He walks back in, as naked as the day he was born, and just stands there looking at me. I’m happy enough to look back at him. Still too attractive for his own good, certainly for mine by the feel of what I’ve just been through. Roughed up hair now, a dirty smile hanging loose on his lips, and my scratches on his frame. I stare at one gash on his chest I must have caused, then run my finger over the cuts he sliced on me back at the other place. Matching. I miss my little knife.
Two men walk in from somewhere after a while. I don’t even have the energy to be surprised, or scared. I just watch as they drop bags on the floor, pass him some keys, and leave.
“What more damage can you do with keys, Malachi?”
He doesn’t answer. He dresses me instead. Leather. Tight leather and little else. I sit in it as he gets himself dressed, far too busy watching his muscles turn and twist to care what’s coming next. He’s beautiful. Still, and regardless of what he just did to me. Soft when needed. Lightning aggressive when he feels like it. And, as much as I hate to admit to liking it, powerful.
But that heart he told me about, I don’t know what that means at all.
Chapter 11
Malachi
She’s lifted then put on her feet, my hands pointing to the boots. She’ll walk from now on. She’ll walk and use her body like she did before – pain or not. This moping around and labouring in whatever state of lethargy she’s become used to ends now.
“Move, Alice.”
She does, slowly, painfully, and then she gazes at me while she’s buckling her boots. There isn’t any need for words. I expect her to understand what’s happening now. Not the actuality of what we’re about to do – the feeling of me. I need her back – want her back. Pain will help her understand that. Pain that is delivered from me and by me. As and when that’s too much for her to bear, she’ll begin to comprehend what I’m asking of her.
I leave and crook a finger at her, pulling her along with me into the elevator at the back of the building. It travels swiftly once she’s inside with me, and I spend my time looking at something dishevelled and yet as captivating as she’s always been. Her make-up’s smeared, patchy under her eyes. And the hair is spiked at angles, showing that aggressive nature of hers that she’s beginning to find again. I like it. Perfectly fucked up. She’s my counterpart – the flip side of this life I exist in while I’m in Manhattan.
“Devil’s night,” she murmurs, looking at herself in the mirror. I wait for more, but none comes. She just eases her neck around, pulls her belt tighter. “We should run.”
We’re not running.
I don’t run from anything.
She looks at me the moment the doors open, frowns. “I can’t,” she says. My brow cocks. “I don’t have a licence.”
I shake my head and walk out to take the helmet off the seat to pass it to her. “The only permission you need is mine. You have it. Use it.” I take the leather gloves and push them onto her hands, grabbing my own helmet soon after. “Let’s see if you can keep up with me.”
“Keep up?”
I swing a leg over the midnight blue Ducati, start the engine. “You’ll never do it by fucking me, or with me, but this is fair enough, little Alice. Might as well try doing it this way. Rebuild yourself.”
She looks at both me and her own black bike. “I can barely walk because of you.”
I chuckle and slip the helmet on. “Think of it as more memories of me on your skin then. Enjoy it.” I rev, begin pulling away a little. “You can grind that sweet cunt of yours on the seat and debase yourself in the burn.” She sneers at that and looks at the men around us, as if I should keep my mouth closed about such things. “You’re wasting time, Alice.”
She stands there as I ease around her in a small circle, revving, and tries speaking to me. I flip the lid down, uninterested in her speaking. I want her moving, acting, using that energy she has to find herself again like she did when I just fucked her.
The look of that movement must aggravate her into action because she yanks the helmet down, buckles it until she’s swinging that leg of hers over and grabbing hold of the machine. It takes seconds, and then she’s peeling out of the basement parking and whizzing up onto the main road.
Following her takes more expertise than I’d given her credit for. She’s fast, aggressive with her driving. Unexpected that she would be, but the precision is surprising. Perhaps I thought she’d be more reckless than she is being, more wild. She isn’t. Not for the first part of the road anyway. I want more than that from her. I need an equal, not a lesser being.
She sits up after a while and takes both her hands off the handlebars, stretches her arms wide. There’s some of my reckless little devil, and it takes me no time at all to capitalize on it. I accelerate and swerve, almost into her, and watch as she scrambles for hold again until we’re side by side. I can see those eyes of hers glaring at me through the visor. My own crinkle, amused, as she shakes her head. I like that thought – side by side. Matched. Equal in all the ways I’ve never had before. No games. No political equations to navigate. Just two, both of whom protect and cherish each other.
I point in front of me at the signs for the freeway, readying her. That’s where we’re going now. We’re going full throttle with no turning back. If we die, we die. But we do that on our own terms – together. We are not ruled. She definitely isn’t. Not by me – not by anyone.
And certainly not by someone who raped her to prove themselves.
My speed increases, and she matches it. Lights get jumped, corners turned carelessly, and she does everything she can to keep up with me. And then we’re there, both of us going up the ramp onto the freeway in the dead of night. Devil's night, she said.
I accelerate, swerve to let her know I mean it. She flips me the bird, accelerates to match me, and tucks in tight to speed away in front of me. She’s right there with me the entire time. As ready to risk her life as I am, as we weave and dismiss the traffic around us. She doesn’t even stop when I hear sirens somewhere, she pulls closer instead until she’s up against me, then peels off down a side ramp.
I wish I could hear her laughter in there, but this moment isn’t for me. It’s for her.
So she can remember who she was to me before.
