My Mafia Bodygaurd

Ella Adair
Copyright © 2023 by Ella Adair

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the
publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents

Title Page
1. The Assignment (Rurik)

2. Winnie
3. Rurik

4. Winnie

5. Rurik

6. Winnie

7. Rurik
8. Winnie

9. Rurik

10. Winnie

11. Rurik
12. Winnie
13. Part 2- Safe As Houses (Rurik)

14. Winnie

15. Rurik

16. Winnie

17. Rurik
18. Winnie

19. Rurik

20. Winnie

21. Rurik

22. Winnie
23. Epilogue (Rurik)
My Mafia Bodygaurd

Ella Adair
Chapter One
The Assignment (Rurik)

I
sat in the office awaiting Malcolm's entrance. He had summoned me
here for 3 p.m., but of course, he was late. If that man was ever on time
for anything hell would freeze over and the dead would walk the earth.
Luckily for humanity, today was not that day, because it was 3:15 p.m.
already and still no sign of him.
The woman behind the front desk was nervously reading whatever was
on her computer. She kept looking up at me, then back down at the
computer, trying to mask the fact that she was either checking me out or
making sure I wasn’t moving. I couldn’t tell if she liked me or was afraid of
me. Neither of them really mattered. What mattered was that it was starting
to annoy me.
I leaned back in my chair and put one of my arms along the back of the
two chairs next to me and placed my right ankle on my left knee. I didn’t
fidget, but I did let out a deep breath that sounded a little like a growl when
I let it out. Little miss timid behind the desk looked up at me, hurriedly
looked down again and began typing something furiously. Her eyes were a
little bigger than they should have been and her face had gone slightly paler
than it had been before.
So she was afraid of me. Good choice.
I looked up at the clock on the wall above the girl’s head. It read 3:21
p.m. and he still wasn’t here.
I shifted and got up out of my seat with every intention of walking out
the door when Malcolm burst through the door talking on his cell, loudly
and rapidly.
“Janey, listen…. No… Come on, you know me. Janey! No… I… will
you just listen to me for a moment please!” He said and disappeared
through the door to the left of the secretary’s desk, slamming it shut behind
him.
The office was suddenly very quiet. The girl watched me intently,
waiting to see if I was going to sit back down or leave.
I did neither. Instead of sitting back down I chose the plain beige wall to
my right and leaned against it with my arms crossed over my chest. The
muscles of my arms bulged, pushing the short sleeves of my t-shirt up
towards my shoulders, showing off more of my tattoos. I saw the girl look
at them and swallow hard, her throat twitching as she did so.
So maybe not all afraid, possibly a little intrigued.
The phone in my pocket buzzed and I took it out to read the text that had
been sent to me. Very few people had my number so it was strange that it
had gone off. Funny enough, it was Malcolm.
MALCOLM: Give me a few minutes. Sorry about the wait.
For fuck’s sake.
I shoved the cell back into my pocket and crossed my arms again,
wondering why I was even doing this.
 Oh right, because the Russians had a target on my back and the only way
I could work and buy them off with a little bit of protection was working for
the Italians here in the states. At least that’s what I hoped.
Once upon a time a little Russian boy witnessed his mother being
murdered by his father. He took revenge and split his father’s head open
with the garden hoe, chopped his head off and buried him in the backyard.
His mother, he buried out front in the flower bed, hoping she could enjoy all
her hard work from there. Then he packed up and left, a homeless orphan
with no food, no water and no direction.
That boy had been me and it didn’t take me long before I was wrapped
up with the wrong people. Of course there hadn’t been any right people to
end up with in those days. You were either with the mafia or against them
and I didn’t want to sell my soul to them. I had fought too hard to survive
on my own.
When I was of age, I enlisted in the Russian army and saw more things I
really wished I never had to see. Too many things happened in that time, my
mind blanked it out on purpose, I think. There was blood, death, torture
both from me and to me. I had killed more than I could count and for no
other reason than I was told to.
I was good at it too.
Which was probably how the ‘Chernyye vorony’ found me. In English,
they would be called the Black Crows and they were a group or a gang that
went against the Russian mob in Moscow. They were a small group, but
they were the biggest threat to the syndicate. I found comradery in them,
something I was severely lacking after leaving the army. Most of them were
ex-military too and believed they were doing the right thing. They wanted
to give leadership back to the government and not to the criminals. So I
helped them.
That was how I ended up killing the Russian Mafia’s Kingpin and getting
the whole lot of them pissed off at me. The guy’s son was now on the
throne and after my blood.
The Crows couldn’t help protect me, not against forces that big, so I left,
disappeared to the states to find a way to survive because that was all I
knew how to do. Here I met Malcolm and I’ve been taking orders from the
Italian mafia through him ever since. I do their bidding, they pay me well
and they protect me from the Russians until I can pay them off to leave me
alone.
It’s going to take a hell of a lot of money for them to even think about it
though, and maybe not even then. I might have to get my hands red before
they would leave me alone, but I’m prepared for that.
At 3:58 p.m. the door opened and Malcolm waved his hand for me to
enter. He was a geeky looking guy, standing about 5’7” with a long blond
ponytail that nearly reached his waist and thick glasses with metal rims. He
wore a navy blue suit that looked slightly too big for him and a white button
up underneath that was unbuttoned at the top revealing a dark blond hairy
chest. His black shoes squeaked with how new they were when he walked
back to his desk and sat behind it.
I walked through the door and closed it behind me, giving the girl a look
as I did so. She looked scared again and refused to meet my gaze. I liked
that very much.
I sat down in the seat before Malcolm’s desk and waited for him to get
the papers on his desk together. As he did that, he babbled.
 “I’m so sorry about the wait. I had an … issue… with Janey, my wife.
She doesn’t understand that my job comes first. It has to. You understand.
When you work for important people, they expect to be treated like they are
important. Because they deserve it. And because they pay for it. I mean
come on… what am I supposed to do when the Don says I need to be
somewhere? Am I supposed to blow him off so I can go to my daughter’s
fifth grade graduation? Who even goes to those anyway?”
He paused and I just stared at him. I find it better not to speak unless you
actually have something to say and I had no opinion on this whatsoever. I
neither cared about his home life nor had a family to relate the story to.
He seemed to get the idea that I wasn’t going to say anything and moved
on.
“Well… I’ve called you here today because I have an important job for
you brought to me by the Don himself, and Johnny Estrada doesn’t see
anyone personally anymore unless it’s important. You’ve been noticed by
the top dogs, big guy, and they like you. That’s good, that’s really good.”
Again, I said nothing. It was a good thing. I had never met Johnny
Estrada, but he was a big name that carried an even bigger weight. No one
messed with Estrada. There were even Russians over in the motherland who
were frightened of Estrada and his reach.
“Estrada has an associate close to him that made a mistake and tangled
with the wrong crowd. I’m going to give you a folder with all the details
that are for your eyes only. In fact, if you could go ahead and burn that after
reading it, that would be best,” he said and pushed a manilla folder in my
direction. I picked it up, but didn’t look at it yet. “What you need to know is
that you are going to be playing bodyguard.”
“A bodyguard,” I repeated, blinking at him. He nodded.
 “Yes. This associate of the Don’s, he pissed off some very powerful
people and he thinks they may go after his daughter. Actually, he kind of
knows they will. The Irish mob have a habit of being ruthless.”
“For fuck’s sake, now I have to deal with the Irish? The Italians and the
Russians weren’t enough?” I groaned. “And I am not a fucking babysitter.”
“This isn’t babysitting,” he assured me. “His daughter is 24 years old.
She works at a bookstore and is a writer in her spare time. She’s definitely a
bodyguard case.”
I looked down at the envelope in my hands then back up to him.
“So I watch her, make sure she’s safe. What happens if she is attacked?”
“Then her father wants you to bring her to him at his safe house.”
“Where is this safe house?” I asked. Malcolm shrugged.
“I don’t know. He won’t say until she has to go there. Her father is deeply
paranoid.”
I would have said that his paranoia was going to come in handy seeing as
he did fuck up, but I didn’t. I stood up, holding the folder in one hand.
Malcolm stood up, ready to walk me out.
“Let me know if anything happens to her. Call me as soon as you make
contact and as soon as they attack her. That way I can get things moving
faster, so you spend less time in limbo.”
I grunted at him in my disinterest and headed out of the office. The
secretary was still behind the desk, desperately trying to not look at me as I
walked out the front door. I was done with timid women for today, so I
didn’t even play with her. I was tired. I was annoyed and I had a project to
work on.
When I got into my car and slid behind the steering wheel, I locked the
doors and opened the file. Inside on the front page was a picture of the
daughter, who I would be in charge of. She had a beautiful face, gorgeous
blue eyes and wavy brown hair that was so light it was almost dirty blonde.
In the photo she was smiling, sitting on a park bench in fall, a scarf tied
around her neck, boots on her feet and a book in her hand.
Winnifred (Winnie) Barone.
I studied her face and felt something inside me shift.
Annoyed, I slammed the file shut and threw it on the seat beside me. The
important thing had been her work schedule just underneath her picture, her
work address and her home address. She would be at work now so that’s
where I was going to go.
Time to get to work.
Chapter Two
Winnie

T
he smell of coffee and books invited me to work as I walked through
the front door and I closed my eyes for a moment, enjoying it. I loved
my job. Mary’s Bookstore was the best place in the world as far as I was
concerned. There was an entrance that invited you with lots of space where
tables of featured books were sitting. Farther back there were bookcases
filled with popular books and magazines, puzzles, and gifts.
To the right of the entrance was a cafe, which was where the coffee smell
was coming from. There were baked goods and sandwiches there too,
which was perfect for break time. Throughout the cafe and the main room
there were couches and tables with mismatched chairs to give places for
people to sit, relax, eat, and read.
There was a second floor that could be reached by the escalators on either
side of the main room to the back of the store. It overlooked the main room
on three sides and there were stacks after stacks of books up there. There
were couches up there too, but the main focus was the books.
I walked across the main room to the service desk where Cheryl, my
boss, stood talking to a customer. Cheryl was an older woman, about sixty-
five, with short cut gray hair and thick black framed glasses. There was a
vein popping out of her forehead that usually happened when she was
stressed about something. She wrapped the black shawl she had on over her
pink and purple paisley patterned dress and typed something one handed
into the computer in front of her. The teenager she was talking to was
tapping her foot with her arms crossed over her chest and an annoyed look
on her face, if the scrunched-up nose and marred eyes was any indication.
“I’m sorry miss, but I just don’t have any Ror-key Enson in stock. I’ve
checked it three times.” Cheryl insisted. The teenager huffed.
“You do have it.” She insisted. “I saw it here last week in the manga
section, but I didn’t have the money then. Now I do, but it’s not in the same
place. I just want number six. Can you do your job and find that for me?”
Cheryl opened her mouth to answer, her finger pointed in the air to
punctuate her no doubt annoyance-filled answer, but I interrupted, seeing
this going poorly at best if I didn’t.
“Good afternoon! How may I help you?” I asked and the teenager turned
to me, her long blonde ponytail swinging. She was wearing a belly shirt and
a pair of low-cut skinny jeans. The girl couldn’t be more than sixteen and I
wanted to offer her the sweatshirt I kept in my bag that I had slung over my
shoulder. She was too young to be dressed like that.
“Oh good, someone younger than the Crypt Keeper. Maybe you’ll be
able to understand what I’m talking about.” She said and Cheryl’s mouth
pressed into a thin, angered line. I nodded to her, letting her know I was
going to take this from her. She gave me a curt nod back and turned on her
heels to go do something else. I couldn’t blame her. This child was being
just plain rude.
 “What is it you are looking for?” I asked sweetly and she took a deep
breath.
“Like I told the other lady, I’m looking for Ruruni Kenshin.” She
enunciated the name slowly and clearly, like she was used to people asking
her what it was she was saying. “I need the sixth book in the series. Can
you tell me where it is? It’s not where it should be.”
“Oh, yes I’m familiar with that manga.” I told her and her angry face lit
up like I had already found it for her. “Unfortunately, we no longer have any
of the books in stock. We had a gentleman come in and by all we had, said
he was going to a convention or something along those lines. I can order the
book for you if you like though. I can either ship it to your house for you or
you can come back next week. We will hold the book for about two weeks
with your name on it, so you have time and you don’t have to worry about
someone else taking it.”
“Well shit,” she cursed and thought for a moment, looking from the
bookcase to our left then back to me a few times before she continued. “Are
you going to be here a while?”
“Yes I will. Actually my shift just started so I’ll be here until close.”
“Cool. I’m going to look around a little while I think about it. What’s
your name? So I can find you?” she asked. I almost pointed to my name
badge when I realized I hadn’t pinned it on yet. Of course I hadn’t been
expecting to help someone before I had even clocked in.
“Just ask for Winnie” I told her and she smiled, turning towards the
bookcase she had been looking at. I smiled and headed towards the back so
I could put my backpack and the thick sweater I was holding in my locker.
Jared and Kris were standing in the break room where our lockers were
and talking about the latest dragon novel that had come out. Kris seemed to
be in love with it, but Jared could take it or leave it. He wasn’t as impressed
as everyone seemed to be. This outraged Kris and before I could escape to
the sales floor, I got roped into the discussion. Lucky me.
“Oh come on, you know dragons are so overwritten about. They are
almost as bad as werewolves.” Jared insisted and turned to face me. “Right,
Winnie?”
“Umm…” I started, but Kris interrupted, her long blonde braid being
flung agitatedly over her shoulder.
“Oh please! They are ‘overwritten’ because they are amazing and
everyone loves them. You cannot deny success!” she insisted, using air
quotes to place her point.
“If there was an appeal, it is certainly gone now.” Jared insisted and
began a full-blown verbal assault on the fantasy genre. While he was
talking, I backed out of the room slowly, this time successfully escaping
due to heated debates on both sides.
My workday went very smoothly after that. I put away the new
inventory, ordered books we had sold this week and made sure that the
Romance section was well organized. In between I had to jump on the
registers to help cash people out. As a whole, the store never got very busy
all at once but sometimes we had surges that the one cashier couldn’t
handle.
After a particularly long surge in which it took fifteen minutes to clear
out, I decided to go on my hour break, buying a copy of Nora Roberts' The
Obsession before I went to sit in the cafe, where I got myself a very large
chocolate raspberry coffee. I managed to snag the couch in the corner and
curled up with my feet on the cushions like it was my own home. That was
my favorite part about my break, it was always just right.
 While I was reading, I felt a presence sit down beside me. I was at a
particularly good part of the book and didn’t want to ruin it so instead of
looking up, I shifted so I wasn’t in the other person's way. I had half a mind
to tell them to go sit somewhere else, but that would be rude and highly
uncalled for. I wasn’t sitting in my living room no matter how much I liked
to pretend I was.
I sipped my coffee and finished the chapter, happy with my stopping
point. I set the book down on the coffee table in front of me and glanced
over at the man sitting next to me.
He was huge. Originally, I had thought that he was just sitting close to
me because he was waiting for someone else to sit on the other side of him,
but he was actually sitting in the corner of the love seat sized couch, as far
away from me as possible. He wore all black; tight black jeans, a skintight
black t-shirt and black boots that looked extremely heavy. I could tell, even
while he was sitting down, that he was extremely tall. He had his arm
resting on the back of the couch, a tattoo of a beautiful woman wearing a
wolf head as a headdress on it with blood dripping from her mouth onto her
outstretched hand.
He had short, spiky black hair and dark brown eyes that looked at me
with distaste. I quickly averted my gaze, but I was now looking at a black
beard that nearly hid his frowning mouth.
“I…I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were still sitting here. I kind of zone
out when I read. I’ll move.” I offered and leaned forward to grab my book.
“Don’t.” His deep voice grumbled and I looked back at him. His
expression hadn’t changed, but his eyes had shifted and were no longer
looking at me. He was scanning the crowd of people who had just walked
through the front door.
 “Oh, did you need something?” I asked, thinking it would make sense if
he knew I worked here and wanted to ask me a book question. He spared
me a glance and shook his head, then went back to watching the people near
the door. “Okay…”
“My name is Rurik Gusev. I have been hired by your father’s contacts to
be your bodyguard and if need be, escort you to your father’s safe house,”
he said.
“I’m sorry, what?!” I asked, completely confused. My father’s contacts?
The mafia? Why would the mafia hire me a bodyguard? I wasn’t a part of
that world, I didn’t need someone to protect me. There had to be a mistake.
Or maybe it was a bad joke. Yea… a joke. Like maybe he’s a stripper or
something? He certainly had the body for it. Even through his shirt I could
see the outline of all his abs, his chest. His muscles bulged out of their
sleeves. He certainly had the body for it.
I had a momentary thought of him in a speedo, dancing on stage. I would
absolutely pay to see that show.
I smiled at him and patted his knee. The moment I touched him, he
snapped his eyes to my hand like I was about to hurt him in some way. I
kept my smile where it was, but I took my hand away, suddenly afraid that
if I didn’t, I would lose it.
“I’m sorry, but whoever put you up to this never told me about the
punchline. I don’t need a dancer at my work. Maybe if they sent you to my
house, that would be a different story, but…”
“What are you talking about?” He asked, eyes squinting at me. I raised an
eyebrow.
“Did they tell you to act oblivious too? Did Arlow put you up to this? I
swear if he’s here, you can give him the dance because I am not interested
in getting fired.”
He stared at me for another long moment when surprise appeared on his
face, followed by an even deeper frown line in his forehead.
“You think I’m a stripper?”
“Aren't you?” I asked back, tilting my head. “I mean, you certainly have
the body for it.”
A vein appeared in the tall man’s forehead. I could practically see it
throbbing.
“No, I am not a stripper.” He spat. “I am your bodyguard. I am here to
make sure you are safe.”
“Riiight…” I drew out, watching him. “Because my father got himself in
trouble.”
“Yes,” he answered and I shook my head.
“Would you excuse me for a moment?” I asked, holding up a finger. He
didn’t answer me, but I didn’t exactly need an answer. What I needed was
to verify what he was saying. I learned well from my father; trust, but
verify. It’s just a smart thing to do.
He didn’t say anything, but didn’t move as I plucked my phone out of my
jeans front pocket and dialed my father’s number. It rang a good eight times
before I hung up and tried again. By the third time I realized something was
very off. My dad always picked up the phone if I called. It didn’t matter
what time it was or what he was doing, he would pick up the phone. Hell,
once he picked up the phone during sex, which was grosser than I could
ever explain.
I glanced over at the big man, Rurik, and called the second number I had
in mind.
 “Hello?” An older man’s voice appeared on the other line, his voice
gravelly from cigar smoke and whiskey.
“Hey, Uncle Johnny, it’s Winnie.”
“Winnifred! So nice to hear from you!” he exclaimed, a lightness coming
into his voice that he seemed to reserve for me alone. “Did you get my
gift?”
“Your gift?” I asked, confused. It wasn’t my birthday for another couple
of months, why would he be getting me a gift? “I’m sorry, but I don’t
understand.”
“Your bodyguard, of course! Did he not show up?” He asked, sounding
concerned.
I looked over at my ‘present’ and reached up with my free hand to rub
my forehead. Suddenly there was a knot above my eyebrows from
furrowing them so much.
“Oh, he’s here alright. I just… needed to make sure he was from you.
Why did you send me a bodyguard? I tried calling dad… did… something
happen to him? Should I be worried?”
There was silence on the other end for a moment which told me
everything I needed to know. Something had happened, but he didn’t want
me to know about it. Uncle Johnny was my mother’s brother and when she
disappeared, him and my dad seemed to double down on the lack of
knowledge that was sent my way about anything they did. They wanted to
protect me and I understood that, appreciated it even, but there was a line
where they had to realize I was an adult and I deserved to know things.
Like what had happened to my mother, but that was a whole other
argument entirely.
 “Uncle Johnny?” I prompted and I could hear movement on the other end
of the phone.
“Your father… he messed up and got some very bad people angry with
him so I told him to go into hiding. We hope that they won’t retaliate by
using you, but these men have very little boundaries and we are unsure.”
“Right because you have all the boundaries in the world and never cross
lines you shouldn’t.” I teased. He chuckled.
“Well… if we are bad, they are even worse, let's put it that way. Rurik is
there to make sure nothing happens to you. If it does, he will take you to the
safe house.” He explained.
“What safe house?” I asked, completely confused. My father never said
anything about a safehouse.
“The one we built after…” He trailed off and I knew he was thinking
about mom.
“I see. Well alright, but I am not leaving my job, my life, until there is
hard evidence that says I am in danger.” I told him and he chuckled again.
“I knew you were going to say that, pumpkin, that’s why I sent the
bodyguard. To give you a chance at a world where you don’t have to hide
until this blows over. But remember, your safety is the most important so do
not fight Rurik and listen when he says something is unsafe. Let him protect
you. Your job will be waiting for you when you are ready and houses and
cars can be replaced. You cannot be,” he instructed.
“Alright, alright, I’ll play nice with the dark giant.” I told him. The
subject of my comment lifted an eyebrow at me, but didn’t say anything.
“Thank you, Uncle Johnny, I really appreciate this.”
“No problem, pumpkin. Get back to work and sell some books.” He
laughed and I chuckled too.
 “Will do. Love you!”
“Love you.”
I hung up the phone and slid it back into my pants pocket, then perched
on the edge of the couch, picking my coffee back up and staring at the big
guy. He stared right back, unchanged. I opened my mouth to say something,
but ended up downing the rest of my cup instead.
We sat there in silence for a few minutes until he actually spoke first.
“You are… Johnny Estrada’s niece?” he asked in an unsure voice.
I nodded.
“Yes, he is my mother’s brother.”
He nodded and ran a hand over his spiky hair.
“That makes you a bigger target than your father pissing off the wrong
people.”
“Well, not many people know about it. For that very reason,” I explained.
He nodded again and looked up at the next large crowd of people to go
through the doors. I was pretty sure it was the bunch of kids who had come
in together that he had checked out before, but what did I know? I guess he
was just doing his job.
Not that I liked the idea of having a bodyguard. Normal people did not
have giant mountain men following them around. When they were not
dating them of course. All I wanted was to be normal, enjoy my coffee, love
my job and go home to my dog where I would read until I fell asleep. I
liked my lifestyle no matter what other people felt about it. It was me and I
wanted it to stay the way it was.
Though it looked like I was going to have to make a few exceptions.
“Are you planning on staying here for the rest of my shift? Or is this a
‘just coming in to introduce myself, I’ll be in the car until you leave’ kind
of thing?” I asked, unsure of what having a bodyguard entailed.
“Where you go, I go. I’ll be here, watching,” he said, not that he looked
pleased about it. I shrugged.
“Suit yourself. Grab a book and a cup of coffee for yourself. It will make
the time go by faster,” I suggested.
“I will be watching you. I have no need for a book or coffee. Those
things are distractions I have no use for,” he gruffed and I got up, sighing.
“Ok, whatever, suit yourself, but I assure you, my life is pretty boring. I
don’t know how long you're stuck with me, but you’ll find that out very
quickly.”
He didn’t say anything else so I walked away. A real conversationalist,
that one. I looked back over my shoulder as I made my way to the service
desk counter and he was just sitting there, watching me with his dark eyes. I
got the feeling that he didn’t like me very much and the feeling was mutual.
He hardly had a personality and seemed to go out of his way to not speak.
Why couldn’t my bodyguard be some sweet, hot blond guy with blue
eyes? And the Giant’s muscles would be nice because his body was
probably the only thing appealing about him. Maybe his tattoos too, though
I might change the subject matter to being something more fantasy and
light. The black and white style with red splashed through it wasn’t my
thing and it seemed like that was the only style he went with. At least what I
could see.
And I was suddenly thinking about him naked, wondering how much
skin was covered with tattoos.
I shook the idea out of my head and tried to focus on what I had left to do
for the day. I was soon interrupted by the Ruruni Kenshin girl from before
who wanted me to order the book for her and have it sent to her house. She
also wanted four other books that I helped her with. She was a good
reminder that I had other things to focus on besides my bodyguard and what
my father had done to get my uncle to send him to me.
Chapter Three
Rurik

I
t turned out that Winnifred “Call me Winnie” Barone was a ray of
bubbly sunshine. Just my luck.
I watched her for a couple hours as she moved about the bookstore and
she beamed at every person she saw. Her smile lit up the whole room, even
when she was talking to strangers and I wondered if she was born like that
or if she had developed that light over time.
She wasn’t exactly tiny, but she was much shorter than me, standing
probably about 5’6”, 5’7”? She had warm honey colored hair that she had
tied up into a messy bun on the top of her head so I couldn’t tell how long it
was and her blue eyes sparkled. Fucking sparkled. I wouldn’t be surprised if
she was a fucking forest fairy or something, the way she pranced around
through the bookshelves, humming.
The only reason I knew she was humming was because at one point she
had made her way to the second floor with an arm load of books so I
followed her as I had not swept the area when I came in. I had felt that
introducing myself while the danger was minimal was a better idea.
 She was putting the books away and I had been standing in the corner
behind her, staying out of sight, when I heard her humming a tune. I
recognized it, but I didn’t know where I would have heard it before. It was
soft and to herself, but she was so sparkly and bright that the humming just
tipped all of it over and made me want to puke. She was a child that hadn’t
been broken yet, or dirtied. She was so squeaky clean I had a hard time
believing she was an adult.
When she finally headed back down I followed and sat back in my seat in
the cafe. I had destroyed the file before I showed up, but it had only told me
things about what the father had done and who the enemy was other than
her one photo, her name, and her work schedule which I had folded and put
in the pocket of my jeans. It didn’t tell me anything else about her.
So I took out my phone and started searching, making sure to look up
every few seconds to find her. Normally I would have loved to do my
research beforehand so I wasn’t doing it on the job and was completely
prepared, but this was not a normal job.
My target had never been as important as the Don’s niece.
The niece of the man who I needed to help get me away from the
Russians.
A lot more was riding on this job than just money or reputation. It made
me twitchy. Especially when I barely knew my target.
She was easy to find through social media. She seemed to post things
daily on Facebook and Instagram which made sense because they were
practically the same thing. She had a lot of selfies, some with a very
flamboyant male who seemed to go by the name of Arlow, others with a
Doberman, but most of them were just her.
 The Doberman had been a surprise. I had pictured her as a cat person or
if she liked dogs, a teacup chihuahua she might carry around in a purse, but
that was certainly a Doberman. From a safety standpoint, a big dog was
always smart. They provided protection even if they were the most docile
creature ever because people saw their size and often decided to go the
other way. Maybe her uncle or father had talked her into it.
She posted a lot of memes about books and self-help advice along with
places she wanted to go and things she wanted to do. Apparently she had
been dead set last year on renovating a van and traveling the US, but that
didn’t seem to have happened.
She was in fact twenty-four years old and had her own house, which she
had closed on when she was twenty. That came as a surprise too. I had
expected her to be much younger and a little less adult. But she worked
extra shifts here a lot, bought her own car out of cash she had saved
throughout high school, bought her house which seemed to be the only
thing her father had helped her with, but she was paying him back slowly.
She seemed to have her life together the way she wanted it.
I could respect that. Didn’t mean I liked her for it, but I could respect it.
Hell I was thirty-one and trying to do the same damn thing. She just clearly
had a better start to life, but I couldn’t begrudge her that. I was glad for it. I
couldn’t picture her being broody.
Though the further back in her posts I went, I didn’t have to imagine her
brooding. She had stopped posting selfies and had started posting pictures
of a car crash. A tombstone with a crying angel over it. My Chemical
Romance lyrics. Dark artwork and sayings. When I looked closer I noticed
every year on the same date, May 23, she posted a picture of a crow with
the name Olivia Caprice attached to it in some way.
 When I went down that rabbit hole in social media I got glimpses of a
story that involved a new driver and a tractor trailer that had lost control
while on their way to school. Winnie had been in the car, but she had
survived. Her friend had not.
Maybe she wasn’t as undamaged as I thought she was.
I got off that train of thought and put my phone away. It was about ten
minutes until it was time for her to leave and most everyone had left
already. There was a woman standing off to my right that had been standing
there for some time, watching me. She was tall and willowy, barely
anything to her but skin and bone which she tried to hide with baggy jeans
and an oversized t-shirt with a cat on it. She had long brown hair that hung
loosely around her and her sneakers looked like she let a child doodle all
over them. I looked up at her and she visibly flinched.
“H-hi… ummm. Yo-you need help w-with anything?” she asked,
stuttering her way through her sentence. I shook my head and leaned back
in the seat to show her I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. She looked
terrified, her eyes wide and her hands tucked deep into her pockets so she
could hold her arms close to her body. “Well s-sir, I am sorry, b-but the
store is closing. Yo-you’ll need to leave.”
“No.” I said simply and watched her face double the fear and turn it into
sweat that appeared on her forehead.
“But sir—” she began again when Winnie came rushing over, smiling
brilliantly.
“Sam! Hey, you don’t have to worry about him. He’s with me.” She
explained and Sam’s body sagged with relief.
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know,” she said and as Winnie glided her
away Sam continued. “I had no idea you had a boyfriend! He’s so gorgeous,
Winnie, where did you meet him?”
I snorted laughter to myself, not hearing whatever bullshit story she told
to her co-worker. As if little miss Sunshine would ever look twice at a guy
like me. She probably dated surfer guys or artists who were in touch with
their inner beings. Not that I really saw any evidence of her dating life on
her social media pages. Unless she was dating Arlow, but I would place
good money on the fact that that wasn’t happening.
Though the dating world was a lot weirder now than it ever had been so
maybe she was and I was just being judgmental.
I shrugged that thought away because I didn’t like it and stood up when
Winnie came back. The lights on the second floor went out and the music
that had been playing softly in the background this whole time like white
noise stopped.
At 6’5”, I loomed over her as she approached and she had to look up at
me, nearly a foot taller. She had a backpack with her and a sweater that was
slung through one of the straps of the bag. She clutched a book to her chest
and shifted from foot to foot.
“We can leave now, my shift is over,” she said and started walking
towards the door. I stopped her, placing a hand on her shoulder. She looked
up at me with confused eyes. “What are you doing? Don’t touch me.”
“Relax,” I ordered walking around her so I could stand in her way.
“There is a specific way this is going to go and you are going to listen to
me. Everyone leaves before you, except for whoever has to lock the door.
When we get outside, you will stand with your back to the side of the
building until I am certain the parking lot is safe. Then we walked to the
car, following me. Understood?”
 “This is ridiculous!” she complained. “No one is going to attack me in
the parking lot.”
“Do you understand?” I asked, glaring down at her. Why was she being
so difficult? In the army I had always been better at the seek and destroy
missions than at the protection detail, but none of the people I had protected
ever complained about how I chose to protect them. For the most part, they
had all just been grateful. Winnie was certainly a long way from being
grateful.
“No, I don't understand.” She shot back, placing her book under her arm
and her hands on her hips. “No one is going to attack me. It’s one thing for
you to come in here and watch me because my uncle told you to, fine,
whatever, but there is no way you are telling me how to leave work. You are
overreacting. Nothing is going to happen.”
“I’m overreacting?” I repeated, completely flabbergasted. “I’m doing my
job.”
“Well it seems more like you are just being an ass,” she countered and I
gritted my teeth at her.
“I will leave first, you will follow, or I will pick you up and carry you
across the parking lot. Do you want that?” I demanded. She looked at me
for a long moment as if assessing if I would actually do it or not. I tried to
show her with my eyes that yes, I would absolutely carry her out of here for
her own safety, threat around or not. I always chose the easy, safest route.
“Fine.” She said, giving in and stepping back to show me she was going
to follow. I let out a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. She just got
to my every nerve like salt in wounds I didn’t even know I had.
I lead the way through the rest of the bookstore and through the front
door where Sam held the keys in her hand. She nodded at us as we went
through and then again when she locked the doors and went to her car. We
waited until she was gone and the only cars in the parking lot were mine
and Winnie’s, a little red Chevy Malibu. Mine was a rental, a sleek black
Jeep wrangler that made her car look like a shoe box.
She started walking toward her car and I put my arm out, effectively both
arm-baring her as she walked into it and using it to shove her back to the
wall. She glared at me, rubbing at her upper chest with her free hand.
“What the hell was that for?” she demanded.
I pointed to the wall.
“Stay!” I barked and moved to the far side of the building, always
keeping her in my peripheral vision. Slowly, I peered around the side of the
building. There wasn’t anything there except a few trees and bushes with a
field that had power lines running through it. Then I jogged over to the
other side to look around the building there. There was a small parking lot
and an area where trucks delivered things, then trees. Nothing out of the
ordinary, nothing to get nervous about.
I returned to her and nodded.
“Ok, let's go,” I said and started walking to my car. Incidentally, she
started walking for hers.
“Stop.”
“What now?” she groaned, her head back dramatically staring at the
starry night sky.
“You aren't driving. Get in my car, I’ll drive you home.” I told her, but
she shook her head vigorously.
“Oh, that is so not happening,” she said and turned to walk to her car
again. I bolted, cutting off her way to the car unless she could make it
around me. She tried going to the left, but I side stepped and blocked her
way again. She looked up to me, glaring, then tried it again to the right this
time. I did the same thing, blocking her path.
“You are coming with me. You don’t know what they might have done to
your car.” I told her and she shook her head.
“Nothing. No one had done anything to my car. You are overreacting.
Again. I’m going to call my uncle and tell him to fire you because this is
insane. You are insane,” she insisted and I shook my head.
“You obviously can’t grasp the severity of the situation.”
“There’s nothing to grasp! My father made some men angry. They won’t
come after me. No one knows I’m Johnny’s niece and aside from my dad, I
have no other obvious mafia connections. I’ll be fine!” she said and tried to
push me out of the way. I flexed my abs and chest, but didn’t move. She
shoved again, harder this time, but I didn’t even have to step back. “Move
you big moose! I want to go home.”
“You are not driving your car until further notice. Is that clear? I will
drive you wherever you need to go. I will take you home. Now get. In. The.
Jeep.”
Her face paled, but she shook her head and tried to get around me yet
again. Patience gone, I bent over, putting my shoulder to her middle,
grabbed her around the back of her knees and stood up. The momentum had
her draped over my shoulder, her head almost level with my ass. Which she
began punching.
“Put me down! What the hell do you think you’re doing!” she yelled, but
I ignored her. I walked briskly over to the jeep and unlocked the doors,
opened up the passenger seat and dumped her into it. She was still yelling at
me, screaming in my ear to let her go when I grabbed her by the shoulders
and shook her twice then pressed her back into the seat, showing her how
easily I could move her when I wanted to.
“Shut the FUCK UP!” I yelled at her.
She quieted, her mouth still hanging open. Her eyes were ablaze with
hatred.
“I am doing my job. I am trying to keep you alive, which means you need
to listen to me, no matter how ridiculous you think I’m being. Your father
killed the son of the head of the Irish mafia, Winnifred. It only makes sense
that they will retaliate in a similar way. It’s not like he cheated at a game of
cards or hit one of their cars at a bar. This is serious shit and I know you
don’t know me, I know you don’t like me, but you have to trust me. Trust
that I know what I’m doing, otherwise your uncle wouldn’t have hired me.
Trust me to keep you safe because I have been trained to do so,” I told her
and her anger seemed to fade a little. She closed her mouth and the color
drained from her face a little. “Now, stop acting like a child and buckle your
seatbelt while I get in and drive you home. If you try to get out of this car I
will put you in the back and turn the child locks on. Do you understand
me?”
I waited a moment, looking at her. Slowly, she nodded and I let go of her.
She reached for her seatbelt and I slammed the door shut.
When I got behind the wheel she had her bag, sweater and book in her
lap and her seatbelt was on. She had her eyes closed and she was muttering
something under her breath. Her skin was pale and her jaw clenched when
she shut it like she was chewing on glass. She was petrified and I wasn’t
entirely sure why. Had I gone too far? Had I pushed her too much?
I started the engine and we drove off in silence.
 She was trembling slightly and I thought about putting a hand out to
touch her, but I didn’t want to make things worse. Looking at things from
her point of view, she had just been bodily put in a vehicle with a stranger
that was only there to save her life because her father killed the child of a
very powerful person. Her perfect life had been turned upside down and I
was not helping.
I felt a twang of something in my gut. Regret? No, surely not. I had done
what I needed to do to get her in the car safely. Sure I yelled a little bit more
than I needed to, but she was being stubborn. Was that wrong? Was that
what she was so nervous of?
Was I fucking this up?
My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I drove to her address
already programmed into the car’s GPS. I would not second guess myself. I
had never second guessed myself. I did what I had to do and that was that.
If she didn’t like it, she could get a new bodyguard from her uncle.
But the look on her face as she gripped the items in her lap like her life
depended on it shot an emotion through me that I was unfamiliar with and
was certain I didn’t like.
Chapter Four
Winnie

