Page 29 of Executing Malice (Jefferson Rejects #4)

“God, you’re sick,” I whisper, though the words are more reverence than accusation.

My free hand drifts down before I can think to stop it.

I stare at the photo, my pulse in my throat, between my ears .

.. my legs. His blood stains the corner I cling to with shaky fingers, a perfect thumbprint imprinted in a dry, crusty brown.

I’m momentarily horrified by the urge to run my tongue over the stain.

To taste him while I fantasize about living under his skin.

That no one will ever have him the way I do.

The thought is poison and it’s spreading like liquid fire through my core.

It taints every rational thought in my head as my eyes shut, and I picture him hunched over that razor.

The first bite of it. The way he would have winced but kept going, dragging the blade with precise precession so each line is perfect.

For my name to be perfect.

I see his chest rising and falling faster, hear the short, ragged pants. The blood bubbling and spilling, turning his finger slick.

“Fuck,” I whisper, the single word a shaky exhale as my hand slips over my mound.

I should throw the photo away. I should burn it. But instead, I hold it tighter, closer to breathe in the lingering hints of copper and chemicals. I let it mix with the fantasy of him finishing. The razor slipping from his fingers and clattering to the counter in a halo of red.

He’d have leaned back to examine his handy work. He’d examine each notch to make sure they were deep enough to leave a permanent scar. Maybe he smiled, pleased with himself. Maybe he imagined me seeing it like I am now with my fingers gliding and pumping where I need him.

The air feels thick clinging to my skin. Every stroke pulls me deeper under, dragging me into the place in my head where he lives. Not a photograph, but flesh and blood.

In my head, the door creaks open and he appears on the threshold. A dark figure framed by the light of the hallway. He stands bare chested, the cut fresh, still raw and glistening. My name a promise carved forever into his skin. His eyes lock on mine, daring me to be afraid. To stop.

I drive my fingers deeper. Hips rising, heels digging into blankets.

He steps closer, the smell of iron and sweat wrap around me a second before his fingers, still sticky, still warm with blood capture my jaw.

“Do you like it?”

I whimper, the sound snagging in my throat. My legs tense and toes curl as the edge rushes towards me .

In my fantasy, he kneels between my offered pussy. One bloodied hand pushes mine away. Replaces it. I can almost feel it. The slide of his touch smearing his blood over my lips. My clit.

“Don’t stop,” I plead, watching him with ravenous fever as he reaches up to his still trickling wound, gathers fresh blood and slides both fingers inside me.

His eyes burn with hunger that’s almost inhuman. “Why would I stop? I plan on fingerpainting every inch of you.”

His finger piston faster, harder. I’m so close.

“Started without me?”

I yelp at the intruding voice not in my fantasy but in the real world. The shimmer of my climax dies.

My head jerks up to find the object of my twisted fantasy darkening the doorway between the corridor and living room.

He’s clad in his usual cargos and a black mask that covers the lower part of his face from under his eyes.

A baseball cap covers the top part, shielding his features, but I’m more focused on his torso.

He’s topless and I have a real view of my name.

Not bloody and raw, but still fresh. Days old. But prominent in the only patch of skin absent of ink, like he’d been deliberately keeping that spot empty for me.

“Getting ready for you,” I breathe, unable to take my eyes off the scars.

My biker closes the distance between us in two long strides. My legs obediently spread in anticipation, but he moves past me, heads for the windows. With several sharp tugs, he yanks the heavy drapes into place, casting us in a murky film of whatever light can filter through the thick fabric.

Then I have his full attention.

I have his powerful silhouette falling to his knees between mine like he had in my fantasy. His big hands settle on my thighs. Shove them wider.

“Did you like your gift?”

I feel my lips quirk. “Which one?”

He drops into his proper place. “All of them.”

The bill of his cap keeps his face hidden from me, but I know he’s rolling up the bottom half of his mask and my hips wiggle with anticipation.

“You took my jar back,” I accuse.

His tongue sweeps up my core, momentarily scattering my thoughts.

“You misbehaved.”

He pushes past the ring of my opening. I have to bite my lip to stifle my moan.

