Текст книги "Rogue"
Автор книги: Callie Hart
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 12 страниц)
It’s not long before my own wants start to make themselves known. I want to fuck her. I shouldn’t even be thinking about that—I’m in no position to be undertaking that sort of physical exertion—but sometimes the human body can shock and amaze. Or rather, be annoyingly stubborn and persistent until it gets what it wants. I could make Sophia come now if I wanted to. It wouldn’t take much. She’s ready to tumble over the edge, and all it would take from me is a little extra pressure, and a little more speed. I hold off, though. She makes a stifled groaning sound when I stop altogether.
“You want something significantly bigger than my fingers inside you, sugar?” I ask, keeping my voice low. Her pussy tightens around my fingers, and I know the idea excites her.
“You’re not…sticking anything weird inside me,” she says, her voice hoarse.
I can’t help it; I chuckle under my breath. “Now why would I want to do that when I have a perfectly good, perfectly hard cock ready and waiting?”
Sophia glances at me down the length of her body. Her hair is mussed and gathered about her face, and her lips are plump and swollen…so fucking sexy. She lifts one eyebrow, arching it for me. “You really do have a death wish, don’t you?”
“If I do die, make sure Cade gets my bike.”
“Why don’t you just…not…” She can’t finish her sentence, though, because I’ve started circling my fingers inside her again, and it apparently feels really good. She’s gonna feel a million times better when I fuck her.
I can’t hold off any longer. My blood is roaring in my ears as I stand up and take hold of her thighs, pulling her roughly down the couch toward me. I still haven’t taken her panties off, but there’s something really hot about having them pushed to the side, exposing her pussy, so I leave them on. Sophia watches with wide eyes as I push my boxers down over my hips, and then kick them off.
I take my cock in my hand, slowly pumping my fist up and down the hard muscle, shivering slightly at the pressure. It really isn’t normal that I’m feeling this way, but if I don’t get myself inside her so I can feel that perfect little pussy of hers tightening around me then my balls are going to explode. She probably doesn’t even realize she’s doing it, but Sophia’s digging her fingernails into her thighs, causing the flesh under her nails to turn from blushed pink to white. She wants me. She wants me bad. She doesn’t look at my cock, though. It’s like she’s afraid of it or something. Give her a few weeks and she’ll be intimately acquainted with it. This coyness will be long gone. I’m willing to put money on it.
Sliding myself forward, she sucks in a sharp breath when the head of my dick is pressing against her pussy. She seems a little hesitant, so I use it to rub up and down over her clit, over the opening of her pussy. She locks up when I move back a little, toward her ass, so I change direction and focus on the areas she seems okay with. When she starts angling her hips up every time I slide myself over her pussy, I know she’s ready.
I take no prisoners. I’m not rough enough to hurt her, to cause her any kind of pain whatsoever, but her eyelids snap open when I thrust myself inside her, all the way, balls deep. “Oh…shit,” she hisses.
“You have such a dirty mouth.” I fold myself over her, not paying any attention to the stabbing pain that sings through me, and take hold of her breasts through the t-shirt she’s wearing. No bra underneath. Perfect. Her tits are soft and full, pliable under my hands. She may not do it willingly but her back curves away from the couch, lifting her chest, offering herself to me. I don’t need telling twice. I grab the hem of the t-shirt and yank it upwards, revealing her incredible body. Her nipples are tight already, turned a dark pink, flushed with blood. She moans breathlessly when I take her right breast in my hand, palming it roughly. At the same time, I take her other nipple into my mouth and I carefully squeeze it between my teeth.
I’ve remained very still inside her, enjoying the intense reactions she has every time I shift ever so slightly, but now I start to move again, drawing myself all the way out of her before driving myself back in, slowly but firmly.
“Oh…ohmygod.” Avoiding my half healed side, she hooks her left leg around me, pulling me closer to her as I thrust, and the extra force is enough to drive me fucking crazy.
I can’t stop now. Even if I did split my stitches, I would have to make her come before I could stop this. I need to feel her body seizing up tight. I need to hear the sound of her breath quickening. I need to watch her expression change as the tidal wave of pleasure slams into her.
I’m desperate for all of that to happen, but I’m also a major fucking tease, too. I bring her so close to climax, having to stave off coming myself at least three times before I can’t take it anymore.