T
he asshole drove me home while I was sitting in the passenger seat,
terrified. I tried not to let it show too much, but my body was
trembling and I couldn’t stop the flinch every time we went over a bump.
All I could think about was the shattered spider web pattern appearing on
the windshield and blood covering the steering wheel.
I refused to look at him and didn’t even care how he knew where I lived.
I assumed it was from my uncle. It was all I could do to keep myself from
slipping back into the past and seeing Olivia’s face staring at me with
lifeless eyes, her forehead sliced open from hitting the steering wheel and
the tree branch that had gone through the window jammed into the back of
her skull.
I tried breathing slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth. I
counted to ten then back down to one, then did it all over again, hoping I
would be able to calm myself down. It worked, a little. It kept me from
screaming.
I hated being in the passenger seat. It was where I had been sitting when
my childhood friend had died and I couldn’t get away from it. Being in the
back was ok, but mostly I preferred to drive. Being in the driver’s seat gave
me a sense of control, no matter how fake that sense of control was. It
helped me believe that everything was going to be ok and I wasn’t a victim.
Of course after being thrown into the car like a child and yelled at by the
asshole driving me home, I wasn’t feeling like I was in control of anything.
When he pulled into the driveway, I unbuckled my seatbelt and sprinted
out of the car as fast as I could, needing to be out of there. I needed to be
safe, I needed familiarity and I needed my dog. I could hear Lucy barking
on the other side of the door and I shoved my hand into my pocket to get
out my keys. I could hear Rurik swearing as he followed me up the steps
and before he could take my keys from me, I opened the front door and
entered my living room.
I didn’t bother trying to shut the door behind me, the giant would just
break it in if he wanted to and then I wouldn’t have a front door. He
followed in right behind me, shutting the door and locking it as I greeted
Lucy.
She went back on her hind legs and put her paws on my chest, her cool
wet nose finding my face. She licked my cheeks and whined, her whole
body shaking with happiness, mostly because she didn’t have a tail and she
needed to wag something. I scratched her sides and told her she was a good
girl over and over again until she was finally satisfied that I was ok.
Then she saw Rurik and the barking started. Like the good little guard
dog she was, she got between me and Rurik and snarled, her head low and
her body ready to launch herself at him. Rurik put his hands up and looked
at me as if I needed to call her off.
“Sorry Moose, Lucy doesn’t like you either.”
 “Lucy?” He looked from the dog to me, then back again. “Why did you
name her Lucy?”
“It’s short for Lucifer actually. That was what the kennel where I got her
had named her because she hated everything and everyone. She tore up
beds, fences, and other dogs. They were going to put her down, but when I
went looking for a dog, I came across her and she was nothing but sweet to
me. Not once did she try to bite me or destroy anything of mine. They
actually gave her to me just to get her out of their hair. She’s been the love
of my life ever since.” I explained more because I wanted to hear me tell
the story than wanting him to hear it. Lucy snarled at him again and he
looked at me.
“Well can you call Lucifer off of me so I can help you pack?”
I looked at him, setting my things down on the couch.
“Pack? Why would I be packing?” I asked. Where the hell did he think I
was going?
“Because they might know where you live. You aren't safe driving your
car, living at home or working where you do. You need to change your
routine, get away from everything and disappear for a while. It is the safest
thing to do.”
I raised an eyebrow at him and folded my arms over my chest. Lucy
growled again and I snapped my fingers. She stopped and came to sit next
to me, her eyes glued to Rurik, her tongue hanging from her mouth as she
stress-panted.
“Really? Because my uncle told me that you were to bring me to the safe
house if anything happened. So far the only issue I’ve had is you.” I pointed
out.
 “Your uncle hasn’t been trained in protection detail. The only way I can
make sure you are safe is if we make sure the areas you reside are
completely safe. That means guarding the residence, the vehicles,
everything. That means making sure I know all movement going on in an
area, especially if the enemy expects you to be there. If we go to a hotel,
they won’t think to look for you there. Just like they won’t be looking for
you in a black jeep,” he explained, but I shook my head.
“No. This is where I draw the line. You can follow me around at work,
you can force me to leave my car and go back and forth with you in that
monstrous jeep, but you will not be taking me out of my home. Not until I
see evidence that there is someone trying to get me and I am in danger. This
is my home and I refuse to leave it. And before you think about taking me
out of here against my will, I will let Lucy rip your arms from your body.” I
smiled sweetly at him as he balled his hands into fists. Lucy gave a sharp
bark and he stilled. Smart, very smart. “Now, I’m going to order a pizza
because I do not have enough food in the refrigerator to feed both of us and
you must be starving. What do you want on your pizza?”
“This is not the end of this discussion.” He growled.
“Oh, but it is. I am not leaving. I am safe here until I see that I am not.
Then I will listen to you.”
He mumbled something under his breath and lifted his arm to scratch the
back of his head. His elbow almost touched the ceiling when he did that. He
was barely small enough to fit in my house.
“Fine,” he spat. “But I’m staying here with you.”
“I’ll get you a blanket and pillow for the couch.” I smiled at him, happy
for the compromise. I would have been happier had he said he was sleeping
in the car, but it was a step better than him insisting on sleeping in my bed
or something. I could deal with him in the living room, if it made him
happy.
Also, it felt like I won a little, standing my ground. It felt good.
I grabbed one of the pillows off my bed and a sheet for him to sleep with.
Lucy followed me around like she needed to make sure I was ok. I had still
been shaken from the car ride and she must have associated that with Rurik
because as I walked back into the living room to put the stuff down, she
growled at him again. He ignored her and sat on the couch, his elbows on
his knees, his hands dangling between them.
“What kind of pizza do you like?” I asked, finding the remote on the
entertainment center and handing it to him. I wanted to read my new book,
but I had a feeling he was a TV kind of guy. I didn’t mind, I could read with
the noise. In fact, sometimes I found it soothing. It tricked my brain into
thinking I wasn’t alone in my house. Tonight, I definitely wasn’t alone
though, and I was weirdly ok with that, even if I didn’t particularly like
him.
“Whatever you want.” He said so I got out my phone and ordered from
my favorite pizza place down the street. Joe’s had the best crust and the best
tasting sauce. Sometimes he skimped on the toppings a little, but it was well
worth it when he got the combination just right.
I ordered my usual, a large Hawaiian pizza, watching the big guy’s face
as I did. He didn’t say ew or tell me it was gross, in fact, his face stayed
stoic the whole time I was speaking. I almost left it at that, but just in case
he was actually grossed out by pineapple and ham on pizza and just didn’t
want to say anything against it, I ordered a large cheese too. And cheesy
garlic bread which I swear was a legal drug of some sort. They said they
would have it delivered in about forty-five minutes so I settled in and began
to read my book.
After a few minutes, Rurik turned on the TV and flipped through the
channels until he found the Lord of the Rings. It was halfway through the
first movie, but he stopped anyway and began watching it, which I highly
approved of. At least he had good taste in movies. It would be annoying if
he had turned it on a sports channel or something.
We sat in my living room peacefully while he watched TV and I read. I
was about thirty pages in when Lucy started barking. Rurik jumped to his
feet and went to the window, peering outside through the blinds. Lucy was
right next to him, barking at the car I could hear pulling up into the
driveway behind the black jeep.
I went to get up, but Rurik motioned to have me sit down. I had already
paid for it over the phone and added the tip for the driver so I let it go,
getting comfy in my seat again, which was really the matching chair to the
three piece sofa set I only had two pieces of. The love seat was being stored
in my father’s basement wrapped in plastic because it just wouldn’t fit in
my living room. My legs were up over the arm of the chair and I was
perfectly happy.
Rurik grabbed the pizza, thanked the driver and closed the door behind
him.
“Kitchen or here?” He asked. I pointed to the coffee table.
“You’re watching a movie and I’m nose deep in a good book. We can eat
here.”
We ate in silence, but that was fine. I had been right about the Hawaiian,
he went for the cheese right away, not giving the pineapple and ham a
second look. He devoured three pieces in the time it took me to eat one,
though I had a feeling that had something to do with the spicy part in the
book that had me blushing and nearly choking on my food.
Lucy curled up in her dog bed next to the TV and watched us eat, licking
her lips and waiting for one of us to drop something. When I was done with
my slice I threw her the crust which she caught and started munching on
vigorously.
When I was done with my second slice I got up and got Lucy her dinner
then decided I might want to clean up. The cheese pizza was gone so I put
the Hawaiian box in the fridge and threw the other box away, breaking it up
and putting it in the trash. When I was satisfied that everything was good
and we were all fed I decided I was going to go to bed to read and hopefully
pass out soon, not thinking of the man sleeping on my couch.
“I’m going to head to bed. Do you need anything?” I asked Rurik from
the hallway. He looked up and shook his head. I waited a moment to see if
he would say anything, but he didn’t, he just returned to watching his
movie. “Well… good night then.”
I walked down the hallway and called Lucy, who bounded around the
corner from the kitchen and raced to jump on the bed. I closed the bedroom
door and crawled under the covers, thinking about the day I had had instead
of opening the book.
How did my dad manage to kill someone? So far as I knew he was just
the operations manager, essentially, who kept track of things for Uncle
Johnny. His job wasn’t very dangerous, though he dealt with dangerous
people. He wasn’t going around carrying a gun and threatening his enemies
on a daily basis.
How did he manage to get us both in trouble?
 Lucy readjusted herself, placing her head on the pillow next to me and as
soon as her breathing evened out and I knew she was asleep, I started to
drift off as well, listening to her rumbling canine snores.
Chapter Five
Rurik

I
woke up to screaming.
At first I thought I was still in the nightmare I had been having, but
as I blinked my eyes open to the morning light coming in through the lines
in the blinds, I realized I was actually hearing a scream coming from down
the hall. Lucy was barking from somewhere too, though it sounded further
away. I was up and off the couch before I thought twice about it and
bounded through a closed door that was between me and the screams,
throwing it open with a hit of my shoulder. The lock on the door gave way
and I stumbled into the bathroom where Winnie was standing on top of the
toilet wearing nothing but a towel in her hair.
When I came crashing in, her screams became words instead of just
frightened noises.
“Get out!” she shrieked, trying to cover up. I stood there watching her,
first to make sure she was ok and that there weren't any threats. Once that
was settled, I was staring at her curvy frame. She had a hand over her
breasts, but they would be hard to overlook. Pressed up as they were from
her arm, they looked round and full, very enticing. Her other arm was trying
to cover the mound of her sex which I had caught a glimpse of. She had
shaved, and knowing that sent a shiver through me that I would swear was
only instinct. I was male and she was a naked female. That was all. That
was the only reason why I noticed.
“Why were you screaming?” I demanded, averting my eyes to look for
the cause. There was no blood, no holes in the walls where someone could
get through. There wasn’t even a window so there had been no peeping
tom.
“There’s a spider in the sink!” she yelled at me, though I think it was
more out of pent-up anxiety than actual anger. I looked over at the sink and
there was indeed a half dollar sized spider with eight fuzzy brown legs and
eight beady little eyes staring at me from the safety of the faucet handle. It
skittered closer to the spout and hopped into the sink itself.
Winnie shrieked again and tried to climb higher on the toilet, but it didn’t
work because she had no place to go. The one thing I could note was that
she forgot about trying to be modest and had dropped her arms in her hopes
to possibly scramble up the wall to the ceiling. That was certainly what it
looked like she was doing.
I walked toward the sink and peered down at the spider. Before it could
move again, I reached out with my thumb and smashed it into the eight-
legged pest, feeling the pop of it as its greenish insides leaked down the
drain. Crisis averted, I washed my hands quickly and turned to Winnie who
was frozen, watching me.
“The spider is dead. Can you possibly next time not wake me up
screaming your fool head off unless there is actual danger happening? One
spider does not a crisis make.”
 She scowled at me and covered her nipples again which I had to admit
was a damn shame. I could feel my morning wood jerk in my boxer briefs
and for the first time I realized I wasn’t dressed. I had fallen asleep in my
underwear. Apparently Winnie noticed for the first time as well and her
cheeks went pink, but she ignored it, choosing to be mad instead.
“Next time, can you not launch yourself through my door?” she
complained, pointing at the lock which was now hanging on to the rest of
the door by splinters. “You smashed it, you big moose. I don’t have the
money to replace that door. Do you know how expensive they are?”
“For fuck’s sake, I’ll replace it. I thought you were in actual danger and I
wasn’t thinking about the damn door,” I grumbled at her.
She stood atop her toilet and I looked up at her as her face went from
angry to a little regretful. Her cheeks were still red and her eyes kept
looking down my body. I stood there, letting her look. It was only fair
seeing as I had seen pretty much all of her. She took a deep breath, her tits
pushing into her arm a little and let it out slowly.
“I’m not interested in you like that, I’m sorry.” She said and I raised my
eyebrows, completely clueless about what she was talking about. A moment
passed where I waited for her to explain, but when she didn’t, I was forced
to ask.
“What are you talking about?”
She pointed at my fully erect penis that was attempting to push its way
out of my underwear. It might have started off as morning wood, but the
sight of a naked woman had it sticking around in hopes for play time. I had
been trying to ignore it.
“Your…” She trailed off, not wanting to say it out loud. The redness in
her cheeks made me want to tease her just a little. It wasn’t often I came
across a woman who was shy. The women I had been with had all been
forward, knew what they wanted and had experience. This one couldn’t
have been all that experienced if I had her all flustered.
Slowly, I moved forward, closing the space between us. She backed up
and sat on the back of the toilet, trying to both get away from me and cover
herself at the same time. I could practically see her pulse pounding in her
throat as her eyes got wide and I didn’t stop getting closer. I put both of my
hands on the wall on either side of her and leaned in, not touching her, but
almost.
I looked her up and down and leaned in close so I was whispering in her
ear.
“Trust me, Sunshine, I’m not interested in you that way either. It’s
morning wood, it happens. Doesn’t make you special.” I reached forward
and took the towel in my hands and pulled, releasing her wet hair. It fell
down her back and over her shoulders in a mess of wet locks. I smelled her
flowery shampoo and closed my eyes just for a moment, letting myself
imagine taking her here in the bathroom. As tempting as it was, because of
instinct, I had a job to do. Fucking her, was not that job. “IF I was
interested, you would know it because I would just take you here and now.
I’d throw your legs over my hips, push myself inside you and fuck you
against the wall. That way you would have something to scream about.”
I pulled away from her and threw the towel at her, which she caught and
pulled around her. I turned around and took a deep breath, trying to calm
myself. As fun as teasing her was, as fun as fighting with her was, the facts
hadn’t changed. She was my charge. Besides, she really got on every one of
my last nerves.
 “Do you have coffee I can make?” I asked, not looking back at her. I
could feel her eyes on my back, roaming my skin.
“Y-yes,” she answered in a shaky voice and I smiled to myself, just a
little.
Nodding I walked away down the hall to the kitchen. I was going to head
in and make the coffee, but I thought clothing would be a better idea, so I
threw on the clothes I had yesterday and then made the coffee.
By the time it was done, Winnie was ready for work, dressed in a pair of
tight blue jeans, a Rosie the Riveter t-shirt and a black zip up hoodie. I
handed her a cup of coffee I had doctored and watched her sip it
thoughtfully. Then she went to the back door and opened it, letting Lucy
inside. She ran in, happy to be there, did a circle around the living room
then came to stand at my feet, growling. The damn dog hated me for
whatever reason and she was certainly not shy about showing it.
Winnie was quiet as we drank our coffee and when it was time to leave,
she grabbed her stuff and walked out of the door after me so she could lock
up. I scanned the neighborhood and unlocked the jeep, checking the back
seat before I got in behind the steering wheel. Winnie hesitated and instead
of getting in the passenger seat, she got into the back seat, directly behind
me. I considered saying something to her about it, but it didn’t matter to me
where she sat so I just rolled my eyes and started heading to the bookstore.
She had a double shift today so we would be there open to close. It was
annoying, but it came with the job. At least there was a cafe so I didn’t have
to leave her to go get food. I had one assignment once where I had to be on
site for a sniper mission. I had to sit for three days in the same spot in the
woods waiting on the phone call to shoot the target. That gig was certainly
worse than this and it wasn’t even the worst assignment I’ve ever had.
 When we got to the bookstore, I scanned the area, heading up to the
second floor then sweeping the first before letting her in the building. Her
manager seemed to think it was strange, but Winnie spoke to her quietly
while I was doing my job and it seemed to calm her down a little.
The barista and the girl from yesterday showed up at the same time.
Winnie had called her Sam. She gave me a shy smile as she walked past me
and disappeared into the backroom, where Winnie had gone to put her
backpack away. I went to the cafe and ordered a coffee from Walter, a very
friendly middle aged black man with a very strong handshake. He asked
how long I would be in the cafe and when I told him all day, he just smiled
and said ‘Okay then,’ before heading to the bathroom.
The day went by uneventfully. I sat and watched Winnie do her work. On
her lunch break, she came to sit with me on the couch and talked about
books, about the people she worked with, about life in general. I listened,
not that I had much choice. I was pretty sure the only reason she came to sit
with me was because she knew I would just come find her if she
disappeared. Coming to me in the cafe was a lot better than having me
disrupt the peace.
When she went back to work, I went back to observing her and everyone
she talked to. When her shift was over, she let me walk out first and made
sure I knew she thought I was being ridiculous. She complained about her
car again and how much she hated leaving it in the parking lot.
“I will get a tow truck to bring it home for you.” I told her. “Now get in
the Jeep.”
That was probably the most I had spoken to her since I had seen her in
the bathroom that morning. She wasn’t happy about it, but she got into the
jeep, again in the back seat, and waited for me to drive her home.
 The car was sitting in the driveway the next morning, which seemed to
make her happier.
The next few days went exactly the same, with the exception of the
spider in the sink and her complaining about the car on the way home. She
would wake up and either read until it was time for her to go to work, when
she had afternoon shifts, or she would hop in the shower, then get ready for
work. Either way, I would drive her, with her sitting in the back seat.
At work I would watch her from the cafe, scanning to make sure none of
the people who came in looked like they might harm her. She would sit with
me on her lunch break and talk my ear off, then we would head back to her
place where she would cook or order out, feed Lucy, read, then go to sleep.
We fell into a routine over the next few days and it was a pretty good
one. She spoke to me a lot, but I spoke very little. I didn’t have to because
she knew what I wanted before I had to ask, which was a good thing. The
more in sync we were, if something happened, the better she would know
my mind and not have to rely on me telling her what to do or how to do it.
My silence seemed to make her speak more. She would ask me questions
and almost challenge me to not answer them or she would just keep talking
until I said something. I had to admit, it was kind of cute how she had made
it her own personal challenge to make me open up to her. It wasn’t
happening though. I didn’t let people get close to me for a reason. They
either ended up dead or I couldn’t keep them.
A week and a half had gone by and I was relaxing a little bit. Maybe
Winnie was right and I was being too cautious. Maybe I was losing my
touch at remembering how a bad guy would think and I was being
ridiculous. I had started reading while I watched her, making it less creepy
for those around me. I was fairly certain her boss Cheryl was one step away
from calling the cops on me, labeling me a stalker.
I drank my coffee, read my book; Crime and Punishment by Fyodor
Dostoevsky in the original Russian, and scanned the crowd.
Today I noticed something odd that had me putting the book down.
Over by the gift section, Winnie was talking to Sam about how they were
going to organize the little gift bags they had while a man standing across
the room by the planners watched her. He was about five foot seven inches
tall with dark red curly hair and freckles all over his pale face. He wore a
tan trench coat and green pants that were baggy and well worn. He blended
in really well, except for the fact that I had been watching and looking for
something out of the ordinary as far as Winnie was concerned. I doubted
anyone else would even see he was looking at her.
I got to my feet and was halfway across the room before Winnie
intersected me. She put her hands on my chest and made me stop, otherwise
I would have barreled right over her to get to the guy. He disappeared
between two of the bookcases.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, smiling at a couple customers who
walked by, looking suspiciously at us.
“There is a man with red hair watching you,” I told her and stepped
around her, but she hustled to get back in my way again, all the while
looking around to see who was paying attention to us.
“I know.”
“What do you mean, ‘I know’?” I asked, looking down at her. She folded
her arms over her chest instead of trying to physically stop me by putting
her hands on me again.
 “I mean, I know him. He’s a regular, his name is Frank and he comes in
at least once a week. He’s a little creepy, he stares at the girls, drinks his
coffee, never buys a book, but leaves after an hour or so.” she explained and
I raised an eyebrow.
“And you just put up with this?”
“Yes, because he has never done anything to hurt anyone. He’s just a
perve, likes the smell of coffee and books while he watches women interact
with people or something. He’s harmless. Please, just let this go.” She
insisted and I took a step back. Every instinct in my head was telling me he
was off, something was wrong with him, but if he really was just a pervert,
maybe that was the intent I was picking up on. Maybe I was right about the
oddness, but wrong about the reason behind it.
“Alright.” I said and looked down at her. “I’ll trust you on this. But if he
places one toe out of line, I’ll beat his fucking head in.”
“Understood.” she said, rolling her eyes. She didn’t believe me, or
thought I was being overdramatic. Maybe I was, but I would rather be
overdramatic than not look for threats at all and regret it.
She shot me a smile over her shoulder as she walked away, following it
up by blowing me a kiss. I scowled at her and turned to sit back in my seat
and watch for the pervert Irishman. She had taken to teasing me, payback
for the spider incident last week, I was sure.
An image of her naked with wet hair plastered to her shoulders and an
arm under her breasts instead of over them as I leaned into her filled my
head and I quickly shook it away. She was a job, nothing more. I would not
have those thoughts or feelings about her, not little miss sunshine. Even if it
were possible for us to be a couple, I would break her with my darkness.
 I sat on the couch, brooding, watching for any sign of trouble that would
try to harm my little light of sunshine.
Chapter Six
Winnie