“You ... you started it,” I breathe, lashes falling closed.

He teases the piercing with just the tip before running a figure eight around my clit.

“You touched another man. ”

The heat in his growl, the possessive snarl surges through me with a powerful thrum that has my arms swinging up over my head to settle flat against the bottom half of the sofa. I use it as leverage to push myself down to him.

“You touched another woman,” I bite back. “You let her touch you.”

His low, gravely groan sends my head back on the pillow. “I didn’t let her do anything. I told her I was taken. She refused to listen.”

I sob with the first breach of his fingers filling me. My back arches off the blankets.

“Bitch,” I hiss through my teeth. “I should have hit her harder.”

The tongue lapping at my clit stops. My chin tips down to where I can just barely make out the glint of his eyes.

“You hit her?”

Heat floods my cheeks even as I try to read his voice. It’s impossible to gauge his expression, but the tone suggests nothing and everything.

“Maybe,” I whisper, uncertain.

His fingers slip free and he begins to pull back.

Panic has me scrambling, trying to push up right, but he’s shoving me down, pinning me with the full weight of his body. His mouth, wet with saliva and my juices slams down over mine in a fierce battle of hunger .

“You’re mine,” he growls in between savage attacks of tongue and teeth. “Only fucking mine. You ever let another man touch you again, I won’t just break his fucking arm.”

I still. My head jerks back and I try to see into his face.

“Jasper?”

Punishing teeth sink into my bottom lip hard enough that I taste blood.

“The piece of shit you let put his hands on you.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” I pant in between assaults. “I was the one who—”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t kill him.” His fingers sink into my hair, and my head is wrenched back exposing my throat. “That’s why he got to keep his fucking hands.” Something cold and fine kisses my jugular. “You made me hurt him.”

I can’t move. Can barely think as the steel edge of his blade lightly skims my pulse.

“Did you think I would roll over and let him have you? Let him fuck you? Did you want him to fuck you, Leila? Did you want his cock?”

Despite the risk of getting sliced open, I shake my head. “Did you want to fuck her?”

He snorts into my jawline. “No one else gets me hard. My dick only responds to you.” The bulge in question pushes into my core and I meet the grind with one of my own. His deep, shaky inhale burns the side of my face. “Only want you.”

My arms circle his shoulders. My fingers glide along the flexing muscles across his shoulders.

I’m trying really hard not to let my excitement get the better of me.

I’m trying to be rational and remember he could still be fucking with me, but every speckle of my soul refuses to believe it.

Refuses to accept that this isn’t real when everything about it feels . .. right.

“You tattooed me.” I meant to be stern, but I’m having a hard time wading through the fluffy cloud of bliss surrounding me.

He nuzzles my cheek with the tip of his nose. “Then I filled you with my cum.”

The area in question pangs, a pathetic reminder of what we’d started and had rudely interrupted ... twice.

“You need to stop that,” I tell him with no heat.

His lips find mine, remarkably gentle followed by a firm, “No.”

The knife — my knife that Reed had given me and I used to keep in my car before he stole it — is lifted just enough for me to draw in a proper breath. I catch a glimpse of it before he skillfully closes the blade back into the handle and stuffs it into his pocket.

He ignores my protest by lifting his head and giving me the barest hint of his eyes and the solid chisel of his lips. Both are painted in a faint shadow made thicker by his massive body blocking out any light that may have touched him.

“I want a baby,” he states with a seriousness that leaves no room for argument, but argue, I do.

“Not until I see your face,” I shoot back, refusing to budge on the matter. “I’m not getting knocked up by some masked weirdo who appears and disappears at random.”

His head cocks to one side, the gesture of a dog hearing something in the distance.

“You think I’d abandon you?”

No. That never even crossed my mind, though, now that he said it, it probably should have.

“It’s not about that. You can’t have a baby with someone you don’t know. It’s commitment, and trust.”

“You don’t trust me?”

I draw in a slow, calming breath. “I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name. I don’t know what color your eyes are or your hair—”

“And when you do, you’ll give me a baby.”

Not a question.

It’s a matter of fact that makes me want to laugh and growl at him. “Why do you want a baby so badly with me? You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I know everything about you.”

