Chapter 39
Koen
Greer’s in the back of the ambulance. Her clothes are torn and dirty, and she’s shaking.
“She’s refusing to be seen,” Raymond tells me.
“It’s fine. I have doctors at my house still.”
“You shouldn’t be up out of that fucking bed, Grady. But I’m glad you are.” He hugs his daughter tighter.
“Go home. Get her the help she needs, so she doesn’t turn into me.”
My warning lands, and at first, he looks alarmed, then realization makes his eyes go glassy with sadness.
“Helms?” I ask.
“He’ll be taken care of. We’ll need to have a debriefing, and we’ll need her present.” Raymond’s eyes dance toward Greer, where a paramedic is addressing a wound on her forehead.
“She’s going to need a couple of days.”
“That’s fine. Just know, it’s coming.”
Marching over toward Greer, her eyes lock on mine, and she pushes the paramedic away from her, the blanket falling over her shoulders and pooling at her feet.
Her arms open, and I heft her off her feet, one arm beneath her bent legs.
“Take me home,” she whispers.
I wince with every step, knowing I’m bleeding through the bandage the paramedic put over my freshly opened wound, but I refuse to put her down.
She’s mine.
I take care of what’s mine.
She shakes the entire way home, curled into me, her head on my lap. I rub her back, eager to get her home, even though I know she’s going to fall apart.
“Almost home, pretty poison,” I reassure her, rubbing her matted hair.
Her hand squeezes my thigh tightly in reply.
When we get home, Bear greets her at the door.
She drops and pulls him into a hug that looks more like a hostage situation, and I can’t help but grin.
Chase makes himself scarce as I follow her to the bedroom, where she removes clothes and drops them on her way to the shower.
I gather them for burning behind her, silently her shadow, her strength.
When she steps inside the shower, my anger seethes at the bruises on her ass cheeks, wanting to desecrate Helms’s body for each one of them.
She steps inside the shower, shutting the door behind her, and I watch for a moment as she steps under the water, letting it run over her.
When she breaks, and her emotions spill outward, I drop the pile of clothes and remove my own before stepping inside with her.
Blood leaks from my bandages as they soak with water.
I pull her into me, and for a moment, we’re silent under the weight of it all. All the hell we endured at the hands of a power-hungry man who couldn’t help himself.
“I killed a man.”
“He fucking deserved it.”
“How do you live with knowing you ended a life?” Her bloodshot eyes find mine when she pushes away to look up at me.
“Would you have wanted him to remain in this world, alive somewhere to hurt someone else? To hurt Charlotte?”
Her answer is immediate. “No.”
“That’s how I live with it.”
“You’re not God. You can’t judge souls and take life. That’s his job.”
I smile, swiping some of her sopping hair back off her forehead. “He does his job through those of us willing to soak our hands in blood, deadly girl. We’re His weapons.”
Her eyes narrow, but she says nothing else on the matter.
“Turn around, let me wash you.”
She listens, and I can’t help how her submission and obedience have my body livening behind her as I drop shampoo into my hand to work through her hair.
“How did you shoot him before?”
“The little gun in my boot you gave me.”
My eyes drift down as I wonder at the marks on her ass.
“Did he…” I trail off, not knowing how to ask about the horrors Helms inflicted on her.
“He whipped me after I shot him. He had someone else hold me down. Another man who wore a mask.”
That gives me renewed vigor that there is someone to kill, and thrill races through my nervous system, synapses jumping in excitement.
I turn her in my arms, tilting her head back underneath the spray of the shower.
The suds wash down her body, and my eyes follow their path as they curve over her breast and down her stomach.
“I’m so fucking mad at you for putting yourself in danger.”
“Charlotte needed help, Koen. What was I supposed to do?”
Her saying my name reminds me just how far we’ve come in this journey of ours.
I thought I wouldn’t ever want her to know me. Now that she does, I want her to scream my name to the heavens and let God know who’s taken up arms, doing his dark fucking deeds in the night, covered in blood.
“I get it, but I’m still fucking mad.”
“I know.”
“You put yourself in danger.”
“I know.”
“You broke the rules.”
“I know.”
We’ve gone back and forth, all the while, getting closer together, our lips hovering nearer and nearer.
“Erase him, Koen.”
“What?!” I’d already come to terms with the fact that it would be a while before Greer was okay from her experience in Helms’s murder basement, so her asking what I think she’s asking right now is in direct conflict with the journey I was ready to walk beside her.
“Erase his touch.”
Squeezing soap into a loofa, I pull back. “Where did he touch you?”
I suds up her shoulder, moving to the other one as she runs a hand over her breast.
“Here.”
I follow the path of her hand with the loofa, anger barely contained in my chest.
