Last Breath

Nineteen

Daniel

REGAN CRYING AFTER SEX FEELS about as good as a stick up the ass. I pat her awkwardly with one hand as I pull off the condom with the other. With a twist, I knot it and toss it into the trash. Meanwhile I rifle through the video memory I’d captured, trying to see if there was a point at which I’d forced her to continue. It seemed like she loved it. Her pussy was squeezing me so tight I thought my dick would snap off—but I’d be a happy dickless man. For the sake of my own sanity, I accept that her tears are as she said—letting it all out. I rub her back, enjoying the feel of her soft body spread out all over mine. Lust still licked around the base of my spine. One time really wasn’t enough. I needed her to ride me until there wasn’t any emotion, fluid, or feeling left in our bodies. Until we’d fucked each other so hard and so long that all we could do was melt into the bed, two formless beings drained by sex. The outside world could go to hell so long as I could lie here inside of her.

I’d been running for months, looking in every hideaway and whorehouse between Europe, Asia, and the Americas. All I wanted to do now was hold Regan. Okay, hold her and fuck her—but with a lot of meaning. I’m going to have a hard time letting her go because in the short time that we’ve known each other I realize she fits me better than anyone else I know. She’s unperturbed by my smartass mouth and, in fact, gives back in equal measure. She’s stronger than anyone and hasn’t slowed me down an iota. Plus, she’s hotter than the sun in the desert.

“You should come to Texas,” I blurt out because my mouth is still being run by the little head which is growing harder with each passing moment. Suddenly I want to shed a few tears. How did I not think to buy condoms at the farmácia? Shit, could I glue my dick shut? No, I’d end up busting a nut—literally—by the unpurged sperm.

“Yeah?” she asks, wiping away the moisture on her cheeks.

“Yeah.” Now that I’ve voiced the idea, I’m warming to it. I can totally see Regan on my ranch, wearing one of my old work shirts with the flaps tied under her boobs like a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. Her smooth belly would be bared to the sun, and her tight jeans would sit low on her hips. We’d ride out into the pasture and watch the sun sink below the last visible strip of land, until only the stars and the deep midnight of the night sky blanketed us. I’d lay her down on a magically-produced blanket, and we’d make sweet love amongst the silver sage that grows wild on the fields. “You could learn to ride. My mom makes a mean sweet tea and pot roast. After dinner, we’d walk down to the pond and listen to the crickets tell each other secrets about the day. Later that night, I’d take you to the old foreman’s cabin and pleasure you until the sun came up the next day.”

“Sounds lovely.” She tucks her head under my chin and I pull the covers up so she’s not chilled by the air conditioning. “Maybe you could come to Minneapolis. It’s as cold as the arctic and without the cute penguins.”

“It sounds irresistible.” But it has you, I think; and sappy as that may be, it’s all I need.

“Your dick is trying to push its way into the wrong place.” She wiggles her ass a little, like she’s not all that averse to the feeling.

“Can’t be helped. You’re naked, lying on top of me. We got done having atom-rattling sex and my cock’s not a dummy. He knows there’s a hot, tight, wet little place for him.” I shift her slightly and rub my cock along her ever-increasingly wet slit. We both groan. “Just ignore it.” But I palm her ass with both hands, allowing my fingers to pull her cunt lips apart so that more of her juicy pussy slides along the hard ridge of my cock.

“Ignore what?” she gasps, and there aren’t any tears in her eyes, just a growing haze of lust.

“Nothing, fighter. That’s not my cock rubbing your cunt right now. You aren’t getting wetter by the minute. I’m not holding your apple plump ass cheeks in my palms.” Digging my heels into the mattress, I angle my hips up and the head of my cock tip slides right into her bare pussy. My eyes roll back. “Oh darlin’,” I groan. My fingertips press into her flesh, opening her even more. Knowing this is wrong but not being able to stop, I pump into her shallowly. Each time, my cock dives a little deeper into her slick, hot channel. “You play ‘I never?’” I ask. “Because I’ve never felt anything so good as riding bareback in your tight little pussy.”

She’s panting now. “It feels incredible. I swear I can feel every vein and ridge on your cock. You feel enormous.”

Her words make me swell longer and harder than I’ve ever been. “I don’t have a motherfucking condom,” I curse, but she doesn’t climb off and I can’t bring myself to pull out. Worse, she squeezes me tight and I feel like shooting a truckload of spunk into her right then. "I know this sounds stupid, but I swear I'm clean. We got checked regularly in the army for everything.” And we both knew she was clean from the post-rescue clinic visit.

She nods and then clenches around me again. “Yes.” It comes out on a breathy, sexual sigh.

With one surge, I’m seated to the hilt and Regan lets out a low, keening cry. Her forehead drops down to mine and I take her mouth, fucking her with my tongue and cock. She responds with a matching hunger. This time it’s a frenzied, crazy fuck—our bodies slapping against each other like we’re in a race to see who can drive the other mad first. The palms of her hands are digging into my shoulders, but the pain is a welcome sign of how needy she is for me.

