Invictus, page 3
Handing me two tarps and a container of cleaner, he slams the trunk and leads me the two blocks back to the barber shop.
Props for inconspicuous parking, mystery man.
Back in the shop, he gloves up and I do the same. He searches both bodies, tossing me their keys before removing their wallets. He glances briefly at their IDs, then removes the cash and hands it to me. He returns the rest to their pockets, and turns to me.
“The Rolex.”
I fetch it from my purse and hand it over.
He wipes it down thoroughly and puts it where it belongs, on Silver Spoon’s wrist. For his next trick, he guides me through wrapping both bodies with the militancy of a head nun teaching candy stripers hospital corners. I try to focus, but part of my mind is screaming and rocking in a padded room. This isn’t his first rodeo. I don’t know whether to be relieved or terrified.
I do exactly as I’m told.
We quickly tape both ends of Tad’s tarp like an oversized tamale. Dealing with Silver Spoon takes considerably more effort, since he’s at least 70 pounds heavier than his side bitch. As I work to wrap my end, the tape slips and lifeless eyes gape up at me. A chill travels my spine and I blow out a long breath. I can still feel probing fingers, and his beefy arm pressing down on my back.
“Atasha.” Four Eyes snaps me out of my introspection. He hunches down and covers my gloved hand with his. “It was them or you.”
I nod. His candid eyes and impassive expression remain unchanged.
“Say it.” His matter-of-fact command is delivered with a surprising amount of tenderness.
I’m fortified, since his statement is true. Some things are worse than death, and being passed around like a box of tissues is one of them. “It was them or me.”
We find Silver Spoon’s car by activating his key fob. It’s parked behind the barber shop. Tad must have been waiting there for his cue. I notice for the first time that both street lights are out back there, a fortunate coincidence.
If you believe in those, which I don’t.
We deposit both into the trunk of his car and he leads me back inside.
He pulls something that looks like a thick wand out of his inside pocket and presses a switch. It illuminates blue, and I immediately recognize it as a black light. Handing me a new sponge, he nods a large spot on the chair.
“If it glows, it needs to go.”
Twenty minutes and a meticulous inspection later, he’s satisfied.
“Now what?” I ask, amazed at how quickly I’ve fallen in line. A good little soldier. Who knew I had that in me?
He advances on me, his broad shoulders and towering height launching tingles down my spine and my heart into my throat. “Now you.”
Four Eyes backs me into the bathroom, and I wonder if he thinks the bathtub will make cleaning up my blood easier. I’m plotting the best way to immobilize him when I bump into the sink.
“Turn around.” He urges me, and with a sharp glance, I reluctantly comply. He makes me scrub my hands, the whole while lurking behind me, meeting my eyes in the mirror. After a minute, he steps into me, his hands sliding down my arms until his fingers entwine with my soapy, bloody ones.
“Like this,” he says, breath hot on the hollow just behind my ear as he guides me though what seems like a surgical scrub. I notice abrasions on his right hand, fresh from Tad’s abrupt demise. Through the material of my skirt, I can feel he’s hard as steel, and I fight the urge to rock back against his raging erection. His hands are steady and his breathing perfectly controlled, but his square jaw pulses…betraying his stoicism. The mirror fogs, and I’m not sure if it’s the hot water that’s responsible or us. As he holds my freshly cleaned flesh under a now clear stream of water, the pressure of his body against mine intensifies.
“You need to follow me to the airport in my car.” He gives me a tight smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Can you drive a stick?”
I look askance at him and turn to face him, cocking an eyebrow. “I know how to handle a stick.”
His eyebrows elevate and the corner of his lips bounce. “We’ll see about that.”
I look up at him from under my lashes, and his predatory eyes back up his lascivious tone.
“Who are you?” As the words leave my mouth, I question whether I really want to know the answer.
He inches closer, his thumb brushing over my cheek bone before dropping away. His eyes darken as they stir with serious indecision for the first time all night. After such a pregnant pause that I’m convinced he won’t tell me, he sighs.
“My name is August.”
“Red or white?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder at the wide eyes of my new partner in crime.
Atasha scans my sizeable wine room, her shoulders squared like she’s readying for battle. “Surprise me?”
I pull out a bottle of the good stuff. If there was ever an occasion to commemorate, it was tonight.
“You live here all alone?” she asks, crossing to the floor-to-ceiling windows to admire the lights of the city.
“Most of the time.” I make short work of the cork, pouring generously into our glasses. She’s already overwhelmed by the scale of my converted warehouse flat. She’ll bolt if I tell her about the family estate.
Or maybe she’ll try to kill you…since well-to-do men are her favorite flavor.
I brush aside the thought, knowing it’s not my own…that it’s merely a symptom.
“No neighbors.” It’s not a question. Her voice matches her porcelain face. Impossibly sweet and a cruel contradiction to what lies beneath.
“Correct.”
“Lucky.”
“I don’t believe in luck. It’s a result of careful planning. I own the building.”
She nods and takes a hefty swig from her glass.
