18
I Do Not Want This
THROUGH HER WILD MOVEMENTS, Kyle saw the sexy blonde in man-drag lick her knife like she was Marilyn Monroe and Freddie Kruger’s love child. She felt an immediate reaction in Beckett’s pants, and for a moment he stopped dancing completely.
Figures. The minute I think I’m the belle of the ball, he only wants someone else.
When Beckett snapped out of it and grabbed her again, Kyle tried to push him away. She stopped rocking her body to the music.
He looked in her eyes. “You feeling okay?”
Kyle nodded, her knowing now complete. She would not get the release she needed from him. “I need to take a piss. I broke the seal.” Kyle pushed harder, and Beckett made his arm a steel barrier around her waist.
He scanned the room again and finally put his mouth close to her ear. “Kyle, I have a lot to do here tonight. I need you to take care of yourself. Don’t make me kill anyone.”
Kyle felt revulsion roll through her, and she took a deep breath. Hairy Buffalo mixed with the knowledge that he would actually off someone almost ended her night. I need another drink.
Beckett pulled his phone out and smiled the most villainous smile Kyle had ever seen. “I have to go,” he murmured. “Don’t get your wings wet, Fairy Princess. It will be too hard to fly.”
Beckett dipped her one last time and twirled her to release his hold. Kyle did her favorite stripper toe-drag walk over to the guys bolstering their courage after Beckett’s departure.
Channeling her best Southern belle, Kyle batted her eyelashes and declared, “Holy shit! I feel so thirsty. I wish I had a drink.”
In an instant, Kyle had her choice of three different glasses held by spellbound men. She poured the two shots into the beer and chugged the concoction with as few swallows as possible.
She heard a garbled, “See, I told you Kyle swallows,” but ignored all it implied. She proceeded to give the men a show so arousing they should have had to pay for it.
As she danced along the bar, Kyle craned her neck and caught glimpses of her sister, who sat almost nose to nose with Mr. Blake Perfection. She tried to shake off the familiar look on his face as he traced Livia’s jaw with his finger. Cole.
Someone handed Kyle another drink, which she pounded. The liquor in it tasted like gasoline, and she felt the burn in her nose as she handed the glass back. There. Perfect. Everyone’s blurry. Anyone could be him. Everyone will be him tonight.
Kyle willed herself to believe she was too numb to feel the liberties her multiple dance partners now took with her body. I don’t feel it. I won’t feel it. Over and over she flashed her smile at the nearest guys, letting them grind into her. They were too drunk to be careful, and she knew she’d be bruised in the morning.
Across the room Blake rose and stood behind Livia. Kyle could see him move her hair and plant a kiss on her sister’s neck. Livia’s happiness rose like smoke from within her.
Kyle turned her back on the lovers and swayed her hips into another sweating man. She wished Beckett would come back. He wasn’t sweating and had smelled so good. He would hold her steady. She felt so unsteady. Kyle disentangled herself and stumbled on her sharp, elaborate heels. One shoe’s laces had come undone and trailed behind her like a deflated scream. Bathroom.
With a worried eye, Beckett watched as Kyle headed for the bathroom, but when his phone buzzed he looked down and lost sight of her. One of Beckett’s douchebags had texted him. As he read the screen, Beckett felt the joy from the tips of his toes to the top of his head.
Boss, we have a bunch of cars and trucks arriving in the lot.
The sender of the Twitter hit on Blake and Livia must finally have received the Beckett-planted tip to come to the Blazing Crotch Cotton. A different douchebag lit up his phone as Beckett went to meet up with Mouse.
Cole side door. Let him in?
Beckett hit a quick reply: Y
Perfect timing, Cole can sop up the mess Fairy Princess is becoming. Beckett liked that all his people were in the club now, and the potential problem was outside it. When Beckett found him, Mouse was knitting an elaborate tube, using at least four damn double pointed needles.
“Mouse, quit finger-fucking that porcupine,” Beckett ordered. “I need you on Blake and Whitebread.”
Mouse’s fingers were like a surgeon’s; he brought the piece to a resting point in the pattern with practiced efficiency. He twirled his work of art into a sack and gave his boss a nod. Beckett knew Mouse would be on high alert now. The exemplary planning and foresight that made him a stellar knitter also made him an exquisite bodyguard. Mouse went to make sure Livia and Blake were behind him.
