Unattainable (35 page)

“
SHUT UP!” he roared,
whipping his gun out of its holster and pointing it at her. “You
made a fool out of me! Do you know who I am? How many women in this
town would have killed to be in your position?”

A violent shudder wracked through
Ellie’s body. She was too terrified to speak.

“
Get on the floor,” he
demanded.

No. Oh God, no. Please God, please
don’t let this happen. This couldn’t be happening.

“
DID YOU HEAR ME?” he
yelled. “Get on the fucking floor!”

Ellie felt the whispers of defeat begin
to settle heavily in the pit of her stomach. Swallowing hard, she
set her purse and phone on her desk and then slowly made her way to
the floor.

“
Lay down,” he commanded
as he walked toward her, and she did as he asked.

Towering over her, his weapon still
trained on her, Daniel reached for his pants, and pulled open his
belt.

Ellie’s vision began to swim and she
tried desperately to suck in much-needed air.

“
Pull up your
dress.”

Trembling, sweating, yet cold with
fear, Ellie reached down and pulled up her dress. As Daniel knelt
in between her legs, his pants sagging off his hips, his erection
already freed of his boxers, Ellie turned her head away and
squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

She wouldn’t fight him this time, she
told herself. She would lie here and take it and then maybe it
wouldn’t hurt, maybe he would let her live, maybe…

She winced as Daniel gripped one of her
breasts tightly and twisted hard. His hand was between her legs
now, pushing her underwear to the side and, oh my God, no, no,
no…

Her teeth ground together, her jaw
locked.

It hurt. She wasn’t ready for him, not
at all. Her body was tense, so tightly strung, if he did manage to
get inside of her, it was going to be painful.

Ellie held her breath and began to
pray. She prayed to every god, in every religion she could think
of. She prayed for her life, she prayed to be able to see her
family again, she just continued to pray, focusing solely on prayer
while Daniel cursed as he tried to push inside of her.

A loud crash sounded and her eyes flew
open. Daniel’s head whipped around and the next thing she knew
Daniel was no longer on top of her but flying across the classroom,
taking out an entire row of desks as he went. Dirty stood above
her, staring down at her, his eyes wide, his features tight,
causing the veins in his neck to bulge.

“
Did he?” he asked through
clenched teeth. Already pushing herself up and her dress down,
Ellie shook her head frantically. “No,” she said, scrambling to her
feet.

He nodded. “Go,” he said darkly. “Grab
your shit and go straight to my place. Right now.”

Ellie glanced over at Daniel, who was
lying on the floor across the room, holding his head and
groaning.

“
Go!” Dirty yelled,
spurring Ellie into action. She grabbed her purse and phone and ran
from the room. She ran through the empty hallways, down the stairs,
and burst out the front door. She ran the entire way to Dirty’s
apartment.

Then she crawled in his bed, pulled the
covers up over her head, and burst into tears.

Dirty was going to kill him and as
awful as that was, she honestly didn’t care. What she cared about
was what was going to happen to Dirty after the fact.

• • •

“
I fuckin’ hate this
place,” Ripper muttered, glancing at the rundown condos at the edge
of town. Dirty glanced up from the ground where Daniel lay
unconscious, and looked at Ripper. “We took care of
everything?”

Ripper shrugged. “I cleaned up the
classroom, Anger’s choppin’ the police car as we speak, and the
only other motherfucker inside that school was one of the
secretaries and she didn’t even bat a fuckin’ eyelash when I told
her she didn’t hear nothin’, didn’t see nothin’, and didn’t know
nothin’.”

“
How much did you give
her?”

Ripper snorted. “Too much.”

“
Blowback?”

Ripper shrugged again. “Maybe. But we
ain’t ever spilled local blood before. We protect our town, they
know that.”

“
Thanks for doin’ this,”
he said, and Ripper’s gaze shot to him.

Ripper shook his head. “Brother,” he
said, “if that was my old lady that fucker tried to rape, he’d
already be eatin’ dirt.”

