Kade wanted to know all about David.  Nothing could beat the insane, head bashing, crapslapping experience that was David.  He had left enough marks on my flesh, but what he did to my insides was damage that was beyond repairable, and telling Kade wouldn’t change anything.  If anything, it would get him angrier than he already was, and the man was a ticking time bomb. Detonating him would only get him hurt, really hurt.  Me staying in this town would get him killed, because if David knew I had feelings for someone, it would be an invitation to annihilate him.

Taking my purchases into his master bathroom, I sealed my lips shut.  The last thing I wanted was to see Kade hurt, and the last thing I wanted was Kade in trouble, and honestly, the very last thing I wanted was to leave him.  I would have loved to see where this thing between us was going, because I had never felt this drawn to a person before.  However, I had no choice.

With trembling fingers, I emptied my boxes of hair dye onto the counter and took a deep breath.  I had never been a blonde before.  Lifting my shirt over my arms and head, unclasping my bra and sliding off my jeans, I stayed in only underwear, not wanting to dye what little clothing I had left.

“What’s the natural color of your hair?” Kade’s husky voice whispered from the door.  He stood shirtless and clean-shaven, both hands resting on the top of the doorframe, pained eyes fixed on mine.  Dropping his hands heavily to his sides, the pale yellow decorative globes above the mirror danced dark shadows over the tense flushed skin of his face.  His body was hard and strained, muscles tightened and hummed just under his smooth ridged skin.

“Dark reddish brown.  Like copper,” I whispered.

The soft bristle of the metallic teeth of his zipper took my gaze away from his eyes.  Sliding his hand inside the unzipped denim, he slowly tugged out his thick erection, and stroked it.

Warmth pooled low in my belly, twisting into an ache and heavy wet heat between my thighs.  My mouth flooded with moisture as I watched his hands move and his expression darken.

One thick hand clutched the base of his cock as the other slid along the top of his shaft, circled around the head and slid back down in slow deliberate strokes.  I could hear his breathing change, almost thicken, as his eyes took me in and his body gave in to the sensations of his own hands.

My God, he was glorious to look at.

So glorious that my hands moved all on their own across my hips and right into the cotton fabric of my panties, trying to feed some of the ache.  As soon as my fingers touched my damp flesh, I shuddered and lost myself in his slow even movements, matching them.  What choices did I have, when the man standing before me touching himself, pleasuring himself at just the presence of me standing there?  He was a fierce potent arousal.

“Take them off.  I want to watch,” he whispered hoarsely.

Wet fingertips slipped under the waistband of my panties and slid them down my legs, then flicking them into Kade’s chest.  My cheeks burned from his attention, but the rest of my body reveled in it, at how open and dirty it was.  Pulling myself up onto the counter, I spread my knees wide and pressed my fingers into myself as he watched with eyes wide.  Hearing the gasp and heaviness of his breathing, my thighs trembled with delicious anticipation and my hips began moving in a circular motion to meet the thrusts of my fingers.

Kade groaned softly, lips twitched in the faintest of smiles, as he continued to rub himself in long, hard, sensual strokes.

My free hand slid up my chest and captured a nipple in between my fingers, squeezing it tightly.  Never in my life had I done this, never had I been so confident sexually, so sure.  My own breaths struggled in my airways, speeding up with the surge of pleasure that my own fingers teased a delicious tension in between my legs and along the surface of the hardened flesh of my nipples.

Then he was moving.

A small gasp caught in my throat as he closed the distance between us, leaning the heat of his body against mine.  The smell of him, the salty taste of his skin, and the warmth of his breath on my neck was pure sex, mixed with violent possessive need.  Right there, then, that feeling should have terrified the hell out of me.

“I’m not letting you go,” he croaked, quickening his strokes, pushing the head of his cock along the slickness of my fingers that continued to move deep inside my warmth.

“No?” I asked breathlessly.

“No, I’m not letting you go.  Ever.  Tell me you want to stay; tell me the truth,” he growled, stilling his strokes.  The head of his cock pressed slowly into the smooth wet flesh alongside my fingers, teasing me, making my belly tighten with hunger.  Desire, lust so thick and real, engulfed me, pressing its thirsty claws against my flesh, squeezing the sweat from my pores.

The need crazed me. It was maddening, as frustration clawed between my thighs, my muscles aching for him to slam inside of me. “Yes! Kade, yes!  I fucking love the way you touch me. I love the way you want to protect me, and my God, Kade the way you look at me.  I love the way it’s starting to feel between us, and if I stayed, then YES.  Falling in love with you, Kade Grayson, would be quick, easy and so fucking lethal for both of us.  You can’t save me, Kade!”