Something in that bold declaration has my temper prickling. It sharpens the words I bite through my teeth.

“You don’t. You don’t know a fucking thing.”

I nudge against his shoulders and I’m relieved when he pulls back. I scoot up to a sitting position and face the figure kneeling before me. He’s drawn his mask back into place so all I can just make out are the glints in his eyes.

“You have no idea what kind of person I am or what kind of life I’ve lived.”

“I do—”

“Stop it!” I snap, voice wavering. “Stop pretending like...” I break myself off, breathing hard as I try to vomit the truth without scaring him off.

Talking about my past always leaves me feeling vulnerable and dirty, like it’s something I should be ashamed of. It’s always where I lose people. It’s too weird. Too risky. People don’t like gambling their futures on someone who seemingly crawled out of the ground.

Granted, I’ve never actually had to tell anyone. Most people in Jefferson know the story. It was a big deal eight years ago. But what if he realizes just how broken I actually am and it’s too much? What if he decides he didn’t sign up for that much trauma ?

“I’m not this person. I mean...” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’m this person now, but I wasn’t always. I don’t know the person I was so I made this person to make up...”

I have no idea what I’m talking about.

The words are a jumbled pile of steaming shit I can’t explain even to myself.

“I know,” he says too softly. Too ... sure. It pisses me off.

“No, you fucking don’t, okay?” I glower through a thick wall of tears that blur his outline.

“Eight years ago, I was a whole other person. I wasn’t born or raised in Jefferson.

I don’t know where I come from or what happened.

I don’t even know my fucking name.” A tear escapes and I scrub it away with the back of my hand.

“I had an accident. I lost my memory. So, the Leila you think you know, doesn’t exist because she’s not real. ”

He’s not moving.

He’s fallen back onto his backside and becomes one with the shadows. One with the silence. The absence of his response carves a ditch in my gut a semi could park in, and the longer he remains frozen, the deeper my wish to take it back.

“What did you say?” he murmurs after what feels like an eternity.

I take a breath and think, well, at least he’s not running .

“That’s how I came to live here. Evan, my dad, found me wandering around Red Hollow while he’d been camping with friends.

I was covered in blood and bruises, practically naked, severely dehydrated.

I had a bump on my head. Dr. Hammell thinks it’s the reason I don’t remember what happened.

” I catch sight of a loose piece of thread poking out of the blanket.

I loop my finger through and tug. “Leila isn’t my name.

I don’t really know how old I am. Everyone guessed roughly eighteen, nineteen.

” I lick my lips nervously and twist the thread tighter around my index finger.

“They assumed I was in an accident. That maybe I came from one of the nearby towns, but no one’s come to claim me so.

..” I give a shrug I hope looks as nonchalant as I’m attempting to act.

“It’s been eight years so the likelihood of getting my memory back is slim at this point, but not entirely zero. ”

I pinch my lips together to stop any more words from falling out.

There really isn’t anymore to the story, but I can feel the bubbling need to explain, to rush on that I’m still kind of me.

At least this version. I don’t think there will be another, but there might be if my memories come back.

I guess I’m just trying to prepare him in case.

“No,” he says simply and with a confidence that momentarily takes me off guard.

“What? ”

He gives his head a slow shake. “No. No,” he repeats, getting louder. “That ... you’re lying.”

I blink. “Kind of a weird thing to lie about, isn’t it?”

He’s pushing to his feet, forcing my head back to peer up at him. “You think you can trick me. You think if you lie, you can save yourself.”

A cold chill scuttles down my spine as his words rush over me with the force of gale winds. “What are you talking about?”

“I checked ... I searched everywhere for you. Some girl showing up the way you claim would make the news.”

He’s talking too fast, too loud. He’s angry and I don’t understand.

“It did, but only around Jefferson, Pinecrest, Mayfield and the other smaller surrounding towns. They called me Alice. You can look it up. They have a whole photo—”

He swoops down before I can finish. His large hand closes around my wrist and I’m dragged to my feet. It’s violent and painful. His hold is crushing, possessive as he hauls me in the direction of the hallway.