28
Fully clothed and in control, I quietly open the door and tiptoe out of my bedroom. The door at the end of the hall is open, so I pad to his room and poke my head inside to find it empty. I swear I heard him walk past toward his room, but maybe he left again.
I dash down the stairs barefoot, Glock loaded in my hand, and pause when I hear tinkering in the kitchen. I peer around the doorframe to see him sitting at the table eating. His eyes are down, so he doesn’t see me, and I can catch him unawares.
A handgun pointed at his face. I walked in, stepped right up to him, pressed the barrel against his forehead, and relaxed back in his chair, a simmering smirk on his face. “Atta girl,” he croons proudly.
“I’m not nice,” I snap, perplexed by his temperature change toward me.
“You’ll always be nice,” he disagrees. “That’s who you are, Rae.”
“I can pull this trigger if I want to,” I hiss at him, annoyed that he’s not concerned by this gun indenting a ring in his skin. “Death is only one second away.”
That smirk of his widens. “Pull the trigger, Rae,” he says calmly. “Do your best work.”
I wrestle with the emotions streaming through my body. “Why did you treat me like a whore?”
He tilts his head to the side, running those eyes over my tanned legs under beige shorts. “To find your limits.”
“Do you do this to every girl you bring home?” I ask as my heart hammers against my ribcage; again, he takes my breath away, and I wish he didn’t have this effect on me.
Those blue eyes narrowed under the weight of the question. “I haven’t had a girl in my bed for years,” he confesses. “But I have thought about it many times.”
The hurt from his rejection and throwaway comments is driving me crazy. I need to resolve that he will never view me as girlfriend material. “Do…” I swallow, finding the courage to ask how he feels about me, but he interrupts.
“Are you going to squeeze the trigger, or can I continue to eat my meal?” he states, unbothered and entertained by the whole fiasco. “I made a plate for you.”
I drop my eyes down to his plate of cold chicken and salad greens.
“I had a burger and fries at Burger Fuel,” I remind him. “And why did you make me a plate? I thought you wanted me to leave.”
“Make your point, Rae,” he mumbles, pressing his forehead firmer against the barrel of the handgun, making me nervous. “Kill or let live?”
I snatch a chicken leg from his plate, bite a chunk of meat from the bone, and then slap it down on his plate again.
“Come on, Rae, make your mind up,” he roars, making me flinch. “Tell me what you want.”
“I don’t want anything,” I lie. Emotions are curling in my mind and body, and I can’t make sense of anything anymore. I don’t even know I’m standing here holding this gun at the forehead of the man I’ve been crushing on for years.
“Why are you here then, threatening to shoot me?” he presses, picking up his glass of liquor and whiskey, I think, and sipping, as blue eyes remain fixed on my face, so I guess I am making some impact.
“To take control,” I reply, keeping my cool.
Stoking a breathy chuckle from that mouth, “Be my guest.”
“Question,” I start, wondering how far I can take this. “Did you let that man fall from the building opposite me?”
“Yes,” he answers, shrugging his shoulders. “He was a sex offender who terrorized that elderly lady. I let him fall because he deserved to die.”
“Did you want me to see?” I propose curiously because I always thought he did as if he was trying to communicate with me.
“Yes,” he grunts proudly. “I wanted you to see me kill a man.”
I swallow over that lump in my throat, which seems coarser the longer I’m here with him. “Why?”
There’s a hesitation in his answer that I find intriguing. “To scare “you,” he says smoothly, takes a pause, and adds, “To show you.”
“To show me what?” I’m utterly intrigued now.
He bites his bottom lip and smirks, drawing out his answer and fueling my apprehension. I am so hungry for answers and for him to open up to me. “To show you what I’m capable of,” he finally answers, and I falter and lose my cool for a few seconds.
No, Rae, you’re in control. Here and now, you are in control.
With my spare hand, I shove his plate of food aside, and it flies off the table and smashes onto the floor. His face remains unscathed, amused, eager to see what I will do next.
I unbutton my shorts and slowly let them drop to the floor, followed by my panties, as he licks his bottom lip and rakes those baby blues all over my pussy.
