.
Except Savage a voice in my head says, but I ignore it. That’s different. He was my friend, not a fuck, and I risked a lot to gain a lot. It was calculated.
This is not calculated.
That’s exactly what I’m thinking to myself as I jerk the steering wheel hard, crossing three lines of moderate traffic to hit the exit ramp and get the hell off this interstate. I’m two exits early for the strip club, but I don’t care anymore.
I careen down the slope of the exit, then make a couple of sharp turns until I find somewhere relatively off the beaten path and pull onto the nonexistent shoulder.
It’s still broad fucking daylight and I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m not stopping.
And neither is Fallow. He’s continued to jerk himself through all of this, only switching to using his left hand on his cock so he can grab the oh-shit handle with his right as we bump around.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I say, unbuckling my seatbelt to launch across the car and wrap my hand around his slender throat.
I’ve had enough.
I’m breaking his rules, but he doesn’t freak out like I expect him to. His eyes widen as my fingers touch his skin, and there’s just a flicker of arousal as I squeeze, all while his hand never stops moving on his cock.
Then his hips rise up a little into his grip. It distracts me for a split second, and apparently that’s all he needs to get the better of me.
I’m not sure how he manages to be graceful with his dick hanging out, but he brings up his legs between us, plants both feet in the center of my chest and pushes me.
Hard.