Beckett hit the front doors of the club. His Hummer had caused a ginormous clusterfuck of fake gangstas. Their Volvos, assorted sedans, and pussy little hybrids formed a fateful line behind a ridiculous F-250 truck. Beckett found Eve, whose lips were still stained red with blood. Beckett found it hard to focus as he wondered if he was part vampire—he wanted to taste that blood so badly.
The bathrooms at The Launch Pad were actually locker rooms, complete with showers. They were endlessly large, but deceptively limited in the number of people they could accommodate. There were two toilets in the ladies’ room, side by side with no wall between them. Kyle always felt it was a little taste of prison when she went within arm’s reach of a fellow female pisser. When she arrived this time, the line for the women’s room was atrocious.
It would take extra time Kyle didn’t have to wait in that line. The men’s room taunted her with its empty doorway. She headed straight for it and turned her mind to the next challenge. These leather pants are like a CapriSun—impossible to open. Just as she was about to enter, two guys stopped her.
“Hey, sexy lady, where’d ya go?”
Both reached out to touch her. She’d given up all rights to her body on the dancefloor. These men were older than she was used to, and they were rougher as well. She couldn’t actually place them from the dancing, but they breathed down her neck and layered compliments on her.
“Sweetheart, I love you,” the taller one wheedled. “Come on, don’t give me blue balls.”
“Say that again.” Kyle’s voice was slurred and barely above a whisper.
The tall one steadied her. His copious chest hair mesmerized her—wild and curly like an old crotch. He smelled like sweat socks and beer.
He tried to focus on her face and spit with his words. “Don’t give me blue balls.”
Kyle laughed with her eyes almost closed. “No, fool, the other part.”
He was stumped. “Uhhh…” Then he obviously remembered the best way to get in a drunken girl’s pants. “I love you,” he said proudly.
“You keep saying that, and you can do whatever you want to me.” Kyle’s eyes filled with tears, but her drunken suitors looked only at the smile she forced for them.
“Anything?” The tall one took a risk. “How ’bout the both of us?”
“Yeah. That sounds about right.” Kyle let them lead her into the men’s locker room.
The layout was a little different from the ladies’, which turned Kyle’s internal compass around. The men actually had walls around their toilets, of course.
“Let me pee first, for fuck’s sake.”
She locked herself in the stall, wrestled with her pants, and did what she needed to. She readjusted her outfit and stumbled out, narrowly avoiding falling onto the floor. Many drunken men in the past had not put forth the effort to aim. The tiles were dingy and sticky, with yellow urine puddled all around. The outer door was metal with a window like a ship’s porthole. The solid-looking bolt was unlocked but made Kyle wonder what exactly usually happened in this bathroom. She wandered back into the center of the two men’s ardor.
Kyle held still as the tall one mumbled, “I love you I love you I love you,” until it became merely “ofyouofyouofyou.”
He doesn’t even know my name.
His short friend came around to test his luck on her breasts. Her top slid easily down. He added his “I love yous” to the mix like the phrase was the “Abracadabra” of sex. He watched her hands and remained ready to flee as he grabbed handfuls of her. Kyle felt the tears slip from her eyes and looked at her shoes.
She’d never been with two men before. She’d never been naked in a men’s room before. She’d never had a man tell her he loved her before.
She could see herself in one smudged mirror, and the ones on either side were cracked into patterns like spider webs. Her reflection showed her the truth. She wasn’t some beautiful siren being seduced by two men at once. She was a stupid girl getting pawed at by two balding idiots who didn’t even know her name. She almost said nothing. I’ve agreed to this, haven’t I? I am this, aren’t I?
But then something glittering on the taller one caught her attention. Buried in his thick, graying chest hair was a gold cross. Cross. I do not want this. Cole. I do not want this!
Her head said it a few more times before her mouth had the courage to utter the words out loud. The shorter one had latched onto her right breast with his mouth like a leech. The taller one had untied her other heel and started working on her impossible pants.
Her voice was quiet at first. “I don’t want this.”
Their lack of response poured urgency in her words.
“I’m sorry. Stop. I don’t want this!” Kyle began to shake when they still showed no sign of hearing her.