“
I’m givin’ it to him
slow,” Dirty gritted out. “Least I can do.”

Ripper smiled grimly and held out his
fist. “You do what you gotta do, dude. Call Cox if you need help
with the body. I’m gonna swing by the club a little later and let
the prez know what’s up anyway.”

Dirty’s fist met Ripper’s and he
nodded.

Dirty waited until he could no longer
see the taillights of Ripper’s pickup before turning back to
Mooresville. Cocking his leg back, he sent his booted foot straight
into the asshole’s ribs.

“
Wake up, fucker!” he
yelled.

Air exploded from the man’s lungs in
the form of a gasping groan and Mooresville’s eyes blinked open.
Coughing and sputtering, he tried to turn away from Dirty, but
Dirty didn’t give him a chance and immediately sent his boot again
into his ribs. The fucker bounced a few feet forward and then went
still.

Crossing the small distance, Dirty
stepped over him and reached down to grab his shirt collar. “Open
your eyes!” he demanded and Mooresville’s eyelids fluttered before
finally opening.

“
You gonna die now,
fucker,” Dirty growled. “But first you’re gonna lie there like a
fuckin’ bitch and take everything I’m gonna give you. And fucker,
I’m gonna do you dirty.”

Yanking him up by his shirt, Dirty sent
his fist straight into the man’s mouth. It hurt for sure, the
fucker’s teeth cut through his knuckles, but it was efficient in
knocking out nearly all of Mooresville’s front teeth.

Letting him fall back to the ground,
Dirty sat down hard on his injured ribs, pinning him in
place.

“
Please,” Mooresville
rasped brokenly. “Please…”

“
What’s that?” Dirty said,
sneering. “I can’t fuckin’ hear you?”

“
Please!” the man
screamed.

“
Fuck you,” Dirty spat and
sent his fist flying into the side of Mooresville’s face. Over and
over again, he punched him as hard as he could, beating on him
until he was covered in the man’s blood, unable to see straight.
Until it was no longer Mooresville he was beating on.

It was himself.

Because as much as he hated comparing
himself to a dirtbag like Daniel Mooresville, he didn’t have much
of a choice. He was just as big of a dirtbag. He’d never spared a
female who wasn’t part of his family a second thought; he hadn’t
given a fuck what kind of pain he’d caused, instead he’d
rationalized it. Justified it, even.

He was the worst kind of dirtbag,
thinking he had a right to inflict pain on other people just
because pain had been inflicted on him.

The world didn’t owe him shit. Nobody
did.

He didn’t deserve a second chance. He
deserved nothing. Worse than nothing. He deserved every inch of
what he had and what he was going to put this motherfucker
through.

“
You think you got a right
to hurt people?” he yelled as he dragged the chief of police’s
broken body toward the row of condominiums. “What gives you the
motherfuckin’ right?”

Dropping him on his stomach, Dirty
yanked down the man’s pants and boxers, then took inventory of his
own possessions. Yeah, no way was he going to use his gun. Or his
phone. He grabbed the next best thing. His blade. It wasn’t a sissy
knife either; it was a serrated hunting blade, made especially for
death.

“
Open wide,” Dirty said,
and shoved that motherfucker straight into Mooresville’s asshole.
Hard. Over and over again, each time amping up Mooresville’s
following screams of pain as they echoed throughout the wide-open
empty space.

“
Upsie daisy.” Dirty
laughed, hooking his hands under the man’s dislocated shoulders.
Once he had him positioned on the front steps to the condo, Dirty
wrenched his mouth wide open and forced the corner of the concrete
stair between his lips. Mooresville whimpered his protests but
there wasn’t a bone in the fucker’s body Dirty hadn’t at least
tried to break. The guy could barely breathe, let alone
move.

“
Good night, fucker,” he
said.

Then, holding him in place, Dirty
lifted his boot and, as hard as he could, slammed it down on the
back of his skull.

Standing up and with shaking hands,
Dirty lit up a cigarette and pulled out his cell phone.

