Monster (23 page)

“No?” I
asked, chuckling.

“No,” she
said firmly.

“Why not?”

“Because I need a
nap first,” she said as I lowered her onto the bed.

I slipped in beside
her, hauling her to my side. “I think I can give you that,”
I said, feeling sleep pulling at my eyes too.

“You can fuck me
in an hour or two,” she conceded a few minutes later, her voice
drowsy from sleep.

“Sounds like a
plan.”

And that was exactly
what happened. I woke up to her kissing her way down my chest. And,
well, I let her do that. But before she could make me come with that
sweet little mouth of hers, I threw her onto her back and fucked her
hard, legs on my shoulders. Then feet on my chest. Then legs on the
mattress pressed together but cocked at a ninety-degree angle.

Then we got up and ate.
She checked her laptop. I tossed in a movie. We watched it. Then we
drifted off to sleep again.

I woke up early, too
anxious to get more than a few hours of sleep put together. I went
down into the basement and pushed myself through a punishing workout,
trying to get my mind to clear so I could focus on how to get us out
of such a shit situation. But one hour and a cold shower later, I was
no closer to figuring out what to do.

Alex came walking out
of the bedroom half an hour later, wearing one of my tees even though
she had her own clothes again. Realizing that meant something had a
weird swirling feeling moving across my stomach. I pushed it away
when she walked up to me and pressed her forehead to my chest, her
body disconnected from me. I felt myself chuckle, rubbing a hand up
her back.

“Want some
coffee?”

“Sure,” she
said, moving away. “Lovely day,” she drawled, moving
toward the window and watching the rain pour down in sheets as it had
been doing since before I woke up.

I walked up behind her,
wrapping my arm around her waist as I handed her the coffee with my
other hand. My head dipped and I planted a kiss where her shoulder
met her neck.

“You ain't
shutting down on me already are you?”

I felt her back lean
into my chest as she sipped her coffee. “Not yet.”

“Good then I can
fuck you one more time before we go.”

“You can't be
serious,” she said, shaking her head.

“Why not?”

“Because my legs
feel like I ran the New York City marathon last night,” she
bitched, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

My hand slid down her
belly, moving up her thigh, and finding that while she put on my tee,
she hadn't bothered with panties as I slid my hand against her pussy.

“Funny,” I
said, nipping into her earlobe. “Your mouth is saying one
thing, but your pussy is telling a whole different story.”

“You can't
possibly want to...” her voice trailed off as I shifted my hips
so my cock was pressing up against her ass, making it clear I very
much
did
want to. “Oh,” she breathed out.

I smiled against her
hair as I reached in front of me and pushed my pants down, grabbing
the condom I had slipped into my pocket while I was getting dressed
for just this reason. If we lived, her ass was going on the damn pill
as soon as possible. I stopped stroking her pussy to slip on the
condom then tuned her to face me, pressing her back up against the
refrigerator.

Her leg lifted,
wrapping around my hips and I slid inside her. Her eyes widened,
watching me, as I started rocking my hips into her soft and sweet-
something I had never really done before, but enjoying watching the
surprise and pleasure spread across her features. Making her lips
part, her lids get heavy. Her hands slid up my arms and went around
the back of my neck, pulling me to her and pressing her lips against
mine. Gentle. Silky. My hand went to the side of her face, cradling
it as I continued by lazily stoking of our desire.

I had a blinding
realization while I slipped inside her, swallowing her whimpers
against my mouth. She had laid on my couch the night before after I
fucked her and told me she had been missing out. Well, in a way, I
had too.

Because soft and sweet
had its own kind of merit.

Maybe it was just
because it was Alex, but making love to her felt different. It felt
like more. Like there was something passing between us other than
bodies satisfying bodies.

Alex's lips pulled from
mine and her eyes fluttered open, staying on mine as her whimpers
became moans and I knew she was getting close.

“Come for me,
Alex,” I said quietly, feeling her tighten around me. “That's
it, come baby.”

And then she did, her
eyes getting wide, her mouth falling open, but no sound came out for
a long time as her body rode through the pulsations. Then, finally,
“Breaker,” she whispered, her head falling to my chest.

I came a few seconds
later, squeezing her to my chest and holding her there for a while
after.

Then she sighed,
shaking her head. “What's the matter?”

“It's twenty of
ten,” she told me, untangling from my body and sliding away
from me.

From the thickness of
the air around her, I knew my Alex was gone. Alex, the mask, was in
place instead- her eyes distant, her shoulders pulled back as she
made the way to the bathroom and closed the door quietly.

Fuck.

She didn't even take
five minutes to consider that something had just passed between us.
Something different. At least for me it was different.

Fucking son of a bitch
cocksucker Lex Keith.

I cleaned up, going
into the pantry and slipping some weapons into my pants and boots,
keeping out an extra pocketknife and a can of mace for Alex to tuck
into her boots when she came out.

She did a few minutes
later, dressed in black skinny jeans and a black long sleeve tee,
looking very much like she was going to a funeral. Which was probably
exactly what she was thinking when she slipped into it. She sat down
on the couch, swishing her finger across the sensor on her laptop to
make it come alive as she slipped into her boots.

