Page 40 of The Killer Card

I try to calm her, try to whisper comfort in her ear until she can fall back asleep but it’s like she can’t hear a word I’ve said. Her sobs are relentless, her pain inconsolable. She’s being torn in half day by agonizing day she’s forced away from her soulmate. Because that’s what Elias is for her. They belong together, complete each other. Elias keeps my wild friend grounded and she allows him to embrace all the parts of him that Vivian forced onto a shelf. I was so happy for them, and now…

A warm hand lands on my shoulder, and I look up to find Cristian, still half asleep, standing over me. “I’ve got her,” is all he says and I back away from the bed to give him space. I watch with tears in my eyes as Cristian crawls into bed behind Nelly- keeping her blankets between them- and wraps her in his arms as if he can protect her from all the great and terrible things in their little pocket of the world.

They’re in this together. For once, Clara and I are not enough. We don’t understand this situation, God forbid we ever do. This is something only Cristian can help her through because he too is suffering her fate. A contract marriage. An entire life forced into each other’s orbit until it shattered them both.

Soon they will be man and wife, and this is how they will go to bed every night. Blankets between them, him protecting her and her… Crumbling before our eyes…

Taking my purse from the bedside table, I steal the half-drunk bottle of wine and recede carefully from their bubble where I am not only useless, but unwelcome.

Clara is standing in the hall, tears sliding down her cheeks. I sigh, raising the bottle to my lips for a drink before holding it out. She shakes her head, wiping her nose on a sniffle. I wrap my arm around her shoulders, leading her into my room. She curls up with me in bed while I head into my bathroom to shower, taking Nelly’s wine with me.

I scrub Graham off of me with boiling water and enough soap to dry out my skin, but I don’t care. I need him off of me. I need to erase every moment of this night before I can face either of my friends again. I finish the wine, tossing the bottle and only when I’m sure I can no longer smell his cologne do I join Clara in my bed, holding her tight in our futility until we both fall asleep.

4 Days Before the Wedding

Chapter Twelve

Graham

I wake up way too early- not abnormal- and way too hard. Also not abnormal just inconvenient considering the sleeping arrangements.

I dreamed about her again. I almost always dream about her, but this one was vivid because it was a memory risen from the place where I meticulously buried all of my desires for her this past year.

Somehow we’d managed not to run into each other at all yesterday. After the girls had left, the rest of us had gone for a run and showers we’d ended up going to lunch one town over and then getting drinks at a local sports bar. We were forced to sit in a booth in the back since Cristian was almost immediately recognized by the hostess- which meant other fans were likely around- but none of us minded. We shared some wings, a few beers, and when we came back to the cabins Nelly and Clara were incredibly drunk and demanding Rowan light a bonfire.

Naomi was already in bed.

I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t because of me. That the only reason she wasn’t out there enjoying s’mores and ghost stories and acoustic karaoke was because she was still tired from her flight. But she’d had the chance to sleep that off already. And I’ve never known Naomi to be in bed earlier than one in the morning.

Scrubbing my hand down my face, I rise from the couch, shuffling to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and take a warm shower. Mornings in Vermont, even in June, are fucking freezing.

As the steam fills the bathroom, I have to groan, because it amplifies and expands the lingering scent of her perfume. Of course, this is also her bathroom. Her toiletries are hanging on the back of the door. Her shampoo is resting on the shower shelf. No thought goes into me reaching out, popping the top, leaning in to smell the coconut scent she uses on her luscious curls. Fuck, I’ve missed that smell. The cocoa butter of her lotion on her skin, the sweet vanilla of her perfume.

Squeeing a dollop into my hand, I put the bottle back, my left hand pressed against the wall and my right wrapping tight around my painfully erect cock.

I’m not what one would call gentle with myself, my furious pumping fueled by the memories I dreamed and everything that happened after.

The taste of her is still too real on my tongue, the vibration of her quivering thighs alive in my cheeks. She had looked at me with such indifference, for a time, but after that night her eyes had sparked with something new. I had done what she considered the impossible- making her writhe and squirm as she came all over my tongue- and the look she gave me after was no longer apathy. It was pure, errant lust, a desire for me to repeat my success again, and again, and again. And I was so frantic to live and die between her thighs that I agreed. I would crawl to the ends of the Earth for this woman if it meant I got to taste her sweet cunt just one more time. If it meant I could take her clit between my lips and suck until her fingers ripped the hair from scalp—

“Coño—” I grit out through clenched teeth, coming in violent spurts across the shower tiles. I keep stroking through the trembling, squeezing out ever last drop into the spray, remembering how it looked painted across her dark skin.

Fuck, this woman has me fucked up again, and I’ve only been in her orbit for a fucking day.

As I pull on a pair of jeans and a sweater, I idly wonder just how deep the lake is only for my subconscious Rowan to smack my brain, shouting, “No! We don’t think like that anymore, amigo.” So, instead of plotting my own death, I grab a mug and a k-cup- add cream and sugar to cover the shitty taste of pod coffee- and step out onto the porch. Taking in a deep lungful of air, I settle myself on the top step, staring out into the brush surrounding the cabin.

It really is beautiful here. It’s cold as fuck this morning, but beautiful. The lake is glistening in the morning sun, the birds are chirping merrily, and the landscape is quiet save the rustles of the trees in the breeze. Everyone is still asleep, so the cabin is restfully quiet. Every aspect of the morning feels like something out of a fairytale or an old Walt Whitman poem. Something out of Leaves of Grass would probably be pretty fitting, but I never paid too much attention to poetry when I was forced to read it. Peaceful country scenes and I don’t exactly add up. I’m glad for the wind and the rushing of squirrels breaking up the stillness—

“You can sit in a chair, you know.”

I spit out my coffee, gripping my chest as I sputter out, “Coño, Dios mío,” turning to find Naomi in a rocking chair, her legs crossed too primly for the periwinkle blue leggings and sweatshirt she’s wearing. ”Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!”

For a second I think I see the corner of her lip twitch, but no. Her mouth is a straight line as she nods to the rocking chair next to her. “You’ll live.”

Standing, I brush off the seat of my jeans, taking the offered chair with a sip of coffee—

“Ugh,” I groan, spitting it back in the cup. “That’s fucking awful.”

She holds out a to-go cup in my direction, her eyes still on the lake. When I don’t immediately reach, she shakes it little. “Go on.”