Chapter 7
Margo
Bull falls asleep seconds after his head hits the pillow and barely grunts when I slip from the bed and head out to the living room.
I sink into a well-worn but comfortable couch, pulling the blanket from the back over my legs.
There was no chance of Bull’s pants fitting me, so I’m only wearing one of his shirts.
I start scrolling through news articles on my phone, but any and all mention of David’s disappearance has seemingly faded. The only exception being on his family’s social media accounts.
My ex’s oldest brother was a cop in the area we lived in and was one of the first responders to the scene on the night David broke my arm and tried putting my head through a wall. Quickly understanding the situation, he left before being asked to.
I respected him for that, in the moment. It was in the weeks following, that I didn’t appreciate the frequency with which he seemed to be parked between my job at the radio station and my house on such a regular basis. Especially since I worked nights, and the roads were mostly empty.
Restraining orders can only do so much, and mine was useless the morning I woke up to a clattering noise downstairs. With less than two hours of sleep, the sound of David breaking into my house was intermingled with my dream, but I darted out of bed regardless.
Hiding in the bathroom across the hall, I waited until David entered my bedroom before I tip toed downstairs as fast as I could, cursing myself for not taking the time to open the gun safe in my closet.
I was nearly in the garage before he caught up to me, drunk, angry, and cursing me out for ruining his life.
I kept moving, hitting the garage opener with the thought of getting to the neighbor’s house; except he hit the button seconds before getting a hold of my ponytail. Flailing backward, my good arm managed to grab a hammer off one of the built-in shelves and I swung it behind me without looking.
Straight into his temple as luck would have it.
Still scared shitless after landing on him, I raised it up and struck him another time.
Bashing in his head in nearly the same manner that I found Granddad tonight.
I sat in the garage, trying to figure out what to do for nearly an hour before the garage door opened.
Dad had turned into a wanderer with short trips during my senior year of high school, but this past summer, he had set out to the furthest reaches of Alaska.
It was days after David’s initial attack that I was able to reach my father, and now he was finally home.
There’s no amount of time that will ever erase the memory I have of Dad looking between me and the body of my ex, with a hammer still embedded in David’s skull.
He simply got out of his RV, walked toward me and reached up to hit the button for the garage door above where I was sitting on the two steps that led into the house. Pulling me up and into his arms for long moments, he finally took a deep breath and looked me in the eye.
“Good job, honey. I got it from here.”
While I was terrified of my dad being complicit, it turned out he knew much more about David’s family than I did; which almost sent me into a tailspin.
Once David’s family reported him missing, we knew I had to make myself scarce, so I gave notice at the radio station, telling them I was afraid that he might be coming after me. Afterall, his car was found abandoned in a shopping center not far from where I lived.
We locked up Dad’s house and he set out for Florida as I bee-lined it for South Dakota, staying off the radar the best I could. Granddad knew I was going through a hard time and being recently widowed was happy for the company.
And now, he’s paid the price for my crime.
Bull
Rolling over, I reach out for Margo only to find the bed is empty.
“Damn girl is going to make me chase her to hell and back,” I grumble, reaching out for the hoodie on my dresser as I trudge out to the front room.
The glow of her cell phone illuminates her face as I stand watching her, wondering if I’ll ever understand what makes this woman tick.
In all fairness, she was stoic as a child, when overhearing a murder, then seeing a dead body, there wasn’t shock or tears that I remember. Even tonight, when faced with a head that’ll be hidden under a closed casket, she froze rather than breaking down.
Although every fiber of my being is screaming for answers, I smile when her foot peeks out from under the blanket and she flexes it, reaching down to massage her calf.
A battering ram won’t work with Margo. So, maybe I can sneak in through an open window.
Stepping forward puts me in her line of sight, a faint exhale is the sign of her surprise as she locks her screen and puts her phone aside.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she starts, pulling her foot back under the blanket.
Kneeling in front of her, I push the blanket aside and tear at the strings holding the sides of her panties together before spreading her thighs apart.
“What?”
I raise an eyebrow at her question and lift one of her legs over my shoulder before lowering my mouth to her pussy.
“Stryker, what?”
“I’d think that’d be fairly obvious by now,” I snort, and notice how she arches her back when my breath hits her clit. “I like the way you say Stryker. Call me that from now on.”
After that demand, I start licking her slowly at first, using my thumbs to spread her lips open before I push my tongue inside of her; twisting and swirling it as deep as I can before swiping up her clit again.
“Bull,” she moans out my road name and I reach up, squeezing her breasts over the shirt she borrowed from me earlier.
“Stryker.”
“Stryker,” she repeats, and I nod.
“Take the shirt off and let me see you play with your nipples,” I tell her, lightly blowing on her clit until she complies. A light blush covers her skin, almost glowing in the moonlight and I resume licking, almost lazily as I watch her shy, inexperienced movements.
Dipping my tongue back inside of her, possessiveness floods me, knowing that she’s only had my cock. I want to rise up and thrust inside of her, fucking her until I come, but Margo’s one to be savored, not used up and discarded.
