Blood to Dust (6 page)

Four months forward, and the car I’d bought when I left prison with the little money my mother left for me was set on fire in downtown Stockton. It wasn’t just a financial disaster, an inconvenience and a fucking warning—it also made the authorities and my parole officer suspicious of my doings.

The day after my car exploded, I stood in front of a freshly released Godfrey. I told him I was willing to work for him in exchange for his protection. God has been dealing with the AB since his Californian drug cartel expanded before he got thrown in the can. They respected him inside and out. We struck a deal.

Now, eight months later, I still feel like the bull’s eye.

Godfrey claims he’s got them by the balls, but I don’t trust anything the man says.

I order two double cheeseburgers, and it’s only when the cashier hands me the food, that I remember that God’s girl is with us.

And that she’s vegetarian.
Fan-fucking-tastic
.

I smack my steering wheel and swallow a curse. Another mouth to feed, and an irritating one too.

“Get me something for a vegetarian too. A salad or some crap,” I grumble to the teenager who serves me. She ain’t happy about me placing an additional order when I’m already at the window, but she complies.

God’s girl.

More accurately—Camden’s girl.

How stupid can you be to get your ass tangled with the Archer men by choice? I know that she’s some rich kid from the Bay Area, and as I said before, I have my theory regarding rich girls and bad boys, but this one didn’t just jump into bed with a baddie. She didn’t just fuck a baddie without a condom. She practically made babies with him, in the form of poisonous maggots that are now eating her life away.

At least she can take a fucking punch.

Seb’s a jackass for hitting a woman. But the mouth that’s attached to this woman. . .uncontainable. Uncontrollable. Of course he would fucking hit her. She’s so much stronger than he’ll ever be. Baby dick syndrome sufferers won’t tolerate women like Country Club. Probably why she’s neck deep in shit.

I climb down to the basement, two stairs at a time, and find her exactly as I’d left her—tied, blindfolded and sitting in the corner. She drags a bloody finger on the wall, right next to another line of blood.

She’s counting the days until Camden’s arrival.

Her head snaps up the minute the door locks behind me and her posture straightens. She scrambles to her feet, her chin lifting in defiance.

“Who is it?” she demands, her voice sharp and entitled like Mrs. Hathaway’s. Unlike Mrs. H, though, God’s girl doesn’t sound desperate. If nothing else, it makes her slightly less annoying.

“Dinner,” I grunt, throwing the plastic container to her feet. The basement is mostly empty. Irv and I have nothing to our names and when we rented this shithole, it barely offered the basics of two beds and an old, saggy couch.

But there’s a rotting wooden table in the corner that’s been here since before I moved in and a few carton boxes where we store our useless shit. Nothing that could serve as a weapon. Clothes, books, some old family albums Irvin keeps of himself and his crew. That kind of stuff.

This means Silver Spoon sits on the floor, sleeps on the floor, and considering the long hours I’m out of the house, she’ll probably pee on the floor soon. She only gets one bathroom break, and after Irv slapped her when she first arrived, I gave him the
Don’t-Come-Near-Her
talk. Just to make sure he took the warning seriously, I stomped on his foot. He’s been limping ever since.

“I’m thirsty,” Country Club announces through blistered lips.

I go upstairs and fill her a bottle of tap water. When I hand it to her after untying her wrists, she drinks the whole thing in one gulp and wipes her mouth with a satisfied cluck of her tongue.

“Shower,” she demands next, then adds a little question mark at the end of the sentence.

I already figured out that she wants me to think she’s some kind of damsel in distress. But her mask is as unbelievable as my Guy Fawkes one. It’s full of cracks.

She’s not weak, she’s strong. Even worse, her strength shines through, blinding every fucking person in her vicinity. There’s nothing submissive about a girl with fire in her eyes who seeks revenge. Thin-skinned people don’t go around laughing in the faces of people who hit them. This chick is a holy fucking terror. She acted like the warehouse scene was some kind of big, fat joke.

What have you done to deserve this, Blondie?

“Eat first,” I order, turning to climb back upstairs.

“Then sit with me. I really need to hear something other than silence.”

Having been in segregation, I know exactly what she means. When the silence is so loud, you want to tear the place down until the pain of bleeding fingers shout your screams for you. But the truth is I don’t owe her shit.

