Page 22 of Ryder
He nodded, going to my kitchen, and rummaging for hot sauce.
“Yeah, course. So… we getting drunk?”
I finished the mouthful I had, damn near half the giant hotdog.
“Fucking right. Don’t rule out sex though, I might want to fuck you later.”
“Too soon, man.” He grimaced, stuffing his face with his food.
Mine was gone already, so I reached for the bottle of vodka he’d brought, and fetched some glasses.
“Yeah, sorry. I thought we’d be ready to joke about it, but truthfully, I’m still freaked out. What the hell was going on in my head?”
I poured us both a generous glass, because who wants to bother with shots right now? I lifted up and sat on my kitchen counter, facing him, while he still ate.
“Thanks for stopping me. That was fucked up. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have actually gone through with it.”
He glanced at me as he wiped his face, and scrunched up the packaging from his hotdog.
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that. You try that on me though, and I’ll put your face through a window. Just saying.”
I nodded. “You know it was just a heat of the moment thing. I’m not… that’s not me. I scared the hell outta myself though.”
“Me too. I don’t mind watching you fuck a woman, or us fucking her at the same time. That shit’s normal, but trying to rape some homophobe in a dark alley, that’s next level fucked. You know I’d have done whatever it took to stop you, yeah? I mean, we were wearing our cuts, man.”
I drank most of the vodka in my glass, leaning my head back against the wall.
“I know. No wonder the Pres has me on lockdown. I was a fucking disaster. I just… I need to find her, you know? I need to find out why she did that, and I need to get my own back. I need to fucking make her hurt.”
“And you’re saying stuff you’d never have said before. You don’t mind a rough fuck, but you don’t hurt women, not the way you’re describing. She fucked you up pretty good.”
I stared at my glass. “I don’t like the not knowing. Not remembering what the fuck happened. It’s killing me. Anything could have happened, Torch. I was out of it. I was a fucking sitting duck. Who knows if she did other stuff, or if there was someone else there, or… Jesus…I don’t know… I’d have fucked her. She didn’t need to…”
“Rape you. It’s rape, brother, and that’s why you’re fucked in the head. Because you feel like this shit doesn’t happen to guys, and especially not guys like us. We’re top of the fucking food chain. We hurt others. We don’t get taken advantage of. We don’t get forced into anything, and nobody survives an attack on us. We’ll get her.”
I tightened my grip on my now-empty glass.
“How? We don’t have a fucking clue who she was, or where she is. For all we know, she swept through town, took what she wanted, and she’s already hundreds of miles away. And I’m left here wondering what the fuck happened, and why.”
Torch glanced behind him, at the sitting area.
“Your phone is going off.”
I slid off the counter, and went to fetch it. I hadn’t heard it, but it appeared to be on vibrate. It was dancing across the table surface intermittently, like messages were coming through.
I picked it up, expecting an update from Reacher or Stitch, or maybe even Ice. Either that or Chrissy, trying to coax me into phone sex again.
It was an unknown number. Three new messages.
Unknown:I had fun last night. We should do it again.
What the fuck!
Unknown:You felt so good inside me. Did you like it?
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I muttered, clicking the third message. A video clip.
The phone dropped out of my hand, as I absorbed what I’d just seen.
