Page 3 of Beneath Her Skin

“Help yourself. Theshitter’sunlocked. I’d hate to keep any more piss in ya than ya already got.” Her voice is dangerously low as she leans into the counter, never breaking eye contact with a man who apparently has zero survival instinct.

I suck my lips through my teeth, trying to stifle my laughter. I need to come up with a plan, quick, because he’s about to stomp out of this store like an overgrown, tantrum-throwing child. I might not get a better chance and only have a few seconds to get ahead of him before he gets to the door. My boots tap against the linoleum floor as I hurry back across the aisles. I cut in front of him, slowing my steps and swinging my hips with extra enthusiasm. He clears his throat, and I look over my shoulder, tossing my pigtails. His eyes try to catch mine, but I ignore him, giving a quick wave to Lucille before heading out the door.

My heart hammers faster than Jasper’s hooves as I wait for him to take the bait. We make our way around the side of the store towards the bathroom. His steps hasten until he’s only a foot or so behind me, and then he matches my pace. I can almost hear his vulgar thoughts as he smacks his lips, but he doesn’tmake me wait long before confirming my suspicion. “Well, aren’t you a sweet little thing?” he chuckles.

I turn slightly, giving him a coy smile and wide doe eyes. His slimy tongue runs across his chapped bottom lip. I open the bathroom door then shut it slowly behind me, keeping my eyes fixed on his until they disappear. Seconds tick by, and the handle still doesn’t turn. My breath hitches, and I drum my fingers against my thigh. Maybe I read him wrong. Maybe he’s all bark, no bite. Just as I’m about to let out a curse of frustration, the handle rattles. When he meets no resistance, the door pulls open.

The delight in his eyes from the unlocked door rapidly turns to a ravenous hunger. His pupils dilate, blown wide like a starving animal ready to devour its next meal. He’s got it all playing out in his head right now, thinking I’ve served myself up to him on a silver platter. My core tightens as I imagine his face falling the moment he realizes he’s wrong, the desire draining from him faster than the blood will drain from his body.

I pull him closer so the door can slam shut behind us. He locks it, and like he’s won a prize, gives me a disgusting smirk. His mouth, full of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth, comes close to mine. His breath reeks of chewing tobacco and hot, stale air, and his rough lips graze the corner of my mouth. “I knew you wanted it,” he groans, adjusting the buckle on his belt.

The jingle of the buckle ignites a fuse leading to the powder keg of pure feminine rage stored inside me. I shove him back against the wall. My cheeks tug back and twist into a forced smile so wide, my teeth clack together. With one hand still against his chest, I use the other to snap the belt free from his pants. The end whips against the cement floor, cracking loudly in the tiny room. My pulse beats heavy against my eardrums, my tongue swimming in a pool of saliva. I struggle between wanting to draw this out or throwing him in the back of the truck nowand racing home. There’s a nice little cage already waiting for him to fill it.

My pussy throbs in my denim shorts, and wetness surges between my thighs as I think about sticking a knife into his soft belly. I moan, gripping his shirt in my fist. The belt falls from my hand, clattering to the floor. “Oh, you think you know what I want?” I purr, leaning into him and wrapping my free hand around the back of his neck. His hips gyrate aggressively against me, and I drag a knee under his groin. He closes his eyes, enjoying the feeling of my palm slipping against his sweaty skin. I coat my hand in his foul-smelling moisture before dragging it down the front of his face.

He continues to rub the bulge in his pants against my leg. I feign a girlish giggle and pull my hand back, giving him a swift slap. The wet pop echoes off the graffitied bathroom walls. He was better off calling any of the numbers scrawled on them before taking a chance with me. His eyes shoot open, bulging with indignation as the tendons in his neck tense and his lips curl in a snarl. “Careful, pussy cat. I don’t need you conscious to stuff my dick inside you.”

Ladies and gentlemen, male audacity at its finest.

The voice in my head bites and snaps behind the bars of its mental enclosure, screaming for blood. I laugh in his face, spraying it with droplets of spit. My knuckles blanch as I clench a fistful of his exposed chest hair and yank his chest down. In the same instant, I drive my knee up into his crotch. Air explodes from his chest, and he collapses on the floor, wheezing in pain. His stupid cowboy hat falls to the side. “Funny, I coulda said the same thing, only I don’t need your limp dick at all. Maybe I should cut it off and stuff you with it instead,” I taunt, making a snipping motion with my fingers.

I slam my dusty brown boot into his chest twice before delivering a blow to his face. There’s a sickening crunch as itcollides with his nose. Blood pours from both nostrils, and the sight of that sweet crimson has my body humming for more.

Blood, so much blood.

