SEAL'd Fate (Brotherhood of SEAL'd Hearts) by Gabi Moore (23)

Chapter 10 - Mickey

Every man needs his vices. Not big ones, of course, just little ones that make it easier to avoid the big ones in the long run. For some men, it’s having a mistress. Playing cards, I don’t know. For me?

Espresso.

There’s nothing in this fucked up world that a proper shot of espresso won’t fix, and I swear it on my mother’s grave. Maybe coffee’s bad for you, maybe not, I don’t care, but fuck if it doesn’t make life go down just a little more smoothly.

I looked around at the other customers in the café, took a sip of my espresso, and crossed over my other leg. The trouble with this country is people don’t stop to enjoy the little things. They just blow in, buy their XL bucket of peppermint sugar frappe double whatever-the-fuck and then leave, guzzling it while they’re still on their phones. In Italy, people actually give a fuck. They sit down. They drink the fucking coffee. One thing at a time. Civilized.

My phone rang. I scowled down at the hidden number and answered, fingers still on the warm cup.

“Mickey.”

I listened, my eyes scanning the shop’s customers. I looked at the overcooked croissants. The kids in buggies. It was a voice I recognized but did not want to hear from right now.

“You’re sure?” I said in reply, keeping my voice down.

“I’m positive. I saw them both leaving the building. She went back inside though,” said the voice into my ear. I sighed loudly.

“And the two that went in with him?”

“No sign of ‘em.”

We both knew what that meant.

“Yeah, OK,” I said, and hung up.

My eyes were still scanning over the customers. They were just people oblivious to all the shit that goes on every day right under their noses. I’d need another espresso.

In my hometown in Sicily, shit doesn’t go down like this. When Angelo was alive, God rest his soul, I told him again and again, you need to drop that bitch. You can’t have a woman knowing what she knows… not a woman like her, at least. Back home, we would never let some broad get tangled up this bad, and I told his punk ass son that it was a dumb idea to send the hitman – the very same guy she’s been screwing if the rumors are to be believed – to do the job. Of course he chickened out. That’s why you can’t have woman in the fucking mix. They make competent men make mistakes.

I told Joey that he should send someone else, and just take care of that bitch once and for all. But I knew he’d do just exactly what he wanted anyway. So, I sent one of my special associates over to watch and, lo and behold, just like I said, buddy goes over there and backs out of putting a bullet in her. No problem. Where assclowns lose the plot, old Mickey will be right behind them, cashing in on their dumbfuck mistakes. I was going to relish telling Little Joey that his stupid plan didn’t work. But I wouldn’t tell him until I knew I could follow up with proof that I went ahead and did the job myself. Now that would be sweet.

I calmly took another sip.

I took my phone and dialed another number.

“It’s just like I said. Go find her. And kill her,” I said matter-of-factly.

“And what about the guy?” came the reply.

“Don’t worry about him. I’ll take care of him myself,” I said. I hung up.

I checked my watch. He’d be here any minute now. I had to admit, I was curious about the man that had managed to melt that ice queen’s heart. From what I knew, he was just a nobody, a hired hitman who didn’t have too much going on upstairs but who had been pretty loyal. Until now that is.

Then I saw him.

He walked in, looked around, and I waved him over. He came to sit opposite me, cracked his neck and then laced his fingers together on the table in front of us. I made sure to take a long, luxurious sip to finish my espresso, placed it gently back down on the saucer and took a hard look at him. He sure didn’t look like a schemer.

“Mickey?” he asked, without making eye contact.

I nodded.

“You want some coffee? The espresso here’s the best in town.”

He shot me a tense look. Always the same with these kids, just like I said. Just because you’re in a… shall we say alternative line of work, doesn’t mean you can just throw your manners out the window. Why not have a fucking espresso? What’s so wrong with that?

“Nah, I’m good, thanks,” he said and cast shifty eyes all around the café.

I shrugged.

“You get it done?” I said.

His shifty eyes landed on me.

“Yeah.”

Fucking liar. I said nothing. There was something kind of entertaining in watching him come out with it all on his own.

“But I lost the other two.”

I raised my eyebrows, pretending this was the first time I’d heard this information. I turned the espresso cup around the grooves on the saucer, making the china grind and grate.

“Well, ain’t that a shame. Care to explain what the fuck happened?”

He nervously adjusted his weight in the seat, looking a little flustered. Nobody else would be able to spot it, maybe, but I could see it clear as day. It wasn’t reasonable to expect the hired muscle to have some fucking brains, I guess.

“Mickey, fuck, I don’t know what to say. You know who she is. Or was. You know what she’s capable of. She knows how to handle herself.”

I could see why someone like her went for someone like him. While Evie’s reputation as a spitfire was certainly not in question, I knew he was lying about this too. It made sense. The fool was in love with her, and did all the dirty work so she wouldn’t even have to kill them. I felt a little bad for the guy, actually.

“Yeah, you don’t have to tell me. She’s something special isn’t she?” I said, casting him a knowing smile.

He shot his gaze up to me.

“A real Femme Fatale, right?” I said in a mocking voice. He narrowed his eyes.

“Well, honestly, I admire that you pulled it off, Jacky boy, she’s a viper. A lesser man might have gotten, well, you know, distracted…” I said and smirked at him. His expression hardened. He knew I was fucking with him, but he wasn’t sure what that meant yet. No problem. He soon would.

“You know what they say about her is true right? The rumors?”

“What rumors?” he said through clenched teeth.

I laughed cynically.

“You been living under a rock buddy? There’s not a guy in upper management who hasn’t screwed her, pal. Or should I say, she screwed them. Takes what she wants, doesn’t she? I like when women are feisty like that. But shit. She’s cold. She had half the men working above her wrapped round her little finger…”

“Shut up!” he hissed at me. I smiled.

“Forget it,” I said and stood to leave. I had been planning to get another cup, to maybe read the paper, watch the world go by and have a little think about life. But giving this fucker what he deserved as soon as possible was too tempting. I held out my hand, shook his and nodded.

“No hard feelings, pal.”

I could see the muscles in his jaw twitching. He turned to leave. I got my coat, took my time putting it on and then walked out after him, thrusting both hands into my pockets. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and some kids were playing with chalk on the sidewalk outside the café.

I was feeling pretty good.

And I was going to enjoy destroying him.

Chapter 11 - Jack

I left the coffee shop in a daze. Some kids were playing outside the café, a handful of them, none older than five or six. Man, did it mess me up to see them there. They were like an omen. Like a warning.

What if she was telling the truth? What if she really was pregnant and I really was the father? I’d spent my time on the hard side of life. I’d made money working for the more powerful, taking out the less powerful. How in god’s name could I possibly be a father?

Part of me was repulsed. I didn’t want to be a part of that story. She was a liar and a manipulator, she had clearly used me, and she had fully planned to never tell me about her pregnancy anyway. Mickey was right, of course. She was a fucking viper. Maybe I had made a big mistake sparing her life, letting her free to do god knows what. I had wanted less involvement with this fucked up organization, not more…

And yet. A small part of me was …excited. Now that I was alone, walking the streets with my thoughts, it felt safe to feel almost happy. She was sorry. She hadn’t meant it. She had kept the baby, for fuck’s sake. She said she had seen something in me, that night in the warehouse. It wasn’t just me getting high and seeing what wasn’t there …maybe something special actually had happened.

I walked quickly. It was hot outside and I felt exposed. Mickey had bought the lie for now but there was no way around it: I’d be screwed if they found out she was still alive. And really, it was a matter of when they found out rather than if. I needed time to think. I had to make my own escape plan, and quickly.

I passed by a narrow alleyway and instantly felt a blunt, heavy object collide with my lower back. I cried out. I spun around just in time for a fist to smash into my face and drag me off. I kicked and thrashed, trying to claw at the hands that had gone to my throat, but in a second I was pulled into the alleyway and pinned hard against the brick wall of the building. It was Mickey.

“What the…” I tried to wriggle free but he had me pinned, his meaty hand jabbing sharply into my throat.

“How stupid do you think I am, huh?” he growled. His face was pressed up so close to mine I could smell stale coffee and cigarettes on his breath. I twisted my head to the side and tried to free my left hand to defend myself, but the guy was massive. I was getting really sick of this shit.

“Go on, tell me again how you followed orders and how you killed her. It’s hilarious. You’re even worse at lying than you are at carrying out your fucking duties,” he said and leaned into me.

Pain radiated out from the tender spot he was pressing into. I could have easily taken him, but not like this, not when he was threatening to choke me out in a second.

“Those were two of my best men, you think I’m gonna just let you waltz away, just like that?” he said. It felt as though my blood, unable to rush into my head, was pooling painfully at my feet instead. I had to break free.

“Fuck you,” I said and spat in his face.

The reaction was swift. His other hand came violently down onto my side ribs and pummeled out the last of the air I had in my lungs with a hard, vicious blow. I bit down and winced, unable to defend myself. I felt dizzy. He was cutting of my air supply. But I instantly jumped to attention when I felt the sharp, cold end of a knife poking into the place I had just been hit. I was still bruised from the beating I’d taken at the funeral.

He lowered all his weight further onto my poor neck and smiled darkly at me. Her face flashed into my mind.

“She’s not a threat. She just wants to live her life, she’s gone,” I spluttered, struggling to breathe.

“Oh, well, isn’t that fucking sweet?” he said and dug the knife tip in a little further.

“Don’t hurt her.” I was surprised to hear myself begging for her like that, but it was true. Whatever had happened, Evie had suffered enough.

He eased up a little with the knife.

“Buddy, it’s too late for that anyway. My guys are already on their way to her now, to finish what you couldn’t…”

I twisted and moaned. I couldn’t let it end like this. Not when she was in danger and needed me.

“She’ll run. She’s already gone. You won’t catch her,” I hissed.

“Won’t we? How do you think we found out where she was the first time, you idiot? Here’s a clue – maybe being pregnant has taken that crazy Evie edge off her, huh?”

I snapped to attention.

“What did you say?”

“It’s not a secret pal. She was so desperate, running around trying to figure out whom the father of her child was, and, what can I say, she got sloppy. We got a hold of her medical records and tracked her down. Boom.”

I felt like the world in front of me was getting dimmer and dimmer, folding into a small circle before my eyes like the end of an old cartoon.

“She really is pregnant?”

“Oh yes she is …congratulations, by the way. Too bad it’s a short-lived thing, huh? C’est la vie, pal,” he said and laughed to himself.

She was pregnant.

I was the father.

“She was hard to track, make no mistake. That woman was one of my earliest teachers, so I knew every trick to look for. We’ll get her again in the end though.”

My mind went into hyper drive. All at once, as though I was watching sixteen movies at a time, all layered on top of one another and played on fast forward, I saw her. Evie. In all her glory. Those painted red-pink lips. Those narrow hips and even narrower eyes. The way she had stared into my soul when we were alone with one another, our bodies knotted together, fucking like it was the end of the world and we were last two people alive in it…

This was it.

The life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing that people always talk about. And it was …beautiful. I was the father of Evie’s child – and what else did we do that night but create something brilliant and strange and new? – and no way in fucking hell was I going to leave her now. I couldn’t die. There was just no way. I was mad as hell at her. But I wasn’t going to let her die either.

Growling like something had possessed me, I dug deep and pulled on every last drop of oxygen, every last dribble of energy I had left and sent it blasting through my fatigued muscles. I exploded against my capture and burst my body against his, jerking my legs up to knee his stomach and then, with immense effort, hoisting myself up on his neck, yanking down and bringing his face into kneecap. The force sent him staggering backwards, arms flailing.

He grimaced at me, wielded the knife at me again, giving me only a split second to duck and tackle him around his ample mid-section. Knowing his dagger would soon have clear access to stab down at me from above, I dropped all my weight down low, tucked myself between his tree stump thighs and pulled him off balance, sending him stumbling forward – and dropping the knife.

Quick as lightning I reached for it. When I spun around and turned to face him again, he was readying himself for another attack. I gathered myself to my feet but only managed to make it to my knees before he lurched at me again. As though it had a mind of its own, the knife in my hand found its way to his barrel chest.

He froze. We both watched the other to see how bad the damage was. Panting, he looked down. I didn’t have to look to know that it was a solid, deep stab. I could feel the wetness pouring out of him as I held the blade there, the hilt right up against the cotton of his shirt. His grasp on me softened. I let him go, and he slumped down to the ground, still looking up at me. He had the look of a man who’s been cut off in conversation. The look of a man confused that the story didn’t end how he had planned it to.

I backed away from him and looked over my shoulder. I leaned forward, wiped the blade clean using his own shirt, and he watched me with fading interest. I hated this part. Dead was easy. Alive was easy. It was this messy shit in the middle that most people found really upsetting. He lifted a weak head at me, a trickle of blood snaking out the corner of his mouth.

I don’t know why I stood there. I don’t know what I was waiting for. For him to tell me that it was OK? That he understood why I had to do what I did? As his eyes watched me I could feel the heat leaving him, could feel him flickering out like pixels dying on a screen. I turned on my heel and walked briskly away.

The day was as bright as it was a moment ago. And still as warm. But now there was a bite to the air somehow. She hadn’t lied after all. I walked as quickly as I could without arousing any suspicion, put my neck down and headed back to my apartment. I did a few loops of my block and then, satisfied that I hadn’t been seen and wasn’t being followed, went inside and locked the door behind me, adrenaline still rattling all through me.

I didn’t know how long I had before they came after me. But I couldn’t let them find me again. I had to keep running. I had to make this right.

I had to get to her… before they did.

Chapter 12 - Evelyn

I looked down at the dragon on my sleeve. I knew that it wasn’t really a three dimensional, living, breathing dragon, but then again, I could find no reason to resist the thought that in some ways, it might be, and I wanted it to be, and so did it even matter? I stroked my finger up and down the embroidered ribs of its spine.

Perhaps being a picture was just a different way of being a real flesh and blood creature anyway? And from the dragon’s perspective, I could be written off because of my lack of stitching and my dull colors…

For god’s sake, Evie, what are you even thinking, just pull yourself together.

I sat upright, blinked hard and looked ruefully at the faint brown powder remnants on the night stand beside me. The bed underneath me felt heavy, its satiny bedspread the most upsetting shade of pink and the motel room lights overhead casting a mustard glow over everything.

It’s not that I was addicted. I had thought about taking more Pink Kisses for a while now. Because I had a death wish? Because I missed him? I don’t know. In any case our in-house chemists had stressed over and over again – this stuff was nothing like heroin; I didn’t have to worry about addiction.

Not really.

“But if you find something that feels better than real life, would you need to be addicted to keep coming back to it?” he had said, and laughed a big lecherous laugh. I had ignored him at the time, but now I understood what he meant perfectly. It’s not that I was remotely addicted. I wasn’t obsessed with it. It was that I was seriously failing to find any obsession for my “real life” anymore.

I was only three months into my pregnancy, and I hated to admit to myself that I was getting tired. I woke up ravenous, ate like a wolf and needed a nap by 4pm every day. It was probably nothing that anyone would have noticed, but I sure could feel it. My reaction times were slowed, just a little. My head wasn’t as crystal clear anymore. My muscles felt less tight. I felt weakened. Softened.

I gathered myself, cracked my knuckles and turned on the TV. An obscene coincidence: a news special about Pink Kisses.

I turned up the volume and tried to focus on the woman’s mouth and the language she was apparently speaking. Her face swirled a little, her features pulsing and refusing to settle down. The strange haze all around my vision made me feel like I wasn’t quite keeping things straight. This wasn’t like the first time with Jack. I felt weird. Like I could smell her childhood in Boston. Like her nose was a new language. I could see the tiny units that made up her image on the tube – red and green and blue – and with an enormous effort I forced my eyes to see them all come together, and focused on her words. The cameras cut to a man in lab coat gesturing casually.

“What we are seeing here is very nearly a new class of drugs altogether, and the danger is that we’re not sure why it works the way it does. Now this idea of an idiosyncratic entheogen, or something that adjusts itself to the user, is neither proven or disproven as yet, but researchers are at work trying to isolate a predictable pattern of response so we can--”

“So doctor, can you please clarify, the drug is as yet not a restricted substance?”

“Now, Elizabeth, I won’t weigh in on that, obviously we’ve had very concerning reports of people who are taking this without knowing what it is, where it comes from etcetera. To answer your question, no, it remains unclassified but I would strongly caution people against seeking it out – not illegal doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea, you know?”

They shared a good-natured laugh.

“Doctor, please tell us, we’ve heard claims that certain individuals are more sensitive than others to this chemical cocktail while others remain unaffected. Could you comment on that?”

“Well, yes, this is what makes a substance like this so difficult to understand. We still haven’t ruled out that there are in fact several varieties or batches on the black market as we speak which may account for the effect. But yes, some are claiming that the drug is particularly …intense for a small number of people,” he said, and nodded to himself.

“Doctor, as far as you can tell, are the claims that the blend is a powerful aphrodisiac substantiated?”

The doctor, in his little TV screen within the TV screen, puffed his chest out a little and smiled tolerantly.

“Well, now, I can’t comment on that actually. Many drugs, when they first enter the public consciousness, are touted as, eh, aphrodisiacs, but this is seldom the case. In all likelihood, Pink Kisses has an effect on the body similar to other common street drugs, and nothing more. Perhaps there may be a heightened sense that empathy is increased, but certainly there are no known substances that allow us to actually, eh…”

“To read minds?”

