Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
S aint…
I stood up, panting, covered in blood spatter and cast off, the dipshit motherfucker who’d put his hands on my woman deader ‘n shit in the middle of the living room area rug in front of me. I turned to look back in the hallway where Velina stood, turned back in my direction, holding the weeping blonde in her arms, hiding her away from the carnage.
My woman looked me dead in the fucking eye and said the hottest shit I’d ever heard come out of a woman’s mouth, “My turn.”
She then proceeded to rattle off a list of shit she would need to help clean this place up like we’d never fuckin’ been here.
I nodded and stepped away, getting on the horn.
“We’ve got a situation,” I said. “The good news? One down – however many of these motherfuckers to go.”
It was a hell of a whirlwind after that.
Bennie and Hex showed up, and Velina sent her friend packing with Bennie and Chainsaw. Hex stayed.
We had the keys to Temperance’s car and would use it to handle things – buying ourselves a little insurance with any of the evidence left behind in her car rather than in Hex’s truck.
Shitty? Yeah, but honestly, I didn’t think we’d need it. Still better to have insurance than not.
Velina went through that place top to fucking bottom, cleaning up while Hex and I rolled the motherfucker up in the living room rug, duct-taping that shit as secure as we could get it.
She didn’t miss a thing and imparted all sorts of useful information every step of the way to make us more efficient in our, ah, future endeavors. Which, as far as I was concerned, we had just kicked off with the disappearance of Basilisk here, and his woman.
We waited for the wee hours of the morning and loaded the rolled-up carpet into the trunk of Temperance’s battered old beater car and drove him on out to the smokehouse. It was just me and Velina at that point. Hex had gone and taken my bike out of there. We didn’t go back. The apartment was scrubbed clean, and clearly, with the missing furniture and rug, something had gone down – but good luck finding any evidence, fuckers.
After that, we went to the club and stashed the car in the garage, pulling it into a back corner and covering it up with a tarp until we could sort that out.
By the time we were done, Temperance was already on the road to Florida with the boys from the Kraken, and had imparted enough information to LaCroix and Axeman to set up for our next target.
I was tapping out, though. I burned my clothes in the burn barrel back at the club. Velina said to me, “Give me that,” and held her hand out for my cut.
“You know what it means I should hand this to you and trust you with it?” I asked.
“I know,” she said.
I handed it to her in front of everyone, and she set to work on it. No, we weren’t supposed to clean our cuts – but I wasn’t about to hold onto one full of fuckin’ evidence by way of blood spatter from the motherfuckin’ worm I’d beat to death, either. Discretion being the better part of valor – I let her handle it.
“You come in handy, huh?” Cypress asked my woman as he watched her work with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, an old rag cut from an old tee, and a cheap toothbrush.
“Guess so,” she said.
We were both exhausted by the time we went to collect her car and headed home.
“I hope the couples that murder together and clean up the scene of the crime together stay together,” she said flatly once we were in the shower.
I laughed, and she gave me a weak smile before twining her arms around my neck and hugging to me tightly.
I held her and kissed her temple, burying my hand in the back of her hair.
I had to remember she was used to cleaning up the aftermath of violence of that level, but she wasn’t necessarily used to seeing it firsthand or the body.
“You alright?” I asked her.
“Drained,” she said. “Exhausted… but yeah, I’m alright.”
We stood under the hot shower spray for a time and just held onto each other in silence.
“I scare you?” I asked, worried.
“No,” she said.
“No?” I asked.
She shook her head and turned it so she could rest her ear against my chest.
“I don’t think you’d ever do it to me,” she said. “If you did, I’d kill you.”
I chuckled at that for a couple reasons. One, the thought of hurting her was ludicrous to me. Two, even if I hypothetically could hurt her– I highly doubted she could kill me. Many had tried and failed, but I supposed stranger things could happen.
“I don’t doubt that you would,” I said. “But I would never. I’d as soon as cut off my own arm.”
She cuddled into me, looked up, and said, “Kiss me. I just want to forget the last several hours.”
“You’re speaking my language,” I purred, and I met her mouth with mine. God, she tasted good. So fine, so pure, but with that edge of darkness like a bittersweet dark chocolate. She’d certainly had her soul stained with violence long before she’d met me, but this had been a different animal. This time, she’d dipped her toes into the darkness all by herself, with no help, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it’d been enough to satiate her appetite for revenge or if it’d just been an appetizer.
It was a conversation for another time, another day – another life, maybe, once we’d gotten through this.
We were just getting started, and I hoped like a motherfucker we would all make it through. That Velina would be able to hold on with me, become something stronger for it, more self-assured, my dark queen ,
The kiss turned fervent, more passionate, life-affirming , and our hands couldn’t stop their wandering over slick, hot skin. It was starting to get hard to tell whether the steam clouding my small bathroom was generated entirely by the hot water or if it was coming from us. From the connection we had, from the bond we’d quenched in blood, that’d become something stronger than iron, stronger than steel.
Soul deep, our passions ran, and I couldn’t keep myself from growing hard against her, where she pressed her lithe tight body to mine with its epic curves and so-soft skin.
She was a masterpiece for the senses, and I couldn’t get enough of her if I tried.
I kissed all the way down her body, kneeling on the shower floor and nuzzling her stomach, pressing her against the stone tiles of the wall, and draping her one leg over my shoulder. She yipped and tangled her fingers in my hair as I went for my prize and delved my tongue at the cleft of her sex.
Her yip of startlement at being put off balance turned into a throaty moan that ended on a strangled gasp as she tried to hold her composure, but I was determined she lose it. I wanted her to come against my mouth, standing in the shower, as the hot water beat against my back and poured across my skin.
I wasn’t worried about her staying warm. I would work that out just fine with my mouth on her, my hands on her, and, if need be, my fingers inside of her.
“Mm, yeah!” She gripped my hair tightly at the roots and pulled me tighter against her body, encouraging me to give her what she needed, and it was so fucking hot.
I teased and tantalized, sucked, and slicked my tongue against that sweet bundle of nerves that would send fireworks through her veins, and I rolled my eyes up the length of her body to watch her.
Her breasts heaved with every breath, her head leaned back against the tile, and her eyelashes made dark crescents against her lightly tanned face as she lost herself in the exquisite torture of my touch.
The sight of her pleasure, the sound of her moaning and panting, the feel of her hot, smooth skin under my hands, lips, and tongue, the scent of her, the intoxicating flavor of her passion – again, she was a living masterpiece, and it was something thrilling to be able to mold her with my attentions into something of starlight and madness. It made me hard to the point of aching, and I couldn’t resist fisting myself and stroking as I ate her out and worked at wrenching an orgasm from her.
She rode my face in the shower, and I had to let my cock go to steady myself, one hand on her outer thigh of the leg draped down my back, the other between her thighs, middle finger deeply entrenched in her tight wet pussy, the delicate tissues squeezing around my invading fingers as she built closer and closer to that ultimate goal.
I fucking loved how tight she got when she was about to come. Loved how she pulled my face where she wanted it, how she writhed and practically humped my tongue to get herself there as much as to let me get her where she wanted to go.
She panted and moaned, cried out, and then stiffened against me, her pussy throbbing, squeezing down and releasing in the rhythm of the heavens as starlight touched her veins and she practically glowed with the exquisite sensations racing along every nerve ending like fire across water.
God, she was fucking perfect.