38. Bindi
THIRTY-EIGHT
BINDI
The hotel shower scalds my skin, but it still isn’t hot enough.
I scrub and scrub, nails digging into my arms until red streaks bloom.
It’s not enough. My breath shudders out of me in ragged bursts.
I brace my palms against the stained tile wall and bow my head under the spray, wishing the water could scour my mind clean.
It beats down mercilessly, punishing and purifying all at once.
The blood doesn’t feel like it’s on my skin anymore, it’s under it—inside me.
Anthony’s blood. His hands on me. His breath. His fucking voice.
The cheap soap barely lathers, swirling into grimy foam before slipping down the rusted drain—brown and pink from dirt and blood.
My eyes squeeze shut, but I can’t erase the images. His body as it crumpled at my feet, the gun slipping out of my hand as I looked at his dead corpse.
A sob claws at my throat, finally ripping free. I press my forehead to the cool tile and cry silently, hot tears lost in the cascade. I’m unraveling by the second, each sob loosening a thread I had wound so tightly around my sanity.
A faint creak pricks through the drum of water.
The bathroom door. I freeze, breath catching.
The outline of Cassidy’s figure cuts through the shower curtain—a darker shadow in the dim, flickering fluorescent light of the bathroom.
My heart rate kicks up and I sniff hard, wiping my cheeks with a trembling hand.
I don’t want him to see me broken like this, but I also can’t stand the thought of being alone in my head any longer.
I stand there shaking, water pounding on my back, and watch as the shadow draws closer. The plastic curtain rips open with a harsh scrape of rings on the rod. Cool air rushes in, goosebumps prickling over my overheated skin.
Cassidy stands on the bath mat, fully dressed in his black jeans and rumpled T-shirt, boots tracking in mud and blood onto the tiles.
Water droplets cling to his dark hair as he pushes it back from his forehead.
His eyes burn as they rake over my naked, dripping, scrubbed, nearly raw body.
I expect him to grin, but his lips are a grim slash. In his right hand, I see the gun.
He steps forward, right into the spray. His shirt darkens as water soaks the fabric, clinging to him. He doesn’t seem to notice or care. I back up reflexively until the cold curve of the tiled wall presses against my bare shoulders. There’s nowhere to go. Water streams between us.
Cassidy’s gaze pins me. “What are you doing, Bindi?”
“I . . .” My voice cracks. The shower’s roar nearly swallows the word. What am I doing? Washing blood off my soul? Trying to wake up from this nightmare? I don’t even know how to answer. “I just needed to—” I start, and falter. I can’t put it into words.
Why am I mourning a man who manipulated me? Used me? Emotionally tortured me for years. Why am I regretting putting a bullet between his eyes ?
He steps closer, and the muzzle of the gun gleams in a stray beam of light. Panic flutters in my chest at the black eyes staring me down. “You’re trying to wash it away, aren’t you?” Cassidy’s tone softens, turning into a dark purr.
“No,” I whisper.
My stomach flips. A drop of water slides into my eye and I blink it away.
“You really think Anthony deserved an ounce of sympathy? A moment of your pain?” He brings the gun level with my face and presses the cool barrel under my chin, lifting my face.
What is he doing? And why am I so fucking calm?
“I feel guilty?—”
He presses the barrel a little harder against my throat. My heart thuds painfully against my ribs. A strange thrill bursts inside me at the mercy of him.
“I’m not you. Cass . . .”
“You think guilt makes you better than me? You think I don’t have guilt!
?” he hisses, dragging the gun downward.
The hard metal traces a cold line down the center of my chest. A rivulet of water slips between my breasts as the muzzle follows, circling one nipple, then the other.
My nipples are already hardened from the cold and fear, but as the gun teases them, a traitorous heat sparks in my core. I bite down on a whimper.
“I think it makes me human,” I shoot back, even as my whole body trembles.
His breath fans hot against my wet skin.
“I didn’t feel guilty when I killed Randall,” Cassidy mutters, almost to himself. His hand tightens around the gun. “I felt alive. Like I ripped something rotten out of me and set it on fire. Anthony was also rotten.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“You think guilt makes you human? No—it’s pain. Pain is the only thing we all share, the only language no one has to translate.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he’s already crowding into my space, pressing the gun harder under my chin until my head tips back against the wall.
“Do you trust me?”
Yes. With more than just my life.
