Dark Savior: A Dark Bad Boy Romance (11 page)

“Touch yourself,” he orders. I want to object, because I know it’ll make me come too fast, which means this bliss will be over for a while. But the part of me that yearns for release overpowers the part that wants to prolong things, and I obediently move my hand to my heated center. It only takes two or three more of his thrusts before I can feel my orgasm approaching in heavy waves.

He can tell I’m about to lose it before even I’m sure it’s happening, and he doesn’t change the rhythm of his shoves while I’m riding on each of them with maddening lust, losing myself in the feeling. It doesn’t take long for him to follow, and I can feel him pulsating inside of me while my muscles clench around him. My vision becomes foggy, but I know that his eyes are on me, taking in the sight of me coming on his cock as he follows along with his own release.

We’re breathing heavily, each of us recovering from our climax and the intoxicating ride that lead to it.

Kade looks at me, sporting a confident smile. “I bet you’re going to enjoy that pizza now.”

I huff.

“So, that’s your plan?” I ask. “You’ll just fuck me right before every meal to make me enjoy it more?”

He leans forward and plants a little kiss on the side of my mouth. “Something like that.”

When he makes room for me to jump down from the counter top, I notice that he steps out of his pants. They remain on the floor as he walks away, heading for the bathroom.

My pulse has just calmed down, but when I see him exit the room, leaving me alone with his pants, and possibly the key to the secret bedroom, my heart rate speeds up immediately. Could I be this lucky?

I don’t waste any time and drop to my knees, quickly rummaging through his pants pockets while I hear him turning on the water in the bathroom. I have to be quick.

There! I produce a keyring and hold it up in front of my face. There are about half a dozen keys attached to it, but I quickly recognize one that could fit into the lock on the bedroom door. I fiddle with the keyring, trying to find a way to remove just that one key. I reckon that I’m safe as long as I hear the water running in the bathroom, but of course, I can’t be sure of that. I keep looking back and forth between the key in my hands and the archway to the bathroom to make sure that he doesn’t make a sudden appearance and catch me in the act.

It takes a while, but I finally manage to remove the key from the ring, breaking a nail in the process.

The water stops running.

“The pizza should be done by now!” he yells from the bathroom. “Go check on it.”

Chills run down my spine and I quickly shove the keyring back into his pants, managing to jump up and go for the oven door just before he comes back into the room.

I hear him chuckle behind me.

“What a sight,” he says. “A naked girl getting a freshly baked pizza out of the oven.”

He steps closer and wraps his arms around me. “Life should always be like this. Right?”

My heart is pounding so hard that I’m sure he must feel it throbbing against his muscular arms.

“Right,” I say, clenching my fist around the stolen key.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kade

“I thought you’d never show up here again!”

Joseph is leaning against the bar as if he wants to show everyone that he owns it. His posture denotes that omnipresent dominance a man should display in this community if he wants to be taken seriously. He’s a lot shorter than me, but he stands straight and carries himself in such a way that he demands respect, and his sturdy frame accented by well-developed muscles is imposing. We trained together before I left town, so I know this guy can bench just as much as I can, if not more by now. I’ve been slacking since I became a corporate guy and no longer saw the need to always be primed and ready for a fist fight at the drop of a hat. That’s how business is done here, but not in the world I became a part of not too long ago.

I occupy the bar stool next to my old friend and order a Scotch without saying a word. The bartender knows how to interpret my gesture well enough.

Joseph places his elbows on the bar and looks at me through his deep, dark eyes.

“Thought you went completely off the radar,” he murmurs.

We haven’t seen each other since then. Since we ended that douchebag’s life together.

“You scared or what?” he asks.

I frown at him.

“What would I be scared of?” I ask back. “We were smart, nothing to worry about.”

Joseph shrugs his shoulders. “True.”

“Just been busy is all,” I add, taking the first sip of my Scotch, savoring the burn as it coats my throat.

“You know we did the right thing.”

