Run From Me (Barbed Wire Hearts #2)

12. Calliope

TWELVE

calliope

Fucking asshole. I slammed the heel of my hand against his solid chest as his lips claimed mine like he owned them. I knew he had one hand on a gun, but the other? It was keeping me from backing away.

Too bad my brain was shorting out and I let him kiss me for another few seconds. He tasted so damn good and the man could kiss. This kiss outdid all the kisses I’d stolen from him, and maybe it was because all those had seemed like I was forcing his hand. Granted, I didn’t think it was possible to make him really do anything he didn’t want to. But this?

My toes damn near curled at the possessiveness before he let me go.

I blinked over and over, trying to come back to the moment.

“She belongs to no one, especially you,” Xander was saying.

I was in a daze as I walked away from the mess.

Ripple was trying to say something, but I couldn’t hear him and I didn’t care. I didn’t care until the door squeaked open again.

“Ripple, man. We gotta go—” The Viper was silenced, but I didn’t see what had happened until I turned around. There was a knife sticking out of his neck.

“Thanks for the knife, Ripple,” Xander said. But that tone. His tone had even me shivering in fear.

Xander seemed to move just fine even with a hole that clearly needed stitches in his leg. What was he made of and why wasn’t I running for cover?

“Tell you what, Ripple my man. You go explain to the Vipers why the Spectors are going to come for them. You’re going to go and take a message about to why Sparky here is no longer their little informant.”

Ripple was actually trying to get up at this point. He was crab-walking for lack of a better description as he tried to get away from Xander, who was taking slow steps his direction.

“Do you understand, Viper?”

Ripple was nodding frantically. The florescent lights down here made him appear far paler than I’d ever seen. To be fair, this was also the quietest I’d ever heard him.

“Wonderful. You can go.”

Ripple slipped several times before he finally got traction and charged for the door as if Xander might change his mind. And maybe he would.

“Wait, take your guy?—”

Xander cut off his sentence because Ripple was already out the door and the body was still bleeding out on the floor.

“Fucking hell. Fine. Guess we need to go dig a grave, Sparky.”

I stood so close to Xander my arm brushed his.

“Did you know if you bury a body eighteen feet deep instead of the standard six, even a cadaver dog can’t find the remains?”

I was just talking while I watched the body. The guy’s eyes started to glaze over, but he wasn’t really dead. Not yet. Or maybe he was. I bent down and reached for his pulse. I jumped as he reached for me.

Xander grabbed me and pulled me up.

“You aren’t used to them not being dead, are you?”

That got him an eye roll and a middle finger.

“What part of ‘I work in a morgue’ made you think that, Captain Obvious?”

I hated how I watched his lips with sheer curiosity and desire. One minute I had nothing to lose, and the next I had a whole lot to look forward to if he’d let me. Even if it was just to use each other, I didn’t think I would mind.

His thumb traced my bottom lip.

“What are you thinking about, Calliope?”

His voice was low, a bedroom voice if I’d ever heard one. If I had had panties on, they would have been wet. Instead I just had my scrubs, and I wasn’t positive you couldn’t see the dampness.

“I…” I cleared my throat. “I was thinking: what do we do if he’s alive?”

I learned something in that moment. Xander could turn off that lifeless black that filled him for a moment and then he could snap it right back in place.

“I thought it was obvious, Sparky. We kill him.”

I swallowed.

“How?”

He seemed to study the guy, and I took a morbid fascination to the red bubbling between his lips.

“What has been your favorite death of all time, princess?”

I smiled to myself, remembering one of the first bodies I’d ever worked on as I continued to find fascination in the little blood bubbles.

“It was one of my first bodies. He’d gotten off from so many rape cases all because his dad or someone had money. When he came in, he was cut up like swiss cheese, and the best part? It had been slow and painful until they slit his neck. He’d been drained.”

Before I could comprehend what Xander was doing, he grabbed the guy and pulled him over to one of the tables. The guy gurgled something, but Xander pulled the blade from his neck and finished the guy by slitting his throat completely.

“This table drains into that bin?”

I nodded and watched the blood flowing.

“Good. So much easier to clean up. I have a few guys coming by that will take care of this. But for the moment? Enjoy. Did you know this one?”

Did I? Yes.

“Yeah. If Ripple wasn’t in here coming on to me, then it was him. Little T. I think it stood for Timmy or something. He was a real asshole. He was one of the reasons I enrolled in the free self-defense program at the community center.”

The sound of a growl is what pulled me away from watching the life drain completely from the guy’s eyes.

“He touched you?”

I looked back at Little T and waited for guilt or sadness to hit me, but I just nodded to Xander and found myself finding a peace at seeing him die.

“Then I’m glad I killed him. No one touches you. No one touches you but me,” he growled as he placed his hands on my waist and pulled me against him.

“You understand me? No one. I just declared war on the Vipers, and I don’t regret it. I won’t ever regret anything when it comes to you.”