I’m pistoning inside her with long, hard strokes. Lifting her slightly and then pulling her back down. “Harder, fuck me harder, Daniel,” she moans into my mouth. The taunt, the plea, whatever it was, bursts through my fogged brain and I flip her over onto her back and fold her legs so that her ass is titled upward. In the next motion, I’ve sheathed myself inside her again, pounding into her as she digs her heels into my shoulders and her nails bite into the sides of my thighs. She’s marking me, my hindbrain chortles, and I love it.

“You’re so hot, so beautiful right now,” I tell her. “Your cunt is swallowing me up, like a hungry flower.” The tension of my orgasm has gathered at the base of my spine and I’m ready to spend all over her. “You coming with me, Regan?” I growl at her. “Come with me.”

I lift one leg over my shoulder and reach around so that I can roll her clit between my fingers. I need her to share this moment with me. My fingers catch and tease and pinch her clit as I stroke her with fast, hard thrusts. She’s crying now, but it’s clearly from pleasure. Her head is thrashing back and forth on the bed until her orgasm overtakes her, tensing her whole body as she bows up off the bed. Her climax causes her pussy to clamp down on me, and it takes superhuman strength to wrench out of her. I palm my throbbing cock and come jets out of me and all over her stomach and tits. I feel like I come for hours, and when the red hot fog of lust evaporates, I see that she’s covered in me. The streaks of milky-white semen look like abstract art on her flushed flesh and I feel more amazing than fucking Picasso.

I can’t stop myself from spreading it around, rubbing it into her pelvis and her stomach and up the underside of her breasts. “You look good in my come.”

She barely has the energy to stick her tongue out at me but manages a small snort. Her face is turned to the side of the mattress, and she’s trying to catch her breath. Me too. I fall down beside her, still rubbing my come into her skin.

“You’re an animal,” she whispers, but it’s not an insult. It’s a simple observation and a true one at that.

“No doubt, fighter.” I draw her close to me, and this time our kiss is languid and exploratory instead of a frenzied meeting of mouth and teeth and tongue. Her lips are petal soft, and she tastes like home, better than my mom’s sweet tea and pot roast. I could live on her taste and nothing else.

A pounding on the door interrupts our post-coital make-out session. “Ignore it,” I say, more interested in having Regan’s tongue in my mouth than food in my belly. I figure it is room service—although I don’t remember ordering any. The thought penetrates, and I sit up abruptly. No one should know we are here. Jumping out of bed, I grab my Ruger from the nightstand. “Get under the bed,” I order in a hushed voice. She nods and slides off the bed, but not before she grabs the other gun.

“Don’t shoot me,” I say with a grin, trying to alleviate some of her fear. Standing next to the doorframe, my back against the wall, I tell the persistent knocker to go away. “We don’t need any assistance.”

“Open the door,” a deep voice commands in Russian.

Oh fuck me. Vasily Petrovich. Just what I don’t need. “Hold your horses.” I have no idea if that Western idiom translates, but I figure he’ll get the message.

Crossing the room, I crouch down beside Regan, who is kneeling beside the bed, the gun clutched between both hands. I reach over and push the safety back on.

“What language were you speaking?” She looks at me with suspicion. Cradling her cheek in my hand, I search for the right words to say but before I can get anything out, the door is kicked in.

Regan lifts her gun, disengages the safety and shoots twice.

“Motherfucker!” yells Petrovich, who dives to the side.

I knock Regan’s hands upward and wrestle the gun away. It’s then I realize we are both nude and she’s probably sticky from my attentions.

“Fuck.” I pick a struggling Regan up in my arms and hustle her into the bathroom. Reaching into the shower, I flick the hot water on and then sit down on the toilet. Her body is shaking—with fear, not desire—but she’s not crying.

“That man out there . . .” She points a trembling arm toward Petrovich, whose moans of pain have stopped.

“You must have winged him, fighter.”

I try to lift her into the shower, but she’s all limbs right now. It’s like trying to handle an octopus. I get her inside the stall, but she fights the whole way. “We don’t have time to shower,” she screams at me. “We’ve got to get out right now.” And then understanding dawns on her as she stares at me under the spray of the water. I can’t tell if there are tears mixing with the shower water, but the expression on her face is killing me.

“You know him.” Her voice is dead. Zero inflection.

“Let me explain.”

She retreats until her back hits the tile wall. Her head is shaking back and forth, as if by sheer force of will she can make this knowledge away. “No. No, you are one of them.”

Her body is taut, and she looks like she’s about to retch. “I let you touch me. I trusted you.” Her last words are a screamed at me, but it’s not the volume that makes me wince, it’s the shredded pain underlying each sound.

“Regan, please.” I drop to my knees, uncaring that water is flooding out onto the bathroom door. “I know him only because he had a lead for me. He sent me to you. To rescue you. I promise.”

“How do I know you’re not part of a whole ring? Are you going to sell me too?”

“No!” I shuffle closer, but she holds out her hands as if I’m the devil come to steal her soul. “I’m Daniel Hays. I’m a former soldier from Texas. My sister was stolen. I haven’t lied to you. Not once, I swear it.” I raise my hands in the air. Her next words kill me.

“He sold me.”

