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I creep into the sauna-hot kitchen, stay behind a tall stack of cookie-trays, barely able to restrain myself from charging out there like a mad dog. But Kieran is dangerous and unpredictable, and I need to get a look at the scene out there, need to make sure he doesn’t have a gun pointed at my baby’s head or a knife at her throat.
The kitchen is long, lined with those massive ovens designed to take large cookie-trays. This stack of baking trays is the only place I can hide my big body, but I can’t see Kieran or Connie from here. Which means I’m going to have to charge in there blind.
Sweeping my gaze around the accessible space, I look for a weapon but come up empty. Connie keeps her kitchen too damnclean, obsessively perfect, probably with a snug secure place for every potential weapon from a cutting board to a rolling-pin. Too bad all those places are beyond my reach right now.
My head throbs from the waves of sweltering heat radiating from the hot ovens. I wonder if Kieran’s lost his fucking mind, but then I remember the guy was always a bit unhinged, with a short fuse and an explosively violent temper. Hearing about that psycho-stalker crap he pulled with Connie before going to prison only backs up my own assessment of the fucker. He’s dangerous, and it sounds like seeing Connie with another guy has pushed him over the edge.
I’m close to that edge too, but somehow I’m able to control my possessive rage enough to wait for my chance, to be cautious until I can get a look at what’s happening in there, if I need to worry about a weapon or if it’s safe enough that I can charge without putting my sweetheart in danger. The way Kieran’s talking about already being married to my woman almost makes my head explode, but I tell myself to cool the fuck down and listen.
Because so far I haven’t heard Connie’s sweet voice.
The realization makes my stomach lurch with raw panic as I wonder if she was injured in the crash or if Kieran has totally flipped out and done something that can’t be undone. I’m about to say fuck it and just charge out there, broken neck and bleeding head be damned, but then I hear her voice.
“Oh, please,” comes her whimpering call. “Oh, baby, I love you. If you’re dead, I want to die too.”
She’s woozy and out of it, but the words send rockets of energy shooting through my body, blasting away the pain. She hasn’t said my name, and I hope Kieran will think she’s talking about him. It might be enough to distract him so I can make my move.
So I step out from my hiding place, prepare to launch myself at Kieran, but then freeze with shock at the horrific scene laid out before me, like I’m being shown a vision of hell.
Connie is spread out naked on the long wood-topped kitchen island, her arms out to her sides, wrists tied to drawer-handles, ankles tied to the towel tack. On her left hand is a big diamond ring, and in Kieran’s right hand is his big erect dick.
“I love you too, baby,” he croons, the black tattoos on his naked glistening white body flickering in the hot flames from the open ovens that surround us like hell’s cauldrons of boiling lava. Kieran’s profile turns to me now, and I almost black out when he fists his erect cock and drags his oozing cockhead along my woman’s naked body, along her breasts and down her belly, now positioning himself between her spread-out legs and guiding his torpedo of a dick towards my territory. “But you’re still a whore for letting another man have you while I was away. I waited for you, Connie, and you should have waited for me. Now I’m going to have to fuck you very hard, so hard you never forget that your dirty hole was made for my cock and mine only. This is going to hurt, baby, but you’ve got it coming.”
My mind shatters into shards of raw anger, and I’m already charging towards Kieran like an enraged bull before he turns in wide-eyed shock just in time to take the full force of my weaponized body.
My head lowers as I launch myself directly into Kieran, the crown of my bleeding skull smashing into his chin, breaking his jaw and shattering most of his teeth. Kieran howls in surprise and agony as the force of my assault hurls his naked body backwards against the stack of hot ovens.
“Burn, you motherfucker!” I roar through my red-hot madness, grabbing his throat and shoving his head back into the open oven until his hair catches fire. Kieran screams like a witch being burned, his cock flopping around as I knee him repeatedlyin the balls while choking him and burning him at the same fucking time. “Burn in hell, Kieran. Burn for touching what’s mine!”
Kieran screams again as the skin on his forehead starts to melt, his eyeballs bursting from the boiling fluid, his nostrils and ears gushing hot blood like a dying volcano. My rage is so hot I hold his head in the oven until my own fingers start to smoke, then with a last roar of beastly triumph I stagger away from his limp dead burning body and hurry to free Connie before this whole place goes up in flames.
Her kitchen-twine bindings snap like string from the surging need to protect what’s mine, save what’s mine, secure what’s mine. Connie is already coughing from the sickening fumes of Kieran’s merrily burning body, and I take her into my arms, hold her against my body, then rush out the back door.
“What . . . what’s happening?” Connie is coughing and stammering, her eyes blurry from the crash, bloodshot from the smoke. “Is something burning? What’s burning? Is it my cookies? My muffins? What’s burning?”
“Your past, baby,” I growl through a manic grin when I see that Connie’s all right, that she’s awake now, alert now, mine now. Mine. “Told you it would all come together, sweetheart.”
Still holding Connie in my arms like a doll, I get the truck door open and place her carefully in the front passenger seat, then circle around and get in the driver’s side. My mind is already spinning up the story, and I see it all come together like the beautiful way a fire sucks everything into its vortex if it’s hot enough.
And the flame of our fate is most certainly hot enough.
As Connie stares in open-mouthed horror at the flames licking out of her precious store’s back door, I crawl through the hatch to the truck’s cargo-area, grab a new pink sweatshirt and black track pants to cover Connie’s naked body.
Then I grin when I see my orange jumpsuit crumpled on the metal floor of this pink cookie-truck that carried us this far and is going to bring us all the way home, all the way to our fate, all the way to our forever.
“Listen to me very carefully, sweetheart,” I say to Connie, getting back into the front driver’s seat after doing a quick scan of the damage to her truck, then checking to see if Patrick’s car still runs. “Do exactly what I say when the fire trucks and cops get here. Do you understand? Hey, Connie, look at me, sweetheart.”
Connie turns dumbly towards me, her face streaked with the shock of seeing her store burning even though I know it’s going to be resurrected soon. Years of experience burning shit down makes me an expert, and I already know this structure is a concrete-and-steel frame, built with cinderblocks that would survive a nuclear blast. The ovens are reinforced steel, designed to handle all that heat and then some. It’s a standalone structure, and the fire won’t spread to any other building. Which means she’ll only lose some superficial supplies, will have nothing more than a massive clean-up and redecorating job in front of her.
In front of us.
Because this fire is going to burn down not just Connie’s past, but mine too.
“Listen carefully, baby,” I say urgently as we hear the sirens wail in the distance. “Here’s what you’re going to tell them.”
9
CONNIE
