Chapter 5 #2
Where they’re exposed by the short shirt sleeves, his arms show signs of surgery.
Scars from sutures circumnavigate one forearm.
His face looks like it’s been reconstructed after some devastating injury.
Old suture lines crisscross, bisecting his nose and puckering his mouth.
His eye sockets are shadows, but shimmering blueness shows within, on the irises at the edges.
My mouth falls open. That must be the whisky talking.
His shirt collar shifts and since buttons have been torn away or undone, I can see some of his chest.
“Fuck me,” I whisper.
His exposed skin is just as messed up as his face, with scars and left-over staples.
Who. What surgeon. I gulp. What surgeon leaves the fricking staples in place?
None.
Overcome by horror, the cold, or a combination of the two, I start to shake and shiver with chaotic muscle spasms.
Am I seeing things? I blink the moisture from my eyes. Suture marks show all over this Goliath of a human male. He looms over me, reaching close to seven feet.
A tear in his shirt suggests a wound beneath, because when the next lightning bolt flashes, I see a hint of red wetness. He doesn’t seem bothered. Despite my alcoholically hobbled state, a fact sorts itself out. Before me, eclipsing the churning sky, stands a man who could smear me into the floor.
The rain intensifies and bounces off the railing, splattering in beneath the roof, making more puddles on my balcony. As if to emphasize the scene’s grimness, another flash cracks the sky and flares a brilliant blue around the silhouette of this strange man.
He takes a step forward.
On shaky legs, I go backward. Another step by him, and I retreat again.
If I turn and run, he might pounce. My back hits the wall, and where the fuck is the doorway? Blindly, I scrabble my hand along the wall and feel no sign of the frame. A glance shows it two yards to my right. Do not panic. My hand freezes on the wall then I drag the stupid limb to my side.
“Who are you. What the fuck are you?” Inhaling, I press the back of my hand to my mouth.
The question stops his advance.
I hug myself, shivering uncontrollably as I wait for an answer.
“Do you think…” Shiver. I hug myself even harder. My teeth rattle. “You can talk before I turn to fucking ice? Who are you?”
He delivers another prolonged and silent stare then opens his mouth.
“I am…” Deep voice. His chest heaves, and it’s impossible not to notice the stacked muscle on that rudely built body.
Whatever he is, he’s been working out. Quietly, I snort at myself. I’m an idiot.
“Do not be afraid.” The words are grated out, guttural and coarse, then he opens his arms. He raises them to the side, creating a cross shape with his open palms toward me. “I will not harm you.”
Instead of reassuring, his pose makes him look larger and more menacing. He speaks like the Schwarzenegger terminator, deliberately, with none of the smoothness of a natural speaker of English.
“You think, Mr. Terminator?” I mutter quietly.
“Yes. I do. I heard that, Hailey.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I was sent to find…you.” That pause rings alarm bells. He grunts, smirks. “That does sound like him. The Terminator.”
“Only sent to find me? Are you sure?”
“Instead, I saved you from another.”
Ignoring my question there? “What’s your name?”
“Let’s use Kail.”
A name from the past. I have too many dead people to remember. He can’t know. Can’t know that is the name of a man who was a close friend, and the reason I hated Revenant for so many years.
A grin splits his face like a gash, then lightning cracks as if to emphasize the moment. He studies me.
My hand is now a fist. My heart jumped when he suggested Kail. The rain noise dulls. Kail. Burying him broke my heart.
I’m shaking again.
“Kail is unusual.” I clear my throat, raise one eyebrow to act nonchalant.
He shrugs. “That’s good. I am unusual.”
He doesn’t know the significance, and why am I fluffing about with names? I should be asking why does someone want me killed, and who sent you, and a million other questions I’m too drunk to figure out.
He hasn’t killed me. Yet. He could have. This is good. I allow myself to move away from the wall, putting a hand to it to steady myself. The recent top-up of whisky is soaking in, gluing my brain with a fresh swimming pool of mush, and with the rain it gives the balcony a smudged, foggy air.
I sway, swallow, and consider throwing up. No. Don’t.
He gestures at the door. “May I enter?”
“Uhhh.” Run and hope he’s slow? My floppy socks are still on. “I guess, you can?” That comes out slurred. Fuck. Don’t drink when a big bad man is coming over to murder me.
I am obnoxiously drunk.
“Thank you.” He half-bows at the waist, then replicates that ghastly grin.
I said yes to him entering. If he’s a vampire, I am so cooked.
I leave my hand on the wall so I don’t topple.
“You’re not a vampire, are you?” I giggle.
“Nooo. I am not.” He tilts his head, checks out the discarded whisky bottle which is mostly empty. “You are very drunk.”
I squint at him, my finger and thumb only a fraction apart, to show how much I am drunk. “Jussh a little.”
Then I fall over, properly, slipping on the drips from my own hair, my own feet, or something, and I’m heading for face-butting the floor—
Except he catches me.
“Fast, you are.”
“By design, Yoda.” He readjusts his hold, lifting me into his arms before heading for the door. His warmth soaks into me at first contact, as does the glorious hardness of his male body.
That was a joke? “You, mister, you made a joke?” I waggle my finger at him.
He frowns down at me, creases like black ravines form on his scary, sutured monster face. His large hands shift on my thigh and beside my breast. Something, maybe a staple, scratches me through the leggings.
