Blood to Dust (20 page)

Checkmate, Godfrey. Your clock starts ticking now.

It should alarm me that I’m more excited about the prospect of killing Godfrey and Seb than I am with getting my own life back. But the truth is, life has become such a chore to maintain over the last few years, it’ll take me a long time to find my lust for it again.

He is standing in front of me, wearing his mask and to my dismay, my toes curl against the damp floor.

Even through the mask, his chin is strong and high. There’s something incredibly proud about this broken man. Nate’s fingers brush the wall as he paces like a predator in my direction.

“I fucked up. You confided in me, told me what they did to you, then I went and did the very same thing on the grounds of being drunk, horny and a prick,” he admits, his tone calm. “But I want you to know one thing. I’m a killer, I’m a murderer
, I am
a prick, but I’m
fair
. The minute you told me your story, you were already free. These walls,” he knocks on the concrete, “they mean nothing. Up until this afternoon, I thought I was going to let you walk away then go do my own thing. But then something dawned on me,” he says and inches closer causing my jaw to go slack in anticipation. “I’m
not
fucking done with you, Pea, and if it’s up to me? I’m not done fucking
you
, either.”

I hug my body, trying to protect myself from something that’s already embedded deep inside me, to shake away the looming calamity that’s moving my way. He rattles something within me that’s not ready to be moved. Not right now, and certainly not by him.
“Nate.” His name on my lips sounds like a warning. On some level, it is. He stops, his mask still offering this wild, up-to-no-good smile. “I don’t want us to part ways yet. I want us to flip hourglasses. To stir up chaos. To start a blood bath.”

He stops next to me. His hand drops to his hip and he lifts the hem of his shirt, rubbing his six pack.

“Prescott?”

“Yes?”

“I’m switching teams.”

My knees turn to jelly as my body starts quivering with released tension.

He is switching teams.

He is setting me free.

God, he’s going to help me glue the pieces of my broken soul together.

All the tears I kept from him come spilling down, my face damp and happy and my heart so, extremely full. I’m a crier. I cry when I get a paper-cut, when it’s that time of the month and when Bambi’s mother dies. The only reason I haven’t cried in front of Nate yet is because I don’t let my enemies see me break.

But he is not an enemy. Not anymore.

“You won’t regret it,” I say, shaking my head, trying to gain control over my emotions. He needs to see me strong. “Together, we’ll overthrow his empire.”

Nate doesn’t answer, but his eyes are hungry behind the mask. It dawns on me that I’m about to see his face, and something unsettling stirs in me. It’s not that I don’t want to see him. I do. I’m dying to lay my eyes on the man I had sex with, who’s about to give me life back, who’s been the center of my world for the past few weeks.

But I’m not ready.

He’s become a fantasy; a bubble I don’t want to pop. A feather of hope that’s tickling but not quite touching me the way I crave. The minute he takes off the mask, the mystery is solved, and reality will kick in. A reality I’m not entirely prepared for, despite the fact I pushed for it for so long.

A reality that consists of people getting killed, of us running away, of trying to get by, of peeking over our shoulders, every second of every day.

Life starts here.

He erases the space between us with a long step, his abs bumping into my chest. My breath hitches and my spine tingles. This is bad. No, bad is forgetting to turn off the oven when you leave the house. This is disastrous.

“Where will you go after this is all over, Pea?” His mask touches my lips.

“Iowa,” I answer. “I want to go somewhere peaceful.”

“Cabo for me,” he replies, his thumb stabing his chest. “I wanna go somewhere wild.”

“Send me a postcard.” I muster a weak grin, but it feels wrong on my lips.

We don’t actually know if we’ll get out of this alive, and even if we do, I’ll dump him and move on with my life as soon as we kill the bastards.

We’re polar opposites. He’s peace looking for color, and I’m a storm looking for serenity. And somewhere between my chaos and his peace, we found each other. Even crazier—we want to save one another.

