Up in Smoke

  I brace myself to cringe from the contact against my bruised skin but he’s surprisingly gentle as he sets me down in the tub.

  Why the hell is he bothering?

  He’s been a brute. Rough. Now he’s suddenly Florence fucking Nightingale? I think I liked the aggression better. At least, it wasn’t confusing.

  I hiss through my teeth as I sink down in the warm water as it makes contact with my wounds. It’s only a temporary sting. After a few minutes, my muscles begin to relax. I moan out loud. I’m so far gone, lost in the wonderful sensation I drop my hands from my chest and almost forget that I’m not alone until Smoke speaks.

  He’s looking down into the water. “That guy in the cell, did he…was I too—”

  “No!” I cut him off, repeating my answer. “No.”

  “Good,” he says with a curt nod. His lips turn up in a snarl like he’s remembering what had happened.

  “Why do you care?” I ask.

  Smoke crouches down next to the tub. “Because you belong to me. Your fear, your anger, your fury, your fucking defiance. It all belongs to me. And nobody fucks with what’s mine but ME.”

  I gasp, his words twisting my insides into a mess that can rival the tangled vines of the prison yard.

  ME, not Griff, the man he’s supposedly working for, the man my father stole from. His one eyebrow, the one with a scar through it, twitches. He looks down into the water. There’s more to this situation than he’s letting on.

  Much more.

  I remember my nudity and cover my body to shield myself from his gaze.

  He chuckles. “Who do you think is the one who undressed you? Hate to tell you, hellion, but I’ve already seen it all. Every inch of your bruised and cut flesh.”

  He might have a point, but I refuse to uncover my body. He may say he owns me, but it’s a lie.

  Iown me.

  No one else.

  I close my eyes as if to block him out in every way I’m capable of, but they spring open again when I feel a sting at my lip. “Ouch!”

  Smoke is holding a cotton ball to the corner of my mouth, a medical kit open on the side of the tub, a bottle of rubbing alcohol open on the floor. He’s cleaning my cuts. I’m about to ask him why but choke down the words. I can’t think of a single positive outcome that will come of that question so I ask him another one.

  “Who was that guy? The one in the cell?” I ask.

  “An asshole sent to check up on me by an even bigger asshole,” he grates out.

  “He doesn’t work for you?” I ask.

  Smoke shakes his head. “No. I work alone. At least, I do now.” I can see the regret on his face the second the words are spoken.

  I remember Dr. Ida’s rules. Relate to your captor. “I’m better by myself, too,” I say.

  Smoke raises an eyebrow and moves the cotton ball to a scrape on my shoulder. That’s when I notice the gauze covering the top of his right shoulder and the bloodstain underneath from the bullet I meant to shoot into my own head.

  Smoke stills and turns his head to the side. There’s an unspoken question lingering on his lips.

  “What?” I ask. “You think you’re so different from everyone else in the world? You’re not. There are a lot of people out there like you. Hell, I’m even more like you than you think.”

  “That’s not fuckin’ possible,” Smoke mutters, closing the kit.

  This is the first time I’m attempting to relate to him in a non-panicked state so I take a moment and choose my words wisely.

  “Well, you’re a lone wolf. Just like me. Governed by nothing and no one except his own fucked up set of rules and morals, and believe it or not, that’s just like me.” I meant to lie to him, but the words I’ve spoken are the truth. I am alone in this world and so is he.

  “You think that matters?” Smoke asks.

  “Yes. I think it does.” I argue then decide to stretch the truth a bit. “We both use what we’ve got to make others do what we want. I use my looks to get the guy from the grocery store to make deliveries by promising him things I’m never planning to go through with. I get the neighbors to fix the door hinge or rewire the stove by offering hints of a friendship I’m not capable of giving them. You do the same except you use your intimidation to get what you want. It’s your own brand of manipulation. So, you see? We may have our differences, but there’s a lot between us that’s the same too. And I have a feeling that you’re just as lonely as I am.”

  “Maybe,” he says calmly.

  I’m taken aback by his agreement. Stunned.

  This might actually work.

  Smoke washes my body with a washcloth. He’s gentle and careful. His face twists in concentration as he maneuvers around the worst of the road rash on my arm.

  This man is a lot more complicated than I initially thought.

  He washes between my legs, never taking his eyes from mine. He drags the washcloth up, dragging it lightly over my nipples then lingering over the cut below my collarbone where he stares down with an expression of awe.

  A LOT more complicated.

  Smoke blinks rapidly, dropping the cloth into the tub. With a small plastic cup, he rinses my hair, careful not to get any water in my eyes. “There is one major difference between us you’re forgetting about. The most important one.”