For a second, I’m frightened. In another, below, between my legs, begins to stir. I try not to look at his face or feel where those hands are resting. My cheeks are hot. What is wrong with me?
Then he focusses on my feet, where my sodden socks droop halfway off each foot. “Hmmm.”
That’s what I tripped on.
“Your socks should be removed. You will get sick from the rain and cold. Let’s go inside.”
A monster is carrying me, and if he murders me, I will be sorry. I wave a floppy hand of agreement at him and discover I’m smiling, stupidly. Ugly monsters, are fiiine. If anything, being in his arms has a weird thrill to it.
It’s more important, more scary, that he made a man with a knife go bye-byes.
That makes my sensible parts awaken. Run!
Screaming will bring no one. Only Molly and Ron are nearby. I wriggle, experimentally, and he tightens his hold without breaking step.
Door opened, door kicked shut. The storm sounds grow softer inside the house.
I burrow my face into my own arm as he strides confidently down the hallway with his gait rocking me, as if he knows where he’s going.
He backs through a door. Everything swishes around and around.
I need to get sober-er. When the light is switched on, I groan and shade my eyes, wondering why the power is on already. Because it’s past midnight?
And then he speaks…
“A hot shower is needed.”
What? We’re in the bathroom? I struggle to sit up in his arms, but he’s already set me on my feet. Then he’s kneeling and attempting to pull off a sock, but the dampness makes it stick.
He’s already closed the bathroom door, so I decide not to try running, yet. He’s fast and strong. I need to distract him then run.
“These come off first.” He slips my parka off my arms and drops it then lifts one foot, hauls off the obstinate sock.
My legs threaten to collapse, and I grab his shoulder. Oh yeah, my plan is so working.
He puts a hand on my…under my…thigh to support me, and desire rolls upward from where that hand dents my leggings. Stunned, I’ve let out a gasp, and I’m staring at him as he starts to remove the other sock.
“Your foot is cold.”
Enthralled by his touch and with my body warming everywhere it shouldn’t, for I’m imagining him doing more than merely touching my feet, I bite my lip, softly. Thinking of him fucking me is just wrong, wrong, wrong. My breathing is labored. I have a death wish. I must have.
I am unquestionably cray-cray.
He’s tossed aside my socks and remained silent, but his fingers have gone from massaging my foot to kneading my thigh, and now…
he’s moving his hand higher. I’m having trouble controlling my ridiculous arousal.
Mustn’t pant. Slow down, slow down. Must not clench my hand in his shirt where those impressive muscles glide beneath.
Then he lifts his head and studies my face at the same time as he reaches under my dress and hooks his hand into the back of my leggings. Fuuuuck. His warm hand wanders, smoothing across the cleft of my ass. His fingers do not feel like those of a murderer.
He starts to pull my leggings downward, slowly baring me, though my dress still covers my rear.
“Hey. No. No.” My protest comes out low and rough.
I grab his hand through my dress to try to stop him, but it’s as useful as trying to restrain the storm mangling the sky over Revenant. Do I want him to stop? I do, maybe? My pulse wildly ratchets up, and I swallow.
My brain says no. The rest of me is in a meeting.
He turns his face upward. The nightmare, distorted flesh says this night will end with me dissected and spreadeagled on the roof for the crows to eat.
Until…
He cups my naked ass and drags the leggings and my panties past my trembling knees.
And, my pussy says, hell yeah. My lower lips are swelling, and I’m shamefully wet. I’ve not had anyone in my bed for more than a year. It’s that. It’s just that.
My clothes fall to my ankles, and I think they’re accusing me of cooperating.
“Wait,” I croak. “Wait. Please.”
“Why?”
Because. It’s not my reason but I splutter, “I saw you, at the door, the first time, with that other man.”
“And I heard you, upstairs, breathing. You were afraid.” His smile twists that horrific mouth.
“Oh.”
When he squeezes my ass, I wriggle away, and he grips me there, again, painfully hard. Shocked, I squeak. He drifts his hand up my leg to slide between my legs and push upward into the seam of my pussy, leaving his thumb resting over my clit.
With a thoughtful expression in his eyes, he then does as I asked—he waits.
Fuck. Oh noes. I stare. That thumb. My clit pulses under the pressure.
The guilty rasp of my breathing is audible.
Drunk as I am, I know that where this is going is the worst, most stupid thing I have ever considered doing.
I try to think of anything but sex. Like, I may need him to find out what happened to Father.
But I don’t really know who this man is.
“You’re not afraid now.”
“Wait, wait. Who are you? Who are you really, Kail?”
“You want me to stop?”
I lick across my lip, already panting a little, moaning with a sob in my breath. The press of thumb there feels like it’s tingling with potential. My toes are scrunching on the cold floor.
“Say it.”
“Kail, I…” That name. I blink down at him and find I’m holding his shoulder.
“Stop or not.” That’s barely a question.
I stare at him, moving on his hand enough that he must feel it. My own pussy is betraying me.
“Say it.”
That grating, coarse voice of his rumbles through my blood, my veins, inside my messed-up mind. When I move on the wedge of his hand, he settles it deeper within my lips. His thumb begins to revolve on my clit.
I inhale, sharply. “Please?”
I clutch his massive shoulder and dig my nails into his muscles. I’m so doomed.