Chapter 21 Ava
TWENTY-ONE
AVA
Crimson blooms through the mangled mess of fabric and frayed skin. Braxton’s stare flashes to mine, a look of utter betrayal tinges his eyes, before his fingers slip free from around Scott’s throat, and his body slumps with a thud to the floor.
The shotgun slips through my fingers, clanking against the hardwoods, but the sound barely registers. A blaring song rings in my ears. From the shot or the reality of what I’ve just done, I don’t know. My mind races too fast to make that call.
Bile clogs the back of my throat, but I manage to keep anything from coming up. My knees buckle, almost taking me down. I stumble back on unsteady legs and hit the wall.
“No. No. No. No,” I chant, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. Burrowing my head in the small space, I squeeze my eyes shut.
What the actual fuck am I going to do now? I don’t know how to get rid of a body. Oh, shit. I’m going to get caught and get carted off to jail. I can’t go to jail. I’ll never survive.
Braxton’s dead. Scott’s… the reminder of the man I was protecting shoves the panic aside. My head flies up, my eyes landing on his still form.
With all the grace of a scared elephant, I scurry across the floor, doing my best to ignore the blood seeping into my pants.
“Scott!” I scream, shaking his body.
With a start, the man jerks upright, scaring the living shit out of me.
“Oh my fucking God,” I cry and fling my arms around his shoulders, shoving my face into his neck.
“Ava,” he chokes, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Hey, baby. Shh, I got you.”
“I had to do it. He was going to kill you. I had to.”
He must register my words. Pulling back and taking in the crime scene we’re currently sitting in the middle of.
In the blink of an eye, I’m off the floor and in his arms, being carried out of the room and back down the hall.
“Scott, what the hell. Where are we going?”
He doesn’t answer me. Just keeps his quick pace until his boot crashes against the bathroom door, and he pulls me into the shower with my clothes on.
“Strip,” he orders, and spins to turn the faucet.
The spout sputters, the pipes probably half-frozen from the source outside. After a moment, a steady stream of arctic water rains down between us.
“Jesus fucking christ,” I screech and jump back. If we’d run down to the lake and dived in headfirst, it would have been the same experience.
“It’ll warm soon. Strip down. But keep your clothes in here.”
Once we’re both naked, it’s hard to ignore the sinfully bare man in front of me, even after everything we’ve been through. His thick cock hangs long between his sculpted thighs.
“Ava,” he groans, huskier than usual, and my eyes flick up to his. “Stop looking at me like that, baby. We have other things to handle, first.”
I squirm, pushing aside the ache building in my core.
But when he pulls my body back under the now volcanic water and begins scrubbing every inch of my skin with the scratchy loofa, it becomes impossible.
His firm ministrations rub across my peaked nipples, then down to the junction between my thighs.
His knees hit the shower floor, and that ache explodes into a throbbing rhythm. My hands find his shoulders when he pulls one of my feet up to the edge, washing me down with precision. Not a spec of blood remains on my skin when his dark eyes lift to my hooded ones.
I still don’t know what the hell his plan is, but my only concern is dulling the need I have for him.
“Please,” I beg, curling my fingers in his dark salt and pepper locks.
His growl echoes above the water hitting the floor, but he doesn’t move to get up.
I tighten my grip in his hair, using it to bring him against my dripping pussy.
“You have a minute to come, Ava.”
The tip of his wicked tongue licks up my slit, and pleasure zings through every nerve ending in my body. Circling my pulsing clit, his attack becomes animalistic. With how pent up I am, his command shouldn’t be a problem.
With one hand on my hip to balance me against his coarse beard, his free hand finds my entrance. There’s no slow prep like our first night together. He spears me, rough and fast, rubbing relentlessly against my walls, and the combination is seconds from throwing me over the edge.
“Don’t stop—fuck, Scott. Right there,” I moan, spurring him on.
The pressure on my clit changes, and I fall apart on his tongue. In a blur, before the euphoria wanes, he’s up, capturing my lips. The taste of my release still clings to him.
“Good girl,” he praises, pulling back enough to meet my gaze.
His hardness pulses against my stomach, and I’d love nothing more than to drop to my knees and return the favor, but he flips the water off and ushers me out of the shower.
