Chapter Twenty- Seven
Maverick.
The bell to the front door buzzes, and Damon goes to answer it, grabbing the pizzas from the older man delivering them.
It’s crazy how I went from eating a lonely dinner every night to having to order three gourmet pizzas just make sure a ‘growing’ wide receiver ‘feeds his muscles’ properly, a demented doctor is satisfied, and my girlfriend does her little happy dance while munching on her food, and of course myself.
I have barely kept to my bland diet since Damon has begun to also feed me on the regular, and I don’t mind it.
The man can cook. But I’m sure always feeding us must drain the man.
We have groceries delivered almost every day.
He says once we move into the home he wants to purchase for Raven in New York, he’ll get us a chef, but I really think he won’t stop cooking. The man is feeder.
As soon as Raven even looks a little sad, he’s handing the girl something to munch on be it fruit of some sort, a sandwich or an entire meal along with a bottle of water. He has appointed himself her personal watchdog, as if Jonas wasn’t already doing his part as her lapdog.
Christ, I have no idea how she can deal with all of our different personalities.
I suppose having enough orgasms to keep her satiated and slightly unable to argue with us helps a little.
A shiver runs down my spine of our earlier activities before Jonas’ game, when I was so deep in her cunt she would grimace and then ask for more. It’s the only time it’s hard for me to deny her anything.
Not when she begs so prettily.
I grab the plates from the cabinet as Damon sets the pizzas down on the table, the scent so delicious my stomach growls loudly and we both laugh. It’s… pleasant… having him around. “How much longer until they’re here?” I ask, grabbing cups.
He checks his phone and then his brows furrow. “They’re crossing the bridge now.”
“They should’ve been here already. Do you think something happened?”
“I guess we’ll find out when they get here.”
And we do find out when Raven comes in dragging Jonas to Damon’s side so he can check out his hand.
Before we can even eat, Damon is disinfecting Jonas’ bloody and bruised hand as he recounts what happened in the locker room. “Flex your fingers for me.”
“I’m telling you, I’m fine, D.”
Damon stares blankly at him. “Now move your wrist.”
“I thought you only did heads?” Jonas says gruffly.
“Internal medicine and psychiatry, Jonas. I told you this at De Novo the night Tyler…” Damon looks over at me, “you know.”
I roll my eyes. “The night our girl slashed his wrists and made it look like a suicide, yes.”
Jonas grins and Damon goes back to cutting gauze and wrapping it around Jonas’ knuckles, using a butterfly clip to keep it together. “Too tight?”
He flexes his fingers and shakes his head. “No, that’s good. Like new again. Besides, we don’t have a game until the bowl. ”
“Congratulations, by the way.”
Jonas shrugs his big shoulders. “I don’t want to be away from Raven that long. We have to be there the night before. I don’t want to do that.”
“It’s only an hour away and we’ll be at the game.” I reassure him.
“That’s not why. I know she’ll be there. My girl hasn’t missed one game. Even when we were broken up, right baby?”
She nods, but she’s staring at the pizza boxes.
I open the box as Damon puts away the first aid kit, and I swear her eyes cross at the smell when she inhales the scent.
I smirk, loving that she never has qualms about the fuel she puts into her body, and if she’s ever insecure, she’s never shown it.
Not to me, at least. That part does bother me.
I’d tear down any insecurity she has. I am glad though, she hasn’t tensed up with as many times as my fingertips have grazed her scars and my lips have kissed them, in a long while.
Besides, I’m sure she’s seen the changes her body’s gone through since she started working out with Jonas, Damon or myself in the mornings.
She hardly clutches her leg between workouts anymore, can run longer distances, and her breathing technique is far better.
It’ll be harder to catch her come Spring and I can’t fucking wait until the snow melts for us to play.
I want to rut into her while her face is in the ground, her ass is up, and whatever leggings she wears are wrapped around her ankles, feel the new grass beneath my knees while I fuck into her perfect cunt and this time… this time she’ll scream for me.
