After (45 page)

It would come. The attack. Maybe when she was stronger and could put up a fight. Maybe when he imagined she'd come to trust him. Maybe that was his sadistic pleasure—giving hope of something other than cruelty, then ripping it away. She waited.

On the fourth night it happened. Two rough hands tore through her sleep—

always thin and sensitive, like a spider's web—and started ripping at her clothes.

Fighting back her rage and panic, she checked herself. Let him grope her flesh and tear her clothes and lick her mouth until her chance came. When he rose up over her passive body to work his fly open, she caught the dangling buckle of his belt and yanked it free of its loops, planted both feet square on his chest and launched him from the bed. She sprang, pinned him, noosed the fucker in his own belt and yanked back hard, with all her hate. So hard they went over backwards together, until she was pinned under his flailing weight. He bucked and squeaked, and she drove her knees into his back and yanked harder, the image of tearing his head from his shoulders driving a surge of adrenaline through her pumped, pounding body.

Then light poured over her, blinding her, then showing her. Artel crouched over them with clenched fists.

It was not Artel's life she was choking off with the belt wound around her fist. The man flailing against his own belt, against her knees in his ribs and spine, gave up on his struggle to claw the leather away from his windpipe, and reached toward Artel with desperate, seeking fingers.

“Please,” she heard a choked, desperate plea squeak out of the man, slackening now against her shins.

Artel's cool gray eyes scanned over her—donated clothes torn and askew—then locked on the face she hadn't seen. Pumped and shaking with her effort to finish her murder, she waited. Artel just stared down at the man, indifferently watching the life fade out of him. The left arm stuck out and clawed at the air, and her eyes found what the hand sought: a knife laying at the edge of the table where they ate their meals. Hope gave the dying man a final surge of strength and he hurled himself forward, his finger nudging the indifferent knife before she managed to yank him back. Artel put the tip of his index finger on that knife.

Patience. Patience. Let go now, and she'd have both to fight. Finish. Finish. Then it would just be her against Artel. He'd win, but not before she'd hurt him.

But then Artel, who was still staring coolly into the eyes of the dying man, slid the knife a few inches back from the edge of the table, hopelessly out of reach, then dropped his hand to his side.

There was some convulsing, then a dark stain seeped over the crotch of the man's pants, below the open fly exposing the dirty gray of his briefs.

“He's dead,” Artel said indifferently a few minutes later, and she realized she was still strangling the corpse. Afraid he wasn't really dead. Afraid of what Artel would do now.

Artel bent down and grabbed the corpse's ankles and dragged him off of her. She stood, took her fighting stance. Watched as Artel slid open the window, hoisted the corpse up by his belt noose, and dropped him six flights onto the courtyard below.

“He wasn't supposed to be here, and there's twenty five units in this column.

They won't be able to prove who did it. Even if they did, they couldn't admit it. But they'll know he was killed here. The next man will think twice.”

He sank down onto the chair by the window, folded up the knife and slid it into his pocket.

“Why didn't you shout for help?” he asked in a tone so indifferent, only syntax suggested a question.

Her first words to him: “I thought it was you.” And besides, she knew better.

Fucking sharks. The smell of blood, the thrashing noises of struggle—what did it ever do but provoke their hunger?

Artel scared her. The others hurt her, disgusted her, made her hate, but none of them scared her. It was Artel, whose behavior didn't map onto any understanding she had of men, that made her afraid. What kind of man gave away his food and his clothes, much less doing so without demanding she fulfill her ”duty”? That he'd calmly watched while a woman took the life of a man—even a stranger or enemy caught taking what wasn't his—was that much farther beyond the limits of her comprehension.

But he'd taunted the man. Calmly looked down as the man begged for his life.

Cruelly edged the knife just inches beyond his reach, then watched him suffocate and die. Maybe that was pleasure for a sadist, watching a man dying at the hands of a woman, his last awful moments filled up with the knowledge that the scrap of cunt he'd come to fuck had bested him, ended his life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“You're an idiot, Dorset.”

“A suicidal idiot.”

The two guards grunted and chuckled at the man, but covetously eyed his bribe.