“You have questions.” I sit on the opposite end of the couch, turned sideways so I can take her in.
She snorts. “Obviously.”
“Ask.”
Languid and graceful, she kicks off her shoes and pulls her feet up alongside her. “Are you always so bossy?”
I don’t miss a beat. “Yes. Next question.”
She laughs, a raspy and delightful sound. I’m surprised at how much I enjoy it.
“You’ve been following me. You know my name.”
“Those aren’t questions.” I sip my wine, smiling with kindly indulgence.
“Did you come to the shop to kill me tonight?” Her bluntness nearly makes me choke.
“No,” I mange, tolerating the accusation with remarkable patience.
She lifts her chin, defiantly beautiful. “Are you going to try to kill me now?”
Try to.
A bemused smile pulls at my lips.
“I hope not.”
She seems to chew on this and has another mouthful of Cabernet.
“Why am I here, August?”
“You need guidance. I have things I can teach you. Things you desperately need to know given your…urges.”
Her blue eyes narrow, surveying me with cold interest. A second later she’s gazing out at the moonlit water in contemplation.
“And what do you expect in return?” Her inquiry is heavy with the predictable reluctance of a girl who has spent her life entangled in testosterone-fueled quid pro quo. I tilt my head thoughtfully, ruminating about what it must be like to go through life as the catch of the day. Having always been the fisherman…or on occasion, the cleaner, I can only speculate.
“A protégé.”
The surprise on her face is undeniable.
“That’s all you get out of this?”
“I get what all mentors get.” I lift a shoulder. “The satisfaction of passing on knowledge. A legacy of sorts.”
Her chin lifts as she probes me with her bedroom eyes. “Why me?”
“You have the hunger. And potential. It’s as plain as the bite marks on that drug dealer’s dick.”
Her eyes magnify, and she stares at me as if seeing me anew. She nods slowly, a devious smile emerging. “I knew you looked familiar.”
I nod and stand, quickly fetching the remainder of the wine. The moment of truth has arrived, and now I feel confident with proceeding. You don’t just dive in with someone like Atasha. You dip your toe in first and assess the temperature. “I do have one request.”
Her contemptuous expression reappears, the one I saw the night in the alley when I had the misfortune of blocking her retreat. She sits forward, depositing her wine glass on the table. She’s perched on the edge of the couch, and I wonder if she thinks she can get to the door before I can get to her.
“What’s that?”
“When we’re…working together, you do exactly as I say. No questions, no hesitation.”
I see the wheels turning as her eyes sweep me. She’s no longer questioning my motivation…that much is plain. She’s questioning her own capacity for falling in line.
“I won’t steer you wrong, Atasha. But I will keep you from getting caught. Do you think you can do as you’re told?”
She knows that I’m watching her and I think that’s why her hands are shaking right now. I’m not here to intimidate her but that’s not something I made clear to her when I called her to invite her over tonight.
“I thought you forgot about me.” This was the way she answered the phone. No greeting, no false pleasantries. I couldn’t help but smile.
“I thought we’d do dinner. Then we could rehearse.”
“Is there a dress code?”
“Don’t wear anything you can’t live without. What we’re having is messy.”
Dinner is steaks bloody enough to pair perfectly with Malbec. Watching her slice into the marbled beef is an aphrodisiac, but watching her sop up the bloody broth and devour it makes me want to take her as an appetizer. I thrust the urge aside. Dessert won’t keep. It’s snoring on the work table in the sub-basement, and the sedative will wear off soon.
I put a lot of thought into my choice of subject for the evening. My research can be complex and tedious, but I followed him one night to a bar and chose him for Atasha when I saw what a fucking loser he actually turned out to be.
I chose a young man for her; no more than twenty-one years of age, and after extensive research, I’ve come to discover is uncut and hung like a goddamn bull. He’s something of an alcoholic; a bastard of a bully that no one will miss and if we were ever found out after tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were awarded a medal for ridding the town of this useless son of a bitch.
The subject talked down to the bartender, who had informed me not an hour before that it was her first night on the job, and when he became grossly intoxicated, he told her in a very loud voice that he would be the “best fuck” she ever had.
I decided to test that theory. Not that I had any intention of fucking him, but I wanted to be sure that he would make the perfect candidate for Atasha’s first experiment. I cornered him in the bathroom and because he was so drunk, it took no more than a well-placed stare into his eyes, a hand blocking his escape from the stall, and a hand on his dick to get him to show me what I wanted to see.
With as much as he spewed about his “big cock” to the bartender, I knew he had a little curiosity in him toward me because I kept watching him with amused eyes. Suffice it to say, he was more interested in me than her and I knew that I would be able to use it to my advantage.
I promised if he came to my place, I’d show him a good time. Unfortunately for him, he thought that meant a blow job or an ass ramming. I’m not interested in either; I did my part in getting him here and now the rest is up to her.
“Can I do it now?” She glances up at me with greedy eyes.
“No,” I reply with a smile. “Wait till he wakes up. You have to give him rules; if he makes a sound, you’ll slit his throat and let him choke to death on his own blood. That’s usually all I need to say to get what I want, but feel free to embellish as you see fit.”
