Chapter 9
Zach
Moira is silent on
the ride home, but I can feel anger and confusion rolling off her in
waves. I, however, have never felt calmer. I don’t even think
my pulse sped up once as I tried to kill that motherfucker for
touching Moira when she clearly didn’t want his attention.
He’d be dead
too… right now, if Moira hadn’t begged me to stop. It’s
the first time I’ve ever had a woman beg me to do something,
and I didn’t hesitate for a moment. The terror in her voice,
the panic in her eyes… I released my hold on that
douche—another new, favorite word of mine—and it was
over.
Mark my words,
though. I guarantee you Michael won’t be sniffing around Moira
anymore.
The drive home is
short, and I follow Moira into her house. I brace myself, because I
know that she’s going to have some harsh words for me. I hope
she treads lightly, though, because I’m not in a mood to hear
it. I gave Moira one concession already by putting my murderous rage
aside for her plea. But she’s not going to get much more from
me tonight.
After setting her
purse down on the kitchen table, she walks into the living room and
sits down on the couch with a sigh. The move causes her dress, which
had been resting at mid-thigh, to creep up her legs, and my eyes
can’t help but take in the long expanse of creamy flesh.
“Zach…
we need to talk about what just happened at the nightclub,”
Moira says tentatively, and my eyes move up her body to rest on her
face. It’s grim, determined, and filled with censure.
“What’s
to talk about? I let him go,” I say with a shrug of my
shoulders as I lean up against the wall that borders her living room
and back hallway.
Moira’s
eyebrows furrow inward, completely dismayed over my disinterest in
this conversation. She stands from the couch in one quick push and
stalks up to me. Her face is angry, but there is still a bit of fear
there. Not fear of me, but fear for me. I can tell the prospect of me
getting in trouble over that incident has her rattled.
Pushing a finger
into my chest, Moira says, “You cannot go around attacking
people because they do something you don’t like. You most
certainly can’t try to kill someone for putting his hands on
me. Do you understand—?”
“I most
certainly can kill someone for putting his hands on you,” I cut
in over her tirade, one hand flying up to grab her by the back of the
neck. I give her a slow shake, so she listens to me well. “I am
my own man. Don’t ever forget that, Moira.”
“Zach…
you can’t kill someone. There are consequences, not only in the
law, but also on your own soul. Taking a life is something that is
irrevocable. You’re a good man… I think that would shred
you—forget about what that would mean for your future. Prison…
being locked away… no freedom.”
Pulling Moira in, I
bring her face in tighter to me, causing her to go up on her tiptoes
just a bit. “I know what it means to kill someone. I’ve
done it before and never had a moment’s regret, so hold the
lecture, Dr. Reed.”
“What? You’ve
killed someone?” she asks in disbelief, and far more fear in
her voice than I want to hear. That dismays and pisses me off, all at
the same time.
“Let’s
just call it another cultural difference. My tribe warred with the
Matica for years. We raided each other, and blood was shed. It was
our own form of justice and when I return, I’ll do it again.”
Moira’s face
pales over my admission, and my grip tightens on her. I wanted to
shock her, to remind her that I am still more animal than human, at
least when you compare our societies. But I don’t want to
disgust her. I don’t want her to look at me with shame or
disappointment.
“Let me tell
you about the last man I killed,” I tell her softly.
“No… I
don’t want to hear it,” she says, trying to pull from my
hold.
“You’ll
listen,” I command with another squeeze and pull her in to me
just a little closer. Her breasts lightly touch my chest, and a surge
of longing courses through me. I put it aside though, at least until
Moira understands my lack of civility. “About a month before
you arrived in Caraica to collect me, the men in my tribe made a raid
on the Matica. It was a rescue-revenge raid. One day when we were
away on a hunt, ten of the Matica snuck into our village. They raped
some of our women and stole three of our male children, killing the
boys’ mother, who was trying to protect the young ones with her
life.”
“I don’t
want to hear this, Zach,” Moira says.
“Maybe not,
but you need to hear it. We planned our revenge carefully. It wasn’t
just to retrieve what they had stolen from us, but it was to punish
them for their assault on our women and children. We went in with the
idea of killing in return.”
“That’s
wrong,” Moira says, her eyes wide.
