Aaron: Book Three (Scars 3) (10 page)

“I’m going to ram a knife into his
throat so he won’t die straightaway. It will be painful and slow and I’ll
finally see some feeling in the bastard’s eyes.” I smiled as I imagined the
scene.

“Why in such a gory way?”

I cast my eyes in her direction and
lifted a shoulder. “Why not? He deserves it and I’ll enjoy it. It’s a win-win.”

She looked down at her drink. “And then
we just go?”

I hesitated. “No, not straight away.
There’s something else we need to take care of first.” She still didn’t lift
her eyes to mine. “Your mother.”

She was as still and silent as if she
hadn’t heard.

“You asked me once to kill her. Now’s
your chance.”

Slowly, she raised her head. “Why now?”

I shrugged. “The opportunity’s here. She
still weighs on you, as much as you pretend that she doesn’t. I’m giving you
the path to freedom.”

“To freedom…or to craziness. Are you
sure that this won’t send me right over the edge? Or do you want me to become
like you?”

“This isn’t about me. It’s about you.
That bitch deserves to die for what she did, and it’s what you wanted once. I’m
just putting the ball in your court.”

She didn’t look convinced, but then, she
never did. There was never any trust in her eyes for me. There probably never
would be.

Suddenly, she set down her glass and
sank down from her chair and onto the floor, right in front of me. Her hand
touched my leg as she looked up at me. “What would it be like if you and I were
the same? Would we run around killing people? Tormenting people? Laughing?”

I gripped the hand that touched me.
“That’s not what I do.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“I do a job, and if I didn’t, there
would be someone else to step into my shoes and do it instead. The only
difference is that I don’t lie about what I am. I know hitmen that have a wife
and kids at home and pretend to go to work in an insurance office all week.
Everything about them is a lie.”

“Like Luca?”

I shook my head. “No, his wife knows
what he is, but she wanted the power, money and the excitement that came with
him. She made her bed.”

She stared up at me for a moment. “Have
I made my bed, Aaron?”

“You’re free to go. You always were,” I
lied. The nightmares of her leaving me flashed before me and the intense rage
that I felt in those dreams was vivid again.

She stood, using my grip on her hand to
lift her up before she settled herself on my lap. Her mouth was soft, almost
shy as she kissed me.  I couldn’t kiss her back though. It didn’t feel real.
I’d just lied to her, and she knew it.

But it didn’t stop my cock from
hardening against her warm body.

“Kiss me,” she whispered. “It’s just us.
Kiss
me I want to feel you, and I want you to feel something.” She tried
to grip my chin but I quickly grasped her wrists.

“Stop it, Rachel.”

She moved her mouth from mine. There was
no question in her eyes.

“Why are you with me?” I shot out at
her, anger sparking in me. “You think I’m a nasty psychopath with very few redeeming
features. You don’t seem to ever be able to forgive me. So why are you with me,
if not to help you take care of your mother?”

She leaned back, taking back her hands
to fold them in her lap. “That’s not why I’m with you.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Then why?” I held my breath, willing
her to say words that I wanted to hear.

She lifted her chin. “I don’t know. Why
are you with me?”

I frowned and resisted the urge to throw
her from my lap. “I like fucking you.”

“Great.” She shoved away from me and
stood. “I’m hungry.” She walked off in the direction of the kitchen.

“Great,” I echoed under my breath.

I
waited in bed later, listening to the sound of the shower. We had managed to
hardly talk for the remainder of the day, but that was okay, I had plans to
make. When she finally came to my room, she let the towel drop and crawled in
beside me, not looking at me and certainly not touching me. Those nights we had
spent together in this bed were fresh in my memory: fucking in the dark, her
limbs wrapping around me and her mouth fighting to kiss mine.

And sometimes I would let her win that
fight even though it felt so wrong to have pleasure in this house.

Even though I knew that every action she
made was purely for her own survival, I still played along. In spite of myself,
I let the fantasy etch itself in my mind, that she was crazy for me; that this
perfect girl desired to please me and only me.

I knew what she was. I was well aware of
that before I’d even met her, but I’d still allowed her to enslave me in a way,
not that I would ever let her know that, of course.

She lay her head on the pillow, facing
away from me. The sheet was tucked under her arm and only just covering her
breasts. My eyes raked over her curves‒all that muscle that I had helped
her to cultivate deceptively covered by soft and flawless skin.

Mine
.

Maybe if I said it enough times it would
be true. But I reached out anyway, to stroke her hair with more gentleness than
I felt. Her head turned abruptly as if I’d caught her off guard and she stared
at me with unrevealing eyes as she lay on her back.