  “And what might that be?” I ask, as Smoke helps me to stand and wraps a towel around my shoulders.

  Something cold and hard juts into the base of my spine and trails up the bone until my entire body is taut.

  Smoke’s lips move against the tip of my ear, his voice rolling through me like thunder.

  “I’ve got the balls to pull the trigger.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Frankie is a shit actress.She’s worse than Rage because even Rage was convincing, at least for the first twenty minutes before you realize there is something very off about the blonde with murder written in her blue eyes.

  But Rage was Meryl Fucking Streep compared to Frankie’s pitiful getting-to-know-you performance.

  I toss her one of my large black t-shirts. It’ll be enormous on her but I’m exhausted and don’t feel like rummaging through the storage bins in the other room to see what other clothes might be there.

  Frankie goes to put it on but winces when she raises her arms above her head. I walk over to her and steady the shirt helping her pull her arms through and then get back in bed. I go to remove a set of handcuffs off my wrist to tether her to the bed again.

  “No! Please. No!” she begs, holding her already bruised and cut wrist.

  It’s the first time I’ve really heard her beg. It sparks something within me, making my cock jump to attention.

  I’m too fucking tired to do anything about it and I’m too fucking tired to think things to death. There will be time for all that shit tomorrow.

  I secure the cuff back around my wrists. I kick off my jeans and can practically feel her panic as I get in beside her. I pull her back against my chest, wrapping my arms around her tiny body, resting my hands on her flat stomach. She smells like the lavender shampoo I just used to wash her hair. I begin to relax with my chin on top of her head when I feel her tremble against me.

  “What are you doing?” she asks with a shaky voice.

  “It’s this or the cuffs,” I tell her. It’s aggravating to even feel like I should explain why I don’t want to fuck her right now.

  No matter how beautiful her trembling is. No matter how hard my cock swells as she takes a deep breath to steady herself, but doesn’t stop shaking.

  Defiant little hellion.

  “I fucking can’t sleep with you trembling like a frightened Chihuahua,” I scold.

  “I just don’t know what you…I don’t want you to…” she says.

  I sigh. “What you want doesn’t matter. Your ‘no’s’ don’t fucking matter. YOU don’t fucking matter. Now get some fucking sleep, before I cuff you, strip that shirt from your body, and show you first hand that you belong to me.”
>
  “No. Please. I’m in high school,” she whimpers. “I’m seventeen. I’m too young—”

  I roll my eyes. “I don’t give a shit how old you are, even though I know you’re twenty-two.”

  I don’t know why I feel the need to defend myself.

  Especially to her.

  She stops trembling and eventually falls asleep, making a soft snoring sound through her dried blood clogged nose. She’s small and warm and I find myself nuzzling my nose and lips into the crook of her neck inhaling the fresh scent of the bath soap.

  “Tell me where your old man is and I’ll make this all go away,” I tell her even though she’s sleeping. It’s not true either. If her old man came to the fucking door right now and turned himself in it’s not like I could just let Frankie go. She knows and has seen too much.

  She’s mine now.

  I close my eyes, not expecting her to answer. I get one anyway. To my ears her words sound and feel like the beginning of the end.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I’m lying on my side in a grassy field. Various rocks and pebbles stab into my back as I try to move. It smells like sour milk and rotten meat. I hear the crackling of fire along with echoes of screams in the distance.

  Then nothing.

  Slowly, I raise my head only to find that I’m surrounded by thousands of bloodied bodies. I sit up and realize I’m on the top of a pile directly in the center. Not just a mound of bodies. But parts. Men and women, all in various stages of death and decay. All bent in unnatural positions. Grayish skin sagging from broken bones. Thick red turns to black as the blood on their clothing dries before my eyes.

  I scramble to my feet. My stomach rolls but there’s no time to get sick, there’s only time to run. I stumble between limbs and torsos as I try to climb down, lifting my knees high. I free my sunken foot by pressing my hand onto hard cold flesh that contains what feels like teeth, but I don’t look to see what I’ve touched.

  My feet finally hit the ground, and I’m free of the pile. I freeze. There are more bodies than grass on the field where I'm standing. As far as I can see. I can’t process what’s around me because the need to flee is stronger than the need to contemplate their mortality or even my own for that matter.

  I navigate the field the best I can, jumping over human obstacles like they’re land mines and not corpses. I try not to stare too long at the bulging eyes staring up at me, or the mouths frozen-open in deadly screams, but I can’t help it. I look then quickly turn away, but it’s too late. Now, I can hear them. Their screams. Their last pleas for their lives. Begging that went unanswered.