“You’re staying, because you could save me,” he growled with a jagged whispered breath, sliding the head of his cock up and down my lips, making the ache savagely painful.

“He’s going to kill me!” I screamed, slicing through our hot heavy breaths with the serrated icy blade of reality.

“No.” His fingers dug deep into my flesh painfully, hard steel eyes fixed on mine.  “I am,” he hissed, as he thrust savagely into me, giving my body what it wept for.

Chapter 16

The accident was brutal, but it had to be.  Only something so bloody and devastatingly violent could count as the finale of her life.  I wanted to give her an elegant death, but I also needed it quick and untraceable, so my violent imagination was rendered useless.  I sat on my knees at the side of the road, Jen and me crying as we watched Deputy George and Deputy Bobby carry out the body bag that held the woman I had just began falling in love with.

Sickly blue lights rotated dimly in circles, reflecting their eerie deathly presence across the blacktop.  Fiery colored road flares burned brightly, sputtering out their warning sparks of danger, leaving a strange chemical taste in my mouth.  The scent of burnt metal, charred rubber and gasoline stung at my nose and eyes, making it easier for me to cry.  Slick black streams of oil poured out from the main road and into a small ditch that held floating debris.  A small lilac ribbon sailed on the surface, slowly spiraling in the thick current.  She wore that same little bow the first time I laid eyes on her.

I reached down to keep it as a souvenir.  Thick congealed oil coated my fingertips.

You could barely even tell what make of car it was or what color it had been, but you knew that Samantha Matthews was inside.  I made sure of it.

The frigid January air burrowed its way into my clothing, seeped through my flesh and sank heavily into my bones.  Deeply breathing in a lungful of the icy air sobered my nervousness, and the tears stung like icicles biting at my cheeks.  I felt not one shred of guilt for what I had done to her. There would never be any regret in my actions and reasoning.  I fought hard not to let her in, but she somehow soaked my soul with hers, leaving bruises and fingerprints, scars and open gaping holes that I knew would never heal.  I would bleed her now.

Everyone thinks that men are the stronger sex, that women are weaker, the uncontrollable emotional and defenseless of the two.  It’s a fucking lie, isn’t it?  The greatest lie of all mankind, because she gutted me, emptied me completely and I never even knew what had hit me.  The only thing I knew was, I wasn’t letting anyone have her.  No one would have her, no one but me.  She burrowed under my skin, saturating my muscles and tendons, penetrating my blood cells and she became part of me.

My life flashed forward.  Like a blunt cut scene of some horror movie with no slow progression to its next images.  I found myself sitting in the hospital waiting room, Jen by my side, pale with swollen eyes from a torrent of tears. A large handful of deputies stood like centurions by the entrance, waiting and watching.

Jen had identified what was left of the charred body and personal effects, and so had the deputies.  Dental records were pulled, compared and determined that without a doubt, the driver of the car was indeed Samantha Matthews, age 32.  The same exact person that went missing from New York City almost six months before under suspicious circumstances.

Once the accident occurred, and after her identification was made, authorities had placed a call to her next of kin. We then waited for her estranged husband, Doctor David Stanton, and her father, Doctor Michael Matthews to arrive.

And they did.  They arrived in a flurry of demands, ego and rage.  The deputies and our hospital staff did everything they could to ease the turmoil of the situation and prove the identification of the deceased.

Through it all, I sat, still, with Jen on the right side of me, replaying the bittersweet images and sensations of the last time I had slipped myself inside my Samantha.  Even though I had taken her away from him forever, kept her safe from him forever, my insides hummed with unimaginable violence towards him.  Her death was simply not enough.

From where I sat, fists clenched white around the arms of the chairs, muscles pulled tight holding me in place, and I could hear the shallow breaths he took.  I could hear the brittle sounds of his voice saying her name and all I wanted, more than I had ever wanted anything before, was to witness every ounce of blood spill from his body.  The needs of violence hummed through my veins, causing my blood to pound faster and shifted my heart up into my throat, and my soul into my mouth.  My pulse throbbed savagely in my ears, blocking out his voice and flooding my mouth with saliva; I was literally salivating for his death.  Foaming at the mouth like a rabid beast.

His flat black eyes fixated on mine and claiming his territory, he asked Jen who I was and why the fuck I was there for his personal family tragedy.

Blindly, Jen entwined her fingers with mine and placed a wet kiss on my lips, “This is Cory Thomas, my boyfriend,” she sobbed.  “Whatever happened between you and Samantha is over, so go fuck off now and leave me the hell alone or I will tell everyone you beat the hell out of her and me before she left your sorry ass.”