“I don’t need a theatrical display, Rae,” he says sarcastically, wiggling his finger at me. “This is nothing new. I saw it all upstairs. Perhaps you need a new act.”
Ignoring his deliberate callousness to wound me or weaken my confidence, I climb onto the table before him, spread my legs, and snarl, “The only dinner you’ll be eating is me.”
He chuckles, “Now we’re talking,” and licks along my inner thigh to my clit and sucks hard, making me scream. I gyrate my body against his tongue strokes, quick short movements, as he pushes his face right into me, nibbling, sucking, moving down to my canal, sliding his tongue inside, drawing out my orgasm quickly.
Weakness comes over me, succumbing to his touch, and the gun falls from my hand onto the floor. I scramble to reach down to pick it up, but he gets there before me.
“This loaded?” he asks, licking me off his lips. He checks the cartridge, cocks his eyebrow to find that it is loaded, then those eyes drop back down to my wet pussy, knowing that I haven’t quite finished and I’m wondering what he has planned. I start moving away from him, but he grabs my ankle and pulls me back to him. “You’re not going anywhere,” he snarls, back in control, locking his gaze with mine, filled with fear.
His lips part, and he claims my mouth, kissing me soulfully, deeply, his tongue dancing with mine, as something cold and steely slides into my pussy.
“Are you going to shoot me down there?” I challenge. Now, the shoe is on the other foot.
“No,” he declines, biting my bottom lip as he moves the gun inside of me.
“Why not?” I prompt, tipping my head back and arching my back as my body responds favorably to the chill sensation inside me.
He tips the gun upwards slightly, then drives it down on a different angle, pinching a little, but it feels good. “Maybe I should,” he replies smoothly. “You drive me nuts.”
“Good,” I sigh. “Squeeze the trigger, put me out of my misery. If you don’t want me, then kill me.”
Tsk, tsk, tsk, “Oh, I want you,” he snarls gravely. “I want you bad.”
Emotions topple over, and tears stream down my face. “Then why are you so cruel?”
He hesitates, and I see a different side to him for the first time. To punish me again, he pushes the gun harder against the inner walls, making me gasp.
“Why?” I moan as my skin prickles, and my entire body tenses as an incoming orgasm tremble through me. “Why are you so cruel?”
In a sudden move, he pulls the gun out of me and slams it on the table as the impending orgasm fades. He pushes his chair back abruptly and stands up over me, roughly grabbing my wrists and pinning them down above my head.
Those eyes hold resentment and anguish but also something else, maybe fondness. I find it so intimidating that I turn away from him. His hand catches my chin, and I turn my head back to face him, drilling those into me.
“There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, Rae,” his voice frighteningly. “If I catch you, I’ll never let you go.”
The words are whisked from my mouth. I’m stumped, speechless, bamboozled. The room is spinning as my world crumbles, and I long for him to pick me up and hold me and never let me go.
“I did it for you,” he adds confidently as he releases one of my wrists to caress my bottom lip with his thumb. “I threw that rapist out the window for you, and I’ll do it again in a heartbeat.”
My emotions overflow as I begin to cry. “You were the only one that understood what happened to me,” I sob. My body trembles as he releases my other wrist and takes me into his arms. “It was always you.”
“Hush, hush,” he whispers into my ear, rubbing my back and kissing my cheek. “I’ve got you, Rae. I’ve got you.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, and he pulls me close. I can feel his heartbeat thudding against my chest and his warm breath prickling my skin. I believe him. I believe his every word.
“They won’t hurt you anymore, Rae?” he whispers into my cool skin. “No one will ever hurt you again.”
My eyes close as I sink into his warm embrace, thinking that life couldn’t get better than this. He sways to a tune in his mind, and my body lifts off the table. He then places me on the floor. But he doesn’t let me go. His bear hug intensifies, tighter and more loving, whispering in my ear that everything will be okay.
And, of course, it will be if I have these three men beside me, fighting off the bad guys during the day while seducing me under the bedsheets at night.
Yes, nothing could get better than this. Until…
Gabe’s phone starts as the front door opens and slams shut. “Gabe,” Blake yells urgently. “We’ve got trouble.”