She catches me glowering at her while she bites into a slice and her chewing slows as though she can hear every single one of my deranged thoughts, or thinking the same thing, the tops of her cheeks turns a beautiful pink, but I want them pinker.
I want them ruddy from exertion. Want to taste the salt of the sweat on her skin, want to taste that exertion on her magnificent pussy, and then add my own so she smells and tastes like me.
I want to brand her as mine so nobody else can claim her the way I have…
she can never leave me, never have an excuse no t to argue with me…
and the need to see her soft and swollen with my child in her tummy makes me hard beneath the table.
Fuck, the thought of sucking the milk from her breasts while she bounces up and down on my cock is doing all kinds of distorted things to my mind.
The sight of her on her knees for me may be branded and tatted into my skin until I’m nothing but dust in the ground, but that’s exactly what she’s done – embedded herself into skin, my mind, my heart and my fucking soul.
I have never and will never love a woman the way I love her.
“It was the way he looked at her.” Jonas says around the bite of food in his mouth. “He’s planning something.”
“You think he knows it was her?” Damon asks and Raven’s caramel gaze flicks over to them, listening in on the conversation which shifts my attention to them as well.
“Does it matter? It made my stomach hurt. Nothing good can come of Stephen looking at her like that.”
“Like how?” I ask curiously.
Jonas drops the slice of pizza on his plate and then imitating Stephen, he narrows his eyes, glaring at me and then swiftly smiles.
Creepy.
“Could you just be paranoid?” Damon asks, biting into his slice.
“I… have… a chip.” She speaks up so softly but the rasp in her voice makes my dick ache further.
“You… will st-still be able to f-f-find me. No mm-matter what happens. You… mm-made sure of that.” She’s looking at Damon when she says this but makes sure her eyes connect with each of us when she says, “I have f-f-faith in you.”
“Amourette,” Damon sighs, “nothing is going to happen to you. We’ve taken precautions,” he does a nod toward Kronos who’s lazily laying on the ground licking his paw. Lucifer is, of course, nowhere to be found. “And hopefully we’re out of the state by the time they even try.”
If she has any inclination we’re trying to purchase a new house where we can all live in New York, she doesn’t make any nods toward it. “If it does-“
“It won’t.” He’s so sure I almost believe him myself, but the way Jonas is so adamant about his feelings, I’m more prone to lean his way. I mean, he was right about someone staking us out.
We finish eating rather quickly after that and head into the living room where Raven sits between my legs on her pillow I dragged out from under my desk while I read, Kronos on the side of her, his head in her lap and Damon and Jonas sit watching the college sports channel watching the highlighted reels of his game.
Kronos sits up and barks.
“Shhh, Kaykay.” Raven soothes him but the dog is up and barking again, alerting me now, I snap my book shut.
That damn dog is so well trained he doesn’t even bark at a squirrel. Something’s going on.
Feeling the tension rise, Jonas switches off the television, going to the window and peering outside. He shakes his head at me as Kronos begins to growl, going to the back window of the kitchen and my stomach swoops.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh
I stand quickly, going around Raven, and straight to the end table, grabbing my gun from where it’s strapped beneath. “Go to the corner, angel.”
“You have a gun?” Jonas whisper-screams.
I put a finger to my lips, to hush them and take off the safety. “Stay here.” I whisper into the living room, and they crowd into one corner. “Don’t move from that spot until I come back. Damon, be prepared to call 9-1-1.”
He nods, pulling his phone out from his pocket.
I keep my eyes on Kronos, whose head tilts from one side and then looks up, growling.
He looks between Raven and up to the second floor of my house.
“Go with her.” I tell him, and he answers with a huff, standing at the foot of the stairs, ignoring me.
His growls low, haunches on end, ears standing, one wriggling to hear more, and when he bends as if about to begin running, I hear it - the soft ‘click’ of a lock on one of the upstairs windows.
Someone’s breaking in .
Leaning toward the wall where none of the stairs will creak, I take them up, one at a time, until I reach the last one.
It’s silent. Like a tomb. Nothing but the howling wind outside and Kronos’ low growls, and my labored breath to accompany me.
