4. Ezekiel
4
Ezekiel
T error has her muttering senseless words. Has her frozen to the spot, her back pressed to the wall. Her narrow shoulders shake hard. She brings a hand to my chest, her fingers trembling. It’s as if she’s checking to make sure I’m real. Her touch is so very insignificant, like a butterfly landing on a lion. Her eyes search my face behind the mask. She is unable to hold my gaze.
I could end her. Here. Now. No one would know. All it would take would be a quick twisting of her tiny little neck. The slamming of her head against the wall. Just one of my hands pressing against her throat to squeeze the breath from her. To steal the life from her. She’s that much smaller than me. Maybe five-feet-two-inches and petite. Physically, she doesn’t stand a chance.
And yet she dares to try and extort money from me. To threaten to expose me. To threaten Zo? and Jericho and all those about whom I care.
She makes a sound, something like a broken little bird caught in the jaws of a predator.
Broken. No. That’s not right. Not with this girl. It’s something else. She’s a fighter. A survivor. That sound is the sound of someone who is caught. Who is desperate.
And that makes her dangerous.
In the next instant, I realize just how dangerous when, out of nowhere, she’s got a fucking knife to my throat.
“Get away from me. Get the fuck away from me!”
The blade cuts, sharp and burning. A warm drop of blood slides down my neck. But it’s a shallow cut.
“Blue,” I say, low and slow. She’s not going to do it. She’d have sliced an artery if she was going to do it. If I’m wrong, well, there’ll be no turning back, but I have a gut feeling. Fighter or not, she’s not a killer.
“I said get the fuck away from me, asshole!”
I shoot my arm out and grip her wrist. She gasps at the speed of the movement. I twist until she yelps and spin her around, drawing her to me with one arm around her middle the other a vise around her wrist.
Where the fuck did she get a knife? I had her bag and coat pockets searched.
“You’re going to make a mess on the carpet,” I say, my voice a deep timbre vibrating against her ear. She shudders and her fear, the smell of it, the presence of it, it stirs that darkness inside me that lies dormant, but there. Always there. “Drop it,” I tell her.
“Fuck you.” She rams the elbow of her free arm into my stomach. A fighter. Like I thought. But no match for me.
“That wasn’t very nice, Blue.” I grip her free arm, whirl her around, slam her back into the wall.
She grunts, her head bouncing off, and drops the knife. She’s disoriented. I watch her blink, give her a minute for her eyes to slowly refocus on my face. They’re pretty. A deep, cerulean blue several shades lighter than her hair. And as her pupils refocus, they grow dark with fury. Not fear. Or maybe that’s there too, beneath the fury.
“You’re going to stop fighting me now, Blue. And you’re going to get on your knees and put your hands behind your head. You hear me?”
“Go fuck yourself, asshole.”
One corner of my mouth curves upward. I didn’t think I’d enjoy this as much as I am.
I loosen my hold on her wrists. I’ll let her run. Give chase. I can outrun her. Overpower her. Those things aren’t an issue. She can’t weigh more than a-hundred-and-ten-pounds soaking wet. I’ll let her wear herself out because this one is not going down easy.
But when she tugs her arms free, she doesn’t run or try to get away from me, like I expect. She grips my arms instead and attempts to knee me in the groin. I catch her leg between my thighs and let her have her little fight. Let her think she has some control in this.
She doesn’t.
She wrestles, tries to scoot past me this way and that. She gets to the door and out into the hallway. She’s almost to the stairs when I catch up with her, tugging her backward against my chest by her hair.
“Blue.” I shift my grip to her arms and lean down toward her ear. Before I can say anything, though, she drops her head then slams it backward. I turn my face just in time, so she hits my jaw and not my nose. That would have hurt.
I growl, irritated.
“That wasn’t very nice.”
I lift her over my shoulder. She’s light as a feather. She yelps. I smack her ass and she pounds against my back as I walk her back into the small bedroom. I drop her on her ass and wait for her to scramble up to her feet before gripping her wrist with one hand and a handful of hair with the other to force her to her knees.
“I told you to kneel.”
Her free hand wraps around the arm that has a fistful of her hair as I crouch down while bringing her to her knees. Once she’s down, I grin.
“You’d better learn to do as I say,” I tell her calmly.
“Asshole!” She shoots out her arm and snatches away my mask, clawing flesh as she does it. Only when that’s done does she stop. Does she draw back, that mask in her hand, her breathing ragged, as ragged as mine.
“Finished?” I ask, jerking her head back.
She cries out, drops the mask. I kick away the knife and as soon as I release her, she falls forward onto her hands, panting.
I give her a minute to catch her breath while I walk the few steps to where the knife is. But it’s not a knife at all. It’s a thick shard of glass with blood on its edges. Mine. Hers too, when I glance at her to find her holding the wrist of the hand which is pouring blood onto the white carpet.
“Where did you learn this trick? Prison?”
“I’ve never been to prison, asshole.”
“I’m done hearing myself referred to as asshole.”
“You prefer ass wipe?”
I toss the glass far enough away she won’t get to it and walk back to her. There, I crouch down again and am glad to see her cringe back. At least until she catches herself doing it.