The room brightens, and my vision narrows until I see only him—and the puddle of blood seeping across the floor. My nostrils flare with every deep, iron rich inhale, and my tongue curls over my front teeth.

These walls would look great coated in red.

A loud banging comes from outside the door, disturbing us. My vision refocuses, zooming out until the rest of the room is clear again. I frown. Fun’s over—for now. “Dammit, Sadie!” Catalina roars from the other side of the barrier between us. “Lucille will have both our asses if she has to pressure wash this bathroom again. It still reeks of bleach from last week. I can fucking smell it from out here.”

She continues hammering on the door until I open it. I smile sheepishly at her, twirling one pigtail—the very picture of innocence. Cat looks from me to the wilted man on the floor, who’s now rolling from side to side, holding his broken nose. She shakes her head but cups my cheek. She tilts my face up and plants a kiss on my forehead. “You never could wait. Patience is just a town in Kentucky, ain’t it?”

Catalina looks around the room and sighs. She grabs the discarded belt and cracks the oversized buckle against the man’s skull, rendering him unconscious. Once his body goes as limp as his flaccid dick, she uses the belt to secure his ankles together. She clamps the set of handcuffs she lifted off a cop at the state fair on his wrists. She spent weeks crafting a lock pick from an old horseshoe before we could use them. Our truck conveniently sits right outside the bathroom door, and I help her hoist the man-shaped pile of dead weight into the bed.

Once he’s loaded, and before I forget—again—I rush to grab his truck key from his front pocket. Just last week, Cat had to useLucille’s landline to chew me out after leaving her stranded in a vehicle with no keys. I hop down from the truck bed and drop the key into Cat’s waiting palm.

“His truck’s more than a little beat up, but there’s still probably something salvageable.” She’s trying to keep the annoyance from her tone, but I know she hates when I pick men with shitty cars. It makes it harder for her to piece them out. Sorry, babe—just the luck of the draw.

“I’ll see you at home,” I chirp, winking at her. She runs one firm hand down my side, taking in every curve before squeezing my ass. She draws me to her, pressing her soft mouth to mine. Before pulling away, she nips at my bottom lip. My body begs to chase after her, but she’s already making her way around the corner. Just before she disappears, she turns her head and winks back at me.

Fuck, I love her.

Eager to get on the road, I bounce into the driver’s seat and put the truck in gear. As I pull around to the front of the gas station, I remember there’s one last thing I need to take care of. I pop out of the cab and run to poke my head into the store. “Sorry, Lucille,” I apologize and blow her a kiss.

3

Every bump on the dirt road vibrates against my ass on the drive home. The twenty minutes from Lucille’s to our farm drags and I glance in the rearview mirror, ensuring my unwilling passenger is still a motionless lump. Long stretches of pasture broken up by dense patches of woods pass by outside the window, the mountains towering in the distance.

The isolation I hated as a child is a blessing now that Catalina and I are on our own. Isolation makes our home a safe harbor for our relationship that society refuses to understand or accept. Isolation conceals the way I’ve chosen to deal with the wrongs life has dealt me. No one bothers us unless we take a drive. Isolation keeps my physical body far fromthe bar, but no distance can keep my mind from continuing to return.

I push the unwanted thoughts back into the recesses of my mind. I have a new piggy, whose squealing will keep thoughts ofthatnight at Drifters far away. I glance back again. He’s still unconscious, his body rocking only slightly from the movement of the truck.

Our gate comes into view, the lonely farm house further behind it. There are no neighbors within shouting distance, noother house we can see, not unless I ride Jasper to the back edge of our property line. I turn up the radio, belting my heart out to a familiar country ballad. I drum my hands against the steering wheel and rock my body in time with the twang of the guitar. Thoughts of Catalina drift through my mind. My big sister is the glue holding my broken pieces together, never worrying if they’re too jagged to hold or too shattered to fix.

I still remember the day we met, when Pop finally brought her and her mama home. The day we became a family, she was thirteen, and I was an eleven-year-old pit, empty and just waiting to be filled with love—or rage. She was smart and scrappy, able to fix tractors without reading the manual. I was bruised and exhausted from long days helping Pop raise hogs. Our love was slow burning, until one day, it just caught like wildfire. Sneaking into each other’s beds at night turned into sharing one. Sibling squabbles turned into lovers’ quarrels. Thenthatnight at the bar blew through us like a tornado, making us cling even harder to each other to survive the storm.

The truck rolls up to the gate, and I get out to swing it open. Movement catches my eye as the piggy starts to stir. I hurry the truck past the house and back to the barn before he really comes to, backing it up to the barn’s big double doors. Leaping from the cab, not bothering to shut the truck door, I race inside to grab a coil of rope and the cattle prod from its hook on the wall. Time to herd this swine into his new pen.

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