“Yes, if you like.”

“So, no need to start talking about it like it’s the elixir of youth, or that it turns everyone into sexy super heroes?”

They both laughed again.

“No, uh, Elizabeth, I don’t believe so,” he said.

She nodded, rearranged her papers on her glass desk and smiled into the camera.

“I have on the line with me Chief of Police Desmond Jones, who strongly urges the public to--”

I turned the TV off.

It was so loud. So obnoxious.

But it got me thinking.

The dragon on my dressing gown stopped writing on my sleeve and listened as I tried to think. Could I be… was I possibly… what if both Jack and I were having a stronger than usual reaction to this stuff? I had seen it in his eyes that day he came to kill me. He knew what I was talking about. He was there with me, that night in the container. This wasn’t an ordinary substance. And what I had done with Jack …well, there was nothing ordinary about any of that, either.

My hand went absentmindedly to my belly.

Since that night, I had experienced intense, almost lucid dreams. I couldn’t explain it, but I started to feel like my skin was alive somehow. I thought I could hear people’s thoughts as they walked past me on the subway, or stood behind me in a checkout line. And I felt like he was there with me, in my mind. Like even now, him and I were tangled in invisible knots and loops behind the scenes, drawn together like beads on a string.

I woke up several times every night flustered, positively certain that I had orgasmed repeatedly in my dreams. My body seemed like it was changing too. Juicier. More sensitive and receptive. But wasn’t that just the pregnancy? I couldn’t take this stuff again, no question. Even if it wasn’t addictive, it was just dumb to take the risk. But then again, if you had something even better than reality just sitting there, right at your fingertips, why would you want to stop taking it?

I flopped down onto the bed and sighed loudly.

I was horny again.

These days, I was always horny.

I wanted Jack. I wanted big, strong, angry, beautiful Jack to lift me up on my tip toes and plough into me until my whole world broke apart and split at the seams. I heard my own thoughts and knew how crazy they sounded, but I couldn’t stop them from clattering on anyway. I needed his cock like it was some lost piece of me. Coming without him deep inside me felt wrong somehow. And maddeningly, just thinking about it was turning me on again.

I nestled back into the pillows, and let an idle hand slink down to the rim of my dragon stitched bathrobe. They all swiveled their crazy Chinese heads to watch me with interest, their red whiskers curling and uncurling, little spiral clouds puffing out their nostrils. I peeled back the edge of the robe and bared my naked skin to the air, relishing it. I’d be fine laying low here for the night, but in the morning, I’d have to hit the road again. I could think about a more elaborate plan later, once I was sure I had put more distance between me and …whoever still wanted me dead. I wanted to trust Jack, but I didn’t know what he’d do. Would he risk being a target himself, just because the baby was his?

My fingertips sunk deeper and found that permanently wet, delicious spot between my legs. I let my knees flop open and my head tilt back into the pillows. I liked to imagine my touch was actually him. Jack, with his eyes that had no dimensions, and his magical dick that seemed able to reach further inside me than I even thought was possible. I stroked gently and let my eyes flutter closed. If I focused just right, if I could tune out all the noises outside, it felt nearly possible to summon him right here, in the quiet spot right between my eyes, in that hungry space twitching underneath my touch…

I felt the tiny muscles around my spine tighten as I arched up, imagining him floating around and above me like a spirit. I breathed in deeply and pulled him into my lungs, pulled him in deeply into my belly and felt him glowing inside there, pulsing, stirring up a swirl of pleasure so intense it was like all of me became a sex organ, and every last molecule of my body could be fucked by every last molecule of his.

A haze of ecstasy floated around me, and with each breath, it heated and tightened closer and closer around my physical form, till it came to a buzzing ball right at the center of my clit. My mouth fell open as I struggled to breathe enough. I was carrying his baby. Part of him was in me already. The thought alone was so deeply erotic I couldn’t help but move my fingers more quickly.

Dripping and eager, I slipped in one finger and then another, and instantly it was him inside me again, and we were back in the container together, and time and space were just minor inconveniences, just tiny obstacles in the way of the only reality for me now: his juicy cock, and how I craved nothing in the world except to have its thick length crammed all the way up inside me while I came and came and came…

A noise.

My fingers froze. My ears pricked. Instantly, I understood that there was someone at the door. Three men. I could hear the weight of their bodies pressing down into the soft rubber soles of their shoes on the concrete outside the front door of my motel room. How was that even possible? My eyes snapped open and my muscles tightened as I tried to listen for more. I was on the brink of an orgasm, but with my attention trained on the new noises, I felt like I could almost hear the whooshing sound of their lungs as they expanded and emptied of air.

They were going to come in. They were going to kill me. Jack had failed, and now they had sent another task force after me. By the time I had finished this thought my body was already up off the bed and scrambling for the bathroom. I scooped up a bag; my coat and then I put my shoes on. By the time they kicked in the door and came bursting in, I was hiding in the bath tub behind the shower curtain, the wire shower caddy in my hands, its hooked edge pointed away from me like a weapon.

“Find her,” came a barely human grunt and the three swooped through the small room, slamming open the wardrobe doors and knocking over a lamp. Then they came into the bathroom.

I could smell them.

Somehow, it was as though my body had reabsorbed all the sexual energy I had generated a moment ago and was now transmuting it into a raw, animal will to survive. I felt my limbs powering up like the rockets getting ready to blast off.

In slow motion, I saw one of them walk over to whip the shower curtain open, but I tracked the blurred shape of his body behind the thin white plastic and with all my might, lashed out and sent the hook right into the middle of him. He howled out in pain and wobbled where he stood. Quick as a flash I jumped onto him, wrapping him in the shower curtain and bringing his protesting body into the bath with me.

I wedged my foot down into his hip crease and grabbed two handfuls of the plastic, pulling it taut over his face. For a few breaths the plastic fluttered inside the cavity of his opened mouth as he gasped for air, but I pulled the sheet even more tightly, squashing out his features into a screaming white mask. I had already grabbed the gun in his hand and aimed it at the other two who were now crammed in the bathroom with me, trying to find a way to leap over their strangled leader and get at me.

I kicked him forward so that his heavy body went slumping into them, buying me enough time to spring up, foot in the soap dish, knee on the window ledge. I yanked the ancient window handle open and threw myself into the tight space, hoping to dear god that me and my baby bump could squeeze through. I pulled myself and my bathrobe through just in time to feel the vibration of gunshots ricocheting off the tiles between my toes.

I fell a few hard feet to the ground and quickly stood to see where I was. I spun on my heel and ran parallel to the building, knowing that they would soon be clamoring through that window and firing at me. I sped along, hugging the wall, feet moving faster than I could think. My hands flew all over my body to find my car keys. I checked that the coast was clear, then scrambled out into the parking lot, crouched, and quietly opened the door.

By the time I had turned the ignition I saw them both running out in front of me, guns drawn, firing freely at my car as I reversed and skidded out of there. I heard the sound of metal singing against metal, of the very air being sliced open by bullets. I saw it all unfold before me like a beautiful oil painting, like a ballet. It was though I could taste each and every tiny element, like I could feel exactly what their next moves would be, but more than that, even the inanimate objects came to life around me. I felt like every neuron in my brain was snapping in a great symphony, like all my muscles were humming with a wild energy that nearly burned as it moved through me. I had never felt more alive in my entire life.

I drove off in a cloud of dust and hit the road hard, speeding away with my heart beating so hard it felt like a continuous tone. They’d be on me in the next minute, but in my current frame of mind, a minute felt like all the time in the world. I scanned for an exit ramp and the first one I found, I took and spun the steering wheel around to double back. It was an old trick, sure, but I couldn’t resist. Losing one of their men like that will have slowed them down, made them clumsy. If I could get them to go in the wrong direction for even a few minutes, it would be enough to get them off my tail.

But for now, I had shaken them.

I was three months pregnant, on the run from dangerous mafia thugs and high as a kite. And I felt fucking fantastic.

I sped full speed down the highway, heart singing, adrenaline pumping in my blood along with who knows what else. Out on the open road without any incident, I decided I had finally shaken them. I’d have to find another place to hide, to rest. I slipped my hand back into dragon bath robe, which had suffered a few tears in the scuffle. I slid my fingers down into that still wet slit between my legs.

Before any hiding and thinking, though, I had other things on my mind. If I didn’t come soon, I would surely explode.

Chapter 13 - Joseph

I could see my reflection mirrored in the black wood of the table. It was a polished ebony conference table, a serious piece of furniture like you’d find in a real boardroom.

I was done with our business having shady meetups in run down pizzerias with sticky plastic tablecloths. Fuck all that. And they had anything to say about it? Well, fuck them. When there’s a change in leadership, there are always a few disruptions, there’s always a period of destabilization. That’s just the natural order of things.

But I was watching with an eagle eye all my father’s cronies who reminisced just a little too hard for the old ways. They were welcome to go the same way he did if they were so obsessed with the past.

“Joey, the new corners, we’re having problems. It’s not our usual turf, the kids we have out there are struggling, and you heard, we already lost two men out there just this month…”

I leaned back in my seat and watched the guy in front of me shake his head from side to side. Fat fuck. He didn’t even bother to change his greasy shirt before coming to this meeting.

“Your point?”

He raised a hairy eyebrow at me.

“My point? We should pull them out of there. We don’t have the men, Joey.”

“No,” I said.

Grumbles erupted around the table.

“What do you want? To send the message that we can be bullied?”

“No offense, Joey, but they’re sitting ducks out there, if we pulled back to Forty seventh and Queen--”

“No.”

The grumbles were louder this time.

“We need to consolidate out there, Joey.”

“You want me to say it three times? How about you fuckers let me get to the real issues today? Or are we gonna gripe like old women about a few lost runners for an hour?”

Nobody could make eye contact with me. Good.

“Where the fuck is Mickey, by the way?” I said, feeling my neck getting hot.

They all shrugged.

“That’s just Mickey, though, I let him know about today, but his wife is sick, you know…” somebody said.

I felt like I was staring out at a table full of incompetent children.

“Well ain’t that touching. Any of you know if he bothered to do his job before he fucked off? Huh?”

“I chatted to him on Friday, Joey. It’s cool. Mickey sometimes does blink out for a few days; it’s not usually a problem. Anyways, I’m in touch with Denny and his boys. They’re out looking for Evie right now,” said another guy, this one skinny and grizzled, but just as poorly dressed as everyone else here.

Jeremy Something was his name. Something with a P? I couldn’t keep fucking track. I don’t know why the hell my father ever took a shine to him but he reminded me of a rat and at that moment I saw an opportunity to flex my muscles a bit.

“Hey, uh, Jerry, how’s your section doing these days anyway?” I asked, knowing the answer already. Every cell in the organization was floundering, but Jerry’s was the worst by far. He shifted in his seat a little, looking embarrassed.

“Well, you know how it is, Joey. Your father left that mess with the Nigerians and I just didn’t …we’re fixing it up, Joey. Slowly. We’ll get our numbers up,” he said, as though that was any kind of answer at all. I cracked my knuckles.

“You know what I think, Jerry? I think instead of trifling with small fries on our new corners, we should look to trimming the fat here in upper management, don’t you think?”

His face went ashy white.

“You guys keep telling me we need to consolidate,” I said, …”and I think you’re right. We need to find the real strong players here and filter out the dead weight.”

Something sour grew on his face.

“Tell me, Jerry, they’re after Evie, but what about the guy? John?”

“It’s Jack,” someone piped up.

“John, Jack, whatever. The meathead who was fucking Evie, what about him?”

The tension in the room was palpable. Jerry winced and shrugged and looked pained.

“Yeah he’s dead, Joey. I’ll talk to Mickey when he comes around, but he said he’d already taken care of him, no problem.”

I smiled. The thought of both of those fuckers being wiped from the board was a satisfying one. You can only get so far in life being a good-looking hitman. But in the end, power counted. At least on this front, I had won.

“Eh Joey, we uh, we need to pull the new stuff. The tainted stuff Evie sent out. The boys have already recalled some of it but nobody’s sure what to do with it…”

“Tell them to sell it,” I said. I caught my reflection in the table again. Damn I looked good.

“Boss? The batch that Evie cut?” someone said.

I gave a dry laugh.

“Guys, I know everyone here’s a little, shall I say, advanced in age, but are you fucking deaf or something? How many time I gotta say the same shit before you hear me?” I yelled. This seemed to catch their attention.

“Joey, it’s crazy, that shit can kill people…”

“Tell them to sell it all. Purple kisses, green kisses, I don’t give a fuck, just recoup me the cash I blew on that dumb shipment and get it over with.”

“If we just wait for the new shipment, we can send out the pure stuff then, get back those new corners and slowly ramp up.”

“There’s not going to be a new shipment.”

“Boss?”

“I’m speaking to some people. Our old connections. We’re going back to coke.”

This time the grumbles around the table weren’t confused, but angry. I leant back in my chair and smiled to myself as I waited for their bickering to die down. I liked watching it dawn on them that they weren’t in Kansas anymore. Coke worked. Coke was cheap, it sold itself, and we already had the network in place to distribute. My father’s squeamishness about it had been hampering the organization for long enough.

I wasn’t in the mood to argue though. The meeting tussled on for a few minutes more but then we adjourned, and I made a mental note to make sure a little accident befell rat-faced Jerry. The details weren’t important here. My first move was to make sure everyone understood that I was the one calling the shots. That I wasn’t my father, and they should thank their lucky stars I wasn’t. I could wrangle the admin later – for now, I wanted to make sure they all understood that things had changed, and they sure as hell better change too, if they wanted a place in the new order.

They ambled out and left me with my expensive new desk. I tried leaning back into my chair and putting my feet up onto it. They would come around. Every last doddering old fool. They had no choice. So why did I feel so on edge?

Evie. She kept popping into my head. Yes, it was a pity. Yes, I wish she had come to her senses and taken me up on my offer to manage the new lines I was setting up. I will never understand how whores like Evie will turn down someone like me, but willingly fuck losers like that John asshole for nothing. Her loss though.

I mean, it was a pity, but it was mostly her problem. Women like her were hard to come by. But I still had options. I flopped my feet back to the ground and grabbed my phone. I dialed some numbers.

“Mellissa? How are you baby? I miss you.”

I listened intently as the silky voice came through the phone.

Melissa was young, and a little naive, but she had a pair of tits that could convince any man to do something stupid. Melissa was no Evie. She was a Spanish beauty pageant drop out with notions of marrying a wealthy drug kingpin. But she was cute and knew what she wanted out of me, and what I wanted out of her. Within fifteen minutes I heard her car pull up outside.

She came inside wearing one of those pink tracksuit bottoms with the diamonds on the ass cheeks spelling out words. And heels. And big dangly earrings and fake pink nails and a little tank top that was one size too small and pulling too tight over her belly. The whole getup was tacky as hell but whatever, she was still fucking hot. I buzzed her in, and she shut the door behind her, and was now just standing there waiting for me to tell her what to do. Good. I liked that.

She opened her mouth to speak.

“Your shoes are filthy, Melissa. Take them off,” I said to interrupt her. She did, taking her time to set aside each glossy pink patent pump with the heels turned to the side so they wouldn’t scuff the new floors I just had installed. She was short without her heels. A good little mafia girl, asks no questions, knows her place.

“Now take off the rest of it.”

She gave a self-satisfied smile and began to slowly peel her shirt off, lifting up her flat-ironed hair with it and then tossing the tank top aside. Like a stripper.

“Not like that, Melissa. Not slutty. Have some fucking class,” I snapped at her. She didn’t bat an eyelid. Like a switch had been turned on, she suddenly became demure, moving more slowly now, more hesitantly.

“Like this, pappy? This is OK?” she said in her best schoolgirl voice.

I hated myself for being so fucking predictable. I was a man who had impeccable taste. I liked good whiskey and expensive cars and fine tailoring. But god damn if I didn’t like my women cheap as they came. It wasn’t the fact that she was playing innocent. I didn’t care about that shit. I just wanted her to obey. I liked seeing her like that, completely subservient to me. Very nearly humiliated.

Evie would have told me to shove it. No way in hell she would be writhing around in front of me right now, pouting and squeezing her tits together for the promise of cash. It was so easy to degrade women like this, when they went so far along the way to do it themselves. But I didn’t want it to be easy. I wanted to deserve it. To win it.

“Stop dancing around and go to the corner.”

“Pappy…?”

“Just shut up. Go stand in the corner and bend over” I said. The brief look of fright on her face instantly had me hard. She padded over to the corner and stood there like a naughty child, looking over her shoulder at me.

“Bend over,” I said slowly.

She dutifully leant forward, lifting her bubble ass up and towards me, exposing a thin band of cropped black fuzz between two full cheeks.

“Spread yourself.”

She obeyed.

In that moment I felt a crushing sadness. Evie was gone. Gone before I could have her. A waste. A missed opportunity.

“Evie,” I whimpered.

She twisted her head around to see if she had heard correctly.

“Don’t look at me!”

My cock felt almost painfully hard. I unzipped and let my trousers crumple to the ground.

“Evie, I’ve wanted to do this for such a long time,” I said.

I could tell Melissa was uncomfortable, but she held her tongue.