Our eyes meet and I see that same worry in Joseph’s eyes that I’ve seen before on other faces. It speaks of fear, the fear of rats. Friends can turn into rats if they start questioning their actions. A murder, many murders, could be called a questionable act if you looked at it from a normal person’s angle.

But Joseph and I are not normal people. The difference between us and a normal person is that we don’t accept things as they are. We don’t accept that certain creatures have the opportunity to terrorize an entire neighborhood for generations because the police are too scared or misinformed to act. I’m all for the rule of law, but not if it’s not carried out in the harsh way these assholes deserve.

“Of course I know,” I hiss at Joseph. “He had to go. I’m not doubting anything. I won’t snap. I won’t talk. Stop worrying.”

“Okay, okay,” he replies, lifting his hands in defense. “But something is up with you man, I can tell!”

“Nothing is up,” I lie.

“What’s keeping you so busy then?” he wants to know. “And why are you still here? You’ve been giving me mixed signals all this time. You fucking show up out of nowhere, announcing that you’re back in town. Then your mother dies — again, sorry about that. We get into this shit together, you tell me you’ll be outta’ here once that’s done, and now you linger around but make yourself invisible. Seriously, what gives?”

“I have shit to take care of,” I say, finally coming up with a good excuse. “My mother’s place. I have to get rid of stuff and sell it.”

“Sell it?” Joseph asks, his eyebrows arching. “I didn’t know you owned that little shithole.”

“I bought it a few years back after she refused to move,” I explain.

“Huh.” Joseph takes another sip from his drink. “Didn’t even know you could buy a place like that.”

“You can’t, normally,” I say. “But I had to make it happen. If she insisted on living there even when there was no need to, I at least wanted to make sure that she wasn’t wasting money on rent.”

“Sure,” Josephs agrees. “Gotta’ be nice. To be able to do that shit for your family.”

I glance over to him. Joseph never made it out of the hood, and I know that a small part of him resents me for being successful away from this hell that we called home. I was willing to put in the kind of work that he always thought less of. I became a corporate snob and started my own company with what I learned during my early years as a trainee. It wasn’t all me, of course. If anything, I just reached for the hand that was held out to me. My mother worked her ass off to make this possible for me, she literally sold herself. How could I not make something out of myself? That woman didn’t deserve to be betrayed like that. It was bad enough that she knew about my vigilante activities. She had always been torn between pride and fright when it came to that. The thought I was running around, chasing bad guys never sat well with her. I know she worried, but she never asked a lot of questions, mainly because she was afraid of the answers, I’m sure.

But she understood. She understood where I was coming from and she knew I had good reasons to get involved. That’s the part that made her proud. The best part.

“I’d have prepared for her to live somewhere else,” I say, absentmindedly turning the glass between my hands. “I will never understand why she insisted on staying in this hood.”

Joseph huffs.

“Of course you won’t,” he says. “You left as soon as you could. But we’re not all like you. Some of us actually feel attached to our home.”

He doesn’t look at me, but he doesn’t have to for me to understand that he’s reproaching me for leaving.

“This neighborhood needs us,” he says.

“Maybe,” I admit. “But you know that most of those who stay are part of the problem.”

“What?” he asks, now turning to me with a sour expression on his face. “Like me? Or your mother? Or my fami—”

“Most! Not all!” I interrupt him. “Damn it, Joseph, you know what I mean. This community is infested with assholes that feed off each other.”

Joseph lets out an angry grunt instead of giving me a reply. We both take another sip of our drinks and sit together in silence for a while.

I haven’t gotten one step closer to solving my dilemma with Meadow. All I know is that she weakens me. Caring for someone in that way automatically creates a weak spot for you, and I know I care for that girl.

I made her squirm with pleasure, I made her moan in ecstasy, I made her smile. She’s mine now, my problem, my sweet dilemma. She has shown no desire to leave the apartment and get on with the life she was ready to throw away, and I haven’t suggested it for a while now. But we both know that things can’t go on like this. I can’t take care of her like a baby, and I’m growing uncomfortable with the idea of her living in my mother’s home. What I told Joseph about wanting to get rid of her stuff and sell the place was true. It was one of the reasons why I stuck around for longer than planned.