“Maybe by your
standards, but by ours, it was the right thing to do. In the end, we
not only got our children back, but we paid them back tenfold for the
lives they took from us. I watched with pride as my adoptive brother,
Kaurlo, retrieved his stolen sons and killed the men that took them
and killed his wife.”
Moira shudders in my
arms, but I see a tiny bit of understanding now in her eyes.
Leaning forward to
whisper in her ear, I ask, “Want to know who I killed?”
She gives a tiny
shake of her head, but it doesn’t stop me.
“When I walked
into the village, I found Tukaba staked out in the dirt by her hands
and feet. She was naked and had blood all over her thighs from the
repeated rapes she had endured. She was stolen from her Paourno tribe
where she had been raised. She was half dead when I cut her loose,
but she was strong enough to let me carry her down the line of
captured Matica. We had sat them in the dirt in front of a longhouse,
their hands tied behind their backs. She identified the men that
raped her. My tribe brothers and I unloaded all of our arrows into
them until they were dead, and Tukaba was avenged as well.”
A tiny tear leaks
out of one of Moira’s eyes, but I also see something new on her
face. Compassion for what I told her about Tukaba which I hope means
some acceptance of my deeds.
“Sometimes I
forget how very different your existence is from mine,” Moira
says with a soft voice. “You’ve acclimated here so well,
that I forget how hard it must be for you to live a life here while
your entire character is built from those experiences.”
Her words slam into
me in a calming wave of validation because gone now is the censure
and misunderstanding. She may not agree with my tribes’ need
for revenge and justice, or even my own personal need to assuage my
anger of wrongdoings. But she understands at a very basic level that
the way I led my life was perfectly normal… at least for me.
“I know you
think me ignorant of your ways, Moira, but I’m not. I’ve
seen enough—read enough—to know right from wrong in this
culture. It doesn’t mean that I’ll abide by your right,
though.”
Moira nods, despite
the way I’m still gripping her by her neck. “But promise
me you won’t do anything like that again. Please don’t
put yourself in jeopardy like that.”
I give her a lethal
smile, tempered with just a tiny bit of understanding for her plea,
because although I understand her position, I can’t agree to
it. “I’ll agree to nothing of the sort, Moira. I’ll
never let anyone… in particular, or a society in general…
control my actions. It’s one of the main reasons I want to
return to my village… because I have absolute freedom to do as
I wish.”
Moira opens her
mouth to argue against that, but I pull her in the rest of the way,
until her entire body falls into mine. Leaning forward, I place my
lips at her temple and graze them there briefly. In a low, rumbling
voice, I tell her, “In fact, I would love to drag you back with
me, so you’d be available to my whim whenever I wanted you. I’d
never let you wear a stitch of clothing again, and your knees and
your pussy would be so sore from the working I’d give them
every day. But then I’d put my tongue back between your legs
and soothe away every bit of the sting I had left behind.”
A rush of breath
pours out from Moira’s mouth and fans across my collarbone,
even as a tiny shiver courses through her body. She’s as turned
on by the image I just painted as I am by having created it.
I feel her body
melting, her resistance only hanging on by a thread. I could have her
about ten different ways to Sunday, but there is only one way in
which I want her now. I press forward.
“Get on your
knees,” I demand, because I know that she wants me to force her
at this point. It’s what she wants, I’m sure of it.
“No,”
she whispers, and I smile on the inside. Her tone says otherwise.
I give her neck a
soft squeeze again to remind her that she’s standing here
pushed up against me only because I demand it so.
“Don’t
ever say ‘no’ to me again,” I growl at her. Using
my grip on her neck, I pull her back from my body and turn her away
from me. Giving a slight push, I urge her downward and almost want to
cry out in victory when she gives me not an ounce of fight as she
starts to lower herself.
I let my knees bend
and lower myself down to the floor with her. Her knees hit first,
then my mine, and I continue pushing her forward until her cheek
rests against the carpet and her ass hovers just in front of my
restrained cock.
“You remember
the first time you saw me?” I whisper as I squeeze her neck
again gently.
“Yes.”
“It turned you
on, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You wanted me
to fuck you that way, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You want it
now?”
“God yes,”
she moans, and victory and lust surge through me. My cock, which has
been getting progressively harder, now pushes brutally rigid against
the tight denim covering my crotch.
“Tell me
then,” I command her, completely enjoying the way her resolve
is unraveling before me.
“Tell you
what?” she asks on a stuttering breath.
“Tell me all