“Borden was the idiot, going in there commando style, thinking he could sneak a little pussy right under that psycho's nose. Shit like that offends a man's sense of entitlement. I plan on showing all due respect. Why should he mind renting her out for a few minutes, if the price is right?”

“Alright. I don't mind smoking a dead man's cigarettes.”

The guards let him by and started divvying up the loot.

* * * *

Her chest went tight and her stomach dropped at the metallic rapping. Without looking her way, Artel went to the door.

“What?” It was a demand.

An obsequious voice oozed through the doorframe, into the cell, “Hey there, Artel, it's me, Dorset. Can I have a word?”

Artel unlocked and opened the door. The man in the hall was not especially tall, but very wide, with a very square jaw. Like a cartoon of a boxer. The man stepped back.

Then, when Artel didn't move or say anything, he started squirming a little, and said in a low voice, “Can I talk to you? Out here?”

“Go ahead and say it, whatever it is,” Artel answered in his low but irrefutable voice.

The pugilist shot a look at her, and her nausea started creeping up her throat.

“What's she dressed like that for?” the visitor hawed.

Artel stayed silent.

When he realized he wasn't getting an answer the man said, “Don't worry, I won't say anything. About the clothes, I mean.” He shrugged nervously and cleared his throat.

Then, nodding in her direction, “I thought maybe you'd like to do a little business.”

No hesitation. Artel just said, “Maybe,” then stepped aside to let the man in. “Tell me what you have in mind.”

“I can get you three cartons of smokes, and two bottles of vodka.”

“In return for what?”

“Half an hour.”

Artel laughed, all rough and downhill. “What? You didn't get enough of her the other day?”

“I was out on patrol. I missed it.”

“I don't want garbage. Booze and smokes.”

“What do you want?” the guy asked excitedly. Like he hadn't been sure if Artel would barter.

She'd been waiting for this. The knife was in Artel's pocket, but the shiv she'd hidden under the mattress was just three feet ahead on her left.

“The keys.”

“I can give you the building key.”

“All three.”

“Artel—”

“I know you've got them.”

“Yeah, but—”

“That's the only way I'll let you have her.”

The pugilist rubbed his hungry look all over her. “An hour, then.”

“Keys first. And I get to stay and watch.”

“Alright.”

The pugilist fished deep down in his big front pocket, pulled up a ring of keys, and pried three from the steel circle. Artel scrutinized the objects and dropped them into his pocket.

“Sixty minutes.”

Taut and ready, her veins primed with fresh, bitter hate.
Wait. Wait
.

The pugilist set his jaw and started toward her, but Artel touched the man's shoulder and with that small brush of his index finger, brought the man to a halt.

“First, tell me what you're going to do.”

“You didn't say anything about conditions,” Dorset whined.

“No conditions. It's whatever you want. I'd just like to hear you say it.”

A huge, disgusting grin spread over that square, stubbled jaw. “Yeah. Alright. Just so it's not cutting into my sixty.”

“It's not. Don't worry. I'm going to enjoy your sixty every bit as much as you are.

More, maybe.”

The boxer kept looking her over. Artel's eyes never went near her. Fuck, she was going to enjoy killing him. Maybe not today, but when she got the chance.

“She good with her mouth?”

Artel shrugged.

“'Cause I've been dying to have my cock sucked.”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“Not scared she might take a bite out of you?”

“You kidding? You know how to put a stop to that, don't you?”

Artel just stared, waiting. The other reached back into that deep front pocket that ran most of the way down his thigh, and brought out a large wrench. Brandishing his weapon he tutored, “You just got to let her know, if she can't keep her teeth off your cock, you'll knock ever last fucking tooth out of her mouth. Maybe she wouldn't be so pretty, then, but she'd be a custom-built cock-sucker, eh? Trust me, it's very convincing.

No bitch has bitten me yet, who's gotten that little warning.”

She'd smash his fucking brains out of that thick skull with that wrench when her chance came. She waited through his long, psychotically detailed description of how he was going to make her suck him, fantasizing his brutal killing to keep from throwing up.

