Page 4 of Atonement

I have to admit, she wasn’t devoid of affection when I had her face held down in the back seat of that car earlier. She also wasn’t so, cold or aloof, when I had her legs spread wide before that, and her hot little mouth was desperately screaming my name.

“You want to play hardball?” Silas shouts as I come a little closer. “You show up on time! You give us what we’re paying you for. You try this shit again, and you’re through, understand?”

The second my Sig hits the center of his back he freezes. His hand falls quickly from her arm to her wrist, and I swear the idiot stops breathing.

“The only balls she likes playing with, Silas, are mine.”

My eyes flick up to meet hers just in time to see fire rage in them like never before. That is, not since our one ill-fated night seven years ago.

In one swift move, the student becomes the teacher as she flicks her wrist, grabs his hand towards her, and quickly yanks it to her right cracking every bone in his slimy arm. She takes a calculated step forward. Her eyes never leaving mine.

“Try that shit again,” she whispers, now addressing me as the bastard between us squeals in pain but knows better than to scream with my gun still pressed against his spine. “Holding my face down against your balls in question, and I swear I‘ll blow them the hell off the second I get a chance.”

“You love it. Admit it.”

“I’ll never admit anything you want me to, Dec. Especially love.”

She looks down at Silas and wrestles slightly with her dress as she pulls her pistol free and points it at the weasel in between us.

“Where is he?” her smoky voice rasps out causing my skin to break out in a sweat.

Fuck, I’ve always loved it when she gets like this. Fierce. Authoritative. Take no prisoners. Makes me want to make her see who’s really in control. Something she hasn’t let me show her since the night our lives were forever changed.

“Where is who?” the coward asks as we force him to walk closer into the shadows; the deafening music from the DJ continuing to blare through the speakers around us.

Hell, Magnolia and I have danced this dance a thousand times before. Just another day on the job with a gutless errand boy whose one bone snap away from breaking. In more ways than one. Yet something about tonight, something about the way she’s acting has me thrown. It’s a side of her I haven’t seen since before the night out lives ended. The vengeful way I know she must always envision me slightly fades as she looks into my eyes over his shoulder. Maybe it’s just a slip up from what happened in the back seat of that car. But as her eyes fill with a look almost foreign to me over the last seven years, I can’t help but hope that maybe there’s more a future for us afterall.

“You know who we want,” she seethes, looking back at our man just as we make it to the black corner in the back of the club. “You know why we’re here. The informant. Your errand boy. Where. Is. He?”

I put my Sig away, back into its temporary hiding spot, and then pull his arms behind his back and tie them with a zip tie I pull from my pocket.

“You can make this easy,” her voice calls out as my eyes lift from my task and watch her gaze haze over just before she steps into our man and forces her knee gently between his legs. The prick takes the bait, loving the feel of her thigh rubbing slowly against his nasty sack. “Or hard,” she hisses out next, a brief second before her knee jabs upward and the poor bastard kneels over in pain.

I roll my eyes because shit, men really are that easy. Kind of the way I made my partner on the force, my wife, out to look like earlier when we both broke and gave each other something we’ve denied ourselves for almost a decade. Something I know she’ll never willingly give me again, ever. Thanks to a penance I’m still in debt to paying.

“Finish him,” I hear my voice demand as I attempt to break myself from my torturous thoughts. Her eyes raise and lock with mine. A new light shines bright in her dark irises. Her chest rises as her heartbeat quickens and I feel myself start to get off on the look she’s giving me. Crazed. Frenzied. Mental. I know, because it’s the same look I have from the intense and violent streak running through my veins.

Glancing back down, she slowly kneels to his level and takes a handful of his hair in her fist. He yells slightly, but I’m quick to pull out my knife and hold it still at the base of his throat to silence him.

“I’ll be nice,” she purrs, and I can’t help but grunt in disgust. She always was the perfect cock tease. Something I’ve unfortunately dealt with firsthand in our marriage over the past several years. But when you’ve fucked up as bad as me, you take what you can get when you can get it. I’d wait forever for another taste of Magnolia. And what’s worse is she fucking knows it.

“One get out of hell free card,” she seductively whispers a moment later.

“Please,” the man cries. “I swear, I don’t...”

Crack!

I barely see her strike as the butt of her gun hits the man across his fat head and knocks him out instantly. She wipes the sweat from her brow and lifts her skirt, putting away her weapon and leaving me standing, staring, with a raging hard-on for a woman I know I’ll never have the balls to touch if she won’t let me.

Ironic, isn’t it?

“Pathetic,” she whispers as she kicks his sloppy frame and starts off towards the back door. I barely have time to recover as I step over the asshole on the floor and pick up my pace behind her.

“Story?” I ask harshly as I catch up to her side and we both push through the exit into the dark of night.

“We couldn’t finish the job and have the mission be classified as covert. End of story. They need to know nothing more.”

She unzips her dress and I watch as it pools around her ankles in the dark shadows behind the building. My throat goes dry as I’m mesmerized by the way she transforms, the outfit she has on underneath calling to me in a completely different way than before.

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