Page 10 of Kick

She’s been busy while I was out, rummaging through my drawers and finding a pair of loose tracksuit pants. They’re rolled at the waist, so much that it makes her look pregnant. That, combined with her crazy fuckin’ cat lady hair and the filth covering her body, makes her look like a homeless person.

I smile and clasp my hands behind my head. Her eyes rove over me, taking in my size. She’s checking me for the arsenal I so obviously have stashed away in my fucking worn, faded jeans. She’s not checking me out and dreaming about me taking her rough and hard on my fucking scratched-up dining table, but I still get a fucking boner out of having her eyes roam all over me.

“Pick up the keys, and open the door,” she commands.

“If you run, they’ll shoot you.”

“Pick up the fucking keys.”

I snatch up the keys and lob them at her, hard enough that she has to twist out of the way. She cries out as she does, proving to me that her ribs are definitely injured, maybe even cracked. I lunge at her. Shoving her back against the bed, I land on top of her, warding off her blows with one hand and squeezing her wrist with the other until she drops the gun on the floor.

“Get off me!” she screams.

“You’re not leaving this clubhouse,” I whisper in her ear as she struggles beneath me. “The best you can hope for is to play nice and I might decide to keep you as a house mouse. But if you piss me off, and if you pull on me with my own gun again, your life will be so much worse. You thought the dentist was fucked up? Baby, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve lived inside my fantasies for a day. So if I were you, I’d be really fuckin’ careful about how you play your next move.”

She stops kicking, and I push up and off the bed. She’s gasping, her face twisted in pain, her body practically fucking vibrating with fury as she glares up at me.

“Get up,” I command. “You smell like shit.”

She rears her leg back and kicks me in the stomach, I stagger back, thankful that her aim is shithouse and that she didn’t get me in the nuts. Twisting on the mattress, she reaches for the gun, but I’m on her before she slides her arm over the bed. I twist it back behind her, pushing the weight of my knee into her back. She screams. I hate that it makes me harder than fucking diamonds, but that fucked up part of me loves it too.

“I will fucking end you, bitch,” I whisper as she sobs into the filthy bed sheet. Keeping her arm twisted up at a painful angle, I stand and pull her up with me. She screams as her ribs and likely her whole body protest the movement. Looping my arm around her waist, I heft her against my chest and walk her forward to the bathroom as she bucks and kicks her feet out at thin air. She thrusts both arms out and latches onto the door jamb, trying to gain traction. I push forward. Right now, I don’t give a shit about her injuries. I shove her into the bathroom. She loses her balance and falls into the wall beside the toilet. Slamming the door with my foot and locking it behind me, I keep my eyes on her as I run the shower. She’s trembling, but there’s also a fierce determination in her eyes as she glares at me while she sobs.

“I can do this all day, sweetheart, so either you get over here and get in the shower like a civilized human being, or I drag you in, but either way you’re getting naked and cleaned beneath that spray.”

“Fuck you.”

“Not while you’re smelling like that, Little Spitfire.”

“You should have killed me, when you had the chance.”

“Oh there’s still time.” I lunge for her, pulling her up by her midsection, dodging the way she thrashes and strikes out with her small fists and bony elbows. I struggle with her all the way to the shower and then I shove her inside the tub and under the spray. She lurches forward, but I’m done playing games. My temper is never very far from the surface these days and this bitch is pushing all my buttons. I climb into the tub with her, not caring that I’m getting soaked in my jeans. She tries to run, but I slam her lithe body up against the tiled wall, wrapping my hand tightly around her throat. “Listen to me. I’m trying to help you. If you walk out that door, there’s ten men ready and waiting to put a bullet between your eyes. You’ll be dead before you can clear the clubhouse parking lot. I’m your only fucking chance at survival; you got that?”

I grab the hem of the hoodie and yank it up over her head. She begins screaming again, thrashing and raking her nails over my hard chest. I don’t blame her, but I don’t let it faze me either. The butcher won’t look at her if she isn’t clean, and for a doctor who had his medical license revoked for dismembering female genitalia, he’s pretty fucking weird about that shit.

I throw the soaking hoodie towards the bin and yank off the pants. They fall around her ankles, almost tripping her up as I shove her back underneath the shower. My hand wraps around her delicate throat as she thrashes beneath the stream. Water invades her mouth and nose. I pull her towards me and whisper, “Either you can behave like a big girl and wash yourself, or I’ll do it for you, but either way this shit is getting done.”

