The change in her voice, the touch of her on my skin, and the excitement of lighting a fire ignite my insides and I steal another quick kiss from her, this time plowing my tongue in her mouth like a pro, making her sigh against me, then purr like a kitty cat.
“Let’s go.”
Chapter
Seven
“He’s so heavy.” Phoenix huffs, bending down and trying to drag the body across the ground while I watch in amusement.
“Dead weight always is.”
“Pun intended?” She laughs, dropping the guys lifeless arms with a heavy thud on the dirt road.
“Absolutely.” I chuckle. “The best way to carry a body is over your center of gravity. Like this.” I add, stooping down, scooping him up, and tossing him over my shoulder, making sure he’s balanced over me before standing straight up with practiced ease.
“And you carry bodies a lot?”
“I do, for work.” I say, adjusting the corpse on my shoulder so the red and grey goo dripping from his head wound doesn’t run down my back. “I’m a firefighter.”
“Oh, my very own first responder. How lucky did I get?”
“Luckier than you know baby girl.” I snicker. “Come on follow me.”
Like the good girl she is, she falls in step behind me, her little shoes barely making any sound on the ground and its overgrowth as we head into the tree line.
The sounds of the woods envelope us as I carry him through the brush, stepping over a fallen tree that has long been down and dead, waiting for her to follow suit, making sure she gets over it before I continue on. Crickets chirp ahead, only quieting when our feet touch their houses, and the occasional hoot of an owl echoes between the branches under the canopy of leaves. The ripple of running water to the north is where I’m headed.
“Where are we going?”
“To the river. We need water.” I answer her, letting her catch up so she’s next to me, her face barely visible in the darkness.
“What are you going to do, float him away?” She pants, jumping over something at her feet in the dark.
“No. Miss nosey, I need to make sure that I’m not going to burn down the entire woods and start a fucking forest fire.”
“Oh…Ooohhh!” She gasps, grabbing onto my bicep to steady herself as I pick up my pace through the trees that are becoming more dense and closer together as the sound of the water gets louder. “Ewww. That’s gross. Can’t we just bury him?”
“With what? You wanna dig a hole with your bare hands baby? Can you make it deep enough?”
“Fuck.”
“Exactly.” I chuckle again, enjoying the way her mind works though. She may just be the perfect woman, even if she is a little…inexperienced at all this murder stuff.
“I have a feeling you’ve done this before. Have you Mister…Hey what’s your name even?” She asks, holding tightly to me as we climb over a large branch and the wood creaks under our weight, the dead bark falling into the leaves and grass below with a quiet whispering.
“Zephyr, but my brothers call me Zeph.” I answer her, shaking my head, because I really shouldn’t be telling her anything, but here I am, being a fucking idiot with a dead asshole on my shoulder, about to teach some innocent woman how to ignite a fucking body.
For fuck’s sake dumbass. What are you doing?
“Zeph, that’s cool, that’s like what?”
“The Greek God of the clouds or some shit I think.”
“I’m the goddess that rose from the ashes. The…”
“Phoenix.” I finish for her, finally able to speak the word aloud without her knowing I already knew that.
It feels like a magic spell as it leaves my lips, like I’m releasing it to the universe for it to do its thing and come back to me tenfold, just like I want her to after this night is over, even though I know the only time I will ever see her again is when I’m sitting outside her house, watching, waiting for just another glimpse of her.
