Rage's Story (Vanish Book 1) (4 page)

“You sack of shit,” he mutters.

“Don’t, Richie.”

He doesn’t listen. He pushes himself off the ground and kneels before me. He launches and I fire. I watch his body throw itself like a ragdoll after the bullet rips through his head, the inertia keeps it going beyond his last thought.

His face lays scraped across the gravel, his eyes lifeless, his expression still snarling. I’m sorry, Richie. Damnit. Why did you listen to them?

After the shot, the crickets flood back into their symphonic collective, the night resumes. My panic dissipates, the pain settles in. Richie’s dead. Mike’s dead. I’ll be dead if I don’t patch this hole up. Where can I turn? I can’t stay here. Sirens will swarm soon, those gunshots couldn’t go completely unnoticed in this sleepy town. If no one else, the owner will return and make the call himself.

Auna. She’s the only one. I have to lean on her now, on a look and a kiss, I have to trust her.

Clutching my bloody side, I set off down the road back towards the Pussycat Lounge. I have to get there before close. Before Auna leaves, and before I’m dead.

6.

I stand in the same place, here at the edge of the light, where the pavement meets the mud. It started raining, my shirt is soaked through, made transparent. It doesn’t wash out the blood, which keeps pouring. I feel weak, but I stay on my feet, eyes fixed on the door to the club.

Auna, where are you? There are only three cars in the lot, the light of the sign turned off thirty minutes ago. Even the bouncer left. Maybe she’s already gone, but I haven’t seen her in the stream of others who’ve trickled out.

I feel weak. My eyes flicker and I stumble forward.

I don’t feel the impact. My hand feels the pavement, though, I’m on the ground. The rain patters against my skin. Then I feel something else. Warm, spreading on my shoulder. It shakes me and I turn my eyes up into Auna’s brown gaze. She’s staring down into my wavering eyes.

“Wes?!” Her voice comes from a muted distance, at the end of a tunnel.

“Auna,” I return, or at least, I think I did. I can’t feel my lips.

She pushes against my shoulder, trying to rouse me. I push with all my remaining effort to stand. I falter for a moment, leaning into her, but she keeps me from falling over again. I hobble with my arm draped over her shoulders for support towards the end of the parking lot where she sets me into the passenger side of an aging coup. The door closes, the rain stops. I hear it softly trickling on the roof. I could fall asleep right now...just...close...my eyes…

The door opens. “Wes!” she shouts.

My eyes blink several times in quick succession, opening and closing on the image of an apartment building standing before us. Did we arrive? Time is slipping through my fingers. She pulls me out of her car and leads me into the building. The world has shrunk into a pinprick, sound comes as light as an ant’s footsteps, and all is drowned in a euphoria I feel sweeping me out of this life.

No.

I cough profusely, and it all rushes back in. It’s a tile floor and cabinets and a sink and a running faucet. My eyes whirl around in my head and I can see I’m on the floor of Auna’s cramped kitchen. My side is killing me. She’s got my shirt lifted so the wound isn’t obstructed. What does she have in her hands? Oh fuck.

“Auna,” I call out weakly as I feel it plunge into my body. A pair of tweezers, straight into the hole, digging, searching for the tiny bit of metal. Shit, I can feel it make contact. I thought it had passed through. She pulls it out. The pain is excruciating, but I’m past the point of passing out. I’m wired and I can’t stop watching. My jaw clenches against the sensation my nerves firing off, throbbing around the wound, radiating into the rest of my body.

“We got it, Wes,” she reassures me. Her hand swipes the sweat away from my brow and cups my jaw. Her thumb rubs affectionately against my cheek before her hand runs through my hair. “Now I need to stitch you, okay?”

I sigh deeply. Then I nod.

I look down and see her free hand shoved against my side, keeping the blood from gushing. Beside her on the floor she’s got her kit. A needle, a spindle of thin twine, and a bottle of vodka. She untwists the top and pours it over my wound. The sting strikes me, but it doesn’t compare to the bullet being pulled out, and the two of those completely numb me from the pain of the needle as it sows shut the hole in my side. I watch her thin fingers pass the needle through my flesh and admire it, the calm she displays dealing with the surely absurd situation in her life.

But she took me home, not the hospital.

