DAMAGED - A Bad Boy Romance (66 page)

If she ended up having some kind of integrity
, I thought,
focused on a thing that was larger than herself — then, maybe.

My mind drifted into the world of possibilities, but only for a moment.

A deep sigh banished the thoughts as soon as they had come. I blinked hard and stared out into Laguna Veneta.

Stay focused, Tyler,
I told myself.

I knew that there was not really any room for error in the moments to follow. We may have been temporarily safe within the proximity of Bastion, but the long-term effects of the situation had yet to come to fruition. If anything, those moments were essentially the equivalent of the calm before the storm. There were far too many factors at work for me to prognosticate any sense of peace within the immediate future.

Then I saw her arrive.

She was in a simple sailboat that she had rented from a nearby marina. The way that she commanded the vessel was inspiring, to say the least. She looked fearless in the face of the slight breeze, and open water that sat beneath her and the ship.

I looked over toward the fisherman and saw him swell with pride at the sight of his daughter. It was clear to me, in that moment, that Piper did indeed stand for something that was independent of whatever situational conflict she managed to find herself in at that moment. I couldn’t imagine how a person who looked that commanding could be in a position of duress, but then I realized that it was likely the context of the conflict itself which had likely brought her to that level of composure.

She docked the sailboat easily next to the edge of Bastion, secured it through a lasso toward one of the posts that were jutting out from the edge of the small, man-made island, and then hopped onto the edge of the wall herself, pulling her body up onto the deteriorated cobblestone wall.

She offered me a curt nod, as though she fully expected my presence on the island, and then walked over to speak with her father.

I let them be for a moment, knowing that both of them were glad to see the other in good health and prepared to engage in whatever new plan was at work in her mind.

She would have to take the charge in this endeavor, because even though she was in the least vulnerable position out of each of us, she was also in the position of greatest authority. Only through careful navigation could we hope to get through this experience in one piece, though I suspected that we would pay some tax for our troubles. The cost had not been high enough, as things stood in the present moment. Sure there had been some casualties on both sides, as well as some emotional trauma, but we were all here, and for a moment, I felt like I had found a team once more.

Walking over to me, then, she initiated conversation.

“I see you still have the bag, and you’re still in good health.”

“Relatively,” I said, moving my body unconsciously to stretch out the minor injuries and strains that I had sustained over the last few days.

“Any plans to give me that bag back?” she asked, figuring that I had at least some say in the process.

I shook my head.

“Not really. Unless you’re planning to make a major shift in your social circle.”

She nodded and looked down at the ground.

The wind buffeted through the small trees that peppered the landscape on Bastion. The ground was surprisingly established for being a man-made island. The only part of the island that reminded me that the ground I was standing on had once been an artificial installment was the sheer octagonal siding and the diminutive size of the landform.

“I figured you might say that,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been having more than a few second thoughts about my social circle as well. Though, I’m not convinced you would provide any better company. Unfortunately, I’m not sure at this point how to dismantle the work that has been done.”

Of course, she was referring to the fact that if she betrayed the group she worked for, then there would only be greater problems for the three of us. On the other hand, if she went to the police, there was no damning evidence to support taking down that group she was involved with, as all of the evidence lead squarely to the two of us, and now the fisherman by association.

I paused for a moment to reflect what course of action might be most appropriate, when suddenly, a small sail caught the corner of my eye.

Another ship had apparently gone around the backside of Bastion and was now coming into view.

Ships in Laguna Veneta were frequent, but there had been no ships around, and now not only was one present, but it was headed straight for the island.

Something about the ship’s presence felt very wrong.

Just as I instinctively pulled Piper to the ground, a shot went off. One bullet, and then two more spat into the ground, kicking up dust and rocks as it buried its deadly force into Bastion.

“Head to the cover of the trees,” I commanded.

Piper’s father ran over toward us, to help get his daughter to safety, but didn’t manage to complete the journey. 

“Dad!” Piper screamed, staring in horror at the fallen man.

Falling into the ground below, blood spilling our from the side of a hole in his neck, the man looked up helplessly at his daughter, seeking to view the only remaining love of his life for one more moment as an excessive flow of his own warmth seeped out from between his gnarled fingers.

Knowing that there was no time in the present moment to indulge in the grief of the tragedy, I literally yanked Piper from her position, and sprinted toward the cover of the trees — dragging her mourning, flailing body every step of the way.

When we got to the trees, she was still trying to crawl back out toward her father. I slammed her body back into the nearest tree trunk and stared her directly in the eyes.

“You need to focus right now,” I said. “Your father is dead, and there will be time to mourn, but now is not that time.”

My speech was truncated by the spray of another series of bullets. Each bullet pulled bark and wood from the nearby trees. The weapon used was clearly a high-powered rifle of some sort. Whoever was attacking, clearly had a very simple plan of execution — Eliminate Target, Recover Goods.