“E
verything ok over there?” Cheryl asked, eyeing Rurik who was
sitting back down on the sofa in the cafe. I nodded, picking up the
pile of books I had been sorting.
“Oh yeah, he just gets a little jealous sometimes, that's all,” I told her.
Cheryl was under the impression that Rurik was my boyfriend who had just
come back from a war so he followed me around all day, worried that
something would happen to me. Not far from the truth and she wouldn’t
question Rurik or the situation, seeing as her husband had come back from
a tour in Afghanistan and he had turned into a completely different person.
She knew better than anyone that veterans needed special rules, so she was
fine with Rurik hanging around all day as long as he stayed out of the way
and didn’t do anything to disrupt the bookstore’s ambiance.
So far so good, though she was constantly on edge, expecting him to
blow up. She said the quieter they were the more in pain they were, also the
more likely they were to blow up at the wrong person. She was speaking
from experience and Rurik hadn’t spoken a word to her in the past almost
two weeks.
 “Jealous? Of who?” she laughed, checking something off on the
inventory list she was looking at as she checked the boxes of merchandise
that had come in. “I haven't seen you look at anyone the way you look at
Mr. tall, dark and handsome.”
I snorted, covering it up with a cough. Did she mean with utter disdain
and annoyance? Because I would believe that.
“Of Frank. I guess he was staring at me and it made him uncomfortable.”
“Did you explain to him that it’s just Frank?” she asked and I nodded.
“I did. He says he’ll stay back as long as the guy doesn’t try to hit on
me.” I reassured her. That seemed to make Cheryl feel better as Frank had
never hit on anyone working here.
“Well good. I feel for the poor guy, but I can’t have a commotion in my
store. My mother would kill me.” She said, mentioning the woman who
founded the Mary’s Bookstore franchise and opened the first five stores.
Even though the original Mary was retired, she still retained the CEO title
and managed her company, and she would give her daughter hell if
something happened in the store.
I had met Mary once, and that was enough for me. She was a very strict
woman.
We continued going through the new inventory as the day went on and
Frank seemed to circle me. I knew he was harmless and I knew Rurik was
just being paranoid, but something about the look on Rurik’s face when
talking about Frank had my brain going. Was he just being a pervert? Or
was there something more that I didn’t see. Did Rurik’s instincts know the
difference where mine didn’t, even if I kind of knew the guy?
When we were done going through the books I bought the ones that went
upstairs up to the second floor. There weren't many so I didn’t bring the
cart, I just carried them up in my arms. When I got to the top, I put the stack
of books on one of the coffee tables and began sorting them so I didn’t have
to walk back and forth a million times.
But as I was bent over, I felt something behind me so I stood up and
turned around.
It was Frank, standing way too close for comfort. My mind flashed to
Rurik, but there wasn’t a way to quietly ask him for help up here. I couldn’t
even see the cafe from where I was.
A sinister grin crossed Frank’s face.
“I’ve been watching you, girly. I’ve been watching you for years and this
was the first time I was ever able to get you alone, you know that?” he said
and I noticed the knife in his hand. It wasn’t big. It was more scalpel sized,
but it would certainly do some damage. “I’ve been wonderin’ what color
your blood is and I finally got the order to do it. Who knew your weak ass
father would be so damned stupid as to fuck with the Irish.”
He lunged forward and I moved to sidestep the swipe of his hand, but it
never came. Rurik had grabbed the man by the back of the shirt and pulled
him backwards with one hand while the other came up and grabbed Frank’s
fist that was holding the knife. Rurik bared his teeth as Frank turned to face
him, the smaller man getting a full glimpse of the beast holding onto him.
“Let me go,” Frank tried to yell at him, but it came out more like a
squeak. “This doesn’t concern you and if you get in the way, the Irish will
have your head.”
“If this concerns the girl, it concerns me,” Rurik told him and squeezed,
putting more pressure on Frank’s hand. He yelled out for Rurik to stop, but
he didn’t. He kept squeezing until there was a loud crunching sound. Frank
screamed and Rurik finally let go, the scalpel in his hand now. Frank held
his broken hand up to his chest, the fingers bending in a very unnatural way.
Rurik circled Frank until he was standing between Frank and I. Frank
turned to make sure Rurik wasn’t standing at his back. He didn’t trust the
big man and I couldn’t blame him. Not after what he had done to his hand.
Not that I felt bad about it at all. He would have killed me if Rurik hadn’t
shown up. He really would have killed me.
Maybe I was in more danger than I thought.
“Get the fuck out of here before I slit your throat with this like you were
planning on doing to her.” Rurik advised holding up the confiscated knife.
Frank’s eyes went wide looking from Rurik to me then back again, like he
was trying to decide who he was more afraid of; whoever had hired him to
kill me or Rurik. Rurik must have won out because Frank took off running
down the escalator, his pulverized hand held out before him.
When Frank was gone, Rurik turned to me, his face set, his eyes
searching my body and my face.
“Are you alright?” He asked, putting his hands on my shoulders. I
nodded. A little terrified that someone I had seen come into the store maybe
a hundred thousand times would want to kill me, but I was physically ok.
“I’m not hurt.” I told him and he seemed to take this as an honest answer,
which was a good thing because I had no other answer to give him. I didn’t
think he would accept the fact that my feelings were hurt. That certainly
wasn't what he had been talking about.
He looked me over as if to verify my answer and then he nodded and
turned around towards the escalator, but in doing so, he grabbed my wrist.
He pulled me along after him, off the second floor. I wish I could say that
he led me, but with our height difference and the fact that he was walking
rather fast, he was definitely pulling me. It was starting to make my
shoulder throb.
“Hey slow down!” I yelled at him and he shot me an aggravated glance
over his shoulder. People were starting to stare at us. There were groups of
people standing around the sales floor looking in the direction of the front
door, presumably after Frank, but now they were turning to my yells. I
didn’t want to cause a scene so I stopped and tried my best to make it look
like I was following Rurik voluntarily. I didn’t think I pulled it off, but at
least I made it less noticeable.
He pulled me through the main room and to the front doors where he
flung them open and walked us through. I had just enough time to look back
and see Cheryl gaping at me, mouthing the sentence “Where are you
going?” I wish I could tell her, but I didn’t even have an idea. I just knew
Rurik had decided we needed to go outside.
We were halfway to the Jeep before he even slowed down enough for me
to dig my heels in.
“Stop! Where are you taking me? I need to finish my shift!” I yelled at
him and he turned on me.
His lips were so pressed together that it didn’t even look like he had a
mouth beneath the hair of his beard. His eyes were wide and blazing with
anger, his thick neck had a vein in it that was nearly popping out. He looked
bigger somehow, wider, like he had put on extra muscle somehow when he
was ready for a fight. He towered over me as he stopped inches from me,
getting into my personal space. I didn’t know if it was an intimidation tactic
or what, but it wouldn’t work on me, I refused to let it.
“Have you been in la la land or something? Have you not been paying
attention? You almost died Winnifred. He nearly slit your throat in the
horror book section. I will not let that happen again. You are done.” he
snarled, gesturing at the bookstore behind me. “I should have pulled you
out of there the moment I found out you were Estrada’s niece. It was bad
enough that your father did what he did, but they have had an eye on you
for a long time if a regular at your store just tried to slice and dice you. I
should have shut this down from the get-go, but I listened to you. Big
fucking mistake.”
“It wasn’t a mistake and I am not done. One attacker means nothing. I’ll
be—” I started, but he cut me off.
“You’ll be fine?” He spat and lifted the hand he still held. “Go ahead. Get
out of my grip. Tell me again how you can handle yourself and that you’ll
be ok. Show me how you could fight off an attacker.”
His grip tightened and I gritted my teeth trying not to cry. It hurt and I
couldn’t move it at all no matter how much I tried to get out of his grasp.
An image of Frank’s twisted fingers crossed my mind and I let one of the
tears that had been refraining from falling roll down my cheek.
“Let go.” I told him. Rurik leaned forward until he was in my face, the
strength in his hand still steady.
“No? Not going to tell me you’re fine? Not going to be able to escape
me, huh? What if I were the bad guy, Winnifred? What if instead of taking
you to the jeep where you’ll sit in whichever seat you’d like, I was shoving
you in the back of a van where there were five guys waiting to rape and
murder you. Think about that the next time you decide not to listen to me.”
He said, shaking my wrist and squeezing even harder. It felt like something
in my wrist was going to give way if he kept squeezing it like that.
“Let go.” I ordered him, though it came out sounding weak and timid.
He laughed at me, a gravely, unamused sound.
 “Let go of you? Do you think an attacker would just let you go? Because
you asked nicely?”
I let more tears fall from my cheeks, all fight out of me. Rurik had won,
fair and square. He seemed to notice the change in me because he finally let
go of my wrist and walked back a few steps, his hands balled into fists. He
began pacing, his hands and arms swinging from his head to his waist and
back again. I sat down where I was, right in the middle of the parking lot.
People were staring, but it didn’t matter, not right then.
Someone was bound to call the cops though, especially after the mention
of rape. Taken out of context it could be really bad. Hell, in context it was
bad.
I stood up and dusted myself off, tears still streaming down my face and
making my eyes puffy. I headed toward the store and he moved to block my
way.
“Don’t you think for one second you are going back into that place. We
are done doing it your way, we are leaving. Now.” He ordered and I had had
about enough of him. He had saved my life, embarrassed me, hurt me and
made me cry in the span of about five minutes. I was sick of him telling me
what to do. I already got the point that he knew what he was talking about
and I had admitted that we needed to follow his lead, but I needed to tell my
boss I wouldn’t be back in for a while and I needed my backpack which
was in my locker. I was not going to leave my house keys, wallet, id and
everything else in a building I had no idea when I would be back to, if ever.
I stood as tall as I could and looked him dead in the eye.
“I need to get my stuff you giant fucking asshole! My bag, which has my
wallet, my license and such, is in the breakroom. I also need to tell Cheryl
that I’ll be gone for a few days so I don’t leave her high and dry because
some people give a shit about other people's lives. Clearly, you are not on
that list. So get out of my way, you big moose!” I yelled and shoved at his
chest. It didn’t do anything. He was as hard as a rock and he didn’t even
budge. “Move! I want to be out of here before the cops show up because
everyone here probably thinks you're beating your girlfriend and called
them.”
That had him moving. He stepped aside to let me by then followed me
back into the store. Everyone was talking in groups and when I came back
in, the store fell silent. Yeah, there was no question. They were talking
about us.
I marched right past them all to the backroom and got my things. Rurik
followed close behind, watching everything and anyone dumb enough to
get in our way. He was like having Lucy walk around with me; everyone
wanted to see what was with me, but they were too afraid to get too close.
I couldn’t blame them. An angry Rurik was certainly something to
marvel at. I just wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of all that anger.
I slung the bag over my shoulder and slammed the locker shut. When we
re-entered the sales floor, most of the people who had been standing around
were gone and only the workers were left. Sam was talking to the barista
guy very avidly about something, but I walked right past without even
trying to hear what it was she was saying. I didn’t care, didn’t want to
know. They could think or say whatever they wanted about what had
happened, but I knew the truth.
I found Cheryl standing by the door as if she were waiting for me. A look
passed between us and my heart broke a little.
“I will give you a reference if you need it, Winnie. You were my best
salesman.” She said, giving a look behind me at Rurik who was no doubt
scanning the crowd in the parking lot.
“Do you think I’ll be able to come back after a little while? Once this
whole thing blows over?” I asked, hopeful.
She smiled at me and nodded.
“Of course, dear, I know this wasn’t your fault, but… be prepared. It
might never be over for him. He might always be… like this.” she said and
I nodded.
“Thank you, for everything, Cheryl.” I said and before I even knew I was
doing it, I hugged her. She hugged me back and smiled when she let me go.
“No problem. Take care of yourself.” She said and then spared a glance
for Rurik. “And your man.”
I resisted the urge to tell her he wasn’t my man and simply nodded.
Then I walked by her and out the door, Rurik following closely behind.
Chapter Seven
Rurik

S
he got in the car, again in the back seat, and I got behind the wheel,
starting to drive before I even had my seatbelt on. Winnie had been
right, I could hear sirens in the distance and I wanted to make sure we were
gone before they showed up. The cops wouldn’t like me very much seeing
as I wasn’t exactly a US citizen. They might even deport me which would
be bad for both Winnie and I.
I drove calmly past the first cop that drove up the road and remained
calm until we were a few miles away. As soon as I got on the highway
though, I took off, heading towards Winnie’s house as far over the speed
limit as I thought I could get away with. Winnie leaned forward and
clutched the seat.
“Slow down!” she yelled at me, but I ignored her. We needed to get in
and out of her house before the guy who’s hand I broke, Frank I think she
said his name was, told his people that his plan had failed. Once that
happened, I had a feeling all bets were off. Especially now that they would
know she had protection.
 I was going about ninety-two miles an hour when she smacked me in the
back of the head. I flinched and glared back at her over my shoulder.
“What the hell was that for?”
“Slow down!” she screeched at me again. I was planning on ignoring her
and her juvenile ways of getting my attention, but something on her face
had me listening to her. Her face was paler than it should be and there was a
sheen of sweat on her forehead. She was breathing rapidly and her jaw was
clenched so tightly I would be surprised if she didn’t break any teeth.
I slowed the car to seventy, which was five over the speed limit and lifted
an eyebrow at her.
“Better?”
“Yes,” she said and sat back in her seat. She folded her hands in her lap,
her fingers playing with the strap of her bag that lay on the seat next to her,
the arm of the backpack draped over her knee. “Thank you.”
I didn’t reply.
She had a very strange thing about vehicles and as I stole glances of her
in the rear-view mirror, I wondered what it was that made her so nervous.
Was it because her friend had died in a car accident?
That was when I remembered she had been in the car with her and I
suddenly felt like a complete asshole. Sure she had survived, but what if she
never got over it. She had been in the passenger seat in the accident, was
that why she refused to sit there? Did she think it was bad luck or
something?
I filed it away in my thoughts to ask her about later when we weren’t in a
hurry to make sure we had a safe place to sleep for the night.
I pulled up in front of the house but instead of pulling into her driveway
behind her little red car, I parked on the street, just in case someone was
there waiting for us already. I didn’t want to be focused on backing up if
someone was shooting at us. One of the first rules of survival is to always
know your escape route. Ours would stay where we could make an easy
getaway.
“Stay behind me, I’ll sweep the area, then you can put a bag together
with whatever you want for the next few days.” I told her, unbuckling and
getting out of the car. Winnie followed suit but as soon as I rounded the car,
she started complaining again.
“What do you mean, a bag? We aren't going anywhere.” she said, “I don’t
want to leave my home.”
“You don’t really have a choice, Sunshine. If they know where you work,
they know where you live, which means this place has been compromised.
We are leaving and I am bringing you to the safe house,” I explained to her,
checking the outside of the house for any sign of forced entry. I could hear
the dog barking inside, which was a good thing. If she was barking at us, it
meant no one had entered the home either, at least not entered and survived.
If they had entered, the dog would have killed them, I had no question in
my mind about that.
She had even contemplated killing me from time to time so I knew it was
in her, but I had started feeding her in the mornings while Winnie took a
shower so maybe she didn’t hate me as much anymore.
“I don’t want to be locked away and hide for who knows however long. I
want to live in my house, with my dog, in my comfort zone. I’ve worked
too hard for this life and I want to enjoy it. No one will bother me here,” she
countered and I sighed. She was a pain in my ass.
“You’re being naive.” I told her, putting my hand on the doorknob. It was
locked still which was a good sign and Winnie fished her keys out of the
front pocket of the tiny backpack. “What makes you think they won’t come
here? What’s stopping them from blowing up your house in the middle of
the night? Or poisoning your dog so they can come into the house and put a
bullet in your head while you sleep? Shit like that happens you know. These
are bad people who will stop at nothing to get revenge.”
“Oh yeah? How do you know all this, hmm? What makes you such an
expert?” she shot as she opened the door and I pushed my way inside. The
dog held her ground and snarled at me, letting out three sharp barks at me. I
waited for Winnie to greet her before I swept the rest of the house. Every
room was clear, there was no one inside, just like I suspected, though I had
to double check.
“Because I was trained to think like them,” I told her, coming back to the
living room. I moved to shut and lock the front door. “Now grab your shit
and let's go.”
She scowled at me, but didn’t argue, which was a small blessing.
While she packed, I grabbed the duffle bag of clothes I had been using
the last two weeks and set it near the door so I wouldn’t leave without it.
Then I reached into my pocket for my phone and dialed Malcolm’s number.
It rang five times then hung up. I tried again, still no answer. I tried the
emergency number I had for him and still nothing. I looked at my phone in
my hand, wondering what it was we were going to do now.
Concerned, I headed down the hall to Winnie’s room. She was zipping up
a medium sized suitcase that she had laid on her bed. She turned when I
entered and her look of confusion would have made me smile if I had been
in a better mood, it was that genuinely cute.
“What’s wrong?” She asked, turning her whole body to me.
 “I can’t get a hold of Malcolm, my contact that gets in touch with Johnny
Estrada for me. I can’t get directions to the safe house.” I made sure the
ringer was up on my phone and put it back in my pocket. Then I leaned
against the door frame. Lucy pushed past me to leap up onto the bed and lay
down, her head on one of the pillows. “He never ignored his emergency
line. He may not answer, but he’ll text through to let me know he's busy.
Something is off.”
“Let me try my uncle,” she suggested and pulled her phone out of her
pants pocket. She dialed the number and waited. Then waited some more.
A look of concern crossed her face as she looked down at her phone and
called again. Same thing, no answer. Her eyes met mine and a look of terror
crossed her face.
“What if they’re…” She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t have to.
I shook my head.
“They are fine, they are probably just busy with something. Estrada is a
very busy man, as is Malcolm,” I tried making her feel better. I don’t think
it worked. Consoling people was not one of my strong suits.
“I tried my dad too, but he didn’t pick up either.” She told me and my
heart sank for her. She looked utterly defeated, her sad eyes looking up at
me like I was the last hope she had. “What do we do now?”
“We keep moving and keep trying to reach them.” I told her, lifting my
arms to rest them on the door jam and stretch my core muscles. All the
tension was making my body stiff. Not to mention the thought that I was in
her bedroom with her kept crossing my mind, my eyes flicking to look at
the bed. An image of her naked body laid out on the bed instead of her
suitcase flooded my imagination and I shifted to try to hide my hardening
bulge. “We’ll find a hotel and stay the night. If we can’t reach anyone the
next day, we will go to another one. We’ll head south because the farther
away from the Irish mob you are, the better.”
She opened her mouth, possibly to argue, but then shut it again. She was
seemingly all out of fight.
“I know you don’t want to leave,” I told her and stepped into her room so
I could be closer to her. “But it really is for the best. I wouldn’t make you
go if it were safe here, but it really isn't. Anyone could find you here and
I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep you safe.”
She nodded and before I even knew what was happening, her arms were
around my middle and she was pressing herself against me, squeezing
tightly. I held my arms up, unsure of what to do. Should I hug her back?
Should I push her away? Why was she even hugging me in the first place?
She hated me.
“Thank you,” she whispered into my chest. “I… know I’m difficult, but I
really do appreciate you saving my life. And being here for me.”
“Ah… you’re welcome,” I told her and gently patted the top of her head,
not knowing what would be better.
We stood like that for a long moment, her pressing herself against me and
me not knowing what to do. Her nearness made my skin tingle and I had a
horrible thought that if she stood there any longer she would feel my cock
grow against her.
Nervously, I cleared my throat and stepped back out of her embrace. She
didn’t look upset or unnerved by it, she just smiled and turned back to her
suitcase, rearranging the clothes that were already in it.
“Would you mind grabbing the bag of dog food out of the kitchen
pantry? I’ll get Lucy’s things together after I’m done packing, but it’s a new
50lb bag and it’s heavy for me,” she asked, not facing me.
 “We are bringing the dog?” I asked, not sure if I liked that idea. I looked
over at the Doberman and she started growling. Winnie turned her face to
look at me over her shoulder.
“I can’t leave her here by herself for however long this takes. She would
starve.”
She had a point but I didn’t like it. I grunted at her.
“Fine. I’ll put the food in the car.”
I found the bag of dog food right where she said it would be and brought
that and my duffle bag outside to the jeep. I put them in the trunk and did a
quick sweep of the front and back yards. There was nothing amiss and it
made me feel better to be more active. Normally on a protection detail I
would be doing sweeps of the area every fifteen minutes or so. I would have
a lookout area established and alarms set up throughout the perimeter. This
time it was like I was flying by the seat of my pants. Winnie kept changing
things on me, making me cater to her and how she felt rather than what was
necessary or what needed to be done.
Was this girl making me soft?
I looked up at the house and saw her shape move in front of the window,
just a shadowy outline, but I knew it was her. I would know it was her even
if there were other people in the house.
Pushing the thoughts away, I headed back into the house and waited in
the living room. I looked at the clock on the wall and saw that we had been
here for about twenty minutes already and I started to get antsy. I wanted to
be out of the state by the time the Irish thought to come after her in her
home, guns blazing, because I had no doubt that that would be how their
attack went. Not only was their element of surprise spoiled, but they now
knew she had protection. Trained protection. They wouldn’t be playing
anymore.
“Come on, Sunshine, let’s roll. We’ve been here for far too long.” I called
out to her. A few minutes later, she came down the hall lugging her suitcase,
a gym bag, a computer bag, a large purse that was draped over her shoulder
and a blanket that was hooked over her head, trailing behind her like a
chunky veil. The sight of her almost made me crack up laughing, but I gave
into anger instead. Anger was safest. I snapped at her. “What are you doing
with all that stuff?”
“Well, if we aren't coming back for a while I need clothes. And my
blanket. And a few toys for Lucy. And books. And my computer so I can
write,” she explained. I walked forward to take the blanket off her head and
rolled it up so I could tuck it under and arm, then took the computer bag and
the gym bag from her.
“You have clearly never packed light before.” I commented and headed
for the door. She followed me, grabbing the leash and harness that were
hanging by the front door. Lucy followed behind her, wagging her whole
body, knowing she was going to be brought somewhere.
I opened the door and waited for her to put the leash on Lucy then
followed behind as she brought the dog to the jeep after she locked the
house up. I put the items I was carrying in the trunk as Winnie put the
harness on Lucy and buckled her harness to the seat. I was going to tell her
that wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t care enough to argue with her.
I shut the trunk and waited for Winnie to get in, but then she turned and
walked back up the driveway.
“Where are you going?” I demanded, jogging to walk beside her.
 “I just need to get something out of my car,” she explained and I moved
to stand in front of her, blocking her way.
“No.” I told her in a stern voice. She rolled her eyes at me.
“I just want to get something real quick off my rearview mirror. It will
only take a second.” She said, walking around me. I put an arm out to stop
her and put out my hand.
“Give me your keys.” I said with a huff and she looked at me, confused.
“What? Why?”
“Because I’ll get it. I don’t want you anywhere near that car. You said it’s
on the rearview mirror?”
“Yes, it’s a… a little crow on a string of beads. A stretchy bracelet.”She
said, looking sad as she talked about it. I didn’t know why it was so
important that it needed to come with us, but hey, she had packed a blanket.
Maybe it was a girl thing that I would just never understand. Maybe she just
liked having an abundance of things to drive me nuts. With her, the
possibilities were endless.
I nodded and walked the rest of the way up the driveway. The car was
parked right in front of the little shed to the side of the house. I had checked
the shed when we had arrived and I did my perimeter sweep, but I hadn’t
had eyes on it the whole time. I thought about the gun strapped to my pant
leg and began thinking I should get a belt holster or a concealment and
carry holster for under my arm, but that would require me to wear long
sleeves. Maybe there was a shopping trip in order for tomorrow. I was sure
Winnie would be up for that as long as I promised her she could check out a
bookstore or something.
I looked over my shoulder at Winnie who was now standing by the jeep,
her hand on the handle, but not getting in yet. She was watching me to
make sure I grabbed it. Slowly I took the car key, put it in the lock and
turned it.
If I hadn’t braced myself for the possibility that the click of the lock
disengaging would be accompanied by the click of a timer being set, I
would have just reached into the car and searched for the bracelet she had
wanted me to get, but I had heard it, felt the difference of the lock. I let go
of the key and bolted down the driveway towards Winnie.
“Down!” I bellowed a second before her little red car exploded.
Heat and a rush of air pushed me forward, making me stumble. I
connected with Winnie a moment later and pulled her to the ground,
covering her with my body as much as possible. She curled into herself,
hugging her knees to her chest and I wrapped my arms around her, my back
facing the flaming car. Winnie’s back was to the jeep and I made sure to
cover her face, tucking her head under my chin.
I could hear things falling and clattering on the driveway, the sidewalk
and the roof of the house, but I didn’t look yet. Not until I was sure if
Winnie was safe.
There was a popping noise and then a second explosion went off. If I had
to guess, I would say the bomb was attached to the engine of the car, or just
inside the driver side wheel well, making it easy to get the trigger attached
to the lock of the door. The first explosion had been the front half of the car.
The second one was probably the gas tank; the flames had heated it up too
much.
I waited, taking a few deep breaths, before I turned my head back to look
at the damage.
Everything was on fire.
 Pieces of the car were scattered all over the lawn and the top of the
driveway, some of them smoking, others on fire. The body of the car was in
ruin, flames billowing out from it and licking the roof of the shed. I couldn’t
be sure but it looked like the roof of the shed had caught on fire too. Pieces
of the house’s roof were smoking; one of the tires had come off of the car
and was lodged in the broken front window.
I turned back to look at Winnie who had shifted so she could peer over
my shoulder. Her eyes went wide and the flames made her blue eyes look
orange. She began shaking.
“Come on.” I said, standing up and holding out my hand. “We need to
go.”
“My home…” She said, staring at the scene unfolding. The living room
had come alive with orange flames, joining the inferno. “It’s gone… just
like that.”
A single tear slid down her face like an accident.
Chapter Eight
Winnie

I
couldn’t believe it. One moment we were heading on a needless
vacation to lay low for a few days or at least until we could get ahold of
my uncle, the next, my car was throwing flaming pieces of itself around my
lawn. I could see a perfect outline of the steering wheel through the hole
where the door should be, but the door had fallen off and was lying about a
yard or two away from the vehicle itself. Flames roared and smoke
billowed. In the distance I could hear sirens.
“My home…” I whispered, shock taking hold of me with a tight grip. I
knew we needed to leave. I knew that this had happened because I was no
longer in a safe place, but I hadn’t thought anything like this would have
happened. I hadn't really taken it seriously until now. Frank had been a
shock and it was unfortunate, but it was one guy. That was small scale in
comparison to this. “It’s gone… just like that.”
I could feel the tear slide down my face and I hated it. I didn’t want to cry
anymore, but this was too much. In one day I had lost my job, my mode of
transportation, and my house. As I watched, the flames in the living room
grew taller, dancing up the curtains and making the wallpaper bubble.
 Faintly, I could hear Lucy barking like crazy from the back seat of the
SUV.
“Come on.” Rurik said, stepping in front of me, blocking my view of the
wreckage. “We need to get going. The officials will be here any moment.”
I nodded and he opened the passenger side door. I got in, not even
arguing about wanting to sit in the back. Today I think my nerves were shot
enough to not care, which was a relief. I only wished it didn’t come at such
a cost.
He shut the door and I leaned on the window, my forehead pressed
against the glass. The fire was spreading to the roof of my house now and
the smoke was creating a black cloud overhead. Lucy was still barking,
harnessed into the back seat. I put a hand back for her to sniff and see that I
was physically ok. I couldn’t promise anything about mentally.
Her cold wet nose touched my hand and she relaxed.
Rurik got into the driver’s seat and strapped himself in right before taking
off down the street like a mad man. If I wasn’t so emotionally numb I might
have panicked. Somehow I managed to get my own seatbelt on as he blew
the first stop sign at the end of the street and turned the corner. Lucy shifted
across the seats and lay down, realizing quickly that it was just easier that
way.
We drove in silence for a long time and eventually he slowed down. I
didn’t know where we were going, but that didn’t matter anymore. It wasn’t
like I could leave the car and go home. I didn’t have a home to go back to. I
thought about calling my insurance and filing a claim, but that would have
to wait. Right now I had to lay low and listen to Rurik because clearly he
had been right all along.
 I had thought they were all just overreacting. I had nothing to do with my
father’s work or my uncle’s life. That was all just circumstantial. I kept to
myself, worked at the bookstore and went straight home. I didn’t cause any
trouble. I had no interest in joining their lifestyle.
Yet, somehow, I got pulled right into it.
Trees and buildings passed by the window as we made our way wherever
it was we were going. I wanted to ask Rurik what the plan was, but I
couldn’t quite get around to it. Asking him made it all real. Like I was
admitting defeat.
I sure as hell felt defeated.
To my surprise, it was Rurik that broke the silence.
“I told you not to drive your car,” he stated, watching the road intently.
At least now we were traveling at a normal speed.
I sat up in my seat and turned my head to him.
“How did you know?” I asked, watching his face. His beard covered
most of it, but he had very expressive eyes. He would probably hate that if I
told him, but he did. “Did you see something?”
He turned his head to me for a moment as if assessing me, then returned
his focus to the road.
“It’s what I would have done,” he said simply, as if that explained it all. I
tilted my head.
“What do you mean?” I pressed. “Have you made many people’s cars
explode?”
“Some.”
I blinked at him, but there was no sign of amusement on his face. He had
answered me honestly, I could see it in the way his eyes darted to me,
looking for my reaction. He was worried I would think poorly of him, I
think. He wanted to be on good terms with me. He valued my opinion.
I didn’t know what to do with that knowledge right away so I stored it in
the back of my mind.
“Oh.” I replied and nodded as if it made sense.
The quiet stretched between us again. In the distance, the sky was turning
all sorts of colors; orange, pink, navy blue. Streaks of red stretched above
head and I wondered how long it would take the firemen to put out the fire
at my place. Was it still burning? Was anything salvageable?
“Why do you hate the passenger seat so much?” Rurik asked and I
immediately started pulling at my fingers, fidgeting.
“Can… we not talk about it in the car?” I asked quietly. “I promise I will
answer you… I just can’t.”
He nodded.
“Ok.”
Silence again, but that was fine. My ears still rang from the explosion,
like being at a really loud rock concert next to the speaker for too long. It
was fading, but it still made my head feel like my eardrums were filled with
cotton. I rubbed at them as if I could clear them, but nothing seemed to
work.
Eventually I gave up and started fidgeting with the hem of my t-shirt.
“The first thing I set an explosive on was an oil tanker off the coast of
France.” Rurik offered and I watched him again, listening intently. It wasn’t
often that Rurik started a conversation, let alone told me something about
himself.
Seeing that I was interested, he continued.
 “Of course I didn’t know it was an oil tanker at the time. All I knew was
there was a ship and I needed to blow it up. It was my rotation on
explosives. My squad and I would all take turns because it was mandatory
that every soldier learn every aspect of the army. That way all the soldiers
were interchangeable. Sure some people were better at some things than
others, and that was recognized, but everyone needed the knowledge in
order to complete any task.”
He cleared his throat and stopped the car at a red light. He turned his face
to me and watched me for a moment before he turned back to go through
the now green light and continue his story.
“So that week it was my job on explosives and I set the C4 blocks on the
side of it, rigged it to the hand controls and waited for the kill order. I
waited on the roof of a very small building in the direct sun for two days
without anything to eat and only a twenty-four ounce water bottle to drink.
When I got the order to trigger the device, I was so excited I dropped the
switch off the side of the roof and it shattered.”
“Did that make the boat explode?” I asked, curious about how all of that
worked.
“No, it didn’t. I had to find one of my guys and have him sniper the
mechanism on the boat. We made it work, but our commander was pissed.”
“Why? You still got the job done, right?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t the way he wanted it to go so the whole squad got
punished.”
“That seems really unfair,” I pointed out. He shrugged.
“The military, no matter what country you are in, isn’t exactly interested
in what’s fair.” He yawned and looked down at the clock on the dashboard.
“It’s getting late. Do you want to stop for some food?”
 I wasn’t exactly hungry, but eating would probably be a good idea. Lucy
whined from the back seat and I figured she would need a stretch and some
dinner too. I had a moment of thankfulness that she had already been in the
jeep when my car exploded and not in the house. A chill ran through me at
the thought of having to run back in the house to get her, and I shook it
away, not wanting to go anywhere near that possibility.
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”
A few minutes later he pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food
restaurant and parked as far away from the building as he could. He cut the
engine and we both got out. Right away, Lucy started barking and I opened
the door to take her out. Rurik came over to my side of the car.
“I’m going to walk her while you get the food,” I told him, unbuckling
her harness after securing the slip lead around Lucy’s neck. She wagged her
whole body and jumped out, sniffing the air.
Rurik shook his head.
“No. Where you go, I go. We are not splitting up. Someone just blew up
your car, which you should have driven home the other day. I’m not taking
any chances, Sunshine.”
A little thrill ran through me at the nickname and at how protective he
was being of me. Sure, he was paid to be protective, that was his job, but it
made me feel special, safe. Like he went the extra mile for me or
something. It was probably stupid. No, it was definitely stupid.
He was annoying. He was mean. He was rude. He was a complete and
utter jerk.
But he was also the strongest and most determined man I had ever met.
“Ok. Then we walk Lucy before we go in and get food,” I agreed. His
return look was not quite a smile, but it was close.
 We walked around the parking lot giving Lucy a stretch. She would
periodically snarl at Rurik and I would tell her not to. We gave her food and
water from a water bottle I had in my gym bag with all her toys. I was
suddenly very grateful I had thought about that beforehand.
When I figured she was good for a little while, we buckled her back up in
the car, gave her one of her toys and locked her in with the windows in the
back cracked just a little bit. It was about 65 degrees out and cooling down
so I wasn’t terribly worried about her overheating.
Rurik and I walked into the McDonald’s and ordered our food, which we
ate at a table in the corner. He insisted we sit on the same side, me on the
inside, so he could protect me if anyone came at us while we were eating.
His eyes were constantly scanning the crowd and I wondered if it would
have been better if we had decided to eat outside.
“So,” he said through bites of his burger. “What is it with the car?”
I picked up a french fry, dipped it in the ketchup and moved it around a
little bit, painting the chicken sandwich wrapper with it. I did tell him I
would talk about it when we were not in the car and we were certainly not
in the car.
“When I was little, I made friends with the girl who lived down the street
from me. Her name was Olivia. We were inseparable. From kindergarten
on, whatever she did, I did and vice versa. In fact, one year, I think it was
sixth grade, her mother tried to make her go to Catholic school, but she just
kept skipping until she agreed to send her back to public school with me.” I
took a sip of my drink and waited a moment. Whenever I thought about her
I got a keen sense of longing that pulled at my gut. Like there was an empty
hole in me that would never be filled.
 “When we were in high school we took drivers ed together and we made
it a challenge to see which one of us would get it first. She turned sixteen
first, just two weeks before me, so it really depended on if she could pass
the test the first time or not. Unluckily for both of us, she did pass and got
her license before I could get mine.” I looked down at the rest of my food
and, no longer wanting it, pushed it away from me so I could lean on the
table. “She wanted to bring me out to celebrate our birthdays together. We
always went to Claire’s and bought the newest, cutest friendship bracelets
or necklaces and we would replace the ones we had bought the year before.
So we went to Claire’s and she picked out these bracelets with multicolored
round glass beads and on it was a crow charm and a silver circle. On one it
said best, on the other it said friends.”
I remembered looking at them in the store and thinking they were
beautiful, but didn’t know if Olivia thought so. She was very colorful, into
yellows, pinks, and purples while I preferred blues, greens and browns.
They were definitely more my speed and didn’t even remotely resemble the
unicorn necklaces we got the previous year or the kitten anklets the year
before that, which was why I didn’t mention them, but when she saw them,
she said they were made for us. They were colorful and dark all at the same
time and crows happened to be her new favorite animal because they were
smart, collected shiny things just like her, and they bonded with people so
much that they could even learn to talk.
I had been so happy that once we bought them I put mine on in the store.
“Well, on the way home, Olivia was driving and a tractor trailer lost
control on the highway. It drove over the median and collided with Olivia’s
side of the car.” My breath hitched and I tried my best not to cry as the
scene played out in my mind. “I think I hit my head on the window because
everything after that was blurry for a while. I remember her hair flying and
thinking how she was going to lose the sunglasses that had been on the top
of her head. I remember the webbing pattern of the broken windshield. I
remember breathing gritty gray smoke that came out of the dashboard. I
remember the car flipping.”
I hesitated and looked at my hands. I had folded them on top of the table
and they were shaking. I tried stretching them out, thinking if I could
release some of the adrenaline the memory caused it would be better, but it
didn’t work. When I folded them again, they kept on shaking.
I felt Rurik’s arm press against my shoulder and somehow that steadied
me a little bit. He was here and I wasn’t alone. Even if he was an asshole,
he was letting me tell him the story without interruption, without trying to
get me to tell him faster and without mocking words. He just sat there with
me, letting me get everything out.
“I came to, sitting in the passenger seat with my hair wrapped around my
face. My head and my chest hurt, but I was able to raise my arm to move
my hair out of the way. My hand came back bloody and I started to freak
out, but then I looked over at Olivia.” I swallowed hard and closed my eyes.
Suddenly there was a strong hand on my knee, squeezing. He was centering
me and giving me comfort, something that I had never seen coming from
the big guy. Slowly I reached down and put my hand on his. My hand was
considerably smaller and I could barely curl my fingers around his splayed
hand, but it felt good to touch him.
“She was staring at me, bleeding from her eyes and her mouth. Her
forehead was cut from where it had hit the steering wheel. I only knew that
because she was slumped forward so her head was propped up by it. I didn’t
know if that was what killed her, because upon impact it snapped her neck,
or if it was the tree branch embedded in the back of her head. She had died
before either of us really knew what happened.”
“I am sorry that happened to you,” he said. “To both of you.”
I nodded, unable to speak for a moment.
“I’ve had plenty of friends die on me, but I’ve never seen one die. It must
have been hard to move on,” he continued. I think he was trying to engage
me in conversation to get me out of that bad place my brain had gone to,
which I appreciated.
“It’s still hard. I try to live every day like it’s going to be my last and on
my last day, why would I want to be miserable. So that was why I bought
my house so young; I didn’t want to have to worry about needing a place to
live. And I got my job at the bookstore simply because I love books and
love helping people discover new books. It doesn’t pay a lot, but I can
honestly say I love my job.” I told him. “I feel like I have to live for both of
us, because I got to live and she didn’t.”
I turned to look at him and he looked back at me, taking his hand off my
knee.
“I don’t like the passenger seat because it reminds me of waking up and
seeing her face. I can drive and I can ride in the back seat, but the passenger
seat is too much. I had kept the bracelet in the car to give me good luck
because I was convinced she was my guardian angel for a time. I have
never been in another car accident and I’m sure she’s half the reason why.
And I got a tattoo to honor her and so I remember to live for both of us
every day.”
He nodded and gave me a sad smile.
“Thank you for sharing all that with me,” he said and I smiled a sad smile
back.
 “You’re welcome.”
“Come on, why don’t we start driving again and see where we can spend
the night. Finding a place with a dog along is going to be difficult.” He
pointed out.
I nodded and thought about that for a moment as we walked out of the
restaurant and to the car. It wasn’t fair to Lucy that we were going to have
to stay in hotels for the foreseeable future. Even if for some reason
everything blew over today and I didn’t have to worry about getting
murdered anymore, I still couldn’t go home. We hadn’t stuck around long
enough to see if the place was completely ruined, but I knew that the living
room was, which meant I would have to renovate before I was able to live
there. It wasn’t like it was the bedroom where I could lock the door and
sleep in the living room until it got fixed. No, it had to be the center of my
house, of all places.
Making Lucy trek around all of creation with me wasn’t fair to her. Not
when I didn’t know where my next paycheck was going to come from.
Hell, at this point I didn’t even know if I could afford to keep her.
Sorrow danced in the pit of my stomach and I shoved it down. I couldn’t
think about that yet. What I needed to concentrate on was the here and now.
Control what was in my power to control and ignore the things I couldn’t.
For the time being.
Eventually, everything would be ok. And if I kept telling myself that, it
might actually come true.
When we got back in the car, I forced myself to get into the passenger
seat. I had been there before and nothing bad had happened while Rurik
drove, I could do it again. I buckled and before we started rolling I cleared
my throat.
“Do you mind if we make a stop somewhere?” I asked.
Chapter Nine
Rurik

