Page 12 of Nasty
“This is it, Sera. I care about you, and I fucking want you more than I’ve fucking wanted anything in my life. But I’ve put you through hell since I walked into that motel in Wyoming. I know that. You don’t know me as well as I know you. Ididhave the benefit of watching you in Seattle, and you haven’t had the same opportunity, so I get it. The events of the past week are all you have to go off. I’d be thinking the same things you’re thinking, too, if I were in your shoes. I want you to know, though…there’s the man you think I am, and the real me. I’m a killer. When it comes to putting a bullet in the skull of a man who has raped and hurt and caused pain since the moment he was old enough to make his own decisions, you should know…I won’t fucking hesitate. But when it comes to you, I’m a breach wall. I’m the thing that stands between you and the dark. I will always be standing there, bracing for the shit storm, ready to fucking defend and protect you, if that’s what you want, because you’re the most important, pivotal, vital thing that’s ever happened to me. You’ll never find me sitting in a bunker, plotting and planning how to capture you behind closed doors. You’ll find me with a knife in my hand, ready to sink it into the throat of the first person who dares to look at you fucking sideways. That’s the truth. That’s fuckingreal. That’s the man you see lying on this bed with you right now. And if you doubt it, if you doubt me, even for a second…hit that call button, and I’ll be gone in the most permanent way possible.”
My heart was fucking racing. She could do so much damage with just one phone call, but I’d never been more serious, or meant anything so much before. My future was in her hands. Literally. And I was willing the face the music and fucking dance.
Sera’s throat worked. Her pulse was racing and skipping just below the line of her jaw. She didn’t know what to do, and who could blame her. Time stretched out endlessly as she speared me through with those demanding eyes. Prison wouldn’t be a walk in the park. She didn’t realize it, but the chances of me living out a long life in jail were slim to none. The crimes I’d committed, spread out across the breadth and width of the country, were heinous and violent enough to earn me a one-way trip to the electric chair. Or to a table with a needle in my arm, depending on which state fought for me the hardest. But let her envision me trapped behind bars, living out a long, miserable life if it made this easier for her. I wasn’t going to weight her decision by letting her know that her next move might end up signing my death warrant.
She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. I wanted to close my eyes; the waiting was like a knife inching closer and closer to my heart with each passing second, but I wasn’t going to shut her out. She needed to be able to look into me. She needed to see the truth that was burning me up inside.
Sera exhaled, and then… the phone dropped from her hands onto the bed. She closedhereyes, and a fat, heavy tear chased its way across the bridge of her nose, streaking across her cheek, falling onto the mattress alongside the phone.
“I don’t want you to go to prison,” she whispered. “I believe you. I shouldn’t. But I do. And now, I don’t know what to do, because…” Her voice caught in her throat. She paused. Regained control over herself. “Sixsmith used to beat me. He beat Amy, too. And he…he did much,muchworse. When I left South Carolina, I vowed that violent men were never going to play a leading role in my life again, Fix. The violence that lives inside you petrifies me. It fuckingterrifiesme. I can see it sometimes, a dark, cold, inexplicable thing that forces its way out of you, and I want to run. But I never do. You just gave me my phone and told me to call the cops, but the truth is you’ve never cut me off from the world. You never took my phone away from me and forbade me from screaming for help. And I think…that fact alone is what’s kept me here with you. A part of me’salwaysknown you’re not like that guy in the bunker. A part of me is stupid, and reckless, and it’s been playing Russian roulette with my life since the moment I realized I was free of my father, because that part of me was used to feeling like I could die at any moment, and it missed…it missed the threat. That’s…god, that’sso fucked up.”
Another tear fell, and then another. She was crying, and I’d made her do it, and it made me fucking hate myself. It also made me sing with fucking relief, because she wasn’t going to end this. Dying didn’t scare me as much as being without her.Thatwasreallyfucked up, but it was the truth. I reached out and I stroked my fingers lightly down her cheek. She could pull back at any moment, and I was ready for that. I’d accept it. But the brief moment of contact was worth the possibility of rejection, and I was used to playing Russian roulette, too.
“You’re a weapon, Sera. You were forged in fire. When you remove a weapon from the flames, it becomes even stronger. Sharper. A hundred times more lethal than it ever was before.And it misses the burn. You’re not fucked up for inviting danger into your life. You’re just trying to prove that you’re still strong.”
