Chapter 33 Mehar
Mehar
Quest had set up targets about fifty yards out in the woods behind the estate.
Wooden posts with paper silhouettes stapled to them, spaced apart at different angles.
The spring air was warm and the sun was coming through the trees in patches that moved when the breeze did and the whole property smelled like fresh cut grass and Virginia soil.
“It’s heavier than what you’re used to,” he said, standing behind me. “The recoil is gonna push you back hard so you gotta widen your stance and lean into it. Don’t fight the kick, absorb it.”
He put his hands on my hips and adjusted my footing.
Pushed my left foot forward about six inches and pressed his palm against the small of my back until my posture shifted.
His chest was against my shoulder blades and I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt and his breath on my neck and this man had no idea what he was doing to me right now. Or maybe he did and that was the point.
“Ear protection on,” he said. He pulled my muffs down over my ears and then put his own on and stepped to the side but stayed close. “Whenever you’re ready.”
I squeezed the trigger and the world exploded. The recoil slammed into my shoulder and pushed me back two full steps and my ears were ringing even through the muffs and the target was untouched because my shot went about three feet wide.
“That’s okay,” Quest said. “First time with an AK always humbles you. Reset. Widen your feet. Try again.”
I reset. Wider stance this time. Leaned forward the way he showed me. Squeezed again. The kick was still vicious but I held my ground and the paper silhouette tore near the left shoulder.
“There you go. You clipped him. Now aim center mass and squeeze, don’t pull.”
I fired again. Center chest. The paper ripped clean.
“That’s my girl,” he shouted. He was grinning behind me and I could hear it in his voice even through the ear protection. “Again.”
I emptied the rest of the magazine into that target and by the last five rounds I was grouping tight enough that Quest was nodding with his arms crossed like a proud teacher watching his best student graduate.
I set the AK down on the folding table he’d brought out and pulled my ear muffs off and my shoulder was throbbing and my hands were buzzing and I felt something the Glock had never given me.
The Glock was defense. This was something else.
“How’s the shoulder?” he asked, pulling his muffs off.
“Sore. But I like it.”
“You’re a natural. Took me three magazines before I could group like that.”
“You’re lying to make me feel good.”
He winked, “Is it working?”
I laughed and sat on the edge of the table and drank from the water bottle he handed me.
The trees around us were full and green and the birds had come back now that the shooting had stopped.
It was quiet and warm and for a minute it felt like we were just two people in the woods enjoying a spring afternoon instead of a couple who’d killed multiple people between them in the last month.
“I need to ask you something,” he said, leaning against a tree across from me. “About Janelle.”
I’d been waiting for this conversation. I knew it was coming since the cigar bar with Mekhi. Quest wasn’t going to make this decision without me and I respected that.
“What about her?” I asked.
“Mekhi asked me to leave her alone. He’s gonna put her in a facility, get her real help. He says she’s spiraling and Quindon’s death broke something in her.” He paused. “I told him it was your call. So I’m asking.”
I took another sip of water and looked at the targets downrange.
Holes in the paper where a body would be.
I thought about Janelle chaining me to a ceiling.
I thought about waking up in that warehouse with zip ties on my wrists and Thad’s dead body on the floor.
I thought about what I would do to her if I ever saw her again and how easy it would be and how satisfying it would feel.
Then I thought about Bryce. My little brother with a baby on the way who Mekhi had agreed to leave alone.
That protection was tied to this truce and this truce was tied to Janelle being alive.
If I went after her, Mekhi’s word on Bryce meant nothing.
I’d be trading my revenge for my brother’s safety and that math only worked one way.
“I’m not going to kill her,” I said. “Your relationship with Mekhi matters. And Bryce’s safety matters more than my satisfaction. So she gets to live.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. But I’m filing a complaint with the Board of Psychology.
Dual relationship violation and breach of confidentiality.
She was my therapist while she had a personal connection to you that she never disclosed.
She used information from our sessions for her own agenda.
I don’t have to mention the kidnapping or anything criminal.
Just the ethics violations. The board will investigate, suspend her license, and she’ll never sit across from another client again. ”
Quest looked at me for a long moment. Then he smiled. Not the charming smile or the business smile. The one that said he was genuinely impressed.
“That’s cold, Peach.”
“It’s strategic. She built her whole identity around being the smartest woman in the room with a degree on the wall. Taking that away from her is worse than a bullet. She’ll have to figure out who she is without it.”