Then the taller one went from his “ofyou” mantra directly into a snarl. “Listen, sweetheart. This was your idea. This roller coaster has left the station, so just hang on for the ride.”
He then stepped on one high heel’s laces while the shorter one stepped on the other’s, which bound her feet to the floor. She knew then that they’d planned this, at least a little. With her legs now immobile, each one grabbed an arm. Kyle had her voice left to fight with, but her shame gagged her quiet. The taller one finally figured out the two hook-and-eye closures on her pants, and she felt them loosen.
“I do not want this,” she repeated. She sobbed now, and couldn’t speak nearly as loudly as she wanted to.
Then all three looked up at the sound of the lock on the thick bathroom door clicking into place. Kyle looked in the mirror for a glimpse of her next attacker. There are three of them now.
But it was Cole’s face she saw. For a moment she thought her heart was projecting his image into the mirror in sheer hope. But he was there, dressed like a dad in khaki pants and a plaid shirt.
Cole had no swagger. Cole had no menacing words. Cole didn’t even wind up when he punched so viciously that the last unbroken mirror shattered with the impact of the taller man’s head.
Beckett shook his head to clear it of his obsession with Eve’s bloodstained lips. All business, she reported to him what she’d learned so far.
“The tags on that truck belong to a Chris Simmer. He’s the one who Tweeted looking for Livia and Blake.”
Beckett contemplated how to proceed. Nothing rash. Chris Simmer would die, of course, but Beckett’s plans were too third-world interrogation room to implement in a parking lot with a crapload of eyeballs watching.
Beckett watched the lineup of cars sitting in the traffic jam. Though they were surely frustrated, the drivers refused to leave the safety of the painted lines that marked the pretend road in the lot. Neat, orderly motherfuckers. After a simple hand gesture from Beckett, two of his douchebags used their cars to block the front and back of the line of vehicles like beads on a necklace.
Beckett and Eve stood in companionable silence for a bit.
“What to do? What do you think, you sweet, sexy bitch?” Beckett stared into the headlights of the F-250.
“Now’s not your moment, but you should scare him enough to stay away from Blake,” Eve said.
Beckett nodded and headed for the truck. He jumped easily onto the running board and smiled like he was delivering Chris Simmer a big check and a bunch of balloons. Chris rolled down the window.
Beckett leaned in to look around the cab while he spoke. “Hey, dude! Are you here for some fun times and partying?”
Chris raised an eyebrow, emphasizing how unimpressed he was. “Yeah, dude,” he accented the dude. “Why are we all boxed in?”
Beckett leaned back to take in the lineup of potential-Blake-beating watchers. He took a deep breath, his lungs filling with anger and menace. When Beckett met Chris’s eyes again, Chris’s whole demeanor had changed. He seemed to grow smaller in his seat.
“Chrissy, Chrissy, Chrissy. Give me your goddamn phone.” All the while Beckett smiled.
“I’m not that comfortable with that—and how the fuck do you know my name?” Chris reached for the button to raise the window, as if a thin layer of glass could ever protect him from Beckett.
Beckett almost laughed. Almost. But he hadn’t liked the use of the word fuck in Chris’s response. Beckett waited for the glass to reach about halfway up before he grabbed it and leaned back until it snapped off in his hands. Chris kept his finger on the window button long after it was obvious nothing was left to respond anymore.
Beckett hated to repeat a request, so he just stared at Chris.
“What? My phone? Fine. Here.” Chris rotated his phone off his hip clip.
Beckett scrolled through his messages.
Chris tried a threat. “My fiancée’s dad is a cop, so I’d be careful what you say to me.”
Beckett handed the phone back. “Oh, Chrissy, I’m going to be so careful with you. Have no worries.”
Just then the club door flew open and Merkin came sprinting in Beckett’s direction. Beckett felt his stomach curl in a ball. What the hell?
He stepped down from Chris’s truck to receive Merkin’s frantic whisper: “Cole’s locked in the men’s room with Kyle. Someone’s screaming.”
Beckett tossed a look at Eve that told her to finish threatening Chris. She sauntered over to the truck as Beckett took off running, through the doors of the club and straight to the men’s room. He pushed through the crowd of his douchebags who’d formed a ring around the door so the regular crowd couldn’t get a peek at the ruckus.