“I knew that this is what was always meant to happen. I knew you always wanted me, didn’t you?” I said.

She took a moment.

“Yes, Joseph. This is what I’ve always wanted.”

I stroked my stiff cock idly, and stared at that cleft raised up to me. I grabbed each of her ass cheeks and stroked the tip of my dick down then slowly up through the damp slit, tasting her body, feeling its soft, silky crevices.

“Shhh, I know baby, I know what you want, and now the time has come and you’re finally gonna get it…”

I leaned forward and breathed down onto the back of her neck, smelling her hair and the warmth of her skin.

“But once I start, baby, I’m not going to stop. If you scream, I’m going to have to kill you, do you understand baby?”

“Yes Joey,” she mumbled, and bent even further forward.

Chapter 14 - Jack

I knew Mickey was a key player. Not muscle and not admin, but the guy who coordinated it all.

I had some idea of how the organization liked to stack people like him, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before his underlings started noticing that their boss wasn’t answering his calls anymore. I didn’t know how long I had till they found out he was gone. But I knew that even when they did, it would take them some time to organize to send a task team after me. Little Joey Valenti was ruthless, but he belonged at Paris fashion week, not heading a nation-wide covert network of drug traffickers. I barely knew the guy and even I could tell that he wouldn’t respond well to having an important person like Mickey picked off.

In any case, I had to get to her as soon as possible. They would be hunting her down right this instant, and I didn’t have a moment to spare. I had to stop them before they realized Mickey was dead and knew to expect me. There might easily be three or four of them; the element of surprise might be the only thing I had in my favor.

I thought it was strange that they saw her as a threat. The woman had run off halfway across the country to start a new life. She had put daffodils in her window boxes, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t see how she was a threat to the organization’s stability any more than that asshole kid Joey, but what do I know. She must have some pretty juicy intel.

I sped along the highway, arms outstretched on the wheel and the sun in my scowling eyes. I picked up my phone and dialed a number.

“Hey buddy,” I said to the voice that picked up. An old friend, one of the few in this snake pit I actually trusted. He was ex-military, a reformed killer who now had a family and a Labrador. He was the bravest man I knew. And having the balls to actually quit the organization was the reason I thought so.

“My man. Long time,” he said.

“Mike. I need your help.”

The line was silent.

“Where are you? I’ll come meet you.”

I gave him the address of a diner I knew I’d be hitting in an hour or two. Mike had all kinds of useful connections. He would be able to tell me whether Evie’s car had passed through the massive tollbooth on the interstate or not. He had eyes and ears all over. He had bugs and trackers and kids who would hack things for weed money. But when he told me he had men on the ground who had seen Evie just a day earlier at a gas station a few miles out from where I was, I nearly swerved the car off the road.

Mike and I had done a few hits together back in the day. I’ll never know why he was always so keen to help me out of a spot when he had long since retired, but he did, and I wasn’t about to ask any questions. She was tough, I knew that, but she was also pregnant. I didn’t even want to think about the danger she was in.

By the time I arrived at the diner, I couldn’t suppress a grin to see him standing outside in the parking lot. I parked, but he was already climbing into the passenger seat.

“No cherry pie?” I said.

“Just drive,” he said with a mischievous smile. God, was I glad to have someone like him in my camp.

“She’s probably at an old farm house a little West of here, an old place that used to belong to somebody’s cousin or auntie or something. Your guys are on her tail. We don’t have much time” he said. I was flabbergasted.

“How the hell do you know all that?”

He smiled and shrugged.

“Let’s just say I’ve been waiting for little Evie to come to her senses for a long time now. I’m glad she’s broken away from those people at last. You’re not the only one who’s been following her…”

“I don’t understand.”

“Evie knows something. Something important. If she’s not going to put that intel to good use, doesn’t mean I can’t, right?”

“But you’ve left the business, too,” I said.

He tapped the side of his nose with his finger.

“Just keeping a lookout for opportunity, that’s all” he said and laughed. “Anyway, I might ask you the same thing, but I have a feeling I know the answer.”

I tightened my fists on the wheel.

“She’s pregnant, Mike.”

He gave a low, long whistle and shook his head.

“Jacky, my boy, you surprise me sometimes,” he said at last. We drove on in silence for a while.

“Take this left here, it’s coming up in a second. We need to find her and run. If they’ve sent who I think they’ve sent, they won’t think to look here for a while, but still.”

Mike had clean blue eyes, an uncomplicated face and a thin, serious mouth. He didn’t look much like an angel, but he sure as hell felt like one in that moment.

“You uh, you try some of this new stuff kicking around? This Pink Kisses?” he said as I steered the car off the main road and into a side street that was shaded over with trees.

“Christ, Mike, I thought you were retired from all this,” I laughed.

“Just following the news, man. Used to be the Valenti’s ran the tightest ship in this country. Now the people on their corners are dropping like flies and they’re selling some hippy sex drug or something? Man I feel old.”

“It’s no big deal,” I said, and leaned forward to navigate the road’s bumps and sudden turns. It didn’t look like anyone lived out here, but I trusted Mike. “And it’s not a hippy sex drug.”

He turned completely in his seat to look incredulously at me.

“Aw hell. You have tried it.”

“Have not.”

He began laughing.

“See what I mean? It’s always a surprise with you, always something I never expected. Evie gave it you?”

Just the sound of her name seemed like a magic code word that activated a sore spot right in the center of my chest.

“Just forget it, you know me, I’m not into that kind of stuff—”

“Dude!” he slapped his knee. “You have to get me some.”

“What? No. That shit’s dangerous.”

“You’re fine.”

“Yeah but…”

“So you did take it, huh?” he said, laughing again.

I’m six and a half feet tall and have made my living terminating some of the most dangerous men that have walked this town’s streets. When I’m on a detail, my life and the life of those on my job depends on me never doubting, never wavering, not even for a second. But something about fucking Mike always made me blush like a schoolgirl. I couldn’t help but smile.

“I hear it can make you fuck for hours,” he said.

I was beginning to wish we’d get to the house already.

“Does it? Did it make you like, super empathetic? Come on, don’t be bashful.”

The truth is I didn’t know what to tell him. The trip I’d had with Evie was drifting off into the past one day at a time, and yet it still glowed in my mind’s eye like it happened yesterday, like some kind of lynch pin on which everything else turned.

What could I say? That sometimes I had dreams that we were psychically connected somehow? That I just knew somewhere inside me that our child would be different, because of what we’d done together? That I wasn’t addicted to the substance itself, but to her perfect, heavenly, mind-shattering, totally game-changing cunt? No, of course not. So I said nothing.

“Hold up, OK slow right down here… see those houses on the hill? She’ll be in the fourth from the left,” he said and pointed to a dilapidated line of row houses, all abandoned and overgrown with grass.

My heart sank.

I hated that she had to do this. Come out here in the middle of nowhere. My mind flashed to her window box of daffodils. Was she afraid? I leaned over the dash to peer up the hill as I drove slowly into a clearing and tried to make out any signs of life.

“Looks dead to me,” I said. He nodded.

“Park here.”

The car tires crunched over the gravel, shot through with grass and weeds, and I listened to the silence after I shut the engine off. The fourth house from the left was partially boarded up, and painted in a chalky green paint with crumbling bannisters. The wind was so still the trees just hung there like that, like faded paintings.

I tucked my weapon into my holster and took a cautious step out of the vehicle. No fresh tracks on the ground, from either car tires or feet. No sign that anyone was here at all. Mike and I stood staring at the building, then we walked up, flanking the sides of the staircase to the main entrance, our eyes scanning the other houses. No open windows. Hell, one of them didn’t even have front steps anymore.

Mike gestured for me to go ahead while he trailed behind me. It was like old times, when we still worked together. With cat-quiet feet I took the stairs one at a time and peered inside. The glass of the front door was completely shattered through, but it was so dim inside I could scarcely make anything out. My eyes adjusted. An empty, dusty front room leading into a kitchen. I cracked the door and stepped inside, Mike guarding me close behind.

We both pricked our ears as the tiniest creak came out from the other room. Then I saw her. Like an eerie, slow-motion ghost, she walked out from the other room, and stood square in front of us both, both arms at her side, a gun in one hand and only a torn silky bathrobe knotted over her full breasts. I had never seen any woman with that facial expression before. Her hair was hanging loose and wild, and she stood tall and fierce looking, like she might spontaneously combust at any second. Her pupils were so big the color of her eyes disappeared completely.

“Evie? Oh god, Evie, are you OK? We have to get out of here,” I said, but her stare shut me up instantly.

It was like she was boring right into my soul. Like we were back in the container again. A deep shudder went through me. Out the periphery of my vision I strained to make out the plump bulge of her breast, the shape of her legs under that flimsy robe. I would have given anything to fuck her at that moment, right there and then, on those dusty floorboards with that untamed look on her face.

“Upped the bounty on my head, I see,” she said quietly, but her whole voice seemed to fill the room.

“It’s not like that, Evie. They’ll be coming after you. Joey wants you dead. You’re not safe here, you have to come with me.”

“And am I safe with you?” she snapped.

I took a step closer. I just wanted to put my arms around her. To hold her again. But even in the dim light I could sense her finger tightening around the trigger.

“Evie, there’s no time, please, I can protect you.”

She stared stony faced at me. I took another step towards her and she drew her weapon higher, filling the distance between us.

“Drop it!”

I spun around to see Mike charging through the door towards Evie. She took aim at him but he grabbed her wrist, twisted it violently to the side and sent her skidding towards him. He clutched her tightly and jabbed the barrel of the gun into her ribs. She screamed as he yanked her hair back to pin her closer to him.

“Sorry, buddy, I hate doing this man…” he said.

Fuck. No. This couldn’t be happening.

Before I could understand what was unfolding before my eyes I heard car doors slam outside and ran to see three men leaping out of a car parked beside ours.

“You fucking asshole! You set us up!” I hissed. He had Evie pinned in front of him as hostage, and I couldn’t have made a clear shot if I wanted to. I heard footsteps clattering up the front steps and took aim at the three who came tearing into the room.

“Step back! Step the fuck back!” I yelled.

The three tried to take a hasty appraisal of what they were seeing. In a heartbeat I turned to see Evie and Mike scuffle, and like magic she had twisted back and down to the side, pulling out of his clutches and elbowing him back up into the nose. He cried out but held her firm, and she delivered another blow. Everyone broke out into confused screaming. But Evie had already wormed her way free and had gained control of his weapon, still in his hands. When he finally squeezed the trigger, it went ringing out.

“No!” I screamed, but she leapt back and let his body fall down in front of her. A gush of red spurt out from a hole underneath his chin. She looked unruffled, watching him as he crumpled sinuously onto the floor. She crouched, picked the gun up and stood again, cocking it in the direction of the three stunned intruders. I would never stop being in awe of this woman.

“You lied to me,” she said coldly, pinning me with her eyes.

“No, Evie, I wanted to save you. He knew where you were. He betrayed me.”

“Why should I trust you?”

Before I could answer she took two aggressive steps towards the trio, aiming cleanly at the guy in the middle’s head. I saw him waver a little, saw that brief flicker of fear in his eyes, Rookie mistake.

She lifted her heel and leapt towards him, kicking hard down onto his shin and bringing him folding forward in pain. In a second she had snagged his arm and wrenched his weapon from him, sending it clattering to the floorboards and away from us. In the next instant two guns were cocked and aimed at her head, freezing her to the spot, her arm now around him.

“Don’t move, bitch, that’s enough.”

She didn’t move. In fact, it blew my mind how calm she seemed. Her eyes were wide and black and unfocused, yet she had moved as swiftly as a ninja. It was hard to believe that she was pregnant.

We stood there staring at one another, in a standoff that I knew I’d have to bust us out of.

“Drop your weapons,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster. I was banking on them having orders to capture her but not kill her. Little Joey Valenti was an asshole, but even he wouldn’t murder a pregnant woman. Would he?

They stood their ground. I could make out her breathing. Her chest seemed so narrow and delicate, so small compared to those of the two that flanked her. I didn’t come all this way to have them do this to her.

“I said drop your weapons.”

The floorboards creaked under them as they dug their heels and stood their ground.

“We’ll take you too, buddy,” one of them said.

And then something strange happened. At first I thought I was hearing things. But then it was undeniable. I could hear her. Though her lips were squeezed tight I could hear her voice …in my head. I stared hard into her eyes. Nothing but deep, strange black. She wanted me to shoot the guy to her left. I just knew, like I knew my own name, that that was what she wanted, and in a moment, it was what I wanted too.

But it was stupid. His finger was hugging the trigger. Shooting him would guarantee a bullet in her head. There just wasn’t another way.

“Do you trust me, Jack?” she said out loud. I was taken aback. She flashed those stretched wide pupils at me and my heart broke and all I could say was that, yes, I think I did.

The next few moments unfolded in slow motion, like a grisly, bloodied ballet where she was the prima ballerina, and I was there to help her execute a daring, dazzling display of grace and athleticism. I lifted my gun and fired. Before the bullet left the chamber she lowered and twisted her weight down and away from me, bringing her hostage’s body square into the line of fire. A burst of red spew out from her human shield as the bullet tore into his soft flanks. Before a second had passed I delivered another bullet clean into the guy on the right of her, toppling him. It felt like there were hours between each of those gunshots, and yet in reality they popped off almost at once, killing the three instantly.

The sound echoed and ricocheted off the worn walls of that place, disturbing a flock of crows outside. Her eyes flitted back into her skull, and all at once, she collapsed down to her knees and then fainted. I rushed over, pulled the dead man’s limbs from her small body and held her in my arms like a ragdoll.

“Evie! Evie, wake up! Are you hurt?” I cried out, my shaking failing to rouse her.

She hung heavy and limp in my hands. I put a palm to her clammy brow. She was burning up. Had she…? I couldn’t even think about that now. At least she was alive. I scanned the room and tried to think. There’d be others. I didn’t know what Mike’s angle was and I had no idea who else he had involved, but I didn’t want to stick around and find out.

I put one knee to the ground, slipped my arms underneath her and hoisted her up and then over my shoulder. She was light but a deadweight; completely unconscious.

I went over to kick the bodies on the floor and, satisfied they weren’t coming back to life any time soon, I turned to leave. I took one more glance at Mike. I had never been a bad judge of character before. I would have trusted that man with my life. And yet there he lay, his blood seeping into the dusty wooden floorboards below, and I wondered just what was so special about all these secrets Evie knew.

I angled her out the door and stepped into the harsh sunlight. I trotted over the gravel to the car, Evie’s hair bouncing in waves over my shoulder, and realized with fresh horror that they had slashed the car tires. With her still on my shoulders I opened the door, crouched down inside to pull out a few things, and then slammed it shut again. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I just knew that as long as she was alive, and as long as she had that little one inside her, I would keep running.

Though my thigh muscles were crying out in pain and I was suddenly aware of some raw, torn patches on the skin on my forearms, I gathered all my energy and stood tall again. I eyed a clearing in the brush, leading away from the house and away from the gravel road. I lowered my head, took a deep, painful breath and ran towards it.

Her body felt warm and toned and delicious as it weighed down on me. I was exhausted as I fled through that leafy tunnel, but it was all for her, all worth it …all easy so long as I knew she was alive, as long as I could feel her warmth, and the faint rise and fall of her breath in her chest against me.

Chapter 15 - Evelyn

I was strapped to the immense back of a giant, riding through the desert, heaving and swaying with each step it took. I could feel the giant moan and sigh underneath me as it carefully picked its way over the dunes, like the air in his lungs was the howling wind. I was safe. Mostly. Reflexively, I reached behind me to touch my own back. I was relieved to find that it was still there: the tiny swaddled bundle that I knew I had to carry and protect no matter what was still strapped to me. We were a stack of beings, each smaller than the one underneath, each more tenuous. He was awake, I was half awake, and the tiny bundle on my back was completely asleep.

Something cracked loudly and shook me from my dream.

It was Jack.

Jack was carrying me somewhere.

Though my eyes hung down heavy as lead and I couldn’t lift them, I realized that my arms were draped around his neck and the rest of me was hanging long and loose down the length of his back. I could feel my feet occasionally tap into things as he walked. Then he stopped. He could tell I had awoken.

“Evie?”

I said nothing, but he knew I was awake. I don’t how I knew he knew, but I did. He carried on walking, a quick, springy pace through what smelt like the woods. Slowly, the events of the day were coming back to me. A pile of bodies in a broken-down house. The feeling that I was only watching a video of myself from way up in space, a video where I could speed up and slow down time at will. Fuck, I had the hugest headache.

“Are you OK?” he said. He meant the baby. I had never planned to embark on massive shootouts and chase scenes in my first trimester, but it was what it was. I knew the baby was fine. I don’t know how I knew it, I just knew it. I said nothing. He kept on walking briskly. I don’t know how much time passed, but the air around us seemed to change, almost getting thicker and damper somehow. Either we had covered some good distance and arrived somewhere in a tropical rainforest …or it was about to pour with rain.

I felt myself being gently lowered and propped against a tree. My body felt weak but the fresh air revived me mentally. I was safe. Mostly.

“They nearly killed you,” he said, looking down at me with concern. I could see that he was hurt bad. A dry, crusted black blood stain snaked down his tattooed bicep.

