Part 16 (1/2)

She took the key from me, and without saying a word, went to her room.

”Lock the door behind you,” I called, but the door shut in my face.

I exhaled a long sigh and let myself into the room next door. I'd parked the car to one side, hoping it wouldn't be spotted from the road-not that anyone was likely to drive by.

In the bathroom, I carefully unstrapped the tape and gauze from around the wound in my arm, having to use my teeth in certain places. I winced at the sight of the wound. It was deep, but didn't look infected. The knife she'd used must have been clean, which was a small mercy. I repeated the process with my thigh. The cut looked deeper, but again I couldn't see any sign of infection. Both wounds could have done with some st.i.tches, but they were healing now. It didn't matter. It wasn't as though a few more scars would make any difference.

Standing naked, I heard a sound. From the other side of the wall came a thunder of water. Vee must have shared the same thought I had, and decided to take a shower.

I turned on my shower and stepped beneath the water.

As the water hit my naked shoulders, I couldn't help but think about Vee next door, only a thin dividing wall between us. Was she still in the shower, was.h.i.+ng away the grime from the day, and my dried s.e.m.e.n from between her thighs?

The thought made my c.o.c.k twitch and stiffen.

I tried to ignore it, but when I helped myself to some of the cheap shower gel the motel provided and began to soap myself, my hand automatically went down, foaming suds up in my pubic hair and then running the foam down the length of my c.o.c.k and back again. I grew harder under my administrations, the thought of Vee never far from my mind. I put my forearm of my free hand up against the tiled wall to support myself, my forehead rested right above it as my hand worked hard. The muscles in my bicep and forearm bunched, my a.s.s taut, as I worked the soap up and down my hard c.o.c.k. Tingling condensed from my b.a.l.l.s, right down to my a.s.shole. All I could see was Vee in the shower, naked, soap and water coursing down her beautiful body. I imagined her lifting her face to the water, her hands running over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then down, between her thighs. Was she thinking of me, too? Could she hear me in here? Did she have any idea of what I was doing? Was she even doing the same?

I didn't think I'd ever w.a.n.ked to the idea of a real woman before. Normally, I'd watch p.o.r.n or just think about f.u.c.king a nice tight p.u.s.s.y, or shoving my c.o.c.k between a big pair of t.i.ts until I got off. The idea of my fantasy now being an actual person who was right next door was alien to me, and I didn't know how it made me feel. I couldn't process, I only wanted to reach the climax, and only thoughts of Vee would allow me to do that. I'd never seen her naked, but my imagination was surprisingly fertile on that topic.

I remembered how she'd felt when I'd f.u.c.ked her against the hood of the truck, how tight and hot she'd been clamped around my c.o.c.k. I brought back to mind her pa.s.sion, her urgency as she'd kissed me. It was as though she'd been hungry for me, and if she hadn't had me, she would have starved.

The memory of the regret I'd seen in her eyes threatened to encroach, so I switched the scene in my head and imagined her on her knees before me instead. I pictured her looking up at me with those big dark eyes, and I reached out and took her silky hair in a ponytail, wrapping it around my fist and pulling tight to have total control. In my mind, instead of my fist wrapped around my d.i.c.k, I was pus.h.i.+ng the purple head of my c.o.c.k between her perfect lips, and driving deeper, forging to the back of her throat. In my imagination, she dealt with my girth and length perfectly, and I pulled out and thrust again.

Faster and faster, my hand circled my d.i.c.k, my a.s.s bunched, as I leaned against the tiled walls of the shower. The tension built like a tightly wound spring, drawing my b.a.l.l.s up into my body, until I finally exploded.

I came hard, white ribbons of c.u.m jetting onto the tiles. One spurt, then another, and another.

The heady bliss faded as I rested, panting, against the wall. I straightened back up and washed the final residues of s.e.m.e.n from the walls. Climbing out of the shower, I wrapped the threadbare towel around my waist. I refused to feel guilty about what I'd done.

