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Chapter Fourteen

 

 

 

Malachi

 

“Rose, can you go in there and check on her?”

 

The plump waitress had a sweatshirt on, and a coat. Apparently her shift was over, and the restaurant staff was taking turns using the apartment attached to the back. Catching a few hours’ sleep, keeping an eye on the injured man, then coming back.

 

“No one going to care you go back there,” Rose told me. “Slim’s got some food packed up for you two. Enough for today and tomorrow, so you don’t have to keep coming out in the cold. Sam’ll take you back on the snowmobile, when you’re ready to go.”

 

Hal sat in a booth with his hands wrapped around a coffee cup. His expression sullen and angry. I wanted to confront him. Wanted to hit him until he knew what it felt like to be abused. Johnny sat in the booth next to his prisoner, his head down on the table, but out of reach of the handcuffed man.

 

“Thanks, Rose, you’re a good woman.”

 

She patted my arm and laughed.

 

The narrow hallway to the bathrooms felt ten degrees colder than the dining room. The showers, that truckers could pay by the shower for, had closed signs on the doors. Without the other generator, some things had to be shut down.

 

I knocked on the door to the women’s latrine. Nothing. Had Kat gone into them? A swinging staff door to the kitchens stirred in the draft created by the uneven temperatures. Maybe she’d gone into the kitchens?

 

The sign on the door that said women leapt out at me. Hopefully, no one else was in there to be angry a man had walked in on them.

 

“Kat?” The walls were covered in gold and black flocked wallpaper, a touch of garish glamor in a otherwise dive truck stop. A small lounge area with a couple of chairs and a big mirror on one wall. The toilet area, five stalls down one side, several sinks down the other side, harsh florescent light washing everything out. None of the stalls were occupied. Where had she gone?

 

The kitchen, or had she escaped? Not outdoors. Could she have gone through the kitchen out to her car? Not a good idea either. I’d pushed her to come over here. I’d found I felt the same way--still alive, not as alive as when I held her, not as alive as when our bodies were locked together. But I had a glimmer of life in me. And if she’d discovered she didn’t? Would she run as Aaron had suggested?

 

A small sound drew my attention. I found her in the lounge area. On the floor, sitting behind one of the wing chairs, wedged into the corner, Kat had her knees up and her head down on them.

 

“Kat, are you okay?” We’d come over here without her glucose meter or her insulin. She didn’t have a purse that I’d seen. “Kat?”

 

She looked up at me. Then she was in my arms, clinging to me. I ended up sitting on the stained carpet with her almost in my lap. Her arms around me, she buried her face in my neck. I held her, relieved she’d not escaped, but concerned. She pulled off being a very hard and tough woman. I somehow doubted she was, in reality, that harsh.

 

“He tried to kill me,” she whispered.

 

“Jake’s not coming back, Kat, I can promise you that.”

 

“Frank, Frank, tried to kill me. And he does anything he wants. No one stops him because he married a slut. I can’t get divorced from him, no matter what I do. And he won’t stop until I’m dead.”

 

Her hair felt wonderful over my hands. I hugged her to me. Felt the emotions I’d touched earlier flame to life. The bit left from them still lived. All I had to do was hold this woman.

 

“And when I’m dead, everyone’s going to say I deserved it. No one will care what happened to me,” she said, her breath hot on my neck.

 

If Frank killed her--fuck. I held her tighter. “If I promised he would never touch you again, would you believe me?”

 

She pushed back from me. I didn’t let her. I held the back of her head with my hand in her hair. My other arm tight around her. I couldn’t look at her, couldn’t let her look at me. Insanity had taken the place of the empty void inside me--insanity that held every dead emotion I’d longed to feel. Things I hadn’t felt for more than twenty years.

 

You couldn’t fall for someone in three days. I’d accepted that I would never find anyone. The demon made sure of that. I couldn’t be friends with a woman, not even with a man. The demon turned them into a sexual encounter. And I couldn’t stop the thing.

 

With Kat--I didn’t need sex to fill the void, to find the emotions I wanted. All I had to do was touch her, think about her. And thinking some cock-sucker wanted her dead. . .

 

“Kat,” I whispered. I touched my lips to the top of her head. “Stay with me,”

 

“What? I’m already staying in your room.” She stiffened in my arms, but didn’t try to get away from me.