“I
don’t like this,” I grumbled as we headed back in the direction we
had come. I had wanted to get as far away from the city as possible
to avoid being seen by the Irish, but here we were, driving towards it. It also
didn’t help that Winnie didn’t tell me why we were heading the way we
were heading. All she had said was ‘I need to stop at a friend’s house,’ then
started staring out the window.
I wanted to argue with her, but I doubted it would do any good. Besides,
if seeing a friend was her goal and made it easier for her to come with me,
and listen, then I could spare some time. It wasn’t like we had to be
anywhere at any particular time.
I made a mental note to try calling Malcolm again when we stopped. I
had tried calling him once more before we left the parking lot, but still, no
answer. I had Winnie try her father and her uncle again and nothing.
What in the hell was going on? Why couldn’t we get ahold of anyone?
“Take a left here,” Winnie said, pointing at a side road that wound
downwards into the forest that had been to our left for a few miles now. We
were just outside the city, but we weren't there yet.
 I took the left and eased the Jeep down the hill we had apparently been
driving on. The road itself was dirt and there were lots of potholes and
rocks that stuck halfway out of the ground. I was happy I had rented the
Jeep instead of the sleek little Lexus I had thought about getting based
solely on the fact that the Lexus was just more fun to drive.
“Once you see the big tree with the blue X on it, take a right down the
driveway and you’ll see the house,” she promised.
Again I followed her instructions and turned when I saw the blue X. I
didn’t know if it was marked just so visitors could see the driveway or if it
was because they were going to cut it down, but either way, it was helpful.
The driveway was practically invisible and was only tire tracks in the grass
that had grown over it.
As I drove down it, the car bounced back and forth, jostling the dog in
the back so hard that she had just decided to lay down to try to stay on the
seat. Winnie clung to the emergency handle above her door, her fingers
going red with how tight she was holding on.
“Where the hell are you taking us?” I demanded, my tone gruff and
snappy. I hadn’t meant it to come out sounding so mean, but it did and I
couldn’t take it back. She looked over at me for a moment, then looked out
of the windshield at our course.
“I told you, I want to go see a friend of mine. His name is Arlow and he
is my best friend," she explained. It didn’t tell me why we were heading
there, but at least I got a name this time. I had a vague remembrance of
Arlow from her social media posts, but I couldn’t remember anything about
him.
I suppose that would be a good thing because it wasn’t often I
remembered someone who wasn’t dangerous or a threat.
 “So be nice,” she added, raising an eyebrow at me.
Soon a white house came into view, stark and vibrant against all the
green of the forest surrounding it. There were a few chairs on the covered
porch, and the lights were on inside the house, making the windows glow in
the twilight. There was a small white truck in the driveway to the left of the
house and I drove up behind it, parking.
A male figure walked out of the house and stood on the steps. He had
light hair, I was guessing blond, and pale skin that nearly glowed in the
fading light. He wore a light pink polo shirt and a pair of longer jean shorts
with a belt that had a four-leaf clover for a belt buckle. He had sandals on
his feet and thick black framed glasses over his eyes.
“Is that your friend?” I asked cautiously. He looked a little like the guy in
the photos from what I remembered, but it was hard to tell.
“Yes, that’s Arlow,” she said, and got out of the car.
Normally I would have yelled at her for getting out of the car before I got
out, but we were in the middle of the woods in a location neither of us had
been expecting to go and the destination was so off the beaten path that we
would see anyone who tried to follow.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t scold her for it.
“Hey, Arlow!” I heard her call as I got out of the car and walked around
it to see Winnie running to the man on the porch. He set the mugs down on
the little table between the chairs and stood up so he could catch her when
she leapt into his arms. He held her closely and lifted her off her feet for a
moment before setting her back down, making her giggle.
A pang of jealousy spread through me that I wasn’t expecting. What if
this man wasn’t just a friend? Has she dated him before? I thought he
dressed a little too well to be straight, but maybe I was being judgmental.
Maybe I was completely wrong about their relationship.
I didn’t like this Arlow character at all.
I approached the house and took the porch steps two at a time until I was
standing just behind Winnie. I towered over Arlow almost as much as I
towered over Winnie. If she was five foot six, then he had to be about five
foot eight. He looked up at me with what I could now see were green eyes.
“Well, hello there,” he said and grinned at me. He let go of Winnie and
stepped forward with his hand out for me to shake. I just stared at his hand,
but he didn’t move it like most people would have. He just waited. “Winnie,
who is your tall, dark, and scrumptious friend here?”
Winnie giggled. It annoyed me that he could get her to giggle like that
without even trying.
“Arlow, this is Rurik. Rurik, this is the most amazing friend in the whole
world, Arlow,” Winnie introduced us. Arlow never moved his hand, he just
waited patiently.
“Nice to meet you, Rurik. That’s an interesting name. Where does it
come from?” he asked and I looked from him to his hand and then back at
him. Then I looked over at Winnie who gave me a shy smile. She wanted
me to shake his hand. She wanted me to be friends with her friend. I
clenched my jaw and she let her eyes get bigger, her eyebrows knitting
together and her mouth formed a pout.
She was actually giving me puppy dog eyes.
I scowled even harder, but then I gave in to her and shook the man’s
hand. At least he had a nice strong handshake. I hated it when people went
all limp wristed and didn’t actually shake.
 “It’s Russian,” I told him and let go of his hand. Arlow looked pleased
with himself and looked at Winnie with an excited look.
“Oh yeah? I love me a white Russian. Why don’t you two come on inside
and I’ll fix us something to drink?”
“No,” I said.
At the same time, Winnie said, “I’m sorry, we can’t stay.”
Arlow looked between us and then at the Jeep.
“Okay then. Not that I mean to sound rude, but why are you here? When
I heard the car I thought it was my mother who should be here soon, but I
was overjoyed to see you, Winnie. I haven't seen you in months and now
you have to leave? What gives?”
“I came because I need a favor,” she explained and pointed to the jeep.
“I’ve got Lucy with me and umm…”
She stopped speaking, tears forming in her eyes that she was fighting
back. I didn’t want her to cry again. She had been going through so much,
she shouldn’t have to relay everything again, not so soon.
“There was an accident that caused her car to blow up.” I told him and
Winnie shot me a thankful glance. “Unfortunately it was next to the house
and caught the house on fire as well.”
Arlow’s eyes went wide with shock.
“No fucking way,” he said, breathless. He put a hand over his gaping
mouth and looked at Winnie. “Oh sweetie, I’m so sorry. Is the house
salvageable?”
“I don’t know, it just happened a few hours ago. But until I get my home
situated, I was hoping you would be willing to take care of Lucy. I could
board her, but…”
 “No, don’t worry about that. She belongs with me if she can’t be with
you,” he told her and put an arm around her shoulders. The look they shared
was intimate and full of love and support of one another.
Yeah, I decided I liked him even less now.
“Thank you so much. I just… I have to travel for a little while and I
didn’t think it was fair to her to not have a steady schedule or a safe place to
run around like she did at home.”
“Wait… you have to travel?” He took a step back and lifted his eyebrows
at her. “Right when your house catches fire?”
“Yeah, well, we were kind of planning on leaving right before it
happened, which was how Lucy was in the Jeep when my car blew up.
Thank goodness because if I had lost her, I don’t know what I would have
done,” she admitted.
“So where are you going? Why are you going? Is this like a vacation
getaway or is this…” He looked from her to me and then back again. “Are
you going on a honeymoon?”
Winnie’s eyes went wide and she looked at me with a shocked expression
on her face. I had a feeling I had a similar one on my face because Arlow
exploded with laughter.
“Oh that’s priceless!” he snickered, trying to catch his breath.
“Shut up!” Winnie smacked him in the arm and he continued to laugh.
“We didn’t get married. It has something to do with my dad that I can’t tell
you about. Rurik is… he’s…”
She looked at me as if trying to figure out what I was to her. I waited,
curious myself. The easy answer would be ‘just a friend’. Or she could tell
him the truth and say I was her bodyguard. She could tell him I worked for
her uncle. She could tell him I was a tour guide or something. All of those I
would have expected, understood and gone with. Instead, she told him
something I hadn’t expected at all.
“He’s important to me,” she said softly.
Arlow said something back to her, but her sentence had broken my
hearing, because I didn’t hear a word of it. I am important to her? I mean, I
was important to her safety, sure, but the way she said it, made it sound like
more. Like maybe she was thinking things about me that I was trying very
hard not to think about her. I couldn’t see how she might find me important
to her. I had been mean to her when I should have been understanding. I
yelled at her, griped at her, and ignored her for most of our relationship so
far. How did that make me important to her?
“Right, Rurik?” she was asking me, but I hadn’t heard what she was
saying. I shook my head and blinked a few times, trying to come out of my
thoughts.
“What?” I asked gruffly.
“We have to get going. We have to find a place to sleep tonight,” she
repeated.
“Oh … yeah,” I agreed, but without any conviction. I was still a little in
my own head. Arlow grinned knowingly.
“You know, you could all just stay here for the night, I don’t mind,” he
offered and winked at me. I didn’t know how to respond to that, but luckily,
Winnie did.
“I really appreciate that hun, but it would be safest for you if we went to
a hotel. My car blowing up had something to do with whatever is going on
with my dad right now and there are people following me. I don’t want to
bring them to your doorstep,” she explained. Arlow waved his hand in the
air and sighed.
 “I don’t care about that, love. If you need a place to sleep, my bed, my
couch, my futon… wherever you want to sleep, it’s all yours.”
“That is very kind of you, but Winnie is right. We need to keep moving,”
I agreed and nodded at her. “I will go get the dog.”
I turned and walked off the porch. I heard Arlow say something about me
not calling the dog by its name, but I didn’t hear the whole statement.
Mostly I was still trying to figure out what I was important to her meant. I
liked that I was important to her. I liked that she turned down staying with
Arlow and not just because it was like she was choosing me over him, but
because she had done it for a very realistic reason. To protect Arlow. I liked
that she thought of that and I felt a sense of pride knowing that she had
made that decision on her own. Maybe she was paying attention and
learning from me. I certainly hoped so.
I opened the back seat and Lucy snarled at me, her ears back, her teeth
bared. She licked her jaws and snapped at me when I reached forward and
tried to undo the seatbelt. I jerked my hand out of the way in time so as not
to get bit, but I didn’t manage to unbuckle her.
I stared at her, unmoving, hardly even breathing and asserted my
dominance. I had had a part of my army training that dealt with vicious
animals. My instructor had told me that if you want to deal with an
aggressive animal, stare them down and assert your dominance. If they are
truly just aggressive, they will back down. If they don’t back down it is
either because you are not assertive enough, or it’s because they have
something seriously wrong with them, like rabies.
So I stared her down as she growled at me. I stared and stayed as still as
possible, hardly even breathing until finally she relaxed and stopped
growling. I stared at her until she was laying down on the seat, her ears
back and her tiny stub of a tail wagging slightly in submission.
“Good girl,” I told her and reached for her head to scratch behind her ear.
She licked her lips, but there was no more growling and no more snapping.
I slipped the leash over her head and unbuckled the harness, shifting it so
she could step out as she hopped out of the jeep.
When I walked over to the porch with Lucy by my side, Winnie looked
amazed and shocked all at the same time.
“Wow! I thought for sure I was going to have to go get her for you. How
did you get her to calm down?” she asked. I shrugged.
“We came to an understanding,” I replied, leading Lucy up the stairs and
handing the leash to Arlow, who took it then crouched down to greet the
dog. She licked his face and wagged her tiny tail furiously. Arlow laughed
and petted her on the head.
“That’s fantastic.” Winnie beamed and pet Lucy’s back. She crouched
down too and Lucy moved to lick the side of her face. “I’m sorry sweetie,
but I’m going to have to leave you here with Uncle Arlow for a little while.
I’ve got to go away and find us a new home, but I promise, I’ll be back for
you.”
I could hear the hitch in her throat as she said the last part and I felt for
her. It wasn’t that I felt sorry, but I felt pain for her. Lucy was the last part
of her life that she had and she was saying goodbye to her. I wished we
could keep her with us if only to make Winnie happy, but she was right.
Lucy would be happier here with Arlow and it would be easier for us on the
move without her.
I moved closer to Winnie and placed a hand on her shoulder, which she
immediately touched with her own hand. She wrapped her hand around my
first three fingers, which was easier for her smaller hands than trying to
hold the entirety of my hand, and sniffed, holding back the tears I knew
were there.
“Come on. Let’s get moving,” I said softly and looked up at Arlow. He
was smiling at me with a knowing grin and looked at Winnie’s hand over
mine.
“Be safe.” Arlow said and I had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the car
trip.
“We will be.” Winnie replied, not seeing the hidden message. When
Arlow smirked at me, I knew he wasn’t talking about the car trip. I rolled
my eyes at him and he cracked up laughing. Winnie looked up at us.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I told her and pulled her to her feet. Lucy sat next to Arlow
and watched us, panting.
We walked off the porch and Winnie waved, saying goodbye to Lucy and
Arlow who watched us approach the car. When I opened the passenger seat
and got in, Winnie looked at me confused. I nodded at the driver's side.
“I think it’s your turn to drive.” I told her. “I’m tired and want to relax.”
The grin she gave me was better than any gift I had ever gotten in my
life.
She backed up out of the driveway and put the window down so she
could wave some more, then she turned around by the tree and headed back
up the dirt road. The sky was pretty dark at this point and the headlights
illuminated the trees, glinting off of random metal in the woods or animal
eyes as they watched us pass. We jostled to and fro, but it didn’t seem like
such a bad thing now. We were heading back to civilization and back to the
unknown future.
 I looked over at Winnie who was silently crying, the tears running down
her cheeks and onto her shirt. I reached over and gently cupped her face so I
could brush them away with my thumb.
“She’ll be ok,” I promised.
Unfortunately, that seemed to only make her cry harder.
Chapter Ten
Winnie

R
urik might have been joking about being tired to give me an excuse
to drive, but it was possibly the sweetest thing anyone had ever done
for me. He put aside his own control issues to give my head a sense of
peace when it was in the middle of having a mental breakdown.
Lucy had never been away from me for more than a few days. I think the
longest was last year when I had to get my tonsils taken out. Arlow had
taken her for three days and it was the longest three days of my life at that
time for more than one reason.
This time I didn’t know how long Arlow would have to watch her. When
Rurik went to get Lucy from the car, Arlow and I had talked about that and
he assured me that Lucy could stay for as long as she needed to stay. He
hated the thought of her being anywhere else just as much as I did. We had
gotten Lucy together after all. We had meant to share her equally, but I had
fallen too in love with her and Arlow had stepped aside, happy to babysit
for me whenever I needed him to.
I drove through the city, the lights and noise flooding my brain, giving
me a headache. I had cried too much today and lost more than I could afford
to. Right now all I wanted was to go to sleep, but I didn’t even own a bed.
I looked over at Rurik through the corner of my eye and he was looking
at the city through the passenger side window. He had tried to wipe the tears
away from my cheek and it had only made things worse. He was being so
sweet for such an asshole. When had he turned soft on me? Was it because I
was slowly losing everything I loved about my life and he felt sorry for me?
Or was he not as much of an asshole as I thought he was?
I had too many questions about him and my headache wasn’t allowing
me to come up with any answers. I certainly couldn’t ask him about it
because he would just deny all of it. Or simply not answer me.
“We should find a place to stop for the night.” He said, leaning against
the window. I nodded and began looking for hotel or motel signs.
I wanted to make sure we were out of the city first so I drove for another
half an hour until I saw a sign for a Motel 8 along the highway. I headed in
that direction and pulled into the parking lot about five minutes later. Tired,
we both got out of the car and walked into the office to book a room for the
night, then we got back in the car and headed for the right building.
We each grabbed our bags from the trunk and headed inside, Rurik first
as usual. He had me stand in the doorway as he did a sweep of the room to
make sure there was only one exit and that no one was in the room already.
Once he deemed it safe, I locked the door behind me and threw my suitcase
on the chair in the corner of the room.
There wasn’t much for furniture, not that we needed much. There was a
microwave and a mini fridge, a dresser with a tv on top of it on one wall
and on the other wall was the queen-sized bed.
Just one bed.
 Rurik sat on it and took off his boots, tossing them to the wall that
divided the bedroom from the bathroom. They landed with a soft thunk.
I stood there, unsure of what to do. Were we going to sleep in the same
bed together? Should I go get another room? Rurik had argued against it at
first because he wanted to make sure I was safe. He didn’t want there to be
any chance that someone could get at me without his knowing it, but this
felt awkward and intimate.
Was it intimate? Or were we two people traveling who wanted to save
money? If we were two girls this wouldn’t feel intimate. It would feel like
fun, a sleepover.
Was I just thinking too much again?
My headache throbbed and I rubbed my forehead.
“What’s wrong?” he asked and I looked up at him. Should I tell him
about my worries about our sleeping situation? Should I tell him that the
idea of sleeping in the same bed as him made things inside me shift
weirdly? Should I ask him how he was feeling about it?
“I… have a headache,” I told him, chickening out of all the other options.
He looked at me with concern and patted the bed beside him.
“Come sit down,” he said.
I took him up on it and sat next to him, wondering where this was going.
I hadn’t expected him to put his large hands on my shoulders and start to
knead the muscles. His thumbs dug into my back and I winced, but it felt
good at the same time.
His thumbs circled and his fingers grabbed at the space just above my
collar bone and it hurt, but it released the tension that had been building all
day. My head began to clear and it felt so good.
 A moan escaped my lips and he stopped moving. I froze too, my heart
pounding.
“Sorry,” I squeaked. “I just… You made my headache go away.”
“It’s alright,” he said in a low voice.
His fingers began moving again, digging in less deeply this time and
being more gentle than he had been before. Then his fingers moved up to
the back of my neck. His fingers became fists and he rolled them on either
side of my neck, releasing the tension there as well. This time I made sure I
didn’t moan but I wanted to. The taut muscles unraveled and became loose
again by the magic of his touch.
“Thank you,” I said in a voice that sounded breathy even to me. “I
really… It felt really good. Thank you.”
There was a long pause.
“You’re welcome,” he said and let go of me. I slumped a little, wishing I
had his hands on me again.
I hesitated, but had to ask.
“Do you want me to return the favor?”
“No,” he said and stood up abruptly and headed for the bathroom door.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
I watched him disappear into the bathroom and close the door. A moment
later the shower started running and I sat on the bed in silence. It seemed
like every time we had a good moment, something ruined it. Was it wrong
of me to ask? Should I have just accepted his help and moved on? What had
I done wrong? Was I just being oversensitive?
There my brain went with all the craziness again.
I sighed and flopped back on the bed. At least it was comfortable and
warm.
 I realized very suddenly that with my headache pretty much gone, I was
very tired. I reluctantly got up and went to my suitcase and rummaged
through it to find a suitable pair of pajamas to wear to bed. Luckily I found
a pair of sleep pants and a tank top with a shelf bra, which I slipped into
quickly, listening closely to the sounds of the shower in the bathroom.
When I was changed and had my suitcase zipped up again I crawled into
bed along the edge on my side, my head on the pillow. I waited for the
shower to end, but it seemed to be going on forever. Maybe he just took
long showers. I couldn’t blame him, my showers were always about a half
an hour to an hour long, but then again I had long hair to wash. Maybe he
was washing his beard.
And then my lovely brain fed me images of a naked Rurik washing
himself in the shower. He would have soap all in his beard and all over his
body and he would be rubbing himself with a complimentary loofa. He
would be rubbing his bare chest, his muscular arms, his toned abs. Then he
would have to wash lower, trailing his hand down to his penis which would
be erect because the water felt so good.
He would take himself into his hands and start jerking, placing one hand
on the shower wall and putting his head back in ecstasy as he pleasured
himself, stroking harder and harder until he was ready to cum all over the
shower wall. He would squeeze harder and finally, when he was about to
find his release, he would whisper my name.
“Winnie?”
I startled awake at the sound of Rurik actually saying my name. He was
standing at the foot of the bed with a towel wrapped around his waist and
nothing else. Water glistened on his bare chest and I could see all his tattoos
marking his skin in black, white and red. He looked concerned, his
eyebrows lowered and his lips pressed into a thin line.
“Yes?” I gasped, very much aware of the fact that my panties were
soaked. I had been fantasizing about him jerking off in the shower and I had
fallen asleep to it. I could feel the heat rush to my face as I squirmed
beneath his gaze.
“Are you alright? You were moaning in your sleep,” he said and I
nodded, hoping he couldn’t tell I was blushing.
“Yeah… just… day catching up to me I guess.” I answered. He seemed to
buy it because he turned towards the bathroom again and disappeared
through the open door.
I flopped back down on the bed and let out a heavy sigh. When had I
become attracted to my bodyguard? Where the hell did that come from? I
knew I found him appealing. I liked the muscles and the height difference
and the way he carried himself, but I never thought I would be thinking of
him in that way. Was it because he was being nicer to me? Or did I actually
have a thing for him?
No, I couldn’t. He was an ass and he was being paid to keep me alive.
That was the only reason why he was with me, not because we were such
good friends. I was getting my signals crossed. I was a job to him. Not a
friend, not a date, not a lover. Definitely not a lover.
I waited until I heard him come out and I rolled onto my side again, this
time facing his side. Slowly, he got into bed next to me, though he lay on
his back, his hand folded over his chest. He closed his eyes and I watched
him visibly relax.
“Thank you so much for everything, Rurik. I don’t think I can express to
you how much I appreciate you being here with me,” I whispered, not
wanting to disturb him, but needing to tell him.
“It’s fine,” he answered gruffly. His sentence was curt and back to the
mean tone he had had when I first met him. I frowned.
“Rurik?”
“Go to sleep,” he barked and turned onto his side, facing away from me.
I lay there for a long time staring at his back wondering why his quick
dismissal hurt so badly. It wasn’t like he had to be nice to me. But I thought
we were getting to a better place in our relationship, working or otherwise. I
thought we were becoming friends. Maybe I was wrong.
Carefully, I turned over and faced the other direction, turning my back on
him.
I closed my eyes and drifted off into a dream that had me waking with a
start in the morning feeling like I was suffocating. My eyes flew open and I
took a deep breath that smelled like Irish spring soap.
My face was buried in Rurik’s neck, my right arm beneath me and curled
up like a chicken wing. His right arm was draped over my waist, pinning
me down and his left hand was beneath my shirt, his hand cupping my
breast. My left leg was slung over his thigh and my left hand was shoved
down the front of his pants, grasping the extremely hard length of him. The
head of his cock was so close to my pussy that if he wasn’t wearing boxer
briefs and I wasn’t wearing sleep pants, we might actually be having sleep
sex.
My clit throbbed and I had to stay perfectly still so I didn’t start rubbing
his cock against it, though I had a feeling I had been doing something very
similar in my sleep. I would feel bad and accuse myself of sleep
molestation, but he had a very nice grip on my right tit that said I wasn’t
alone in this.
 His cock throbbed in my hand and instinctively I squeezed. A small
goran came from his throat and he thrust his hips forward, causing his cock
to bump against my clit. I nearly shot off the bed in surprise and overload of
good feelings. I needed to get rid of this ache inside me and if he wasn’t
going to help with that, I needed some time alone in the bathtub or
something. But that would involve figuring out this situation first.
His eyes fluttered open and his breathing changed, letting me know he
was awake. It took him a few moments to assess the situation like it had
taken me and then we locked eyes. He swallowed hard and his heart
pounded in his chest. I was sure my own was giving him a run for his
money.
“Good morning,” I said cheerily. When in doubt, go for humor. “Guess
it’s time to get up?”
“Your hand… is on my dick,” he started and I nodded.
“Your hand is on my boob,” I pointed out. His fingers twitched, which
made my nipple harden against the palm of his hand, the traitorous little
bitch. In response I let my fingers tighten on his cock and it jerked in my
hand. He sucked in a breath and went completely still, except for his
labored breathing.
“I need you to move,” he told me then realized what his sentence could
imply and tried again. “I need you to move your hand off of me.”
“Why don’t you pull away?” I countered and he turned his gaze to look
me straight in the eyes.
“Because I don’t want to. If your hand tightens again I may just forget
that I’m trying to be a gentleman and not fuck you into the mattress. But if
you let go, if you back away, it’s on you and I have to respect your wishes,”
he explained and I thought very carefully about what he was saying.
 He didn’t want to let go. I had to in order to keep it from happening.
But I wanted it to happen. I wanted to feel him roll me over and take off
my clothes and ravish me. I wanted to feel him fill me and I wanted his
hands all over me. I wanted his mouth, his teeth, his tongue. I wanted him.
Apparently my sleeping self knew that better than my awake self. Way to
go Winnifred.
Slowly, almost painfully slow, I pulled my hand off of him and out of his
boxers. Then I shifted my hips so I could roll over onto my side of the bed
and lay outstretched breathing heavily. It had taken all of my strength not to
squeeze him again. He was huge and I wanted to see it. I wanted to know
what it felt like inside me. Inside my mouth, inside my pussy. I wanted it so
bad it hurt.
But it wasn’t a good idea and there was no guarantee he wouldn’t just
return to being an ass after a one-night stand. I didn’t want to deal with that
fallout for the rest of the foreseeable future. If we started having sex things
would get complicated and messy and my life was already complicated and
messy without that on top of it.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed, looking at the ceiling. “I woke up a minute before
like that. I think our sleeping selves got bored in the middle of the night.”
He ignored my joke and got up, once again heading to the bathroom.
I lay there for a moment trying to recollect myself. Since when was I
attracted to the moose? Seriously, did part of my brain blow up when my
car did? Because I felt like I had brain damage or something.
Trying not to sulk or dwell on what had just happened, I got up and
picked out my clothes for the day. I had packed very simple, a lot of t-shirts
to go with the jeans, but I loved my chibi Lord of the Rings t-shirt, which I
pulled from the pile. I took off my pajamas, folded them to put them back in
the suitcase, then pulled on my jeans. I stopped cold as the door to the
bathroom opened. I was standing in the middle of the room wearing jeans
and nothing else. My bra lay discarded on top of the chair and my shirt was
next to it.
I turned my back to the door and went to grab my bra.
“Is that… a crow?” he asked carefully and I looked at him over my
shoulder. He was staring at my back. I nodded.
He was referring to the back piece I had done in honor of Olivia. It was a
crow with iridescent wings and a watercolor background. It combined the
colors she loved, the black crow wings I loved and the fact that it was on
my back, represented that all of that was behind me. As much as I wanted
her here with me, what was done was done and nothing I said or did would
bring her back. She was gone, but I was still here.
“Yes.”
“It’s beautiful,” he said with a breathy voice. He came closer and put out
his fingers, gently stroking the lines of the wings. “It looks so real. Like the
feathers are coming off of your skin.”
I didn’t answer, I just stood there, enjoying his touch. He came closer and
I could feel the heat radiating from his body against my back. He was so
close and yet I couldn’t touch him. Not again, not like that.
“It suits you.” He told me and ran a hand through my hair. “You are so
gorgeous.”
The compliment was a shock to me, but so was the gentle touch of his
fingers against my side as they left my hair and trailed down the length of
my body. I shivered slightly at his touch and I wanted more.
I turned to him and looked up into his face. His eyes locked on mine as if
afraid to look anywhere else.
 “Thank you,” I told him. “That’s very kind of you to say.”
“It’s not,” he argued. “It's a fact.”
My heart swelled and I would have taken his hand and put it on my
breast, but he backed away again.
“We should get dressed and move. I want to call Malcolm again and I
need you to see if you can get ahold of your dad or your uncle. Someone
must know something. They couldn’t have just disappeared. I’m starting to
get worried.”
I stood there in the middle of the room and watched him put his boots on.
He had gotten fully dressed in the bathroom, probably to put a barrier
between us. We needed them now because the pull I felt for him was strong
and it seemed the one he felt for me was just as tough to fight. We had
somehow gone from strangers to enemies, to almost lovers in a very short
span of time.
I wonder if this was what people talked about when they mentioned
chemistry.
“Ok, sounds good,” I said in a flat tone of voice and finished getting
ready. He was right, we needed to get moving, but I was wet and wanting
with no release in sight. I wanted him to take care of it, but that wasn’t
going to happen. Not yet.
I did have a sneaking suspicion that if the first night sleeping in the same
bed ended up like this, we weren't going to be able to avoid having sex for
long.
Chapter Eleven
Rurik

