Page 79 of Souls and Sorrows

Dragging me up, Cash removes himself from my mouth, allowing me a second of reprieve. He takes his cock in his hand, smearing my spit and his arousal around my lips before slapping my cheek with the side of it.

I feel dizzy, vibrating with my own lust, and he pushes my head back into his lap.

After another session where he holds me to him, stealing the breath from my lungs, I feel him tense up above me.

“Shit.” He starts to pull me away again, but I brush his hands off, picking up the pace. “Ariana, stop, I’m—”

Warm, thick ropes of cum jet into my throat before he finishes his sentence, and a groan that is half-man, half-beast fills the limo, so loud that I feel its rumble in my bones. I’m caught off guard by the sudden impact, and he manages to wrestle free while his orgasm continues, splashing against my lips as he pumps himself dry with my hand beneath his.

His chest rises and falls rapidly, and his head lolls back. I swallow, struggling to catch my breath, and lean back on my knees, watching him.

The corners of his eyes crinkle, and his mouth turns down.

He looks… disappointed.

My heart slices in two.

Wiping my mouth with the back of my wrist, I pull my top up and focus on steadying my pulse. The dejection smarts, but I’ve certainly survived worse.

“Look, I’m—”

Pressing my lips together, I hold up a palm and shake my head quickly, cutting him off. “God, please do not apologize or say this was a mistake. I might actually kill you.”

I’m met with silence, and after a moment, Cash sighs and roughly tucks himself back into his pants, doing them up without meeting my eyes. When he’s done, he slides to the end of the seat and knocks on the window; a second later, the locks unlatch, and he climbs out, shutting the door behind him.

I sit on the floor, staring at the space he just occupied. There’s a heaviness crushing my ribs, like a boulder that was incorrectly placed and promptly forgotten.

No thoughts even plague my mind as I’m left in my solitude. I just space out, a stream of absolutely nothing looping across my vision, taking me out of the moment. Protecting me, the same way it used to when Mamma did really awful things, like make me reciprocate lewd acts or have someone from Mass join in.

For some reason, those were worse than the beatings or the malicious comments about my appearance and intelligence, because the other stuff didn’t always hurt. It wasn’t always pain, and for a few moments, it was like Mamma and I were on the same playing field.

She loved me during those times, and I only felt sick after.

And then the sickness stuck around, like a plague I would seemingly never recover from, devouring my soul until it was as black and broken as hers.

It’s been a while since I felt the need to go there. My heart’s hardened over the years, producing a shell of its own that is typically pretty impervious to attacks.

But I think the problem is that I don’t feel about Cash the way I’ve felt about people before.

Which means everything that goes wrong is only going to hurt more.

24

Blood splattersacross the chest of my T-shirt as I flick my wrist, bringing the sledgehammer down in a perfect arc. The sound of metal colliding with thick bone is drowned out by a horrific scream, and I watch a crimson wave explode from where Officer Butera’s kneecap used to be.

Now, it’s mostly a mess of torn, mutilated flesh, the front portion of the patella scattered in pieces across the hardwood floor. For once, I’m grateful that no one in my apartment building ever bothers going to the small, dilapidated basement underneath it, because this would be difficult to explain.

On the surface, it could be presumed that because of my profession, I’m keen to sit back and let justice prevail. And when it comes to strangers, most of the time, I am because I’m no vigilante, and I would have no work if I took a more hands-on approach to getting government officials to review carbon reduction proposals and helping businesses regulate their greenhouse gas emissions.

None of that has potential for immediate ramifications anyway, so I don’t see an issue with allowing the system to play out the way it was created.

But too often, in cases where swift action is needed, victims are let down. Justice isn’t served, and monsters are free to walk the earth as though they haven’t made it worse just by existing.

Administrative leave with pay was simply not enough of a reprimand for the officers who dared to put their hands on Ariana. They tiptoed around the legal system, bypassed protocols, and then accosted her when they thought they’d be able to get away with it.

I tug on the leather belt between Butera’s teeth, reveling in the vicious grunt he huffs at me.

And while, normally, I wouldn’t care to resort to such violence, I meant what I told Ariana the other night. No one hurts her but me—and only then because I’m capable of making up for it.

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