Though I would have liked to have slept naked, I pulled my pants back on, and threw my s.h.i.+rt over my shoulders, leaving it undone. I wanted to be prepared in case I needed to move quickly, and anyway, I didn't let people see me even partially naked.

I lay back on the single bed, its twin beside me, my arm across my eyes.

A knock came at the door and I sat up, quickly doing up the b.u.t.tons of my s.h.i.+rt. I got to my feet to answer the door. There was only one person it could be.

I swung the door open and Vee stepped into the room.

My heart pounded.

”Do you mind if I stay in here with you?” she asked. Her hair was damp from the shower and twisted up into a knot at the top of her head, loose tendrils hanging down around her cheeks and shoulders. Her skin free from makeup, and utterly flawless, her body barely hidden in the jeans and sleeveless t-s.h.i.+rt. From where I was sitting, I didn't think she was wearing a bra, and my mind immediately went to wondering if she'd bothered putting her dirty panties back on.

No, I had to behave. I had to remember the regret I'd seen in her eyes after we'd f.u.c.ked up against the side of the truck in the parking lot. She was hurt and vulnerable, even if she always pretended she wasn't, and I shouldn't take advantage of that. The low throb in my c.o.c.k told me otherwise, blood engorging the area so I had to adjust my position for her not to notice.

Unaware of my physical struggle. She sighed and said 'thanks' and then crossed the room and threw herself down on the single bed beside mine. I walked over and lay back down on the bed I'd just vacated. There was barely a foot of s.p.a.ce between us, only a small shelf acting as a bedside table separating the two beds.

She twisted to her side to face me and placed her hand under her cheek as a pillow. ”I didn't want to be on my own.”

I couldn't bring myself to admit to her that I didn't either.

Chapter Twenty-three.

V.

”Tell me about your first time,” he said as we lay there, waiting for sleep to claim us.

I looked to him, propped myself up on my elbow, and lifted my eyebrows. ”Seriously? It was a quick fumble in the dark with some boy from my neighborhood whose name I barely remember. Is that what you want to hear? It's not exactly some hot tale of kissing my girlfriends, if that's what you'd been hoping to get off on.”

”I wasn't talking about your first time having s.e.x, Vee, though I do like the image of you making out with another girl. No, I meant the first time you killed someone.”

My body went rigid and I looked away. ”I don't want to talk about that.”

”Why? Do you feel guilty?”

”Not at all. He had it coming.”

”So why won't you talk about it?”

”Because the reason it happened wasn't about me. I did it for someone else. It isn't my story to tell.”

”Okay, so just tell me how you felt when it was done.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. ”Do you like talking about death?”

”Not the death itself. But I find it incredibly s.e.xy that you're someone willing to go to such extremes for someone you love.”

There was always such a steeliness behind his blue eyes, a hardness. I supposed I shouldn't expect anything else from a killer. Did people see the same thing in me? Was that why I never had any friends, and most people had the good sense to give me a wide berth? I guessed it was.

”And how did it make me feel?” I took a breath. ”Strong, fierce, brave, ruthless. Self-righteous and powerful.”

”So you understand why people get addicted to killing?”

But I shook my head. ”That was only at first. Later, when all the adrenaline had worn off, I felt sick. I replayed it over and over again, how the gun had bucked in my hand when it went off, how he'd had this confusion in his eyes before he fell. The blood smeared across the ground. I replayed it so many time over the next few weeks that I thought I was going crazy, caught in some kind of time loop where I couldn't get my brain to focus on anything else.”

”But yet you did it again.”

I looked up at him sharply, locking his eyes with mine. ”That was different. I was forced to do that.”

His eyebrows lifted. ”Forced?”

”Yes, forced. Why do you think I went to the police? I couldn't take it anymore. I knew I couldn't live with my father after he'd put us through that. He was trying to get me to prove my loyalty to him, but all it did was push me even further away.”