If you had asked me that very question only three months ago, I would have said hell no. Now? Now I’m willing to give it a shot. The most euphoric thing in the world is watching the light switch on in someone’s eyes long after they’ve been trapped by the dark.
I swear Nikolai’s ego still feeds off his feat now.
After unwinding the cords around Dok’s iPod, I push back the curls fanning K’s face before popping a pod into her exposed ear. The other half goes into mine. Once I’ve pressed play on the track Dok suggested, I lay on my side so I can watch K’s face for any indication she can hear the patters of rain on a tin roof.
Dok picked good. This track sounds exactly like a sprinkling of rain hitting a pigpen. All I need is the smell of pig shit, and the scene would be set.
My eyes pop out of my head when a lightbulb inside switches on.
“I’ll be back in a sec, K. I know I said I wouldn’t leave you, but this is really important.”
Ignoring the similarities between this comment and the one that had K taken away from me for three and a half months, I remove the pod from my ear then hightail it out of the room. Nikolai is awake, alone, and eating toast like he wasn’t responsible for the death of over thirty men last night.
“Who hid in the stables before the raid?”
He stops munching on his toast to arch a brow. Although curiosity is his highest expression, he hates being interrogated more. “Nero and Shaun…” I race down the hall before all of Nero’s name leaves his mouth. “Why?”
“I need shit. Lots and lots of shit.”
Nero greets me with a grin like he isn’t in the process of getting his dick sucked by a whore. “How’s K?”
“Good, but I need your boots.” I drop my eyes to his muddy boots parted by the naked backside of a brunette slurping away on his cock as if it’s a lollipop. “Did they have pigs in the stalls you hid in?”
Nero fists the brunette’s ponytail to hold her down on his cock until she gags before shrugging. “I can’t recall. I don’t know the difference between a moo and an oink.” He jerks up his hips two times, producing a prolonged moan from the whore before a smug grin curls his lips. “But I sure recognize the moans of a horny woman.”
With his shirt showing signs of an oozing wound, he’s being extra pigheaded today. He’s probably also drugged up on pain medication. If you’ve got a good doctor on call, that shit can be better than the best blow.
“Give me your boots, Nero.” I commence untying the laces on his left boot, ensuring he’s aware I’m not taking no as an answer. “If your dick gets anywhere near my face, I swear, I’ll bite it off.”
“What the fuck, T-man?” He thrusts his hips up in a way that makes my stomach roll. “You’re the one cutting the queue ‘cause you want my nasty-smelling shoes.”
The men surrounding us laugh, but I barely hear their chuckles over my second light-bulb moment for the day. Although shocked revelations like this usually have me wanting to drop one campaign to take up another, this time around, I don’t need to. They’re both about the same person—K.
With Nero’s boots thrust under my arm, I make my way back to the room at the other end of the jet, stopping by Nikolai’s little alcove on my way. He almost chokes on his last slice of toast when I say, “K tried to bite off Rory’s cock.” While he coughs up the breadcrumbs lodged in his lungs, I explain. “When I took Rory to Jim’s, K laid the boot into him…afterseeing teeth imprints in his cock. You saw how drugged up he got Ana. She wouldn’t have been able to chew through his skanky cum much less his dick.” Nikolai sits up straighter, understanding where I’m going. “If Vladimir was letting members of your crew hook-up with his prized girls, what were they giving him in return?”
I hear his back molars grind together before he spits out, “Do you think it was just Rory?”
I want to say yes, but my suspicions are too high to allow that. “I don’t know, but I suggest you don’t quit looking until you find out.” When he lifts his chin, agreeing with me, I add, “I also suggest you look deeper into your purchase of K…” Before he can remind me he doesn’t pay for whores, I push out, “Not because you pay for whores, but because her sale wasn’t placed in your name for no reason. Dok said K was looked after the past three months. None of the women housed with her were. I don’t even know if the blonde in her cell was breathing when I raced out of there.”
I should feel guilty about the number of women we left behind, but I don’t. We would have never extracted K safely since the number of rescuers was less than the number of captives.
Nikolai lifts his chin for the second time before locking his eyes with Nero’s boots. “What’s with the boots?”
After hitting him with a cocky wink, I say, “Not even the darkest night can hide the brightest star.”
Leaving Nikolai to unravel my riddle alone, I enter the only door next to the couch he’s spent the past fifteen plus hours on.
K is still as stiff as a board, but her eyes appear more sheened than they were when I left.
The gloss of her tears has me switching tactics for the third time this evening.
While struggling not to hurl, I tap out the dirt from the bottom of Nero’s shoes into the washroom sink before scooping it up in my hands and depositing it into the soap holder in the shower. Once I have the water switched on and at a similar temperature to a Vegas summer shower, I snag a t-shirt out of the bag Nero dumped on the floor hours ago before moving to K’s bedside.
My hands jitter like a virgin undoing his first bra when I peel back K’s hair enough to locate the zipper of her dress. As it slides down to the two dimples in her lower back, my jaw works through a bad bout of stiffness. Her whip marks have healed, but they’ve left a nasty set of scars on her back.
Endeavoring to keep my head out of the darkness of my past, I shimmy K’s dress down her slender frame before rolling her over so I can see her face. Her wide and un-terrorized eyes are the only things capable of keeping me out of the dark. They can even surpass my wish to kill.
I’m a cruel, faceless monster… until I’m standing across from K.
