DAIR (4 page)

The whole setup was creepy in the extreme.
 
Just the type of place someone would take you to finish you off.
 

I checked my appearance in the mirror, and thought I was turned out rather well, all things considered.
 
Suit only marginally wrinkled, hair disheveled, but not more than usual.
 
Eyes only slightly bloodshot, but not terribly so.
 
Slight bruise on my jaw, but nothing too gruesome.
   

The room didn’t have a phone, but it did have an alarm clock that read ten minutes past seven.
 

There was an ancient TV centered between the two double beds, and after waiting thirty minutes, I switched it on.
 
Turned out, it actually had a good lineup of channels.
 

I wound up watching one of the reality shows Iris used to love.
 
It was called
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
, and it was atrocious.

Sadly, how bad it was just made me miss her more.
   

Around an hour after I’d been left in the room, the door opened.
 
That blond son of a bitch poked his head in, customary glare in place.
 

“Turn that shit off,” he growled, then shut the door again.
 

I heard his voice faintly outside again not a minute later, though by his even, non-hostile tone, he clearly wasn’t talking to me.
 

“Brought you something,” he was saying.
 

There was a long pause, then a quieter, fainter voice responding softly.

Something about that voice had me standing, breath growing short, heart skipping beats.

“Go inside and see,” the bastard responded.
 

I watched the door, body drawn taut in anticipation.
 

Hands clammy and shaking with it.
 

Finally, mercifully, it opened.
 
It creaked wide slowly, and the sight that filled it nearly brought me to my knees.

“Iris,” I breathed.

There stood Iris.
 

She looked different.
 

Wearing gray sweats and thick framed glasses, her blonde hair braided thick to one side and draped on her shoulder.
 
Her face was clean of makeup, and as beautiful as ever.
 

She looked about fifteen, dressed like that.
 
It was a perturbing development, but overshadowed completely by the burst of sheer joy in my chest at the sight of her.
 

She was whole and alive.
 
Safe and sound.
 

Ironically, she seemed even more shocked to see me, her hands covering her mouth as she gasped.
 

“Dair,” she sobbed, then rushed forward, throwing herself into my arms.
 

They were ready for her.
 
I caught her to me, holding her tight, my face buried in her hair.
 

She tipped her face up to me, eyes closed, glasses askew, her whole body shaking, and threw her arms around my neck.
 

I lifted her, and she wrapped her legs about my hips.
 

I lowered my mouth to touch her trembling lips.

“Jesus, can you not do that in front of me?” the bastard growled.
 
“You’re already making me regret this.”
 

With that, he slammed the door, and I heard when he drove the outside bolt home.
 

I had no notion why, but he’d locked us in together.
 

CHAPTER FOUR

I took a ragged breath in and an unsteady step back, sitting on the bed.
 

I pulled her between my legs, pushing her baggy sweatshirt up to expose her taut naval, then up higher, to her ribs just beneath her breasts.
 

Her sweats hit low on her hips, and one glance at her emaciated torso (and my very precise memory of her body) told me she’d lost some weight.
 

I was troubled by this, but I didn’t ask about it.
 

I wasn’t sure I was prepared to hear the answer.
 
I knew it wouldn’t be good.
 

I buried my face against her warm belly, breathing in her sweet, familiar scent.
 

I’m not sure exactly what I would have done (likely fallen on her and started fucking like an animal) if she weren’t crying, and trembling so, and clutching me to her like she’d never thought to see me again.
 

And chanting my name, again and again, like it was her own personal prayer.
 

Inside of every man existed two natures, and never had my own dual temperaments been more apparent than they were then.
 

I felt equal parts tenderness and hunger.
 

Love and base desire.
 

Relief and frustration.
 

I pulled her on the bed, spread her out on her back, and got on top of her, head on her chest, hard, of course, ravenous, of course, but I didn’t act on it, not for a long time.
 

Instead, I held her.
 

It began slowly, carefully, the touching.
 
Just feather light ones—at first.
 
My hands moved along her hips, up her sides, squeezing lightly, feeling tenderly.
 

A remembering touch, as it sank into my mind and body that she was here, in my arms again.
 

I lifted and bent her leg around me, stroking the long length of it, my cheek on her breast, ear to her heart.
 
I stayed glued there while my hands wandered, reacquainting themselves with every lithe, lush bit of her.
 

She was like a cat; she loved to be touched.
 
She arched into my hands as I stroked her from head to toe.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, one hand rubbing soft circles into the tender skin behind her knee.
 
“Has that bastard . . . hurt you?”
   

She gasped deeply once, then let out a trembling breath.
 

I glanced up and watched as she carefully took off her glasses and set them on the nightstand.

Something about those glasses tickled some agitated part of my brain, but I was too distracted just then to pin it down or even focus fully on worrying about it.
 

“No, Dair,” she sighed.
 
“He hasn’t hurt me.
 
But we cannot talk about him.
 
We can’t talk about any of this, not if you ever want to leave here.”
 

“Shh.
 
It’s okay now.
 
We’re both leaving here, and soon.
 
I’ll find a way.”

“Oh, Dair,” she whispered, her voice equal parts affectionate and exasperated.
 