Slowly, I reached over and trailed a
finger down her cheek, and further on, close to her mouth that opened slightly
the nearer I came. But I bypassed that and ran my fingers down over her long
and graceful neck and felt it pulsing with life, more rapidly than it should
have been. Grazing her chest, I let my fingers take hold of the sheet and
slowly peeled it back to bare her breasts, which rose and fell with each of her
breaths, the nipples hard and pink, ripe and waiting.

I bent down and took one of them in my
mouth like it was candy, sucking on it made it harden even more. She gave a
slight gasp and reached for me.

But I stopped her, taking my mouth from
her breast I clutched onto both of her hands.

“I know,” I whispered, the alcohol
taking control and saying what I shouldn’t.

She frowned. “Know what?”

“I know why everyone falls for you. Why
they love you. Why they
destroy
themselves for you.”

Her jaw hardened and I saw fire in her
eyes. “Why?” she breathed.

“Because you’re a witch, a demon, the
devil, a fucking enchantress…”

I saw her nails coming and didn’t even
try to move. They sunk into the flesh of my cheek, gorging and tearing at my
skin as they dragged trails down my face. I felt wet, warm blood before the
agonizing pain set in.

She screamed and bared her teeth, blunt
and white. “Why are you so stupid? Why would you say something so…unbelievably
ludicrous. You sound like
him
.”

She pulled her knees to her chest and
wrapped her arms around them, hugging them to her. She seemed oblivious to my
blood staining and embedded in her fingernails. Her eyes shone with threatening
tears.

“Don’t cry,” I said urgently, sitting up
beside her and pulling her to me. She didn’t resist. “I didn’t say it to upset
you.”

“Don’t say it again. It makes you
sound…”

“Crazy,” I finished for her. “I’m not
crazy, Rachel. I swear to you. It’s just…can’t you see how perfect you are?
There’s no black or white with us, there’s just a lot of grey. You know
everything bad about the world. You’ve done bad things and you’ve done good
things, and for the most part you accept me for what I am.”

She looked at me through her tears and
messed hair. “So you like what I am and what I’ve done? Because I don’t.”

I held her even tighter. “It wasn’t your
fault and I’m going to help set you free. We just need to get rid of her and
then you’ll be able to begin again. When I killed my father, I felt free. I
felt alive for the first time.”

“This is different though.” Her tears
fell onto my chest.

“How?”

“My mother loves me.”

I stiffened and then brushed my lips
across her hair. “I’ll only do what you want me to do. That’s a promise. You
call the shots.”

“You’re drunk. You’re only saying this
stuff because you’re drunk. Tomorrow we’ll wake up and nothing will have
changed.” Her voice was muffled with her tears but I wasn’t really listening.
All I could concentrate on was my blood falling onto her hair.

I half expected her to be gone in the
morning when I woke up with my head pounding, but she hadn’t fled. She sat,
nude, in front of the dressing table mirror. Perched on a stool, every ounce of
her was on display from her perfectly formed back to her pink tipped breasts
reflected in the mirror. She reached out to touch her reflection, trailing a
forefinger along the glass as if she could ripple it like it was water.

I got out of bed and stretched, before
grabbing a blanket and approaching her. I placed it over her shoulders,
wrapping it around her. Her skin felt like ice. “You feel cold.”

Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “I’m
always cold, no matter what the weather.”

I stroked her hair. “Then we’ll go
somewhere where it’s always warm.”

“Hell?”

I let a tendril curl around my finger.
“We’re already there, aren’t we?” I tried to smile. That wasn’t true. This
wasn’t hell. Not even close. I bent down to kiss her neck, inhaling her scent.
But the kiss wasn’t enough; I needed more, so I sucked her skin into my mouth
to bruise and mark her flesh. All the while, my hands roamed over her, beneath
the blanket, feeling hard nipples at the helm of her full breasts that had an
impossible softness to them. A slight gasp emitted from her, and I let my hands
go further south to her thighs that parted enough for me to touch her and enter
her with my fingers. I found warm moisture there to spur me on, rubbing in and
out, pressing against her sensitive clit while her eyes closed and her small
gasps continued.

With my free arm, I wrapped it around
her, holding her against me. “No. Open your eyes. I want you to look,” I
whispered in her ear.

She obeyed, opening her eyes to half
mast, watching us in the mirror.

I increased the speed as I fucked her
with my fingers, enjoying her mouth that was open in a helpless ‘O’ shape.
Perspiration covered her skin and moans came from deep within her as her body
shook.

With a sudden jerk, she thrust her face
down into my arm, closing her mouth over my skin. I felt her teeth and saliva
as I brought her to orgasm, trapped in my arms. As she rode it out and then
collapsed against me, I leaned into her with a smile. “Still think we’re in
hell?”

She didn’t answer, and I took her hand
to lead her to the bathroom.