It sounds like her screams are being ripped out of her throat by force as I slam myself into her over and over again, rolling her clit with my thumb at the same time as I fuck her. I rarely come at the same time as a woman—I’m always far too intent on watching the whole thing play out—but this time I don’t have a choice. She opens her eyes at the last second, dark chocolate irises locked right on me, and she whispers my name, my real name, and I’m screwed.
I come with her, our bodies both tense and gripped in ecstasy for what feels like minutes but can only really be seconds, and then we’re melting together. I rest my forehead against her collarbone, panting, trying to clear my vision of the small starburst of color exploding like fireworks.
“So…is Cade going to be claiming ownership of your bike by morning?” Sophia says softly. She strokes her hand up and down over the skin of my back, oblivious to the fact that she’s practically making my eyes roll back in my head.
“The fucker isn’t getting that bike for a long time yet,” I tell her. “Not until we get to do that at least three or four more times.”
She laughs quietly, and it’s a fucking remarkable sound.
SIX
SOPHIA
My body aches. Burns, in fact. I want to lie still, to sleep forever, or at least another few hours anyway, but I can’t. An incessant pounding on the cabin door wakes me before dawn, though the loud hammering doesn’t wake Rebel. Seems he can sleep though just about anything. Unsurprising, given how late he stayed up last night, how much morphine he had in his system and how energetic he’d been when he’d pinned me to the couch and fucked me. I’d had to spot him as he weaved his way back across the other side of the cabin, and then he’d pulled me into his bed, refusing to let me go back to sleep on my own. I feel hung over as I disentangle myself from his arms and get up, pulling my t-shirt down to cover my bare legs.
“Rebel? Rebel, man, open up!” a gruff voice hisses. I can tell by the sharp tone of the male voice on the other side of the door that it’s Cade, and that he’s also super pissed. “Rebel, open the fucking door.”
“All right, already,” I hiss back. Despite the low light coming from a lamp on the other side of the room, I still manage to stub my toe as I hurry across the room to get the door. My foot is throbbing and my heart is beating out of my chest when I open up, glaring at the two dark figures lurking on the porch. Not just Cade, then—Carnie, too.
“Is he okay?” Cade asks briskly.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so,” I reply. “He’s out cold.” Carnie gives me a none too subtle once over, his eyes raking over my bare legs, and it’s with a considerable horror that I realize I’m not even wearing any underwear. He can’t see anything, but I still suddenly feel very naked. Cade gives Carnie a pointed look, clearing his throat, at which point the other man looks away, eyes to the sky.
“We need to come in,” Cade tells me. “It’s important.”
“I gathered, since you were trying to knock the damn door down.” I pluck at the t-shirt, trying to pull it down some more as I move aside to let them in. I close the door behind them and Cade beelines straight for the bed where Rebel is still passed out on his back, a very thin sheet barely covering his naked form. Cade clears his throat, scratching at his jaw. He seems to think about how to proceed before grabbing hold of his friend and shaking him hard enough to make his head bounce off the pillow.
Rebel is instantly awake, eyes wide, fist pulling back as he readies to punch Cade. “What the fuck?” he snaps.
“No time for pleasantries,” Cade says. “Can you walk?”
Rebel inhales, pulling a deep breath into his lungs. He glances between the three of us, and then nods, resting his hand over his injured side. “I might be able to if you quit shaking the shit out of me, man. What’s going on?”
“We got a problem,” Carnie says softly. “A big one. You need to see.”
Cade grunts. “You need help getting dressed?”
Rebel shakes his head. “Give me a beat. I’ll be out in a second.”
Cade and Carnie leave without saying another word, both of them wearing grim, frightening expressions on their faces. I’ve never seen either of them look so angry. Cade’s always polite with me, well mostly, anyway, and yet it’s like he doesn’t even see me as he exits the cabin. I don’t know why, but a sense of intense foreboding settles over me. Something really awful has happened. Something beyond comprehension. Something I probably don’t want to know about. A wave of panic sings through my veins—panic not for myself, but for Rebel. He’s nowhere near fully recovered, and knowing his luck he’s probably about to be shoved head-first into a really dangerous situation again.
Slowly, he heaves himself into a sitting position, pressing his hand into his side, wincing in pain. His beautiful body is in bad shape, black and blue, his bruises visible even against the complex, dark background of his extensive tattoos.