She put it together this damage was done on the other side of the law. She must know I live there, in that dark territory behind the gaze of authority, where monsters grow from greedy men. I see his face, Mike, flash before my eyes, the pistol fire, and then dark.

I’m warm. It’s the first thing I feel. My eyes open and I can see her, seated on a recliner across from me, bundled in a blanket, cup of coffee held near to her lips, just watching me, eagerly. I’m on her couch, bundled too. She’s dressed my wound, removed my shirt, and somehow gotten me onto the couch. I don’t remember that. A layer of sweat covers my upper body and my face, I can only imagine in a delirious fever I came to and she managed to calm me and move me to the couch, where I slipped into slumber.

I rub my face dry with the palm of my right hand while my left pushes me into an upright position, emerging from the blanket to feel the cooler air of the room wrap my bare upper body. I position my back against the arm, then pull back the blanket to reveal the bandage. It’s a perfect square, white, with a small red dot in its center. She did a good job. Far better than I’ve received from my brothers.

“How do you feel?” she asks.

I take a deep breath, then release through my nostrils. I nod, placing a hand lightly against the dressing. “Thank you.”

She smiles in return and it lights up the room. Who is this angel, willing to accept a drifter on the brink of death, whose wounds link to some seedy element, the danger of which would scare most, who smiles now upon me and fills my chest with warmth, whose skin I dream of, and whose smell now rests in the forefront of my mind, a precious scent I seek like a lowly hound? This woman, she makes me ache. And I don’t know her. But I feel more connected than I have in years. Auna. My angel. She’ll save me yet.

Christ. These thoughts, a fool’s. She must find me repulsive. What she’s done for me, a mere humanitarian gesture of kindness, no need for love.

Her smile still rests on her perfect face, olive skin dimpled behind the corners of her mouth, red lips full and luscious, brown hair framing the beauty in her expression, brown eyes peering out and through me. I hope she never stops smiling.

I smile back. Hers grows wider. It’s like a pair of children, giddy, grinning at one another. This moment is unspoken and full between us. The pain recedes.

Then in strikes.

I feel my side sting and my expression, regrettably, sinking into a scowl, breaking the moment. She throws the blanket off and comes to my side, crouching beside the bed and wrapping a concerned hand around my arm. “Are you alright?” she asks.

I look into her eyes, brown, full in front of me, pools of gold. I nod. I notice in my periphery that she’s taken her pants off. She wears a pair of cotton panties that expose her long, tan legs, smooth and glistening with the dim light of the room. God, she’s gorgeous. And apparently comfortable in my presence. Well, I did already see her naked. But this is different. This is personal. She lifts herself and places her butt on the edge of the couch, my hand falls instinctively onto her thigh, and the sensation of her smoothness floods me with guilt. I can’t be here. I’ll make things turn to shit in her life inside a day. People are after me. The police are probably after me now. The Devil’s Right Hands will tear Westwood Valley apart looking for me.

“Auna,” I say, then cringe. My side stings a bit when I speak.

“Yes?” Her smile makes a modest return as her hands rubs against my bicep. Her eyes brim with sympathy.

My jaw drops, and I want to say I have to leave, but I can’t bring myself to do so. “I’m so sorry,” I tell her.

She shakes her head, then brushes a bit of her loose hair behind her ear. “Don’t be,” she responds. “You needed me. You came to the club for me, didn’t you?”

I fall into her eyes, entranced. I nod.

“Good,” she says. “I knew, the other night, when you came in…” She doesn’t have to say it. We did both feel it then, instantly, in a stare, and then a kiss, and a touch. We feel it now, where my hand rubs against her thigh, where her fingers glide against my arm. It’s a feeling that’s muted everything else, but I can start to hear the rain again, cascading over her window, and the rest fills back in. My eyes wander over it all, her apartment. It’s a small space, I think I can see every room from here on the couch. It’s dark, too, intentionally so. The floor lamp has a thin, red scarf thrown over the top to diffuse the light. It casts a soft, warm color on everything. She’s got a television next to the door to her bedroom, straight in front of me. To my right, the window, to my left, the kitchen, and behind that in the hallway, the bathroom. The carpet is a dark brown, shaggy, and it makes the place feel like a blanket wrapped around us while the night storm showers outside.

I come back to her eyes.

“You like it here?” I ask.