W
e packed up and checked out of the motel and I called Malcolm
again while Winnie tried her family. No answer yet again. I was
getting sick and tired of no one answering, especially when answering was
what Malcolm was for. If this had been a military assignment, Malcolm’s
ass would be so far in the fire right now, you might as well call him a
marshmallow.
But we weren't and the only one who held Malcolm accountable for
anything was Malcom. Maybe Estrada, but I didn’t think so.
I looked at Winnie who sat in the passenger seat wearing jeans and a very
low cut see through top. The sheer fabric was a light blue and I was lucky
she had a white tank top underneath because I couldn’t imagine being stuck
with her all day with that on if there wasn’t anything beneath it.
I would lose all control. She had me on edge to begin with.
Going to bed with her in the same bed was bad enough. I kept listening to
her breathing, stealing glances over my shoulder as soon as I thought she
was asleep. I hadn’t been able to fall asleep myself until I turned over onto
my opposite side to face her and watch her sleep. She was so beautiful, so
exquisitely sweet that I felt guilty for watching her.
Then I woke up to her hand squeezing my cock and my hand on her
breast.
I nearly took her right then, just slid down her pajama bottoms, spread
her legs and plunged so deep into her that she let out that special grunting
noise women utter when their partner hits the top of them. I loved hearing
that noise and I wanted Winnie to make it. I wanted to fuck her so hard she
couldn’t walk for days.
Possibly needing my tongue to lick her sore inner muscles better.
But I didn’t.
It took all of my strength to walk away from her and into the bathroom
where I jerked off to take the edge off. I came so quickly I had flashbacks of
being a teenager, jerking off to a dirty magazine one of the other boys I
hung out with found in his father’s closet. Somehow this woman had gone
from being a royal pain in my ass, pissing me off every five seconds to
being the woman I was thinking about every time I touched myself. What
the hell was wrong with me?
I only let myself have the one moment while her back was turned and I
was looking at her tattoo. I let myself think of her as mine for a split second
when I reached out and ran my hand through her hair and touched the skin
of her side. Just that once was all I needed, all I could have.
She was too sweet, too nice and too perfect to let someone like me
destroy her because there was no doubt in my mind that I would. I had
never made love in my life. Love was not something I was familiar with,
nor could I be capable of it. I had sex, a lot of it and I liked it hard and fast.
 Winnie deserved sweetness and tenderness. She deserves someone who
could love her beyond measure.
I could not be that person.
Which was why I found myself pulling away from her again as we drove
south, away from the city and away from the Irish. Technically we could
have stayed in the motel room another night, but I didn’t want to stay in one
place too long. We were easily tracked that way. It was bad enough we had
our cell phones. I should have had her throw hers away but we needed her
to try to contact her family and there was a chance that if she changed her
number they wouldn’t answer because they didn’t recognize it. Which was
also why I wasn’t having her call them from mine.
She looked over at me and shook her head.
“Still no luck. I’m seriously worried now. Maybe we should go to my
uncle’s house? See what’s going on?” she suggested and I shook my head.
“If he isn’t answering and he is concerned about your safety, I have a
feeling that something is going on where he is. We need to stay clear to
keep you safe,” I said, coming to a stop at a red light. The car that was
turning to our left honked at something and I looked around the car to make
sure whatever it was had nothing to do with us. “I’m not risking your life
just to see what is wrong.”
“It feels… horrible, thinking of my life above theirs,” she admitted,
looking down at her hands clasped in her lap.
“I assure you, they don’t see it that way. They are grown men who can
take care of themselves.”
“And you don’t think I can take care of myself?” she countered, facing
me. The green light changed and we continued down the road. I turned my
head to glance at her and raised an eyebrow.
 She turned back to look out the windshield.
I decided that we needed to go shopping while we waited for some news
about what to do next. The thought of needing a gun had resurfaced a few
times in my brain so that was definitely on my list. The knives I had packed
with me wouldn’t be enough to fight the Irish. They were famous for using
bombs, as we had already witnessed first hand, and automatic weapons. A
bullet-proof vest would be a good idea, one for each of us, and I needed to
get us some provisions. I was not above sleeping in the woods if we needed
to. It was only out of consideration for her comfort that I had us staying in
motels. She didn’t seem to me like the camping type.
We drove until I saw a sign for Walmart and pulled into the parking lot. It
was relatively busy and I thought about having Winnie stay in the car, but
figured that would be worse. At least if she came in with me, I could keep
an eye on her.
She didn’t even give me the choice to have her stay in the car because as
soon as we parked, she got out of the car. I held back my annoyance on that
as best I could because a few seconds didn’t make much of a difference in
the scheme of things, but she seemed to be forgetting that I was in charge.
She should have checked with me to see if I wanted her to come in with me.
However I was learning quickly that with Winnie, it was best to choose
my battles.
She pushed the cart as we walked around Walmart and we picked up food
supplies. Quick easy things that we could eat on the road and in hotel rooms
without refrigeration or stoves to cook them on. She picked out Pop Tarts,
crackers, a package of oatmeal creme pies and Cheez-Its. I eyed the
contents of the carriage and steered us immediately towards the produce
section where I put carrots, celery and a bundle of apples into the cart.
Winnie made a face.
“Celery? Ick, that is all you, big guy. I wouldn’t even touch that if there
was chocolate on it. Ewww… actually… especially if there was chocolate
on it. It would be an insult to chocolate.” She wrinkled up her nose at it and
I found that face particularly adorable. Not that I could act on that thought
either.
“Not all of us shop like a nine-year-old with an endless amount of cash.”
I picked up the box of zebra cakes she had snuck into the cart when I wasn’t
looking. “Seriously, how is any of this nutritious?”
“At least it doesn’t taste like something a rabbit pooped out,” she
countered and I raised an eyebrow.
“How exactly would you know what that tastes like?” I asked and she
rolled her eyes at me.
“It’s an expression. Duh,” she said and pushed the cart past me. I
snickered quietly, making sure she couldn’t hear me. I liked seeing her in a
good mood and bantering with me seemed to bring that out of her. I wasn’t
sure if it was just because she liked confrontation or if it was specifically
me she liked irritating, but I would take it regardless. Couldn’t do anything
about it anyway if it actually got on my nerves so I would be forced to
adapt anyway. Might as well embrace it.
The trip had seemed to lighten her mood and got her to stop thinking
about her family. She was smiling and almost her natural bubbly self again
as she picked out more boxes of junk food and headed to the book section. I
let her hear my annoyed sigh when she rounded the corner and her face lit
up, cover upon cover lining the aisle on both sides.
 “This is the largest book section in any Walmart I’ve seen recently!” she
exclaimed with excitement, reaching out to pick one of the books off the
shelf. She turned it over and began reading the back cover. “They’ve been
cutting them down, which is just about the saddest thing I’ve ever
experienced. Don’t get me wrong, ebook readers are amazing, but there is
something to be said about physically holding a book, flipping through the
pages and enjoying it to the fullest. Reading is a full-on experience, after
all.”
I opened my mouth to say something as she put the book down and let
out a squeal almost so high pitched it sounded like it should be a dog
whistle. I tensed, looking around the aisle for danger, but what I saw was a
woman walking down the other end of the aisle with a Doberman mix
beside her wearing a service dog vest. It had the coloring of the Doberman,
but the ears were longer and floppier and the tail was long and had long fur
waving on the end of it like a flag.
At the noise Winnie was making, both the dog and the woman walking it
looked up at her with quizzical looks. Seeing them, Winnie walked toward
her, leaving the carriage on the side of the aisle for me to either push
towards her or leave where it was. I decided to leave it and followed her.
“Hi, I’m Winnie, I’m sorry, but your dog is so beautiful!” Winnie smiled,
clasping her hands together in front of her like she was keeping herself from
petting the dog with all of her strength. She probably was. “I have a
Doberman myself. Her name is Lucy and she’s about four years old now.”
“Aww she sounds so lovely!” The woman said with a big smile on her
face, now realizing that Winnie wasn’t just some crazy person squealing at
her. No, she was a dog obsessed crazy person squealing at her which
seemed to be acceptable to her.
 I don’t think I will ever understand pet people.
“This is Champ.” The woman said, gesturing at her dog. “He’s in
training, but if you wait for him to sit, you can pet him.”
Winnie nodded and the woman held up a fist to the dog. Champ sat
automatically and watched the woman with wide chocolate brown eyes. His
mouth opened to show lines of pointy white teeth and a long pink tongue
that hung out of his mouth while he panted heavily.
Winnie reached down and began petting the dog, cooing to it as if it were
a baby she was greeting. I sighed, knowing there was no fighting this battle
either.
“Your wife really loves dogs, huh?” the woman said and I started a little.
No one had ever mistaken me for being married before.
I went to deny it, but instead what came out of my mouth was:
“Yes, we are traveling and unfortunately this time we can’t take Lucy
with us so we had to drop her off with a family friend. Winnie is
heartbroken.”
“At least she has you though!” she said and I nodded.
“Yes, there is that.”
After a few more moments where Winnie said goodbye to Champ and
then to Champ’s owner, we headed out of the book aisle and to the rest of
the store. Winnie was considerably less excited than she had been when she
had first walked into the book section and the more we walked around, the
gloomier she seemed to get. She didn’t talk, she didn’t smile and the only
time I got her to say anything was when I asked if she was hungry, to which
the only thing she said was no.
We checked out and brought the groceries to the Jeep, piled them in the
back seat and then we were on our way.
 We made three more stops, one to an ammunition shop where I got a
bullet proof vest for both of us, a CZ P-10 F Semi-Automatic 9mm pistol
with a holster I could attach to my belt or, if I preferred, my calf. I still
wasn’t a huge fan of guns, but I figured having one was better than not.
Then we headed to the bank so I could get more money out in cash. I
hated using cards because if for some reason the Irish thought to start
tracking me, they could easily follow the debit card number and I wanted to
avoid that at all costs. I used the drive through entrance so I didn’t even
have to get out of the car and Winnie didn’t argue. She just stared out the
window looking sad. I hated that look on her face. It was getting to be late
afternoon and we had done some traveling so I was planning on looking for
a place to stay for the night, but I decided to make one more stop.
I had seen the toy store sign from the highway and without thinking too
hard about it, I took the exit and headed for the building. Winnie hardly
noticed as we parked in the parking lot, her head clearly somewhere else. I
unbuckled and got out of the car before she even moved to unbuckle and I
shook my head.
“I’ll be right back,” I told her. She nodded, then went back to staring off
into space.
I ran inside and easily found what I wanted. It wasn’t as if I frequented
toy stores, but I knew it was bound to have a collection of stuffed animals.
When I was a kid I had stolen a teddy bear from a box that had been left
outside the back door of a place much like this one and I had carried that
bear around with me until it fell apart. I might have even stitched it up then
and continued to have it with me, but that was when I went into the army
and I was afraid I would have been picked on.
 I was right of course, but part of me still wished I had taken Medved with
me.
Medved means bear in Russian. I wasn’t a very imaginative kid.
I paid for the stuffed animal and headed back to the car quickly. I was
fairly certain we hadn’t been followed and she was safe waiting in the car,
but there had been that nagging thought in the back of my mind that I had
been wrong and the moment I started walking towards the Jeep it was going
to explode the way her little red car had in front of her house. The thought
was enough to have me running across the parking lot.
When I got into the car, Winnie was looking at me with a confused look
on her face. She pointed at the big sign above the building that said Jerry’s
Toy and Games.
“Umm… why did we have to go here?” she asked. I handed her the bag I
was holding and buckled my seat belt. She just looked at the white plastic
bag with the yellow smiley face on the side.
“It’s for you.” I grumbled, not wanting to appear too soft. “Open it.”
She did and inside was a stuffed animal Doberman with a plastic collar
on it. The cashier had lent me a black sharpie so I could write Lucy 2 on the
tag. Winnie fingered the little plastic disc and looked up at me with tears in
her eyes. I hoped they were happy tears. I didn’t want to make her cry, that
wasn’t the point of getting her the stuffed toy.
“This is…” She stopped and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand.
“This is so sweet. Thank you so much Rurik. I really do miss her.”
Instead of saying anything, I just nodded. I didn’t want her to see how
happy I was that she was happy. I didn’t want to tell her that I had never
gotten anyone a gift before so this was a big thing for me too. I just kept my
mouth shut and drove until we found a place to sleep for the night.
 Another motel, another room with just one bed. I got the keys and we
piled into the room in silence, Winnie carrying the stuffed dog like it was
the most important thing in the world to her. We shut and locked the door,
then Winnie sat on the bed and I sat in the chair in the corner of the room
next to the bed. She turned the tv on and we watched whatever was on. I
think it was a rerun of some sitcom from the ‘70s. No, it was based on the
‘70s in Wisconsin.
Whatever it was, I was hardly paying attention. My stomach kept flipping
on me and I couldn’t keep my heart from pounding. It had been pounding
since I gave her the toy and I didn’t know why. She got it. She liked it. She
was snuggling it to her right now, playing absentmindedly with the ear like
it was her personal fidget toy. I watched her watch the show, paying close
attention to every smile, every frown, every little detail about her that I
could see.
Was she what was making my heart race? Why did giving her the dog
make it worse?
When the episode ended and another was starting I got to my feet and
grabbed my bag.
“Shower.” I grumbled at her and headed into the bathroom. I placed my
bag on the toilet seat and unzipped it, pulling out my last pair of clean
underwear. We would either have to buy more clothing or go to a
laundromat soon unless we wanted to start running around naked.
Personally I wouldn’t mind, but I had a sneaking suspicion Winnie would
have a problem with that.
I brushed my teeth, zipped up the bag, put my clean boxers on the sink,
then threw the bag out of the bathroom door before shutting it again. I
urinated, then started the shower. I stripped and got in as soon as the water
warmed up a little. I could deal with the cold shower if I had to, but I didn’t
prefer them.
I began to think about Winnie and the last time we had woken up in the
same bed together. Would she grab my dick in her sleep like she had then?
Would my hand find her breast on its own? Would I have the strength to
back away again? To the last, I didn’t think so. Just the thought of her
touching my cock had it standing to attention. I liked her grip on me way
too much.
I wondered what it would be like to slide between her legs and stroke
myself inside of her. Would she be tight? Would I have to fight to get my
whole cock inside her? I was big and a little wider than normal, if my army
platoon was any comparison. Could she take me?
I pictured hiking her legs up to get a better angle as I pushed all the way
inside and she gasped at the sound. I grasped my dick in my hands and
began sliding my hand up and down as the water began washing away the
soap.
My daydream turned dirtier as I pictured flipping her over onto her
stomach so she could get up on her hands and knees. I pictured spreading
her ass cheeks open to reveal her tight little asshole and her pussy, both of
them just there for my viewing pleasure. I would lick my finger and slide it
into her ass and she would moan. Moan because she enjoyed it and moan
because she knew my cock would be next.
I wanted to fill all her holes.
I stroked my cock faster and in my daydream I was smacking her ass,
making a perfect red handprint on each cheek. She was pushing back
against me and I reached out to grab a handful of her gorgeous hair to wrap
around my wrist and pull her head back. In fact, I changed the image so that
I was wrapping her hair around her neck and using it to pull her head back,
choking her as I pounded into her. She could tell me when it was enough,
all she had to do was tap the bed three times quickly and I would release it,
but she wouldn’t. My little ray of sunshine loved to be choked.
The daydream vanished as there was a knock on the door and then it
opened. WInnie walked into the bathroom, I could see her silhouette
through the opaque shower curtain. I was glad it wasn’t one of the clear
ones because I had a monster of a hard on between my legs and it wasn’t
going to get any better until I came. I paused in my stroking, but I didn’t let
it go.
“Rurik…” she started and I slowly began pumping my cock again. It was
wrong. I shouldn’t be jerking myself off anywhere near her, let alone when
there was only a curtain between us, but I needed to keep going or it was
going to hurt. I was past the stopping point.
She had paused, and presumably waited for me to speak.
“Yes?” I managed though it was a lot more of a growl than I intended.
My voice tended to get deeper when I was turned on.
“I wanted to thank you for today,” she said, her voice almost nervous. “I
know I let the Lucy thing get to me. She has just been my best friend since I
got her and… I love her so much. It kills me to think that her home was
destroyed and I don’t know when or if I will ever get her back. So the
stuffed Lucy… it really meant a lot to me. It was very nice of you. You
know I think deep down you are a very sweet and gentle human being.”
I closed my eyes and squeezed my dick harder. I was not a nice guy. I
was not a soft guy. There was nothing gentle about me and the sooner she
learned that the better. She needed to know how much of a monster I was
because the nicer she was to me, the more I wanted to give in to the
daydream in my head. The more I wanted to take her and have her as my
own. I was developing a… fascination with her. Something I couldn’t quite
put my finger on, but I knew the second she told me she wanted me I would
devour her like the snake I was.
I needed her to put up boundaries and draw the line because I had none
anymore. I guess I needed to show her that.
Slowly, I shut off the shower and opened the curtain, my hand still
stroking my cock.
Winnie’s eyes went wide as she stared right at it, her mouth falling open a
little. I stroked it a couple more times as she watched and everything in me
tightened. I wanted to cum as she watched. I wanted to put her on her
knees, shove my cock down her throat and make her swallow every last
drop of my load. I wanted to bend her over the counter, ram my cock as far
up her pussy as it would go and cum inside her so I could mark her as mine.
Instead, I stepped out of the bathtub and moved towards her. She backed
up a step, but only one and I closed the distance between us easily. I put my
hands on her shoulders and shifted her so her back was pressed against the
bathroom wall. A look of curiosity flashed in her eyes along with a little bit
of excitement and a healthy dose of panic. She was having an inner battle,
trying to figure out which one was the right feeling. I completely
understood that dilemma, I was having one of those of my own.
I towered over her and brought my wet, dripping face to her neck.
“I am not a nice person,” I declared and nipped her neck with my teeth. It
was a lite bite, but I made sure she could feel a little bit of a sting. She
sucked in a breath and my cock twitched between us. I pulled away a little
so I could press it against her stomach. She was too short for it to be nestled
where it wanted to be, but that worked to my advantage in this case. I didn’t
want to actually fuck her, that would be going too far.
I looked her in the eyes and something in me knotted up even tighter. She
was looking at me with excitement and need now rather than panic. Was my
plan backfiring? There was no way someone as bubbly and cheerful as her
could be as sick and twisted as I was. No way she could find joy in the
darkness.
“I am not sweet,” I told her and reached for her neck with my big hand. It
wrapped most of the way around her without even trying and when I
squeezed a little, her mouth came open a little so she could suck in a breath.
Her eyes were wide and her heart was hammering. I could feel it in the
pulse that knocked repeatedly against my fingers, but her hands stayed
where they were at her sides, palms placed on the wall. She didn’t try to
fight me, she didn’t try to break free. She stood there and took it, watching
me.
I leaned into her again and this time, I grazed my teeth along her lip. My
lips touched hers and suddenly I wanted more. I needed more.
I squeezed her throat a little harder until I could hear her breath coming
in raspy pants and I kissed her. I drove my tongue down her throat and
kissed her like I was trying to suck the soul right out of her. I wanted her so
badly my body ached, but I refused to give myself more than the kiss.
At first I thought I was forcing my kiss on her, but I quickly realized she
was kissing me back, pushing her own tongue into my mouth just as much
as I was invading hers. I wanted to see what else she would let me do, but I
was afraid to push my luck.
“And as you can see,” I told her, pressing my body to her again, gripping
her arms so tightly I would leave bruises. “I am not gentle. If you are
looking for these qualities in a man, Sunshine, you are sorely mistaken.”
I released my grip on her and pulled my body away from hers a little. My
cock still pointed straight at her like a dowsing rod looking for water, but it
wasn’t touching her anymore. I felt the loss of her right away and I wished I
could continue, but I wouldn’t. She needed to be afraid. She needed to be
cautious and she needed to set the boundaries I was too weak to set for us.
Of course that was all well and good in theory. The only problem with
that was that I was assuming she would set boundaries when she caught a
glimpse of my darker side. I wasn’t expecting her to drop to her knees and
take my cock into her hands.
I grunted, both in surprise and pleasure. She squeezed her hand around
my cock and began jerking me, her other hand cupping my balls and rolling
them in their sack. I looked down at her, possibly more shocked than I had
ever been in my life. I opened my mouth to protest, but she stopped jerking
and just squeezed. She squeezed my balls too and a flood of pain shot up
from my groin, but I liked it. I didn’t know if that was what she had
intended, but it was certainly what she had accomplished.
“My turn,” she said and released her grip, going back to stroking and
rolling. “I get that you think you are this big bad scary giant and part of that
may be true, but you also seem to see me as this perfect little flower with
unblemished petals. I’ve seen some shit in my life too, Rurik. Not as bad as
you, but I watched my best friend die. Before that, my mother was
kidnapped from the front yard by men in a truck that would have grabbed
me too if I wasn’t fast enough to run to the neighbor’s house. I have anger
and pain and I have needs and wants that I can’t explain. I am not someone
you have to worry about breaking. I can take what you dish out and who
knows, I might even enjoy some of it, but don’t try to intimidate me with
your darkness. It won’t work.”
When she was done speaking she put the head of my cock in her mouth
and I just about came right then and there. Her mouth was so warm and wet
and she slid it almost half way down before I hit the back of her throat. She
made a choking noise, but stayed there for a long moment, her throat
convulsing around me before she pulled herself off of me. She did that
about three or four times before I put my hands out to lean forward and
support myself on the wall. If I didn’t, I didn’t think I could stay on my feet
for much longer.
I watched her suck my dick, her head bobbing, and it may have been one
of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen.
“Keep that up and I’m going to cum down your throat.” I warned her.
“You can stop and I’ll finish in the shower.”
She squeezed my balls tightly and moved her lips so they were no longer
sheathing her teeth. She bit me gently and I let my head fall back with a
moan. Fuck, she was going to be the end of me, I could feel it.
She deep throated me a few more times and BAM! Fireworks went off in
my head and I came down her throat, thrusting forward hard and fast. I let
go of the wall and held her head in place. I tried my best not to hurt her, but
the feeling was so good and it had been a long time since anyone had given
me a blow job that I lost myself for a minute.
When I was spent, I let go of the back of her head and pulled my cock
out of her mouth. It was still hard, but the urgency was gone and I knew it
would calm down in a few minutes. She ran her hand over her mouth,
cleaning herself up and she looked up at me. I was worried I had hurt her,
worried that I had been too rough or had let go too much, but when our eyes
met all of that worry was gone, replaced by more want, more need.
She was smiling at me. Fucking smiling.
Chapter Twelve
Winnie

I
t had been a long time since I had given a blow job and I had been
worried that I was doing it wrong, but the moment he let go and
grabbed my head to use me to get off, I felt this thrill of confidence. He was
reacting like this because of me and what I was doing.
Sure he had been masturbating in the shower when I interrupted and
maybe I should have just left him alone, but part of me wanted to see him
naked again. He was gorgeous. Maybe his beard was a little long for my
taste, but he had like no fat on his body and his muscles rippled when he
moved like he was an animated sculpture. He was perfect and I had wanted
to thank him for the stuffed animal. It had really been a sweet thing for him
to do and I had wanted him to know I appreciated it.
I was happy to do something for him that he appreciated.
And it was a completely selfless act. I took no joy in it, it was all for him
and the release I had interrupted. Sure… because my panties were not
soaked and I hadn’t wanted to sneak my hand down the front of my jeans to
finger myself while I sucked him off. Right.
 He looked down at me with something close to wonderment in his eyes
and I smiled up at him. I had hardly tasted his cum, he had been so far down
my throat when he let go that it didn’t even hit my taste buds, which might
have been a good thing, but I had drooled all over him and myself. I wiped
it off with my hand and got to my feet. As much as I loved staring up at his
still hard cock, I didn’t want to seem like I was begging him or something. I
had simply returned the favor, nothing more. I had also wanted to prove a
point to him, that I wasn’t just some perfect little girl he had to protect all
the time. There was much more to me than that.
All he had to do was open his eyes and see it.
“Finish your shower, I’m going to turn in for the night,” I said. His eyes
still held heat and he was watching me, like a predator whose prey had just
done something new and interesting. “I’m happy I could return the favor.
Good night.”
I winked at him and walked out of the room.
My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I doubted I would be
getting much sleep, but I had to try. The sooner I fell asleep, the sooner I
could be back home in my house with Lucy lying next to me. I knew all of
that was gone, but I still dreamed about it.
I heard the shower turn back on and I quickly changed into a tank top and
a pair of sleep shorts. They were the last things I had that were clean and,
knowing I would need my underwear for tomorrow, I didn’t put any on
under the shorts. I waited for a moment and heard the shower stop, then slid
into bed to lay down on my side, facing the wall.
I had all the confidence in the world when he was right in front of me and
I could do whatever I wanted to him because he was already hard and
naked, but what happened now? Would he expect that every time he took a
shower? Would he want to come out here and just go to bed? Would he
cuddle with me?
No, he certainly wasn’t the cuddling type.
Would he want sex?
A thrill went through me and I kind of hoped so, but I wasn’t holding my
breath. He was trying his best to stay away from me physically. I didn’t
know if it was because he was being paid to be my bodyguard which made
me his client, or if it was because he had this ideal picture of me in his head
that he needed me to live up to, but I knew he was trying hard.
His resolve was slipping, though. He had let me put my mouth around
him and he tasted wonderful. All that velvety skin over such a hardness
made my mouth water just thinking about it. He was delicious and beautiful
and I wanted him inside me more than I wanted my house back, I think. If
not more, a close second which was saying something.
I lay there quietly as he left the bathroom and moved the bag he had
thrown out of the room before he had started his shower. There was
rummaging and then he moved to his side of the bed. His side dipped when
he sat down and he stayed there for a few long moments. He sat there so
long that I wondered if he would ever lay down.
Finally, he lay down and I held my breath, staring at the wall.
“I know, you are not unblemished,” he started, his voice low, but missing
the growl it had held in the bathroom. “I know you have your own
darkness, but my darkness runs far deeper than yours. My first kill was my
father when I was just six years old. He had beaten my mother to death in
the kitchen while I was out playing in the fields with my friends. I came
home to see the end of it. He was slamming her face against the stove and
instead of calling out to him to get him to stop, I went out in the barn,
grabbed the garden hoe and attached him with it. I think I knocked him
unconscious first, but when I saw my mother’s brains plastering the wall I
realized there was no saving the situation. So, I took the metal part of the
hoe off the stick, flattened out the curve and began severing his head from
his body.”
At some point during the story I had rolled over to see him. He was
laying down on his back with his arms behind his head, his tattoos flexing
in the dim light coming through the window. He was staring at the ceiling
and the tone of his voice was flat and even. He could have been telling me
about the weather or a TV show he had watched.
“I wanted to make sure he was dead, you see. I was too young to realize
if someone has a heartbeat, they are alive and if they don’t they are dead. I
figured there was no way he would be alive if he didn’t have a head.”
“Fair assumption.” I said, feeling like I needed to say something. He
turned his head to watch me, like he wasn’t sure how long I had been there.
“I buried him in the backyard. I had to dig with a broken shovel but I did
it. I didn’t want him in the house, the one my mother spent all her time
cleaning and taking care of. He had already made a mess of it. So I shoved
him in the hole and covered it with soil and donkey shit from behind the
barn. Then I went to the front to dig a hole for my mother in her flower bed.
She loved those flowers and I thought she would like to be there for all of
eternity.”
“That was very kind of you, very loving,” I said and his face turned
angry.
“I tell you I killed my father and you say that sounds kind?”
“I say that you witnessed an impossible thing and you took extreme
action. Who’s to say he wouldn’t have killed you too? What would have
happened if you ran away instead? Maybe he would have killed someone
else. You don’t know, but you took care of the problem, even at such a
young age. You showed your mom respect and kindness by burying her
where you did. You did what you had to do and then you took the time to
lay her to rest. You could have just left her there in the house,” I pointed out
and very gently, placed my hand on his chest. “I’m sorry you went through
that.”
“I didn’t go through that, Winnifred. I am that. I kill people for a living.
And I’m good at it. I’ve lost count of how many lives I’ve taken. And I do it
for money, not some noble cause. I am the villain in your story and that’s
how it should be,” he said and turned to face the ceiling again. “What
happened in the bathroom…”
“What happened in the bathroom was my choice. I didn’t have to kneel
before you and suck your cock. I didn’t have to enjoy it either, but I did.
Don’t start with some ‘that can’t happen again’ bullshit because you feel
guilty that you liked it too,” I interrupted him and he looked at me again, his
mouth set into a fine line.
“You don’t have to pretend for my sake,” he said and I just about slapped
him across the face. Fire raged in my belly and I had had it with playing it
safe. I had had it with worrying about what was right and wrong, what I
should or shouldn’t do. He was pissing me off by insulting a very powerful
and amazing moment and I wouldn’t lay there and take it.
Quickly, I rolled off the bed, pulled my shorts down, pulled my tank top
off over my head and crawled back on the bed. He went to roll away from
me, but I got to him first, pulling him so he lay flat on his back again.
Slowly, only so I didn’t hurt him or myself, I moved up so I could straddle
his face. He stayed perfectly still as I put one knee on either side of his
head. I could feel his breath on my pussy and I shivered.
I reached down and put two fingers between my lips and pulled them
apart, dipping my fingers into my pussy inches from his nose. Then I pulled
them out and spread my fingers to show him the wetness that I had no doubt
was dripping from them.
“Does that look like I was faking it, Rurik?” I asked, dipping my fingers
into myself again and pulling them out again. “Do you think I got wet
listening to the story from your childhood? No, I am wet because you came
down my throat. I am wet because I am attracted to you, you giant fucking
moron, possibly against my better judgement. I am wet because just being
close to you turns me on and I want you so bad my body leaks.”
I reached down and rubbed the wetness on the tip of his nose.
“And if you can’t see that I am wet, I’m sure you can smell it, right?”
He flipped me.
One second I was straddling his face, my pussy inches above him, the
next second I was laying on my back, my head propped up on pillows while
he had his arms hooked around my legs and hips. His face was so close to
my pussy that I could feel his beard brushing against me and it tickled, but
it was also an amazing sensation. I shivered and his tongue dipped down
and ran along the seam of my sex.
My nipples puckered and he reached up to cup one in his giant hand. He
squeezed gently and I shivered, wanting more but wanting to enjoy every
minute of where I assumed this was going. I was strung out like a live wire
and I was about to blow.
His mouth was painfully close to my clit and I wanted to feel him eat me.
I wanted it more than I wanted to breathe, which was a good thing because I
was holding my breath. My heart hammered in my chest.
Slowly, his tongue delved into my seam and found the magic button I
wanted him to focus on. He hit it once, twice, three times and I was so close
to cumming just from that. I felt his fingers move and I waited for him to
penetrate me with them, holding my breath. He spread my lips with his
fingers and gave my pussy one, long, strong lick with his tongue that sent
me spiraling, needing and wanting more to get off but at the same time
every touch was like fireworks. He lit me up in ways I had only dreamed
about and I wanted more. I wanted all of him, not just his mouth, though
that was nice too.
In that moment I had no shame for I was wanton and needy.
“Fuck me, Rurik,” I said and he stilled. “Please, I need you inside me. I
need you to…”
The phone rang.
His phone by the sounds of it and there would be only one person who
would call his number.
Rurik was off me like a sprung coil and heading for the table where he
had dumped the contents of his pockets before his shower. He picked it up
and looked at the ID, then answered the phone.
“Malcolm, where the fuck have you been?”
Chapter Thirteen
Part 2- Safe As Houses (Rurik)

