I woke up with a raging headache and Romero in my face.
“Do you always fucking sleep this heavy? I was about to drown your ass in the shower.”
“Stop yelling at me. Jesus.” I threw an arm over my eyes in hopes he’d go away.
“Babe, I don’t think Jesus would appreciate being confused with me. I dragged his sister with my Jeep for about ten miles last summer.”
I peered at him through one eye from beneath my arm. “You have severe psychological issues.”
“I also have an extremely hard dick so unless you want a headache and a sore pussy I suggest you get the fuck up.”
I definitely wasn’t up for getting destroyed. With a groan, I rolled across the mattress and reluctantly got up. When I couldn’t sleep, I was stuck awake; when I could sleep, I was stuck awake. A girl just couldn’t win.
Smothering a yawn, I began combing my fingers through my hair. “How late is it?”
“Super late. It’s almost six.”
I gave him a dirty look. Six in the morning was not my definition of late. “Is there a particular reason you’re waking me?”
“There is. You’re gonna help me with the body pit, and like I said, my dick’s hard and there was this sexy fucking blonde lying in my bed, begging to be violated.”
I just couldn’t even deal with him. Shaking my head, and then regretting it, I pulled my boots on and headed for the door.
The sooner I helped him, the sooner I could go back to sleep. “Next time, use your hand, Romeo.”
“Next time, I’ll just stick it in between your lips. I get off and you stop snoring. Two birds, one stone.”
I paused on the staircase and glared back at him. “I don’t snore.”
“Yeah you do.” He grabbed my hand and took the lead, walking us towards the front of the warehouse. As we passed through the door, he snagged a metal slugger leaning against the wall.
The humidity wasn’t so bad yet due to it being so early, which I guess made it make sense why he was waking me then. Heat or no heat, the smell was horrible.
I peered down into the hole without really needing to and got a nice whiff of death. Pulling my shirt over my nose, I backed up and tried not to gag, swallowing hard. “It smells like swamp ass!”
“Interesting description.” He twirled the end of the bat a few times and then used it to start smashing corpses down like one would a composite pile. Things mashed I didn’t know could mash and the smell of fly larvae overwhelmed me.
“What did you need my help with?”
“Nothing, this job is filthy and you’re not to get filthy doing something I’m fully capable of. I just wanted you with me.”
Then why did…ugh. Could I even be mad at the guy for that? He woke me up to spend time with me. It’s not his fault I sipped on moonshine.
“Wow, that’s actually really sweet.”
“All we do is fuck or fight. I figured I could take a day off. So after dinner, that sweet pussy of yours is mine.”
Rolling my eyes to the sky, I moved a breathable distance back and watched him work.
“So who’s the guy who broke your heart?”
I gave him a blank look. “Guy?”
“Last night you said some things,” he clarified.
“Have no idea what you’re talking about because it wasn’t a guy—it was a girl.”
He froze and gave me his full attention. “You like women?”
His tone didn’t convey whether this bothered him or not—not that I would give a shit either way, but I didn’t want to start a 101 about my sexuality either.
“The only thing I like is you.”
My answer seemed to placate him for the time being because he went back to smashing bodies. It didn’t dawn on me that there were at least twelve people in the large ditch and majority weren’t from The Order until a redhead’s body shifted into corpse oblivion.
“Who are these people?”
“Not sure, to be honest. Some are from The Order, obviously; some are from our beds.” He didn’t look at me once when he answered.
“So you mess with a woman and then put her in your pit of bodies after you’re done with her?”
“You mean when I actually touch a woman, yes, but that isn’t always the case. The redhead all the way to the right tried to climb in my bed after leaving Grimm’s. I snapped her neck.”
“Okay, that’s understandable, but what about the others? Why wouldn’t you just let them go?”
“Once someone has been touched by me and gotten to experience the tumultuous life-altering experience that is my dick, there is no letting them go.”
“Did you really just call your cock life changing?”
“I called it life-altering. You know it’s true because I can see you changing too, and you’ve only had the sample edition.”
The intensity of his gaze had me looking back down at the body pit and rubbing the back of my neck.
Was I changing? I didn’t feel any different, but maybe he could see things I couldn’t. He did call me beautiful when I didn’t even consider myself pretty.