I ran a bath and once the water was to
temperature I helped her in, soaping every inch of her. As I rubbed the sponge
around her neck and back, she gave a groan of contentment before saying. “Last
time we were here like this, I thought you were going to kill me. I thought you
were getting rid of the evidence.”

“I know.”

I moved my arm around to clean the silky
skin of her chest, but she caught my hand and held it tight against her. “What
are we, Aaron? What are we doing? We just exist…or do we? Sometimes I imagine
that we never left here and that we just died here and everything since is just
a dream. Or maybe I didn’t die and I’m still locked in that room thinking that
each day will be my last. Maybe your humanity is just in my imagination and the
truth is that you are so terrible my mind broke because it couldn’t deal with
the horror.” Her voice trailed off as she stared off into space.

“Hey.” I cupped her chin and made her
look at me. “There is nothing broken about you. You’re the strongest person I
know.”

Her mouth twisted up in to a wry smile.
“You’re manipulating me.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing to me
this whole time?”

Her smile receded into a line as she frowned.
“No. I haven’t. Is that what you think I’ve been doing this whole time? Playing
you?” She jumped up, splashing water out onto the ground and onto me as she
snatched at a towel, wrapping it around her body almost defensively. She
stepped out of the bath tub, keeping her distance from me. “I’m not playing
games with you Aaron. I never have. I’m not your fucking enemy so stop acting
like that’s what I am!” Her teeth were bared but her eyes showed her hurt.

“I don’t think you’re my enemy,” I said
quietly.

“Well you shouldn’t, because I’m not.”
She kept her towel tightly around her.

“You should go get dressed. It’s cold.”
I turned my back on her. I needed a drink, and more than anything, I needed to
not be around her. Anything that I’d had to drink the night before had worn off
and the sharpness of sobriety hit me hard.

Once downstairs, I hurriedly poured a
drink before collapsing down into the arm chair. Why had I even started that
stupid conversation with her? I didn’t need to talk about feelings, about
us
.
We just were and this was the way that it should continue.

She must have moved silently, because
when I looked up, she stood in the doorway, clad in one of my sweaters that
fell to mid-thigh, revealing nude legs beneath it. She was still damp from her
bath and her face flushed from the heat.

“Why are you so angry?”

“I’m not angry.” I turned to watch the
fire.

“You are. You’re never happy. You’re
always simmering like something is about to break free and‒”

Enough of this crap. “You want to know
why I’m angry?” I snapped out. “It’s because I don’t like who I am around you.
You make me weak.”

Her eyes went wide for a moment. I had
taken her by surprise, but she recovered and stepped into the room. She didn’t
fear me. Not anymore.

“You aren’t weak, Aaron. You don’t feel
fear. You’re scared of nothing.”

I let out a bitter laugh. She didn’t
have a fucking clue. I desperately sucked in air as I faced her. “You know what
I’m scared of? I’m scared that one day you will wake up and not be fucked up
anymore. That’s what I’m scared of, because if you’re not fucked up then there
is no way in hell that you will ever love me.”

She stayed quiet, and I laughed once
more. “What are you thinking, Rachel? Let me tell you, you’re thinking that you
would never love me anyway, under any circumstance. Isn’t that right?”

“Stop it,” she hissed out finally. “Stop
talking like this. We don’t need it. You and I don’t need love. Love makes you
weak, but we’re strong. Together, we’re strong. You’re just drunk right now.”
And with that she moved out of the room, her hair swaying behind her.

I felt like I’d been punched. I’d just
said the stupidest thing that I could ever say in my life…and she’d hardly
reacted. Or had she? Did she grow stronger the more weak that I became?

She hadn’t slithered into my life. She
hadn’t connived and schemed. I’d stolen her, and then I’d taken her again. When
she’d been kidnapped, I’d searched for her and when she ran, I came after her
even when commonsense told me how stupid I was being.

My hand tightened on the glass. No, she
would never love me, but that didn’t matter. I had her and she wasn’t going
anywhere.

I got to my feet with more grace than
the alcohol should have allowed me to have. It was time to stop drinking,
otherwise I would turn into my father or my uncle, and Rachel would only allow
me in her life while I was useful. She wouldn’t tolerate a pathetic drunk.

Her eyes were on me as I entered the
room. She lay on her side with her hair spread out on the pillow, waiting.

She held open the blanket so I could
slide in beside her, almost in a welcoming manner. “We have plans to make,” she
said softly. “You have a man to kill, and I…I have my mother to be free of.”

She moved over to rest her head on my
chest. She must have heard my heart beating, every part of me seemed to throb
beneath her as if I needed her to breathe. I would never tell her that though.
She didn’t need to know that; it would just give her more power and she already
had too much.

“In the morning,” I murmured, gently stroking
her hair. “We’ll start then.”