Page 6 of Devil to Pay: Cutter

“Sounds good” might have come out of my mouth. It’s hard to remember clearly, given my level of sex exhaustion.

I passed out.

Slept hard for a couple of hours before being woken up by my need to use the bathroom. But when I walked back to the bed, watching him lying there so contently, a Horde I thought I could probably convince to let me into their clubhouse as I’d done with the Death Bringers, it hit me that I needed to get my life together. If I stayed the night with him, that would never happen.

As much as I hated to steal from him, I had to think about myself and how I was to go about getting a life to be proud of. If that meant checking his pockets for cash, so be it. And wow—I found a mother load of bills in his wallet. I snagged his credit card, too, then got the hell out of there.

It still doesn’t sit right and I’ve had plenty of time to stew on it. Cutter was good to me but that old couple, I followed them into the diner and he helped her sit. She had some sort of medical issue. Her eyes sunken in with dark, dark circles. A startling contrast to the rest of her skin which looked so pale under the garish fluorescent lighting. She wore a nasal cannula attached to a small oxygen tank tucked under her arm that I didn’t see when they were walking in. He cut up her food for her, for Christ’s sake. EvenI'mnot evil enough to steal from the likes of them.

Get that out of your head.

Right. Nothing good can come from dwelling on the past. I exit the highway to get gas and find food. It’s noon. We got in late, so he probably slept until checkout at eleven o’clock. Noon? I’ve been on the road for—well if you ask my butt, it’s been an eternity.

The first place I find is a Speedway.Hallelujah!Speedways have coffee, sandwiches, and gas all in one stop. I pull up to a pump using Cutter’s credit card to fill up, then head inside to get my sandwich game on. They’re actually serving these bacon double cheeseburgers and curly fries. And coffee. I can’t forget the coffee. Liquid life in a paper cup.

After paying, I walk my lunch out to a picnic table to the left of the store, dropping down on the tabletop rather than the bench seat, taking in the view of the mountains and trees. Now okay, it’s not a national park, but I’ve eaten in worse places. And I’m actually starting to relax when my view gets blocked by a semi-rounded stomach covered in a faded green T-shirt and a pair of legs wearing long jean shorts.

“You hungry?” the strange man asks.Strangeis right. He can’t be running on all circuits if he thinks it’s okay to approach a woman minding her own business, innocently eating at an outdoor table in the middle of the day. There’s social protocol that someone should have hipped him to by this point in his life.

“Clearly,” I answer while taking another bite of my burger.

“What’s your name?”

“None-ya.”

He laughs one of those annoyingly whiny, snickering sort of laughs that whistle through his nose. It scrapes down my soul like nails on a chalkboard. “As in ‘none-ya business’?”

I look up to smile sarcastically. “Have we met?”

“We haven’t met officially, but I’m willing to get to know you better.”

“Seriously?”

Why were men even invented? The world would be better off without them—or most of them. I don’t think the women who’ve had Cutter would say they were better without him. And when I say women, I mean me. I wouldn’t be better without having met him. I still feel him between my thighs.

“Twenty-five bucks and I give you something else to eat.”

Twenty-five? That’s just insulting. What do I look like? Some toothless, cracked-out whore who’ll gum his tiny prick?

“Pass.”

“Pass?” he asks and I swear he’s shocked. Like okay, I’m hanging out at a gas station in stiletto boots, skin-tight jeans, and sex hair, but I’m more of a walk of shame in this outfit.

“Thirty,” he says, countering his first offer.

“Listen, buddy, I’m not getting on my knees to suck a stranger’s cock for any less than a hundred.”

“You want a hundreddollars?”

“No—I’m asking a hundred pesos. Of course a hundred dollars.”

“That’s pretty steep—”

“You approached me,” I say, cutting him off. “Want me to blow you, that’s my price.”

He holds his hands up close to my mouth to shush me when I say “blow you” and that just pisses me off more.

“Go,” I tell him.

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