“Go fuck yourself.” She spits, like actually motherfuckin’ spits in my face. Seething, I grab the soap, and rub it vigorously over her bruised body as she shrieks and fights against me. Her screams hurt my ears in the small bathroom. I shove the cake of soap in her mouth and hold her jaw tightly closed with my hand clasped over her lips and chin, gagging her with it.

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” I say and wrench my hand free. She coughs, spitting out the soap and retching up the empty contents of her stomach. I don’t let that stop my assault. I yank her head back and scrub the soap over her neck and shoulders, aggravating the tender wounds, and poking deliberately at old bruises that show their distaste for being touched. I rub it over her swollen face as she sobs through her hair.

Reaching around her to the shower caddy I pull the shampoo from the shelf. It’s only that two-in-one generic shit from the supermarket, but it’ll do the job. I empty the shampoo into my palm and rub my hands together, and then I do something I’ve never done for anyone. I wash the bitch’s motherfucking hair. It’s not like it is in those cheesy fucking romance films. It’s disgusting, and it takes two times through of vigorous scrubbing to get the crusted blood and filth out, and my dick is hard as fucking nails the entire time. I think of wrapping her hair around my fists, jerking her head back as I shove my cock inside her from behind, and I have to step away from her bruised body before I give in and take whatever the fuck I want,however the fuck I want.

Her hair is a deep chestnut, and now that it’s not matted and sticking out at all angles, it’s glossy and plastered to her back. I reach out and run my fingers through it. She stiffens, and I can almost taste her fear. I pull her into me, wrapping my arms tightly around her waist. She tries wrenching herself free, but I tighten my hold and grind my hard-on against her arse. I use my free hand and drive my fingers between her legs, separating her lips. I could pretend I’m just washing her pussy as thoroughly as I washed the rest of her body, but we’d both know that’s not true. I soap up my hand and circle her arse with my fingertips. She flinches. She fights. Of course she fights. That’s the thing that made me want her in the first place. Her defiance. Her fight.

She gasps for breath, a visceral, wounded animal sound tearing from her throat. I loosen my hold. Her hands claw at me, scratching, seeking flesh to inflict pain upon. That’s a feeling, a need I know well. And I let her fulfil it, because I know better than anyone that that need doesn’t ever go away, not once you’ve been arse raped by the world, not once the violence seeps into your pores and under your skin, blacking out all of the goodness within.

“You should have left me there. You should have let me die,” she sobs as she turns away from me and sinks down to the bath floor, sitting in the pool of filth as the water beats down over her head and washes her clean. “I just wanna die. Just let me die.”

I stare down at her, feeling like an arsehole for not having been able to put a bullet in her brain when I found her there in that chair. It would have been kinder. I freed her and brought her back to the club with me because I’m selfish. I’m fucked up. I’m a vicious cunt who thinks only of his own torment and pain.

Leaning over her, I press my forehead into the wall. Ending this misery for her would be as simple as opening the door and letting her walk out into that clubhouse, but I can’t. I can’t, because I didn’t save the one woman who mattered. I can’t, because I don’t want to. I can’t, because the same thing inside me, inside Ivy, is inside this woman too, and she might hate me for now, but she’ll come to realise quickly that the fucked up ones gravitate towards each other like magnets. Darkness doesn’t seek out the light. It smothers the light, and it revels in the light’s death. And there is nothing more dangerous than darkness that doesn’t have an outlet.

I am a monster. Not because I’m a product of my environment, or because I like to hurt women. I am a monster because I choose to embrace my darkness—I revel in it and nurture it like it’s a newborn. I feed it regularly from the suffering of others, because that’s what I do: I make those I love suffer. I betray everyone who ever wrongly put their trust in me. And at the end of the day, this girl will be no different.

Because that’s my special power; that’s the one thing I’m truly good at—betrayal.

Idon’t know how long we stay beneath the spray, with me bent over her body protectively. It’d be nice if I could protect her from myself, but that’s about as likely to happen as me coming clean to the club about killing the Angels. After a while I grab her wrist and pull her up to a standing position. She flinches and tries to struggle free, but I only tighten my grasp.

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