And I definitely shouldn’t play into her game.

“Got plans.”

“Please.” Her tone is anything but begging. “You have the outside world all day. All I have is you. Ten minutes is all I ask. We’ll eat and then you’ll go.”

Ten minutes won’t kill me, I guess. And whatever shit I’m dealing with right now, her problems are a hundred times bigger. I sit at the far corner of the room, opposite from her, and rip my brown paper bag open.

“Thank you,” she mouths. We eat. God’s girl’s pretty disorientated. Trying to eat a salad while being blindfolded is a bitch. She stabs her plastic fork—I make a mental note to take it away when she’s done—in the air, around her thighs, anywhere other than the plastic bowl before giving up altogether. Then she starts eating with her hands.

“Tell me about yourself,” she says, munching on lettuce.

“This is not a blind date,” I growl.

“Technically, it is.” She grins at the pile of leaves sitting on her lap, her eyes still wrapped in the black cloth of what used to be my shirt. I don’t humor her.

“You know, I majored in English Literature at UCLA.” She pops a cherry tomato between her lips. They’re the best kind of lips. Her upper lip is thicker than the lower one, creating a natural pout.

“Good for fucking you.”

“The best life to live is the one people will judge you for.” She brushes her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. “Dance with your demons, love carelessly. Selflessly. And most importantly, love yourself, even at your worst.”

Wow.
She’s so fucked up. And nuts. I kinda’ dig it.

“Did Ink hook you up with some dope? Are you fucking high?”

“It’s a part of a poem I wrote in lit school. It was published in the campus newspaper.” She pats the inside of her bowl.

I wanna get up and tell her to forget about the whole thing, but my ass is still rooted to the floor, because I shouldn’t be intimidated by some rich kid.

“Let me guess,” she rasps, “You graduated from the School of Hard Knocks?”

“Nope. Dropped out of that one, too. I’m a failure through and through. There’s not even one competent bone in this body.” I bang my fists on my chest like a gorilla.

She’s laughing at my lame joke—it sounds genuine—and I notice her hands caressing the walls of the black bowl again. She’s finished her salad but is still hungry. Of course she is. She hadn’t eaten all day. Reluctantly, I scoot to her side and place my fries in her hand. I can raid the kitchen later. A small beam tugs at her lips. “Thanks. So why Guy Fawkes?”

“Easiest mask to get on the market.”

“And why Beat?”

This, I don’t answer.

“Let’s see. . .” She nibbles on a fry, bobbing her head backward and contemplating. Her neck is thin. Pale. Fine.
I’d love to choke it
. “Ink is called Ink because he’s a tattooist—wasn’t difficult to milk that one out.”

“Fuck-tard.” I inhale, rubbing my face. That’s another reason why I keep him away from her. Is it any wonder he ended up in San Dimas? The guy’s so stupid it’s borderline illegal. I’ve lost count of the times he’s gotten us into trouble with his stupid mouth. Be it at a bar or just picking up fights with the teenagers on bikes across the road. This week he tells her what he does for a living (it’s not even true. He hasn’t worked in a parlor since he was released), next week he’ll be sharing tips on how to sneak out of here.

“You probably thought of names together, so that means your name has a meaning, too. Beat, huh? Music? But you’re too silent to be the partying type. Maybe you like to beat people up. . .but then you wouldn’t be so shocked about Seb smacking me for fun. And maybe. . .” She leans closer. “Maybe I fell captive in the arms of an avid reader. Wouldn’t that be something?” Her shoulder brushes mine. Something weird stirs inside me, signaling that my body’s awakening from its normal dormant state.

“
Beat generation
fan. But who’s your favorite? Fante? Bukowski? Burroughs?” She leans closer. My mouth twitches.
What. The. Fuck?
“Which one of these authors plays the strings to your lonely heart, Beat?”

“You done psychoanalyzing?” I stand up, taking her hand and jerking her up. “You’ve got fifteen minutes of peeing, shitting and showering. Hurry your ass up, Sigmund Freud.”

She follows me up, and this time doesn’t stumble on the stairs on her way to the bathroom. Quick learner.

“I need a few extra minutes to wash my dress. And maybe I could borrow a clean shirt from you while it dries?”

I don’t want to pamper her, but these are the kinds of things you are granted in prison, no questions asked. “I’ll wash it. I’m keeping an eye on you after your little stunt yesterday.”

