Jessica Clare - Last Breath

“I told you that they used condoms. Even when I blew them.”

“Can’t believe Gomes sold you. What a stupid, greedy fuck. If I don’t get to him, Mr. Freeze will.” He sounds disgusted, as if he can’t believe the stupidity.

I slide to the floor, my knees feeling weak. I’m sitting close to a load of weapons at Daniel’s feet, and he’s casually picking through them as I watch. I glance around the room once more. “You sure this place is safe?”

“Not at all,” Daniel says. “But the devil you know, and all that.”

I know how that feels. “Good point.”

Daniel stuffs a few of the new guns into both of our bags. “So why do you like this room?”

“Two things: no windows and close to the front door.”

He grunts, not looking at me as he organizes his new stash of weapons. “So you’d rather be close to the front door than have a bed?”

“The way I look at it, everyone here is dangerous,” I say. “If I was in a zombie apocalypse and I wanted to be safe, I’d pick a room with no windows and close to the ground floor. You don’t want to be upstairs in case of an emergency.”

Then he looks at me, and his gaze is amused. “Zombie . . . apocalypse?”

“Yeah,” I say. “So? I like horror movies. They’re under-appreciated gems of filmography.”

Daniel shakes his head, grinning. He doesn’t say anything else because Pereya has returned with a sulky woman in tow. They give us several pillows, a few blankets, and some questionable-looking sheets. Doesn’t matter to me. I’ve slept on worse recently. I take them from her and begin to make a bed in the corner of our little fortress room while Daniel and Pereya talk for a moment more. A bag of junk food and some sodas are exchanged.

Then, the door closes behind us, and Daniel throws the lock and pushes the squat wooden table in front of the door to make a clumsy barricade. He returns to my side and sits next to me on the makeshift pallet.

He nudges me with his elbow. “I wasn’t giving you shit back there,” he says. “It’s actually pretty smart to suggest we stay here. I was surprised, is all.”

I nudge him back with my elbow, a shadow of my playful old self returning at his compliment. “When in doubt, look to the zombie apocalypse.”

Daniel chuckles, and it turns into a yawn. I suddenly remember how tired he was before I started getting crazy on him. He’s exhausted, and I need him healthy and on his feet in case we have to mow down any other bad guys, get into gunfights, or whatever assassins do. “Why don’t you sleep?”

“I can take watch,” Daniel says. “I sleep light anyhow.”

“I can watch, too,” I tell him. “I have guns. And a knife. And apparently a grenade for shits and giggles.” I elbow him again playfully.

“You think you could shoot someone if they came through that door, sweetheart?” No more “baby doll” now. Daniel’s done teasing me into irritation. I can hear the exhaustion in his voice.

“Sure,” I say blithely and pat one of the dirty pillows, inviting him to lay his head down there. “I’ll pretend that whoever comes through has been infected with a virus that turns them into a brains-eating monster.”

Still, he hesitates, clearly torn.

“There’s a crack under the door,” I say, pointing at it. It’s about an inch high. “I’m going to be watching that all night anyhow. And I’ll scream ‘Zombies!’ if I think there’s any trouble. All right?”

He rubs his face slowly, his eyes hollow. “All right. But if you get tired, wake me up.”

“Get some sleep,” I tell him. Strangely, being bossy to him is making me feel a bit more like my old self, too. Give a girl an ounce of power and all that. But I pat the bed again. “I’ll even tuck you in.”

“How can I resist that?” Daniel says and climbs into the bed fully dressed. Within two minutes, he’s asleep, despite the constant noise outside. There are people talking and walking around upstairs, and I tense at every creak of the boards. Daniel went to sleep with his hand on his gun, so I’m guessing he still doesn’t feel a hundred percent safe. But he’s got to sleep at some point.

I take my sandals off and pick up my gun, making sure the safety is on. Then I creep toward the door and lay down flat so I can watch through the crack underneath.

Daniel

WHEN I WAKE UP FOUR HOURS later, I have a raging boner and an armful of warm woman. Regan has once again rolled over and plastered herself all over me. It’d be nice if it’s because she wants me, but her subconscious is probably screaming for her to hold on tight to the buoy in the water. I’ve got something to hold onto, sweetheart, my sleepy, subconscious self mumbles. Just like earlier, I slide out from under her, but this time she stirs and grips me harder, her knee sliding up my legs to rest under my balls, which are straining toward her flesh. A little rub, Danny boy, they beg.

I can’t give my package the good slap that it needs, and I’m a little afraid that if I even come close to touching it, my wood won’t go down until I find some place to jack off. Lusting after this girl is thirty kinds of wrong. If she had any idea about the thoughts that ran around in my monkey brain, she’d bash me across the face with the chair leg. And I’d let her.

Because I can’t stop thinking about how her plush lips form a perfect “O” when she’s thinking—or how her legs seem to be endless acres of smooth flesh. When we walked up the steep path to Pereya’s, my gaze wandered to her ass, the firm globes pressing against the fabric of the knit skirt as she climbed. I finally took the lead because I wasn’t going to be able to walk if I kept looking at her.

The puzzle of Mr. Freeze concerns me. He obviously wants Regan back, and Gomes was a greedy fuck for letting her out of his sight. Even for twenty-five grand. Sick people get fixated on things sometimes with no good explanation for it. In her late stages of Alzheimer’s, my Grandma would only drink out of a certain plastic cup. She’d throw a fit if someone offered her some other container. Apparently Regan was that plastic cup to Gomes’ rich patron.