“And if she comes for you again?”
“Then next time I won’t be so generous. And I won’t need a board complaint to handle it.”
He pushed off the tree and walked toward me and I saw his eyes shift from those of the man who’d been teaching me to shoot into something else entirely.
He took the water bottle out of my hand and set it on the table and stood between my legs and put his hands on my thighs and looked at me with those dark eyes that made my brain turn off like a switch.
“You know what watching you shoot does to me?” he said.
“I have an idea.”
“Nah. You don’t.” He kissed me and it wasn’t gentle.
It was hungry and rough and his hands were already pulling my tank top over my head and tossing it on the ground next to the AK.
My bra followed. The spring air hit my skin and it was warm but his mouth was warmer, moving from my lips to my neck to my collarbone to my breasts, and I arched into him and grabbed the back of his head.
He dropped to his knees in front of me on the dirt and pulled my jeans down my legs and pressed his mouth between my thighs through my underwear and the sound I made echoed through the trees and scared a bird out of a branch somewhere above us.
He pulled my underwear to the side and put his mouth on my pussy and I grabbed the edge of the table behind me and held on because this man ate pussy like it was his primary source of nutrition.
“Quest.” His name came out of me like a prayer. “Oh my God.”
He didn’t respond because his mouth was busy.
His tongue was slow and deliberate, tracing circles around my clit and then flattening against me and dragging up with pressure that made my thighs shake.
He gripped my hips and pulled me closer to the edge of the table and buried his face deeper and I wrapped my legs around his head and let my body fall back against the table with the water bottle rolling off and the ear muffs falling to the ground and I didn’t care about any of it because his tongue was inside me now and the sun was on my skin and I was going to come in the middle of the woods on a Tuesday afternoon.
“Right there,” I gasped. “Don’t stop, Quest. Don’t you dare stop.”
He didn’t stop. He sucked my clit into his mouth and slid two fingers inside me and curled them up against the spot that made my vision go white and I came so hard my back arched off the table and I screamed loud enough for the whole estate to hear because there was nobody around for miles and I didn’t have to be quiet for the first time.
He stood up wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and his eyes were burning into me and his dick was straining against his jeans and I was still shaking from the orgasm when he pulled me off the table and turned me around and walked me backward toward the oak tree behind us.
My back hit the bark and it was rough against my skin but I didn’t care because he was unbuckling his belt and freeing himself and lifting me up against the trunk like I weighed nothing.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and he pushed inside me in one deep stroke that pinned me between his body and the tree and I gasped and dug my nails into his shoulders.
“Look at me,” he said.
I opened my eyes and he was right there, his face inches from mine, his dick buried inside my pussy to the hilt, holding me against a tree in broad daylight with dirt on his knees and my taste on his lips.
“You know how good you feel right now?” he said through his teeth. “I’d go to war every day for the rest of my life if this is what I come home to.”
“Then don’t ever stop coming home.”
He started moving. Long, deep strokes that pressed my back against the bark with every thrust. I could feel the texture of the tree against my skin and his hands gripping my ass and his dick stretching me open with every push and the combination of rough and warm and deep was something I’d never felt before.
This wasn’t a bed or a desk or a rug in front of a fireplace.
This was outside, raw, primal, dirt and sunlight and the smell of gunpowder still on both of us.
“Harder,” I said.
He fucked me harder. Drove into me with a force that made the bark scrape my back and I didn’t care because each stroke was hitting spots that were building something inside me that was bigger than the first orgasm.
I was loud and filthy and telling him exactly what I wanted and he was giving it to me with his jaw clenched and sweat on his forehead and that low groan in his chest that meant he was close.
“Come inside me,” I said against his mouth. “I want to feel it.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure about everything with you.”
He buried himself deep and came with his face in my neck and his arms wrapped around me and his whole body shuddering between me and the tree.
I came with him, my pussy clenching around his dick in waves, my legs tightening around his waist, my nails leaving marks on his shoulders that he’d wear under his shirt tomorrow like a secret.
We stayed like that for a minute. Him still inside me, both of us breathing hard, pressed against an oak tree in the Virginia woods with an AK-47 on a wood table twenty feet away and paper targets full of holes behind us.
He set me down and my legs almost gave out. He caught me and didn’t say a word about it but I could see the smirk. We got dressed, brushed the dirt off each other, and walked back toward the house. His arm around my shoulder, the AK in his other hand. Neither of us said anything. We didn’t need to.