“Are you sure you should be moving about?” I ask. “Shouldn’t you be resting for a couple more days at least before you head off on some wild goose chase in the early hours of the morning?”
“If Cade comes in here looking like he just did, it means something important requires my attention. He wouldn’t ask me to come if it wasn’t entirely necessary. So yeah, I have to go.”
“Couldn’t he just tell you what the hell has happened?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Sophia, Cade is not that wordy. He’s more of a show than a tell guy.” He winks, groaning as he carefully gets to his feet. I want to give him more morphine, but I get he still has a huge supply of the drug coursing through his circulatory system. More at this point could kill him. Dad used to tell me about that all the time—people who overdose on painkillers, both unintentionally and intentionally, and slip away without even so much as a by-your-leave. It happens so easily. They’re dangerous things, painkillers. And highly addictive to boot.
“You feel like passing me a pair of jeans?” Rebel jerks his head toward his closet, brow furrowed in pain. “I think you’ll get there quicker than me.”
I open up the door to his closet to find the most immaculately organized walk-in I’ve ever seen. T-shirts, shirts, belts, shoes—everything is placed and folded just so. Puts my room back on campus to shame. I like to think of my room as organized chaos, but the truth is it’s actually just chaos. I grab a pair of jeans, boxers and a t-shirt for him, and then I watch as he fights his way into his clothes. I’m about to ask him if he needs me to help him at one point but he holds his hand up as soon as I take a step toward him. The look he shoots me could freeze over hell. Eventually, after a good ten minutes of swearing under his breath, he’s fully dressed. I can tell the effort has cost him a lot, though. His face is pale, his forehead lightly speckled with sweat, and he doesn’t seem that steady on his feet.
“Are you coming?” Cade calls through the closed door.
“Jesus wept, man! I have a fucking hole in my side,” Rebel yells back. He starts to cross the room and I quickly snatch up my own jeans, kicking them on in record time.
Rebel gives me a curious look, arching an eyebrow at me. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“With you.”
“No, you’re staying here.”
“Funny, because I was sure you told me a couple of hours ago I could have free roam of the place if I wanted. Did I imagine that?” It takes me a second to realize my hands are on my hips, my own eyebrows raised in challenge. He’d better not take that back. He promised me I wouldn’t be cooped up in here any longer. If he reneges on our deal, it won’t matter what awful problem Cade and Carnie want to show him right now. He’ll have a much bigger problem on his hands: me.
Rebel narrows his eyes. “I’m not saying you should stay here for the fun of it, Soph. It’s for your own good.”
“I’m an adult. How about you let me make my own decisions for once, huh?”
He stares at me a second longer before rolling his eyes. “Okay, fine. But remember, whatever happens, this was your call.”
I drop my hands from my hips, trying to hide my surprise. “Great. Thank you.”
Outside, Cade takes one look at me and shakes his head. “You won’t want her seeing this, man.”
Rebel casts a look at me over his shoulder, a guarded look in his pale blue eyes. “She’s an adult, Cade. She can make her own decisions, apparently.”
******
A hundred meters from the compound gate, a lone tree stands by the side of the dirt road, silhouetted against the rising sun. From the moment we leave the gate, making slow progress as Rebel hobbles after Cade and Carnie, I can see that something’s not right. It’s not until we’re much, much closer that I catch sight of the reason why Cade seems to be so agitated though.
A body.
A body hangs from the tree, upside down, suspended by one foot. The other leg hangs at an awkward angle. The foot which should be at the end of that leg is missing. The hands which should be at the ends of the arms hanging freely below are also missing. And the head… the head is gone, too. Blood mottles the naked flesh, covering the torso, the buttocks, the legs…
The rope, looped around the thick bough of the tree, creaks as the body spins, facing us, revealing that it’s the body of a woman. There’s what looks like a scrap of blood stained paper stuck to her body, black writing typed across it, but I don’t see what it says. I drop to my knees instead, and vomit into the red dirt beneath me.
“Jesus. A gift, from Los Oscuros? What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” Rebel hisses. From where I’m bent over double on the ground, I can see that his hands are shaking. I lock onto that sight, willing myself not to look up at the poor woman hanging from the tree, at the awful things that have happened to her. Rebel’s hands shake and shake and shake. And the woman’s hands are…are just gone.
Cade grunts. “And what the fuck is up with their choice of font, too?”