  It’s too much. It’s all way too much. I move faster. Push harder. But I’m too fast. I trip over a leg, and when I brace myself, my hands land on a severed head. Not just any severed head.

  My mother.

  Now, it’s me who’s screaming.

  I pick the head up in my hands, but when it hits me what exactly I’m holding, I drop it at my feet and it lands in a position that looks like she’s buried up to her neck in the ground except I know there’s no body beneath. I turn to the side, and the churning of my stomach finally emerges as I purge its contents until I’m sure there’s nothing left. I bend over with my hands on my knees and try to catch my breath while trying to turn off my thoughts. I won’t be able to get free of this field if I concentrate too hard on what’s around me. I have to keep going, keep moving, but the screams of the dead around me grow louder, holding me in place. They're so loud now I cover my ears and shut my eyes tightly in an attempt to silence them. It doesn't work. I’m lost. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to die by way of scream and soon I’ll be just another body on the already bloodied field.

  I’ll take it. I'll die right now. Eternal silence has to be better than the shrill screams adding to my own.

  “Be quiet, girl,” I hear my father’s voice echo from somewhere above me. I take my hands from my ears and look around, but he’s not there. It’s like he’s speaking into a microphone from the clouds. His voice is distant and echoing all around me. The screams become muted. “He’ll hear you.”

  “Where are you?” I ask, spinning around in a circle. I can barely see through my unshed tears. But still, he’s not there.

  There’s an explosion in the distance. It takes me by surprise, and I take cover, diving behind a tree stump. I can’t tell if it’s me shaking or the earth beneath me. However, it might be me because I can hear my teeth chattering. After a few minutes, I realize it’s not my teeth, but my mother’s as her head vibrates from the aftershock of the explosion.

  There’s another explosion. A flash of yellow then red appears from over a small hill in the distance followed by a huge plume of grey.

  I don’t know where I’m going I just know that I need to leave. “Run, Frankie. Run,” My father orders angrily, his voice surrounding me on all sides. I’m drowning in his voice, but he’s still nowhere to be seen. “Run,” he commands again. “Be smart. Stay safe and RUN. He’s coming for you, Frankie. RUN RUN RUN!”

  “Where?” I cry, looking to the cloud covered sky above me. “Where do you want me to run? And if you want me to be safe then why won’t you rescue me yourself! Where are you? Why aren’t you here?” I shout at the sky, growing angrier at the man who won’t show himself. I ball up my fists and dig my fingernails into my palms.

  Only the sky answers with a rumbling roll of deep thunder that rattles my bones. From over the small hill, a shadow of a man appears from the smoke. Not just any man. He’s as massive as a bear. My spine straightens with awareness, fear, and familiarity. His strides are sure and wide, and I realize it’s because he knows where he’s going.

  Or WHO he’s going to.

  Me.

  He pays the bodies around him no mind. As he walks, the ground shakes again like the thunder has crashed to the ground, causing an earthquake. His dark gaze is solely focused on me. My blood turns to ice. Fear strangles me. My throat grows dry and thick. I can’t swallow. Finally snapping out of my haze, I heed my father’s advice and turn to run, but my feet have sunken into the soft ground. I'm held in place. Stuck.

  Panic constricts my breathing.

  He’s so close now that I can see his face. His tanned skin. His dark, emotionless eyes that convey nothing but his determination to get to me.

  The sun emerges from behind the clouds, and I immediately notice the man has no shadow. He’s got to be some demon. He smirks. No, a devil. There is no doubt in my mind that the carnage surrounding us is his doing. He’s a one-man army walking across the bloodied field of his sin, and I’m next to face his wrath, but there’s nothing I can do but stare as my end nears.

  Before he reaches me, he kicks over my mother’s head like it’s a beach ball in his way, and I again feel sick. I close my eyes tightly and wish away the feeling while waiting my turn to become just another corpse in the field. I just hope it’s over fast.

  I flinch when I feel his rough hand against my cheek. “Open your eyes, hellion,” he says. I refuse and shake my head. He grips my face with his hand, holding it still. I can feel his breath against my skin. “Look at me, my love.”

  My love?

  Confused by his words, I finally obey and come face to face with evil. He’s hatred personified. There’s something terrifyingly beautiful about the purity of his evil. There’s something else there too. Deep in his eyes. Lust. Admiration. Awe.

  He strokes my face in a way that’s almost loving. This time I don’t flinch. In fact, I find myself leaning into his warm touch.

  The man looks all around us with a proud smile on his upturned lips. “This is better than I expected,” he says, pressing his lips to mine in a brief soft kiss that makes me feel like I’m floating.