And my heart breaks. I lean down and kiss her feet.

“I’m sorry, fighter. I’m so sorry.” With my face on the cold tile and my hands on either side of her feet, I wait for her to forgive me. I need for her to forgive me.

"Where's the other guy?” She’s shaking so hard with fury that she can’t stand, and she slides down the wall until she’s seated. Her voice is low and harsh. “He raped me before he handed me over to them.”

“I killed him. Broke his neck and left him behind a gas station. I should have made it more painful, now that I know that.” I climb in beside her. The hot water from the shower head is almost cool by the time it hits our feet. When she hears that Yury is dead, she relaxes slightly and that awful, brittle look washes down the drain with the water. But my heart is breaking for her.

Gesturing toward the outer room, she asks with incredulity, “Are you really friends with him?”

“Who? Nick?”

“No, the slave trader.”

“I know him. Met him a few months ago. Knew of him longer, though.” I tell her everything. “I’ve been searching for my sister, so I got involved with some guys who make money killing bad guys.”

“Hit men?”

“Mercenaries. Hit men. I needed a way in to find Naomi. I started watching people, reaching out if I thought that they had some personal code because I felt I might be able to trust them. Nick was one of those guys. He was very careful with the jobs he took on. He researched them, and he was very good at what he did, so I reached out to him. When you and Daisy were kidnapped, I knew it was my opportunity to do him a solid, so he’d owe me.” She’s listening to me, which I take as a good sign.

“The Petrovich Bratva is a powerful mafia, but the head of it was running the organization into the ground. Vasily Petrovich approached me. Said that he will help us if we kill the head of it and make sure it can’t be traced back to him. Nick, Daisy, and I take care of Sergei Petrovich. Vasily gives me your information and then hints that there’s been a long funnel of blondes from Russia to Rio. I think maybe Naomi is here, also. You know the rest of it.” I scrub my hand across my head.

“What’s he doing here then?”

“There’s something here he wants, too.” I have my fear about what that is, but I think Regan’s had enough revelations at the time.

"I don't want to be near him.” Defiance has replaced fear as her current emotion.

“That’s fine. I’ll take him down to the beach and figure out what he wants.”

She nods.

“Are we okay?” I ask.

There’s nothing but silence, and then her hand slips over mine. “I can’t go back.”

I rise up on my knees. “I swear on my sister’s life no more harm will come to you. Not if I have to lay waste to the entire southern seaboard to keep you safe. You will never go back.”

Regan’s lower lip trembles, but she bites back her emotion and then mirrors my pose. Her small hands creep up around my neck. “I believe you then, Daniel.”

I want to kiss her but know that would be very foolish of me to do at this moment. Instead, I squeeze one of her arms. Rising to my feet, I tell her to shower. “I’ll get you some clothes.” I tuck a towel around my waist and leave Regan to clean up.

Outside I find Vasily sitting on the sofa, a white cloth wrapped around his left hand.

“Is she okay?” He jerks his chin toward the shower. I stomp over to the packs and pull out some clothing for us.

“No thanks to you.” I hadn’t realized that Vasily was directly involved in her sale, even though I knew he had kidnapped her. He’d had to in order to sell the scheme thing to his uncle, but his ends justifies the means attitude makes me want to take the butt end of my gun and rearrange his face. Shaking it off, I head back for the bathroom. Regan is drying off, and I try hard not to watch her but even the bathroom is too small to avoid seeing a few glimpses of her fine body. My own body reacts predictably, and the towel around my waist lifts up.

“Sorry,” I mumble.

“I’m going to take it as a compliment," she sighs. “My outrage meter is worn out. I’m worn out.”

We dress hastily, and I ignore my growing hard-on.

Regan leads us out of the bathroom but stops short with a gasp. Vasily has stripped off his shirt and laid a belt on the bed. He's kneeling with his hands laced behind his head.

"What are you doing?” she demands.

“Recompense.” Vasily does not turn around. He barely moves.

"He wants you to hit him with the belt,” I offer helpfully.

“He thinks that me hitting him is going to make up for selling me?” she shrieks.

“I guess?”

Regan goes over to the bed and picks up the belt. We wait. She runs the belt through her fingers and then juggles the buckle end in her hand, perhaps testing its bite.

“Wrap the small end around your hand and strike with your whole arm,” Vasily instructs. This is surreal. Vasily is giving Regan directions on how to best beat him. Looking around, I spy the sofa and head toward it. This whole scene seems like something out of a bad art house drama. Regan does as he instructs, winding the soft end around her hand. She whips the belt up and down a couple of times. I think I’m flinching, but Vasily is not. Her arm pulls back, and she whips it forward. We all hear the whistle as the belt flies through the air. Vasily doesn’t move an inch, and the buckle falls harmlessly. Regan tosses the belt onto the bed.

“Live with the guilt,” she spits out. “I don’t absolve you.”

“You were not to go on sale,” Vasily says. “You were to sit in a safe house until Daniel could come for you, but…” he pauses, “something went wrong. Someone I trusted betrayed me.”

This is too much for Regan to hear. She collapses onto the sofa next to me.