Whoosh whoosh
I keep my gun up and ready, my finger on the trigger, checking every available room. No lights are on up here and just when I begin to think it was a figment of my imagination, that Kronos was in fact, barking at a ghost, I hear a footstep to my left.
Standing at the threshold to my bedroom, I crane my neck, a shadow in my peripheral, and they lunge, full weight on me, we topple over, Kronos downstairs barking.
They grunt, breathing heavily, grabbing at the gun in my hand, trying to overpower me, but as soon as they even try to turn it toward me, I fire.
Three.
Deadly.
Shots.
Whoosh whoosh
They slump over me, and I force their weight off. Wet, and sticky with blood I stand, swallowing down the urge to vomit. I stumble to the switch in the hallway and call down to Damon to tell him that we’re going to need an ambulance but not to come up here.
I stare down at Detective Arlo Martinez’s corpse bleeding out on my hardwood floors and I slump against the wall, staring at his wide, dilated, unfocused, unblinking muddy dark eyes.
Not caramel, not light honey, not amber or cinnamon or even whiskey colored like my angel’s.
The kind of dark you can barely tell is brown.
I nudge his shoulder with my foot, to make sure he’s fucking dead and only then, do I put the safety back on, and drop my gun to my side, the metal still hot from the gunfire.
Whoosh whoosh
_______ _
It takes Kingston PD twenty minutes to arrive along with an ambulance. I’m already speaking to an officer when they’re hauling his body away.
“And you said his name is Arlo Martinez?” the cop asks, scribbling the information down on his notepad, another officer joining him as soon as the hallway and stairs are cleared.
She’s tall, her skin dark, face pleasant, and her hair is braided but the ends are tied into a bun at the nape of her neck.
I clear my throat. “Yes, Detective Arlo Martinez.”
The cop, whose badge says O’Keeffe, shakes his head. “Wasn’t from our precinct.” His Bostonian accent is loud, the red in his hair and the freckles splattered across the bridge of his nose, are louder.
My gaze snaps up to his green eyes. “Rayne-Moore.”
The second cop, whose badge says Smythe, shakes her head.
She’s older and reminds me a lot of Tasha.
“We’re friends with most of the tri-town PDs, we see each other at a lot of the social gatherings.
That includes detectives,” her head is still going from side to side, but she lifts a shoulder in a shrug.
“Never seen a Martinez I didn’t know. Families included Mr. Harrington. ”
“Me either.” O’Keefe agrees. “I’ve been with this precinct for twenty years now, my father was Chief of Police before he retired and I’m telling you; this wasn’t one of our detectives.”
“But he gave me a card. It said-“
“Professor,” Smythe interrupts me and takes me to the side, her partner going to one of the EMTs waiting for an order to either take him to the hospital or straight to the coroner. It’ll be the latter. “I was one of the cops that showed up when that poor girl downstairs was found.”
I hold my breath, opening my mouth to tell her Raven is my student and my boyfriend’s patient, that we were having a celebratory dinner with her boyfriend and that’s why they were here.
Even if that even made sense that both my students would be here.
I’m ready to lie- again – to say I do this with my best students, invite them over for dinner .
But Smythe doesn’t let me get a word out.
Her voice lowers into a whisper, “Things on that campus are fucking seedy at best, Agent Harrington.”
I snap my mouth closed at being called agent again.
“My big sister, Auriel disappeared after visiting that campus once with a friend. Twenty-two years ago. She’s the whole reason I became a cop.
But her case went cold, and they closed it because back then and even now – black girl goes missing, nobody bats an eye…
But if they’re in your home, able to break in, you need to watch your back.
If they weren’t here for you, they were here for her. You understand what I’m sayin’?”
I nod mindlessly, chills rushing up my spine.
“They’ll finish what they started.” She eyes me up and down. “You got somewhere else you can go? If you do, pack your shit. Get out of Kingston. You aren’t safe here anymore… none of you are.”
Whoosh whoosh whoosh.