I
don’t think there was any chance that I was going to be happy to hear
from Malcolm seeing as I had been trying to get ahold of him for a few
days, but having him call while Winnie was bare and spread for me, open
and wet, begging me to fuck her was just unforgivable. If it wasn’t for the
fact that it took forever to get ahold of him nowadays, I wouldn’t have
answered.
I wanted so much to do as she had asked. I wanted to make her cum, fist
with my fingers and mouth, then again with my cock that was already hard
again even though I had cum less than an hour ago.
Down that tight little throat of hers.
“Malcolm, where the fuck have you been?” I demanded into the phone,
resisting every urge I had to throw the damn thing across the room.
There were muffled noises on the other end for a moment and then
Malcolm’s voice. He was whispering and he said something I couldn’t quite
hear. Then there was a whooshing sound. I held the phone away from my
head because it was loud and threatening to ruin my ear drums.
 “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.” I said into the phone. The
whooshing noise stopped and I heard Malcom speak this time.
“Hey man, is this better?”
“Yeah,” I said and turned to face the bed. Winnie was still lying there
with her legs open, watching me. Damn, she was gorgeous. And she wanted
me. For whatever messed up, fucking reason she wanted me. I had no
delusions she wanted to be with me for the long term or anything, that
would be absurd, but now? She wanted my body and she wasn’t afraid of
me. Not afraid enough to push me away anyway.
I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“So I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. Are you
ready?” he asked and I pulled the phone away to put it on speaker phone.
Winnie pulled the blanket around her and came closer, shuffling on her
knees to the end of the bed.
“Ready.”
“Alright, so it’s like this. Johnny Estrada is now at the safe house with
the kid’s dad. They are holding up, I guess someone broke into Estrada’s
place the other day and ransacked the place. No one was hurt, but it was a
close call. How’s the kid?”
“Winnie is fine and she’s listening so don’t be an asshole.” I warned him.
There was a pause.
“Ah, oh… hi… Winnie, did he say? I thought it was Winnifred?”
“It is, but everyone calls me Winnie.” She explained then hopped back
into the conversation. “You said my dad and uncle are fine?”
“Oh yeah, yeah they are at the safe house and asked me to bring you both
there.”
 “I thought you were just the connections guy?” I asked, reading strange
vibes. Winnie looked up at me with concern, wondering what was throwing
me off. I didn’t know exactly so I just shrugged, but it seemed strange to me
that the connections guy would be doing any of the actual work.
“I am but I’m their only connection to you two. They ditched their
phones for fear that they were being tracked,” he explained. That would
make sense and explain as to why they weren't answering Winnie. I looked
at her to see if she believed it and her nod told me she did. Okay then.
“Alright. Go on,” I said.
“So they want me to get you across the ocean so you can meet them in
Moscow. I have a buddy of mine leaving at around eleven in his yacht. If
you can make it to the dock by then, he’ll smuggle you to France. From
there you’ll have to make your own way, but at least the hard part will be
over. I’ll be going with you so I can try to facilitate the rest of your journey,
but I promise nothing, my international connections are far weaker than my
state-side ones.”
I looked at the clock on the wall. It said it was about 9:15. We could
make it to the docks in time. I looked at Winnie who nodded. She was on
board for the trek, therefore so was I.
“Alright. We will meet you at the docks at eleven.” I said and hung up.
The room seemed so loud with his voice gone. It seemed to echo as we
stayed where we were looking at the phone.
“Russia…wow,” she said, “I’ve barely even been out of New England.
But wait… aren't you in danger if you go back there?”
“Yes.” I said and turned, looking for my jeans. I found them by the
bathroom door and slid them over my hips and tightened the belt. I turned
and Winnie had forgotten all about the towel. She knelt on the bed, nude,
her breasts full and hanging slightly, too big to be truly perky. Her curves
were highlighted in the light from the front window and she looked to me
like an angel in the dark. An angel that was very naked and had minutes ago
been begging me to fuck her.
Well, guess that was over. We had places to be now and who knew what
would happen when we got there.
I went to her and caressed the line of her body with my fingertips. She
was so angelic that it felt wrong to touch her, but I wanted to. I could still
taste her pussy on my tongue and it was sweeter than candy. She looked up
at me, not bothering to hide her nakedness and let me do what I wanted.
I slid my other hand up her back and splayed my fingers. It took up most
of her lower back and I could feel her lean into my touch. Then I bent and
kissed her gently on the lips, wanting just that last taste.
“We have to go.” I said when I pulled away from her. My voice was
breathy and I hated it just a little. I hated that she did that to me and that I
couldn’t give her what she wanted.
“I know.” She said and looked up at me, placing her hand over my heart.
It was the one place I didn’t have a tattoo and her hand fit there perfectly. I
had an insane moment to think I would get her handprint tattooed there
when this was over with her name beneath it, then let the thought pass. She
deserved more than a handprint tattoo. She deserved a whole fucking back
piece, not that I had any space left on my back. “Later.”
“Later,” I agreed, but I didn’t think so.
We hurried about the room, packing things up and getting dressed. I
pulled a t-shirt over my head and she did the same, putting on an oversized
black t-shirt with ‘Hot chicks read,’ written across it. She pulled her jeans
on and slipped her socked feet into sneakers. I put the gun on my belt and
we walked out of the room not caring that the gun was visible. I would
handle anyone that said anything to me about it, but I doubted anyone
would.
We packed up the car and got in, her sitting in the passenger seat. She
seemed calmer sitting there than she had before. She had stopped playing
with the corners of her fingernails and acting like she expected us to crash
at every moment. I didn’t know if it was because she trusted my driving
now, trusted that I would keep her safe or she just had bigger fears to worry
about. I was betting it was the latter.
It only took us about an hour to get to the docks so we managed to get
there early. We parked along the harbor, the moonlight reflecting over the
water, rippling with the tide. There was a rather large white yacht anchored
to shore and there were a few men dressed in dark dress clothing sitting on
the deck.
We were far enough away that I couldn’t tell who they were, but they
looked important and I had a horrible thought that they were Russian. That
would not be good and I would hope that Malcolm of all people would
know better than that.
“I don’t like the thought of you going to Russia with me,” Winnie said,
speaking for the first time since we left the motel room. “You will be in far
more danger there than me and I’m not strong enough to be your
bodyguard. I can go alone, find my father and uncle. Malcolm will help
me.”
“No,” I said instantly, not even entertaining the idea. She tried again.
“But, Rurik, they’ll kill you.”
“I said no,” I repeated and turned to look at her. “I will not leave your
safety in the hands of anyone else. Your safety is my job, not Malcolm's,
not whomever he hires for him, not your responsibility. You are mine and I
will keep you safe. Even at the cost of my life, if it comes to it.”
She looked sad as she reached out and took one of my hands in hers.
“I’m yours?” she asked and I nearly swallowed my tongue. Shit, I hadn’t
meant to say that.
“You are… my responsibility. My charge,” I corrected and took my hand
back. She lowered her eyes so I couldn’t see them and turned away from
me. “Alright, let’s go get this over with. I will feel better when you are in
that safe room.”
Chapter Fourteen
Winnie

I
f only I could get Rurik to admit that he wanted me. That he felt
something for me. I knew he did, I could see it in his face. He might
think it was merely just a sexual attraction that was filling him, but I could
tell the difference. He wanted me for reasons other than sex and he was
starting to let little things slip past his ironclad barriers.
Like him saying I was his. Like him telling me I was too good for him,
not in so many words but it had been there. Then there was his nickname
for me. Sunshine. He felt things for me, I knew he did, but he was scared.
I needed to show him he didn’t have to be.
That was going to take time though and that was something we didn’t
have.
We got out of the car and grabbed our things from the back. The bag of
books could stay in the car, I would get them from Rurik whenever we were
free to get out of the safe room. I had a thought, a horrible thought, that we
might never be able to get out. If the Irish were mad enough at my dad, they
might hunt me for the rest of my life.
What would I do? What could I do?
 Would changing my name and moving help? It would be hard for the
Irish mob to find me if I was living in California or something. Or living in
Russia. Maybe living amongst the Irish’s enemy would be a plus.
But Rurik couldn’t stay with me and there was a very strong part of me
that wanted him with me at all times. I wasn’t quite sure when that changed.
I couldn’t say when it was that he became as important to me as breathing,
but he had. I couldn’t imagine my world without him in it which was crazy,
because he wasn’t mine to keep. As soon as the job was done, he would
probably move on and I would be nothing but a distant memory.
I hated that thought and squashed it down as we walked along the docks
towards the big white boat tied to one of the many plank walkways
connecting the tarred slab we were parked on and the row of boats. The area
didn’t look like an official docking station, there was no gate with an
annoyed security guard asking for our boat number or an ID. It was open
and the bay it was situated on was full of oil tankers and other official
looking transport boats.
It wasn’t like I was a boating expert by any means, but Uncle Johnny did
have a few he kept docked in a marina called Garret’s Grotto, which I
always thought was a cool name. Every summer we would take his boats
out for a swim and one time I was able to talk him into staying out in the
open ocean for the night. We watched the stars twinkle in the sky as we
curled up in giant comforters to ward off the ocean winds.
It was a fun time.
This didn’t look like it was going to be anything like that.
As we got closer to the boat, a few men dressed in black slacks and black
button up shirts got off the yacht. I could see their guns in holsters under
their arms and a few had long knives hanging from sheaths attached to their
belts. I didn’t like the looks of them, but they did appear to be Italian with
their slicked back black or dark brown hair and dark eyes. They had tanned
skin and wide eyes that tracked all our movements.
Rurik stood slightly in front of me, blocking me from them the best he
could. He didn’t like them, I saw it in the way he kept his hands near the
butt of his gun which was holstered, but unbuttoned so he could slip it out
easily and use it. I didn’t think these guys were against us. They were with
the guy Malcolm, right? And he worked for my uncle. My uncle would
never hire someone who was untrustworthy. He screens his people well
before trusting them with anything, let alone his niece’s life.
A man stepped off the boat that certainly didn’t look like the others. He
was shorter than the rest, about 5’6-8” if I had to guess and he had a long
blond ponytail that hung behind him. He had a pair of thick framed glasses
too and instead of black, he wore a white or light gray suit; it was hard to
tell exactly which color in the dark. He grinned when he stepped onto the
wooden planks and started towards us with his arms outstretched.
Rurik must have known him because he walked straight to him, hands
leaving his sides and the vicinity of his weapon. Granted I was pretty sure
Rurik himself could be a weapon if he wanted to be.
“Rurik! Glad to see you in one piece!” the blond guy said and went to
hug Rurik, but seemed to think better of it. He fixed the motion by throwing
his arms in the air like an exaltation of excitement. Then he turned to me. “I
saw on the news about your place. I’m very sorry, dear, that must have been
horrible to witness.”
“It was,” I admitted then looked up at Rurik who was looking at the other
people around us. “You are…?”
 “Oh I’m sorry, how silly of me! I am Malcolm Richards, at your service.
Or… well your father’s employer’s service anyway. He certainly got in with
the right people, didn’t he?” Malcolm said and I shrugged.
“Apparently not if it got my house blown up, don’t you think?” I pointed
out.
Malcolm didn’t seem to have anything to say to that so he just turned
back to Rurik as if I didn’t say anything at all.
“So, are you ready for your voyage?” He asked. “I regret having to tell
you this, but the two of you will have to share the same room and until we
cross the ocean, I think it will be best if you two stayed in there, to make
sure no one sees you. I’ve gotten word that the Irish suspect you are taking
to the ocean to hide so I feel like seclusion would be best.”
“We will manage.” Rurik responded coolly. I didn’t know if it was just
because he was talking to someone who wasn’t me or if it was because he
didn’t particularly like Malcolm, but he was definitely not portraying
himself as a happy voyager. I couldn’t blame him, it had to be nerve
wracking going back to where he grew up, and the fact that he murdered
someone higher up in the Russian mafia. If they found him, they would kill
him, no question.
I knew how organizations like that worked.
Malcolm clapped his hands together in excitement.
“Excellent! Let’s get you settled in then!” he said and turned to walk
back up the metal plank that had been set out and back to the boat. Rurik
motioned for me to go ahead of him and so I did, following Malcolm onto
the lower deck of the ship.
It was wide and open, spanning most of the first layer of the boat,
running partially under the second floor. There was a bar that had stools in
front of it, an L shaped couch going along the wall to the far side where the
bar was and there were a few tables and chairs that seemed to be strapped
down to the floor. Well, at least the tables were, the chairs moved freely.
Someone had brought along fishing gear that had been leaned against the
wall, along with a red and white cooler. I thought it a little amusing that a
giant, elegant boat such as this would have an old looking set of fishing
poles, but what did I know. Maybe they were antiques or something.
Malcolm led me to a staircase that went both up and down in the middle
of the ship. He pointed downwards and started going beneath the floor of
the hardwood deck we had been walking on. I followed into a slim hallway
that even had me thinking it was a bit of a tight fit. I have no idea how
Rurik was going to get through. I turned to see him walk down the stairs
and realized he had to duck his head in order for it to not hit the ceiling.
“You would think that for the money this thing probably cost that they
would build the sleeping quarters better,” Rurik complained as we
continued down the hallway. Malcolm snorted.
“Well these aren't the main sleeping quarters exactly, this is more of a
storage area. The sleeping quarters are on the top floor, but the only way the
Captain of the ship would let me smuggle you through with us was if you
stayed down here. He’s super paranoid and wants to make sure there is no
reason why the national guard or whoever else is patrolling the seas thinks
you might be people of interest. Sometimes they come onto ships like this
just to see, and no one will think to find you down here, not where we will
have you.”
Rurik didn't say anything else, just continued to follow us.
At the end of the hall there was a door that was almost completely hidden
into the wall because it didn’t have a handle, but when he pushed it open I
saw that it was a relatively large, mostly empty room. There was a spare
couch against the right-hand wall, a chair that was broken, a few coolers
and a small window that looked out just above the water, but it was very
close to the ceiling and no bigger than a brick.
“We can bring you more things if you like, blankets, cushions, pillows,
things of that sort. We want you to be as comfortable as possible.” Malcolm
assured us, “The trip should only take us about four days so please, let me
know if you need anything. Rurik, just text me and I will come down, but
do not for any reason, go above deck. If you do, the Captain has assured me
he will throw you both off into the ocean and leave you as shark bait and I
believe him.”
“Understood,” Rurik said and put his bag down on the couch. He looked
around the room. “We could use some more blankets. Does the light switch
work?”
“No,” Malcolm admitted and moved to head back out the door. “I’ll bring
you some lanterns though so you can see at night. The light from the
window should be enough during the day. Anything else, just text. I’ll bring
you those blankets.”
Rurik nodded and Malcolm left, leaving us by ourselves again.
I followed Rurik’s lead and put my bag down on the couch. There wasn’t
much in the room and if we were expected to stay in here for four days, it
was going to have to involve a lot of sleeping because there wasn’t anything
to do. Suddenly I wished I had my bag of books.
Malcolm came back quickly, opening the door with ease and plopped the
pile of pillows and blankets he had been carrying on the floor. Rurik, who
was sitting on the couch now, got up and picked everything up, scooping it
all into his large arms.
 “The bathroom is the third door down the hall to the right, feel free to use
it, just don’t go up the stairs. The mini kitchen is down here too so feel free
to make yourself food as long as we are traveling. The moment we stop,
please stay in here and lock the door. Is that clear?” Malcolm said and I
nodded. Rurik just stared at him for a moment before going over to the
couch and placing the blankets on top of it.
Malcolm left again, closing the door behind him and shortly after I could
feel the ship begin to move.
I yawned and Rurik began moving the blankets around, making up a bed
on the couch and one on the floor. I thought about arguing, but I knew
arguing with him would only upset him further and he was already on edge.
I didn’t want him directing his anger on me.
When he was done he lay down on the spot on the floor he had made up
and put his arms behind his head. I thought about waiting until he was fully
asleep to move my bed, but instead I picked up the blankets he had put
aside for me and I placed them by him on the floor in a very bed-like
manner and lay down next to him. He rolled over onto his side, looking at
me funny.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I made that bed for you on the couch.”
“Do you really think I’m going to make you sleep on the floor alone?” I
countered and snuggled into the blankets, trying to make myself as
comfortable as possible.
“You aren't making me,” he pointed out. “I chose the floor because that
couch is far too small for my height. I will be much more comfortable here.
You, on the other hand, fit on the couch just fine. Take it.”
“Nope, I am good right here thank you, very much,” I told him and, to
take a page out of his book, I rolled over onto my other side, facing away
from him, effectively shutting down that train of conversation. “Good night,
Rurik.”
I closed my eyes and lay still, trying to calm my brain down. The rocking
of the ship was good. I missed that feeling. Last summer we only got out on
the boat once because Uncle Johnny had places he had to be that he
couldn’t tell me about. All summer.
“Goodnight, Winnie.” Rurik said behind me and, as if I had dreamt it into
being, he got closer and put an arm over my waist. I moved my arm so it
lined his and held his hand to the softness of my belly. When he didn’t pull
away, I relaxed further into him and slowly drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
Rurik

I
awoke sometime the next day in a panic. I didn’t know where I was,
what was going on and I was alone. I could have sworn I had fallen
asleep with Winnie right next to me, but she was gone. Fresh terror bolted
through me just as the fear from my nightmare slowly ebbed away.
Winnie was gone and I didn’t know where she was.
I got out from under the blankets and was on my feet, ready to go find
her when the door opened and Winnie came through holding a tray in front
of her. It had two mugs, a thermos and a plate of eggs and bacon. She
looked at me, startled to see me on my feet and kicked the door closed
behind her.
“Oh hey!” she said and moved to the couch where she put the tray down.
I looked her over as she did so, seeing that she was, at least to my eyes,
perfectly fine. “I thought you would still be sleeping. You were passed out,
so much so that I moved your arm off of me and you hardly even grunted. I
thought for sure the door opening would have woken you, but it didn’t. You
know, for a bodyguard, you sleep like a rock.”
 “I usually don't.” I told her and stretched, touching the ceiling with my
palms. At least it wasn’t as short as the hallway, but the ceiling was still
pretty low. I would have preferred more head room, but I would make do.
Beggars and choosers and what not. “Maybe it’s the constant rocking.”
“Yeah! That would make sense. It did wonders for me,” she agreed and
went about pouring the thermos into the two mugs. Out came a coffee that
smelled amazing and I accepted it when she handed it to me.
I didn’t have the balls to tell her it was probably because I fell asleep
with my arm around her and the smell of her hair in my nose. Hugging her
while falling asleep was like hugging the world’s softest teddy bear. It put a
place of my mind at ease that I didn’t want to analyze too closely. It had all
sorts of feelings attached to it that I didn’t want to think about right then.
Especially after the nightmare I had been having. It involved Winnie
being taken from me and I tried my best to get to her but I was shackled in
place with no means of escape, no means of being able to help her. Then the
men dressed in black that had taken her stripped her in front of me and
started ripping pieces of her off, including the giant white wings she had
had. I cried out for her, but her screams drowned out the sound of my own
voice.
Again, not something I wanted to look at too closely.
Winnie was looking at me with a triumphant smile on her face waiting
for me to drink the coffee so I brought the mug to my lips and sipped. It was
really good; a dark roast with hints of vanilla and cinnamon. I could see this
being a very girly drink, but she had left out the cream and sugar so at least
the strong notes of black coffee were able to seep in.
“What do you think?” she asked, taking her own sip. I nodded.
 “It’s good,” I told her and when her expression didn’t change I continued.
“It’s really good. Where did you find it?”
“Actually I made it,” she said and I could feel my eyebrows raise in
surprise.
“Really? Here? On the boat?”
“Yep.” She nodded with a self-satisfied look in her eyes. “I raided the
spice cabinet. It’s a full kitchen in there, albeit tiny, so we can make
whatever we can find, but the coffee was just too plain so I made it better
while the bacon was cooking.”
She kicked the blankets we had been sleeping on aside and sat on the
floor then moved the tray from the couch to the floor. I sat across from her
and she handed me a fork. She took a bite of the eggs and gestured for me
to try them, so I did. Those were good too, very well-seasoned with a bacon
after flavor. I picked up a slice of bacon and tested it, hoping it was crunchy
vs chewy and it was. She had made me one of the most perfect breakfasts
ever possible. It was delicious.
“Thank you,” I told her through a mouthful of food. She smirked at me.
“This is delicious.”
“I’m glad you like it. The eggs were powdered,” she told me and I had to
admit I was even more impressed. It takes a special kind of person to be
able to make powdered eggs tasty.
“Well then I give you double credit because that is twice as hard to make
those good,” I told her and she smiled.
The rest of breakfast was spent in silence, just eating and enjoying the
rocking of the ocean. I had the urge to go topside and see the ocean
spreading out before us so I could see the waves breaking on the side of the
boat, but Malcolm’s instructions rang loud and clear in my head. It seemed
a little strange to me that someone would be that nervous about us being
discovered even on the open ocean, but I was not the captain and this was
not my ship so I must obey the rules.
Besides, I could think of worse places to be stuck than in a room with
Winnie.
After we ate, Winnie brought the plates and cups back to the kitchen to
wash and I started exercising. I hadn’t had much time to do so in the last
few days but now, all we had was time. I started with squats, then went to
pushups and sit ups. I was halfway through a five minute plank, timed by
the stopwatch on my phone, when Winnie came back. She watched me for a
while and asked me a few questions about what I was doing. Then I did the
routine all over again. I did five sets in all, but I took a break halfway
through to get the book I had stored in my backpack for her.
It was a long book by Stephen King and had been the one she had picked
up while we were at Walmart. She hadn’t even noticed I had bought it for
her, she was so out of it, and I stored it away in my things feeling foolish
for having gotten it for her in the first place. Now, though, was the perfect
time for her to read it and seeing as it was over a thousand pages long, I
figured it would last until we got wherever we were going.
Her eyes lit up when I gave it to her and she jumped up, putting her arms
around me so she could hold me to her tightly. Her eyes sparkled with joy
as she sat down on the couch and began reading, but she wasn’t just reading
to herself. She began reading out loud.
I finished my sets, listening to a story about a man who was driving
across Texas with his wife and his kid in the car, trying to get ahead of a
disease that would surely kill them all. One of them coughed and I knew I
would be wanting to listen to Winnie finish that book. I was hooked both on
the story and on her voice. It was soothing and her cadence while she read
was like the sea ebbing and flowing. She even made character voices when
they spoke. It sounded funny when she tried to do male voices, but I liked
it. She was creative with it.
She read straight through lunch and when dinner time finally rolled
around, I went and got us dinner from the tiny kitchen.
Tiny might have been too nice a word. It was like they stuck a stove and
a refrigerator in a closet. I was too big for the little space and I had to stand
in the hallway in order to get into the fridge. I found lunch meat so I made
us sandwiches and found a few cokes in the cabinet, which I poured over
ice cubes I found in the freezer into red solo cups I found in a cabinet. I
brought everything back on the tray to Winnie, who sat cross-legged on the
floor in front of the couch. I set the tray down before her and sat across
from her again, after shutting and locking the door of course.
“What did you want to be when you grew up?” she asked suddenly while
we were eating. I looked at her for a moment and went back to eating my
sandwich. I had a feeling this was going to go down a road I didn’t want to
be on, but I supposed if WInnie had questions about me, I would let her ask
them. I might even answer a few.
“I wanted to be alive,” I answered and she shook her head.
“No, like a profession. I wanted to be a veterinarian for a while, but I
couldn’t stand the thought of hurting an animal, even if it was to save them.
Then I wanted to be a librarian, but they get paid horribly,” she told me and
I nodded. “So what about you?”
I shrugged.
“I only ever focused on being alive to see the next sunrise. Before my
parents died, I was going to take over the farm. It was my only option
because we were poor and education wasn’t exactly mandatory for our area
of the world. Then after…” I trailed off a little, not having to tell her again
what I had done. “After they were gone I did what I could to survive. When
the Black Crows took me in, I did what I was told, until I went into the
army for the training, where I did what I was told. Then I went back to the
Crows and had thoughts about moving up the ranks there I guess until I got
too cocky and took out the king of the Russian mob and was forced out to
the United States where I don’t exactly have a choice because I am not a
legal citizen. I do what I can for your uncle and he protects me. As for the
future? I don’t know. I usually just focus on counting the sunrises.”
She nodded thoughtfully and chewed on her sandwich.
“Is that where you learned your English so well? When you came to the
States?” she asked, accepting my answer for what it was. I appreciated that
out of her. She never tried to pry too much.
“No, I learned in the army. It was a requirement. Then when I came to the
States, I fine-tuned it so to speak.”
“You don’t speak Russian to anyone much,” she observed and I laughed.
“If someone around me spoke Russian I would run from them, not chat
with them, Sunshine. Knowing Russian isn’t like knowing Spanish in the
States. You don’t run into random people who know it and have a chat on
common ground. If I run into someone who speaks Russian, chances are it’s
because they are from Russia and are looking to collect the bounty on my
head.”
“You have a bounty on you?” Her eyes got big and I nodded.
“Yes.”
“How much?” she wondered and I raised an eyebrow at her.
 “You planning on turning me in to the mafia once we get to Moscow?” I
winked at her and she laughed.
“Maybe.”
I snorted.
“Well you might get about nine million Ruble, but I don’t know for sure.”
I shrugged and her jaw dropped.
“What is that in US currency?”
“About a million dollars. I’m not entirely sure what the exchange rate is,
but it’s not far off.”
“Holy crap. They want you badly,” she said and I nodded.
“Yeah, I know.”
She thought for a moment longer and finished the rest of her food.
“Can you say something in Russian?” she asked and I chuckled. Her
enthusiasm was amusing.
“Vse dlya tebya, Solnyshko. Potomu chto ya tebya lyublyu,” I told her
and she smiled, clapped her hands with joy and did a little seated happy
dance.
“That sounds so cool! What did you say?”
“I said ‘Anything for you Sunshine,’” I told her and that was at least half
true. The other part had meant ‘Because I love you,’ but I couldn’t tell her
that. Not in English. I wasn’t ready and until that moment I wasn’t even
sure I had been ready to say it in Russian, even if she didn’t understand
what it meant. I did.
My heart did flips in my chest and the nerves in my body tingled. It felt
good and strange all at the same time, but it was true. I was in love with her.
Why else would I be heading into almost certain death if I was caught just
to make sure she found her family in one piece?
 I was head over heels in love with her and I wasn’t sure what to do about
it yet, but at least I knew.
“Want me to start reading now that we are done?” She asked, putting
everything onto the tray and pushing it towards the door. “I’ll take care of
that before we go to bed.”
“Sounds good.” I said and shifted so I could sit with my back to the
couch she got up and sat on, my head leaning against her outstretched leg.
She opened the book and her fingers started playing with my hair as she
picked up the story where we had left off.
Yes, I was deeply in love with the woman reading to me and for once in
my life, I was okay with that. Even if she was the death of me, I will have
loved every single moment of getting to that point with no regrets.
Chapter Sixteen
Winnie