Thinking about Regan being mistreated by Gomes and his pals is as deflating as a pin in a balloon, but I’m grateful. The last thing I need is for Regan to encounter the rod in my pants and then look at me for the rest of our time together like I’m one breath away from throwing her down. The last of my erection wanes away, and I’m left feeling awkward and anxious. Twin emotions I haven’t experienced since I was fourteen and about to take Marybeth’s virginity in the back of my Ford pickup. Even then I was more excited than anything.

I pull back her fingers that are wrapped around my waist, and she whimpers in her sleep. “Hey, sweetheart,” I say. This only causes her to snuggle closer, putting her nose and soft cheek in that angle between my shoulder and neck, fitting perfectly, as if I was made for her. And that erection I thought I’d killed off comes raging back. From a fucking nose rub. I swear to God, the minute I am done here, I’m going to find a willing woman at a bar in Dallas, and we are going to fuck until I’m so raw my dick is red for a week.

Needing her off of me, I use the nickname she hates the most and inject as much asshole into it as I can. “Baby doll, I’m all for a morning fondle, but I prefer the hand to the knee.” Then I lightly slap her butt for emphasis. She jumps off me like a cat doused in water.

“What was that all about?” she asks, brushing hair out of her eyes with one hand and rubbing the spot on her ass where I slapped her with the other.

My hand tingles from the contact with her butt. It wants to make contact again. I want to make contact with every part of her. Turning around I bend over to gather the blankets, using the housekeeping as an excuse to hide my erection. “Just waking you up, baby doll, and letting you know that I’m all up for a romp around the floor here, but I hope you don’t mind being on top. Ever since Afghanistan my knees are for shit.”

My back’s to her so I can’t see her face, but I assume she’s seething. At least she’s awake.

“Why do you say stuff like that?” she asks in a quiet voice which, shit, is not what I was going for. Now I’m feeling bad on top of crappy.

Holding the thin pillows and bedding in front of me, I face her. There’s a look of speculation in her eyes as if she’s trying to decode me. “I was concerned you might jack my manly bits into my throat, so I wanted to make sure we had a clean separation.”

“Nice.” Her nose—the one that fits perfectly into my neck—wrinkles up. I’m rank. Maybe I should’ve let her sniff me more because that would be enough to send any girl into a fit. I’ve got dirt, blood, and who knows what other bodily fluids from two dead men on my clothes, and I haven’t showered in…I count back. Three fucking days.

If I was with my team, we would’ve joked about the smell, saying that if you aren’t riper than a rotten peach then you haven’t been outside the wire long enough. I’ve gotten soft in the years since I’ve been out. Sleeping in a “Ranger grave” is common enough during deployment that blankets and pillows should be a luxury, but the services of a paid assassin pay pretty well and I’ve gotten used to feather beds and down comforters, not to mention hot showers.

I lay the bundle onto the wooden table and then stare down at Regan. My tired mouth speaks before my filter can catch up, “You are really fucking beautiful, you know?”

I’m grateful but surprised when she shakes her head and laughs disbelievingly. “You know my boyfriend Mike said I looked like a colt. All legs, no torso.”

“Shit-for-brains-Mike? The one who couldn’t give you an orgasm? You actually listen to what he says?”

Regan’s face falls. “I should’ve never told you that. You think I’m a weirdo.”

Leaning against the table, I shake my head in disbelief. “You’re the weirdo because he can’t give you an orgasm?” I don’t even tell her about the other stuff I know, like how he’d sleep through her masturbating right next to him. And how he hasn’t called, not even once, to find out where she is. Nick told me that he’d considered shooting Mike because he was taking up space in the universe that could have been given over to someone who actually gave a shit.

“No, because I told you all the stuff and…” she waves towards my crotch, “other stuff.”

I don’t need for her to notice my other stuff because it’s swelling in hopes that she pays real close attention to it. I need to get her out of sight and out of mind before I start telling her that I’m not going to be a tool that she uses to get off. What I’d like to say is that the next time my touches are going to be personal and when she gets wet, it’ll be because of my up close attentions.

Worried that she’s a distraction to me, I cast around for a place to stash her. In Morro Dos Macacos everyone is armed—from the residents to the police force that regularly marches through trying to clean up the slums so that Rio is respectable for the world stage. Regan could easily get hit by a stray bullet, which to my way of thinking would render this whole escapade worth about a Benjamin ripped in half. Meaning, less than nothing.

Mentally I check off the things we have to do. First, we need identification and passports for Regan or she is never leaving Rio. Second, we need to get to the airport and send Regan home. Third, I need to find the hacker. Fourth, I need to find my sister, and then the Hays siblings get on their own plane and return to their ranch and never, ever leave it again. But before all that I need to hustle up to the hill and meet my informant, the one that Pereya found that might have information about Naomi.

Running an agitated hand through my hair, I order her, “Stay here. Be right back.”

Upstairs, I find Pereya sleeping like an innocent next to his wife. My knife hand itches, and I place my palm against my ankle so I can feel the outline of the sheath against my hand. Pereya has sold me ammunition and given me a place to stay. I don’t need to threaten him with a knife across the throat. Not yet at least.

I give him a few alternating taps on the side of his face, and when I see his eyes pop open I cover his mouth. When the warm saliva and tongue hits my palm, I wonder why I don’t wear gloves more often. Resisting the urge to pull my hand away, I whisper in his ear, “Need one more thing from you before I leave.”

Pereya nods and I release him, swiping my hand across the fabric of my pants. A wet wipe will be in order as soon as Pereya gives up a source. “I need to know of a good paper maker.”