“Now, do you want to tell me who exactly I’ll be getting rid of before the rest of your family arrives?”
My post orgasm glow is gone in the blink of an eye.
“It’s a long story, and as you said, we’re short on time.”
“Give me the condensed version then.”
I let out an unfair, annoyed huff. “We went to school together and ended up in the same peer counseling group. I was struggling in my sophomore year, and that’s how we unofficially met.
But then the notes started, and the gifts wouldn’t stop.
But it was him, breaking into my dorm and hiding in my closet, that got the school involved.
I thought everything was fine. I hadn’t heard or seen him in over a year. ”
Scott violently pulls two towels off the shelf. He shoves one in my direction, using another to wipe himself dry quickly, muttering something under his breath. When he finishes, he looks up at me, but I’m still caught in the break of my story, wondering if he wants me to continue.
“When all of this is over, I’ll need his full name and everything you know about him,” he says, and that seems to be the end of my story time.
“Okay? What are you going to do?”
“Well, now you’re going to get dressed in something you don’t care about. Then I want you to find all the cleaning supplies you can—hopefully bleach. Then, drown our clothes and the shower in it. But leave enough to deal with the kitchen.”
That didn’t answer my question at all, but now doesn’t seem the time to argue.
His fingers grip around the plastic shower curtain, and with a quick pull, the thing rips free.
“And I’ve got a body to wrap up.”
He says it so casually, like he’s about to step out to pick up takeout for a date night.
“Scott.” His name barely registers as sound. “I’m scared.”
The space between us vanishes. His strong fingers pinch my chin, lifting it to snag my full attention. I could get lost in the way he looks at me. Like the world could be on fire or aliens could be invading, and I’d still be the only thing he’d see.
“I won’t let anything happen to you. No one will ever know. I swear it, Ava. I’ll take care of you.”
With the declaration of a fucking lifetime, he captures my lips in a searing kiss and then walks ass naked out of the bathroom with the plastic shower curtain in hand.
Our bleach-soaked clothes in the trash bag over my shoulder weigh down every step I take through the snow. Scott leads the way, out of the clearing and back into the woods. The body-shaped plastic across his shoulders is probably doing the same, but he doesn’t seem to strain in the slightest.
The clear sky, dotted with bright, blinking stars, allows the moon’s golden glow to shine freely. It’s the only light we have to guide our way between the thick shadows and scratching branches.
“How far are you going?” I call up ahead after what feels like half an hour, but Scott doesn’t stop.
“Keep moving,” he grunts back, swapping hands on the shovels he’s also carting like a pack mule.
The cabin had far more cleaning supplies than I’d ever noticed.
I have my mom to thank for that. Hopefully, she doesn’t miss her apocalypse-sized stash if they ever actually show up.
It was enough to rinse the shower clean and scrub the kitchen free of any blood we could find.
The extensive discoloration on the hardwood is a problem for when we get back.
I can excuse away a stain, a dead body on the other hand…
An owl screeches high above our heads, stealing a surprised yelp from my throat. Scott’s weighed-down shoulders somehow bounce with the chuckle I catch over the crunch of our boots.
“It’s so not funny,” I mumble under my breath. Closing the gap between us as the forest grows thicker, cutting our limited light.
Straining my eyes is the only way I can make out the roots poking through the thin layer of snow. I narrowly miss one in the shadow of the hulking figure beside me, but still manage to crash into his side.
“Okay, this is far enough.” He halts to a stop, and a resounding thud comes a second later.
“Are you sure? We can keep going.”
“No. You’re cold and tired, and I’m not going to let you get hurt so that we can stumble another mile through the woods. This is far enough.”
“Yes, sir,” I tease, and his head whips in my direction.
“Don’t brat me right now, Ava, or so help me God, I’ll handle you on this filthy forest floor the moment I’m done dealing with this dead body.”
His threat should sober me. Any sane person would shut the hell up or be in tears after the day I’ve had, but maybe something cracked in my brain when I pulled that trigger because that’s the last thing I want to do right now. Maybe it’s just a simple case of deflection.
I drop the bag of clothes we’re supposed to burn out here and walk into his heaving chest.
Pressing up onto my tiptoes, I drag my tongue along the lobe of his ear before giving it a playful nip. “So fucking handle me, Scott.”