“Pea.” He rubs my chin with his thumb, staring at my lips with burning eyes. “I’ll fight your war while I’m winning mine, but you have to be honest with me. When I took you like an animal the night of the party. . .did it remind you of them?” “It was different,” I answer. “Intense, yes. Wild. But it reminded me that I could still enjoy how another body feels against mine. I didn’t think I could anymore.”

His jaw tenses and he looks down at his palms as he speaks.

“I’d like to be the person who reminds you of that again,” he says, his usually cutting tone sounds softer now. Maybe it’s just what I want to hear. “I’ll be whatever you want me to be. Wild, gentle, good, bad, rough, delicate. Your pick.”

I swallow and look down to his chest, blinking away my embarrassment. “I’d like that too.”

“Would you like that now by any chance?” he growls, his forehead dropping onto mine. “Ink’s out of town. Some family shit. I need inside you.”

You’re already inside me
, I think.
You crawled in the minute you showed me mercy, the minute you decided to switch teams
. But I know what he wants. He wants what all men want.

He wants sex. My flesh, my warmth and what’s between my thighs. Because after all, before he became a killer, a captor, an avid reader and even my savior, he was the one thing I hate—a man.

The only difference between Nate and the others is. . .well, I want his body, too.

“Are you going to take off your mask?” I ask, staring at his army boots.

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes.”

No
.

My eyes are still trained on his feet as his mask floats to the floor, landing next to his shoes. This is it. The mystery man who has been occupying my thoughts all this time is standing in front of me, exposed and open, offering me everything I’ve ever asked him for.

I drag my eyes up, lingering on his groin, his hips, moving on to his flat stomach, memorizing his triangular upper-body, tan, inked throat, and once I get to his face. . .

I lose it. Completely lose it.

Cruelly beautiful, that’s what he is. A beauty so violent it demands to be appreciated despite my best efforts to ignore it. I can actually
hear
his face, and it’s loud. Screaming at me to drown in his perfect features.

Every bone in my body melts and my skin spikes with the need to touch him.

His cheekbones are high, prominent like blades, and sharpen his face into something that’s ruthlessly male. Which is good, because everything inside this frame is sickly pretty. Roman strong nose, bee-stung lips with a cupid’s bow, upturned, hooded eyes of a predator. Hard, dark, expressive
, perfect
.

I look away before it burns, like staring directly into the sun. I shift my gaze, feeling something funny crawling from my neck up to my face. Something I haven’t felt in a long time, maybe even ever.

Something I promised myself I’d never feel.

I’m about to get out of here and instead of being filled with joy and ecstasy, I refuse to look directly into my new partner in crime’s face.

I open my mouth, not sure what might come out of it, but before I get the chance to say anything, he braces a hand on the wall above my head. His eyes fall to my lips, then return to my eyes.

“Let me do filthy things to you, Prescott.” His husky tone breathes fire into my body. “Let me dirty you up with who I am.”

I close my eyes. I can do it. I can master my emotions. I’ve done it so many times before. Years of not letting anyone in made me resilient to whatever men throw at me.

But how do you let someone inside you without letting him into you?

My eyes travel to his, and I dare look at him again. So perfect. So, disgustingly, unwarrantedly perfect.

“You think you can rub your filth on me?” A lopsided grin pulls from the right side of my mouth. “I’d like to see you try.”

That’s all the invitation he needs. He picks me up, fireman style in one arm, and rushes up the stairs, tackling two at a time.

My nails are already digging into the flesh of his lower back, squeezing out the scent of his manhood and sweat—sweet and sour and animalistic.

“We’ll fuck, then we run away?” I pant.

“We’re not
running
. Running is for pussies. We do this shit in a stride.”

He marches the short distance from the narrow corridor to his small room, which I’ve never seen before, and bangs the door shut, me still on his shoulder. Before I know what’s happening, he throws me onto his bed like a ragdoll and looks down at me, still standing.

He’s huge.

Tall.

Tatted.