The obvious reality that there were no official police members on board the attacking ship went without question. Venice’s finest didn’t operate clandestine kill jobs via sailboat.

I knelt down to the ground and undid series of bags located within the pack. Finding the pistol, I unloaded the cartridge and checked to see how much ammunition was available. The officer I had stolen the weapon from made sure that the weapon was full. I wouldn’t need that many bullets if I could get a fair shot off, but it wasn’t going to be an easy confrontation.

Using what cover the trees provided, I launched into an attack, firing at the man in the boat, and making him dive into the water in order to take cover. One final blast through the pistol’s chamber sent a bullet to clip the man’s legs as he was retreating into the water. The leg twisted weirdly from the force, and I ran forward to finish him off.

Posting up on one of the octagonal lengths of Bastion, I looked to either side of the island, and then back down at the man. He had lost his rifle and was struggling to hold onto the edge of his wooden sailboat.

“Keep to the tree line, but look around the perimeter of the island,” I yelled, instructing Piper to make sure that there weren’t any other ships about.

The island was small, and within a few moments, she called out a signal that everything was clear.

I thought about shooting the man then and there and then decided to go through with it, knowing that his fate might be worse than death if Piper got around to seeing him. The man fell with my final shot, and his body floated limply in the water. Running over to the Fisherman’s body, I dragged him off toward the side of Bastion.

“Come over here and help me give your father a send-off,” I directed.

Piper was more than a bit rattled, but common sense was strong inside of her, and she was operating well on a minimal level of both survival and logic.

We both knew that if one found us here, it would be wise not to remain here for too long. Likely the assailant had some type of communication device, and would not be getting in touch with whoever had orchestrated the assault. However, I was confident that he would have reported a positive on the observation of the boats as soon as he arrived; any assassin would have done as much, particularly if the worked alone.

The two of us lifted the fisherman’s body into its final resting spot. He fell down into the water with a splash, and then slowly began to sink beneath the waves. I reasoned that our best option at this point would be to take the fishing boat, as it had a motor, and I believed there was more equipment available on board.

We boarded the vessel, and then pushed off from Bastion, headed back out into the Adriatic.

Neither of us spoke for a long while.

The silence was broken by an unearthly scream.

Turning around, I found Piper was kicking and beating the hell out of the side of the ship.

Her moment of shock had sustained her long enough to where we could find a secure place for her to break down. Now that we were in the middle of the sea, and out of immediate danger, I had to agree with her.

She couldn’t have picked a better spot.

After her outburst, she sat silently for a long while, staring off into the water and crying. The tears rolled down her eyes, and as though the environment itself was sympathetic to our cause, a light rain began to fall on from the overcast sky overhead.

I walked over to see how she was faring, but stopped only a few feet away from her, astonished.

Steam was literally rising off of her body in the rain, and she looked absolutely hellish. The amount of anger present in that woman was incredible, and I had nothing but understanding for where she was coming from. Personally, I hoped that she would stay there as long as possible.

“Hold onto that feeling,” I told her, ”but only long enough so that it will give you the strength necessary for you to do what needs to be done. Any longer, and it will start to eat at your heart like cancer.”

She turned to me quickly, as if to accuse me of speaking up about things that I knew nothing about, but I didn’t back down from her glare. There was no reason for her to be upset at me. She knew I had helped both of us out, and I knew that we had all shared in the responsibilities of the events that had come to pass. I was no more to blame than she, but in a sense, we were both irreparably tied to loss.

I wanted to say something more, to offer her some form of encouragement that would ease her mind, but then I stopped. Thinking that I could do anything at this point about her grief was nothing short of pride. The best thing for me to do was to safely navigate the ship toward a location where the two of us might know a moment of peace. At the moment, I didn’t know exactly where that was, but the unknown seemed like a safer bet than any of the places we had been previously.

I targeted our course for the center of the Adriatic and cut the engine so we proceeded forward at a drifting pace. We had nowhere to be, and I figured that I might as well pause for a moment to reflect.

She cried for a bit, staring out at the water, so I let her be. When she stopped, she came toward the ship’s navigation room, with a desperate and strange look in her eye.

“You as much a man as you seem?” she asked, leaning in toward me, and placing her hand on my cock.

Without pausing, she leaned in to kiss me. Her lips were chapped and puffy, but they felt good against my skin. Her eyes were red from crying and kept a careful eye on her, wondering just what she was all about.

“I need something to keep my mind busy,” she said, continuing to rub her palm against the front of my pants, “and I like it rough, do you understand?”

I nodded and pulled her top down so I could pinch her nipple. Then I wrapped my hand around her throat, while sticking my tongue down to meet her tongue. She opened her mouth for my fingers, and I slapped sharply on the face. She bit her tongue and nodded.