Aware he was watching me in the annoying testy way he always did, I crossed my arms to keep them from making any nervous movements. Meeting his eye, I swallowed and adjusted my stance.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said? For that to happen, I’d have to let you go. So no, baby, I’m not going to kill you. I’m just going to make you wish I had. I’m going to hurt you real fucking bad.”
He didn’t say another word to me. He poured a canister of gasoline on the bodies and we watched them burn.
I didn’t have artillery strong enough to win a fight against a man who was severely unhinged.
His vast mood swings made me feel as insane as he was.
I decided to give everyone around me a large berth so I could reflect and think for once. I needed to reestablish order in my madhouse of thoughts. My chosen method of self-therapy was taking a hot shower and letting my mind wander.
I’d gone from a life of dull repetition to one of resonant uncertainty in the blink of an eye. Looking forward, I saw nothing, had no idea where my life was going. Looking backward, I saw routine, knowing exactly what to expect every day I woke up.
I had to remind myself why I was here. I had come here for answers and I had them. I had come here because I was struggling to find myself and, in the midst of my struggles, I found Romero.
I started adding what if questions to certain scenarios. Cool air rushed into the cubicle, replaced by the heat of Romero’s naked body as he stepped inside behind me. Surprising myself, I calmly turned around to face him.
His perfectly styled hair came undone and curled up at the ends. He palmed it back and looked over every inch of my body. “You’re fucking exquisite.”
“Is it dinner time already?”
“It’s noon—close enough.”
Placing the palms of my hands on his slick chest, I peered up at him through wet lashes. “What are we doing?”
He looked at me for a few silent beats as if he needed to carefully pick and choose his words. “You have this truly shitty inability to just let things be. I can see the thoughts churning inside that pretty little head of yours. You’re a victim of your own mind. Stop over thinking, stop over analyzing; just let shit be. Live in our present before you fuck it up worrying about the future.”
“I have to over think when it comes to you, Rome—I have to avoid certain situations if I want to live at all.”
A dark smile slowly spread across his face.
“Situations? You gave yourself to me. You’re already in a situation that’s permanent. You’re going to live for me. As far as you’re concerned, you don’t even get to breathe without my permission.”
“Why are you being a bigger asshole than usual?”
He answered me by dropping his mouth down to mine, biting my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood when I didn’t let him in.
Pushing against his face, I pulled away and soothed the pain with my tongue, glaring up at him with mounting frustration. “What if I don’t want to belong to anyone else?”
“Too fucking bad, cause your ass is mine and I’m not going to pretend I care how you feel about it. I know you’re going to hate me, baby, but I guarantee you’ll love me more and fuck me harder.”
He gripped my jaw so hard something popped. When he brought his mouth within the proximity of mine a second time, I grabbed a handful of his hair and bit him back. He laughed and wrapped a hand around my throat, slamming my head into the slated wall.
I swallowed a hiss of pain, expelling it on a scream when he lifted one leg over his forearm and buried himself inside my pussy. He didn’t give me any time to adjust, driving into me over and over again, fucking me into the wall.
I grabbed at his hand, unable to pull it away. My chest began to burn as my lungs were deprived of the air they desperately needed. He watched me choke and fight to breathe with a serene expression on his face.
“You know what you have to do.”
He sounded far away. I couldn’t respond. I swore there was no way in hell I was coming, not when my brain started to go fuzzy. I thought he was going to kill me but at the last second, he forced what he wanted out of me.
His hand fell away at the exact same time my body went numb. I sucked in air as pressure burst in my core. I had no recourse, forced to let the orgasm sweep over me as his cock bottomed out. Without a sound, he buried himself to the hilt and froze. I felt him jerk twice, releasing his come as far inside me as he could.
He stepped back, slowly easing out his flaccid dick. I looked down and rubbed at my neck. My mouth went dry as I watched excess semen drip down my thigh. He couldn’t have changed his mind so quickly from our discussion in the confessional.
“Why would you do that?”
“Why would I not do that?”
He reached out and swirled his fingers in the seedy liquid and then brought them up to my mouth. I mechanically sucked off every drop the shower didn’t wash away, barely tasting it. His soulless eyes tracked every flick of my tongue.
“We have somewhere to be.” Without another word, he reached for his body wash and began lathering it on my skin.