And completely stunning. This is not the first time I’ve gotten into bed willingly with a man since I ran away from the Archers, but it’s the first time I’m scared about how I’m going to leave it once it’s over.

Before Nate, I had sex to prove to myself that I could still feel.

But with him? I’m going to have sex and convince myself that I don’t.

“You’re beautiful,” I say breathlessly.

“You’re
safe
,” he answers reassuringly. Exactly what I needed to hear.

“Make peace to me, Beat.” I call him by his nickname purposely, my smile sly and cunning.

“Make fucking storm to me, Pea,” he says, doing the same.

He dives onto the bed on top of me, grinding his huge, scary hardness against my body. My legs spread on cue. Know that old cliché you read in romance books,
Our bodies were made for one another
? Well, that’s not the case with Nate and me. My body was made for an average-sized man, while his would be more fitting for a 6’2” Viking girl, or a full-grown elephant. He’s so much bigger than me, but it works. For us, it’s perfect.

His puffy, swollen lips find mine. Warm, fierce and comforting. I should probably close my eyes like he does, but I can’t, still crippled by his good looks. I watch him wide-eyed as our kiss deepens and his tongue attacks mine, his body grinding against my own. I gaze at him, mesmerized, as I feel his needy erection poking between my thighs, barely contained by his jeans and boxers. The bastard doesn’t have any bad angles. At all. He must’ve spent all his years in jail walking with his back pressed against the wall.

His fingers spread my thighs open roughly, and my dress rides up past my chest. His mouth sucks on my right nipple long and hard, teasing it with lazy circles he creates with the tip of his tongue. Then he pulls my panties down with one tug and slides his index finger inside me. Nate is so huge, his finger is probably the size of a typical cock. Simple math: Two fingers = Two cocks.

His finger pulls out of my folds and drags my wetness along with it. We both watch in awe, eyes half-closed under the mist of lust.

I never get wet anymore. Only for him, I do.

He uses my wetness and rubs the same finger around my clit, my head falls to his cheap, flat pillow.

“No hourglass in here, Pea. With me, we take our time.”

“Yes,” I groan.

“Yes,” he repeats with conviction as he starts rubbing my clit up and down, his tongue striking mine like it’s trying to punish me. “Fuck.” Kiss
.
“You.” Bite. “Godfrey.”

I smile into his mouth and reach for his cock, the sound of his zipper rolling down is the only thing audible other than our moans in the murky room. “Fuck.” I grab his junk in my hand. “You.” I move my palm up, rubbing the tip, then slide the pre-cum along his shaft. “Camden.”

“Fuck them,” he concludes, reaching back and yanking his shirt up over his head and throwing it to the floor. His tongue finds my neck, swirling downwards in swift movements.

“Fuck them,” I agree, letting him slide my dress up as he undresses me, toss it on the floor next to his jeans, and watch his head travel south.

He French kisses my inner-thighs, his warm tongue dancing in passionate circles around my hypersensitive flesh, only hovering over my folds, but never touching. Circling, applying pressure, then biting softly. He’s giving every valley and curve in the area special attention, and I begin to spasm, rocking myself against his face, completely possessed. Nate’s tongue hasn’t even touched my sex yet, it’s still licking my thighs, biting my flesh. . .but I’m already well on my way to a furious orgasm. I’m quaking all over, thrusting myself into his face, begging him to put me out of my misery. When he does, when his beautiful, hot mouth closes on my clit, his rough palms nail me to his bed and he doesn’t let me move.

“Fuck Sebastian.” He pulls my clit between his perfectly straight teeth and I actually throw my fists on his shoulders because the orgasm is too much. I’m losing control over my body, my muscles, my skin, even my bones. My hips move erratically to the rhythm of his mouth. Every time he speaks, his charged breath tickles me from the inside, making every inch of me tingle with pleasure. “And fuck the Aryan Brotherhood and fuck San Dimas and fuck this world. We’re getting outta here.”