Page 22 of Saxon

"The fuck are we, six?"

She holds her silence, pinky in front of my face.

"Fuck, fine, you juvenile." I curl my pinky around hers. "Pinky promise."

Her smile could outshine the sun. "It's a thousand years bad luck if you break a pinky promise," she says. "It's sacred." She brings my pinky, still wrapped around hers, to her lips, and kisses it softly, tenderly, and with an eroticism that's 100% intentional. "But it's not binding until you kiss it to seal it."

I rumble in my chest, unable to communicate in words the hurricane of shit I'm feeling at this moment. I echo her gesture, kissing her pinky gently, with a flick of my tongue. "There. Sealed."

"You can't break it now," she whispers. "You now owe me the world's most epic pussy-pounding sex. Plus you have to let me give you a hand job to end all hand jobs, and the greatest blow job of your life. Just so we're clear on what you just swore to."

"Assuming I survive this shitshow, it's a promise I will be absolutely delighted to keep."

"Then you better dig deep in that well of badassery so you can survive and keep it." She toys with the button of my pants. "You sure we don't have time for me to give you a little downpayment?"

The door to the penthouse smashes open. My reactions are immediate and instinctive—spin to put Terra behind me, draw, and fire, all in one movement. My rounds go wide and low, which turns out to be a good a thing, sort of: if they'd gone true, I'd have just broken my vow. I shove Terra hard, and she goes flying—she's got some of her own badassery, because she turns the fall into a tuck and roll that takes her behind the couch a feet away, where she huddles in a tight, small ball, hands over her head.

I hear the chatter of that most useless of weapons, the Uzi; I don't bother ducking, because the damn things are so wildly inaccurate that even in the most expert of hands most folks can't hit the broad side of a barn from point blank range. And, indeed, the rounds go everywhere but near me.

BAM! BAM! I hit the Uzi wielder in the dominant shoulder and opposite knee. Hurl myself behind the couch, resting a reassuring hand on Terra's back.

"Nothing to worry about," I murmur in her ear. "These idiots are useless. Stay down, I'll have 'em taken care of in a second."

She just nods, hands still on her head.

"You good?" I ask.

Another nod.

"Good girl. One sec." I pop up and crack off a couple of rounds—there are four of them, one down and caterwauling like a zapped cat, and three more huddling around the doorway like so many cows.

Dumbfucks.

My two rounds drop one next to the first with a pair of holes in his fat belly; I belly crawl to the other side of the couch, pop up, crack off a couple more to drop the third with permanently busted kneecaps. That leaves the fourth, the only one with a lick of sense. He's hiding behind the door, occasionally rolling out to spray and pray with his Tec-9. At least, until his shit inevitably jams, as those asswipe pieces always do. I hear the chatter cut off, hear him chanting "Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck" under his breath.

That's when I spring over the couch and sprint across the room, slam into the doorframe, and reach around to grab the shit-for-brains by the wrist. Clamp down, hard, and twist. He yowls and drops the Tec-9, and I haul him out in front of me, jamming my barrel under his jaw.

"Talk, bitch," I snarl.

"I don't know anything!" he screeches.

"Wrong fuckin' answer," I growl.

BAM! I put a round through his thigh, just above his knee.

"Talk."

"What—what do you—w-w-wanna…know?" he stammers between sobs and curses.

"Who's sending you incompetent fucks?"

"His name's Jarrod."

"You work for The Cabal?"

"Th-the what? No, I just…they…Jarrod found me and my boys at the bar. I guess he heard we would do shit for money, so he hired us to take you out."

"How'd you find me?"