Page 33 of Ryder
I’ve never moved so fast, sliding off of his corpse, and dropping to my knees, my stomach purging itself of every last morsel of the day’s food.
I had been fucking a dead man. What the fuck? I threw up again and again. Soon it was just bile, burning its way through my stomach and throat.
I’d barely managed to get my wits about me enough to get out of there. I’d managed to remember my bag, and my phone, and I’d run. Staggered out of there like I was being chased, but with barely enough strength and awareness to even remember when I’d parked. The car was down an alleyway from where I was. I’d had help getting him inside, and then I’d been on my own.
Once I was in the car, I drove. I just got the hell out of there. I was crying so much that I could barely see the road. By the time I’d put some distance between me and the dead man, I pulled over, and removed my seatbelt, curling up in the driver seat, hugging my legs as I cried.
I never meant to kill anyone. This was never about that. It was about taking power from men. It was about using them for sex, like they do to us. It was about getting my pleasure, while they had no say in it.
And now a man was dead. He might have had a family. We never checked that sort of thing. She found me a date, and I’d go play with him for a night. After the biker, we’d reverted back to my old type; smarter, businessman types. The ones who were out cheating on their wives, and looking for a goodtime. They got their good time, and they never spoke of it again.
It had worked for so long. Even with the occasional dose of crabs, or that one case of something a little nastier. I’m sure I’d passed those conditions on to my next victims before I’d realised I was infected. Again, none of that mattered.
A man’s life though, that mattered. I’d killed someone. I’d murdered a man. I clearly didn’t fuck him to death. He’d had some kind of, what is it they call it? A medical event. Call it what it is, dammit… a heart attack maybe? Something else? A stroke? I don’t know. He was alive one minute, and dead the next.
Had it only been a minute? Or had I been fucking a dead man for a while, before I realised he wasn’t waking, or breathing? Hiscock had remained hard, but hadn’t I dosed him to make sure that it would?
My god, what a mess. I don’t know how I found my way home that night, but I’d dragged myself into my flat, and showered for a good hour or so, before I crawled into bed, and cried myself to sleep.Something I swore would never happen again.
Thirteen
They brought her in,and took her to the basement, where we interrogate people. I didn’t have details, because apparently it was ‘none of my business’. They’d found and snatched my rapist, but apparently it wasn’t my fucking business.
“I get to talk to her,” I demanded, slamming Reacher’s office door open, and interrupting him in a meeting with Stitch and Ice. They all just stared at me for a moment.
“You will,” he said finally, turning back to them to carry on with his discussion. Enough of this shit. I’m going there right fucking now. I turned and strode from the room, itching to get my hands on the bitch, itching to punish her, to make her pay. To make her SUFFER.
As I reached the stairs to the basement, an iron grip caught my arm, hauling me back a few steps.
“You’ll keep quiet until I fucking give you the go ahead, you get me?” Reacher snarled, nodding at the others to drag me out of the way, letting him go first.
“Since you’re gonna push us to do this immediately, we’ll be going in half-cocked, but who cares, right?”
He shoved the door open when we reached the basement, and there she was. She was pretty, and I’d definitely have fucked her, if she’d only given me the choice.
She glanced from one of us to the other, straining at the ropes tying her to the chair in the middle of the room. Her eyes landed on me, and she gasped softly.
“You,” she whispered, pulling again at the ropes.
“You’ll keep your eyes only on me,” Reacher demanded, nodding at the others to back off. The door had closed, but in the room with me and her, and Reacher, were Stitch, Ice, and Torch. The fucking boy band back together again.
My fists were clenched so tight, my fingers were cramping up, but I couldn’t unfurl them.
“Ease up, brother,” I heard Torch whisper, as he grabbed my shoulder and dragged me away from Reacher. I leaned against the wall with him, but it took every ounce of my self-control to stay there.
She didn’t look afraid as such. Nervous, maybe. Worried. Not afraid, at least not yet, and she really should be. She’d fucked with a member of our club. She was in our torture room, with enough of us to tear her to pieces. People tended to leave this room no longer breathing, did she even realise that?
“I guess there’s no point in me demanding that you free me,” she said quietly, keeping her eyes on Reacher as he’d commanded.
He smirked. “You know why you’re here, of course.” He’d ignored her dumb question, because that’s exactly what it had been.Dumb.
“I just want to start off by saying that you have me all wrong,” she said, a small smile on her face.
Reacher leaned close, his hands covering her wrists as he towered over her.
“This will go easier for you, if you just stick to answering my fucking questions, and drop the wise-ass act.”
She swallowed hard, tilting her head to meet his eyes.