“Before we go on, you have to be honest with me. What do you know? Why is everyone so keen to have your head?”

Wincing, I got to my feet.

“Where are you taking me?” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“You’re just like them… you just take and take and take …I left that life behind,” I said bitterly.

It was so easy to trust him in my dreams. In those quiet moments alone where I was sure that he was the only person in the world who had my back. But looking at him now, I had the crushing fear that he was just like all the rest, just looking to take what he could get. I was tired of mafia men. Tired of the death and the lies and the greed…

“Evie, tell me what you know.”

He was even better looking than I remembered. The veins in his neck pulled tight as he frowned at me, one legged propped up on a tree root.

“No.”

“Evie, tell me, for fuck’s sake. Haven’t you lied to me enough already?”

He took a step towards me, but I pulled back.

“I’ll kill you,” I hissed, and brandished a weapon I had pulled from his belt when I slinked off his back. He looked stunned. He backed away, hands raised.

“Evie you’re not well, you fainted back there, let me help you…”

I lifted my arms and took aim right between his eyes. I had a clear shot. It wasn’t that long ago that I had cruelly framed this man, and now I was carrying his child and I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t make sense of the emotions swirling through me. Couldn’t get my heartbeat to stop jumping all over the place. But this is what I knew. Killing him would be easy. I would never have my happily ever after, not with my history, not with the enemies I had …so why was my hand shaking now, as it aimed at him?

He took a step towards me.

“Evie, put the gun down and let’s talk. Why do you think I’m out here now, in the middle of nowhere with you? If we have any hope of getting out of this mess alive we need to work together. And we need to be honest with each other.”

His words sounded so sweet. So tempting. Of course I had imagined it. Life with Jack. I had no idea what women with babies and husbands actually did with their lives, but I still couldn’t help imagine it.

Standing in front of me was a man who was offering to help me, no strings attached. Back in the house, something had happened. There was no denying it. We had worked together. Somehow. In my wildest fantasies I pretended we could read each other’s minds, that we were one of the rare ones who responded to Pink Kisses with a surge in empathy neurochemicals, and fucking secretly in a container glued us together and cemented our fates. But standing now looking at him, I felt silly for ever thinking that. Stuff like that didn’t happen. I had just taken too much of a poorly understood chemical and was paying the price. Old Evie would have wasted this guy hours ago. I lifted the gun and cocked the trigger.

We locked eyes. He took another step towards me, bringing his chest close enough that it touched the barrel of my gun. He stood there, pressing gently into it, his eyes still firmly glued to mine.

“Do it then, if you really want to,” he whispered.

This isn’t what I did. I was a killer. A tough-as-nails mafia queen bee who fought blood and guts for every last scrap of respect she had in the organization. Pulling the trigger was the easiest thing in the world for me. But I couldn’t do it.

“Kill me, Evie, if that’s what you want. Pull that trigger if you know you feel nothing for me, if what happened that night was just meaningless. Go ahead. If you’re really not curious to see where this goes, to see where we go…”

I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I was coming down, and the ache in my head became a scream. But I couldn’t lower the weapon. The muscles in my arm had frozen.

“I know that you got the paternity tests …that’s how they found you Evie. I know you wanted to find out who the father was, and that’s why you’re in danger now. Let me help you. They want to pit us against one another. They want us to fight. But I saw you that night… you’re not really a killer at all, are you…?”

Though I held on with all my might, two fat tears escaped when I blinked hard and I stood there shaking, feeling them roll down my cold face and onto my cheeks.

“I never… I never got the results back from the clinic,” I said. The more I held in the shaking the more it seemed to morph into sobs in my chest. His hand rose up, curled around the barrel of the gun and gently pushed it aside.

“I’m the father, Evie,” he said quietly, pushing my arms down and to the ground so all the tension fell away. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Big sobs wracked through me and I began to cry. The gun fell from my hands and thudded into the wet ground below.

He leapt forward and wrapped his arms around me.

“I just want to protect you,” he said. Hot tears streaming down my face, I pulled away and shoved him hard against his chest. I couldn’t do this.

“I don’t need your protection,” I spat. I must have been out of my mind. Maybe it was pregnancy hormones, or it was the stress of the situation, but no way in hell was I going to go gaga over some guy I barely knew.

I picked up the gun again, shook my head to clear it and wiped down my face with the back of my arm. I turned to hike down the path.

“Where are you going?”

“Away from you,” I hissed.

“Evie, you can’t go,” he cried after me.

I turned to smile at him.

“I can’t? And what are you going to do about it?”

To my astonishment, he smiled as well. But his smile wasn’t sarcastic. Wasn’t hard like mine. And scared.

“If you would stop trying to kill me, and quit running away every chance you get, maybe we could actually help each other out here” he said.

“I already told you, clearly I don’t need anyone’s help.”

“Evie, you’re pregnant. If you want to keep that baby, it’s going to be harder and harder to run.”

I said nothing.

“What, you don’t think they’re after us right this instant? They’re not going to stop, Evie. Not till they have both our heads on spikes. We have a better chance of survival if we work together…”

I hated how right he thought he probably was. I hated that maybe I thought he was right too.

“The only way out of this is to take down the organization. Completely,” he said. “And now’s our chance. Little Joey has no clue what he’s doing. If you know something, Evie, now’s the time to share it.”

I was frozen to the ground. The forest around us was dense, wet and creepy looking. I wasn’t in any position to argue.

“Ok, fine, whatever.”

“You said you felt it too, that night, right?”

“I don’t want to talk about that right now, Jack.”

“Well, I felt it too Evie. I haven’t been the same since… I don’t know what that stuff is but I’ve been having so many strange ideas, so many thoughts…”

I tried hard not to look too interested.

“I said, I don’t want to talk about that right now. We have to get to civilization soon and then come up with some kind of plan. I’m not telling you a damn thing till then.”

He gave a little smile.

“Sure.”

“I’m not some damsel in distress, Jack, I’m serious. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Never said you were.”

“And just because I’m pregnant it doesn’t mean I’m going to just fall madly in love with you now and…”

He raised his eyebrow at me.

“Just because it’s your kid it doesn’t mean that we’re… that I owe you anything and we’re just going to screw each other right here in the bushes,” I yelled.

He broke into a full grin.

“Of course, not, no way! You don’t owe me anything, Evie.” He held both his hands up in defense. Then he looked down at the ground.

“But I guess I was kind of hoping you’d …want to,” he said quietly.

I felt that tight knot between my legs thump with anticipation. No. Don’t be an idiot Evie.

“Oh, give me a break,” I scoffed and moved to brush past him. “We have a lot of walking to do, let’s go,” I said, but as I moved past him he reached out his arm and caught my elbow, swiveled me round and in an instant he had me pinned to him, locking our lips together.

I resisted a little, but almost instantly melted into him, like our bodies were drawn to each other’s like magnets. It felt so good to kiss him again that I couldn’t suppress a moan, couldn’t stop from weakening at my knees and falling into a deep, passionate kiss with him. Both his firm hands rose up around me to anchor me closer to him, and at that moment it felt useless to fight, useless to insult him or kick and scream or play tough anymore. His body felt hard and warm under his shirt, and he had the smell of wet earth and grass on him.

“Just so you know, this doesn’t mean anything,” I mumbled as he rolled his sweet lips over mine. I could taste him smiling.

“No, of course not, you don’t need me, you don’t need anyone… and of course you don’t need this,” he said and pressed his hard body against mine. His cock felt like a third leg packed into his pants, and my hips tilted and rubbed against him of their own accord, like nothing but what he had in there would put me out of my aching misery. The spot between my legs was burning deliciously, wet with just the thought of what we were about to do. I had fucked him so many times in my dreams, so many times in my lonely moments, and now it was really happening.

I ran excited hands down the length of his body as he laced his fingers in my hair and pulled back to look at me.

“You’re beautiful, Evie,” he mumbled, tracing delicate thumbs along the contours of my cheekbones.

I couldn’t bear to look into his eyes. I was afraid of what I’d see there. Afraid of that deep, delicious blackness that had haunted my every waking and sleeping moment for the last four months. I lost control when I stared into those eyes. And I didn’t know if I was ready to lose control again.

I tore at the buttons of his shirt, urgently pulling at the zip of his trousers and pushing him back into a tree. He was twice my size and could have done whatever he wanted to me, but he hung back, gentle, watching me with satisfaction all over his gorgeous face. He lifted his hands a little overhead as I worked frantically at his belt, and when his thick, juicy cock flopped hard out of his pants, I couldn’t help but groan again.

He smelt so fucking good.

It was the scent of adventure – of hard work and masculine sweat and forest and underneath it all something so deliciously dirty it instantly turned me up a notch. It was like I could draw in energy from the heat of his body, energy that powered me up and made me want more… and more.

His hands moved over me and made short work of my now-tattered dressing gown, letting it crumple to the ground along with his own shirt. Naked skin to naked skin, I pressed back into him again, feeling the warm heft of his cock pushing into my belly. Underneath my hands he seemed like the tree itself, his feet spread and rooted firmly into the ground, supporting a body that seemed unmovable, sturdy.

We were both naked now, the heat between our skin and the air between our searching lips almost steaming. Just the thought that we were actually doing this was enough to drive me wild. A damp, desperate spot hummed right at the center of my clit, making me arch my back and curl my hips into him again and again.

We were two animals in the wild, about to fuck. We had just fought for our lives, fled into the woods and now there was nothing in the world except our naked bodies, the darkness, and the unbearable hunger stirring in both of us.

I wrapped my fingers around his swollen cock and stroked, sending a tight ripple all through his abdomen. When I lifted then lowered my body down over him again, it was to stroke those wet, silky folds over his length. He had the most beautiful fucking cock. Thick and solid, it was a tree stump in my hands. I glided my aching body slowly over the veined surface, stroking myself into a frenzy, loving how much pleasure he could give me with so little movement. I loved that no matter how much wetness I doused him with, there was still so much it dribbled down the inside of my thigh.

His cock tucked inside that cleft between my thighs, and I leaned in for another deep kiss, but this time his tongue was more insistent, more urgent as it locked and wrapped over mine. His hands snaked up my bare back, up my neck and settled on my scalp, taking soft fistfuls of my hair.

“Turn around,” he said low under his breath, and before I could respond he had clasped my hips and swiveled me round so that I was facing the tree and he was behind me. Usually I was the dominant one, usually I would be barking orders and giving directions …but who was I anymore? What did any of that even mean now, when the rest of the world didn’t exist, and the only thing was this man with me, right now, this man and his immense cock and his calm, assertive voice and his hands, steadying themselves against my hips as I arched up to offer myself to him…?

He smoothed appreciative hands over my ass cheeks. I could hear him breathing. Even in the darkness, I could make out the tiny shapes and of the brittle bark under my clutching fingertips, like tiny tiles in a mosaic only made to look like a tree. I anchored my feet and bent forward, submitting. Nobody could stop us now. What happened here was truly our secret.

Squeezing his hands tight round my waist, he guided me backwards onto his dick and pressed into me, one deep, fluid movement that opened me all at once.

Oh fuck.

I gasped and let my head fall forward. That delectable stretch deep inside me was what I had dreamt about for months. And it was even better than I remembered. His hips paused when they came to meet my body, giving me a moment to breath into him, to adjust my throbbing breath to accommodate that deep, complete thrust that dug right to the core of me.

Shuddering, I spread my legs wider to him. I wanted more. I wanted everything he had to give. And with the next thrust he gave it to me. There was no foreplay. Hadn’t the last four months been foreplay for this very moment? No, now was the time for hard, brutal, animal fucking. Now was the time to hold onto that tree for dear life and be pounded until I couldn’t stand up properly.

My soft belly hung gently down to the ground. I was already plump with his baby, but I wanted even more of his cum. I wanted to be filled to bursting, wanted every part of me to be his, marked, laced in every last sticky drop of that thick juice that I could eke out of him. He drew back his hips and slammed his stiff cock into me, then again, then again, immediately sinking into a dark, bestial rhythm that my drenched pussy was happy to take.

With each slap he growled and reached deeper inside me. Each time his balls came banging into my poor exposed cunt, it sent a ripple of pleasure through me that reverberated over my whole body, tinkling out through my fingertips and toes. Every atom of my being was switched on to him. His slick cock was a piston thumping into me, and together we made a delicious engine, a fuck machine about to launch the both of us into the stratosphere.

He fucked me so hard and so deep he lifted my hips up with each thrust, bringing me to my tip toes at the apex. I leaned back and let my weight fall onto him, letting gravity deliver me onto that engorged pole that somehow found a way to cram into me so deep my clit was brushing against his balls.

I couldn’t speak. I didn’t need to. My pussy was singing, opening joyfully to whatever his powerful body dished out, locked in place by his hands entirely circling my waist. I was impaled on him. Our bodies collided into one another with enough passion that it felt like violence. Like a dare. Like we both had one night left in this earthly realm and we were both committed to using up every last shred of our flesh-bound bodies to fuck our hearts out.

The branches and leaves overhead shook quietly in the night air, swish swish swish as he fucked me. I crawled my hands up the tree to stand more upright, to pull him in deeper and propped up on his thrusting cock. When the sweat-slick skin of my back met the sweat-slick skin of his chest, I felt his body twitch inside me. He was close to coming. He stopped, gave a few more powerful thrusts, stopped again. His breath was jagged and irregular. He squeezed down hard on my waist, embracing me close to him.

Then he stopped completely. I felt him swell and move, no part inside me left untouched by that gorgeous fat cock, no part not stretched, opened, adored by him. Just the thought was enough to race me up to the edge of my own orgasm. We both froze, bodies bolted hard together, nothing moving except those sweet, twitching ripples inside as we felt over one another’s most secret, most vulnerable places. The wind blew and I heard his breath slow with mine as we fucked liked this for a few moments, only those most inner parts of ourselves moving, nothing existing for us at that moment except the exquisite pulse of my pussy against him as he struggled to hold off.

I wanted to make him cum.

Taking a deep breath, I rolled through my belly, stroking him inside with long, internal muscles, squeezing the head of his engorged manhood and feeling it twitch in response. When we came together, it felt like falling. Like hurtling from some great height down into a bottomless void. It came on low and slow, so gloriously painful was the release that I felt him falter behind me, felt his grip loosen as the waves of his orgasm pummeled through him.

It was more than coming together. It was the same orgasm. It was though I had a cock, and felt it jerking and pulsing inside me, and he knew exactly what that cock was doing to me because he felt it, firsthand, as though he had penetrated me so deeply he could feel my experience as his own. Even the trees swaying overhead seemed in on it.

By the time we had both calmed down and stretched back out again on the floor, our bodies and minds cooling, it was well past sundown. I was staring straight up, ignoring him completely, but my arms were at my side and one of my pinky fingers stroked the edge of his hand lovingly. I wanted him to understand. It was all I could muster for him now. I had lived my life as a stony woman, locked up in the need to survive, to fight, to hate. I wanted him to know that thawing would be hard for me. In fact, that little pinky finger caressing him slightly was almost more erotic than everything we had just done together.

He extended his finger and stroked me in return. I sighed loudly, the air from my lungs going white as it floated up to the sky mottled with black tree tops. He leaned in closer, but not too close.

“We have to keep moving,” he said.

I nodded in the darkness.

“But I have to know, Evie. What is this big secret that could destroy the whole organization?”

I turned to face him, propped myself up on my elbows and cleared my throat.

Chapter 16 - Joseph

Loyalty, that’s the damn problem. None of these fuckers understand vision. They can’t conceive of anything bigger than themselves, they don’t understand legacy, or allegiance. My father ran this shithole into the ground so hard these fools now wouldn’t know a good idea if it came up and punched them in the face. But fuck it. I had to remind myself that if my esteemed colleagues didn’t have what it took, then I didn’t want them anyway. I needed men with balls. Men with follow through. And irritatingly, I was pretty low on those at the moment.

I was dropping capos like flies on the new territories, and morale was low. They had been pampered and coddled on the old regime, but no more. And it was getting to the point where I almost didn’t even have anyone else to send after Evie and her fuckboy John or Jack or whatever his damn name was.

“At my old job,” Janie said, “what they would do is, like, have employee of the month, you know? So the one that did the best got a little bonus and they put their picture up on the wall. Maybe you could do something like that?”

Janie was Melissa’s newest friend and whore-in-training, maybe a distant cousin, I had already forgotten. I slowly raised my eyebrow at her and gave her the dirtiest look I could muster.

“How the fuck is that gonna help me, Janie?” I hissed at her. “We’re dealing with hardened criminals here, baby, not fucking MacDonald’s employees.”

She kept her head down and focused on slicing and bagging tiny packets of fine, white powder on the smooth table before us. It wasn’t much of a harem, sure, but I was working on it. I hated to admit it, but Evie was the last quality female this wreck of an organization had seen. It was all gold diggers and junkies for now.

Janie looked hurt, and carried on weighing and bagging.

“Jeez, just saying.”

“Well, don’t just say, OK? How about shut the fuck up instead, OK?”

“Anyway, it wasn’t at McDonald’s it was at Wendy’s,” she said under her breath.

I brought my fist down hard onto the table, sending the scale rattling and a fine mist of powder bounced into the air and settled again. Both girls jumped in their skin, their whitened fingertips freezing above their work.

“Do you think I pay you bitches to give me advice on how to run my organization?”

