Chapter Nineteen #2
He looks like a crucified moth. His oily-haired head hangs like it’s about to snap off his shoulders, so I can’t see if they’ve marked that up, but the artwork carved into his bare chest is quite impressive. It’s only one word, but it draws my lips back in a sadistic smile.
REESE
Walking up behind Becca, I slip my arm around her waist and draw her against my chest. “This is Liam, cara mia ,” I murmur against her ear.
“He’s a Rogue wannabe who served the man who killed your mother.
That’s why he didn’t ask questions or hesitate when that same man gave him the order to shoot your father from behind like a coward, then use something that belongs to us to send a message. ”
She drags in a slow breath, her chest falling with the exhale of one word. “Fire…”
“Fire,” I confirm, pressing my palm harder against her stomach.
“The feds will never catch him, and even if they did, he’d likely get offered a cushy plea deal to turn on someone like him.
Ask me how I know.” A little unnecessary, but the reins are slipping from my hands.
“So it’s up to monsters like me to carry out justice.
How does that make you feel, Doc? Do you want to run away? Cry for my soul?”
I half expect her to do both. Instead, she stands there stone-faced and says the five words I know I’ll be jerking off to for weeks to come. “I want him to bleed.”
“The queen has spoken.” I tilt her head over her shoulder and crash our mouths together, knocking her glasses askew. Becca pushes up against me, turning my cock to stone.
What I wouldn’t give to chain her to the wall and fuck her to tears.
But that’ll have to wait. My wife demands blood.
Giving her lip a final bite, I pull away and begin a slow walk toward the guest of honor. “Show’s over, Liam. It’s time for more unpleasant activities.” I shrug at the blood from the graffiti still oozing down his chest. “Well, for you, at least.”
He twists in his chains. “You’ve got the wrong guy. I didn’t kill any cop.”
“The problem I have with that is, yeah, you did.” I drag my favorite cleaver off the shelf above his head, his eyes tracking every move. “Now, my beautiful wife, here,” I say, swinging it in a wide arc toward Becca, “thinks she’s owed an apology and a lot of fucking begging. I happen to agree.”
His red-rimmed eyes shift behind me. “If I do, can I taste her, too?”
A black silence swallows the room.
“You really shouldn’t have said that.” I draw the cleaver back, ready to turn Liam Callahan into a mutilated torso when a sharp voice stops me mid-swing.
“Wait.”
It takes an unprecedented level of restraint for me to look over my shoulder. When I do, I realize Becca’s eyes aren’t on me. They’re on Liam.
She walks toward him, her shoulders back. “Do you have a family?”
His eyes narrow. “Why?” Slamming the flat side of the blade against my palm proves to be an effective motivator. Liam flinches, his attitude taking a nosedive as he stammers out, “A mother and l-little sister.”
“She probably idolizes her big brother, huh?” she muses. Liam wisely keeps his mouth shut. “What would you do if someone murdered them both?”
“I—”
“Denying you any kind of closure because the man who killed your mother and baby sister also burned their bodies until they were nothing more than charred bones.”
Fuck. I think I fell in love with this woman all over again.
My terrifyingly brilliant wife just ended this guy without a single blade.
When a man trades in violence with blood as his currency, the threat of death loses its power.
That’s why intimidating him is nearly impossible.
But a psychiatrist knows the most effective torture cuts into the mind, not the flesh.
By embedding the visual of his sins befalling his family, she’s sending him to Hell never knowing if it was an idle threat or a sworn promise.
That’s some cold-blooded shit.
“Please don’t hurt them,” he begs, tears streaming down his face. “They’re all I’ve got.”
Two more steps bring Becca and Liam face to face. “So was my dad.”
I reach down and adjust my cock. Time to shut this down before I lose control and do something I’ll regret. “What’s your verdict, Doc?”
Her stare could melt steel. “Rot in hell, you pathetic fuck.”
I smile. “You heard the lady. Time’s up.” My fingers on Becca’s cheek draws her eyes toward me. “Step away, cara mia . This is going to get messy.”
The moment she shuffles back, I land my first swing, Liam’s eyes bugging out as I sever a lung. It’s a faster kill than I prefer, but I don’t have the patience for theatrics. A second swing sends his guts spilling out, quickly followed by a third that damn near decapitates him.
I turn around and drop the cleaver, every inch of me dripping with blood. Becca watches in silence as I unclip my holster and draw my gun. “Come here, beloved,” I tell her, my bloodlust far from satisfied. “It’s your turn.”
Becca walks unsteadily toward me, her hands clenching by her side as I brush a lock of hair away from her face with the barrel of the gun. “What are you doing?”
I lean in, a dark smile on my lips as I dust them against her ear. “What my wife wants.” I pry her fingers open, her breath hitching as I press the gun in her hand.
She swallows hard because she knows I’ve called her bluff.
At the club, she demanded a gun, but if she can’t fire a bullet into a dead man, there’s no way I’m risking a live one turning the tables and her own weapon on her.
“I can’t…”
“Yes, you can.” Moving in behind her, I slide my bloodstained hand around her waist and place it flat on her stomach.
“You know how this goes. Move your feet shoulder-width apart.” As she shuffles her feet, I bring the other hand around and cup the heavy swell of her breast over her thin T-shirt, my fingers teasing her nipple into a stiff peak.
Her head falls back against my chest. “Gianni…”
“Remember, knees bent, weight on the balls of your feet,” I say, my voice low and lethal.
She complies, and I grit my teeth, the angle of her ass against my cock nearly putting an end to this.
“Now, arms forward and elbows straight, but don’t lock.
” The gun rises and points shakily at Liam’s mutilated body as my hand dips from her stomach into the waistband of her leggings.
She stiffens, her body fighting her mind as her unsteady breaths turn to pants. “What?—?”
Two fingers invade her slick pussy. “You’ll never pull that trigger in a vacuum, Doc.
Your target won’t be chained. Bullets will be coming at you.
There will be fear in your veins instead of desire.
If you can focus with my fingers in your cunt, you can focus when it counts.
Concentrate and find your center. Survivors fight, Becca.
Victims fall.” Tight, controlled circles against her clit award me a delicious, throaty groan.
“Now block everything from your mind, and shoot.”
She stills. Then, the gun goes off.
I expect to find a bullet lodged somewhere in the rafters, not dead-center of Liam’s chest.
Becca lowers her arms, the gun still clenched in her hand. She doesn’t move or blink. She just stares blankly at the new hole in what’s left of Liam’s torso. Even sliding my hand out of her leggings does nothing to knock her out of it.
Damn it. I got too caught up and pushed her too far. I am a monster.
“Becca, say something.”
“Fuck me.”
I rear back, her blunt delivery catching me off guard. “You’re in shock. You don’t know what?—”
“I know exactly what I’m saying,” she says, turning around with the fluidity of a cat on the prowl. “It’s two words, Gianni. Fuck me. Right here. Right now.”
I fist my hand by my side, the blood on my fingers sliding across my palm like butter.
The thought of seeing it on her naked body turns my stomach, something that rattles me more than her request. While my cock begs to be inside her, stripping us down to our darkest core has built an unexpected wall I don’t know how to scale.
I take the gun from her hand and engage the safety. “I think you need to take some time to process what happened.”
“The only thing I need is you…” Blood splashes onto her white sneakers as she cups me with a grip that sends my brain spinning. “And this cock driving into me so hard I feel it for days.”
I’m losing control, the last few shreds of my restraint dangerously close to snapping. “I shouldn’t touch you right now.”
“I think you should,” she taunts, her voice low and sultry. “In fact, I think you should let those demons of yours do anything they want.”