Lily practically skipped down the sidewalk to her car. She’d just gotten her toes curled in the best possible way, and she felt like her feet were barely touching the ground. She hadn’t been fucked like that since… well, maybe ever.
Hammer had been a delight, both to look at and to fuck, and he hadn’t made a scene when she had to go. It had been a perfect evening, and now she was feeling calm and relaxed in a way she hadn’t in a long time.
She smiled as she flopped into her car. She’d had her walk on the wild side, and it’d been fun. No, better than fun—it had been fucking fantastic!
She wasn’t sure what had come over her. She enjoyed a hot and sweaty tumble as much as the next girl, but getting her butter churned on the first date? That was a little out of character for her. She’d done it before, but that had been in college, and while she wasn’t drunk she had been drinking, and she knew the guy from her ethics class. Not like this. Not with some guy she’d just met and barely knew.
He might have been mouth-wateringly sexy, built like a Greek god, and hung like a horse, but she wasn’t twenty anymore. She was twenty-six, had a career, and she needed to act like the professional policewoman she was. Her lips quirked into a smile. So, what did that mean? That she had to wait until the second date? She wasn’t supposed to want to have her toes curled anymore? She wasn’t supposed to notice, or want, a handsome, well-built man?
She began to tie her hair up. Fuck that! She wasn’t an old maid, and she wasn’t going to start acting like one. If things were different, she might like to have another go with Hammer, but a cop and a biker? It’d never work, especially if Hunter was right and not all of Hammer’s security jobs were one hundred percent legal. That could lead to nowhere but trouble.
No… it was better to end it here and now before it got complicated. She’d gotten what she’d wanted from a man that knew how to give it to her. She’d started thinking with her vagina and not her head. She didn’t regret it happened because she had enjoyed the hell out of it, but she would admit, if only to herself, she hadn’t used the best judgment. Nothing had happened that would lead to trouble. She hadn’t stumbled across drugs or anything else that would cause… issues. Now was the perfect time to end it. She’d gotten what she wanted, and Hammer had gotten what he wanted, and there were no strings attached.
Lily smiled as she backed out of the drive. She had her memories, and that would just have to do.
###
The shooter watched the front door open through his scope and acquired his target. It was a ridiculously easy shot, less than two hundred yards, even in the dim light of the streetlamps. The woman he watched was blissfully unaware how close to death she was as she walked between the front porch light and his position, painting herself as a perfect silhouette.
The man smiled, feeling the rush he always felt when he had his target in his sites, relishing the power that swelled within him. He was a god, and he held the power of life and death in his hands. All it would take is the gentle squeeze of the first finger of his right hand.
He caressed the curve of the trigger, his finger tightening slightly as his breathing slowed. Two pounds. Two pounds of force is all it would take to end her life in a spray of blood. His finger tightened further, and the trigger crept back, but then he slowly relaxed. He didn’t know the woman and didn’t know if having her brains splashed all over the side of the house would have the desired effect.
He felt an erection forming. It always happened, and he’d made sure he had adjusted himself so when he became erect, he was still comfortable. It wasn’t the woman’s stunning beauty that caused his cock to harden, it was the thought of squeezing the trigger and ending her life like a thunderbolt from heaven. She was nothing, a mere plaything, an ant that he could crush under his shoe… or allow to live. He reveled in the power, choosing who would die and who would live.
He was lying in the mulch behind the brick and wood Tanglewood sign at the entrance of the subdivision, the thick hedges planted at the edges of the sign providing him plenty of cover. He’d been lying there for two hours, waiting—waiting to take a victim like the deadly predator he was. He could lie there all night, the overhanging branches and sign giving him complete cover from prying eyes. It was a good position. The house was only six in from the entrance and across the road from his position, and he could see the entire front of the house with ease.
Many cars had passed, unaware that they were being watched, and even a couple on foot had passed by him as they walked their dog. The dog could have been a problem. It had sensed what the people couldn’t see, but as the dust-mop on legs yapped at the man hidden in the deep shadows under a ghillie net, the couple hushed it and dragged it along until it forgot about him.