They quietly started working again.

“In fact, there’s my problem right there – I’m too soft. I pay you too damn much and put up with too much of your shit. You think you can just sit here and mouth off and that’s just fine?”

“No, Joey,” Melissa said quietly.

“Exactly. No. In fact, what the fuck are you wearing? You know I hate those kind of shirts,” I said and gestured her chest. Janie and her exchanged glances.

“Don’t look at her. Look at me, I’m the one talking to you,” I barked. “Take it off.”

Melissa looked surprised.

“Take it off?”

“Are you deaf too, bitch?”

Her face soured. She set the bag she was working on off to the side and then considered it.

“God, Joey, you don’t need to be mean just because you’re stressed about all the muscle you guys are losing, you know…” Janie said.

The instant she stopped speaking I could tell that she knew she had fucked up. Melissa winced. I smiled at this.

“You take your shirt off, too.”

I hadn’t fucked Janie. Not yet, anyway. She was mouthy, a bit insolent, but dumb as hell and wouldn’t take much convincing. Her face went white as I passed my eyes over her thin tank top. She wasn’t as thickly built as Melissa. Her hair was shorter, with a little wave to it. But she wasn’t bad looking.

They slowly started moving, but they both seemed more than a little reluctant to strip. I stood, kicking the chair back behind me and relishing how it made them jump. Good. At least they had enough brains in their thick heads to fear me. I took a few menacing steps off to the end of the room and opened a side cabinet. I reached far into the back and pulled out an old, small cigarette tin with a ribbon tied around it. Inside was a tablespoon or so of soft, cinnamon-fine powder, the color of rust.

Janie muttered something in Spanish to Melissa. I chose to ignore this. I noisily sat back down at my chair, placed the cigarette tin on the table and moistened my index finger. I held Melissa’s gaze as I lowered it into the powder and picked up a fine film of dust which I quickly snorted. She looked genuinely frightened.

“Is that …?”

“Pink Kisses, yes.”

They again exchanged looks.

“I notice your fucking shirts are still on,” I said. In a few moments, they had removed them and set them aside. Janie’s tits were tight and hard, the little nipples erect like a pair of coffee beans. I didn’t give her the pleasure of my ogling them.

“I thought… I thought there wasn’t another batch yet,” Melissa said, and I thought how awesome it would be for some of the coke to dust her nipples.

“There isn’t a new batch,” I said and helped myself to another dab, before closing the tin and retying the ribbon. She looked confused.

“Is that …the old batch?”

I smiled at her.

“The tainted batch?”

Janie watched us talk like a dog trying to figure out how to understand its English-speaking owners.

I didn’t have to answer. She knew what it was and I knew it impressed her. At first I thought I had held onto some of the dirty batch out of morbid curiosity. Then I wondered if I was keeping it out of guilt. I hadn’t been the one to kill him, sure, but that was just a detail. But no, I had kept a small sample, and had taken it, just because I fucking could. Because I wasn’t afraid. It was enough to finish off a fragile old man, but why should I be afraid of it? As it happens, it was the right choice. Taking Pink Kisses cut with an SSRI was just about the best idea I had come up with lately.

“Joey, that shit’ll kill you,” Melissa said softly. Her small, powdered white fingers were moving swiftly over the bags again, knotting perfect measures of cocaine and twisting the tail around the bag into neat, regular little loops.

“Do I look dead to you?” I said.

I thought I heard them sniggering amongst themselves. But it was like it was happening just out of sight, just out the corner of my eye. I couldn’t tell if they were petrified or making fun of me. Maybe both. Or maybe I was a little paranoid. This stuff did have a slight edge, I couldn’t deny that.

Maybe I’d fuck both of them, at the same time. Maybe I’d spread both of them out here on the table, smearing their tan bodies right into the pile of coke and letting it fly everywhere. Maybe I’d slip my cock into one, then the other, then into the first one again, and keep going, and they’d fucking scream and beg for it, and then they’d think twice the next time they wanted to second guess every little fucking thing I said. Maybe I’d lean back in my chair and make them fuck each other. For my entertainment. They could damn well earn their pay for a change. Maybe I wouldn’t let them go till they both got one another off.

“Joey? Joey, are you OK?”

Melissa was half risen off her chair and was staring at me with panic in her face. I smiled at her.

“You look really high or something, baby. Maybe you should go and take a rest, huh?”

“Just trying to get rid of me are you?” I said and laughed.

“It’s just that, Joey, you don’t look so good. Are you even supposed to mix that brown stuff with coke?” Janie said.

I shot her a poisonous look.

“If I ever needed to ask someone if I was fucking supposed to do something or not, it sure as hell wouldn’t be you, would it?” I snapped.

But she didn’t look fearful anymore. In fact, I began to wonder if she was laughing at me again. Her lips were still. Her face was expressionless, but I felt almost as though …she was laughing at me anyway. A more obnoxious kind laughter, and invisible one that I couldn’t point to, but I knew was there all the same.

But fuck them. Fuck them both. I was riding that sweet, powdery high and if that made them uncomfortable, it sounded like a whole bunch of their problem, not mine. The news reports, the rumors – they were all true. I wouldn’t say that this shit gave you psychic powers or anything. That’s stupid. But it did …how could I describe it? It did ramp things up a whole hell of a lot. It made me feel light. Like I could buzz, or turn into electricity if I concentrated hard enough. It didn’t do a damn thing in the trouser department but it’s not as though I’ve ever needed that. On this stuff, I was more than a king. I was a god. Like a giant on Mount Olympus, looking far out and down on the entire world. If two half-naked sluts didn’t understand that, well, again, it was their problem.

The girls were quietly at their work again, and I sat in silence in my chair watching them, slumped a little but feeling like I could read every thought in their dirty minds. I laced my fingers and smiled to myself. Melissa’s tits jiggled slightly every time she leaned over to add a bag to the growing pile.

“The problem is loyalty,” I said again, although I wasn’t sure if I had only thought it or said it out loud.

“The problem is that there just isn’t any loyalty anymore.”

They said nothing.

“When that fucking Mickey shows his damn face again, he’s gonna wish he never took off in the first place,” I said, cracking my own knuckles in my hand, one at a time. Janie looked up at me.

“Mickey? Fat Mickey?” she said.

“Yeah, Fat Mickey,” I said.

Melissa also pricked her ears. “Mickey’s dead” she said and shrugged.

“The fuck he is. And what do you know? Keep your nose out. Mickey’s got issues. Disappears for weeks on end. His wife or something…”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure they took him out,” she said again, and carried on working. Melissa looked sideways over at her.

The guys had sworn up and down that he was fine, that he just did this, that my father and him had an understanding, that I needed to not make a big deal about it …and now this 20-year-old nobody bitch was busy telling me otherwise? I tried to speak calmly, to not let them see how ruffled I was.

“Who took him out?”

“Oh, I don’t know, somebody,” she said. “Who’s that guy who left? That guy who did a runner and then you sent people after him to take him out?”

It irked me beyond belief that this mere child knew anything at all about the operations of this business.

“The guy that left? Mr. Martin?”

“Nah.”

“Giovane K?”

“Nah, the other guy, that really hot guy,” she said and giggled.

I felt ready to explode out of some hot circle growing somewhere on the top of my head. It was all just a big joke, was it? That I had so many defectors that people could barely keep track? The hot guy. The fucking hot guy. Melissa seemed as surprised as I was.

“Do you mean Jack? The hit guy?” Melissa said.

“Yes! Jack. That’s what I heard anyway,” she said. With her tongue she fished out a forgotten wad of gum and began loudly cracking it between her teeth. Melissa cowered a little as she looked over at me.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” I yelled at her. She looked mad. “Anyway, you heard it? Where did you ‘hear’ it?” I said, turning my wrath to Janie.

“I don’t know! Just around, you know. Everybody knows it, not like it’s a big secret…” she said.

I was so mad I wanted to punch a hole clean through that table. Not only were the few men I had left fucking up on our new territories, and not only did I have spies and backstabbers to deal with, my own upper level managers were lying to me through their teeth.

“You OK, Joey…?”

I looked up to see Melissa’s soft face, watching me quizzically. I snorted, straightened in my chair and shrugged.

“I’m perfect baby, don’t worry about a thing.” I couldn’t let them get even an inkling that they had known about so trivial a piece of information that I didn’t.

What happened in the next five minutes was hard to pin down. Though I sat perfectly still on that chair, hands laced and head lowered, my mind was whizzing a thousand miles an hour. I would have all their heads. I didn’t care if I wiped out three quarters of what my father had built, I would root out the insubordination, once and for all. But it wasn’t enough. They were just two women, for fuck’s sake. Worthless, stupid women who’d do anything for money. And yet …they thought they were better than me. I could see it in their eyes. In the way they moved around. I could smell it on them, I knew I could.

I couldn’t let them know how deeply humiliated it felt to watch them sit there like that. How white-hot the rage for them was as that moment. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t get my own. I just needed to think. I had already consoled myself that Evie was still on the loose, but I had been assured over and over again that Jack had been exterminated. I watched them. Weighing, scraping, packing, knotting… it was all a mockery of me. All designed to make fun of me. They were pushing me. Trying their luck. But I wouldn’t let them get the better of me.

“Hey Janie, what else do you think we should do, to fix up things around here, huh?”

“Boss?” she said and gave me a shocked look.

“Well, you got so many bright ideas, go on and tell me. Maybe I make you my next VP, huh?” I said and flashed her a juicy grin. She smiled but Melissa’s face went white.

“Well,” she said, and made like she was thinking. “This is just my opinion, right? But I think what made your dad so great was that he never, ever stuck his head out, you know?”

She was behaving like she was at a slumber party chatting over pizza to a friend, rather than at the secret home of the country’s most feared drug kingpin with a pile of coke in front of her.

“Yeah I know.”

“Well, if you ask me, this is the problem,” she said and indicated the white powder on her fingertips. Melissa looked like she desperately wanted her to shut up. I smiled as broadly as I could manage and egged her on.

“You mean the coke?”

“Yeah, I mean the coke. Obviously, it’s a big fuck you to the people on the west side, right? It’s like, you’re deliberately asking for trouble, you know? Your dad was always in the shadows. Nobody even knew who he was. But then you come along, and you’re like” here she laughed “you’re like this big dude who’s totally like a gangster from a movie, you know? And everyone knows who you are and where to find you, and this coke is just like a big old target on your head,” she said, smiling at her own brilliant analysis.

It was then that I saw it. I saw into her. It was only a split second. Only the tiniest fraction of time. But it was enough. For a fleeting moment, I caught a glimpse of what she really felt about me. And it was awful. She wasn’t afraid of me. Oh no, she was derisive. Her contempt for me was only mildly suspended for as long as it took to extract enough cash from me. For that split second, I saw myself as she saw me. A violent, diminished man. Unattractive. Pathetic.

It was enough to take my breath away. She prattled on, oblivious to the deep channel straight into her brain that I had briefly opened and peered into. Completely unaware of the effect her words were having on me. Melissa made a move to cut her off, but the girl kept speaking.

“Anyway, that’s why I think you should just lay low sometimes, you know? Just take the ego out of the game a little and be more, what do you call it? Strategic,” she said and smiled simply at me.

In the next breath, I had drawn my pistol, extended my arm directly over the table and sent a bullet straight through the center of her skull.

Melissa screamed. Janie’s mouth flopped open like a dead fish and she sputtered and gargled a little, looking down at the table and then back up at me, before sliding sideways off her chair and into a crooked pile on the floor. Her legs remained tangled up with the chair. Little motes of cocaine sprinkled down onto her like snowflakes. She died with her eyes open. The buzzing in my own head stopped. I put the pistol away.

Melissa’s entire face was red, and she was clutching a hand tightly over her mouth. Crying, she dashed over to the body, hands outstretched.

“Stop,” I said, and lay my hand again over the pistol. “Leave her.”

She shot me a wildly panicked look and scuttled back to her chair. I hated the way her breasts hung down when she leant forward. Like a dog’s. I hated how soft her face looked right now. How completely weak she seemed.

“But Joey, why? Why do it? Why, Joey?”

I hated the tiny snot bubble I could hear in her nose as she cried. I did it because I could. The moment I shot her, she couldn’t look at me that way anymore.

“Get back to work or you’re next,” I said.

I could make out her chest heaving as she stifled some sobs and tried to work with shaking fingers.

“Joey, baby, she was my sister,” she wept.

“Sister? I thought she was just a friend or something…”

She gave me a look as though I’d slapped her.

And then I felt that little channel opening up again. I felt myself getting close to her, to something deep inside those wet eyes of hers. And I didn’t fucking like it. I didn’t want to look into her mind. And I didn’t want to have to kill her if I found the same thing in there as in that other dirty bitch who now lay bleeding on the floor. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t bear to experience that, not ever again.

“Get up.”

She sniffled and looked at me with damp eyes.

“What?”

“I said get the fuck up!”

She sprang to her feet. I could feel it coming on. I could feel her hate for me. I squeezed my fists down hard to blot it out, to force away that sensation of the pure, black loathing she had for me …but I couldn’t. Melissa was one of the few people I had left. She was an insignificant whore, a nobody, but she alone put up with me, she stayed when the others left and lied to me. She fucked my sorry ass when Evie ran off starry eyed after that stupid “hot” bastard Jack. She was all I had left. She had to love me.

“Take your pants off. Strip, all of it,” I yelled.

She was crying loudly now, unable to look at the body just a few feet to the side of us.

“Joey, please don’t…”

“Shut up. Don’t make me,” I said, my hand going to my pistol again.

If I had to take what I wanted by force, then so be it. She would learn to love me. They would all fucking learn to love me. A haze descended over me as I grabbed the edge of the table and tore upwards, sending it and everything on it flying through the air. She screamed and backed away, but I lurched forward and grabbed her by her hair.

The time for asking was over. The time for telling had begun. And once I was finished here, I would go after both Evie and her lover boy personally. I don’t care what big special secret she claims to know, and I don’t care how hot anybody thinks that motherfucker of hers is, they would both die, even if I had to do it with my own bare hands.

I grabbed the now-naked body of Melissa and swiveled her around so her back faced me. Her hands staggered forward to balance against the wall as I shoved her forward and unzipped. She was crying hard now, her ribcage wracked with sobs as I yanked out my cock and drove my way deep up and into her. She didn’t resist. She didn’t do anything but cry. I didn’t care though. As long as she didn’t turn around, as long as I didn’t have to look inside those eyes of hers and see what I didn’t want to see, it would all be OK.

I would fuck her until it was all OK…

Chapter 17 - Evelyn

I hadn’t been in a log cabin like this since I was a little girl. I had forgotten how lovely it could be, out here in the woods. Just the trees. The cold, crisp air. Even the sunshine seemed cleaner somehow. I liked the wildness of it all. How you had to survive on your own wits. And I always prided myself on being strong. On knowing how to get shit done, and not letting anyone bully me. I don’t know when I myself turned into a bully, but as I sat there and waited for Jack to return, it hit me all at once: I had never really been the victim. But I sure have been the perpetrator.

I had killed. Over and over again. I had been merciless. I had used men’s desire for me as a weapon against them. I had lied and manipulated. And yet still, Jack was out there right now, searching for fresh water for me and the baby.

The fainting spells were getting more frequent now, and I could no longer argue that I was able to tag along after him anymore. It was hard to imagine that there was any danger facing us out here, with the world looking as pretty as it did. But we were being chased.

I hadn’t been involved with the organization in months and yet it had followed me relentlessly anyway. It was only a matter of time before they found us again. Jack was right. We couldn’t keep running. We had to go back, I had to tell everyone what I knew, and we had to put it all behind us, once and for all. The thought of killing Joey felt outrageous, even to me …and yet it was the single point that all my thoughts kept converging on. His father had been shrewd. He had lived entirely on the wrong side of the law. But he wasn’t exactly evil. Joey? There was something wrong there. Something badly wrong, and I wasn’t the only one who saw it.

We had stumbled on this remote cabin two mornings ago. It was nothing but simple, rough-hewn boards pegged together and held up seemingly by moss and vines. It was amazingly well camouflaged, small, comfortable, and ideal for two. It was no bigger inside than a single bedroom, and had only a narrow wooden cot long since abandoned and a little counter where I imagined people once propped up a gas stove.

It was dark inside, and smelt like rotting leaves, but it was warm, and felt safe. Jack had fought to get me to stay here and lay low while he went off in search of food and water for us. It was an odd sensation, being so vulnerable. So dependent on him. But I agreed and the world didn’t end. In fact, it was kind of nice not having to be the one in charge for a change.

I spent the morning examining the cottage in painstaking detail and trying to find something to eat in the near vicinity. If we kept travelling West, we’d land up in town soon enough. Part of me fantasized about just staying out here though. I was getting bigger. My body felt plump and juicy, and I was horny all the time now. I just wanted to fuck him. That was all. Call it pregnancy brain, call it the honeymoon period, or blame it on that strange substance. But there was no denying it. I was different. I felt different.

I sat on the cabin steps cross-legged and did my hair up in a braid. I sang a quiet lullaby to my swollen belly, all alone. I picked a few skinny daisies and hung them inside over the “bed”. These little things felt earth-shattering to me. I no longer felt like Evelyn, the ex-mafia bitch with a bounty on her head. I wanted to just be Eve, the first woman, a fresh start, something that felt a little like forgiveness.

