16. DEAN
“Something wrong?” I ask Willow as I lean against the bedroom door frame.
After we had breakfast together downstairs, she wanted to come up here to lie down and I had some work to do so I left her to it but I’ve not been able to think straight with her away from me.
“Huh?” her head snaps to mine where she’s been staring out the window from her position on the bed. “Oh no. I’m fine.” She shakes her head and gives me a small smile but I know she’s lying. I just don’t understand why. I thought things were good between us.
“You don’t have to stay in here all day, you know?”
“Yeah, I know it’s just…” she trails off and I can see her shutting me out but I can’t have that after we’ve made so much progress. I step into the room and sit next to her on the bed, taking her hands, I run my fingers along her palms and she lets out a shaky exhale as she looks up at me.
“Talk to me, baby. I want to know everything you”re feeling.”
She bites on her lip and I think she’s about to shut that door tight on me but she doesn’t. “I’m not used to having this much freedom,” she says quietly and I don’t know what to say.
Is she joking?
Her cheeks start to turn that lovely shade of peach they do when she’s nervous and she quickly adds. “I know, I’m not. I’m here and I’m yours and—
I cut her off by putting my fingers over her lips. “Slow down, baby. Whatever you want to say, I promise I won’t get mad. Got it?” She nods and I move my fingers away, reluctantly, because god I love the feel of her lips. So soft, they make me want to kiss her and sink my cock into them at the same time. Not the time for that now though. I need Willow to trust me and distracting her with sex isn’t the best move right now.
“Like I told you before, I never had any freedom. I was so used to being kept in my room all the time and I think I’mstill used to that. It’s messed up how scared I am to be able to just walk around freely and to even have someone want me around them. You say you care about me and I’m scared to trust that feeling. Scared to trust you.”
Her father has clearly worked his way into her brain after all those years being stuck with him. He locked her away, then when she got herself out, I took her before she had a chance at real freedom.
What Willow has with me isn’t what she deserves but I’m too damn selfish to let her go so I’ll do everything in my power to give her what she needs here with me.
“I understand having people not want you around them. I spent a lot of my childhood surrounded by people but I was still completely alone.” She looks at me with sadness in her big eyes and it breaks my heart that she’s got enough empathy in her to feel sorry for me when she’s already hurting.
“Willow, I just want you to be happy. You don’t need to hide in here, I want you with me every second of the day but I’m worried that’s too much for you. If there’s anything you need, I’ll get it for you. If you’re bored, I’ll buy you a new hobby. You can have all the freedom you want but it has to be with me.”
Her eyes go red with tears and she twitches her nose before wiping her face with the back of her hand. Then with a small laugh she says, “there’s no way you want to spend every second with me, Dean.”
“Baby, if I could chain you to me I would. I mean I can totally do that, it”s not like you have much choice,” I tease her hoping the dark humor’s not too much for her but she just laughs and shoves my shoulder.
“Don’t even try it. I’ve been tied up plenty since I got here.” Then she blushes hard and bites her lip again. I tug it free and she gasps.
“Don’t tempt me, little kitten,” I growl and she moves closer to me so she’s almost sitting on my lap. Her fingers dig into my thighs and I know she wants me just as much as I want her but I’m behind on work and spent the last few hours staring at a blank screen because all I could think about was what she was doing up here alone.
“Promise I’ll make you feel good later but right now I need to work.” I feel it as she physically and mentally draws back from me but I’m not letting her get away from me, I pull her back onto my lap and her legs wrap around me.
“Never said I was done with you. You”re going to keep me company whilst I get my work done then, if you ask nicely, I might make you come.”
“Dean,” she moans against my lips and my cock”s begging to be inside her but for once I’m trying to show some restraint. To prove a point to her or me I’m not sure.
I stand up and she clings tight to me as she lets out a small yelp.
“Put me down,” she laughs and her wriggling only makes her grind more against my cock. I know she feels it too, by the way her breaths turn into eager pants and her nipples harden against my chest. So fucking needy. She really is perfect.
“Were you not listening when I said I want you with me always? If I could live buried into you every second of the day I would. I’d stitch myself to your skin and keep your pussy so full of my cock until we both die of exhaustion.”
She gasps again and I can feel the heat radiating off her. “Dean, please,” she whines again and if this is what pain feels like I’m glad I’ve not had to deal with it before because this is excruciating.
With a slap to her ass she starts to settle down and clings to me as I carry her downstairs into my office. I watch her closely as she takes the space in. It’s bare compared to the rest of the house, not like I have much in the way of knick knacks or sentimental items anyway.
The things I own are either practical or functional. That gives me an idea.
I adjust her on my lap so she’s sat sideways and I can still access my keyboard then I say, “I didn’t really bother decorating in here or any of the house really so if there’s anything you don’t like or want to change then we can do that.”
“Really? But it’s your space,” she says as she keeps taking the room in.
“No, sweet girl, it’s our space. Our home.”
Willow’s eyes snap to mine and her lips part slowly. I’m starting to realize just how much this girl is like me. She may have had everything I didn”t have growing up, a real home and the security of money, but it all means nothing when the person that was meant to care for her did the exact opposite.
Simply offering my space to her is like I’ve given her everything but it barely scratches the surface of what my sweet girl deserves.
If I could, I’d give her the earth, the stars and everything in between. All I have to offer her is my twisted concept of love and the vow of keeping her safe forever.
“Okay, I’ll think about it. I don’t know the first thing about interior design though.”
“If you like, when I’m finished on here, we can look at it together, like furniture and shit like that.” I run a hand through my hair and try not to make this awkward since I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.
With Willow, everything’s brand new.
She’s more than just someone to fuck, she has feelings and for some reason I care about them more than my own.