“That’s what I need right now,” she said, and she knelt down to unzip my pants.

My cock was already hard when she started to bob her head up and down on my penis. Her eyes were closed, and she was giving herself one hundred percent to the lust of the moment. I grabbed her by the back of the neck and shoved my cock down her throat.

“You’ll look at me when you suck my cock,” I demanded.

She nodded because my hand made her head nod. Then I gave her some more space, so she could have a bit of freedom to demonstrate her improvements. That didn’t last long because I found it was easier to hold her hand behind her back and shove my cock in between her lips. She kept coming toward me, with her mouth open, looking to kiss my body. I wanted her so badly, that I lifted her up off of the ground, and placed one of her legs over my shoulder. With her vagina right there for me, I began to clutch my body up against hers, while fucking the hell out of her.

She moaned incredibly loudly, and tears came down her eyes. I grabbed her by the roots of her hair, and she pleaded with me.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “Don’t you fucking stop.”

Maintaining my composure, I pushed her back down to the floor so I could get my hand firmly planted on the top of her head. My cock was wet with her saliva, and I pumped by dick in and out of her mouth as fast or slow as I saw fit.

Pulling her down on top of me next, I began to fuck her from behind, while she rode me in the referee position.

“Fuck… OH OH OH!” she moaned, as she twitched and convulsed on top of my cock.

The two of us took turns fucking each other. When I thrust into her, she couldn’t do anything but cry out in pleasure, and when she was busy fucking me, drove her into paralysis through repeatedly rubbing my fingers on her clit. She switched positions on me, giving me just the right opportunity to put her in a submission hold and spank her while I pumped my cock in and out of her body. I moved faster than any other time and gave everything that I had to fuck her.

Feeling the pressure of the moment, I decided to slow things down. I flipped her onto her back and pinned her body through a lifted leg. While pumping into her cunt once more, and holding a hand firmly on her neck, I watched her scream out for more.

“Is that all you got?” she cried. “Fucking be a man!”

Grabbing a hold of her hair, and shoving my fingers up against her clit, I began masturbating her furiously while fucking her so hard that her whole body shook with each thrust.

“You’re going to cum,” I instructed, “and you’re going to do it now.”

I dragged her across the floor and held her down by the legs while I slapped her ass and pumped two fingers into her. Executing another quick wrestling move, I wrapped my legs around her head and pinned her on top of my cock. My hand worked her clit until she sprayed all over the floor of the ship.

It was obvious that the ejaculation was exhausting for her, but I wanted to push her past her limit. We had both been pushed past our limits with everything that had happened lately, and I understood what she was after.

She wanted to numb the pain of her experience. She wanted to bury her own sadness underneath a spiked cocktail of pleasure and pain in sexuality. All of those taunts, and all of that begging for something rough.

You and I both know that this isn’t really rough
, I thought to myself, while holding her head to the ground and pushing up with my hips into her mouth.
What’s rough is what we’ve already been through.

She writhed with pleasure and agony while I shoved my cock as far down her throat as it could possibly go. While I was inside of her, I thought for a moment to pull out. I had lost myself, and was inside of her throat too long. When I started to pull out, her fingernails raked the back of my ass, as she shoved her head back onto my dick. The final thrust on her part was all I needed.

With a cry of my own, I grabbed a hold of her head with both legs and shoved myself into her. One wave of contracting muscles after another, caused a torrent of sperm to erupt from inside of me. Each stream shot directly down her throat. When she swallowed, I got caught in her musculature, and the suction elicited even an even stronger shot of cum.

By the time she was done, I had already been sucked dry, and my entire nervous system was shaking with the intensity of her attention.

I felt so calm, and I noticed a change in the way that she regarded me as well.

She didn’t stop sucking me off, but instead, she pulled more gently, and let her tongue wrap around the base of my cock. She gave my testicles some attention as well, though each movement of hers was at this point more like a thing of my body with her tongue, more than it was a reckless, manic shot into the darkness of human experience.

I actually crooned for her, losing track of my voice, as well as myself in response to her touch.

Without thinking, I leaned forward toward her asshole and began to lick her from her anus, all the way to her clit. The fervor was gone, but the careful attention to detail brought about by the post-orgasmic exhaustion was a more than welcome change of events.

My tongue found the remnants of her orgasm and tasted her juices. She was divine, and the combination of the way she tasted, and the way her tongue felt along the length of my shaft brought more blood back into my penis.

I was hopelessly aroused by her, and the tenderness that followed made me want to love her more; to love her in a different way.

Though both of our bodies were tired, we sucked on each other and allowed our bodies to press closely up against each other for the remainder of the next few hours. Orgasm, gave way to orgasm, gave way to unconsciousness, and eventually, I woke up to a dark sky — clouds blotting out the stars, and revealing only a luminous backdrop for a moon.