He continued to watch the woman through the scope as she walked toward the bright yellow Ford she’d arrived in. At only two hundred yards, a skilled marksman firing the Browning X-Bolt 30.06 mounted with the 42X Nightforce scope could put one of the high-powered thirty caliber rounds through her ear, the drop of 150-grain bullet imperceptible at so short a distance… and he was a skilled marksman indeed.
He tracked her, keeping the crosshairs on the center of her back, as she unknowingly offered him the perfect kill shot. She passed behind a car parked on the street, but he continued to track her, and she reappeared a moment later right where he expected her too.
It was all so incredibly easy.
He tightened his finger on the trigger again, his cock throbbing in excitement. The thought of ending her life in an instant making him smile to himself, but his face never twitched as he maintained the target picture.
He continued to track her, moving the crosshairs to her head as she stepped behind her car. He kept his breathing slow and shallow and the target picture rock stable. He watched as she sat in her car, looking at herself in the rearview mirror as she smiled. She put a hair tie in her mouth and quickly pulled her hair back and tied it off to form a ponytail, with quick, sure, movements.
Hair up, she turned her attention to driving. He couldn’t hear her car start, but he could tell from her movements when she turned the ignition and tracked her as she backed down the slight slope of the drive. She came toward him, and he watched for a moment, the crosshairs centered just above her eyes, and then flipped the front cover on the scope closed to prevent the lights from her car from glinting off the optics.
After she had passed, unaware of how near death she’d been, he flipped the cover open and reacquired his target. He was death. Silent. Patient. Unstoppable. He watched the front door open, and Corporal Grimes step out onto the front porch. He was out of uniform, wearing only a pair of boxers. He looked directly at the shooter, but the man never moved. He knew Grimes couldn’t see him and was actually watching the yellow Ford as it turned onto the road behind him that led into the sub-division.
The shooter smiled. Grimes had always had a way with the ladies, and it appeared he hadn’t lost his touch. He’d filled out some since he’d last seen him. He’d always been big, even as a kid, but he had bulked up some as he grew into manhood.
The shooter adjusted his aim, pointing higher, and placed the crosshairs on Grimes’ temple. His finger tightened as he debated with himself. All it would take is another half-pound of pull, and Corporal Grimes would be no more.
Slowly he relaxed the pull on the trigger. Now wasn’t the time… but he continued to watch until Grimes turned and walked back into his house. He shut the door and turned off the porch light, the rest of his house systematically going dark soon afterward.
But death never moved.
###
Hammer watched Lily’s yellow Ford as it turned then accelerated down the street. He continued to watch until it disappeared behind a house, and then he grunted again. He didn’t mind fucking and running. He’d done it plenty of times himself. But this was the first time it had been done to him.
He gave his head a little shake, a half-smile tugging at his lips, as he turned and entered his house. He picked up the two, barely touched, now warm flat beers, and poured them down the drain before chucking the bottles into the recycle bin.
It was still relatively early, only ten, but he was feeling relaxed and sleepy. He flicked off the lights as he moved through the house. When he entered his bedroom, he could still smell their sex in the air, and he smiled.
It had been a very satisfying romp.
Lily had made him come twice, and he was spent for an hour or so. Had she stayed, he would have certainly tried to draw her into another tumble in the morning, though it was just as well she’d left. He knew getting involved with a cop was nothing but trouble waiting to happen, but she’d been worth it.
He shucked his boxers before crawling back into bed and snapping out the lamp. He took a deep breath and sighed in satisfaction. He could feel sleep tugging at him, drawing him down into its dark folds. But before he completed his slide into sleep, he smiled.
Getting involved with a cop might be a bad idea, was a bad idea, but damned if he wouldn’t like to have another go with her. He sighed again. It was a good thing she had used him then left. It kept things simple.
Having her around would be nothing but a complication. Then why was he still thinking about her? He’d used her, and she’d used him. They’d both gotten what they wanted. Why did he want more?
He was still mulling the question over, unable to find an answer, as the darkness of sleep took him.