 

“No. I mean stay with me. When this storm is gone, take me with you. I don’t have any reason to be here, but I have reason to be wherever you are.” I let her look at me. I held her face in my hands, held her so I could stare into her tear-filled eyes. A tiny whisper of Aaron’s words skittered across my soul. And she can turn on the sympathy switch so fast you’ll swear it’s real. Would she leave me? Did she feel anything I felt? Did she want to leave her hunter behind? “Better yet, stay here with me. We can find somewhere we both like to live. . .”

 

The look on her face stopped me. She pulled my hands down from her face, held them. I wanted to shove her away from me. How could I think she felt for me, felt at all? I knew what the hunter was, knew what the demon was.

 

“Malachi,” she said. Her voice a small whisper. “When I married Frank, my family thought he would fix me. They thought if I had a man around to have sex with, then I wouldn’t go looking for one--well, everywhere. They thought he could change how I am, control me, make me into something I can’t be. A good, little housewife. I left a very good paying job to be his fucking housewife. I tried to cook and clean. To not leave the house, to not talk to anyone. To be what a man expects from a wife.”

 

I stared past her. My eyes burned. Had I ever cried as an adult? She needed to tell me these words, and I would listen. It was how I was raised, you let the other person speak and if their path wanted to follow yours, then all was good, if theirs didn’t, then all was good. Except if Kat said she couldn’t be with me, then all would not be good.

 

“At first, it wasn’t so bad. I laid there, and Frank did his idea of being God’s gift to women, five touches and go in dry. Fuck me like I was a masturbation toy and ask me if I came.”

 

She touched my face, tried to turn my head so I had to look at her. I took her hand away. “I am listening,” I said.

 

“I want you to look at me, so you understand my words. So you know they are true, listen with your heart as well.”

 

I swallowed hard. Looked at her. Tears streaked her face. And she can turn on the sympathy switch so fast you’ll swear it’s real. The way she’d thrown herself on the floor when Johnny was in the room.

 

“Can you feel the hunter in me?” she asked.

 

All sorts of feelings were going through me, but the seduction of her hunter, that matched what my demon could do, that I didn’t feel. “No. But I still. . . ”

 

She put her fingers to my lips. “Then you know this is me speaking, not the hunter doing what it needs to survive.”

 

“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t say anything else. I’d lose control over the tears that wanted to make themselves known, and my demon would break free. It was already threatening to push me to get angry with her and do things I’d regret.

 

“After three months of living like that, I suggested we try something different. Maybe more than five touches, wouldn’t he like it if he took the time to touch me in other ways?”

 

She took a deep breath and let out a tired sounding sigh. “He threatened to cut off one of my breasts if I ever said such a thing again. I was a slut and a whore that how many men had left their trace behind in--I should be lucky to get what he gave me. It only got worse after that.”

 

My arms tensed with the desire to hold her, to offer her some sort of comfort. A feeling as alien as all the others she stirred in me.

 

“If I made a sound during his, teach me to have proper sex sessions,” she continued, “he would do something to me that he saw as punishment, as my lesson on being a good woman—show me what happened to bad women.”

 

This time, I did grab her and jerk her against me. I said into her hair, “I would never do anything like that to you. I won’t let him near you, Kat--ever.”

 

“And what would you expect in return?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I left the house one day, met the neighbor. And the hunter was out. Yeah, I had sex with the guy. My hunter could no longer take what Frank did to me, I couldn’t take it. After he found out--I spent months tied up whenever he was at work. If my diabetes hadn’t almost killed me, I’d probably still be there--Frank’s prisoner.”

 

Rage swept through me. I wanted to do things to Frank that had been done to me in Vietnam, and more. “You can’t think I would be like that?” It hurt me to think she maybe did feel I would.

 

“And if I fucked the neighbor?”

 

“The guy in room 8 smells like he rolled in sewage. Would you want that?”

 

Her sudden laughter startled me. She leaned back against the wall. “And the guy in room 10?”

 

“Pothead, bad skin, don’t think he’d know what to do with a woman--too stoned.”

 

“And if I wanted one of the truckers in the dining room?”

 

“Then there wouldn’t be any point to us being together, would there? Your hunter wouldn’t get what it needed from me. And we’d be done anyway. I wouldn’t keep you like some kind of pet, Kat.”

 

“You know what I’m asking you. What you’re asking me is pretty serious, please. . .”