Her nipples perk as I tease one and then the other before Greer’s hand travels over her stomach.
“Here.”
I follow the path, washing Helms off her body.
Her hand sinks further, and I nearly see fucking red. “Here.”
I crouch, and the loofa’s path glides between her thighs. Gently, I wash her, watching as her eyes grow heady instead of frantic, ensuring she’s alright.
By the time I’ve done the rest of her body, her hands are roaming over my chest, and my dick is hard as fuck.
“Greer, I think you need time to…” She strokes me roughly, and I hiss.
“Erase him, Koen.”
“Deadly girl, don’t play games with me. You know I can’t be easy with you, and easy’s what you need right now.”
“It’s not. It’s really fucking not.”
I snarl, lifting her into my arms, and slam her back to the shower wall.
The tip of me presses against her sex, swollen from my taunting with the soap. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Part of me means sex, but the other part of me means something else, something more profound.
It’s all over now.
Helms is dead, and while there are a few loose ends to tie up, there’s nothing more for Greer to worry about.
Something’s changed between us, and I can’t deny it.
I can no longer stalk her, but I can’t hold her hostage if she wants to leave, either.
Chase would call it love, I think I’d call it delusion.
“I won’t be able to let you go,” I whisper against her lips. “There’s no going back.”
“There was never any going back, Koen. I’ve been yours since the first fucking note.”
To hear her say it… Fuckkkk
Without another word, I press inside her, relishing the way she arches off the shower wall, begging for more.
It’s just as promised: rough and dark.
My teeth sink into her shoulder, and she cries out in bliss-filled agony.
Tears roll down her cheeks as I fuck her harder and harder with each thrust, her body bouncing on my dick, and her tears only fueling the burning in my chest.
I bite her jaw, locking onto her as her nails dig into my shoulders.
“Fuck,” she sobs. “Koen… Please!”
My mouth captures hers in a punishing kiss that seals an unspoken deal between us and brandishes her soul as mine.
She returns the fervor with which I kiss her tenfold, and my hands on her hips squeeze as hard as I can manage, my fingertips digging in and sizzling as if I can feel the bruises I’m creating in real time.
“Fuck, don’t stop!” she breathes, tears still seeping down her face. “Don’t st—”
She breaks, her forehead colliding with mine as she screams, her tight channel gripping me like a vise, taking me over the edge with her, ripples of unspoken bullshit exploding around us, between us.
“Fuck, I love you,” I growl, capturing her lips again, but hers still against mine.
“We’re really doing this, aren’t we?” she says, the last spasms of her orgasm fluttering around my cock, still impaling her.
“What?”
“I’m in a relationship with my stalker. My stalker is my boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend…” I scoff, pulling out of her and slowly letting her onto her feet.
“What would you like me to call you?”
I shrug. “Husband seems more fitting.”
She looks up at me, and I swear her breathing halts momentarily. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me, deadly girl. Don’t act like you didn’t.”
“Oh, I heard you, but traditionally…”
I cup her pussy, my fingers mingling in the cum seeping from her, before I rub the tips of them across her lips. “What about me screams traditional, G?”
She exhales shakily. “Nothing.”
“Alright, then.”
“Husband…”
My hand tugs my dick, blood pooling there all over again. “Say it again...”
It takes a while for us to get out of the shower, and when we do, we only make it as far as the bed, where a doc fixes up my wound… again.
Raymond’s going to want a debriefing, and I don’t know what kind of investigation will go on with my standing with the company, being that I’m technically contracted.
A shit storm is probably brewing, but here, in the cabin, we’re secure, and Greer’s warm in my arms, and no longer shaking.
“This is not where I saw things going when I dreamt of you finding me.”
I grin, kissing her hair. “Oh yeah? What did you imagine?”
“My body displayed in the woods. Allison grieving me,” she answers.
“Mm. Could be arranged.” My nose skims over her cheek as she turns onto her back in my arms.
“Will you be in trouble for shooting Helms?”
“For shooting the kidnapper of a future senator’s daughter? I think not.”
“Good.”
“You’re sure they won’t know it’s me?”
“No one will ever know you spilled blood, pretty poison. No one but me.”
“You know, a year ago, you’d have loved to have this little piece of information in your back pocket to use for your taunting notes.”
“I still love to have it in my pocket, but for other reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“It makes me so fucking hard to think of how you took him down. It keeps replaying over and over in my mind.” My hand slides beneath the covers, where she’s laid out bare for me.
Her thighs open, no reluctance, only acceptance of her fate. “I did what you taught me.”
“You killed so fucking well for me,” I tease into her ear, licking the shell of it.
“Koen,” she mewls, and I know my words have stirred her darker nature.
“Don’t worry, pretty poison, I won’t let you suffer… long.”