Page 25 of Small Town Beast 2: Saverin's Duet

So much for a slick getaway.

His gaze lingered on her soft brown eyes, searching lower to her softer lips, lower still to all those other places he’d dove into the night before with reckless hunger.

She tugged him down to kiss her. Tanya’s lips were soft and warm. Honey didn’t taste so sweet. Saverin rocked back down to the creaky mattress and she straddled him with one smooth and gorgeous leg slung over his thighs. Women…so different from himself, and Tanya especially. Smooth where he was rough and hairy, soft where he was hard, brown as a chestnut where he was pale. Nothing compared.

Tanya rubbed her thumb over his cockhead. “Remember last night?” she whispered.

“What part?” he murmured back, meaning to tease her. But her expression changed; her own words had brought back something else from that night and now he was thinking it too.

Before Tanya won the lottery.

Before he raw-fucked her over every inch of that bed.

When he had killed the father of her son, in front of her.

“You know what part,” Tanya said quickly, but the damage was done. Saverin tried to focus on Tanya kissing down his neck but he saw only the face of the dead man. The one with the name he couldn’t remember; the father of Amari. He’d shot him five times– or was it six? Once in the face, blowing the thing beyond recognition. Dead. Did he regret sending the bastard to hell? No, he did not. He didn’t regret the other lives he’d taken let alone some dirty monster who probably would have raped Tanya before shooting her dead. Thank God he’d been there. Thank God for his gun. Imagine if the filthy fucker got hold of his Tanya, defiled her, killed her…He wanted to gag at the thought. Fuck the motherfucker, he was dead now. So that made ten dead men. Or eleven? Other faces swam before him; faces from his other life that blotted out the view of Tanya leaning over him.

The stain on Saverin’s mortal soul had set long ago, like ink on muslin, unable to wash clean. He understood that very well. He’d never killed without knowing exactly what it meant, and he hated to forget details, since a man should never take a life lightly. Yet it was a struggle to recall exactly what had happened last night.How did it start?He’d been arguing with Tanya, then he’d taken her keys and opened her apartment, and then the gun— flashing— blood…

“Baby, what’s wrong?” Tanya whispered.

“Stay here with Gwendolyn today,” he ordered, kissing her one last time before rolling her off him. There really wasn’t time for fooling around anyhow. Colton— that was his name. Tanya’s ex-boyfriend and her son’s father. Tanya never spoke on him but Saverin had a good idea what that relationship had been like…The motherfucker had found her all those years later, and stalked her to her new apartment in Florin. Then he’d broken in and laid in wait for her to get home…

Tanya grabbed Saverin’s arm, snapping him out of it. “Sowhereare you going, exactly?” she demanded.

“Out. Down the mountain,” he said gruffly.

“Why?”

He began hunting for his clothes. “Just some personal business.”

“Don’t you want to talk about last night?”

“When I get back, Tanya.”

Her eyes got that mulish look. “I want to go back to my apartment,” she declared.

He got his belt and picked out Tanya’s clothes from the lingerie sprawled on the floor. Did he really need to state the obvious?

“Well?”

“You can’t go back there. It’s a crime scene. They’ve probably got the stiff still in there.”

Tanya flinched. “That would be disgusting. They can’t just leave a dead body in my house all night!”

“This is Florin, on a weekend. Shit moves like molasses uphill.”

“I don’t want the police running through my place, going through my stuff. I don’t trust them.”

Saverin waved away her concern. “They won’t touch a thing.”

“Becauseyousay so?”

“Do you have my wallet?” he asked, ignoring her sarcasm.

She dug around under the pillows and handed it to him, saying, “I don’t trust the police. That deputy had a bad look to him.”

“The deputy is my cousin,” Saverin dismissed, although privately he acknowledged Tanya was right to be wary of the flinty-eyed Absalom. “Worry about that lottery ticket.”

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