She nods as she turns her attention back to him. She waits and rubs her hands together nervously.
“It’ll be okay,” I say, placing my hands on her shoulders and giving them a reassuring squeeze. “The first time premeditated is always nerve wracking, but if I didn’t think you were ready for this yet, we wouldn’t be here.”
Her entire body trembles under my touch. She’s still wary of me, maybe. I can’t fault her for that considering how we formally met each other, but I would think the savage girl who left teeth marks in some drug dealer’s cock would have more courage.
Maybe I’m wrong about Atasha, maybe I’m not. Her actions will tell me what her words fail to. I feel a slight tinge of worry that she may not be everything I hoped for, but again, I plan on watching her reaction when the opportunity finally presents itself. Then I’ll know for sure.
Our subject isn’t tied to the table like my other experiments. He’s half sitting up in a chair with his lower half slightly sliding off the edge and his ankles tied to the table behind him. My table would be of no use with a man unless I wanted him castrated and I don’t. I simply want to relieve him of the excess skin he has around his bull cock and I want her to cut him deep inside of his piss hole once we have that part done.
I find it easier to refer to these human wastes as subjects because it makes me less likely to become attached, and it allows me to act on my urges without regret or remorse. I give Atasha’s shoulders another squeeze, lulling into an absentminded massage, and I glance down at him again.
There’s no real reason for me wanting her to slice his cock down the middle other than to level the playing field with my female subjects. If they can no longer feel any kind of sexual desire, why should he? Being a man makes him no different when he’s in this room and I need to know if Atasha is capable of robbing someone of one of their important senses. Unnecessary, but important.
To someone like me it’s not something I would miss, but to someone like Drunken Bar Man, it would most likely end in self-destruction.
If he survives.
“Who is he?” she asks, shrugging away from my hands.
“You’ll see when he wakes up,” I say with a chuckle.
She nods and lets her hands fall onto her lap. Maybe she’s not ready for this, not yet, but I won’t allow her to leave now. She’ll have to learn that sometimes the best way to act on the urge, as I like to call it, is on impulse. And even though I planned this, I have every faith in Atasha that when the time comes to make the first incision, she will act.
If she doesn’t, I will. I didn’t spend half an hour in a sweat-filled bathroom stall heavy with the stench of his drunken breath in my face, rubbing his cock through his pants, for nothing.
The subject groans and a smile starts to crease my tired face. It’s time for Atasha to prove to me that she can be everything I hoped she can be.
“What the fuck?” he asks in a groggy, thick tone. “Where the hell am I?”
When he first arrived, I made sure to ply him with wine that had been drugged with rohypnol. I could have easily knocked him out, but that’s the easy way and I want her to see how this process goes from beginning to end. Which of course meant that she had to drag him downstairs herself.
“My place,” I say calmly. “Exactly where you wanted to be, remember?”
He turns his head to the left, then to the right, then groans again. He hasn’t yet attempted to move his arms, but when he does, he’ll quickly find that those have been roped into place as well.
“Yeah, yeah,” he replies tiredly. “Fuck.”
He blinks a few times then slowly begins to raise his chin from his chest and finds himself face to face with my apprentice. She looks up at me quickly before she looks back at him again and pushes his long-ish brown hair away from his forehead.
The drunk lifts his eyes past Atasha’s head and up to my face, a fractured smile starting to become etched across his tired face.
“You into kink? That why I’m tied up like this?” he asks, pulling at his arms.
“You could say that,” I reply with a smirk. “But she’s your host for the rest of the evening; I’m merely here to observe.” My hands are back on Atasha’s shoulders.
“Nah, I’m not feeling pussy tonight,” he replies brashly. “I wanna see what you’ve got now.”
I raise an eyebrow and push my glasses back up my nose. He must be out of his fucking mind if he thinks he’s here to fuck either of us, but I don’t mind playing his little game for the moment. It’ll make the moment even sweeter when she finally decides to cut him open.
“No one is offering you pussy tonight,” I say with a smirk. “No, I hate to tell you this, but you’re here under false pretenses. I didn’t have you come here to fuck you—or her for that matter, I had you come here because you need our help.”
“Yeah, well you can help me by sucking my dick,” he replies crudely, lust burning deeply in his eyes.
“Oh. Um. Okay,” Atasha says, standing and looking at me in confusion.
“Sit down,” I say to her sternly.
I think I’m more confused with her than Drunken Bar Man. The Atasha that I asked here, the one that agreed to do this, slit a man’s throat at my command and didn’t hesitate. Is this so different? Is it because this is a planned act? Or is it because she needs to be told what to do to be able to bring out the same spirit I have inside of me?
“Unzip his jeans and pull them down,” I direct her.
I’m not really surprised to realize that the answer to my question appears to be the latter. I’ll have to break her out of that at some point because eventually she’ll be on her own. Once the urge burns inside of you, you don’t exactly wait for your partner to be ready to go out and hunt with you. All urges hit at different times and some urges deserve to be indulged alone.