His lips claimed mine hard and rough and fast. I shouldn’t be turned on with someone still very clearly dying not the table, but fuck if I didn’t let Xander pull me up and wrap my legs around his waist.

One second, we were in the main room, and the next, I was on the desk in the little office.

“Tell me there are no cameras here,” he said as he untied the drawstring of my scrub bottoms.

“No. No cameras in here.”

His lips were back on mine as he yanked at my bottoms. My bare ass cooled as it rested on the desk. I’d worry about that later. Or maybe I didn’t care one bit. His lips pulled away for a second, and that was far too long. I reached for his scrubs and yanked them down, releasing him and all his glory.

Desire was all I knew right now. He’d killed someone for me. Hurt someone else, and all because he wanted to. For me.

His hands rested on either side of my face, and the starving look, although still there, seemed to war with something else. His thumb traced the side of my mouth before he pressed his mouth to mine as his hands made their way down my body.

A moment later, he yanked me to the edge of the desk where he slid between my thighs as I gladly spread them for him.

“You make me crazy,” he said against my lips a second before his thickness slid between my already wet folds.

I moaned at the stretch of my sore entrance as he slid into me in one quick thrust.

“Yes, crazy,” was all I could answer as he held my hips and used my body.

“No one can have you,” he said between one thrust and the next.

I was already so sore, so sensitive, and already feeling that invisible buildup inside me. The pressure building in my belly as he continued to thrust inside me quick and dirty. My hands wrapped into his scrubs as I lost my grip on reality and let myself shatter around him on his next thrust.

It might have been seconds or minutes as he fucked me harder and harder and I was lost in my own pleasure. His forehead was on mine, and I realized that his cock was pulsing as he came within me again.

I was breathing rapidly. My pussy still pulsing around his emptying cock. I was ruined. He wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t never going to feel like this with anyone but him.

“No one,” was all he said between breaths.

The sun was already up by the time Xander and two guys I still didn’t know the names of walked me to my door.

“Open it, Calliope. They are going to sweep it.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been tired enough that I almost didn’t care what was in there, but I gave Xander my keys and he took care of it from there.

I yawned against my will.

“It was a long night. I’ll be out of here in a few.”

I was fighting a war with my eyelids when I became all too aware of being lifted into someone’s arms. The familiar scent of Xander enveloped me, and I leaned into him.

“Thanks, Xander. I might sleep for once,” I said as I buried my face in his shirt.

I could still hear them moving, but it was either quiet or I was just tired. I didn’t know which one it was.

I felt his arms release me and subconsciously knew this was my bed. I was so tired I couldn’t fight him. But the more I tried to let myself float into sleep, the second something slid or knocked or whatever, I bolted up.

I couldn’t sleep with them here. Of course, now that I looked through the bedroom door, I saw far more than Xander and two others.

Now I was up. How long had I actually slept? I kicked my feet off the bed and headed for the doorway and stood there.

“What in the hell?” I asked a room full of men.

Xander was in front of me in a breath.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

That earned him a shrug.

“Why aren’t you not in my apartment?”

He held up a key fob.

“Installing security. Just in case I’m not with you to do a sweep. Oh, and those,” he paused and pointed to a vase that had never held any flowers but had something a little stranger inside it now. Small black squares and wires were floating in water. “Those were in your apartment. You were right to be paranoid, not that I doubted you.”

Well I wasn’t tired now.

“I’ve been looking all over, where did you find those?”

He started to answer but someone called his name so I followed.

“It’s all hooked up. This camera will monitor if anyone tries to get in and she can…” the guy turned around. “Oh, hey. I guess you. You’ll be able to see everything here on this monitor. You’ll know if anyone tries to break in.”

I took in all the commotion and watched as, one by one, they all packed up and slowly filed out of my shitty place. They all wore T-shirts and all had obvious tattoos or a jacket showing the hourglass.

“What is all this?”

Xander took my hand and put the fob in it.

“This is so you can sleep.”

I blinked back a burn in my eyes that I hadn’t felt since I was before I was sold.

“How can you do all this? The Vipers?” I pointed to the vase. “Well, that was their ability to monitor me, and it was nothing like this.”

I could see new locks on the door—hell, was that a new door?

“Do not compare us to the Vipers. Where they can’t seem to get their shit together, my brothers and I have made it a business to ensure we could protect anyone we choose to. Our reach is far greater than your little crew, and they have no idea what ripple effects will happen now.”

I snorted. “Pun intended, right?”

I liked the way his eyes crinkled just a touch when he smiled at me.

“He fucked up, and I’m going to enjoy the hunt. Not that I wasn’t looking for some reason to kill a few of them for sport anyway.”

I blew out a breath.

“You can’t. Or, at least, not for me. I… well…”

My damn heart raced inside my chest as I fought the squeeze of panic. I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. Wasn’t supposed to say anything.

“What? You can’t what?”

I shook my head.

“Nothing. Just please let it go, okay? Thanks for the security. It will be nice to actually sleep without one eye open.”