Chapter 4
BONER
"Great, you brought the food." I stepped over to open the pizza box and pulled out a slice. "Really, anchovies? What are you, evil or something?" Grinning, I took a big bite.
Okay, this was good pizza, anchovies aside.
"Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?" Carl stared at me. He inched toward the kitchen as though he was going to grab out a knife and use it on me. That wasn't going to happen. Not successfully anyway. Let him try. It'd be good for a laugh.
"Think of me as your unfriendly neighborhood vigilante," I said. "You see, Carl, I don't like people who do bad things to innocent people. They make humanity look bad. Do you want the aliens to keep flying past?" I took another bite of pizza and chewed.
"You're out of your mind." Carl backed away a few more steps.
"Actually, I'm very much in my mind," I told him. "Okay, I admit, I'm a bit flamboyant once in a while, but believe me, I'm all there."
Mostly.
I got a certain amount of pleasure from ending the lives of people like him, so maybe there was an element of unhinged going on here. Whatever, I was what I was.
"Whoever sent you, I'll pay you double," Carl said, his eyes wide. Pretending not to be scared but failing miserably, if you ask me.
"Here's the thing, Carl," I said slowly. I finished off the slice of pizza and wiped my hands on my jeans. "I don't get paid to do this. It's a free service I offer to the world. Generous of me, isn't it?"
"What do you want?" He backed up to the edge of the counter top. "Name your price and it's yours. A million dollars? Two million?"
I clicked my tongue. "Carl, Carl, Carl. I don't want your money." I paused for a moment. "No, that's not quite true. I'd happily take a couple million dollars. But not from you. Not while you're alive."
I snagged the pizza box from the table and held it out to him. "Hungry? This is pretty good. I mean, of course it is, this is New York City. Bad pizza would be sacrilege, wouldn't it now?"
I shook the box at him, but he looked back at me and didn't take a slice.
That's gratitude for you.
"What do you want then?" His eyes narrowed. "You want a share? You want some of my goods for yourself?"
I stuck out my tongue in disgust. "Did you just refer to girls as goods? And you wonder why I'm here. People like you don't deserve to live."
"You don't get to decide that," he snapped.
"Actually, yes, I do." I tossed the pizza back onto the table. "I get to decide exactly that. Isn't that grand? I get to be judge, jury and executioner."
Hell yeah.
His expression changed; he became borderline smug. "Did you really think I'd be here alone?"
"I don't see anyone else here," I said easily.
So far, Harlow kept herself hidden, probably wondering what the hell I was doing. To be honest, I was wondering the same thing. I could have waited until his back was turned, pulled out a knife and jammed it right into his neck. But this? This was more fun.
"They will be, any moment now," he said. "They'll walk right through that door behind you."
I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. "That door? No one is coming through the door." I stepped toward him. "No one is coming to save you, Carl. We'll see to that."
Carl looked understandably confused. "We? There's only one of you." But his eyes twitched, looking for something he might have missed.
"Yeah, you're right there, Carl," I said. "There's only one of me." Before he could look too relieved, I added, "But there's also one of her."
Right on cue, Harlow rose and stepped out of the bedroom.
She was dressed from head to toe in black, her red ponytail and pale skin contrasting with striking perfection. She looked like the goddess of death. Empress of fucking people up. Patron saint of making a man regret his life choices before taking their last breath.
And now my cock was hard.
"What are you doing?" she asked me. "I don't suppose it crossed your mind he might have drugged that pizza?" She raised one carefully shaped eyebrow at me.
"Of course it did," I protested.
That was why I offered some to Carl. Yeah, it didn't escape my notice he didn't take any. Still, if it was drugged, I'd be feeling it by now.
Wouldn't I?
"You wouldn't offer me poison pizza, would you Carl?" I asked.
Judging by the expression on his face, he'd do exactly that. In fact, right now he was wishing he had.
Rude.
Harlow moved over to make sure the door was locked and the chain in place. "We should get on with this. He's wasted enough of our time."
"Have some pizza," I offered. "You seem hangry."
"I'm not hangry," she protested.
She was hot when feisty. She was also hot mid-orgasm. A fact I hadn't managed to put out of my mind for the last couple of days.
"I don't like wasting my time." She gave me a look as though to accuse me of doing just that. As if it wasn't Carl's insistence on continuing to breathe that was taking up both of our time.
"You heard the woman," I said to Carl. "It's past time we dealt with you." I lunged at him, slamming one hand over his mouth and the other around his throat.
I wasn't the biggest fan of strangulation, it was slow and messy. In this case though, I'd make an exception. Especially given I believed him when he said he planned on not being alone for long.
Someone would be bringing the… 'goods' as he referred to them. Potentially multiple someones.
If there was something I didn't like to deal with, it was multiple someones, particularly angry, vengeful someones.