I
woke up in the morning to a light touch rubbing its way up and down
my thigh. I could feel Rurik pressed to me along my back and if I
wasn’t mistaken, his morning wood was saying hello to my butt, trying to
poke its way between my cheeks. I wiggled my butt a little bit, rubbing
against him and he took in a sharp breath. His beard tickled my ear as he
leaned closer to whisper in my ear.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” he said in a low rumbly voice that did things
to me all over.
“Good morning,” I greeted him with a smile on my face, even though he
couldn’t see it. I was happy to have him pressed against me even if it was
on the floor of a stranger’s boat in the middle of the ocean.
He was warm and hard and so damn close to where I wanted him most.
Just feeling him pressed between my cheeks made me want to rub my butt
against him like a dog in heat and beg him to fuck me again.
Not my proudest moment, but I think it got the point across. That I
wanted him and he could have me if he wanted me too. It didn’t seem like
he wanted me though. He hadn’t made a move at all yesterday, even though
we hadn’t had much to do. He had surprised me with the book though, The
Stand by Stephen King, which happened to be one of my favorites, and he
had sat there all day, listening to me read to him. Most guys I had known
would have braved jumping overboard and faced the sharks while
swimming for shore rather than listen to me read The Stand. It was a long
book and there was a lot to it, but Rurik didn’t complain. He just sat there
listening, enjoying when I played with his hair. It had been fun and super
sweet of him, but he hadn’t once tried to kiss me or fondle me or even
mention what had happened in the motel.
And I had been thinking about that blow job a lot. It was one of the
reasons I had woken up wet this morning, though I doubted his cock near
my ass hadn’t helped matters.
I wiggled my butt again and the fingers near my hip gripped my flesh so
hard I thought he might draw blood from pressure alone.
“Yebat,” he hissed and I didn’t know what it meant, but I was pretty sure
it was a swear of some sort. “Don’t do that. You’re gonna kill me, woman.”
I smiled and did it again.
He rolled me onto my stomach, pressing his lower body into me hard and
his hands found my wrists, holding them above my head. I was effectively
pinned, trapped by the weight of his body. He used a knee to push my legs
apart and settle himself between them, grinding himself against my core. I
wore my sleep shorts and he wore nothing but boxer briefs so there was
very little between us. My pussy clenched expectantly and suddenly I was
very, VERY ready for him to take me.
“I’m going to take you, Sunshine, because I think we both need it. We
passed the point of protector and protected the moment you placed your
hands on my cock. Maybe even before that, I don’t know, but I can’t get
you out of my mind. Especially now that I know what you taste like.”
He ground his cock against me again and I let out a soft cry. His chest
rumbled in a pleasure sound and it almost sounded like his version of a pur.
“You have to tell me now if this isn’t what you want. I’ve already told
you that I am not gentle. I won’t hurt you on purpose, but…”
“Rurik,” I whispered, interrupting and he leaned in closer to my mouth to
hear me better. “Put your cock inside me. I want you and if you don’t
follow through this time, I might actually hurt you.”
The thought of me hurting him apparently made him laugh. Whatever, I
was serious. I would find a way because my pussy actually ached for him.
“As you wish.” He said and put both of my wrists into one of his big
hands and he reached down between us. My hips jerked upwards and there
was a ripping noise. Cool air touched my pussy lips and I realized that he
had just torn my shorts open instead of taking them off of me. I didn’t know
if that was scary or sexy as hell.
When I felt his cock rub its head against my lips I decided it was sexy as
hell and pushed my hips up and back to give him a better angle. He slid into
me, stretching me, filling me with his length as far as he would go and I
loved it. It was like he was soothing an ache I didn’t even know I had. He
drove himself as deep as he could go and I put my head back with my eyes
closed, enjoying the feeling. He let out a moan, letting me know it felt just
as good for him, which made everything that much better.
“Are you alright?” he asked. “You’re so tight… am I hurting you?”
How did I tell him that it hurt, but it was a good hurt? That it was like the
release of the hurt and it was so good it was painful? I didn’t even know if I
could make sense of the feeling myself so instead of trying to tell him I just
shook my head.
“No you are good,” I told him. “I’m not hurt. Show me what you got.”
And he did.
He let go of my hands and used the hand that had been holding my wrists
captive to grip my throat, pulling my neck back. It was tight and I had to
struggle to breathe, but it made everything else feel so much more potent,
like the lack of air made every other sense come alive. He drove into me
fast and hard, pounding me into the floor like it was his job. He gripped my
hip with one of his big hands and used it as leverage to get into the right
position. I arched my back as far as it would go and took what he gave,
wanting more and enjoying every minute of it.
He drove into me faster until he pulled away completely, letting go of my
neck and letting me get my full breaths back. I felt empty and still
unsatisfied. Concerned that he was done and I hadn’t felt him cum I looked
up.
Rurik had moved to stand in front of me, his dick straight as an arrow, his
hand moving up and down his length, watching me. I scrambled to my
knees and reached for him, but he stepped back.
“Don’t touch me. If you do, I might cum and I haven't decided where I
want to cum yet, but I know I don’t want it to happen in your fist. Besides,
we need to make you cum at least once before I do. Sit on the couch, your
legs spread. And take your top off, I want you naked,” he instructed and I
did as he instructed, stripping out of my tank top and throwing it in the
corner. Then I sat with my back to the back of the couch and I spread my
legs.
 He stood there, holding his cock and tilted his head as if observing a
particularly interesting painting.
“Finger yourself,” he instructed and I did, moving my hand down to play
with my own pussy, pressing two fingers where his cock should be. I
understood though and I couldn’t complain that he wanted this to last. So
did I and we had all day to play if we wanted.
I pushed my fingers in and out of me, then pulled them out to rub my clit.
I took in a sharp breath and Rurik reacted by picking up the pace with his
hand, just a little and only for the moment. My nipples were so hard they
could cut diamonds and I was pretty sure I was leaking all over the couch,
but neither of us cared.
“How many fingers can you fit inside you?” he asked and I tried to fit
another one, but the angle was wrong and it wasn’t comfortable. Plus I had
fingernails that needed to be cut. He clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“Well that’s a shame. I’ll just have to do better for you.”
He crossed the distance between us and replaced my fingers with his. I
could feel my walls pulse around him as he slid his fingers in and out of me.
Then he added another and I gasped, a little out of surprise, a little out of
pain. He paused in his movements.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked and I shook my head, breathing
hard.
“No, keep going,” I told him and he did. He stretched me and worked me
until I could feel my orgasm coming. My whole body was wired for sound
and I could feel that when I exploded it was going to come on fast and hard.
“Rurik, please… I’m going to…”
He pulled his fingers out and moved his face between my legs. His thick
tongue licked my clit and I nearly shot off the couch. The sensation was so
much. He did it again and I started to grind my hips into his face.
“That’s it,” he crooned between licks. “Cum for me. I want you to cum
on my face. I want to taste your happiness, Winnie. I want to devour your
sunshine.”
That had me up and over the edge, especially when he stuck his tongue
inside, his nose bumping against my clit. I reached down and grabbed the
back of his head, pulling him into me enough where I was sure I might
suffocate him with my pussy and I didn’t care. Right then, the energy that
flowed through me was everything.
When I was spent, he pulled away, smiling. His beard was shiny with my
cum and I felt a moment of embarrassment, but then again, he was smiling.
An actual, full blown smile and that made all the embarrassment slide away.
He sat on the couch next to me, his back against the arm of the couch and
shifted so he could put his legs up. I got up and stood, waiting to see what
he had in mind because clearly we were not done. He was still hard and he
motioned for me to come to him.
“Straddle me,” he said and I did so, putting my knees on either side of his
hips, hovering over his cock. He leaned back and looked at me with an
expression I had never seen in his face before. “Kiss me. Kiss me and taste
yourself on me and know I will be smelling you all day and loving every
minute of it. You have marked me.”
His words sent a thrill rushing through me and I bent down so I could
kiss him. He did taste like me and it was sweet and salty and a little sour,
but it was alright because it was me and I replayed how he had wanted to
taste my happiness. My heart throbbed, as did other lower things in my
body and when I was done kissing him, he held his cock straight, an
unspoken command to lower my weight onto him.
 I did and he filled me in a way that made him seem bigger, harder than
when he had taken me from behind. I didn’t know what the difference was,
but I certainly wasn’t complaining.
Rurik’s hands found my breasts and he played with the nipples, clamping
them between his thumb and forefinger before stretching them and
squeezing. I began moving up and down and Rurik let his head fall back.
He moaned deeply when I clenched my pussy muscles on him, tightening
even while I pulled away.
“Mmmm keep doing that,” he moaned and placed his hands on my hips,
helping me bounce up and down on him. The faster I went the more he
swore and I began to feel like I could cum again too. I was panting and he
watched me like I was his favorite movie. His eyes tracked my face, my
bouncing tits and when I knew I was going to cum again, he must have
noticed because he pulled me down to him. His arms wrapped me up in a
bear hug and his face buried into my neck. Then he began to fuck me,
holding me in place so he could thrust up. Mostly I was a vessel that he
needed to make sure wouldn’t move and I was ok with that. The speed he
was using to fuck me brought my orgasm on faster.
“I’m going to cum again,” I told him and his chest rumbled in pleasure.
“Cum with me. Cum when I tell you to, and not until then or I'll spank
that ass of yours. Understood? You cum with me.”
I nodded, not even knowing if I could control it like that.
But moments later his arms tightened around me and he was fucking me
harder and faster than I thought possible. I was right there, ready to cum,
my body strung tighter than a piano wire.
Then he said it
“Cum, Sunshine, Cum on my cock.”
 And I did. I came harder than I had ever cum before, so much so that my
whole body shook as he came inside me, filling me, jerking inside me as we
both came down from our orgasms. I had tucked my head into his shoulder
and when I pulled away I saw that I had bitten him. There was a set of
perfect purple teeth marks in his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Rurik, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said and went to get off
him, but he held me tightly.
“You didn’t hurt me and no, don’t move yet. Please, I want to make this
last a little while longer,” he said so I put my head back into the crook of his
neck and just breathed him in. His hands slowly moved up and down my
back, soothing me.
We lay like that for a while, just breathing. I could feel him soften inside
of me, which was the oddest feeling, but it was good too. His heartbeat
drummed against my forehead and I smiled, finally completely satisfied.
“I really didn’t mean to hurt you.” I said after a while, thinking of the
teeth marks in his shoulder. He chuckled.
“You didn’t hurt me. In fact, I liked it. A lot,” he said and kissed the top
of my head. “I have a few wires crossed where I don’t actually feel things
the same way others do. I like a little pain with my pleasure so trust me, you
didn’t hurt me.”
I thought about that for a little bit and I could see how that made sense.
The choking had turned me on, so who was I to judge? There was nothing
wrong with a little rough sex as long as both parties were into it and it
appeared we were.
What a pair we made.
We cleaned up in the bathroom down the hall one at a time, got dressed,
and continued reading the book until lunch time when there came a knock
at the door.
“Come in.” Rurik said, getting to his feet.
Malcolm was on the other side, quirky smile on his face as usual.
“Well guys, I hope the ride hasn't been too unacceptable thus far, but I
have some good news for you if you would follow me out onto the deck.”
He said and turned around to head back down the hallway. Rurik stayed
where he was.
“We haven't reached land yet, we still have another day of travel, at
least.” He said, watching Malcolm. He turned and smiled at him some
more.
“Right you are! But the captain has agreed to meet you and wants to see
you on the deck so… up we go, ship mates!” He said and turned back
toward the hall. I looked at Rurik, wondering what was going on. He didn’t
look happy and part of me really wanted to stay in our own little bubble,
reading The Stand.
“Come on.” Rurik said. “Stay behind me.”
So I followed him out of our little room and up to the deck of the yacht.
Chapter Seventeen
Rurik

S
omething was going down and I didn’t like the feel of it. Malcolm had
always seemed a little slimy to me, but that cheesy smile and that too
bright expression had me on edge. I held the butt of the gun in my right
hand at the ready, even though the safety was still on and the gun was still
holstered.
I had a moment to think of the bullet proof vests tucked away in my bag
and mentally kicked myself. It was good planning, but the only way they
protect anything is if it’s on. Stupid, stupid mistake.
I followed Malcolm up to the lounging area with the bar and the dance
floor. There were about 10 men lined up around the edges of the boat, all in
those black dress shirts and slacks we had seen when we got on the boat,
but there were four people at the bar, One of which I knew way too well to
be happy about the situation.
Oleg Stikovska leaned against the bar in a blood red suit, his hand
wrapped around a whiskey glass. He grinned at me when he saw me and I
stopped in my tracks, blocking Winnie from coming up the rest of the way.
I wanted her nowhere near that asshole and he couldn’t know she meant
anything to me. If he did, he would do unspeakable things to her to get
revenge on me.
After all, I was the one to kill Mikhal Stikovska, his father, the mob boss
of all the Russians in the motherland. I was the one he put a bounty on and I
was the one who had stupidly gone against my gut and trusted someone I
shouldn’t have,
I turned to look at Malcolm who shrugged.
“Sorry, Rurik, but I couldn’t say no to a 10 million dollar bonus. They
upped the price when I told them I worked for the Italians and, look, I’ve
got kids to pay for and alimony to keep paying, though after this pay out I
might just have the bitch whacked.” He laughed loudly, though no one was
laughing with him. He didn’t care. He slapped his knee and went to the bar,
taking one of the glasses of whiskey from the counter.
“Privet, staryy drug. Khorosho, nakonets, uvidet' tebya snova. YA zhdal,
kogda ty vernesh'sya domoy.” Oleg said and took a sip from his glass.
Hello, old friend. It's good to finally see you again. I've been waiting for
you to come home. Ha, old friend. We had never been friends, not even
when he was part of the Black Crows. We had been brothers once, but he
had left the Crows for his father’s business and became the crowned prince
of the mafia underworld. I had been aiming for him when I had accidentally
hit his father.
“Pozdravlyayu, vy menya poymali. Chto teper?” I asked, replying to him
in Russian.
Congratulations, you've caught me. What now?
He looked at me with a smile in his eyes though it never reached his
mouth.
 “Teper' ya otvezu tebya domoy i sderu s tebya kozhu za tvoi
prestupleniya.” He replied in a matter of fact tone.
Now I take you back home and skin you alive for your crimes.
I debated fighting him on it, but if I tried that here, the only thing I would
manage to do would be to put Winnie in danger. I would have to figure out
something along the way and go with him easily. I could see an identical
yacht tied up alongside this one and assumed it was Oleg’s. He would want
to take me straight to Moscow. There would be plenty of time to escape
between now and then and who knows, maybe I could get ahold of the
Black Crows again and ask for help. They might have more fire power now,
more people on their side. I hoped so anyway because they were kind of my
only hope.
But the one thing I did know for certain was that I needed Winnie safe.
“What happens to Winnie?” I asked Malcolm. He waved a hand and one
of the guys in suits came and confiscated my gun. He then did a quick pat
down looking for weapons. He got the knife strapped to my arm, but he
missed the one with the sheath hidden in my boot so at least I had a little
protection if I needed it. The three men standing with Oleg came towards
me and I stood my ground. Winnie stood on the stairs behind me.
“What’s going on?” Winnie asked, fear in her voice. I didn’t want to tell
her the truth, but there didn’t seem to be any other way. They were going to
take me and she was going to be on her own. Or worse, she was going to be
with Malcolm.
“They are taking me back to Russia. Malcolm sold me out,” I told her
while I watched the three approaching men. Go back downstairs and hide.”
“No!” She shrieked and pushed past me, making me stumble because I
wasn’t expecting it. She stood before me, facing the three men with knives
in their hands now. “You will not take him back to Russia! You will not hurt
him!”
The men advancing on us stopped and Oleg cracked up with laughter. He
laughed so hard he spilled his drink all over the counter.
“Ty pozvolish' etoy suke zashchishchat' tebya, Ryurik? Nashel sebe
storozhevuyu sobaku?” He laughed and I tensed ready to take the gun and
shoot as many as I could before they advanced on me, but it might be worth
it to put a bullet through Oleg’s skull.
You're going to let this bitch protect you, Rurik? Found yourself a guard
dog?
“Please Winnie, just get behind me and go downstairs. You can’t fight
them by yourself without any weapons. I can’t even fight them myself.”
“You aren't even trying, Rurik!” She accused me and turned to me, tears
in her eyes. “Please, don’t leave me. You can’t.”
“I will go with them to keep you safe.” I told her and kissed the top of
her head. I took a deep breath of her scent and gripped her hair in my hand.
“I love you, Winnie. You are and will forever be my one little ray of
sunshine in this dark and dismal world. But if he knows that, he will rip you
apart and make me watch. I can’t handle that, Winnie. I need to go with
him. I will be able to handle what comes next if I know you are safe.”
I let go of her and strode to the men with the knives, hearing her yell
behind me but not paying attention to what she was yelling. My head was
buzzing with the shock of my new reality. I had told her I loved her and
now I was going to die to keep her safe. I felt like it was too close to a
Shakespearean play or something. Some sort of cosmic joke was being
played on us.
 They took my gun and held my arms between them. Oleg smiled and
came up to me. He stood there a moment before he punched me square in
the face. My nose broke and my face lit up like a Christmas tree, pain
running through my face. Blood dripped down from my nose. I heard
Winnie yelling curses in the background and I looked over. She was being
held like I was, between two of Malcolm’s men though, which I felt was
slightly better than if she were being held by Oleg’s people.
Malcolm approached me, also smiling. I almost expected him to punch
me in the face too, but he just cleaned his glasses off on his shirt.
“You know, I never liked you and it brings me great satisfaction to tell
you that not only did I sell you to the Russians, but I sold her to the Irish.
We are turning back around and bringing her to Boston as soon as the
Russians leave. Have a wonderful rest of your life! Maybe you and the brat
will meet each other again in the afterlife.” He laughed again and I strained
against my captors, wanting to strangle him so badly my fingers itched.
I fought then. I had wished I had thought of that before I gave up my gun,
but I don’t think it would have mattered anyway. I watched as they carried
her, kicking and screaming down the stairs and I lunged for her, taking one
of the guys down so easily, he had to wrap his arms and legs around my arm
to keep me from getting away and still I pushed forward. I was gaining
distance and I was almost there when someone hit me with something hard
in the back of the head and I collapsed, smacking my face on the floor. I
lifted my arm to try to get out and I was hit again, in the same place.
I lost consciousness reaching for the staircase Winnie had disappeared
down.
Chapter Eighteen
Winnie

I
have never considered myself an athletic person or a fierce person. I
like reading about brave men and women who fight everything to save
their loved ones. I never really saw myself doing something like that,
possibly because my loved ones were always so much stronger and more
powerful than me. My uncle could have anyone I disliked killed with a snap
of his hand. My father could pay someone to do it for him. And Rurik, I
never thought I would see him fall.
I did though. Somehow I had managed to claw my way over the man that
had been carrying me down the stairs and up the stairs back to the main
floor. I saw the blow from the butt of Rurik’s gun to the back of his head. It
looked like it hit him right where the spinal cord met the skull which I knew
was a bad thing. He was out before he even realized I was standing there.
He lay on the ground and two men lifted him by the shoulders, draping
him across them like they were helping a buddy who got too drunk for his
own good and passed out. It would have been funny if it wasn’t for the fact
that they were planning on hurting Rurik if he wasn’t dead already. I don’t
think they would have taken him back to the other boat if he had been dead,
but what did I know?
The men in black who were left on the deck saw me and went for me,
Malcolm yelling at the top of his lungs for them to grab me. I dodged them,
bringing out of my memory any move I had ever made in dodgeball, which
seemed to be the only sport in high school I was good at. I always assumed
it was because I was a smaller target to hit than everyone else, but I think I
had some talent for dodging and weaving because I managed to get around
three of them and sprinted towards the edge of the boat. There was a drop
and then the cold Atlantic Ocean water. The plank they had walked across
to get to the Russian boat was gone, pulled up as soon as they had crossed
it. There was no way to Rurik except for getting a little wet.
Ok, a lot wet.
I looked behind me at the guards that were coming to me and Malcolm
who laughed.
“Don’t worry about her, the princess won’t jump. She’s got nowhere to
go but the ocean!”
He was right of course, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I may have
grown up in the city, but I could swim. So I jumped.
Water engulfed me and I held my breath as I went under. I had been right,
the water itself was cold, but at least it wasn’t freezing. I heard shouts from
the boat above and I looked up to see Malcolm’s shocked face. It was a
good look on him and if I ever saw him again I would tell him so.
Or I would just beat his face in. No way was he selling me to the Irish. I
am not a thing to be pawned off or sold to the highest bidder.
I began swimming. The breast stroke was powerful, but with the
choppiness of the waves it was hard to breathe so I went for the frog style,
which I was fond of anyway. I swam around the Russian boat, looking for a
way in. I could hear shouting up top, but I ignored it. I couldn’t hear what
they were saying anyway, it was all in Russian.
Luckily, around the back of the yacht I found a little recess in the boat
where there was a ski-doo attached by a few long cables. It had its own
little garage in the back of the boat and I pulled myself up onto the
platform. Just in time too because I heard the motor pick up and the boat
began to move. I decided I would try to find Rurik first, then we would take
the ski-doo and get out of here.
Though I had no idea where we were or how close to land we were.
As the yacht I was on pulled away from Malcolm’s, I saw them all on the
deck looking in the water, probably looking for me. I sat there, catching my
breath and dripping onto the platform until the yacht was gone and there
was nothing but open sea again. Then, I rung out my t-shirt and opened the
door to the platform.
It led me into a corridor that looked much like the level Rurik and I had
been stuck in the past few days. I wondered if they would bring him down
here or if they would keep him on higher levels. It was hard to tell, but I
figured it was a good place to start.
I certainly lucked out, at least in finding him. I checked five of the six
doors and the fifth door led to a room with a giant dog crate in it. Inside was
Rurik, laying on his side, his face covered in blood. I had a horrible thought
that he was dead, but I saw his chest rise and fall so I was able to calm
myself. He was alive. Hurt, but alive. That I could work with.
I went over to the cage and examined the lock. It was a number lock,
which sucked because the numbers could be anything. There was no faking
it and trying to break it open, it was just locked.
 Which meant I would have to find someone to open if for me.
Not wanting to leave Rurik alone just yet, I looked around the room.
There wasn’t much in there, just a bunch of tools I guessed had special
purposes for the boat. There was a drain snake to clear plugs, scuba diving
gear, snips of all different sizes and scrapers that I knew must be for
barnacles that might grow on the hull. They seemed to have anything they
might need.
Then I had a flash of memory from when my uncle’s boat got caught on
something floating in the water, a net or something. It had tangled around
the propeller and we got stuck for a while. Well, my uncle put on his scuba
gear and dove down with a pair of gardening shears.
I dug through the tools in the corner of the room and found what I was
looking for. A pair of gardening shears that were heavy duty enough to cut
through the metal of the lock. I picked them up, put them to the lock and
brought it closed. I tried it again and again until finally there was a loud
creak and a snap. The lock broke and the door was free.
I opened it and put a hand to Rurik’s temple.
“Rurik,” I said and ran a hand on his forehead. He shook, his whole body
going into a convulsion for a minute before he stilled and opened his eyes.
He looked at me for a long few minutes as if trying to remember my face,
but once he saw it, his face lit up.
“Winnie! What are you doing here? Did they take you too?” He asked
and I shook my head.
“No, I escaped from Malcolm’s boat. I jumped and swam on board. The
Russians have no idea I’m here.” I told him and the look of shock on his
face transformed into one of respect and possibly a little awe.
“You are incredible, you know that?”
 “If you say so. How are we going to get out of here though? We are in the
middle of the ocean. There’s a ski-doo tied to the boat, but I don’t think…”
“We aren’t taking the ski-doo.” He said and crawled out of the pen. I
backed up so he had enough room and he rolled his head on his shoulders,
placing a hand on the back of his neck. “Fuck my head hurts.”
“I bet. They hit you with the butt of your gun.”
“Oh, is that what that was?” he asked and shrugged. “I guess I was lucky
it wasn’t something more permanent. Like an ax. Come on, follow me and
watch my back, but be quiet and whatever you do, do not scream.
Understood?” He asked and I nodded.
He kneeled down like he was tying his boot and out of it he pulled a long
thin knife. It had been strapped to his ankle.
“They didn’t find that?” I asked and he shook his head.
“No, lucky for us, because this is our ticket out of here. Ok, follow me
and keep quiet.”
I nodded and followed him as he walked out of the room, slowly and
carefully, looking around the corner as he did so. It was a lot harder for me
to be quiet on account of my sneakers squeaking from being drenched and
my clothes dripping everywhere, but we managed. He cleared the bottom
floor, making sure no one was down here with us, checking all the doors to
make sure no one was hiding. In one bedroom he found a loaded gun on the
bedside table. He checked it, cocked it and handed it to me. He looked at
me for a long moment as if trying to decide something and then he nodded.
“I am going to leave you here at the top of these stairs so you can make
sure no one comes down and occupies our cleared area. Shoot anyone who
crosses your path. I will hear you when you shoot and I will come running,
ok? I hate to do this but…”
 “But I can’t follow you if you are trying to be sneaky and we need to
make sure down here is people free so worst case, we can escape on the ski-
doo.” I interrupted him. A look of relief passed over his face as he nodded.
“Exactly. Thank you for understanding.”
“No problem. I will always be your backup when you need it,” I
promised him and I meant it.
He reached for me and kissed my forehead then wiped away the blood he
left on it.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said and I had no doubt in my mind he was telling
the truth.
Chapter Nineteen
Rurik

I
t was much too easy to slip back into my army role, my Black Crows
role. I had always been good at killing, but I excelled when it needed to
be up close and silent.
I slunk along the hallways of the boat like a ghost, quiet and easy even
though my face was throbbing and my head felt like it was going to
explode. Killing was second nature to me and I could be good at it even if I
was more debilitated than I was. Luckily for me, I wasn’t worse off and I
had my knife.
My first victim was sitting on a couch watching TV on the second floor. I
crouched down low and went on all fours to slink along the edge of the
room behind him and not draw attention to myself. I crawled all the way
from the wall to the couch and in one swift movement, I grabbed the man
by his hair, pulled his head back and slit his throat. It wasn’t instant and it
wasn’t clean by any means. When you cut someone’s carotid artery, it
spurts and sprays blood everywhere. When you manage to knick both of
them like I had, it looks like it’s raining blood. He died choking on his own
blood and I got covered in it.
 I stood up, went around to the front of the man and used his shirt to whip
my face off. Then I checked him for weapons. He didn’t have any so I
moved on, hoping they would all be as easy as that one was.
The next was a man who was standing in the kitchen. He had his back to
me, looking in the refrigerator for something. I entered the room, grabbed a
chef’s knife from the block on the counter and did the same thing to this
guy as I did his buddy watching TV. I slit him across the throat, artery to
artery. He turned, spraying blood all over me, and fell at my feet. I caught
him, keeping him from making a loud thud as he fell and laid him on the
floor in front of the fridge. Then I shut the door of the fridge and moved on.
Most of my kills ended up like that, easy throat slits. One ended up being
a stab to the back of the head simply because he was bent over and I
couldn’t get to his neck. He had let out a little yelp when I did it, but no one
heard because the others on the floor were dead.
By the time I reached Oleg I had killed eleven of his men. I was covered
in blood from head to toe, but I was still alive and so was Winnie. She
hadn’t let off a shot with the gun, so I assumed I had gotten to everyone that
could have gotten to her. That to me was number one.
Number two was taking care of Oleg.
When I walked onto the deck he was sitting there with three of his men,
the three who had been with him on Malcolm’s boat. They were drinking
and laughing, listening to a Russian rap track I had never heard before.
There was one more man behind them in the captain’s cabin, steering the
yacht.
My target was oblivious until I walked over to the stereo and shut it off.
The silence rang across the deck, leaving the waves to create the only music
for them to listen to. I was not upset about that, the music had been horrible.
They all looked up at me and I grinned. I must have looked a little crazy,
smiling with blood dripping from my beard, but I really didn’t care how I
looked to them. They had shoved me in a dog crate and were going to bring
me to Russia where they would skin me alive in the street to prove to others
that Oleg couldn’t be crossed.
He was not going to make it back to Russia.
The three men ran at me and when they got close I dropped to the floor at
the last minute, surprising my drunk assailants. They stumbled past me and
I attacked the first two at the ankles. I slit the back of one ankle each,
causing them to hobble on that leg. They called it the Achilles heel for a
reason and no one I knew could stand on that kind of damage. They could
put all their weight on the other leg, and they would try, but they wouldn’t
get very far.
The third one got my knife to his crotch. There was no easy way to
retrieve it as he fell, so I left it there in his groin. He pulled at it, trying to
get it out, but it was stuck, lodged in his pelvis somewhere. Blood poured
out of his crotch, wetting the front of his pants. He was screaming and to
shut him up, I reached over, took his head in both of my hands and I
twisted, fast and hard. There was a crunching sound and the man stopped
screaming.
I did this while I stared at Oleg. He was still holding his drink, watching
me as if he had no cares in the world. He swirled his drink and sipped it
while the two other lackeys of his that had gone past me hopped over to me,
knives in their hands now. They swung at me at the same time, but I
dodged. They were slowed not just from the type of injury and because of
the pain, but the amount of alcohol in their system was greatly aiding in
speeding up their blood loss. They made stupid mistakes, overreaching and
putting all their weight into it. I tolerated it for a few minutes before I
grabbed the arm of one of the guys, moved behind him to use him as a
human shield against his buddy, broke the guy’s arm over my knee and
stole the knife. He howled in pain and I took the knife I had stolen from him
and shoved it into his ear.
He dropped and his friend stared at his corpse as if wondering if he had
done that or not. It gave me enough time to pull the knife from the downed
guy’s ear and throw it at guy number 2. It landed deep in his throat. In a
state of shock, he fumbled for the knife and yanked on it. He pulled it from
his throat and the blood sprayed. He fell forward, dead, just like the other
two.
Slowly, I leaned down, took the knife out of the last guy’s hand and
started toward Oleg.
“Ochen' krasivoye zrelishche, Ryurik, no na etom tvoya popytka pobega
zakanchivayetsya,” he said.
A very pretty show, Rurik, but your escape attempt ends here.
He pulled my gun out of his jacket pocket, cocked it and pointed it at me.
I stopped walking toward him and stared him down. We had been in this
position before, back when he wanted to leave the Crows to join the mafia.
Only it had been I with the gun trained on him. I hadn’t shot him even
though I didn’t like him because I had wanted to stop the killing then. I had
wanted to end the trail of bodies I left in my wake. Of course after he left,
our leader decided his death would be my last.
That didn’t work out very well in any aspect, now had it?
“Davay, Oleg, strelyay v menya, no eto budet posledneye, chto ty
sdelayesh', tak chto schitay,” I dared him, my hand tightening on the knife.
 Go ahead and shoot me, Oleg, but it will be the last thing you do, so
make it count.
I ran at him and he shot. Army training kicked in and I twisted my body
to reduce the target and protect my vitals. I felt the bullet go through the top
of my right arm and I ignored it, one thing and one thing only in my mind.
It wasn't life threatening so it wasn’t important. He shot again and that one
missed. I could see the closer I got that he was shaking. He knew that if I
reached him I would kill him with no hesitation. I had given him one
chance and then he had gotten lucky, but now, he was all out of luck and I
wasn’t passing out chances.
I could see his death in his eyes. He knew I would have no mercy.
That was probably why he decided to jump over the edge instead of face
me.
One moment he was standing before me and I was closing the distance
between us, the next he turned around, hoisted himself over the edge of the
railing and dropped. There was a splash and when I reached the railing I
looked over. He was bobbing up and down in the water like a buoy.
I stood there for a moment trying to figure out what to do. I could run
down and see if I could reach him with the Ski-doo, or at least head him off
at the pass if that was what his plan was, or I could talk to the guy driving
the ship to get as far away from him as possible.
I decided on that option, mostly because the Captain’s cabin was closest.
I headed to the door and threw it open. It startled the guy driving and
when he turned around I saw all the blood drain from his face. Clearly he
had not heard the commotion going on outside. When I looked at the walls I
could see why. They were lined with foam, most likely to keep the noise
and the music from the party floor from invading his space and
concentration.
“What’s your name?” I asked. He hesitated and had to clear his throat
twice, but he finally answered.
“Adam, sir.”
“Alright, Adam, I am going to offer you a deal. I have five million
dollars saved up. I will give you half if you turn this yacht around right now
and head back to the United States. Now I was in the Russian army and I
learned a hell of a lot of shit in the service. I could probably figure out how
to drive this thing, but I would rather have you do it. I would strongly
suggest you take it because the only other option is I kill you right now and
dump your body overboard for the sharks. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes sir.” He said and looked up at me. He was much shorter, probably
closer to Winnie’s height and he was small, maybe only a kid.
“What do you want to do?” I asked him.
“I want to head back to the United States, sir.” He said and I nodded.
“Good answer. Now, my girl and I will be doing some cleaning. All the
other occupants of this boat are no longer your problem. The only people
you need to worry about are me and Winnie. Is that understood?”
“Ye-yes, sir.” He said and stood straighter, turned around and started
turning the boat around. “Whatever you say sir.”
I nodded and walked out of the cabin. Then I looked over the side again
to see if Oleg was anywhere.
He was trying to swim towards the Ski-doo opening, it looked like. He
was a few yards down from where he had been, but now the boat was
moving away from him and the waves the boat was kicking up were starting
to jostle him too much. He was heading away from the boat now and I
could hear him yelling.
Well, it was his fault he chose the water instead of my knife. I would
have thought a quick death would have been better than drowning in the
ocean, but then again, what did I know?
I headed back down to Winnie and found her at the top of the stairs,
holding the gun. She took one look at me and lowered it, her footsteps
carrying her over to me so fast she was almost a blur. Before I could stop
her, she threw her arms around my neck and hugged me to her, not caring
that I was covered in blood. I held on to her with one arm, the uninjured
one, and wished I didn’t have to let her go.
“You did it.” She said in amazement. “You saved us. I can’t believe it.
You are amazing, Rurik.”
She was wrong of course, but I would let her believe it for a little while
longer.
Chapter Twenty
Winnie