She didn’t flinch away from me; her eyelids flickered, and then she opened them. Slowly, tentatively, she raised her hand to touch mine, threading her fingers through my own. “I’m not going to ask you to collar the monster inside you, because I already know it, and it’s a part of you,” she said. “I’ll allow your demons to protect me, and I’ll use mine to defend you, too. Stupid though that is. However fucking dangerous and unbelievably idiotic though that is. But I’m keeping the gun, Fix. And I will use it the moment your demons look like they’re turning on me.”
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
This woman.
She was miraculous.
She was beautiful.
She was strong.
She was everything.
Grinning, I rolled myself over, straddling her body, supporting myself over her. Gradually, I began to lower myself.
“Sera Lafferty…I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
FIVE
TUG OF WAR
SERA
If I were home and telling Sadie about what I was about to do, she’d call St. Peter’s Hospital and have me fucking committed. Unlike me, Sadie was sensible. She was steadfast and reliable. When she saw an accident on the side of the road, she didn’t lean her head out of the fucking window and wind up crashing her car, too. She’d been brought up by college professors. Parents who hadn’t gone ahead and died on her, or raised their fists to her, or sold her to the highest bidder. She hadn’t had to worry about anyone creeping into her bedroom late at night when the rest of the world was sleeping. When I’d first moved to Seattle, I’d used Sadie as a touchstone for sanity, watching how she reacted to situations and experiences to see how anormalperson might respond. After a while the constant editing taking place in my head became exhausting, though, and I gave up.
Sadie was the only person who knew me well enough to call me out when she thought I might be teetering on the edge of stupidity, but she wasn’t here right now. I was alone with Fix, and I was about to do something remarkably stupid.
I. Did. Not. Care.
His mouth was getting closer and closer, and the smell of him was filling my head—a fresh, masculine, indefinable scent that made my back arch up off the bed. I wanted him. I wanted him on top of me, his entire weight pressing down on me, making me feel safe. I wanted his hands tearing at my clothes, his tongue in my mouth, his cock pushing inside me, and I was going to have it all.
Fix’s wicked eyes, brimming over with lust, promised as much if I wanted it. They promised ecstasy, and pleasure, and release. They promised that he was going to steal my breath away, and my soul, too, if I allowed it. I slid my hands up over his back, digging my fingernails into his skin through his t-shirt, and the demanding, breathtaking man on top of me growled so low that a thrill of anticipation shot through me, rocking me to my core.
“Bad Angel,” Fix murmured against my lips. He was moments away from kissing me, and I could barely hold myself still long enough for his mouth to meet mine. My need filled me like there was a dam wall holding it in place, but the wall was buckling. The pressure was too great. Too intense. If I’d been with anybody else, I would have reined in that need, forced it into submission so that cooler heads could prevail, but this was different. My need for Fix washed away the worry, the pain, and the fear that I’d been wrestling all day. My desire muted anything and everything else so efficiently that I knew it was going to become a problem. An addiction, like a drug. Every hit of Felix Marcosa that I took left me higher than I’d ever been before, and the come down, though considerable, was completely worth it.
The muscles in Fix’s shoulders strained as he lowered himself down yet another inch, and I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t hold myself back anymore. I reached up to meet him, and when our lips crashed together it felt like I’d just jumped from a high board into a deep, bottomless pool, my body rocking from the impact. Fix groaned as I opened my mouth and allowed him to slide his tongue inside. I was cocooned in him. Surrounded by him. Enveloped in him. I forgot to breathe, forgot why I evenneededto breathe as Fix lowered himself down on top of me, bracing part of his weight on one elbow, as he used his free hand to cup and knead at my breasts. I was drowning in him. I was meters down, and I couldn’t tell which way was up, and I had no hope of surfacing any time soon. To do so, I would have to tear myself away from him, and that just wasn’t going to happen.
Fix pushed one of his knees between my legs and roughly shoved them apart. At the same time, he squeezed my nipple between his thumb and finger, pinching, and a sharp pain volleyed between my breasts and my pussy, making me gasp against his mouth. A perilous smile spread across his face as he settled himself between my legs. “Can you feel it?” he rumbled.
“Feel…what?” I was feeling everything all at once, and the overload of stimuli was threatening to turn me inside out.
“This.” Fix rocked his hips up and forward so that the hard length of his cock pressed up against my pussy.