“What was that?” I ask, my face inches from hers. “Didn’t quite catch it.”
She glares, but keeps her mouth shut. Good girl.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Blue Masterson.”
“Your real name.”
She doesn’t answer my question. “I’m bleeding here. I need stitches. There could be glass in the cut.”
“That’d be too bad for you but too good for me. Name.”
“Blue. Blue Masterson,” she says more loudly.
I exhale, shake my head. “If you think you know what I did,” I start, referencing her first message to me. “Don’t you think you should watch yourself around me, Blue ?”
At that her expression changes. She searches my face. I wonder what she sees. What I see, even in this dimly lit room, is that she’s young. Nowhere near the twenty-seven on her ID. She’s completely out of her league. And the look in her eyes in that moment, the uncertainty, the expression of someone lost, it triggers something inside me. Because I know this look. I’ve seen it before.
And I’ve ignored it.
I shake my head. Now is not the time to reminisce. I need to remember why she’s here. Why I was forced to return to this place that holds all the bad memories of my past.
What I know about Blue Masterson isn’t much. But she somehow got her hands on information about me that, if it gets out, will hurt those I care about and possibly destroy me. That’s not nothing. She’s not some pickpocket, dollar store thief. She is much more capable than that. And I need to know exactly what she knows and how she came to know it before I can make any decisions about her well-being. Her future. Whether or not she’ll have one.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“And I’m Santa Clause.”
Her face says it all. Cocky arrogance replaces what I saw an instant ago. She clenches her jaw tight, lips in a sneer, head tilted so she’s somehow managing to look down her nose at me from her position kneeling at my feet.
“How. Old. Are. You?”
“Twenty. Seven.” She mimics my tone.
I smile. She smiles wider.
“Cute,” I say, and she dips her head like she’s taking a fucking bow and before she even sees me move, I fist that handful of hair again. This time, she lets out a scream as I draw her up by her hair. It’s painful, I’m sure. She mewls, her neck twisted as she clutches my forearm with both hands. I march her toward the desk, lift the chair to set it out of the way and push her face-down over the desk. I kick her legs out wide to stand between them, grip the waistband of the oversized sweatpants and tug them off.
She gasps but I’m not done yet. I flip the skirt of the uniform, if you can call it that, up over her ass and smack a cheek hard.
She clenches, gasps, her back stiffening.
I hook a finger into the snaps at the crotch and with one tug, they snap open, and her ass is right there on display just for me. I take a minute to enjoy the sight of her sweet, round cheeks, the skin just beginning to pink.
But only good girls get spankings.
And Blue here is not a good girl.
I cup her sex, dig my fingers into tender flesh.
“No!” She begins her fight anew, adrenaline must be coursing through her veins. She flails her arms, pushing back from the desk, and I shift my grip to take her wrists. I draw them out, and lean over her, pinning her with my weight, reminding myself she’s not here to be fucked.
“I asked you a question,” I say, voice low and deep and somehow calm sounding.
“Nineteen! I’m fucking Nineteen!”
“You sure?”
She nods, rattling off her birthday as if to prove she’s not lying. “Please don’t hurt me!”
“Please don’t hurt you?” I ask with a laugh. I’m sure she can feel my erection between her ass cheeks. She’s very still as I straighten, bringing both wrists to her lower back and shifting them into one of my hands. I spank her again, harder and she yelps. I look down at the sight of my handprint forming on the soft, smooth flesh. “Why do you think we’re here, Blue Masterson?” I ask, gripping a cheek and drawing it out, taking in the pink slit of her pussy, the tight ring of her asshole.
“Please.” It’s a quiet plea.
“What’s the matter? No please asshole ?” I shift my gaze down as I say the words and she stiffens when she feels my thumb against that very orifice.
“Oh God. Please don’t.”
I press the pads of those fingers against the warm, tight hole and lean over her again. “Do you know I could finish you right here, right now, dump your body, your shitty bag and coat. It’d be like you never existed at all.” I rub her asshole. “Of course, I’d take what I wanted first. What is owed to me, considering your attempt at blackmail and extortion.”
“I’m sorry. I just…”
“And you know what? No one would even give a shit. No one would miss you, would they, Blue ?”
“I just…” She turns her head to the side, attempts to wipe her eyes and nose on her shoulder.
“No wait,” I continue, straightening, releasing her wrists and gripping the far edge of the desk, my hands on either side of her face. Because she lost the right to a defense the day she decided to send that first email.
She looks at my hands, big and strong, oh the damage they can do. I wait for her to shift her gaze up to me before I finish my sentence.
“Wait. Someone would miss you,” I say.
Her expression changes wholly then, all the fire and fury, gone. Tears drop from her blue eyes. She’s prettier for it. It’s a weird thought I know. A sick one maybe. But I know the stock I come from.
“I’ll repeat myself once more, Blue,” I say, drawing back to give her space to do as I command. “Get on your knees.”
I should question her and be done with her. Finish her. That’s all. But there is that command and something inside me twists and stretches and yawns to life. Something dark and ruthless and feral as a starved beast in the wild.
She straightens, wiping her eyes and nose with the inside of her wrist. And she drops to her knees. Because I have her.