Page 52 of Femme Fatale
“You ever wish you’d been someone else?” he whispered.
“No,” I said. “But I wish I’d met you sooner.”
He kissed me then, hard and wet, the kind of kiss that says we may not get another chance. I bit his lip, drew blood, and he growled, gripped the back of my head, and kissed harder. When we broke, I was shaking.
“Inside,” he said again.
We left the bottle, and the ghosts, and went inside.
The hallway was empty, a graveyard of bad lighting and dried blood smears nobody had bothered to clean. Every step echoed off the walls, bouncing back at us like we were ghosts haunting our own afterparty. Zeke didn’t let go of my hand, not even when we passed the front room where the TV glowed with silent news, the ticker running names of men we’d outlived. I felt his blood warm and slippery between our fingers, mixing with mine until there was no telling where one of us ended.
We moved fast, past the old poker room, through the kitchen, and up the back stairs. I unlocked my door and slammed it behind us, the noise shaking the cracked drywall. Zeke dropped his jacket, slumped against the dresser, and grinned at me through split lips.
“Sit,” I said. “Let me see.”
He kicked off his boots and peeled his shirt, slow at first, then all at once, like it burned him to have it touch his skin. The wounds were bad. Two round holes, one through the meaty part of his pec, the other higher, torn and purple with angry bruising. They’d patched him up, but the blood still oozed, soakingthrough butterfly bandages and matte-black ink. I wanted to touch, to clean, to make it better, but that wasn’t what he wanted. Wasn’t what I wanted, either.
He reached for me, dragging me into his lap, hands digging into my ass like he could fuse us together. I straddled him, legs shaking from the run and the pain and something that felt like grief but wasn’t. Maybe it was hope. Maybe it was just fear.
I kissed him hard, tasted the copper in his mouth, and let it cut my tongue. He gripped my thigh, grinding his palm into the place where the bullet had caught me, and I hissed, half with pain, half with the way it made my whole body light up. I bit his jaw, licking the line where sweat met stubble, and he shuddered, lifting me higher on his lap.
We tore at each other, ripping buttons, popping seams, nothing elegant, nothing slow. He yanked my jeans down, fingers rough on my skin, and I gasped when the denim scraped the wound. I wanted to hurt, wanted to feel everything. I wanted to burn this into my head for the next ten years.
When I was naked, I turned to the mirror above the dresser, watched the reflection of two broken animals, smeared with blood, too stubborn to quit. My hair stuck to my cheek, matted with sweat and spit. Zeke’s hands left red fingerprints on my thighs, and when he slid them between my legs, I flinched and then didn’t.
He didn’t ask if I wanted it. I didn’t ask if he could. He lifted me, lined up, and pushed inside, slow just long enough to make me ache for more. I rode him, grinding down, feeling the heat and the slide, the sting of his hips on my bruises. Every thrust ground my clit against him, and I clenched hard, digging my nails into his back, leaving crescents in the muscle.
His mouth went to my shoulder, biting down, not soft but vicious, and I bucked, feeling the pain spike through my chest and into my cunt. He came up for air, lips trailing down to theplace where my breast met the curve of my ribs, biting there, too. I moaned, not caring who heard, maybe wanting the whole place to know we were still alive.
I felt the edge coming, that hot white tunnel vision that every woman desired, and I raked my hands up his chest, clawing for purchase. My thumb caught the edge of his wound, the higher one, and the patch tore with a wet sound. Blood gushed, black in the dim light, and for a split second, I almost pulled away. But he just growled, grabbed my ass, and slammed me down harder, like he wanted to bleed on every inch of me.
I came, hard and ugly, crying out as the blood slicked down his chest and pooled in the groove of his abs. He kept going, kept fucking, face twisted with something between agony and bliss. When he came, it was violent, every muscle locked, eyes screwed shut, teeth bared. He slammed his head back, the thump of his skull against the wall loud as a gunshot.
We stayed like that, panting, clinging, the scent of sweat and blood heavy as a storm. I looked down, watched the blood trickle between us, mixing with spit and the rest, running in lazy streaks to the edge of the chair. My thighs were painted with it, my hands, my chest. It didn’t scare me. It made me hungry, made me feel more real than I ever had.
Zeke caught my face in his hands, smearing blood on my cheeks, and kissed me. Not soft, not gentle. However, this time, there was no violence involved. Just the understanding that this was the only way we knew how to love.
He pulled me tight, hands shaking, breath ragged. “If this is it,” he whispered, “I’m glad it’s you.”
I buried my head in his neck, tasted salt and copper, and held on.
When the wind rattled the windows, and the sirens started in the distance, we didn’t move. Not yet. There was nothing left to do but cling, and bleed, and wait for the world to finish us off.
***
By the time I’d cleaned the blood from my thighs and managed to find a shirt that didn’t reek of death, the sirens were right on top of us. They wailed up and down the road, the kind of sound that vibrates your fillings and turns the air electric. From the window above the stairs, I watched the first squad car pull a hard stop at the porch. Two uniforms crouched behind the doors before they even bothered to kill the lights.
The main lounge was lit with that blue-red strobe, the kind that made everything inside look like it was on fire and underwater at the same time. I watched the lights flicker across the faces of the girls who’d made it through the night—Joker, Glitz, even Nines lurking in the dark corner with a laptop clutched to her chest. Nobody said a word. Nobody needed to.
The battering ram hit the front door once, twice, splinters flying like shrapnel. I heard the boots, the screams, the metallic clatter of guns racking rounds. I stood in the center of the lounge, arms at my sides, and waited.
The first cop in was a woman. Big, black eyes sharp enough to read your DNA. She swept the room, gun up, and barked, “Down! Everybody down!” The girls hit the floor without argument. I stayed standing.
She zeroed in on me. “Are you the President?”
I nodded. “President of the Royal Harlots, Vegas chapter. And very proud of it.”
She jerked her chin. “Where’s Zeke Smalls?”