“Nothing?”

“Lot of views all
of a sudden,” she said, her voice cool. “No bites
though.”

“Here,” I
said, leaning over the couch and handing her the knife and mace.
“Tuck those into your boots too. Just in case.”

She took them, but made
no comment, lacing up her shoes loosely, slamming her laptop, and
standing. “Let's get this over with,” she said, making
her way to the door, avoiding eye contact.

I had no other cards to
play so I grabbed my keys and wallet and followed behind. I couldn't
begrudge her her sour mood. The closer we drove toward town, the more
I felt my own darkening.

I sighed as I swung my
truck into a parking space out front of Lex's office. It was in a
sketchier side of town than you would usually catch Lex in himself,
choosing to send one of his lackeys instead. But he was in there. For
whatever sick plan he had rolling around his twisted brain. Beside
me, Alex might as well have been stone. Her breathing was slow, even.
Her hands relaxed on her thighs. Her face impassive. Her eyes far
away, staring out the window at the rain collecting on the
windshield.

“Doll...”

She shook her head
stiffly. “Let's get this over with.”

I sighed, watching her
open her door and step out into the downpour. With little choice, I
followed suit.

The door flew open
before I could even reach for it, Limp Dick Rick standing there
looking bored. But I could see blood staining the pocket of his
jeans. I wondered if Alex noticed, but if she did, she wasn't letting
on.

“Lex here?”
I asked as we stepped into the office area, cheap fake wood desk, old
law books on the shelves. I wondered if he did that ironically or
just because they all matched. The floor was dusty in the corners and
there were just old yellowed blinds on the windows, pulled closed.

He inclined his head to
me and knocked on a door to the side of the bookshelf behind the
desk.

A few seconds later, it
opened and out walked Lex in one of his gray suits, the stain of
blood almost invisible on his black dress shoes. But I saw it. And I
felt myself tense. Beside me, still no reaction from Alex.

Lex's head tilted to
the side, watching Alex. “I see you managed the task.”

“What task?”
I asked, trying to make my words come out casual though I felt like I
was talking through clenched teeth.

“You broke her.”

My head turned to the
side where Alex was still just staring off at the wall. It certainly
looked like I had. The smart thing to do would be own the idea. But I
couldn't bring myself to so I just shrugged a shoulder.

“You might need
to... unbreak her a little,” he said, his eyes coming to my
face.

“Unbreak her?”
I repeated, raising a brow.

“She's no good to
me all catatonic.”

“Might be useful
if you told me what exactly she is to be of use to you for then.”

To this, he shrugged.
“That's why we're here,” he said, turning and moving back
toward the door he had just walked out of. I felt my gut clench up,
every instinct telling me that we shouldn't go behind that door. But
there wasn't much choice with Limp Dick Rick standing in front of the
main door.

Lex stepped into the
room and I followed. Alex was a few steps behind me.

I was right.

We didn't want to be in
there.

'There' being a room
with white tile and a drain in the floor. A hose was hooked up to the
bathroom sink in the room to the back. A hose that they used to wash
the blood down the drain. The blood like the blood that was
everywhere right then.

The blood that had come
from the man that had been cuffed to the chair in the center of the
room.

Young. A few years
older than Alex, a few younger than me. A little pudgy and with a
definite nerdy look with his black-rimmed glasses and video game
t-shirt. But good looking.

Or at least... he was.

He was dead.

Likely from the sheer
amount of blood he had lost.

Arterial spray fuckin'
everywhere.

My eyes went
immediately to Alex as she stepped through and I saw a flash. It was
gone before a blink, shut down behind her wall. I couldn't even get a
chance to analyze it. Shock? Horror? It was gone too soon.

“As you can see,”
Lex started and my eyes drifted to his, “I have had some issues
lately.”

“Who is the
stiff?” I asked, nodding at the guy in the chair.

It should have bothered
me. It was gory. Horror movie worthy. But I had seen worse. I had
done almost as bad. I had no right to be disgusted. But even so, my
stomach clenched.

“This,
unfortunately, was a man I hired recently.”

“What's he do?”

“He's a hacker,”
Lex said easily. “Well, he
was
.”

“A hacker?”

“Yes. See... I
have had a series of security breaches and viruses on my computer and
I had an inkling that someone was trying to gather information about
me.”

Fuck. Shit fuck fuck.
As much as I wanted to look at Alex, see if she was giving any of her
guilt away, I kept my eyes on Lex.

“So this is the
guy who has been doing it?”

“No no. This is
the young man I hired to find the hacker.”

“I'm assuming he
failed the task.”

“Indeed,”
Lex said, slapping a hand down on the dead guy's shoulder, making his
lifeless body jolt.

“And we're here
seeing this because...”

“Because the
threat still exists,” Lex went on, wiping a bit of blood off
his hands with a white pocket square. “I got some of my men on
it and when they were searching potential hackers to do the job,
Miss. Miller's name came up. I was intrigued.”