Taking the opportunity to get up and stretch, I left Piper on the floor, cuddled up in a ball next to me. My mind recalled the location of some blankets, and I grabbed every single one I could get. The weather was bearable, but I didn’t want to deal with bearable any longer. I didn’t want Piper to have to deal with bearable either. I wanted us to be able to get a good night’s sleep for once, and to me, that meant being fucking warm. I laid out more than a few wool blankets and made space in them for the two of us.

Lifting her up in her sleep, and setting her down again gently on the blanket, I put her to bed. Pulling several other layers of wool over our bodies, I laid down next to her, and stared at the place where the moon was peaking through the cloud cover.

Piper didn’t wake up, but she did roll over and cuddle up next to me. Her face was in my armpit while the two of us fell back asleep. I smiled, knowing that in that moment, I was experiencing something that would keep me warm for years to come.

That night instead of feeling the comfort of sleep, I found myself thrashing about through a nightmare. The situation was an abstract format of consequential behavior. Cause and effect. Fate. That sort of thing. Like one marble leading up toward other marbles on a playboard, I observed the consequences of my actions. In addition to the benefit of receiving a life review, I was also treated to brief reviews of conversations with Piper’s father.

His voice echoed through my mind throughout the course of the evening, and I found myself repeatedly heading toward the same points of conclusion. The essential message could be broken down as follows:

First, each time you have come into contact with a conflicted situation, you have pursued a solution which has been in line with your training.

Second, your training is valuable, but it is incomplete.

Three, make a decision to be the type of man who knows the value of life.

Four, complete your training.

Each point was reiterated in a different format at different parts of the dream, but the core message was there. When I woke up, the details of the dream seemed to fog over, and I was left with a single distilled sensation that my violence had not only been instrumental in increasing the suffering of others, but the very idea that I had killed while thinking I was solving problems was problematic.

What is the difference between me and them?
I wondered, the relativism of the situation firmly entrenched in my psyche.
They think that they are achieving some great good, or that their behaviors are justified, and I feel the same way. Yet, in spite of my efforts, no great good is ever achieved; only misery, loss, and sadness; only greater complications
.

I turned over to see the woman who had chosen to come to me the night before. She had wanted me to own her. Rough sex was really just a desire to manifest the out of control feeling that we know from within the rest of life. We want to be able to experience that in the context of a safe space; I understood that. What I didn’t understand was how drastically my mind had shifted gears once we had orgasmed together.

I felt as though I had been possessed by a sort of sweetness. The desire to be tender toward her, and to really treasure the moment that we were able to share with one another became my sole focus. As I laid there and watched her sleep, I got the feeling that the two of us were going to be going through some difficult times ahead. In spite of the impending conflict, it felt right to have someone to face these troubles with; someone to take the edge off when things got too intense.

Seeing Piper handle the sailboat as she sailed up to Bastion was a remarkable thing for me. I was in awe, but it was because I had judged her. I thought she was nothing more than a punk girl, who thought it was cool to be involved with trafficking and dubious assholes like that guy who visited her apartment.

I shook my head while staring at her.

The guy could have been decent, once upon a time, but he didn’t seem that special to me. Seemed like a right piece of shit. What made matters worse, was that his face was somehow familiar. I knew I had seen someone with facial characteristics like that before. I couldn’t exactly place it, as he was wearing glasses, and I only caught a look at his cheekbones and his lips. Really, he could've been anybody.

I guess all that really matters is that soon enough that fucker is either going to be dead or we we’re going to flee the country
, I thought.

There you go again
, came a soft voice from inside of my head.

I paused in my reflections, in order to pay attention to what I was doing on a sub-conscious level. Then I realized what was going on.

Without even considering the ramifications of my dream, I had already been plotting to use violence to kill someone, and ‘solve’ another problem. The will to use violence against my enemies had become so entrenched in my personality that I didn’t even stop to question violent plans while they were in their conception phase.

How deep does this go?
I thought, wondering what other activities went on in my mind. What other activities had become so rote that I pursued them, and formulated their execution without so much as the slightest consideration that I might be hurting myself.

Just make a commitment
, I replied, trying to bring a solution to my own inner turmoil about the subject.
Make a commitment that from here on out, you are not going to do any more killing; it’s not that hard, you just have to make a choice, and stick to it.

The words rang clearly in my mind, and I looked down at Piper.

She opened her eyes, blinked sleepily, and smiled at me. Closing her eyes then, she pulled the blankets up around her shoulder and went back to sleep. She looked so beautiful, and I nearly found myself wanting to cry, thinking that I had been instrumental in some way for the death of her father.

I nodded.

Never again
, I swore.
Tomorrow, we run.