He grabbed the nearest minion. “Make that music as loud as you can and clear this club.”
Beckett reluctantly turned his eyes to the porthole to the men’s room. The tile walls were already sprinkled with blood, and inhumane screams emanated from inside. Beckett put his hands on the metal door. There were only a few feet of visible space before the locker room turned a corner, giving Cole privacy to do his worst. Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Cole, it’s me! Let me in. For God’s sake, Cole!” Beckett kept his hands flat on the door, wishing he could melt the metal with them.
The screaming stopped. Beckett tried again, yelling over the music to be heard. His phone buzzed and he checked the text from Eve:
Police r on their way 2 lock down 4 underage drinking. ETA 6 minutes.
Beckett gave a silent thanks that his crew monitored the police scanner as he texted Eve back:
Cl4ear the patrking lot of the purn#ks
“Cole, you have to let me in. I have to be in there to help.” Beckett banged the door in the quick pattern they’d used in foster care. The code promised it was safe to open the door.
“Merk, where the hell’s Blake? Where’s Livia?” Beckett yelled.
“I’m on it, boss.” Merkin headed for the dancefloor.
Beckett saw movement in the porthole. Cole approached in a red-stained plaid shirt and bloody priest pants. He didn’t look at the window as he clicked the dead bolt open. Beckett opened the door and closed it behind him with a snap of the lock.
The scene around the corner was so bloody it was almost funny. Almost. And a scared Fairy Princess with her top around her waist sobered him immediately. Her fucking huge eyes stared at Cole. He would have to work quickly.
Cole’s turned to face her as he whispered, “Kyle, I know you must be really afraid of me right now. I promise I won’t move. Beckett will take you home, okay?”
Kyle stared blankly at them. Slowly she straightened herself, stood, and walked across the bloody floor to stand in front of Cole. Only then did she speak. “I’m so sorry. Look what I did. Now these men are…are they dead? All because I wanted to punish myself? You must be so ashamed of me.”
“Can I remove my shirt?” Cole asked.
Kyle nodded. He unbuttoned his shirt and held it out to Kyle, who didn’t move. Beckett sighed, took the shirt, and put it around Fairy Princess, covering her fantastic rack. He tried to button it up, but Cole’s shirt had the smallest fucking toddler-sized buttons. He wound up getting them all matched with the wrong holes. But at least her tits were hidden now.
Kyle stepped into Cole’s chest, and he wrapped his arms around her. They fit together like two quotation marks. Beckett didn’t want to rush this sweet nonsense, but the cops would be here any freaking minute. He cleared his throat anxiously.
“Please leave with Beckett. Are you okay? Did I get here in time?” Cole spoke into the top of Kyle’s head.
“I’m fine. I’m stupid, but I’m fine. I think I’m going to be sick.” Kyle remained cuddled in Cole’s arms.
Beckett heard the secret knock again and felt a surge of joy that Blake was safely on the other side. He grabbed Kyle’s arm and led her away from Cole. He had a feeling if Kyle had had even one fewer drink, pulling her away would’ve been a whole lot harder.
“Wait—come with me, Cole.” She looked confused and guilty.
Cole returned and took her hand. “Kyle, will you promise me something? It’s all I’ll ever ask of you, please?”
“Yes. I’ll promise you anything.” Kyle looked into his eyes.
“Don’t let that girl inside you win. Ever again. Be the real Kyle. Promise me you’ll be you.” Cole looked desperate.
Kyle shook her head, eyes pleading, but she responded in the affirmative. “I promise. Cole, what’s next?”
Cole looked around the room sadly. One man was clearly dead and the other moaned softly.
“My sweet, beautiful Kyle, I have to atone for what I’ve done here. I want you far, far away when they put the cuffs on me.”
Kyle’s eyes widened, and she struggled valiantly against Beckett’s instant grip on her.
He popped the lock and passed the bundle of squirming Kyle to Blake. “Bro, take Mouse and get her home. She’ll be puking soon.”
Livia looked furious and immediately pounded Kyle with high-pitched questions about the blood on Cole’s shirt. Kyle stopped cursing and struggling long enough to tell Livia she was okay. Beckett slammed the men’s room door and locked it again. He had just moments to make this right.
