Love and War: Part Two (Shadows in the Dark Book 2)

I glance at the clock on the radio display. 4AM. I’ve been sitting here for the past two hours, off the driveway between some pine trees, ensuring no one else shows up. I holster my knife in my boot and my gun behind my back in the waistband of my jeans. It’s time. It’s been too fucking long.

I’ve had plenty of time since I followed him here to locate every flood light on the front of the house, to check surroundings, and to work my adrenaline up.

I make my way to the house along the tree line, out of sight from the security light. One dim light remains lit up inside the house. It has been since I arrived.

I check the sliding glass door. It’s unlocked. I ease it back slowly and quietly walk in, looking around. Two wine glasses sit on top of the counter with barely any liquid remaining inside, one wearing a pair of red lips around the rim. Giggling commences. “Chuck,” a female voice says in a flirty way.

One step at a time I move through the main area of the house, in front of the mantle. I stop, my eyes being pulled toward the picture frame sitting on top. My jaw locks into place. Long black hair. Tattoos I recognize. She’s younger, standing in a parking lot, hands laced on top of her head and staring off as if she’s dazed.

It’s a candid shot coming from an angle most often used by stalkers and private investigators. Everything is the same except her eyes. The ones I’m familiar with look alive. These remind me of the ones that walked in the shop that day to drop off her design for her tattoo: lost, sad, void.

My eyes move to the next. There she is again, but this time she’s in lingerie and heels, sending my rage into dangerous depths. Innocence is ingrained in every feature all over her face. Insecurity of a juvenile girl is in the way she holds herself without clothing. She’s too fucking young to be dressed like that. One by one my eyes study them. He’s got photos of her all over the room. Of my girl.

Then a female moan sounds, and all I can fucking picture is Delta lying there under him. Him touching her. Putting his mouth on her. Mine. She’s mine. His house is like a fucking shrine of her. He’s not over her.

Then I hear my worst nightmare. “Just like that, Delta.” A grunt sounds. “You always were so tight.” Everything goes red, blurred, and I swiftly move toward the continuous sounds, some feminine, some masculine. “You like that, baby? Tell me you love me.”

The words are returned, high-pitched. I walk in the bedroom to a girl with long, black hair bent over the bed, taking it like a fucking animal in heat. He’s thrusting into her, calling her by a name that doesn’t belong to him. And I fucking lose it. My fist becomes a vise around his neck and I shove him against the wall, the blade of my knife already out and pressing against his lips.

I look back at the girl that’s now staring at me, scared. It’s not her . . .

“How old are you?”

“Fif-fif-fifteen.”

“You always let men get off to your body while they pretend you’re someone else?”

She stares at me, saying nothing, a look of innocence and embarrassment on her face. It all comes flooding back. Every fucking time I was forced to lay there while she fucked me, while she sucked me, while she milked me. She tormented me mentally, physically. She repulsed me, but she still made me hard. She made me touch her. I hated her. And the last time, I fucking killed her.

I breathe heavily, my nails digging into his skin, gagging sounds occurring. “Get the fuck out of here. You better forget you were here or I’ll come after you too.”

She grabs her clothes and takes off running, only seconds occurring before the door slams shut. My eyes bore into his until recognition hits. “It’s you,” he chokes out against the flat side of the blade. I clamp my hand harder, teeth clenched, drawing a gasp. “Delta.”

His face is turning blue. I loosen my hold, not ready for him to die yet. That’s too easy. Too peaceful. I lightly run the blade along his cheek “You’re fucking little girls.”

He tries to jerk out of my hold. I slam him against the wall. His hand goes to my wrist, trying to push it away. I tighten my hold again. “Age means nothing to girls like that. They know exactly what they’re doing. They seduce men like us. They want us to want them. Look at how they dress, the makeup they wear, the way they act.”

He has a baby face. A headful of thick hair he keeps a little on the shaggy side. Looks younger than he is. He was probably a playboy in school that didn’t amount to much of anything.

I press the tip of the knife into his skin, drawing a bead of blood. I feel the release as the skin separates, and then I slowly slice down his pretty-boy face. He likely uses it for bait, using sex with young girls as a fountain of youth. With each centimeter I cut through, a little more anger leaves me. He growls. “What do you want from me?”

