Page 13 of Ride Forever
He grunted as he moved his hand to the front, slipped a finger under the crotch of my jeans shorts and delved inside me.
“Chaser…” I gasped as his palm pressed against my clit.
“Fighting is one thing,” he whispered. “Cardio is another. They work best together.”
“Is that so?” I raised an eyebrow. I didn’t mind wild sex but on the roof when we were supposed to be keeping a low profile? Maybe another time.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said, pulling his hand away. “Want to join me?”
“Hell yes.”
The motel room was dark and slightly cooler than the furnace of the outside world. Taking off my sunglasses, I tossed them onto the table where they slid across the surface before coming to rest beside Fortitude’s grand executioner. I tensed, a strange melancholy coming over me.
“You okay?” Chaser asked, closing the door and blocking out the last of the burning sunlight.
“Yeah… Just tired, I guess.” Picking up the revolver, I stroked my thumb over the mother-of-pearl. “Taking a life… It’s so final.”
Chaser nodded, prying the revolver from my grasp. “What we need to do to survive isn’t easy.”
What was that thing Sam told me after Harley had been shot? He’d been a good man once. Well, as good as he was able to be under the circumstances. Fortitude changed him for the worse, tapping into all his violent tendencies and amplifying them. What if the same thing was happening to me? This whole plan to take out my father, then King… What if I was headed down the same path? One kill had become two, and there would be more and more. How many people did I have to murder until I lost myself?
“I don’t want… I don’t want to turn into Harley…” I glanced at Chaser, who narrowed his eyes.
“You don’t want to turn into me?”
“No, I didn’t mean… It was something Sam told me before she left. This life turned him into a monster…”
“She told me the same thing,” Chaser said. “Don’t worry, Sloane. I know what happened to me, and that’s why I push you to confront things. That’s why I’d prefer to take the gun out of your hands and take your place. I don’t want you to go through the shit I have. Especially not because of me.”
“I know. I…” I glanced at the revolver. “It’s not who I killed with it. It’s the fact I killed in the first place.”
Chaser cupped my face and rubbed his thumb across my cheek. “I don’t want to say it’ll get easier because it won’t. Just…”
“Just what?”
“Just don’t do what I did. Don’t shut it out.”
I nodded slightly, leaning into his palm.
“Promise me.”
“I can’t,” I whispered.
Chaser’s intentions were noble, but I knew I was going to have to go to an even darker place before this was over. I just hoped to hell I wouldn’t lose my soul along the way.