“I wish it were that simple.”

“It is.
 
I’m taking you home.”
 

“Do you even know where we are?”
 

“No.
 
Do you?”
 

She shook her head, eyes wide, lips parted in an invitation I was finding harder to resist by the second.
   

“Don’t worry, honey,” I whispered, leaning down to kiss her.
 
“I’ve got you.”
 

The kiss was hot and wild, her soft lips giving but somehow that just meant they took more.
 
Like my willpower.
 
They swiped that clean away from me.
     

I groaned, thrusting my tongue into her mouth, taking, pillaging, seeking what I could get while she was here, with me, before she left again and took yet another piece of me with her.

I pulled back from her, gazing with heavy lids at her mouth.
 
Her lips were swollen.
 

The sight drove me wild.
 

I wanted to come inside of her right that instant.
 
I ached with it.

I rubbed my stubble over her pulpy bruised lips, along her jaw, down her straining neck.
   

I fingered her messy braid, then set to work tugging it loose, running my hands through it, in it, massaging her scalp until she went limp.
 

I lavished my soft, adoring attention on her, head to toe, still fully clothed, repenting with tenderness for what was to come, because I knew it wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, anything approaching tender when we came together this first time.
 

After I’d finished kissing each one of her adorable toes, I moved back up her body to fondle her pillowy breasts, skimming my fingertips over her sensitive nipples, filling my palms with her until she was panting as she arched her back.
 

I pushed her sweatshirt up to her collar, palming her bare, her coral crests swelling into my hands.
 

I took my mouth to them, rubbing my lips so lightly along her skin that she was begging me to suck her.
 
I tongued a straining nipple, drawing it hard into my mouth, gentling to suckle softly, then sucking hard again.
 

She began to chant my name.
 

I may as well have died and gone to heaven.

I moved down her body and pulled her sweats down, taking her panties with them.
     

I couldn’t help it, as I moved back up, I stopped at her sex and started lapping.

She gripped my hair, digging her heels into the bed to push my tongue deeper.
 
I filled my palms with her ass and went to town.
     

I wasn’t timing it, but even so, I was certain that she came in less than a minute, the room filling with her loud cries, and I pulled back with a gasp, straightening to loom over her.
 

I started to lift off her sweatshirt, but she stayed my hands, keeping her arms in the sleeves.
 

I didn’t care.
 
I had access and a visual on everything I needed.
 
And I was too desperate to take even one more delay.
 

I gripped the bottom of her thighs, pushing them high as I nudged my cock at her slick entrance.
 

When my tip was in, I shoved, propelling myself deep, seeking the very center of her with every aching nerve in my body.
 

It’d been so long.
 
Too long with nothing but my hand and only the thought of her for relief.

Going from so little to
everything
, every single sinful inch of her, all at once, a squeezing vise around me, was almost too much.
 

I held onto the most meager ounce of control at first, but only barely and not for long.
 

Holding her steady, I put her ankles on my shoulders, and pounded deep, deep, deeper until her body was writhing.
 

I stopped on an upswing.
 
One of her cries had been a touch beyond frantic and into panicked.
 

“Too much, Iris?”
 

She didn’t answer.
 
Even her chanting had stopped.
 
She just lay
shaking
under me.
 

I could have used an answer.
 

Without one, I reverted back to a mouth-breather, panting while I held her in place and worked my hard length in and out, rough and steady.
 

I watched my cock pull out of her, then force back in, my brutal thrusts becoming heavy and jagged in an effort to keep from increasing my pace.
 

I tried my best, but she wasn’t with me when I bottomed out and spilled deep inside of her.
 

I pulled out, and she writhed, unfulfilled as though she hadn’t come just minutes before under my tongue.
 

I didn’t even require recovery time.
 
I was still twitching from the last round, and it already felt like I needed her again.
 

I flipped her onto her stomach, and held her in place with my open palms, my mouth moving up her back, along her spine.
 

I tried to push her sweatshirt up out of my way, just below her shoulder blades, but she tucked her arms and kept it in place.
 

Even in a nearly mindless state, this gave me pause.
 

What on earth could she be trying to hide from me?
 

I had no notion what it could be, but I was bound and determined to find out.

“Get on your hands and knees,” I ordered, voice roughened with need.
 

With trembling gasps she complied.
 

I came up close behind her, my burgeoning erection digging into her ass.
 

She bowed her spine, swinging her hips to push her ass back against me.
 

Without warning, and swiftly, I bent forward, pushing her sweatshirt up and over her head, so her back was completely bared to me.
 
She didn’t have time to stop me, that time.
 

I saw it right away, the discoloration of it catching my eye.

It froze me for an endless moment, then my heart started pounding frantically.

Just on the edge of her shoulder, about the size of a dime, was a healed over pink wound.
 
I knew what it was because it matched the one on her shoulder to a tee.
 

It was a gunshot wound.
 

Another one, a fresher one.
 
It had to be just a few months old.
 

My teeth clenched, my pounding heart doing a slow, torturous roll inside my chest.
 

“You were
shot
again?” I asked raggedly, though the answer was obvious.
 

She’d stiffened up, clearly bracing herself for my reaction.