“What if I need to use the toilet?” her tone turns panicky.

“Then you should be happy to know I shared a cell with a guy who took shits less than a foot away from me while I was eating fucking dinner. In other words—I couldn’t give a damn.”

When we get to the shower, she peels off her dress. Her cream lace panties are thrown to the floor. Silently. Confidently. Assertively.

Her nipples, pink like cotton candy, spring free from her lace bra, and my eyes drop to the blindfolded girl’s pussy. Completely shaved—or maybe waxed—her pussy is like a delicate flower. A sudden urge to rub my nose against it hits me hard. She reeks of privilege; her sleek body screams it. She walks like a rich person, talks like one, and her body is milky-white and scar-free.

Though by her odd behavior and deadly enemies, I have a feeling that despite her exterior, her interior is virtually disfigured.

Being a twenty-seven-year-old man who hasn’t tasted pussy in five years sucks ass. My balls immediately tighten to the sight of her body, and I let out a surprised growl. I feel my cock twitching, and almost stumble back in awe.

What. In. The. Actual. Fuck?

After I got out of prison, I tried everything to get my mojo back. One night stands. Strip clubs. Hookers. I got a lot of offers from women, thanks to a face that can only be described as so pretty, I had to cover myself up with bad ink just to keep my ass from being torn by San Dimas’s Gay for The Stay crowd.

Women courted me.

Old, young, beautiful and ugly. The model type, the curvy type, the everyone’s-type type. But ultimately, none of them made me hard. You know,
really
hard. Hard and wanting and seeing everything through the fog of red, agonizing desire.

Don’t get me wrong—I do get hard. All the time.

I get hard when I think about slitting the throats of Godfrey and Sebastian. I get so fucking horny when a vision of me, blithe and free, driving in a convertible sports car without worrying that the Aryan Brotherhood will spot me pops into my head. I jerk off to the beat of independence, freedom and peace of mind.

But never to a woman.

To put it nicely—the vehicle drives just fine, but the GPS is out of service. No compass, no guidance, no turn-ons.

I tried porn. Straight porn. Gay porn. I even watched porn involving a cow and a sheep I wish I could erase from my memory. Nothing turns me on.

And now there’s a hot, blonde girl in my bathroom—naked and blindfolded, her nipples as erect as my dick is—and it terrifies me that I’ve finally found someone I’d like to dirty up, rub some of my filth on. Because she’s pretty much the
only
person in the world who’s completely off limits. Hell, I’d have fewer issues if I screwed the living, fully-grown cow I watched the other day.

But my balls. . .they demand to be emptied inside Country Club.

“Get in.” I shove her into the shower angrily, and turn on the showerhead. This time she’ll have to do it blindfolded. I pick up her filthy dress from the floor and twist the knob, rinsing it in the sink. She hums something I don’t recognize underneath the stream of water and rubs her arms and legs behind the shabby plastic curtain, occasionally patting the tiles to try and find the soap. I bend toward her, flapping the curtain away and reach for the soap so I can give it to her, my hand brushing her bare stomach.

We both flinch at the contact, and for very different reasons.

“Beat!” Her voice pitches high. I growl.

“Relax, I saw you were looking for the soap. Here.” I stick it in her palm, but use the opportunity to glare at her nipples again. They’re like sweet fucking coins I’d like to toss between my thumb and finger. Her mouth pulls from displeased back to content as she continues humming, shutting the drape so I can’t see her. “You said you’d buy me what I need for my shower.”

“I never said it’d be today. I ain’t Amazon Prime.” I sniff, getting back to washing her dress. I’ve no idea why I said that. Actually I do. She was really fucking sad and really fucking vulnerable. “No fancy shit, God’s girl. You’ll only get the basics.”

“My name is Prescott.” She draws the curtain back sharply and pokes me in the shoulder.

“Shitty name,” I drawl again. I hate it when rich people give their kids pompous names. Prescott’s a last name. Not a first.

“Stop being mean just because you can’t stand the fact that you like me,” she says breezily.

I kind of like that she’s still keeping things light despite her situation. It’s badass. I watch the dirt and blood seep out of the fabric of her dress with fascination, swirling in circles of a black and red whirlpool down the sink. It’s better than watching her body, knowing I can’t destroy it.