“Yeah.” Carnie spits on the ground. “Really says a lot about your intentions. I mean, how are you meant to take someone seriously when the message they send you is printed in motherfucking comic sans?”
“You cut their body into small pieces. That’s how you take them seriously. Hector’s fucking with us,” Rebel says softly. They continue to talk, but my ears are ringing. I can’t focus on the subdued conversation that takes place over me, but I can feel the tension pouring off the three men. I can literally taste their rage. I throw up again, screwing my eyes shut, unable to breathe.
Oh my god. I can’t… I can’t… I can’t…
“Bron,” Cade says. “Her name’s Bron. She’s Keeler’s girl. I recognize the tattoo.” I make the mistake of looking up, then. I see the small tattoo of a rose on the inside of her right forearm, just above her wrist. The bloody stump where her arm terminates is still dripping blood. I heave again, though nothing comes up this time.
“Fuck.” Rebel sinks to his knees beside me, his face now completely ashen, devoid of all color. He reaches for me, pulling me to him, though he doesn’t really look at me. He’s staring at the piece of mutilated flesh hanging from the tree like a slaughtered cow. Slowly, he strokes a hand absently over my hair, the cool blue of his eyes hardening, darkening somehow, turning steely and cold. “Sick motherfucker,” he whispers. “That sick, evil motherfucker picked her off because she wasn’t inside the compound.”
Cade laces his fingers behind the back of his head, turning away from the woman. He squints into the distance, out into the desert, his mouth pulling down at both sides in a grimace. “Yeah. Yeah, looks that way.”
“Does Keeler know?”
Carnie kicks at the dirt, shaking his head. “No. No one else knows. I found her this morning when I came back from town. I went straight to Cade.”
“Good. You did the right thing. I—fuck. God knows how we’re gonna break this to everyone.” Rebel sounds composed but his voice is utterly empty. I cry in his arms while he strokes my hair, wishing I hadn’t been so damned stubborn. If I’d just let him have his way, I wouldn’t have the image of Keeler’s dead girlfriend burned into my memory. This isn’t something that will ever go away. This isn’t something I’ll ever forget about. This is something that will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.
“They’re gonna want blood,” Cade says.
Rebel’s chin rests on the crown of my head, and for some reason the intimacy of the action calms me a little. “I know,” he says. “And they’ll get it. We just have to make sure we go about this the right way. He’s trying to bait us. Trying to provoke us. If we’re angry when we go after him, we won’t be thinking straight. We get sloppy, we make mistakes. This has to be contained.”
“I hear you. But this woman had a foot, both her hands and her fucking head chopped off, Rebel. I’d like to see how you’re gonna contain that.”
SEVEN
REBEL
Turns out Keeler spent the night away from the compound, visiting his sister in Cedar Crest. At the moment he’s one of our primary tattoo artists at Dead Man’s Ink, though. Today is his day to cover the shop, so Cade and I ride into town and to wait for him. We cut Bron’s body down and drive her back to the compound first, of course, hiding her out of sight, where the other guys won’t find her before we have chance to tell Keeler. Cade and I sit in the shop in silence, me bleeding through my stitches, staring at the walls, neither of us knowing what to say to one another. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen fucked up shit. Afghanistan was a savage place. The things we saw there… That was the first time I really understood, really knew the evil man was capable of committing against his fellow man. Nothing will ever be more brutal than the atrocities we saw there. But this is different. This is here, on our fucking doorstep, and this isn’t fucking Kabul. This is regular small town Americana, and this was one of our own.
Keeler’s first appointment is at ten thirty, so Cade and I sit and stew for a good hour and a half before the low rumble of Keeler’s motorcycle rattles the glass in the shop’s window frames.
“How you gonna handle this?” Cade asks.
“I don’t know. I guess we’re about to find out.”
Keeler looks surprised when he opens the shop door and finds Cade and me sitting at the counter. Concern flashes across his face. He’s young, mid-twenties. Good guy. Not ex-army like most of the Widow Makers. He was beaten by his father from the moment he could walk til the moment he ran away from home—spent some time pin-balling between different drug gangs before he wound up on the wrong side of the law and serving three years for possession with intent to supply. He got his shit dialled in prison. He’d been out for a month when he walked through the doors of Dead Man’s Ink for the first time, looking for work. Cade gave him a job on the spot. Took him a clean year to convince me to let him prospect for the club, though. Now I’m feeling really fucking guilty that I caved and swore him in.