She leans her head against my shoulder and I tense for a brief second before letting her soft body melt my own. “Sure. What even is your work? I don’t see why you’d need a computer to kill people. Do you have a second job?”
I tap my keyboard and the computer screen comes back to life. Then I open up the shortcuts to everything I use to plan out a job.
My current contract is a simple one and like the others I’ve undertaken recently it’s close enough to home that I won’t need to leave Willow alone for too long.
“This is what I use to track down the people I’ve been hired to kill. I find their information, like social security number, birth certificate, bank records, then I use that to trace where they’ve been recently and get an idea of where they’ll be when I need to complete the job.”
“What did this guy do to deserve it?” Willow leans closer to the screen and scans the information I’ve brought up. “Dean, it says he has a wife and two kids. You can’t kill him.”
“It’s never that simple, Willow. You should know that. Look.” I open up his social media pages that I’ve hacked into and she simply shrugs.
“They look like a happy family.”
“Exactly.” She frowns at me like she’s still not getting it.
With a sigh I lean back and wrap my arms around her waist. “Willow, baby, this is exactly what your father’s social media looks like. Just like so many others it’s all fake. This guy, Steven Mellow, he’s an accountant with the perfect white picket fence life but his wife is the one that put the hit out on him.”
“Really? She did?”
I nod. “You’d be surprised how many rich socialite assholes know the shadiest guys.”
“So why does she want him dead then?”
“Because he beats the shit out of her.” I pull up the wife’s medical records. They show only a handful of the injuries her husband has given her and of course none of them relate back to him.
“How many times do you think is normal for someone to fall down the stairs in a year? Not fucking five.”
“Why doesn’t she get the police involved?” I close the tab, go back to Mellow’s social media and scroll until I find the picture I’m looking for.
“Because that’s one of his closest friends.” In the photo Mellow stands with his arm around the shoulders of a shorter guy with white hair and a thin mustache. “The chief of police.” I feel the shiver that runs through Willow as she looks at the two men smiling on screen. “If she went to the cops, I’m sure she’d be sent straight back home and I don’t think she’d survive the next fall.”
“Is everyone you kill like this?”
“No,” I say, giving her the truth. I’ve never claimed to be a good person and I never will, not even to Willow.
“But—”
“Don’t ask things you don’t want to know the answer to, Willow. I want to be truthful with you but I know you won’t like the answers.”
She stares at me but I can’t get a read on her expression.
“Would you stop?”
“Why would I do that? I’m good at this and it pays better than any normal job.”
“If I asked you to, would you stop?”
Something cold trickles down my spine. Is that fear? No way. She’s not actually asking and even if she was it’s not up to her. Of course, I wouldn’t give it up, I love my job. I get to make some of the worst of humanity suffer.
“I don’t know if I can stop,” I say, avoiding the truth only slightly. It’s all I’ve known for years, being able to kill people and actually get paid for it is what’s made me happy for so long.
But now I have something else that makes me happy.
Since taking her, Willow has taken over my every sense. I can’t function without her close by or knowing she’s safely locked away here for me to come home to.
If she gave me an ultimatum of her or the job I know what I’d have to do and she really wouldn’t like it.
She turns back to the screen like nothing’s wrong but I can feel the tension in her body and the way she moves ever so slightly away from me.
If I was a decent person I’d give her space but I’m not so I wrap my arms tighter around her and bring her side flush to my chest.
“What do you do next? Now that you have all this information.”
I show her the tracking apps I use and how I’ll hack into Mellow’s work and private schedules so I know exactly where he’ll be for the rest of the month. I only need the information up to the end of the week but for Willow”s sake I’m showing her how far I can take this. I really did only intend for her to keep me company whilst I did this but now that she’s here I can show her just what I’ll do to find her if she ever leaves me.
“It’s that simple? So you just pick a time to go kill him?”
“Yes, baby. It’s easy. Once I have someone’s basic information, I can track them down to the ends of the earth. I’ve had a few targets find out they’ve had a hit put out on them before and they’ve tried to hide but I’ve always found them.”
I watch closely as her pupils dilate and her breathing picks up. She knows exactly what I’m getting at. Even as my fingers dig hard into her sides, she doesn’t flinch. Instead, she stares me down and her face starts to soften. Fucking soften. It’s almost like she likes knowing I’ll always find her.
“You finished with work now then?” she asks, her voice low and breathy. I nod and smirk at her as my fingers trail under her shirt and over her stomach, lightly tracing the lines of her healing cuts.
A bright smile spreads across her face and something mischievous twinkles in her eye.
“Is there something my little kitten has in mind?”
Willow leans in until our lips are almost brushing and it takes all my self restraint to not grab a fistful of her hair and force her the rest of the way.
“I think I remember owing you an orgasm,” I purr and she giggles. It might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard, well, second to her screaming my name as she comes but fuck it’s pretty and I want to hear more of it.
“You do…later,” she says and she actually smirks at me. I reach out to grab her and pull her in for a kiss but she grabs my wrists and I let her stop me. “You also said we could look at redecorating. Not that I know where to start.”
“Oh, I have a few ideas, maybe a better office chair to start with, one with more room to fuck you on.”
She bites her lips and her eyes get that glazed-over, lust-filled look.
Fuck, I’ve done a good job at converting her to worship on my cock. Who would have thought kindness was the way to get there?
“That’s definitely a start.” She licks her lips then blinks a few times and starts to look all shy. “Maybe we can get some more clothes for me whilst we’re at it?”
I school my expression, so I don’t show my surprise. If she’s willing to ask for clothes then surely that means she really is coming around to the idea of there being an us.
“Sure, baby. Whatever you want,” I say stroking my fingers up her spine and resting them lightly around the back of her neck. Her pulse beats steadily against my skin and I let myself relax into the feeling of all of her truly being mine.