He'd been hard almost from the beginning, when he'd described how he'd have her on her knees while he pulled his dick out. It would almost be worth having every tooth knocked out to take a chunk out of that worm's meat and hear him scream, knowing he'd never stuff his putrid sausage into another mouth as long as he lived.

Artel just stood there, soaking it all up, probing, now and then, for some embellishment on the already horrifying detail on the violation being described.

“Think that's going to take up your whole sixty?” Artel demanded when the boxer had finished orating his rape fantasy.

“Well, if it doesn't, we can improvise with the time that's left over, eh?”

“Sure.”

“Shall I get started, then?”

Artel consulted his watch, then said, “Be my guest.”

The boxer let out a nasty little chuckle, and turned on her.

“You ready for me, sweetheart?”

Damn fucking right. Her shiv was going to be six inches into that watery blue eye of his.

“I know you got a lot of practice the other day, sweetheart, so I expect this to be an A-plus cock-sucking.”

He took his first step and she flexed to lunge for the stashed blade, but his second step landed him face down on the floor at her feet. Artel was on him, hog-tying the fuck with his own bootlaces, then frisking the grunting, writhing pugilist, tossing screwdrivers ands keys and a switchblade onto the bed. Then he hoisted the man onto his knees and slapped his cheek a few times with the flat side of his own wrench.

“Your sixty's probably looking pretty long now, eh Dorset?”

“What the fuck?” Dorset huffed, straining pointlessly against the knots binding his wrists to his ankles. “God, Artel, what is this?”

“I don't know. What shall we call it?” Artel looked at her over his shoulder, and for the first time she saw him smile, and it made her skin prickle. “We could call it 'turn about's fair play.' Or we could call it 'Give as good as you get.'”

“Jesus, Artel. Come on. I gave you the keys. They're legit. I swear.”

“I'm counting on it.”

“What? Christ! What do you want?”

“You're asking the wrong person.”

She didn't understand why Artel was looking at her. What that look meant.

“It's up to you,” he said.

Impossible. She was wrong. Or he was playing with her.

“Please. Artel. Anything. Fuck, anything. Just tell me, and I'll get it for you.”

Artel turned away from her silence, sank down on his knees in front of his captive, confronting an expression of uncomprehending terror with an amused smile.

Cringing and struggling against his bonds, the prisoner shrank back as Artel moved in close and tenderly stroked a rough cheek. Her own taut body shuddered as Artel leaned in closer still, letting his lips brush against the man's ear as he whispered in his abraded voice,

“I like this. Seeing a man, big and hard as you, so soft and quivering. So vulnerable.”

“God dammit,” the guy forced a menacing voice through a clenched jaw, “stop fucking with me, Artel.”

As if the man had said nothing, Artel sank his fingers into the short tufts of hair—

like summer-yellowed grass—sniffing and mouthing him. Jerking back as the Dorset thrashed, splitting his tormentor's lip with his forehead, Artel slapped the man brutally across the face, stunning him to a momentary stillness. Then his bloodied mouth was on the man's mouth, a wet tongue probing lips shut tight over clenched teeth.

“I want a nice, soft kiss, Dorset.”

“Fuck you!” Dorset screeched back, tears trickling down his reddening face.

In a few fast, rough movements Artel had Dorset's pants undone and down, and his limp dick pulled taut in his fist. Now the blade of his knife glinted in his other hand, millimeters from that pathetic tube of flesh Dorset had meant to force between her lips.

“I want a nice, soft kiss, Dorset. If I don't get it, I'm going to cut this scrap of meat off and shove it down your throat.”

“Aw, God. God, Artel,” Dorset blubbered.

A violent surge pulsed through her veins each time her heart banged in her chest as Artel brought his mouth to the others' lips again. When the mouth clenched and the head flinched away the gleaming blade touched the veined, pink-gray flesh stretching from its woolly base. A terrified howl, the likes of which she'd only heard coming from women's throats, filled the cement cell, and the next moment the howling mouth softened, its jaws and lips parted to receive.

Artel's mouth came soft, lips caressed, tongue teased while the other whimpered and shivered, fighting to be still and soft so the blade pressed to his cock wouldn't slice in.