I blink up at him. “W-what?”
What is he about to do?
“You trust me?” he repeats himself, slower this time.
The smart answer would be no.
The safe answer would be no.
But for my entire life, I’ve chosen Cassidy, before all others.
I nod once.
“Good girl. Because what I’m going to do to you tonight isn’t to hurt you—isn’t to scare you. But it’s showing you how strong you are. I can’t break you, because you’re already made of fucking steel, Firefly.”
“What are you going to?—”
He cuts me off by pushing the gun’s muzzle into the valley between my breasts, making me arch away from the pressure. He’s not using his hands on me, just the gun, and yet my body responds as if he was trailing his finger, or an ice cube. My skin contracts, hyper sensitive.
“These men want to hurt what mine— take what’s mine.
They think you’re this fragile thing they can bend and mold .
. . but you’re not.” His free hand tugs my arms away from covering me.
I let him, too startled and mesmerized by the intensity in his eyes to resist. He pins my wrists to the slick tile above my head with one hand.
The other, still holding the gun, is now sliding across my ribcage, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.
I inhale sharply. My breasts heave with each unsteady breath.
He watches my reactions closely. The corner of his mouth twitches in a ghost of a smirk as the gun finds my left nipple and he presses it into me.
The hard circle of the barrel flattens my nipple; a jolt lances from the peak straight down between my legs.
A strangled moan slips from me before I can catch it.
Cassidy’s eyes gleam with lust at the sound. “There she is,” he says, almost lovingly. “There’s my girl.”
“Fuck you,” I whisper, voice breaking, but my hips betray me by tipping forward, seeking friction that isn’t there.
Fuck him for making me want this. Fuck him for making me like something so twisted.
Tears burn in my eyes again, but not from sadness, from sheer frustration that my pussy is throbbing like some needy, desperate little bitch in heat.
His lips curl fully now into a grin. “Oh, Firefly, don’t act so desperate for this cock. Let me have my fun.”
He releases my wrists unexpectedly. But before I can process, his hand fists in my wet hair at the nape of my neck, and he yanks my head back against the wall, baring my throat.
I gasp. The motion forces my eyes to meet his.
We’re close enough that the damp heat of my naked body seeps into his clothes.
I see a smear of dried blood on his collar, stark rust red on black cotton, and a shock runs through me.
Is that . . . Anthony’s? The questions fade as he brings the gun up again.
The short muzzle glides up my throat, grazing the rapid flutter of my pulse, then presses against my lips.
“Open up, baby.”
A whimper hitches in my throat, and his fist tightens in my hair.
Slowly, I relax my jaw, and he presses the barrel past my lips.
The alien weight of it rests on my tongue now.
I taste soot, salt, and the cold tang of metal.
My heart is thundering so hard I’m dizzy; I don’t know if it’s from disgust or arousal or both.
Cassidy groans softly, as if the sight of me gagged with a gun is the most erotic thing he’s ever seen.
“Look at you,” he rasps, eyes hungry. “So fucking beautiful like this.” His left hand cups my jaw, thumb stroking my cheek possessively as he gently pushes the barrel a little deeper.
My lips stretch around it, saliva pools under my tongue, and a dribble escapes the corner of my mouth, mixing with a tear that has slipped free.
He wipes that messy mix away with his thumb, then licks it off his skin.
I should be revolted—part of me is. My mind screams: this is insane, dangerous, vile.
But there’s another part that drowns the other out—a dark, needy void inside me that hungers for anything to make me feel alive, to match the inferno inside.
Cassidy always knows how to feed that void.
Right now he’s feeding it with fear-laced desire, and it’s working.
My thighs clench together involuntarily, an ache blooming between them.
He slides the gun out of my mouth slowly. A thin string of saliva connects my bottom lip to the barrel before snapping. I suck in a shaky breath, oddly missing the invasive pressure now that it’s gone. He notices—of course he does—and chuckles darkly.
“Did that turn you on, baby?” Cassidy taunts softly. “Nothing’s ever looked sweeter than you like this. My little killer, my pretty mess.”
I want to snarl a retort, but all that comes out is a desperate, keening sound as he drags the barrel down my body again.
He drops to one knee as he goes, and now the gun is sliding over my hip bone, then along my outer thigh.
I’m panting, every muscle taut. When the barrel hooks behind my knee and nudges my legs apart, I let them part without resistance.