I patiently use my tongue to stroke her clit and lap at her pussy, before sliding first one, then two fingers inside of her, pumping them faster and harder until I feel her body tense up and a final nibble at her clit sends her over the edge.
Removing my fingers from her pussy, I lick up her juices before sliding a digit past her lips.
A soft mewing sound escapes her before she starts sucking on it.
Standing up, I have every intention of carting her back to my bed, instead, she leans forward, lowering my boxers and sealing her lips around the head of my cock.
Her small hand quickly slides up and down my shaft, wetting me with her spit as I wind my fingers through her hair. “That’s my good girl. Can you take some more?” I whisper, catching her eyes and seeing a flash of determination in there.
Trying my damnedest to hold still, I grin as she switches to stroking my cock with her mouth instead of her hand. It’s when she cups my balls with her other hand that I start coming, filling her mouth faster than she can swallow it.
“Come on back to bed with me,” I say, soothing her hair down and shaking my head when she reaches for my T-shirt. “Nah, I prefer you like this.”
Leaning down, I grab her ass and pull her up, content when she wraps her legs around my hips and whispers my name again.
Hours later, when I wake up again, my leg’s thrown over her hip and she’s rubbing her finger along the stubble on my chin. I grind my cock against her, needing her again.
“I’m kinda sore right now,” she shyly says, keeping her eyes focused on my lips.
I start to tell her that I’ve never popped anyone’s cherry before, but I stop, not sure she’ll take that like I mean it. Instead, I opt for a heavier subject.
“You know it wasn’t your fault, right? You kept saying that last night and it isn’t true,” I tell her.
“You don’t know that,” she says after a moment.
“Why would you even think it?” I ask.
“Because I killed a man. His brothers have either figured it out, or they will, sooner or later, and then they’ll come after me.” She’s utterly calm as she relays this information, so much so that I almost start to laugh, until she looks up at me and I know she’s dead serious.
“What did you do with the body?” I ask. Disposing of corpses is kind of our specialty after all.
“He’s pretty well scattered. I used lye, also. Like you did last night, or whoever picked up the truck did.”
“We are talking about the man who broke your arm, correct?”
She nods, tilting her head to the side, studying me as intently as I am her. “Apparently, between my broken arm and the restraining order, I ruined his life.”
“Do you have a gun you need me to get rid of?”
“No. I bashed his head in with a hammer,” she confesses, finally shedding some light on her reaction to finding her grandfather the way he was.
Of course, seeing his death practically mirroring her ex’s death would make that the most reasonable explanation.
“Where’s the hammer now?” I continue to pepper her with questions, wanting to make sure she didn’t miss any details.
“I cleaned it up and left it on a hook in a hardware store in Nebraska.” Her answer pleases me more than it should, being a pretty damn clever way to hide a murder weapon.
“Does anyone else know?” I’m trying not to sound frustrated—I’m happy she confided in me, but wish she’d just tell me the whole story without making me play twenty questions.
When she simply nods, I firmly place my hands on her shoulders and silently encourage her to keep talking with a look.
“My dad,” she replies with no further explanation.
“Why didn’t he call the cops?”
“That’s not entirely my story to tell,” she says after a moment, and my exhale betrays my frustration.
Just when I felt that we were making progress, she pulls back again.
“What’s the short version?”
“There isn’t one, not really.”
“Woman…” I growl out the word, trying to stay calm.
“My mom left my dad for David’s uncle, and he wasn’t especially kind to me,” she says in such a way that I suddenly want to stuff that entire bloodline in my cremation chamber while they’re still breathing.
“Dad hated them, and it just got worse after Mom died. I didn’t know the half of it until that day. ”
“So, you knew David for a long time?” I ask, wondering why the hell she’d agree to date him in the first place.
“No, he grew up near Tulsa and had a different last name, he was working at the airfield when we met.”
“Margo, you’re sexy as fuck, funny, and well, there are a lot of things I like about you, but you need to start telling me the whole story and not make me drag it out of you with a hundred questions.
” I realize that she just lost her grandfather and that I’m butting into her business, something that I wouldn’t appreciate if the situation was reversed, so I lay a few light kisses on her by way of apologizing.
“I was getting certified to give flight lessons and he worked at the airfield as a mechanic. We went out for a couple of months, but it was just, he was too intense, so I tried to break things off. He didn’t take that well and I already told you he broke my arm, so after I got a restraining order and got ahold of Dad, he figured out who David was. Does that clear everything up?”
Rolling onto my back, I’m both amused and terrified that this woman has her pilot’s license but that dulls in comparison to the other dozen or so questions flooding my mind.
“When do you think your dad will get here?”
“Probably tomorrow night or the day after,” she replies like that was common knowledge. “And before you growl again, he’s down in Florida and doesn’t like to fly, so he’s driving up.”
Because I have every intention of keeping Margo by my side for the foreseeable future, I refrain from asking if he was afraid of flying before she got her pilot’s license.
My phone rings and I reach for it, happy for the distraction.