I wouldn’t have to kill Joey. Once I shared what I knew, there would no longer be any need to. I lay inside on the cot for a while, dozing in and out of sleep, listening to the birds. I missed him. When I heard his feet on the dried leaves outside, my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. I jumped to my feet and threw open the cabin door.

It was Joey.

Just standing there, like someone had cut and paste him from a dingy city street. He was like a black hole in front of me, like all the light around him was bent and trapped by his dark, heavy presence. I must have stood staring at him for a century. Then all at once, he sprang to action and bolted up the small path towards me. I responded, leapt back and slammed the door in front of me. But before I could swing the latch over its hook on the inside of the door, he had burst through it, sending it screaming on its hinges and thumping painfully into me. I staggered back, then stumbled for the gun I had stashed underneath the cot.

With one powerful leap, he came for me, clutched at my throat and pulled me towards him. I screamed and thrashed, but my muscles were weak. I hadn’t eaten properly in three days, and was faint and dehydrated. His arm around my neck, I could do nothing but kick backwards against him. With one solid, vicious blow he brought the ball of his fist hard down onto my back, smashing into my kidneys and leaving me to totter in pain for a moment.

I saw stars, then nothing.

When the pain dissipated somewhat I realized I was on the floor, my legs dragging across the splintered wood beneath me. I came to just as he started to loop a rough cord around my wrists and pin both my hands behind me. I was tossed into the corner like a bag of trash. Groaning, I lifted my head and tried to breathe through the scary pain now radiating out from the left side of my spine. Without the support of the cabin walls behind me, I was sure I would have blacked out and fallen over.

“Where is he? Where’s Jack,” he said at last. I looked up and saw him peering down at me, his breath coming in unhealthy sounding rasps.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. My only thought was the baby. That I had been too weak. That my body hadn’t been enough to protect it…

“Liar. Tell me where he is,” he said again. My vision cleared and I lifted my chin to him. His hair was disheveled and his skin had a waxy, sick look to it. His eyes were wide and crazy looking. He must have come at an incredible speed to have caught up to us.

“If you’re going to kill me, just do it already.” I was too weak to fight. Too tired. I was done with violence, done with the blood and the hurt and the killing.

“Oh, I plan to,” he said casually, and took a step towards me.

“But what’s the rush? You always were so keen to end our little chats, to run off. Why?”

I said nothing. Jack could be a few minutes from the cabin. Or he could be miles away.

“I thought you were dead, actually. But I’m glad you’re not,” he said, crouching down onto his haunches and looking at me, struggling to breath, bound in the corner.

“Why?”

“Because we have unfinished business, don’t we?”

His smile revolted me. It looked like it even revolted him. The thought of having this man touch me again sent a deep wave of nausea through me. I should have killed him when I had the chance. Should have spared everyone. He looked around at the interior of the cabin with interest, then back at me, ogling the soft swell of my abdomen. My muscles felt like they had been wrung out dry.

“You and I were always meant to be, that’s what I think, Evie. You understand life. You understand death. You’re a woman, but you know how to think…” he said in a quiet voice.

I did nothing to conceal my grimace. He reached into his pocket and I winced, but he only pulled out a small cigarette tin, one with a small, faded picture on the front. Delicately, like he was dealing with something unspeakably precious, he opened the tin, dipped in his pinky finger and lifted the brown powder to his nostril and snorted hard. He repeated this process on the other side.

“What’s that?” I asked, although I had a strong suspicion I already knew. He smiled, closed the lid and gently tucked it away in his jacket again. He thought carefully for a moment, his gaze to the floor before he looked at me again. It wasn’t just my imagination. The change in him was almost instant. I couldn’t say why or how, but he had become a demon. I felt a tear roll down my cheek as I watched something like a dark cloud move over his expression.

His eyebrows kinked and furrowed as he looked at me, and watched another tear roll down my face. I was no stranger to the darker side of humanity. I wasn’t afraid of death or violence. But what I saw in his face was truly the most frightening thing I had ever witnessed.

“You came here with him, didn’t you? With that guy?” he said. I just wanted it all to end. “But what’s wrong with me, Evelyn? Why not me?” his voice was so low I wasn’t sure I hadn’t just imagined the words. I squirmed to try and look away, but he leant in closer.

“What did I do wrong? What did I have to do? You were always so cold, always so cruel.”

He had finally found me, he was standing a few inches from my face and could have killed me there and then, and this is what he wanted to say to me?

“There’s nothing wrong with you Joey. But you’re sick,” I said. I could tell he was listening intently to every word.

“I’m sick,” he said, as though trying the words on for size.

“I’m pregnant, Joey. Please don’t kill me.”

He gave me a bizarre look.

“You think I’m the bad guy, don’t you?” he said.

I said nothing.

“Am I really that bad?”

For a moment, I felt overwhelmed with pity for him. I suddenly saw him as he was when he was a kid – intense, fearful, a little strange. I felt so bad for him. I couldn’t help more tears from falling.

“I’m sorry, Joey. I don’t know how we got here. I just know I don’t want to do this again. No more killing…”

Slowly, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a pistol, then looked down at it like he had never seen it before in his life. He was mad. Anybody could see that, psychic mind-reading powers or not. He lifted the barrel of the gun and carefully pressed it to my sternum. I couldn’t slow my breathing as I looked down at it, pressing straight between my breasts.

“Do you love him?” he asked, voice husky, like he was drunk.

Jack. My sweet, beautiful Jack. The man who had loved me enough to blast through my walls of self-defense.

“More than anything,” I whispered. The words seemed to sting him. He leant even closer still, and reached out his hand to grab my chin. He began examining me, like an alien trying to find out where exactly this “love” was stored and how. He turned my face over this way and that, a look of violent perplexity in his eyes as he inspected my every feature.

“I can see you,” he said quietly.

He was high. So high. He appeared as a man in the middle of a violent religious experience. He seemed utterly overcome with what he could “see” in me.

“I know what you think of me,” he said plainly.

I thought of Jack. Of how even though he was technically a hitman, he had taught me more about mercy than anyone else. Without thinking, I leaned forward and pressed my chest wall against the barrel of the gun. I opened to him, shoulders back.

“I know you’ve been hurt, Joey, we all have, you’re not the bad guy, and things between us never worked for a reason, you need to believe me, all of this can be saved, you don’t have to do any of this.” But before I could say more he pulled the pistol back, turned it towards himself and popped it cleanly into his mouth.

When the shot rang out, the disturbed forest outside rustled and released a flock of birds. He flopped backwards. I could only see a gooey spray of his red blood strewn on the petals of the daisies I had hung over the bed.

I sat frozen for a moment, trying to wake up to the events that were unfolding around me.

Of course he killed himself.

Of course he did.

Who hated Little Joey Valenti more than he himself did? Pink Kisses unlocked deep, raw chambers of empathy and emotion inside people. What else would such a drug do to a man who was fundamentally incapable of empathy?

When I was sure that I was only imagining the sound of Jack’s footsteps running up the path towards me, I dug deep and found the energy to lift myself up. As I did, a sharp, angry pain stabbed right through my stomach, winding me instantly. I doubled over in pain. The baby. Something was wrong. I heaved myself upright again and tried to breathe. The worst was over now. From here on out, there was only life. If I could just hold onto it.

Tightening my jaw, I found my footing and leaned to grab him underneath each of his armpits, then lowered down onto my haunches to drag him out of the cabin. He was heavy. As I stepped, dragged, stepped again, I left a jagged trail of blood behind him. His face looked empty now. Almost sad.

With waves of pain pulsing through me now, I pulled and pulled till his body came clunking down the front steps, then I dragged him out into the trees, his feet hanging limps and carving damp lines in the dirt beneath. An echo of the blow he’d given me just moments earlier pumped through me again. I dropped him as I involuntarily clutched at my side. I felt myself moving internally. I just knew the baby was in danger. The little one was afraid, I could tell. I had to calm down. With him still propped against my shins, I closed my eyes and tried to gather myself until the pain subsided. I would not miscarry. I would not lose the baby, not after all we’d been through together.

When I had found the right spot, I let him fall to the ground. He looked much like he did when he was alive: a shell. But something about the forgiving, mossy ground underneath him and the way the forest sounds carried on regardless made me snap to attention again. I ran to where I had found a crude shovel a few hours before, and came back to start digging. I wasn’t going to bury him because I was ashamed. It wasn’t because I needed to hide his body. It was that he was dirt in my life, and this was the way to clean him. In him went it all – the brutal past, the running, the bloodshed. I hoped he took it all with him once I pressed him deep down into the earth.

I dug for what felt like hours. The pain inside stopped and I began to feel invigorated. I was tearing up the skin on my palms with each thrust of the shovel, but I didn’t care. The hole grew in size and the soil gave way easily. When it was deep enough I knelt down to roll him inside, and he flopped down into his grave, face first. I threw the shovel down onto his back and proceeded to kick the huge pile of sand over him.

When this was done, I tamped it down firmly with my feet; not quite dancing on his grave but I forgave myself that interpretation. I threw some moss and twigs down over the bald patch and sat for a moment, directly on top of him, feeling how absolutely still everything was. How he would never be coming up from there again. Then something caught my eye. Yellow and red in the bushes. I walked over to see the cigarette tin – it must have fallen from his pocket when I dragged him over.

I stroked my fingers over its rusted surface for a second, but then opened it and scattered the fine brown powder all around me. It hung weightless in the air for a moment before the soft forest air carried it away. I put the case back in my pocket, put my hand on my belly and waddled back to the cabin.

Chapter 18 - Jack

“I’m huge!” she wailed.

“You’re gorgeous.”

She stood side on to look at herself in the mirror, arching her back to make her pregnant belly look even more pronounced. In truth, Evie was the tiniest pregnant woman I’d ever met …but she wasn’t exactly used to carrying around passengers.

I lay back on the bed, propped on my elbows, and admired her new figure. She was short, with a fierce little build and long, strong hair. It’s true, she looked like she fit in a Charlie’s Angels film and not on the cover of a baby magazine, but I admired her all the same.

“I’m going to put something else on,” she said and walked back to the closet to rummage through a few items. I was sick of the hotel rooms. Sick of the hideaways and fake names and extreme caution. But it was necessary. Until we left, there was no point in taking on any extra risk. Not with Evie due in just a month.

She came back to standing in front of the mirror and looked at her reflection again. Most of what she owned was black and form-fitting, so I couldn’t really tell the difference. But she fretted some more, twisting around and trying to pull the fabric flat down over her middle.

“What about this?”

“Yup, still gorgeous,” I said. She frowned at me, grabbed the hem of her black dress and pulled it high over her head. I couldn’t help myself. I jumped off the bed and ran over to her, looped my arms around her waist and started kissing her soft, bare cleavage just above her bra.

She tried to swat me off but then relaxed and let me kiss her, tossing the dress through the air so it landed in our almost fully backed bags.

“This bra really has its work cut out for it, doesn’t it? I swear your boobs have grown a whole size since this morning,” I said and flashed her a naughty grin. She smiled back, her arms resting on my shoulders.

“Oh, they definitely have. But like I said, you can take your elephant of a girlfriend on a lingerie shopping spree or we can get me onto that plane before I pop, there’s no time to do both.”

I lowered my head onto her warm, sweet chest and tried to hear her heartbeat. She still had that soft, freshly-showered smell in her hair. Her skin felt like satin under my rough hands. I don’t know how she did it. How she managed to be so soft and yet so tough at the same time.

“Do you even have to wear clothes, though? I hate clothes. Let’s just forget about clothes forever,” I mumbled and let my hands play over her smooth body.

“What a great idea! You can go first though. Let’s see what she thinks when she comes to pick us up,” she said and kissed my head. I buried my head in her pillowy breasts again and groaned. It had only been two weeks since I had found her alone in the cabin, scrubbing blood from the sleeve of her shirt and smiling strangely. Yet it felt like we had spent forever like this, in temporary rooms, flitting from one motel to the next, living out of bags...

I was scared, I admit it.

The weird truth was that Evie and I barely knew one another at all. We had never been on a single date. I didn’t know her family and she didn’t know mine. She was five years my senior and so far our shared activities leaned strongly towards the murderous and illegal. We had been brought together by strange, traumatic experiences and part of me was afraid that the moment we stopped to rest in a quiet, normal life, we’d both realize we’d made a mistake.

And yet, here we were. Our final motel stint and in a few months, another little being that I barely knew was going to push itself into my life, and everything would change again. I had tried to talk to her the night before. Tried to ask her about that day in the cabin, about what happened between her and Joey …but she wasn’t ready to talk yet. Part of me agreed – hadn’t he taken up too much space in our lives already?

“Seriously, though, are you all packed up?” I asked, and held her at arm’s length so I could look at her face again. Hugging her meant hugging the baby at the same time. If fatherhood came to me as easy as loving her came to me, then there’d be no problem, I guess.

“I’m ready. Got the most important thing with me,” she said and tapped her belly.

There was nothing to do now except wait for our lift to arrive. Nothing except…

I pulled her back in towards me and embraced her again, but this time differently. This time with a suggestion in my hands, with an invitation. Her hands slowly went to my body and stroked my flanks. We hadn’t made love since that night in the forest. There had been so much going on. She had felt faint. Fatigued all the time. I didn’t want to push anything. But here she was, and her hands seemed to flitter over my skin and respond to my caresses.

We looked at each other, eyes expectant.

“I don’t want to hurt you though,” I said.

“I can take it,” she responded immediately. My cock instantly sprang to attention.

“I’m …this time will be without the…”

She knew what I was saying. Without that stuff coursing through us. Now, it felt like being at square one again. The woman in front of me, the woman carrying my child, seemed virginal somehow, and like I was seeing her, touching her, for the first time.

Her little hands continued tracing lines over my body. Her fingers slipped to my belt, stroked along the length and lifted up at the buckle to travel secretly under my shirt.

“She’ll be here any minute,” I said. I wanted her to initiate, to tell me clearly exactly what she wanted. It was easy enough to have wild sex on Pink Kisses. I wanted to make sure she needed me anyway, as I was, sober and about to go out into the “real world”…

“We have time,” she said simply, and started to work the buckle on my belt.

The silence in the room felt enormous. I watched her with rapt attention as she unclinked the belt, pulled it from its loops and let it fall to the ground. She struggled a little to pull my jeans over my erection, but when my cock bounced free, she stroked fairy-light touches over it before moving to peel my shirt off. I realized how much I was shaking when I helped her pull it up and over my head. Her bra and panties easily came off. We stood with one another for a moment, naked.

The tension between us was stretched tight, ready to snap. No matter what had happened these last few months, there was always one constant: my raw hunger for her body. I never went very long without thinking about her skin, or the curve of her upper thigh as it gave way to that hidden cleft between her legs. Fucking her hard and without mercy had become a religion for me, and I was a hopeless zealot at the altar of her breasts, or her tight, swollen belly. But right now, I wanted to be gentle. The fight was over. I wanted to learn to handle her softly, to soothe her tired body, to love her.

She took my hand and led me to the bed, where we both lay ourselves down. I lay behind her, my body tracing the contours of hers – knees to knees, spine along spine. My hands fit naturally over her full, heavy breasts and I nestled my nose in the curtain of her hair. Her toes reached out for mine and I wiggled back in response. It was a quiet, peaceful conversation. Everything was soft. Except my cock, which nuzzled secretly at the base of her spine, aching like it could tell she was near.

“I used to think that this was weakness,” she said.

I traced a hand down over her rounded belly, grazed my fingertips against the soft fuzz between her legs and then traced back up again, landing again at her breasts, which hung down towards the bed beneath us.

“I never thought I’d be a mother, Jack. It actually felt easier to me to take life than to make it, isn’t that crazy? The day I found out that I was pregnant I…” she trailed off.

I knew everything that she was going to say before she said it. I could feel it somehow, in her body. In the smooth shapes it made under my hands as I caressed slow, careful lines over every part of her.

“I had always told myself it was temporary. That I wasn’t meant for that life. So how did I wake up, ten years later, one of Angelo Valenti’s right hand woman?”

As she spoke, her hips started moving independently, grinding gently back into my hips, against my stiff cock.

“I must have been mad. We all thought Little Joey was mad, but was he really so different from me? From us?”

I stroked and listened in silence.

“He said something to me, Jack, that day in the cabin. He said, you think I’m the bad guy, don’t you? And Jack, you know, he meant it. He really couldn’t see himself that way. Jack I’ve …I’ve done so much damage,” she said and this time a choked back sob cut her short. I kept stroking.

“I was willing to do anything. And I mean it; I don’t know when I lost my way or when I became so …hard. I was even willing to hurt you! But the day I found out I was pregnant I knew I had to change. I knew I had already changed…”

Her hips kept moving against me. After a moment I dragged my fingertips down the length of her spine, then gently pulled apart her ass cheeks and pressed the head of my cock into that fiery hot crevice. She was silent, and responded only by leaning forward a little and tilting her hips up to receive me.