Cox answered on the first
ring.

“
Got a problem,” he said
around a cloud of smoke.

“
Yeah?” Cox asked.
“Whatchu need?”

“
Special
sauce.”

“
Where you at?”

“
Mama Vi’s.”

“
Be there in
twenty.”

Dirty shoved his phone back in his cut
and looked down at his bloody boot. Lifting up his foot, he wiped
the gore off onto Mooresville’s body.

“
Be seein’ you in hell,
fucker,” he said. Hocking up a wad of phlegm, he spit it out onto
the back of the man’s broken skull. “And you best believe you’ll be
gettin’ another beat-down when I do.”

• • •

Ellie’s stomach was churning, her head
was pounding, and she was so high-strung her anxiety had reached
volcanic levels, that when she heard the jingle of keys against the
door, she fell face first onto the floor when she attempted to
scramble out of bed.

“
Jesus,” Dirty muttered.
Hands gripped her arms and she was hauled to her feet.

Ellie choked on her surprise as she
took in Dirty’s disheveled, dirt- and blood-covered clothing. Her
gaze dropped to his blood-covered hands and his swollen, split
knuckles.

“
Michael,” she whispered.
“Did you…”

Tears formed in her eyes. “Please tell
me you didn’t kill him,” she finished quickly, praying to God that
he hadn’t.

His eyes met hers. “I killed him,” he
said without an ounce of remorse. In fact, he looked angry, like he
wanted to kill the man all over again. “He ain’t never gonna be
found, baby, and you don’t gotta worry anymore about him comin’
after you.”

“
The whole town is going
to be looking for him,” she whispered, her body filling with fear.
“You’ll go to jail. They will take you away from me and you’ll go
to jail and it will be all my fault. Oh my God, this is
all—”

Dirty’s mouth slammed into hers with
such force that she would have flown backward if he hadn’t been
holding her arms.

Ellie’s surprise was short-lived. She
wanted this, she wanted this badly, so when his tongue roughly
thrust past her lips, she’d already forgotten entirely what she had
been talking about.

“
Nobody is takin’ me away
from you,” he growled against her mouth.

Ellie found herself suddenly spun
around and Dirty’s front pressed against her back. His hands
gripped the collar of her dress. “And that motherfucker ain’t never
gonna be found,” he finished, then yanked. Buttons flew through the
room, pinging off the furniture and walls as her dress split wide
open.

Large hands gently cupped her
bra-covered breasts and she trembled through her next breath. “I
have to have you, baby,” he said, pressing his erection into her
backside. “I can’t take it no more, but I gotta do this my way and
I need you to do exactly as I say.”

Ellie’s need for Dirty had overridden
her fear of what could happen if she and Dirty were ever to become
intimate awhile back. She simply didn’t care anymore. She wanted
him that badly. More in fact now that she knew what he was capable
of. He had just killed a man. Beaten him with his own two hands.
For her. All for her.

Never in her entire life had she dreamt
she would ever be in the center of such events, or turned on by
them, let alone falling in love with a man…like Dirty.

Her dress was pulled from her arms and
just as quickly her bra was tossed across the room. Moments later,
Ellie was naked, facedown on Dirty’s bed and he was behind her,
holding her hips, pressing against her, pressing into
her.

She whimpered her frustration. She
wanted to touch him, to kiss him again; she wanted to hold tightly
to him when he slid inside of her. But she would take it. She
understood. She’d seen firsthand his fragility, his fears, and she
knew how desperately hard this was for him, so she would do it his
way.

Except, suddenly she could no longer
feel him behind her. Pushing to her knees, she turned around and
found him kneeling by the edge of the bed, tears rolling down his
cheeks.

“
I can’t do it,” he choked
out, his words frantically spoken, his eyes wide while his head
shook wildly. “I can’t do it.”

Instinctively wanting to comfort him,
Ellie reached for him and found herself immediately shoved
backward. Startled, she glanced up at Dirty, who was towering over
her and glaring. “Don’t touch me,” he bit out.