Page 67 of Ballistic

Nicoleta

An hour must’ve passed before my muscles unspooled, my chest loosened its crushing grip on my lungs, and my head was forced to relent the possibility that Dax had any intentions of letting me go. I blamed the incessant effects of my addiction, that voracious craving for touch, for trampling the natural instincts to protect my heart by pushing away. A maddening battle between body and mind.

Perhaps the only way I could be persuaded to lie next to a man after sex.

He was right: I had been programmed. Trained to keep the drugs pumping through me by ignoring my instincts. Those minutes that followed orgasm, particularly mine, had always been reserved for the punishing waves of guilt and remorse that’d always pummeled through me afterward. But the euphoria brought on by something so simple as touch had made it almost sickening. The times I’d climaxed while on Hedonic had always been the worst, because I’d been so willing, so eager, just to score my next pill. Like a dog primed to please its master.

Something had shifted, though. Dax had supped from me, no doubt, indulging as greedily as I had, but not in a way that left me chiding myself, feeling cheap and used. In fact, my body craved more of his attention, more of his touch. And yet, my instincts warned me to proceed cautiously. He’d left me in muscle-cramping pleasure, unlike anything I’d experienced before, and though my guilt had grown weaker, I could still feel it in the shadows, waiting to swoop down and destroy my momentary bliss.

Seemed any time within the last hour I’d begun to fall into those destructive thoughts, though, Dax had distracted me with conversation, a gentle stroke, or a kiss, heightening my desire to be near him, while teaching my brain to trust him.

“Can I ask you a question?” Head resting against his chest, I watched his large, scarred hand swallow mine as he threaded his fingers between my knuckles. The heady scent of sex still clung to the air, tamped down by the spicy bergamot radiating from his warm skin.

“Sure.”

“Why …. Who are the men you chat with?”

“Come again?” His body shifted beneath mine, and though I couldn’t see him from my angle, I knew he was staring down at me.

“On your phone. I saw the …. One of the messages popped up. It was vibrating in the drawer, so I looked. What’s that all about?”

He snorted and stroked a hand across my hair, easing back against the pillow. “I like to pretend to be a child and fuck older men.”

Face undoubtedly reflecting my sudden confusion, I lifted my head from his chest, relieved to see his lips stretched into a smile that squinted his eyes.

“I’m playin’.” The smile withered to something more serious, and he cast his gaze away from mine. “So I have a profile on this site that says I’m a twelve, or thirteen, year old. These guys, they message me. Friendly at first, but then it doesn’t take long to turn sexual. I play along, letting them send me dick pics and nasty fantasies, until we eventually plan to meet up.” He ran his fingertip down my shoulder, pebbling my skin with goosebumps. “Usually somewhere obscure, like a parking lot, or a strip mall closed down for the night. They show up all surprised to see a grown ass man, instead of a skinny, defenseless kid.” His chest rose up beneath me, exhaling quickly on a slight chuckle. “And that’s when I usually beat the ever-loving fuck out of them.”

“So, you hunt them?”

“I’ve not killed anyone. Yet. Wanted to, but I don’t. They don’t leave in good condition, though. Some can’t even drive after.” He shrugged, still circling his finger over my collarbone to my shoulder. “That’s what happens when you make plans to have sex with a child. You get fucked up by some crazy ass vigilante who hates pedophiles.”

Maybe I’d grown cynical and twisted, but the thought of him doing that sent an erotic chill up my spine. “If there were more people like you in the world, maybe there wouldn’t be any Tesariks, or Jaspers. Maybe they’d feel more like prey, instead of the predators.”

He snorted again, lifting me as he sat up on the bed. “Not according to my therapist. She says I’m just making them go into hiding. They’re missing out on an opportunity to get the help they need and heal.” From the nightstand, he nabbed a small bag of weed, taking out a good-sized chunk of it, which he separated out on the surface. He stuffed it into a metal tin, rotating it back and forth, and unfastened the lid on the shavings inside. Opening the end of a glass cylinder, he packed the weed inside and twisted in the half that held grooves, like an enormous screw. Back and forth until it filled the ridges inside. “The fuck am I supposed to do? Tell ‘em they’re better than that and send ‘em on their merry little way? Sit back and watch them pick up on some other unsuspecting kid who could end up dead? Fuck that. It’s fucking chemical.” He paused to tap his temple, keeping his attention on the task of filling what looked like a blunt made of glass. “In their brains. You can’t undo that shit. They see kids as sex objects, and nothing’s going to change that. No therapy in the world can alter brain chemistry.” Setting his lighter to the end of it, he puffed on the mouthpiece twice, until the end burned orange and a skunky scent filled the air. Thick, white curls drifted out of his mouth, and he sucked it back in, holding it in his lungs before blowing it out his nose.

Hypnotizing, the way he smoked.

I stayed propped on my elbow, until he settled back beside me with his back pressed to the wall, and I snuggled into his side again. “You’re passionate about this. What brought it on?”

Another hit of his blunt, and he handed it to me. “Ah, you don’t want to open that door, Nic.”

I’d only smoked weed once in my life. Found a joint left out after one of my mom’s parties that I mistook as a cigarette, and I’d snuck out behind the shed to smoke it. Only took one hit for me to realize I’d gotten it wrong, and I spent the whole night tripping out on thoughts that the neighbors dog had been watching me like a spy, while laughing my ass off over it.

“Why? What’s behind it?” One long inhale, and my chest damn near crackled as the smoke infiltrated my lungs. Nothing like cigarettes. I coughed out puffs of smoke, handing it back to him.

“Lot of fucked up shit. Fucked up shit.”

“Try me.”

“Look, you see me as I want you to see me. But I had a moment in my life when I wasn’t what you see. I was defenseless. Weak.” Frowning, he set the blunt to his lips again.

“And you don’t think I’d understand that feeling?” Getting hooked on Hedonic hadn’t been part of my plan when I decided to infiltrate Tesarik’s group.

“Goddamn, you don’t give up for anything, do you?” On a sigh, his jaw shifted, and he flipped the Zippo at the end of the pipe to relight it, inhaling again. A couple more hits, and he sniffed, glancing over at me then back to somewhere toward the end of the bed. “So, I was eleven years old, and we lived about four blocks from the middle school. I used to walk it everyday. To and from school. One day, this guy pulls up alongside me. Flashes me a police badge and says he’s an investigator for the Detroit Police Department.” He shook his head, drawing his knee up, where he rested his elbow. “Honestly, my first instinct was to run like hell, but I didn’t. In retrospect, I wish I’d gone with my instincts. Anyway, he told me my mom had overdosed, and he was going to drive me to the hospital. All sounded legit, ya know? I mean, looking back, motherfucker must’ve watched us for months to know my mom was a junkie.” His lips flattened, brows pinching together again, as they did when something was about to get serious with him. “So I get in the car, and I notice the lock on the passenger seat is broken. It clicked when he locked it, but there was no way to manually unlock it. There was no button on my side, either.”

As his hands gestured in the air, a warm fuzziness settled over me, calming my muscles in spite of the anxiety his words brought to mind. “Anyway, he’s driving opposite to downtown, and I’m watching hospital signs pass, saying it’s in the other direction. You’re going the wrong way, man! We end up parked behind this rundown housing project, a real shithole. That’s when he pulls out a gun and tells me he doesn’t have to hurt me, as long as I do as he says.”

His gaze fell away, and even through the high taking over my senses, my heart sank at what I anticipated would come next.