He winks at me, his blue eyes sparkling like an ocean lit with bioluminescence. “I’m out for a good time, not a long time.”
He pockets the keys, reaching across me to snatch my bag of goodies, the gun still resting in his lap. Once out of the Jeep, he walks around the back to open my door, holding a hand to help me reach the ground.
“And with your kidnapping and Razek’s murder added to my sentence, I’m going to be occupying the cell next to your son for a very,verylong time.”
Slamming the car door but leaving it unlocked for quick access, he lays his large hand on the curve of my shoulder, steering me ahead of him as he marches us towards the front door.
“You might want to keep that in the forefront of your mind while we have a nice little chat.”
CHAPTERSEVEN
KAI
The farmhouse is betterthan I expected. Used mostly as a storage facility, I’ve heard rumours about it for years but never visited. It’ll do fine for a night.
Nadia breaks off to hunt for painkillers in the bathroom and probably to avoid a conversation with me for as long as possible. Fair enough. She’s had a lot thrown at her in a short space of time. A few minutes delay won’t matter, and it might help me put my thoughts in order, too.
Unlike the last place, this has electricity, access to TV and radio. I can get a sense for the mood out there. Use it to help plan out my route.
First and foremost, I need to plan out what to do with my travelling companion.
The wisest course of action would have been to leave her back at the last house. Disable her car so by the time she found her way back to civilisation, the scant information she had would have been useless to my pursuers.
But I could hardly leave her there with a dead man.
I might have no remorse for killing him, would do it again in a heartbeat, but that doesn’t mean other people won’t miss him.
Given Razek’s position in the gang, if one of our fellow members had found her before the police did, they’d have hurt her far worse than anything I could envisage putting her through.
I recall the torrent of anger that came spilling out of me when Razek punched her, the grip of lust that seized me when I thought she was going to run for the woods, then push those thoughts aside. I’ll examine them later. Right now, I need to take emotion out of it.
Except, the more I try to push aside those feelings, the more they spring forward to fill the gap. I try to consider the major routes up the South Island and end up dwelling on the sensation of her curls under my hand. The press of her warm lips while I held my hand over her mouth, the soft vibrations as she gasped, the judder as her body catapulted over the precipice a moment before mine.
Get a fucking grip.
I physically do just that, grabbing the edge of the table and squeezing hard, making my biceps pop and the large veins scoring my forearms balloon out into sharp relief.
The small action reconnects me with here and now. If I don’t get this right, I’ll be back inside having achieved none of my goals. Back inside for such a long stretch that I’ll be tempted to call it quits.
By the time I get out again, I won’t understand the world any longer. Everyone will move ahead while I stay stuck in the past, like my grandpa in the years before he died, his head living in the eighties like it was his present day.
One shot. A bit of pussy won’t make any difference in the long run. A day spent back behind bars, and I won’t even remember what she felt like, writhing under me. The way her pupils blew up to saucers while my cock stretched out her insides.
For fucks sake!
I slam my hand against the table, palm down at first and when that doesn’t work, a fisted punch, the shock wiping my brain clean in an instant like the pain flicks up the sheet on an etch-a-sketch, leaving it blank.
Then I see her hovering, hesitation pouring from every cell in her body.
“Yes?”
“Could I take a shower here? Is it safe to use the hot water?”
“Safe?” I’m genuinely puzzled.
“No one’s going to be upset if the electricity meter ticks over,” she elaborates.
Something that had never occurred to me. An additional worry to add to the list.