I
started running a shower for him even though he protested. Rurik
assured me he could clean up himself, but I wouldn’t have it. I had
spent a whole half an hour at least listening to the quiet of the boat around
me, trying to guess where he was and if he was ok. I had images in my head
of someone killing him without my ever knowing. Not until they came for
me anyway.
I worried that I would never see him again alive and it broke my heart. I
didn’t want him to have to go through what he did, but I was so happy he
had. Now we had the boat, a way to get home and he had taken care of the
man who had put a bounty on his head. He no longer had to worry about the
Russians, not unless someone else carried a personal grudge against him.
He was free, which meant he didn’t have to kill people for a living
anymore.
Or baby sit silly young girls who didn’t want to listen to him when he
was right.
So much could have been avoided if I had just listened to him.
 But that aside, I wanted to see what had become of my family and seeing
as I didn’t know where the supposed Russian safe house was, I thought
going back to my uncle’s house was the best place to start. We were already
heading back to the United States, so it made perfect sense.
When the water was to a warm but not hot temperature, I led Rurik into
the stall. It was big enough for both of us and seeing as I had hugged him
while he was covered in fresh blood, I figured we could take a shower
together. I stripped my clothes off in the shower, figuring the shirt at least
was ruined and so were the pants. I would keep the bra and panties, but they
needed to be washed anyway.
Then I helped Rurik take his shirt off. Blood washed away from his
shoulder showing me a cut that went straight across. It wasn’t terribly deep,
but it was bleeding and it looked like it hurt. I touched it gently and looked
at him.
“What happened here?” I asked. He shrugged his good shoulder.
“Oleg shot at me. One of the bullets winged me. I’ll be alright.”
“I’ll bandage it after it’s clean, but you need to clean it well, otherwise it
could get infected.”
I got another shoulder shrug.
I leaned over and found a loofa. I coated it in body wash that smelt like
Irish Spring but wasn’t and started to rub him with it. The lather went from
white to pink as I started at his head, down his neck, his shoulders and back.
I washed his chest and his arms, making sure to scrub his hands and beneath
his fingernails. When I was done with that, I took off his pants and boxers,
sliding the wet fabric down, trying not to hurt him.
He stepped out of them when I asked and he kicked them into the corner
of the shower to mingle with my own sodden mess.
 “You shouldn’t be taking care of me like this,” he said and I continued
soaping up his lower half. He wasn’t excited and it wasn’t sexual, it was
healing and showing him I cared. Sometimes that meant more than sex.
Actually it always meant more than sex, but often was less fun. Especially
when one of the parties didn’t want to be cared for. “You should be running
away screaming right now.”
“Why? Because you did what you had to do to save us from death? They
would have killed you in Russia and they would have killed me or worse in
Boston. We were going to die and you made it so we can survive. You
shouldn’t be down on yourself for that,” I told him.
He stared off into space as he answered, looking at something I couldn’t
see.
“You saved us, Rurik. I know you are going down a dark road in your
head right now, but you saved us and that is all I will ever remember of this
portion of our trip. You have been saving me since day one and I could
never thank you enough for it. You are my life, Rurik, because I owe you
everything.”
“Don’t say that.” He muttered, but without much enthusiasm. “You
deserve so much more than me. You deserve someone with less blood on
their hands, someone who can hold you and love you with tenderness, not
with pain and suffering. That is all I offer you Winnie because that is all I’m
good at. Fuck, I can’t even make love to you without wanting to sink my
teeth into you or choke you.”
“I like that stuff, Rurik,” I told him and lifted his chin so he could really
see me. The blood was gone from his face and now instead of deadly, he
just looked sad. “So your love language is a little different than most
people, so what? I like it. I want it. You make me feel things I have never
felt before and guess what, I know these things about you and I love you
anyway. There is nothing wrong with that and I don’t want anything, or
anyone, else. So please stop trying to determine what I do or don’t deserve.
Don’t I deserve to be happy?”
“Of course,” he said as if it were obvious.
“Well, then, you make me happy. Let me be happy and be with you in
whatever form that looks like. Unless you don’t want me…” I hesitated, but
his eyes snapped to mine and we locked eyes.
“I want you more than I want to breathe, Winnie,” he said and my heart
melted.
“Then let me be with you. Let me love you. And let me decide what I
deserve. This,” I waved my hands in the air indicating the rest of the boat
where the bodies still lay where they fell. “This bothers me less than you
might think. I grew up attached to the Italian mafia after all and my family
did their best to keep me away from everything, but it didn’t always work.
I’ve heard stories and I’ve seen things over the years. I’m not naive and I’m
not squeamish. This was necessary for our survival and I thank you for it.”
He looked at me for a long time, the water falling on both of us. Finally
he nodded and kissed me gently on the lips. I kissed him back and we
embraced each other in the shower, letting the water attempt to wash away
our pain and fear.
When we were clean, dried, dressed and refreshed, we started the dirty
business of getting the bodies off the boat and cleaning up all the blood.
Rurik found an oversized long sleeved shirt that he put over his own
clothes. He picked up the bodies and dumped them overboard while I
attacked the areas that needed cleaning, bleaching everything and mopping,
cleaning the blood off the ceiling in some cases and throwing anything that
couldn’t be cleaned overboard.
After a few of the bodies were dumped I noticed a group of sharks
following us. They began devouring the bodies that were dumped,
disposing of more of the evidence.
It was a long and hard job that took the few days it took to get back to the
states. By that time Rurik and Adam had an agreement. He would dump the
yacht somewhere off the coast of Canada and then travel wherever he
wanted using the money Rurik gave him. Neither of them told me how
much it was, but it sounded like it was enough to make Adam be able to
travel for life, making videos on the best places to visit. It was going to give
him a whole new life and he was excited for it. I couldn’t blame him, it
sounded like a dream come true for him, especially seeing as he had so
much debt from going to Harvard for three years, which was why he had
taken the job Oleg had offered him to begin with.
Adam dropped us off back at the dock where the jeep was parked. I was
happy to get off the boat and be on land. I wasn’t exactly against boats, I
enjoyed being out on the ocean with my uncle, but now I might think twice
before agreeing to a long-distance boat ride.
We waved as Adam pulled away from the dock and headed back out to
the ocean. We turned, happy to get back into the jeep. We placed out bags in
the trunk and buckled up, Rurik behind the wheel, me in the passenger seat
without any worries about being there.
“Ready to find out what’s going on with your family?” he asked and I
nodded.
“Yeah. Let’s go find my dad and my uncle.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Rurik

W
innie directed me to where her uncle lived. We figured we would
start with him seeing as he was the one who had put her father in
hiding and he was the last one she had spoken to. I would have pulled over
to let Winnie take the wheel and drive us instead of her telling me where to
go, but she was jittery and the closer we got to her uncle’s place, the less
control she seemed to have.
She was nervous and she was letting it get the best of her. I couldn’t
blame her of course. If I thought Winnie was in danger I would go stir crazy
in a car trying to get to her.
We passed out of the city and back the way we had come when we were
driving to the docks. I thought about those last nights in the motel and
wondered what our lives would be like after this. Would she want me to
stay with her when I didn’t have to be her bodyguard? We had said I love
you to one another, but those were under dire circumstances. Did it still
count? Did she still feel the same way?
And since when did I turn into a giant emotional marshmallow, worried
about this crap?
 Since her, of course.
I looked over at her in the passenger seat and thought about how we
would move in together with Lucy, in a house with a big fenced in backyard
and a garage. We would have friends over for barbecues and charades, or
whatever. It had been so long since I had lived in one place I didn’t even
know what people did when they got together for a night of fun. Winnie
would know though.
Would she want all that? Would she want a house with a library where
she would read all day and let me support her?
I had no idea, but I knew I wanted to find out. I wanted to be with her for
the rest of my life, however long that might be. I really hoped she felt the
same.
We pulled up to the house she said was her uncle’s and I stared wide eyed
at how huge the house was. We had traveled a good half mile down the
driveway to a giant stone mansion that looked a little like someone was
trying to recreate the house from Casper, just in stone. There were rounded
towers and wooden shingles on the roof, perfectly square windows with
single panes of glass in them, a small garden in the front that circled around
to the back of the house. There were horses in the fields grazing and there
was a giant garage area that actually had a horse drawn carriage in it. I
parked on the cobblestone driveway with the fountain in the center spewing
water and I looked at Winnie with a raised eyebrow.
“What?” she asked and I shrugged.
“I don’t know, is your uncle a magical wizard or something? Is he going
to wave a magic wand and turn me into a toad because I fell in love with his
niece?”
She snorted.
 “No, but he will find it funny that you think that. His mother really loved
fairies and magical things so his father decked out the house to make her
happy. When she died, he gave the house to my mother and uncle, which is
why he lives there now, to honor my grandmother.”
“Hey I can’t blame him, the house is gorgeous. I just feel like I’m
stepping into a storybook or something,” I said and got out of the car.
As soon as I did, I knew it was a mistake. The air around the place was
off and I could smell something somewhere burning. That was when I
noticed the cars around the side of the building and a man with a shock of
orange hair coming towards us from that side of the building. He hadn’t
noticed us yet, but I knew as soon as he looked up from the phone he was
staring at, we were going to be in big trouble.
Luckily, Winnie saw him the same time I did and ducked down, using the
car to block her body from view. I didn’t have that luxury, but I didn’t
exactly want to hide. I rushed to the front of the building, keeping my back
to the wall and when the man rounded the corner, I got behind him, put my
arm around his neck, got his jugular in the crook of my arm, locked my
hand around my wrist and squeezed.
He gasped for air, but he wasn’t getting enough and he dropped his phone
so he could claw at my arm. It didn’t last long though, he faded, falling
asleep in my arms. I let go of his throat and dragged him to the front of the
building. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with him, but clearly Winnie
had a plan because she came out of the car, opened the trunk, dug through it
real quick then came towards me carrying a dog leash.
I propped him up against the wall and Winnie put his wrists through the
slip lead and tied his wrists to his Ankles. I watched her do this in record
time and was amazed at her ingenuity.
 “That was impressive,” I told her and she shrugged, but I saw a smile
hiding on her lips.
From there we headed around the side of the house. There was a line of
cars that Winnie verified were not her uncles nor did she recognize any of
them for being any that her uncle’s men drove. I took out my knife and
popped the tires of all 7 for good measure. If it turned out that the cars
belonged to the Italians I would apologize later.
Around to the back of the house there seemed to be a little campground
thing going on complete with a bonfire. There were tables and chairs in the
fire, burning, which was what I had smelled. If they belonged to Winnie’s
Grandmother I would feel bad. Her stuff didn’t deserve to get trashed just
because some assholes didn’t like something one of the mob did.
Suddenly a trio of people came rushing out the back door all holding
guns. They let off a volley of shots into the people who were around the
campfire. Everyone was shot and there were yells and cries of annoyance
and pain, but then the trio went back into the house and disappeared.
“What the fuck was that?” I whispered and Winnie shook her head.
“I don’t know, but I think that the Italians are inside and the Irish are
outside. At least that's what it looks like right now. Come on, let's go around
the other side and go through the side door. Maybe they can lead us to my
uncle.” She suggested and I followed her lead. We went back around to the
front of the house and saw that the red headed guy was still sleeping in the
flower bed, then around the other side of the house. There was a side door
that she tried, but it was locked. She knocked on it four times then paused,
knocked three times, paused and finally knocked five times.
The door opened and we were ushered in by men in black body armor
and masks holding automatic weapons. They pointed the guns at us and we
put up our hands. One of the men took off his mask and glared at us.
“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded. I expected Winnie to cower or at
least refrain from answering him, but no, instead she got in his face.
“Who the fuck am I? I’m Johnny Estrada’s niece, that’s who the fuck I
am. Who the fuck are you?”
The guy stammered.
“I … ummm… We were told….”
“What, you were told I was being held safe somewhere, guarded, by
chance? Yeah well that doesn’t work out well when the Irish blow up your
house and your car. It also doesn’t help when the guy who helped hire the
bodyguard sells both the bodyguard and the niece out to the people who
want to kill them.” She said and the poor guy practically crumbled in front
of her. She didn’t care though, she just kept right on going. “I’m having a
real bad fucking day, actually, I’ve had a bad fucking week so please,
someone tell me what the fuck is going on in my uncle’s house?”
“The Irish came and bombarded us. We’ve been stuck here for a few
weeks. They seem to think they can wait us out, like they think they are
going to starve us out or something, but they don't know about the tunnels
so we have been picking them off one by one,” one of the guys explained.
“Or three by three if we plan it right,” another said.
“Your uncle and your father are in the safe room,” someone else said.
“Would you like for us to bring you to them?”
“Yes, please, thank you.” She said, all smiles again. She really was just a
ray of Sunshine.
We were led through a labyrinth of hallways and tunnels until we were
officially underground. I could tell by the temperature that we were going
further downward into the earth but it was a gradual shift. Soon we came to
a metal door surrounded by rocks. The guy leading us there knocked four
times, then three then another five knocks like Winnie had done. I didn’t
know what the significance of the number was, but it seemed to work as the
secret code.
The door opened and a very skinny man with the same colored hair as
Winnie stood, looking at us. He wore a suit that was beginning to look too
big on him from weight loss and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a long
time, but not purposefully. The beard he was growing was bushy and
unkempt.
When his eyes saw Winnie they lit up and he was like a new man,
completely reanimated.
“Winnifred!” he exclaimed and hugged her to him. She hugged him just
as tightly until there was a yell from deeper inside.
“Don’t leave the door open! You wouldn’t want the Irish to get in now,
would you?” That voice I had heard before, but usually over Malcolm’s
phone. Johnny Estrada rounded the corner behind the man hugging Winnie
and saw what the commotion was about. Winnie waved him over and the
three of them hugged each other, the family reunited after a crisis.
I stood beside them, looking back the way we had come just in case. I
didn’t like the idea of being jumped.
“Come in, come in! We have so much to talk about. Rurik! So glad to see
you are well!” Estrada exclaimed. “Come in and we will chat. I want to
know all about what’s been going on. I haven’t been able to get service
down here. Are you both alright?”
He looked between us and let go of Winnie to head over to a couple of
easy chairs next to a working fireplace. I wondered where the chimney went
up, but then shook my head.
 “No, sir, you guys catch up. I have work to do.” I told him.
“What work?” Winnie’s father asked. “You’ve already protected Winnie
and brought her to us. Your task is done.”
“You are under siege and I can aid in protecting more soldiers and getting
you your house back. I will rest after, but knowing Winnie is here safe with
you is all I need.” I told them then headed back down the corridor. Etrada’s
men closed the door behind me and we headed back to the surface.
“Are all of your men inside the house?” I asked. The men behind me
muttered to themselves and nodded.
“Yes. So far as I know we are all accounted for inside.”
“Alright. I’m going to go hunting. I’ll knock the code knock when I want
to be let back in. Do not open it for any other noise. Understand? In no
instance should any of you come outside.”
“Yes sir,” they both said and I turned to the one right behind me.
“Give me your knife.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Winnie

I
stayed in the safe room while Rurik went out to do what he did best. He
might not agree with me on that, but being able to take out dozens of
people by himself with nothing but a knife really was an artform. I had no
worries that he wouldn’t be safe because he had faced bigger and badder
people than the Irish.
My father sat in his chair watching me with knowing eyes. I kept looking
towards the door hoping to see him, not out of nervousness, but out of
eagerness. My father noticed and brought it to my uncle’s attention.
“I think our Winnifred has fallen for the bodyguard.” Dad pointed out,
smiling. Uncle Johnny raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair.
“Oh? Do tell.”
“I… We…” I could feel myself blushing and had no idea how to word it.
How did I tell them that I fell in love with him not just because he was my
bodyguard and had saved my life so many times I couldn’t count anymore,
but because he was sweet and kind when he didn’t want to be and he was
calm and collected when I wasn’t. He was gentle yet firm when the
occasion called for it and he treated me like gold. I don’t think I could
explain it to them if I had the rest of my life to do so, but I tried. “We just
kind of fell for each other. We have terrific chemistry and even though I
hated him at first… I can’t picture him not in my life, you know?”
My father smiled knowingly.
“Your mother and I were very much like that. She hated me at first. She
thought I was… oh what were her words… an ‘overbearing pretentious
asshole’,” he laughed and so did my uncle.
“Yeah, she hated you. Swore up and down that she didn’t want anything
to do with you, then one day she comes to me and says she’s going to marry
you. Threw me for a loop, that was for sure!” my uncle chuckled.
“So.. you get it? It’s alright?” I asked, feeling shy all of a sudden. I
wasn’t sure why, but it was important that they understood.
“Of course it’s alright!” Dad exclaimed. “If you are in love, you’re in
love! I would never tell you you couldn’t be with someone you fell for
because they were hired to follow you around to begin with. Rurik did his
job and he did it well!”
“Maybe a little too well.” My uncle joked and I scowled at him, which
only made him laugh more. “Seriously though, he is a good guy. He's done
a lot of work for me over the years and Malcolm spoke highly of him.”
“That reminds me.” I started, looking at both of them. “I need to tell you
about Malcolm.”
I spent the next twenty minutes or so telling them about our issues since
the last time I had spoken to either one of them. I told them about my car
blowing up and catching my house on fire. I told them about traveling
around to the motel rooms and having to leave Lucy with Arlow. I told
them about how Malcolm had tricked us and betrayed us all. I told them
about what happened on the yacht… well, most of it. I left out the part
about Rurik and I having sex, but everything else was there. I even told
them about Adam who had helped us out.
By the end of it my uncle was so mad that the vein in his forehead had
started popping out.
“I can’t believe him! After all I’ve done for him, he planned on selling
you to the Irish? Wait until I get my hands on that good for nothing
weasel!” he yelled and started pacing. I sat in the chair watching, feeling
bad because I hadn't meant to make him that angry, but he did need to
know. “I wish Rurik had killed him. That bastard!”
Uncle Johnny went on for a while calling him every curse word he could
think of.
“Well, sounds like you’ve had a hell of a month,” my dad said. “Do you
need help finding another home? You are more than welcome to dip into the
savings. That’s what it’s there for after all. I know you wanted to pay for
your house your way the first time, but this is different. You were all set up
and because of my shit, you lost everything. Let me help you build your life
back up.”
“I will let you know once I talk to the insurance people, but I will let you
help me this time. I mean, if it’s that important to you,” I joked, but he
knew I meant it. This was a little different than me just getting a house
instead of paying rent.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, Rurik came back. He was not
covered in blood this time and he hugged me back when I launched into his
arms. The other five guards that were with him catcalled and whistled but it
didn’t matter. He was back, he was safe and he had saved the day yet again.
He hadn’t said as much but I knew he wouldn’t have come back until the
enemy was gone.
 He put an arm around me and turned to my family.
“Mr. Estrada, your premise is clear. I have a few of your men digging a
trench in the field to burn the bodies. There are twenty-three in total, all
Irish, no Italian casualties. No gunshots were let off so no cops should be
called by nosey neighbors and your house has been searched and deemed
safe by all. You may return topside, sir.” He said and all the men saluted,
including Rurik, though it was with the wrong hand because he had the
other attached to my hip. I liked it there very much.
“That is fantastic, thank you so much, Mr. Gusev. You’ve done
immaculate work both here and with my niece. I cannot repay you enough
for what you have done,” he said and came forward to hug Rurik. He just
stood there, unsure of what to do and it made me laugh. When my uncle
pulled away he clapped Rurik on the shoulders. “Come! Let us have a full
meal and swap stories. I have a proposition for both you and Winnie.”
Uncle Johnny looked at me and winked which meant he was definitely
up to something. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was bound to be
interesting.
We headed up stairs and sat around a large table. All of Uncle Johnny’s
men sat with us and we ordered pizza, apparently something they couldn’t
do for a week and he had wanted pizza since before the siege. Once the
pizza came and everyone was eating, Uncle Johnny leaned over to Rurik
and I to tell us what it was he had in mind.
“So, I know you don’t really know me, Rurik, but I have a feeling we are
going to get to know each other very well, especially with how in love with
my niece you are.”
Rurik opened his mouth, possibly to protest, but then closed it. Denying
our feelings for each other was useless. We had been sitting together
holding hands this whole time.
“I want to offer you a job.” Uncle Johnny said and Rurik nearly spit out
the sip of coke he had just taken. He coughed a little to clear his throat.
“A job?”
“Yes. It would be local, unlike all the rest and it would be much more…”
He thought about that for a moment. “Relaxed. You would be more of an
‘in case of emergency, shatter glass’ kind of bodyguard. You did such a
good job with Winnie against all odds and you came and rescued us, I’m
planning on making you my secret weapon.”
“So… I would be here?” he asked and my uncle nodded.
“Yes, right here as a matter of fact. And I’ve been thinking about the
living situation too. I would want you here at all times; in case of
emergency. So you would have to move in. And I don’t like Winnie being
so far away from me, across the city. Now that the house had been
destroyed and she had no mode of transportation, I think it would be best if
she came to live here with me too.”
Rurik and I looked at each other and then at my uncle.
“You want us to move in here? With you?” I asked and my uncle
shrugged.
“Yes, why not. Your father has been living here too and I think the place
is plenty big enough. Lucy can have space to run until her heart is content
and there will always be someone around to watch her. Plus when you start
to have kids, they will have a place to play and you won’t have to go far for
a babysitter,” he pointed out and my cheeks went red, I could feel them.
“That sounds like an amazing offer, but I have to do something first,”
Rurik said and to my absolute shock, he turned to me, pushed his chair out
from the table and got down on one knee.
 The whole room went silent and all I could see was him. He reached for
my hand and I gave it to him, shaking slightly and feeling like I was
dreaming. He smiled at me and kissed my hand before looking back up at
me with a serious face.
“Winnifred Monroe, I know we haven't known each other for very long
but I cannot picture my life without you. I am normally a man of very few
words, but because of you, I suddenly have something to say. You have
tested my patience, time and again, yet still you have me coming back for
more, asking you to stay with me through all the shit we have been through.
You seem to understand what I need when I need it, and I don’t even have
to say anything. You are resourceful and strong. You are independent and
fierce. You are everything I could ever want in a woman. Hell you are more
than I ever thought possible out of a partner and I would be a complete
dumbass if I ever let you go. So, before your family has us moving in
together and things become awkward and gray lined again with labels and
titles, let me place the second most important title on you. Will you let me
call you my fiancee and eventually call you my wife?” he asked and I could
hardly speak. All I could do was nod, grab his beard and pull him up so I
could kiss him silly.
There was a roar of cheers from the rest of the table and I didn’t even
care. I was happier than I ever thought I could be. Now there was just one
thing missing.
“Come on.” I said to him and I took his hand, pulling Rurik to the front
door. “We have to go get Lucy.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue (Rurik)

N
o one had ever shown me how to be a good husband.
My first example turned into a brutal story that ended with me
being an orphan on the streets of one of Russia’s biggest cities. After that it
seemed like every man I came across that was married was either miserable
or cheating on their wife. Or both.
Not one of them seemed to be content with what they had and before I
married Winnie I was terrified I would screw everything up.
I shouldn’t have been worried.
Being Winnie’s husband was the best thing in my life and was the easiest
by far. We communicated on everything, told each other what we expected
from one another and checked in multiple times a day. If she needed
something I was there, even if the guys called me whipped. I didn’t mind.
She was the best thing to ever happen to me, why wouldn’t I want to be
there for her? Why wouldn’t I want to make our relationship better? She
was always there for me when I needed it.
And after what I had done on the boat, I needed a lot from her.
 I had never been one to have too many nightmares, but something about
having to walk back to Winnie covered in blood the way I was messed me
up. I relived it for a while. Sometimes it was the blood of our friends and I
couldn’t figure out why I had killed them. Sometimes I was covered in her
blood and I couldn’t stop stabbing her.
The worst one was the one where Oleg and Malcolm had her strung up
on the deck of the boat, naked and were taking turns skinning her with a
potato peeler. I had thrown up all over the bed with that one and poor
Winnie had cleaned it up while I shook in the shower. I had told her over
and over again that she didn’t have to do that, but she just shrugged and said
that that's what we do for our loved ones when they need us.
I will never forget that.
I was sitting in the back field watching the sunrise with Lucy chasing
rabbits through the grass when I heard her footsteps coming up behind me. I
had shaved my beard and grown out my hair a little so it brushed my ears
and I had to slick it back a little. Winnie told me it made me look more
Italian, which I didn’t mind at all. The less Russian I could appear the
better.
The bounty on my head had doubled after the body of Oleg washed up on
shore somewhere in Spain. It had been pretty hard to ID him, but the
Russian mob had pretty much known he was gone and why.
I doubted they would come looking for me in the house of Estrada
though.
Winnie put her arms around me and I hugged her. The wheat swayed
back and forth with the breeze and Lucy took off barking at something a lot
faster than a rabbit. Another dog maybe? A fox? She would be back though
and she knew how to handle herself though so I wasn’t terribly worried.
Neither was Winnie.
She sat down next to me on the blanket and leaned back on her hands so
she could lift her chin to the sky and soak in the morning's first rays on
Sunshine.
“Malcolm’s funeral is today,” she reminded me and I nodded. “Did you
want to go? I know you were kind of colleagues with him, before he turned
into a complete asshat.”
“No, I’m all set with that. They might arrest me if I piss on his casket,” I
said and she laughed patting me on the back.
“Yeah, maybe.”
Malcolm had run to Canada to escape Estrada’s reach, but he had
underestimated it. His men found Malcolm in Quebec trying to start over as
the go to guy for the motorcycle gangs up there. They weren't having it
though and found out he was wanted by Estrada.
The night before our wedding they dropped him off on our doorstep with
a sign stapled into his chest telling us congratulations on the nuptials. I
thought it was clever and I enjoyed it very much. I even tracked them down
to tell them so myself and we have been buddies ever since.
After that, Malcolm did time in Estrada’s personal jail cell. I had no idea
where it was, but I knew it couldn’t be somewhere nice. Eight months later
he hung himself in the jail cell using his blanket. I couldn’t say I was
surprised or heartbroken, but I was a little upset that I couldn't do it myself.
Winnie didn’t want me to. She said it would just add fuel to the fire of my
anger, not quench it.
So I listened to her because she was right and after all she knew me best.
 I leaned over to her and kissed her mouth. She kissed me back and she
tasted so sweet, like honey and raspberry jam. I wanted more and started
kissing along her jaw and down her neck. I brought up one hand to cup her
breast. I squeezed and she gasped.
“Rurik, I have something I need to tell you.”
I ignored her and fondled her breast, finding her nipple and tweaking it
just a little. She gasped and I moved my hand down so I could slip it down
the front of her jeans.
“Rurik…” She started again, but I moved my fingers between her skin
and her panties and found the magic button. I rubbed her clit and her back
bowed. She arched, pressing her chest to the sky and I dipped lower so I
could pull her button up shirt away with my teeth and nibble on her breast.
I had her panting before she even knew what to do with herself.
“Rurik, I need to talk to you. Please.” She panted.
There was something about the way she said please that had me stopping.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to take her clothes off and fuck her right here in
the field, but if she needed something I wanted to make sure I could do it
for her. No matter what state the front of my jeans happened to be in.
“What’s wrong, Sunshine?” I asked, sitting up. She was still panting
slightly, but she straightened and fixed her clothing so it covered everything
back up.
“Nothing is wrong, I just… I have some news for you and I’m not sure
how you are going to take it.”
I hesitated, my wonderful morning all of a sudden having a gray cloud.
“Okay….”
“Well we never really talked about it and I know you have issues because
of you being an orphan and I didn’t have the most normal childhood either,
especially growing up around the mob. I had never wanted that for my kids,
if I ever wanted kids and I didn’t know how you would feel about it,” she
blurted and I scratched my head, not following. I was sure there was a point
in there, it was just buried under a lot of babble.
“I’m sorry, love, can you repeat that for me?”
“Well, I just…” She hesitated for a moment and then pulled something
out of her pocket and handed it to me.
It was a sandwich bag. Inside the sandwich bag was a white stick. I
looked at it closer and there were two oval windows on it, each one had a
blue line through it. On the side of the stick there was what looked like a
map legend. It said that if there was two ovals and only one of them had a
line, then it meant not pregnant, but if there were two lines…
“You’re pregnant?” I asked, looking at her closely. She nodded shyly and
placed her hand on her stomach.
“Seems so. It’s early yet, only about five weeks, but according to the
books there is a heartbeat. I just… I didn’t know how you felt about it. We
had never talked about kids and...”
I stopped her rant with a kiss.
I kissed her deeper than I had ever kissed her before and placed my hands
on the sides of her face. I pulled away once we were breathless and needed
to breathe more than we needed to kiss. She chuckled as she panted,
rubbing her forehead with the palm of her hand.
“Was that your answer?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it was,” I told her and kissed her again quickly.
My heart was beating out of my chest and my brain was on fire. A baby?
We were having a baby? I couldn’t even picture it, the idea was so foreign
to me. But the idea of Winnie pregnant with our child? It struck a chord in
me deep down that made me want her even more if that was possible.
“So you… are happy?” She asked hopefully and I smiled at her, placing
my hand on her knee.
“I am more than happy. I am excited. I’m scared too, don’t get me wrong,
I’m terrified, but the thought of a child running around, a little piece of you
mixed with a little piece of me? That just sounds like the best gift anyone
could ever give me.” I moved to pull her into my side and put my arm
around her. She snuggled into me and I could see happy tears start to form
behind her eye lids.
“Oh good, I was worried. I didn’t want you to hate the idea or get mad or
something. We have never talked about having kids and I know that
children are a topic you’ve avoided because of your childhood, I didn’t
want to trigger anything in your brain and cause any issues.”
“How could a combination of us be bad?” I asked and kissed the top of
her head. “All we have to do is promise each other that we won’t kill each
other and any issues with my childhood are solved.”
I was only half joking about that, but she didn’t need to know that. She
took it as a joke and chuckled, putting out her pinky finger. I curled my own
around it and squeezed.
“I promise not to kill you,” she said and laughed.
“Same,” I said and she laughed even harder.
We sat and watched the rest of the sunrise then, watched the birds play in
the trees at the side of the field. Lucy came bounding back towards us and
all of a sudden there came a horrible stench. Winnie started making gagging
noises and I got to my feet so I could pull her up, both of us looking around
for the source of the stench.
 Lucy stood there with her mouth wide open, her eyes squinting and her
back half attempting to wag her excitement.
Lucy had not been chasing another dog or a fox. Apparently she had been
chasing a skunk that decided it had had enough and sprayed her in the face.
“Get up to the house, love, I’ll take care of the stinky mutt for you,” I
laughed and drew Lucy’s attention so she wouldn’t go after Winnie. She
had her hand over her mouth and nodded, stumbling to her feet and
attempting to run back to the house. I waited for her to be far enough away
to start walking up to the house with Lucy, holding an old tennis ball in my
hand so she would follow me. Luckily for us she had given up her hatred of
me when I brought Winnie back to pick her up from Arlow’s the night the
siege ended. She must have been so happy to see Winnie that any
wrongdoing I might have caused her was forgotten and she had even
greeted me like an old friend.
Now she was happy to play with me in the mornings before I left the
house to do whatever uncle Estrada was going to have me do with him that
day.
Lucky for me, because it was going to be a lot easier to give her a bath
outside with her liking me than it would be if she was still trying to chew
my face off.
“Thank you, my love!” Winnie called to me as I led Lucy to the horse
barn. There was an old tub behind it that I planned on bathing her in. I
hoped it worked, but my experience with this sort of thing was slim to none.
I had a feeling both Lucy and I were going to end up sleeping in the barn
for the foreseeable future.
“Anything for you, my Sunshine!” I called back to her and if she didn’t
know that it was the truth after this fiasco, she never would.
 The end
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BLURB:
Diving into a fake marriage with my emotionally damaged but
smokin' hot bestie is a recipe for trouble.

He's the one night stand type.

But Matteo has an ability to awaken a fire that no other man has ignited.
Just looking at him sparks an inferno.
Ever since we were teenagers I secretly dreamed of marrying him one day.

So when he needed a pretend wife to avoid jail, I stepped into the role
without hesitation.

As our fake marriage grows familiar, the line between reality and make-
believe blurs. Pretending to be with Matteo feels strangely natural, almost
too easy.

I can't help but wonder how the same hands that caress my face with
tenderness could effortlessly carry out unspeakable acts of violence for the
merciless mob.
I wonder if his feelings are genuine or just another charade.

I'm now torn between the excitement of our fake marriage and the fear
that he might run away. Being with Matteo is dangerous, yet I am
willing to embrace the risk, the thought of losing him weighs heavier
than the secrets we carry.
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