No one is expecting me back in Boston any time soon. My company was bought out by another one a few months back. That deal has been in the making for a very long time, and I was so relieved when it was all done because it not only provided me with a shit load of money, but also the freedom to embark on the next endeavor. Whatever that might turn out to be. My visit home was supposed to serve as a little timeout to clear my mind. It was a terrible coincidence that my mother died just a few weeks after I got back to town. A fucking heart attack. Knocked her out right away. She always said that’s how she wanted to die, or something close to that.

“I better be holding a good Scotch in my hand when I say goodbye!” is what she used to tell me. There was no Scotch, but a cup of coffee. Her heart failed in the morning, while she was drinking her first cup of the day. The first of many, that’s for sure. She loved her coffee, and her Scotch, sometimes both at the same time. She was a good woman, a strong woman, a badass who wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything, not even death.

She was my weak spot, the only person I cared about. After her death, I had no one to be scared for, to worry about, no one to take care of. No weakness. I was as free as a man can be, but I never enjoyed that kind of freedom.

Maybe that’s why I took Meadow with me. Meadow and her troubles. Meadow and her sad eyes, that beautiful body and her melancholic face that is able to display so much more than sorrow in such a mesmerizing way.

I might be addicted to her already. Too attached.

“You know he also killed others?” Joseph asks, interrupting my stream of thoughts.

I cast him a quizzical look. “What?”

He scans our immediate surroundings before he leans in closer to me, now whispering.

“The guy we offed,” he murmurs. “They are looking for him out of state.”

“For what?” I ask.

“Same as here, rape and possibly murder,” Joseph replies. “He might have killed at least two in Pennsylvania before we got him.”

“Pennsylvania?” I ask. “When? Old stories?”

Joseph shakes his head. “Not at all. This year. I mean, not sure if it’s really him, but from the description I’ve heard… too damn close. Same strategy, too. Same kind of victim.”

“Drunk college girls?” I ask.

Joseph nods. “That’s the kind. He was a lazy coward.”

“Fucking asshole,” I hiss. I hate to be even reminded of his face. This guy really rubbed me the wrong way. A rapist and murderer who went after vulnerable girls when they were least expecting it. There are no words to express the disgust I feel towards men like him.

“Let’s hope we got him,” Joseph adds. “I would hate to think that there’s another motherfucker like him still running around out there.”

“There is,” I whisper, sounding bitter. “There always is. No matter how many we get rid of, there’s always a new one showing up. If not here, it’s in fucking Pennsylvania or God knows where.”

Joseph sighs, rolling his eyes at me. “Oh, you again with that depressing talk! Shut the hell up, will ya’? Don’t matter if we only get rid of a tiny portion of them. Every single one of them is an insult to humanity.”

He has a point there. But I still can’t fight the damn hopelessness. Yes, we got rid of this one, and the ones before him. Every time we made one of them disappear, the next one practically showed up on our doorstep. They’re easy to spot and there’s too damn many of them. I hate knowing that I can’t make all of them disappear. Sure, the police take care of the ones who are caught the proper way, and if we’re lucky the guy ends up in prison for a very long time. If he’s only been raping but not killing — yet — he’s out within years, maybe even months. And then they do the same thing all over again.

It sucks. It fucking sucks, and I hate having this shit happening in my neighborhood.

I don’t even want to think about something like this happening to Meadow. She needs my protection, and I trust that she’ll know what to do with it. She’s a sweet little lamb.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Meadow

I wait for a few minutes after Kade leaves the apartment. Just to make sure. He’s never returned once he walked out the door, but you never know. If today was that one exception to the rule, I sure as hell don’t want him finding me snooping around in the one room he keeps locked up.

He said this room was private. It could be his old bedroom, for all I know. If he used to live here when he was a little boy, it would only make sense that this room was his.