“Hey, guys. What’s up? Did I leave the door open or something?” He eyes us cautiously, like we’re about to ream him out.
“No, dude. Come in. We gotta talk to you about something.” I pull out a chair by the counter, gesturing for him to sit down. He looks like he’s about to shit his pants.
“Uhhh… should I be freaking out right now? ‘Cause I’m freaking out.” He slowly walks into the shop and lowers himself into the seat.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Cade tells him. “It’s—it’s about Bron.”
I watch the nervous smile fall from Keeler’s face. “What about her?” he says slowly.
I take over. I’m the president of this club. I’m responsible for the people who have joined, and I should also be responsible for their loved ones. I should have known this was going to happen. I tell Keeler what’s happened, doing my best to provide as few details as possible. It’s impossible to keep the truth from him for long, though. The guy stares at me, as though I’m making it all up.
“Come on, man, stop fucking around. That shit ain’t funny.”
“I’m sorry. I swear to god, I am so sorry, and we are going to make this right, Key.”
“She’s dead? She’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“They…they cut off her head?”
I scrub my hands over my face, blowing all the air out of my lungs. “I’m sorry. Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“What?”
“Where is her fucking head, man?” Keeler’s voice is nothing more than a whisper, yet his eyes are screaming with rage. He’s about to flip his shit.
“We don’t know. We’ll find out, though. We’ll make this right.” God, I really hope I’m not lying to this kid.
As predicted, Keeler explodes. Cade and I sit back and watch as he trashes the shop, punching a fist through the door to the back room, throwing the sterilizing equipment, destroying anything and everything he can get his hands on. We let him rage.
By the time he collapses into a heap on the floor, sobbing silently, shoulders jerking up and down as he weeps, there’s barely a stick of furniture in the place that remains unbroken.
“Take him back to the compound,” I tell Cade. Keep him away from everyone until I get back. No one leaves today, though. Tell the rest of the club they’re on lockdown. Tell anyone with friends or family living here in town to make sure they pull everyone in. I’m not having his happen again.”
Cade says he’ll get it done and then leaves. As soon as he’s managed to half carry, half drag Keeler out of the shop, I double over and clutch my side, breathing through the white hot, burning pain that’s tearing through me. “Fuck.” Breathing is hard again. I don’t know if that’s from the pain or from Keeler’s complete devastation. He deserved better. He deserved for his girlfriend to be safe while he was out of town. I should have fucking known this was going to happen. Hector Ramirez is a sociopath. He’s clinically insane. The life of an innocent bystander means nothing to him. He’d murder the entire town if he thought it would make his point. So I should have known.
“Well, that was quite the display.”
My head snaps up at the sound of the voice, already knowing who it is. Already assessing how I’m going to proceed. Hector Ramirez stands in the open doorway of the shop, one hand braced against the frame, the other hand casually in the pocket of his suit pants. He looks mildly amused, like the scene of destruction before him is entertaining. His gaze settles on my side, my hand still pressing against my wound, and his eyebrows slowly rise. Taking his hand out of his pants, he places something small into his mouth and bites down on it, crunching.
“You know,” he says. “It really is a shame you snuck up on my guards the other night. They’re very jumpy men. They tend to react without thinking sometimes. If you’d simply have made your presence known to them and told them you wished to see me, I’m sure they would have treated you in a far more…civilized manner.”
I grind my teeth together, mentally scanning the shop for a concealed weapon, something to do some serious damage to the evil piece of shit that is strolling into my property like he owns the damn place. Problem is, we don’t keep guns or knives here. The shop’s raided by the cops on a fairly frequent basis, and precautions have been necessary in the past.
With a slight grunt of distaste, Hector steps over the smashed coffee table between he and I, his leather shoes crunching as he treads on shards of glass. “I imagine you found my little gift this morning?” he says. “I worried that you might not see her. Raphi suggested we leave our present to you right on your doorstep where you wouldn’t miss it, however that seemed a little too obvious. I didn’t want the police arresting you for murder because there was a mutilated corpse propped up against your boundary wall. Where would the fun have been in that?” He puts something into his mouth again and chews—candied almonds. The bastard always has a pocket full of them. Makes him smell like an old woman.