“Cole, you need to leave. Right now.” Beckett started punching the wall to bruise his hands.
“I’m taking this, Beckett. I did this. I could have just disabled them. But when I heard her say no I just…” Cole seemed resigned to his fate.
“They were trying to rape her?” Beckett hit the wall with enough force to hear something crack—either a tile or a knuckle.
“She said, ‘I do not want this,’ and they were all over her.” Cole glared at the men on the floor.
Beckett grabbed his brother by his shoulders. “Listen to me. The police are on their way. I know you want to take this and nail it to that giant fucking cross you’re carrying around, but I can’t have you in prison. Who the hell will take care of Blake?”
Cole looked unmoved.
“You and I both know I’ve already outlived my shelf life. Do you think I’ll make it for another twenty years while you’re locked up? Who’ll make sure Blake gets what he needs if we’re both gone? It has to be you. Let’s face it, I deserve to be arrested—so many times over. So many times. Look at me.”
Cole stared at the still-breathing man.
“How many lives will you save if I’m in prison?” Beckett continued. “Hundreds? Thousands? Do it for the people I haven’t killed yet.”
Cole turned to look at Beckett. Success. The combination of Blake and the yet-to-be-harmed had done it. Cole let himself be dragged to the door. Merkin was waiting.
“Take my brother and get our group out.” Merkin looked puzzled, but he would never question Beckett.
Beckett left the door unlocked for the police. No use making it hard. Beckett Taylor gift-wrapped at a murder scene should make them cum in their pants.
Beckett hung his head and clasped his hands in front of his body. As he waited for the biggest punch of his life, the door creaked open.
“Do you have to kill people every time you take a piss?” Eve locked the men’s room door behind her.
God, he loved looking at her. Even with her hair tucked in a baseball hat she was breathtaking.
“No, they killed themselves after I unleashed my colossal penis. It happens everywhere I go.” Beckett smiled as she assessed the damage.
“What happened?” Eve felt for a pulse on the dead man.
Beckett told her without thinking twice. He trusted her implicitly. “Cole caught these two bastards trying to rape Fairy Princess.”
Emotion flashed in her eyes. Hate.
“The cops are already here. Right about now…” She paused as they heard a ruckus outside and the music faded to silent. “All the douchebags are starting fights the police will have to break up. Do you trust me, Beckett?”
Beckett had never heard Eve use his first name before. It made him long for a home, a blanket, and her pussy all at once.
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
Eve moved to the dispenser that emitted rough, brown paper towels. She used one to withdraw a knife from her ankle holster. Beckett made no move to stop her as she walked toward him. She ran a hand through his hair, took the knife, and cut his scalp. She smiled as blood dripped onto his face.
“Fucking ouch.” Beckett waited to see what she’d do next. Would this be the time she killed him?
She counted his ribs with her fingertips and found her favorite spot. She slid the knife in sideways and pulled it out. Beckett could only wheeze in response, feeling like all the air was instantly gone from his lungs. She yanked the gold chain off his neck and took the ring off his finger, ripping a good chunk of skin with it. Beckett put it together when she planted the jewelry on the dead man and carefully slid the knife out of its paper towel and into the grip of the corpse.
Fingerprints. Tricky bitch. She just made that dead fool my attacker.
He didn’t complain when Eve hit him with a few precisely placed punches. She slid him down the wall and set him on the floor.
She arranged his legs and arms to her liking and whispered in his ear. “This was self-defense. You’re unarmed. He wanted your gold. I’ll call your lawyer.” She put her hat on his head.
“What about the witness?” Beckett wheezed.
“There is no witness.” Eve leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on Beckett’s lips.
Our first fucking kiss.
Eve easily lifted the soon-to-be-ex witness. Apparently, he was not as bad off as he’d seemed because he was able to stand. Eve pulled another knife from around her ankle and inserted it into the fucker’s lower back, essentially making the knife a handle to the man’s kidney. She could steer him like a horse with a bridle. Eve commanded her hostage to open the door and look calm. She didn’t turn around again, but Beckett knew what she’d done. She’d crossed some line she’d drawn for herself. She’d said his name, kissed him, and saved him.
She’d done what he couldn’t do for himself.