“This apartment, or this town?”

“Both.”

“Well, I’ve made this my home, I suppose. I feel comfortable here.” I sense a cringe when she speaks optimistically. She’s lying to herself.

“Why do you stay?”

She holds her gaze on me, losing the facade of happiness, dropping like a curtain before her. She bites into her lower lip while her eyes well. I take my hand away from the bandage and place it against the side of her face. I rub my thumb against her cheek bone. She turns into it.

“Wes,” she whispers into my palm. “Do you feel like you have to flee all the time?”

“No,” I answer, but I’m not sure it’s true. I think of the sensation of the wind rushing against my face while I race my bike down the open road and wonder if I’ve ever thought of a more perfect ideal than that of a street that doesn’t end. She turns her face softly in my palm, looks at me with questioning eyes. “Do you?”

She shakes her head, the smoothness of her cheek rubs against my fingers. “No. I feel caged.” A sardonic smile breaks out on her face. “But isn’t that cliche? The caged stripper. Poor girl, taking her clothes off for all the drooling men, caught in the trap of their lust, when all she wants, Wes, all she wants is to fly…” she lifts her hands into the air in a mocking gesture, “...to some beautiful paradise for all the birdies.”

“Don’t you think you deserve something better?”

She sighs. “Do you?”

I’m not sure.

“Truth is,” she says, “I don’t hate it. Sure, it has its fair share of shit, but the worst hasn’t happened. And what’s running going to bring me? Will escape really set me free?”

“Depends,” I say.

“On what?” She takes my hand from her cheek and holds it in her lap. I feel the soft cotton panties against my knuckles, the warmth of her thighs radiating.

“You,” I reply.

“You took that road,” she says. “You’re away, but are you free?” She looks to my side, where the red dot rests in the center of a white bandage. She sighs, turning her head to the side. “I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t even know who you are…”

“Auna,” I say. She turns her head back to me. “Yes you do.” I lift my hand from her lap, open it and place it against her chest. I can feel her heart beat beneath it. Steady. Ache. She reaches her hand out and places it against my pec, grappling.

She squints, grins. “Do you know me, Rage?” She slides one leg over me, straddling. I hold one hand against her chest while the other ventures up her thigh to grip her ass. “How well?” Both of her hands grab my pecs as she leans forward. She whispers, “Tell me what I want right now.”

I take my hand from her chest and wrap it around her nape to pull her face into mine. She gasps as her mouth slams into mine, her eager tongue lashing immediately at mine, reciprocating. I feel her lower body undulate, shifting to grind herself against me, the heat of her igniting my own. God, Auna. You feel amazing against me. She rubs herself up and down along my growing erection, bulging my jeans. The taste of her is intoxicating, truly. Each time our lips break and her breath spills onto my chin and neck, I feel craving, for more, for everything harder.

She lifts herself from me and pulls her shirt over her head, and her pointed breasts show above her ribs, olive skin smooth and tight over her body. She drops onto me, and I feel her breasts against my pecs, soft rubbing on hard, nipples gliding over me while she kisses, wantonly. I wrap my hands around her ass, feel her heat as it rises and falls on me, more intense, riding.

I sit up, holding her close to me, pulling my lips away to listen to her gasp. I throw my legs over the side of the couch and stand, lifting her in the center of the living room, holding her body against me. I can feel her coursing through me, like an injection, bursting through my veins. I lower her to the floor and gently lay her beneath me. Her hands caress my flexed arms as I stare into her hungry eyes. This isn’t lust, not only. It’s breath after a lifetime of starved lungs, finding air in the body of another, one who went without just the same.

I tear her panties pulling them off her legs and she moans with a guttural quality that drives me mad. I part her legs, laying them flat to the side and she doesn’t fight, flexible, smiling at my motions, her hands running along my muscles. I place a hand against her pussy and feel how wet she is, coating my fingers while she moans. I lift my hand to her lips and watch her taste, wrapping her perfect lips around my fingers and sucking while I unzip my jeans and shimmy them down my legs. My cock unconstrained feels stiff as metal while I guide it towards her pussy. When I enter, she spasms, her mouth clamps around my fingers, as she does the same around my cock. The heat, the sudden burst of fire, surrounds us, holds us against the rain, in this small space, this sanctuary, where we burn together.