I curl my fingers to make a fist, hate charging through my veins, seeping into my pores, infecting every last part of me with a rage that won’t go unanswered. Can’t go unanswered. I tried to do this the legal way, I really did. I wanted Ramirez and his men in jail for what they did to my uncle. I wanted them to suffer every horrifying, dark, awful violation possible while they served their time, knowing they were going to die as incarcerated men, never to walk free again. The time for that has past now, though. Now, I just want them all dead. Preferably in the most painful manner possible.
“You shouldn’t have killed Leah. You should never have stepped foot on my father’s property in Alabama. You should never have followed us back here, and you really shouldn’t have harmed a hair on Bron’s head, Hector. You think there won’t be consequences?”
Hector Ramirez shrugs, pulling a fat cigar from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, apparently done with his almonds. He bites the end off the cigar and spits it onto the ground, then proceeds to light it with an engraved silver lighter. “From where I’m standing, the Widow Makers aren’t the formidable force I assumed them to be when I undertook this little adventure to New Mexico, Jamie. When Raphi dealt with your uncle back in Seattle and your second in command made grand gestures, inciting war between our people, I thought to myself, ‘well, okay now. This might be interesting. Something to distract you from the tedium of every day life, Hector. Thank the lord.’ But no. I arrive here to this dust bowl you call home, and I find a rag-tag group of misfits living out in the desert, sticking their dicks into the locals, tattooing people for money.” He gestures at the trashed shop, disgust warping his features. “I have to admit, I’m more than a little disappointed.”
He makes it to the counter where I’m still bent double, trying to remain calm. Trying not to give away the fact that my right hand is resting on the one weapon we do keep in the shop—a prime maple Louisville slugger. I’m in a shit load of pain and my head is spinning, so I have to wait for the perfect moment. If I launch myself at him too early, I’m going down hard and I won’t be getting back up again. That means I need him close. Closer than he is now, anyway. And that means I have to keep him talking.
“You made a huge mistake in coming here, Hector.”
“Ahh, you think so?” He pouts, pulling on his cigar, holding the smoke in his mouth before he blows it out in a thick cloud. The smell reminds me of my father—he always smokes after dinner, ever the traditional southern gentleman. It takes me a mere second to connect the dots when I see the familiar Havana Red paper seal of my father’s favorite brand wrapped around the rolled tobacco leaves in Hector’s hand. He is literally smoking one of my father’s cigars. This is an action designed to piss me off, to drive me crazy, but all he’s succeeding in doing is distilling my anger into clarity. I don’t see red. I don’t react. My recklessness the other night, the recklessness that got me stabbed, isn’t normally how I operate. Push me to the edge and I get smart. Poke and prod at my buttons and I come up with new and interesting ways to return the fucking favor. I’ve got my shit handled now, but then Hector Ramirez doesn’t know that about me. He knows nothing about me whatsoever. He’s massively underestimated both me and my club if he thinks he’s going to succeed in baiting me into stupidity twice.
He comes closer, standing on the other side of the counter. “You know…I believe I recognized the woman with you at your father’s home, Jamie. Can it be that you arranged for Julio Perez to purchase my little One Eighty-One on your behalf?”
One Eighty-One, the number he assigned to Sophia in order to sell her. Motherfucker. I glare at him, willing him dead. It’s the only way I can maintain my relative calm. If he says her name…if he so much as mentions her again…
“That was very underhanded, you know. I can’t say that I like you tricking me out of her like that. Bad business. My good friend Raphael has aired his concerns about her association with the Widow Makers. He’s…worried about her safety. Normally, I’m careful to ignore Raphi’s council, however in this particular instance I think he may have a point. I want her back, Jamie.”
My vision blurs in my peripherals, my heart rate doubling. No way. No fucking way is he having her. “You’re certifiable if you think I’m handing her over to you, asshole.”
Hector shakes his head, as though he expected more from me. He looks away, out of the shop window, biting down on the fat cigar in his mouth. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I suppose these things can’t be helped. If you are not willing to return the girl to me, I will simply take her from you. You won’t be able to stop me. And this way, when she is back within the confines of my household, performing for my pleasure, I will not treat her well, my friend. I will treat her like the whore she is. I will ruin her. I will make her obey me in everything. She will be degraded and tortured, and when I have had my fill of her, I will kill her. And this time I will make sure to send you her head and her hands instead of the rest of her body. No. I will keep the rest of her body. A pussy is still a pussy, after all, no?”