I gently probed forward a little to hunt out that tight hole of hers, and pushed, and all at once her whole body opened to mine and I sunk inside her, one delicious inch at a time. I loved how every fold of her hot, drenched pussy enveloped me so perfectly, how her perfect, slippery cunt embraced me right to the hilt. I couldn’t help but groan as I found my way into her, guiding her hips back towards me to press in even deeper still. Other than a faint flutter of her breath picking up pace, she made no sound. Her pregnant body was a thing of wonder. The round orbs of her already-perfect ass felt so full. And between them her pussy was so wet and soft and juicy. Everything about her was so extravagantly ripe.

I drew back my hips and, very, very slowly, crammed the length of my cock all the way back into her, drawing out the delicious stretch of fitting every last inch of me deep inside her. I didn’t have to move much to find precisely the rhythm that made her breath skip and grow jagged. We fucked this way in silence, my body folded tightly against her, linked in every way. Hands over her navel, and knowing that she had my child in her suddenly seemed unbelievably erotic. We had done this, she and I, together. We had fucked and created new life. I had cum inside her and now she was full and fertile, and the thought alone woke some lusty animal part in me that wanted to do it again and again…

Her top leg bent at the knee and folded towards her waist, giving me deeper access. I planted rows of kisses all along her bare neck, kissing aside the tumble of hair there, wishing this moment never had to end. We were sober. We were fucking, sweet gentle pregnant fucking, and we were sober, and it was perfect. And why not? It never had anything to do with that stupid drug. It was her. Nothing but her. Even laying here in a shifty motel room having noiseless, slow sex at two in the afternoon was perfect. It wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t some magic illegal fairy dust.

I just loved her. Plain and simple.

When she came, it was sweet and soft and slow, and I held her body close as she convulsed through it, tightening and clenching over me as I jammed deeper inside and kissed her neck till she calmed down. Then in a moment, smooth as water, she carried on gyrating against me again, her hips more insistent this time, milking me expertly. The pleasured pooled at my groin, a white-hot pulse that seemed to terminate at the tip of my cock, right where I reached the deepest part inside her. I couldn’t resist any longer. I growled softly, unleashing a thick string of cum into her, one spurt after another, and then held even closer still, still buried inside, kissing her neck.

We lay like this for a while, in that blissful, half dream state that only comes after a good, deep fuck, and held one another. I softened out of her and pulled a slick, white trail of cum over the curve of her ass cheek. It wasn’t quite the most beautiful thing in the world, but it was close.

“I never liked drug deals,” she said, absentmindedly. “None of it ever sat right with me. I always knew, deep down, that that wasn’t who I really was… I’m so sorry, Jack, for everything, I’m so sorry that I--”

“Shhhhh…” I said and kissed her nape again. “You don’t have to explain anything. You don’t have to apologize. Not to me, anyway.”

“I framed you, Jack. They could have killed you,” she whispered.

I waited a moment before responding.

“But they didn’t.”

“How can you just forgive me like that? How can you just let it all go?”

It was a good question. In our industry, revenge was the grisly engine at the heart of everything. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. I don’t know why it felt so easy to “let it go”, honestly. But it did.

“Well, do you forgive me? I was prepared to kill you too, you know.”

“I guess …I guess I do,” she said as though she was only thinking about it for the first time. “I do forgive you.”

“Yeah? Well why? Why don’t we have knives at each other’s throats right now…?” It was something I’d wondered myself. She grabbed my arms and wrapped them more tightly around her shoulders, like a shawl, and kissed my forearms.

“Because …because this feels so much better.”

She couldn’t see it, but I smiled. That was the reason why. Because a professional killer and a hardened criminal mastermind were right for each other precisely because they had had enough. Enough of the killing. Enough of the lying and vengeance and petty politics. There was nothing special in that night in the container, only that it opened the tiniest window through which we could see something else. Another life. And in one way or another, we’d been chasing that glimpse ever since.

“We’d better get cleaned up, Melissa will be here any second now” I said and nuzzled into her hair. She moaned and wriggled in my arms.

“Ok, ok …but just one more time,” she said and started up again with those hips of hers.

“Again? Woman, are you trying to kill me?” I laughed.

“Well, I am a badass mafia woman, you know, you’d better do as I say…” she purred.

I smiled. The warm rasp of her voice was enough to rouse me again, and my dick ached and thickened all over again, still wet from her, but ready for more.

“I love you, Jack,” she whispered as I popped the head of my cock into the snug hole again. I paused. I waited. This was a moment I had never prepared for.

“I love you too, Evie” I said, and it all felt right.

I made her come again, and this time she yelped and bit hard down into the pillow, her hair flopping everywhere. It was 100% true. I did love her.

Fuck, did I love her.

Chapter 19 - Evelyn

I was busy examining myself in the mirror when I heard Melissa’s car tires crunching on the gravel outside.

I didn’t look like a woman who had spent all morning fucking, but it didn’t hurt to check, I suppose. My belly was small but prominent, like I was smuggling a small watermelon. It wasn’t a bad look, but it certainly didn’t go with my leopard-print jacket and glossy black leggings. Nobody expected a woman like me to be waltzing around glowing and fawning about the wonder of new life she was carrying and all that crap – least of all me. But soon I’d have to get something with a little more give. Roomier pants. Elasticated waists. The future looked dark and strange indeed…

Jack easily hoisted up our bags and lined them up at the front door. We had only stayed here a few nights, but I guess my so-called nesting instinct was getting out of hand and I almost felt a little tearful to leave it behind. I was Evelyn Van Horn, expert bad bitch, pro marksman and MMA champ. I was fearless, conniving and tough as nails, and there was nothing that I couldn’t handle. Except maybe pregnancy. And the fact that last night I had told a man that I loved him for the first time in my life. And except for the fact that that scared me half to death, and I was just waiting now to see if my whole world would come clattering down now that I had opened up to him.

In those nature documentaries, the pregnant females are always vulnerable. They’re slower moving, too heavy, too fragile. Easy prey. I had just assumed I would never have to endure the humiliation of being a pregnant woman, and a pregnant woman in love, no less. But here I was, and my big secret was that I was kind of getting into it. Maybe there were different ways to be strong. What if all the shit I rolled my eyes at in the past had some merit after all? Maybe mothers were gritty and tough, and maybe sincerely trusting a man wasn’t the end of the world, or a personality flaw.

“Hola hola! Look’s like your Uber’s arrived!”

I turned to see Melissa walk in with a big, goofy grin and outstretched hands. I ran over to her, threw my arms around her and gave her a big, over the top hug. Hell, I’d only met the woman a few times in my life, but if I was going to try on this sappy new personality of mine, I might as well go all the way, right? She accepted my hug in earnest and returned it, then gently lay her hand on my belly.

“Remind me how long, mama?”

“I’m due in three and a half months,” I said.

Her eyebrows went up high.

“Really? And so small! God, I hate you, I went out like, this big when I had my Mateo,” she said and mimed a giant belly out in front of her. She saw Jack and gave him a big hug, too. The room just suddenly seemed so much fuller with her in it. She was a short woman, but her loud voice, strong perfume and energy were just too much for that tiny motel room.

“Ready to go?” I said, turning to Jack. He smiled at me. This was it. In 24 hours, we’d be in a new country, in a new life, hundreds of miles away from Little Joey’s crumbling empire, from the endless motels, from the drug deals that I always hated so much…

We piled into Melissa’s car. It was a little pitiful, how small and shoddy our luggage looked, but we had traveled light on purpose. We had enough money, and a safe place to go, and that was what mattered. She started the engine and we pulled off in silence. It was crazy, but I wanted him again. If I wasn’t already pregnant, the morning we had just spent with one another would surely have done the trick. I glanced over at him in the passenger seat, and he quickly turned to look at me. He knew what I was thinking. And I knew what he was thinking. And fuck if it didn’t turn me on so much it hurt.

We drove on in silence for a while, me in the back seat playing out various fantasies in my fevered pregnancy brain. Anything was possible now. We’d find new jobs. Why not have another baby? I wanted to just fuck him for a month solid. Or what about buying a farm? A Bed and Breakfast? I’d go back to MMA after the birth. I hadn’t even picked out a name yet. It would be a girl, obviously. I just knew it would. I wanted his cock. His big, thick, juicy cock. I loved the fact that even though it was as big as it was, it seemed to fit so neatly inside me, like it was designed for nothing but that. I loved how gentle he always was …except when he wasn’t.

“Melissa, have you heard any news lately? Any word on the street?” Jack said.

Melissa gave a long, low whistle under her breath and stared straight ahead at the road, a faraway look on her face.

“To be honest, I try not to think about any of that,” she said. “but it’s not good, from what I hear, no.”

“You left,” he said.

It wasn’t a question. There was just something in her demeanor that made it obvious that she was no longer bound to the organization in any way.

“Man, everybody left,” she said and laughed cynically. Most of the capos have fucked off, you know, they were loyal to Angelo but I think they were just waiting for an excuse, they had their own things lined up, maybe something will come from a new line up north they tried to get Joey to go for. But it’s all messed up now. I don’t think anybody knows what will happen next.”

We were getting closer to the airport now. The clinking of Melissa’s bangles on her wrist sounded like music to me. The story she was telling seemed like a fairy tale, something that happened to other people, imaginary people, in a world far away that didn’t really exist anymore.

“We saw some stuff on the news. The Feds went in for Roger Blunt and his crew. Do you know anything about that?” Jack asked.

“Man, the Feds weren’t just after him,” she said. “We don’t know who snitched. Honestly, it’s a question of who didn’t snitch, you know? Joey had nothing to offer anyone. He tore down everything his father built and still expected everyone to kiss his ass. Thing is, he walked right into the traps the Feds laid for him. That’s how it looks to me, anyway. His own people ratted him out, but they didn’t exactly have to paint a bullseye on his head. Sad. But whatever, he got what he deserved.”

There was a distinct bitterness in her voice. I knew that Melissa had lost her sister recently, but I had never pressed for the details. Knowing what I did of Little Joey, I could only guess.

“What about… about Joey’s mother?” I asked from the back seat, saying what everyone else was thinking. The atmosphere in the car changed immediately. That wasn’t on the news. IN fact, it was the secret that I had carried around for years, a hidden weapon I hoped I’d never have to use. Melissa took her time with a long, ragged sigh.

“You know what? I think everybody kind of knew already. Joey looks nothing like his father. We all suspected it. Even I suspected it. But Angelo never said a word so we all just went with it…”

Jack stared out the window, his chin in his hands.

“It’s kind of a tragedy, isn’t it? All that time he wasn’t even his son.”

Melissa snorted. “Yeah, the tragedy is that he’s dead now and everyone can’t kill him again now that we all know he’s just some bastard kid.”

The bitterness was back. I decided to drop the topic, but I could feel, as we all drove on in silence, that everyone’s thoughts were busy, each in a slightly different direction.

It had been so long ago, but I still remember that night. One of those humid summer evenings that you just want to spend outside, under the stars. I was going to “babysit” Little Joey. Angelo was out of town and his mother was at a conference that evening …or so she said. After dinner he went upstairs to watch TV, and I stayed in the kitchen and tidied up. That’s when I saw it. Joey’s mom picking her way up the sidewalk in her high heels. With a man. A man that had the same oily, vicious look that Joey had. The same slick black hair, the same narrow eyes.

He kissed her in the street. Squeezed her ass. I watched it all from the window of their house, my hands wrist deep in sudsy water and my heart beating. They whispered some parting words and I quickly dried off my hands. A few moments later when she came into the house, I made a show of walking in from the other room, acting surprised to see her, smiling. Did Angelo know? Did Joey? She gave me a strange look that evening and sent me home early. I never breathed a word of it to anyone else. The wife of the most violent and notorious drug lord in this hemisphere was cheating on him. And anybody with eyes could have seen whose child Joey really was.

The next few summers, when I pushed to do small jobs for Angelo here and there, I knew it was his wife that was quietly encouraging him in the background. I had never threatened her. But the fact that she had instantly and silently begun to give me special treatment was enough to cement in my mind just how important the thing I had seen was. How dangerous. Everyone liked to think that I had climbed the ranks because I knew who to sleep with. The truth was I had her on my side, giving me whatever I needed to keep my mouth shut.

It was sad, really, that I never got to play the most exciting card this whole game had dealt me. But Melissa was right. In the end, Joey had gotten what he deserved.

Chapter 20 - Jack

While I could never put it on a resume, having been a hitman is probably the best training you can have for a lot of other jobs. People think you have to be some kind of idiot, or some morally compromised thug to do the work that I did. But the truth is that you just need to remain calm. That’s it. If I was ever successful at what I did, it was because I knew how to relax when everyone else was getting riled up. When it comes down to it, knowing how to look at adversity square in the face and act calmly and rationally is all you need to be a good hitman – or a good anything, really.

That goes for chicken farming, too. If any of my old partners had seen me in the early days, I would have been a laughing stock for sure. But chickens are not that different from people. They get scared, they get territorial. You can predict how they’ll behave. You can always spot a good one, can always tell when one is going to be a disruption to the rest of the flock. I was probably the world’s only hitmen who retired to become a chicken farmer in Spain. But, fuck it. Sometimes life doesn’t pan out the way you quite expect it will.

I wiped the sweat from my brow, trudged up the stone path and hauled a few buckets of feed I’d prepared the night before. I was getting the real hang of staggering my yearlings and layers, so that each cycle I was getting a pretty reliable egg yield. One bucket under each arm, I walked over to the main camp, stopping for a second to turn my face up and into the warm yellow sun. It had taken us a long time to turn this place into what it was now, but it was beautiful, if I did say so myself.

It was a lush thirty acres, with a mature olive grove, a view to the North of the Bay of Biscay and to the east a faint blue row of low, softly undulating mountains. And chickens. Sweet, fluffy beauties who laid small eggs with yolks almost as deeply golden as the sun. I carried on walking to the camp, unlocked the gate with my boot and marched in. I heard a faint trickling noise. I followed it to the barn and realized with irritation that the borehole tank was leaking again.

I quickly sprinkled down the feed, turned the buckets upside down on the hutches and went to have a closer look. A long, thin dribble of water snaked all the way from a one-inch slash at the top of the barrel, making a muddy brown puddle at the base.

“Shit…” I muttered, and took my shirt off to lean in for a better look. The tank was new, but had this weird weakness right at one of the seams that had given me trouble before. Nevermind. Calm and rational, like I said. My previous repair hadn’t held. I’d need to fix it again, and soon if I didn’t want the girls to be running around caked in mud for the next week.

I kicked off my boots, too, and pressed bare feet down into the icy cold, squelchy mud. I could now see the problem. Luckily, the tear in the fiberglass was high up enough that it wouldn’t drain out the entire tank. Feet muddy, I went to fetch some tools: a handheld sander, a glue gun and a coke bottle. Not exactly high tech, but I’d be able to get in for better repairs later. I took some shears to the coke bottle and cut a square of plastic to patch the leak. After sanding the edges lightly, I’d apply some glue and paste it on, then pray the water pressure wouldn’t be enough to blow it off again.

“I leave you alone for one second…”

I turned to see her in the barn doorway, wide smile on her pretty face.

“Fucking thing’s gone again. I just need to patch it for a second, just till I can get that guy in to have a proper look…”

“God I love it when you work without your shirt on,” she purred.

I smiled at her sideways. I never knew why she found me doing impromptu hack jobs so sexy, but I’d go with it.

“Yeah? You like my big sexy glue gun, do you?” I said, and brandished it at her. The water continued dribbling out in a long, thin stream overhead. She walked in, took a look at it, then smiled at me.

“Oh yes I do, and I love your big old …coke bottle?” she said with a crooked smile, and held up the mangled plastic bottle.

“Yeah well, I’m Macgyvering over here, you’re a woman, you wouldn’t understand,” I said, and tried to lay on the patch at just the right angle. She giggled and turned the sander over in her hands before setting it aside. She came over, lay her hands onto my flanks and stroked me teasingly.

“Can you Macgyver later?” she said.

My hands froze. I loved it when she wanted it this bad. When she was so horny she’d trek all over this farm just to find me for a quickie under the brambles. I loved how coy she was, too, as if it wasn’t blindingly obvious from the first second.

Before I had time to answer, she had spun me around and was planting a big, juicy kiss on me, standing up on her tip toes to reach. The mud below squelched as she flopped against me, her greedy little hands moving all over me. I could still feel the warm sun on the cotton of her dress. Could smell it in her hair, even though it was braided tight into two pigtails on either side. She was my Evie, the same woman I had fled my home with almost seven years ago, the same woman that had helped me build this barn. She never changed though. Her face was still as bright and lively as it always was, and her little body still felt lithe and vivacious in my arms.

I smiled at her enthusiasm. Her tongue still wrapped around mine, she gave me a gently but decisive push and I went staggering back and into the tank, making the water inside heave and slosh. She laughed as the flow of water out the hole temporarily increased.

“You’re not helping, by the way” I said drily, and she gave me a devilish grin as her hands worked quickly to unzip my overalls.

“You’re going to get your pretty dress dirty,” I said, although in all honesty it wasn’t really a protest. When she had that look on her face, fuck, she could do what she wanted with me, and I sure as hell didn’t care whether she ruined her clothes doing it.

She took one more look at the dribbling water, then at me, then winced and quickly ducked her head under the stream, laughing like a crazy person.

“Evie!”

She came out form the stream, drenched, smiling at me.

“Well? Now I’m already wet, so it doesn’t matter,” she said and pattered her feet up and down in the mud to make her point.