“What was Delta? She one of your kid fucks too?”

“The worst kind. She’s a fantasy, a sweetheart, an addiction, and an obsession. Those green eyes lure you in. That body hooks you. The sadness she hides makes her an easy target. A little attention and she was riding my cock better than any other girl ever has. That little vixen is still the best fuck I’ve had.”

I’m counting his pulse. Watching his heartbeat. If I don’t, I’m going to snap his neck. And that’s no fun. “But you already know, don’t you? Or you wouldn’t be here. She love and leave you too? Word of advice . . . move on. The bitch is needy. Makes a good cock choke. That’s about it.”

“So you can have her? Not a fucking chance.” I knee him in the balls once and then the dick before shifting him around in front of me so that he’s facing the mirror, neck in the crook of my arm, his naked ass against me. He coughs, his hand going for his dick, trying to hunch over, but I hold him straight. “I hope I broke it,” I seethe. I turn my knife around toward him, handle up. “Take it. You know you want to.”

He stares at me. “What’s with the black latex gloves?”

“Take it,” I demand.

He grabs the black handle. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Your worst nightmare. And I’m about to rid the world of mine.”

I shove the needle into his skin, injecting the PCP. He tries to strike me with the knife and misses, my gun already aimed at his temple. “Okay, man. What do you want? You can have it. Just let me go.”

“First, I want to know why you have so many photos of her. Since she’s just a cock choke and all.”

“Because she’s mine. Always has been. When she’s done with her little phase she’ll come back. She already was ‘til you got in the way. The second she started moaning against my lips and choking my cock with that still-tight pussy after all these years, I realized nothing had changed. I put in the time. She knows who wants her, who will take care of her. Your kind is just a fantasy for her—the tattoos, the muscle, the attitude—and something that won’t last. When she’s done playing with you she’ll come back. Always does. Another pussy didn’t even take her away from me.”

The anger dies down, burning out like a flame, and all that remains is indifference—the point in which I know I’m gone. There’s no turning back, even if I wanted to. If . . .

I don’t.

“That’s where you’re wrong, motherfucker. She’s mine. The way I see it, only way to solve this is for one of us to die, and it isn’t going to be me. Blade to the gut. Let’s go.”

“What? No.”

He tries to struggle, but I tighten my hold, shoving the barrel of the gun into his skull. “You can do it or I can, but if I do it, I won’t stop until I’m wearing your blood. It’s your choice.”

His hand starts shaking. He holds the blade toward his abdomen, three inches from the skin. “Please. Let me go. I won’t touch her. She’s all yours.”

“See, I don’t think that’s the case. Then you’ll always be in the background; the guy that fucks kids. And well, this is what I think about those people.”

I switch my gun to the opposite hand, still holding him in the bend of my elbow. Then, with precise control, I wrap my hand over his over the knife and drive it into his torso. He screams out, hips pushing backward against me in an effort to protect his body. My chest swells. Before her it would be enough of a rush to get hard. Forcefully taking a life satiates something deep and dark that nothing else touches. Every second pulls me deeper: every blood-curdling cry, every blood-covered tooth spewing droplets as his mouth opens, and every cast-off blood pattern against the floor as the knife backs out to go again. It all channels my mind.

Control drives me.

Thick red flows down his chin like a waterfall. The smell of rust makes me high. Not ready to stop, I pull the knife out and strike again, and again, releasing every bad memory on a stab, and then, as the blood begins to coat my hand and pool on the floor, everything blurs and becomes peaceful.

I stare through the mirror, watching every breath become slower than the last. I continue, waiting for the moment that I feel his heart stop and his body become lifeless in my hold.

When there is no sound, no breathing but my own, I release him and he drops to the floor. I squat, taking him in. “Should have never fucked that one. That one was meant for me.”

Empty needle on the floor. His handprints on the knife. The door was unlocked. PCP is a hallucinogen. Who the fuck knows what he could have been seeing in his head. Doesn’t matter to me. One person that hurt her is gone.

And one of my nightmares will cease.