Carl struggled, but I managed to drag him down to the floor and pin him there. His eyes were wider now, starting to protrude from his head. So attractive.
Not.
"This is taking too long." Harlow dropped to her knees beside me.
"Tell him that." I squeezed his throat harder, but he was still kicking, arms flailing. "He's a stubborn prick."
She rolled her eyes at me, pulled out a knife and drove it straight into Carl's neck.
Narrowly missing my hand, mind you. In fact, I think she nicked off a piece of skin. It was hard to tell, with all the blood spurting out of Carl's throat.
"Has anyone told you patience is a virtue?" I asked her.
"I heard something about that once." She pulled out the knife and wiped it on his shirt. "I'm not in the mood to be patient."
"I noticed that," I said approvingly. She wasn't patient in jumping my bones either. A fact that was very good for my already healthy ego.
"I think you can let him go now," she said.
She was right. Carl stopped fighting and was lying still, making a mess on the floor with all that blood. I lifted my hand from his throat and patted his cheek.
"Nice talk, Carl. Although, to be perfectly frank, I prefer you like this." Cooling rapidly and unable to do anyone any harm.
"We need to get him out of here," Harlow said.
"Do you have a plan?" I asked, not trying to be facetious.
She was, after all, here first. A woman who planned to kill a man as big as this one must have figured something out in advance.
Unless she was planning to leave him here to be found by the first unfortunate soul who stepped through the door.
Which, if they were bringing an innocent victim, could probably not be considered unfortunate.
In fact, fuck them.
"I figured I'd throw him off the fire escape and go from there," she said.
"That would be a no then," I said.
She looked up at me sharply. "I would have figured something out. I always do."
"I'm sure you do." I glanced around before reaching for a towel which hung on the front of the oven. I wrapped it around Carl's neck before tucking the ends into his shirt. It was rough, but it'd have to do.
I didn't want to touch him, but I leaned over, picked him up and threw him over my shoulder. "Let's get out of here before his associate arrives."
"But if there's a—" she started.
"We deal with him, then we come back," I said quickly. "Do you know anywhere close by?"
"My restaurant," she said quickly.
"Your… Oh." Better not to ask too many questions at this point. Instead, I held on carefully to Carl and carried him out the door.
She stopped outside, so suddenly I almost ran into the back of her.
"What is it?" I glanced past her, down the hall toward the elevator. The place looked empty to me.
Wincing, she reached into Carl's pocket and pulled out his phone before pushing it into her own pocket at the back of her jeans.
"It might be useful," she said.
"Good thinking," I said. Keeping an eye out for anyone who looked like an evil associate, I stepped toward the elevator and pressed the button beside the aging mechanism.
"What was your plan?" she asked as we stepped inside and let the car take us down. "With him, I mean." She spoke carefully, clearly mindful of the possibility the elevator contained a camera.
"Same as this," I said easily. "It was inevitable. You know what Carl is like, he gets drunk and needs to be carried home. Sometimes, I'm tempted to throw him in the nearest dumpster and let him sleep it off." Like I usually did.
So far no one pinned any random bodies on me. Sometimes I wondered if they just weren't looking very hard. I mean, if anyone had an inkling of the things men like this got up to, would they want to bother? I knew I wouldn't.
Unfortunately, the cops didn't get to pick and choose, so no doubt they did look.
"Yeah, Carl is disgraceful," she said honestly. "He should be ashamed of himself."
"I'm absolutely certain he's regretting all of his life choices right now," I said.
Hopefully somewhere very hot and painful. With everything I'd done, I'd probably see him again someday.
The elevator pinged. We stepped out, Harlow leading the way, her gaze shifting back and forth, looking for anything suspicious.
Well, maybe not anything suspicious, because someone very suspicious walked right behind her. Me.
Rather, she was looking for someone completely devoid of a moral compass. I could claim to have one of those. Some people might disagree, but those people were mostly dead.
"It's possible he was bluffing," I said. "About there being someone else."
People would say anything if it meant avoiding a horrible death.
Or even a slightly less horrible maiming.
Carl might have planned an evening by himself in front of the TV, eating all that pizza.
It was a lot of pizza for one person when I thought about it.
Unless he planned to have some for breakfast.
In retrospect, I should have brought it with us. It was a shame to waste perfectly good food. Oh well, that couldn't be helped now.
Harlow hummed a sound of agreement and jerked her head toward the street, indicating that I should continue to follow. That was exactly what I did, whistling a lively tune as if I wasn't carrying a dead body over my shoulder.
Just another Thursday night in the neighborhood. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Except Harlow's ass, which swayed as she walked. What were the chances of another round with the beautiful Miss St. James? Me and my cock were down for it if she was.
What can I say? Killing assholes made me horny. Also, spending time with pretty women like her made me horny. I had a lot more orgasms left to give, and I wanted to give them all to her.
And have a couple myself.