“You’re wet, you say?”

She bit her lower lip.

“So fucking wet…”

I grabbed her waist and yanked her in for a deep, delicious kiss. Her pigtails hung damp and limp on my bare chest and instantly sent goosebumps all across my skin. Her cool, tight little body against mine in that hot and dusty barn felt like pure ecstasy. A few chickens were rummaging near the entrance of the barn but besides them we were all alone. The day was hot, my cock was rock hard and my beautiful wife was asking for trouble. Life was good. I could literally think of no way it could be better. Sure, gallons of precious water were pouring away over our heads with each second, but when I caught sight of her brown little nipples under her wet sundress, that didn’t seem to matter quite so much.

She pulled me under the stream as well, and that silvery rope bent and spread over us, dousing us in cool water that had been pumped from deep under the earth beneath us. The stream hit the top of our heads and then slipped over our skin, wound its way over our lips, dribbled down over our chins and finally went spluttering over the rest of our bodies. It felt amazing. She smiled at me, drops in her eyelashes, the water streaming down over her and giving her a strange, glassy look. The mud pooled at our feet but I didn’t care.

I reached down, pulled up the edge of her little white sundress and slid the clinging fabric over her head, revealing her naked, puckered body underneath. She let me do this, lifting her arms and then shaking her two pigtails behind her, sending little droplets spraying behind her. The rope of water was falling right on her chest down, hitting square between her breasts and splashing out. She seemed to love this. She surrendered her weight into my arms and let her body flop backwards, opening up to the pelting of the water. She looked like some stripper in a cheesy nineties porno.

It was fucking fantastic.

I tore off her little panties, which weren’t holding up well against the rush of water, and she in turn pulled me close so her small hands could finish their work at my zip. She reached her hand into my still-dry boxer shorts and cupped the bulge there, before guiding my cock out through the slit in my pants and immediately gliding her fist up and down my shaft. Like I said, sexual desperation was a good look on her.

As her hand worked feverishly over that veined rod, I glanced down with concern at the mud, now splashing higher and higher up our calves.

“You’re a dirty girl, Evie, and nobody would ever say otherwise…” I said admiringly, then looked down at the pale stripe of skin on her scalp, between her two braids. Almost immediately, she dropped to her knees with a splat, sending mud flying in all directions, and leaning into my crotch so the water drizzle was now raining down hard onto the curled nubs of her spine.

Watching the water fan out and rain down over the curves of her hips and ass was just about the most perfect thing I’d ever seen. She took me in her mouth, just the tip, and swirled a hot, busy tongue over it, her lips locking around the shaft while her other hand stroked my abdomen. I leaned all my weight back against the tank and let my eyes flutter closed. Evie never slobbered. She never took the whole thing in her mouth. But fuck, she never needed to.

After she had worked over my cock till it stood straight up and ready, she pulled back and let the stream of water land at the base. It was wonderful. I reached down, grabbed one of her pigtails in each hand and gently guided her up to her feet again for another kiss. She was filthy; covered in mud and with a face full of mischief.

She didn’t need to be given any direction. With each of her hands propped against my shoulders, she lifted her one knee high to wrap her leg around the back of me, and jumped up a little to bring her hips level with mine. I grabbed her ass and hoisted her the rest of the way, bringing both her muddied feet clear off the floor. She smiled with pleasure at how easily I could carry her. She always loved that; loved how I could always pick her up with ease.

Now I was leaning back against the water tank, Evie was leaning into me, one leg hiked high up around my waist, and the water kept raining down on us both, first against her and then against me, depending on how we moved underneath it. I looked down at her sweet little pussy lips spreading open and pressing against me. I trailed a tender hand down from her navel to the start of that soft strip of fuzz. Her C-section scar was so light you could barely make it out anymore, but I still knew it was there, and took a moment to trace a little cross line over it before continuing my way down.

With one of her arms linked over my neck, she took the other and split her folds open for me, showing me those glorious silky ruffles that I’d start a new religion for if I could. The water was pummeling down onto the flesh of her belly now, sending little sprays of water onto her clit as I took a thumb and rubbed gently on that swollen spot. Her head fell back again. I did the same with the underside of my cock, her body slick with its own kind of water, twitching beneath my dick in anticipation. I excitedly lifted my hips to grind against her and felt the tank wobble and lurch behind me, sending a fresh burst of water through the top.

She laughed hysterically at this.

“You should totally plug that hole up,” she said and lifted her head to me again, impish smile all over her flushed face.

“Oh I plan to,” I said and, still supporting her in my one hand, used the other to guide the red knot of my cock into her. I always loved that first moment. The first few seconds of penetration, that first thrust inside. It was like drinking a tall, ice cold glass of water after a hot day. Like that first bite of something juicy and delicious after you hadn’t eaten for ages.

“Fuck you’re sexy,” I said.

She pulled herself up again and held my shoulders to lower down a little onto me. The water splashed away, the mud squelched beneath, the chickens clucked and fussed a little outside. I’d regret not fixing this leak sooner. But then again, with my cock half way in her already, there was nothing in this entire universe that I wanted to do more now than to put the other half in, too.

“Shut up. You’re sexy,” she said and pulled a tongue at me.

I frowned and flicked my hips up, sending a few inches of cock straight up into her. Her naughty face quickly dissolved into submission. She couldn’t help but to take in everything, take in whatever I gave her, since her body was pinned against mine and gravity made sure that the only way to go was down.

“Oh fuck,” she whimpered. I smiled. Not so tough, now, huh.

“Is that you wanted? Is that what you came looking for, hm?” I cooed softly into her ear as she struggled to adjust her weight to accommodate me. She nodded, her eyes half closed. I loved the little wet curls glued to the side of her face. She was certainly the hottest wet rat I had ever seen.

“All day, Jack …I’ve wanted it all day long. I needed it,” she said, her body still twitching to open up and let all of me in. My thumb went to work again on her clit, and the wetter she became, the deeper in I pushed, till the tightly coiled fuzz of her pussy lips met the base of my cock and could go no further.

“Fuck,” she said again, this time making the word sound extra dirty.

I steadied the foot she had wrapped at the base of my spine, locked my lips to hers and held her waist close. She winced and yelped a little with each curl of my hips, but soon those little yelps turned into moans, then to screams. The water stream was lessening a little, but still came down in a solid band onto us, splashing like a glaze over her naked tits and dousing us again and again in cool, fresh water. It was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. But it was also hot as hell.

Everything outside was cool and slippery and wet with tank water. Everything inside was hot and squirming deliciously, my cock in her, her little body wide open to me as I fucked her with long, smooth strokes again and again… slapping the flat of my belly against hers and she lowered all her weight down onto that hard pole and grinded away, her pigtails flicking water as they flailed behind her. The water had nearly run itself out. But we hadn’t.

I was fucking her hard now, and we both collapsed onto one another, holding the other’s body for dear life as our hips banged again and again into each other. I could always fucking feel when she was close to coming. I always knew by the way her breath suddenly went a little chaotic, and her hands suddenly clawed desperately at anything in their way, and her mouth slackened and deep inside, the little cunt stopped stretching with each pump and instead started to constrict back, tightening all along my length and pushing me right to the edge.

She snapped to attention and stroked the veins in my neck, staring deep into my eyes.

“Do you have lots of cum for me?” she asked, using a girlish voice she only very seldom used with me.

“Fuck, Evie, so much…”

“Good,” she cooed slowly. “I want all of it. Every last drop. Put it in me as deep as you can.”

I bit down hard on my jaw and felt my balls tighten and spasm, bringing on a huge release that went bursting through me. I cried out, cursing under my breath as my orgasm pelted through me. “Fuck…”

“Yes,” she moaned.

I could feel how the cum I was shooting into her had triggered her own orgasm, and soon she was following me in swearing and gasping, our bodies jerking hard against one another with each delicious shockwave of our orgasms. She hopped off my dick and landed inelegantly in the mud, a look of relieved surprise on her face. We both stared down at the almost instant gush of sticky white that came sliding down her leg, down to her knees. The dribble of water overhead petered out and then stopped.

We couldn’t help but roar with laughter.

“I love it when we get the timing down so perfectly!” she said and gave me a naughty wink.

“Come here, you,” I said and grabbed her for a hug.

My still throbbing cock pinned between us, and her wet pigtails snaking loosely over her shoulders, we stood chuckling to ourselves for a moment, trying to catch our breath. I pushed her back for a second and peered again down at her legs.

“Hm, mud and cum, not your best look,” I teased. She playfully slapped my shoulder and laughed.

“I want to clean off but I’m afraid we don’t have any water left,” she said and took a peek behind me at the poor beleaguered tank.

“Yes. You and I suck at DIY. You know, when they said we’d never make it out here, they were right. I mean, we can’t even go half a minute without getting distracted and fucking. Not only don’t we maintain our farm equipment, we literally just fuck on top of it,” she was laughing loudly again, holding her belly. She knew I was only playing. If she wanted to burn our whole farm down just because it got her off, well, I’d be there first with matches and some gasoline.

I kicked the mauled coke bottle and watched it rolled into the mud.

“Eh, I’ll just call the guys tomorrow to come and look at everything. My two-bit plan wasn’t going to work anyway.” I smiled at her and smoothed away the damp hair from her forehead, and she smiled back at me. Her white dress was barely recognizable, crumpled in the mud, and her panties were completely MIA, so we both ran naked and giggling back to the main house for a shower.

I ran behind her on the path, and her wet pigtails went bouncing along after her. She had the broadest, silliest grin on her face as she looked behind at me and we ran as fast as we could, drenched and full of mud.

For most of my life, I never believed in anything. Not in God, not in life after death, not in hell or heaven, not in anything. But I just hadn’t been looking properly. It was hard to really explain it all, but somehow, this woman had burst into my life and torn through all of that.

There was a god, and he lived in those live trees, and in the voices of our daughters, and in the generous sunshine that was now beating down on our naked bodies.

There was life after death.

And there was a heaven - after all, I was living in it, out here on this little farm in the sun, running behind my naked, laughing wife.

Epilogue - Janie

My parents are seriously the cheesiest two people you’ll ever meet in your whole life. Really. It’s so embarrassing. Everyone says I’m so lucky to have parents who love each other so much, but they’re not the ones who have to deal with watching them suck face all day every day, are they?

Anyway. They’re OK most of the time, I guess.

Dad’s always chill and forgetting things and getting stuck in his projects and whatever, and mom’s always freaking out and telling him he should be doing a different project instead, or she’ll be running around freaking out about the chickens or something and he’ll say, “which one do you want me to take out for you? You just tell me who’s giving you a hard time and I’ll take care of the problem, boom” and then he pretends his fingers are a gun and he takes aim and shoots. Mom never likes this joke much, especially when she’s stressed, but then again, I don’t get it either. My dad’s the chilliest guy ever. If anyone was going to assassinate any chickens, it would definitely be mom.

I had just about finished sorting through the laundry – colors with colors, whites with whites. That was my job. That and turning the eggs in the hatchery, although we didn’t have any fertile eggs going at the moment.

“Mom, what did you do in America?” I said. She was bent over and scratching around in the cupboard under the sink, looking for stain remover.

“I already told you, sweetie, I was a rep for a pharmaceutical company,” she said. The air around her head always went that strange blue and white color whenever she said it though.

“But really? Is that what you really did?” I said, and straightened out the pile with the edge of my sneaker.

“Why’d you keep asking, baby?” she said, and stood up to look at me.

“I’m not a baby. I’m already seven years old!” I said. It wasn’t true, I was only six years and eleven months, but grown-ups seemed to bend the rules all the time, so I decided I’d do it too and tell everyone I was already seven.

“I had a dream you were actually a soldier,” I told her, and danced the detergent and the softener bottles around each other like one was Beauty and the other was Beast.

“A dream?” she said. I just said it was a dream but it wasn’t really. It was like a dream I had while I was still awake. The kids at school didn’t like when I talked about the things I saw in my dreams, so I just stopped talking about them.

“Yup. You were working for a mean king, just like in fairytales.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I think that’s what you did, and you weren’t a rep for fosootlicals.”

“It’s pharmaceuticals.”

“That’s what I said.”

She gave me that look she sometimes does, the one that makes the air around her head go out in small little purple spirals, but she was still laughing, so I knew she wasn’t really mad. Then Melissa rang the bell and came inside.

“Heeeeeeeere’s baby!” she said and danced Isabelle around the kitchen a bit. My mom smiled and went to take the baby from her, and Melissa came to give me a hug.

“How you doing kiddo?” she said and kissed my head.

“I’m almost eight years old, Melissa! I’m not a kid anymore,” I said, but she wasn’t listening.

I started to pile the darks into the washing machine. I had to really squash the last few socks in there to make it all fit.

“Melissa, you were in America with mom, weren’t you?”

“Sure was.”

“What did mom do for her job?” I said.

“That’s easy. She worked as a rep for a pharmaceutical company. Same as me.”

I frowned. I just knew they weren’t telling me the truth. I know I’m not even really eight yet, but there are some things that I do know, I swear. I don’t know how I know them, but I just do.

“That’s not true! You were a soldier too, Melissa, I saw it!”

“A soldier…?” she said to my mom. My mom shrugged and shook her head, then added some washing powder to the machine.

“Janie says she dreamt it.”

“Dreamt it? Chiquita, dreams don’t mean anything,” said Melissa.

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Ok, ask your dad. Ask him what mom did back in America.”

I sighed. I had a feeling he’d also tell me the same thing. But that was fine. I’d figure it out eventually. Miss Carla at school says I’m gifted, which means I can figure things out quickly, which means it doesn’t matter if I don’t know just yet. Who knows how many things I’ll know by the time I’m eight, which is basically just around the corner.

I bend down and started to gather up the laundry pile of whites. Something brown caught my eye.

“Oh man, mom what’s this?” I said. “Looks like you were dragged through a hedge backwards.” I held up a white dress so covered in mud it was basically a brown dress.

“Dragged through a hedge…? Baby, where do you get this stuff from?”

“Heard it from TV probably,” Melissa said and pinched my cheek. In fact, I knew they wouldn’t like it if I told them where I really heard it from, so I just kept quiet.

“But seriously, Evie, what the hell?” Melissa said and held up the muddy dress as well. It looked pretty bad.

Mom blushed.

“Oh, that. Jack pushed me in the mud,” she said. Even though I was pretty sure that Melissa couldn’t see that same squiggles around mom’s head that I could, even she could see that mom was telling a big old lie.

The door banged open and dad came in. He nodded hello to Melissa and gave mom and me a peck on the cheek but what he really wanted to do was scratch around the kitchen drawers for something.

“Dad …what did mom do in America?” I asked.

He didn’t look up from his scratching, and said, “Your mom? That’s easy, she was a beauty queen.”

“Dad! That’s so lame! She wasn’t a beauty queen.”

“She was. Prettiest woman in America, they even gave her a certificate, so you know I’m not lying…”

“Where’s the certificate then?” I said, laughing.

“The certificate? Uh… I don’t know. It’s around here somewhere,” he said. I ran up to him and grabbed his legs and he made a big game of trying to shake me off like an angry grizzly bear.

“What did she really do?”

“Ok, ok, you got me. She wasn’t a beauty queen. She was a magician. You know the ones that can get out of the handcuffs and chains and things? Like that. We met one day when she got stuck and dad had to help her out.”

Now mom and him were both giggling and, can you believe it, they started kissing again.

“Ew! Come on, gross! You guys are so lame,” I yelled, but they never listen, as usual.

Now Melissa was laughing too. Mom scooped the baby up, and her and dad went off to the other room to put the baby down. I know I should be happy that my parents can make pretty pink and yellow sparks between them, but …you know, gross.

I put the whites back in the laundry hamper and lifted myself up onto the counter so I could swing my legs. Melissa was making tea for us all. I liked Melissa. She was my aunt but not really. Which is another way of saying that I was her niece, but not really. She told me once that everyone who dies goes to a special place where they can watch to make sure that everyone who’s still alive can be safe and happy. She always says stuff like that when mom’s not around. Maybe she’s right.

“So, Janie girl, when are you going to your new school, huh?” Melissa said. My mom was busy putting the baby down. My little sister was cool. She was the only other one who was the same as me, but she couldn’t talk yet or anything, so she wasn’t much fun. I bet that when she grew up, she’d be gifted too, and then we’d both figure out even more things together, like detectives.

“Next year only. Mom says she wants me to be eight first. But I’m basically eight already.” I knew how to tell a lie and not let it show in the air around my head.

“Ah, that’s good,” she said. “That means my Chiquita can stay with me a little while longer, I’m happy.”

“I’m happy too,” I said and we smiled at one another.

“You still gonna be a doctor when you grow up,” she said.

“Nah, that’s for babies” I said. I had wanted to be a doctor when I was just five, so that didn’t really count.

“So, what are you going to do then?”

“Something cool.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna have a nice farm like your mommy and daddy and live in a pretty place and grow veggies?”

I looked at her blankly.

“Of course not. There won’t be any farms in the future.”

She gave me strange look.

“What? No farms in the future? But Chiquita, how will people grow food if there are no farms, huh?”

“I don’t know. It’ll just be different in the future.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. People won’t eat veggies anymore.”

She laughed.

“And how do you know of all this, huh?” she said.

I shrugged. The same way I knew everything else.

I just did.