 

“We both know what being what we are means. We came over here to find out if what we felt was due to being the only thing available or something else. Do you want someone else right now?” I asked her.

 

She straddled me. I sat with my legs straight out in front of me. As soon as her lips touched mine, fire shot through me. It wasn’t my demon alone that set me off, made me hard. My soul felt. I felt. She pulled back, held her hand to her mouth. I kept my gaze locked with hers.

 

“Fucking hell,” she said.

 

“So is that a good fucking hell or a bad one?” I asked her with a slight smile and fear in my heart.

 

She kissed me again, hard, demanding. Her hands went over my arms--down my chest. She stopped again. “Answer me, if we did stay together, what happens if my hunter needs someone else?”

 

I raised my hips a little. Watched the look of pleasure cross her face. She still wanted me. “I guess that would depend if you and your hunter still wanted me afterwards. If I still gave you what you needed. The same could be asked of you, Kat. What if we did this and my demon decided it needed to come out and play?”

 

She nipped my lip, licked at my ear. I held her hips and shoved against her.

 

“The thought doesn’t bother you?” she asked.

 

“Your hunter wants someone, my demon wants someone, who’s to say they don’t want to share?”

 

She laughed. “Good answer.”

 

I kissed her. Thought we needed to get out of the women’s bathroom before someone came in.

 

“So we agree to stay together until our respective hunters no longer want to come home?”

 

I wanted so much more with her. Couldn’t tell her what I’d discovered in my own soul. Maybe with time, I could, but not yet. “I can live with that.” For now.

 

“And no strings if one of us needs to move on?”

 

“Shit, Kat, can you tell me you feel nothing between us?”

 

“I feel plenty between us,” she said. Her hips moved. I took in a quick breath.

 

“I don’t care about the rest of it right now, Kat. We take the risk because we never wanted anyone twice before. Good enough for now.” She moved her hips, pressing down on me and sucked on the side of my neck.

 

“Move like that again and it’ll be inside you, woman--not between us,” I told her.

 

“Good enough for now,” she said back. She reached down, undid my belt, and then the button on my jeans.

 

I didn’t stop her. My heart raced. Any moment, someone could come in the door. And the first thing they would see would be Kat and me. Kat working my cock with our mouths locked together. She backed up, but didn’t stop her attention to me. She took me in her mouth.

 

“Son of a bitch,” I said and wrapped my hands in her hair. I didn’t do things this way. And I hadn’t just asked this woman to live with me. “You’re going to get a mouth full.”

 

“Hope so,” she said around me.

 

I gave in. Raised my hips a bit, pushed her head down some. Her mouth felt incredible around me. Her tongue circled the head of me, and a sigh, then a groan of pleasure escaped her along with my own somewhat held in noises. My head against the wall, I closed my eyes. My hands buried in the soft silk of her hair. Nothing around me mattered. The fact we were on the floor of the women’s bathroom, in a truck stop, or that she was about to bring me off--before I’d done anything for her, didn’t matter. Every god as my witness, I loved this woman, even if I couldn’t say the words.

 

Her teeth ran along the flesh of my cock, then her tongue went over the tip. The door opened a crack.

 

“Can I go to the can first?”

 

Caught a brief snatch of voice, saying just get me the something first.

 

“Dang it, Slim.” And the door went shut.

 

“Fucking hell,” I said. I pushed her head down and raised my hips, bucked into her mouth less than five times and let sizzling pleasure shoot down my spine and flash through me. Kat didn’t stop sucking on me until the last wave of ecstasy faded.

 

She got to her feet and laughed. The door opened. I leapt to my feet. Jerked her against me to cover myself. I held her head to me. Her body shook. She sniffed as if she’d been crying, but I recognized it as held in laughter.

 

The waitress gave us a startled look. Jenny. Not the friendliest of the women out here.

 

“You okay now?” I asked Kat.

 

“Rose said you came in here to get her,” Jenny said. “Why are you still in here? Other people have to use the can.”

 

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at us. With the blanket around us, Kat had already put my clothes back together. We stepped apart, and Kat wiped at her face.

 

“Hal’s waiting out there for you anyway. Best let him give your husband a call, let him know you’re alive anyway.”

 

Hal had Frank’s phone number? Oh, yes, let Frank come and try to take Kat away from me.

 

“You think he’s such a catch, Jen, then you go live with him. Cunt,” Kat said and stalked out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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