Page 19 of Karma

I wish this was our first night here, not our last. But wishing is for people who have choices. Mine were washed away in blood a long time ago.

So I don’t ask any more questions and I don’t make any more suggestions. I just lean back and enjoy his lips on my skin. They started out sending little sparks of electricity through me, but now raging forest fires erupt everywhere they touch. Another thing I’ll get tattooed on my skin to stay there forever.

I already know that’s all I’m gonna get to keep of him. Memories. And good dreams, hopefully. I don’t know when I started wanting more. I don’t know when I started fooling myself that he wants more too.

It happened somewhere between his cock making me come in ways I never have before and falling asleep in his arms, listening to the steady beat of his heart as the forest hummed all around us. Or talking for hours on end about absolutely riveting things that had no basis in our real lives away from here. Right around the time I started wishing we could stay at this cabin forever, I guess. But all of that was doomed from the start.

Even those thoughts start to fade as his lips finally find my nipples and his fingers my clit. He’s so good at making me feel good. So good at making me forget I’m supposed to be tough and independent and strong. Not someone to be taken care of and cherished.

His fingers are inside me, brushing against that special spot that he can find so well. Pressing the button that makes me want a home and a peaceful life and everything nice. I feel his fingerseverywhere, but mostly somewhere near my heart, right where his lips are too.

I surrender to the pleasure he’s giving me, let nothing invade the bubble of bliss he’s wrapping me in. Least of all the thought of it bursting.

Burying my face in his neck, his hair, I let those bonfires we’ll never get to share warm me as his skilled fingers and gorgeous lips coax yet another mind-altering orgasm from me. One of our last.

Because we stole this time together from our regularly scheduled lives. But thieves, just like murderers, never get very far.

9

Scorpio

We left the cabin with the sunrise. What I didn’t tell her was that I almost left on my own before dawn, while she was sleeping peacefully. I had everything packed, was dressed, really fucking wanted a drink. I fought both the urges as I watched her sleep, unable to take my eyes off her. Not sure how I’m ever gonna be able to do that.

But the goodbye is still coming. Swiftly. We’ve been on the road for over twelve hours now and I’m starting to hallucinate. None of those hallucinations are showing me anything good.

The thing is, she’s riding to get back to Grim and I’m riding to play my part in the revenge plot that’s been years in the making and will more than likely lead to my death. Neither of those things is something I want to be thinking about. But long bike rides will get you thinking. It’s why I always break them up with sex and booze pit stops. Whatever stop we make on this ride will only lead to talking about all those things I don’t want to think about. So I haven’t been stopping.

Even if I had a future, even if after the revenge, I somehow remain alive, it still leaves me nowhere with Karma. She belongsto another man. I’m under no delusions that the warning to stay away from her didn’t come from both of her guys, even though it was Reaper who delivered it.

I’m not looking for a relationship. Especially not with a woman and a man. Just thinking in that direction is making the monsters hiding in the darkness on either side of this empty stretch of road start to lash out at me. Those monsters have been growing more and more hideous as my tiredness grows heavier. Usually, the steady rumble of my bike beneath me and the hum of the tires against the road are enough to lull me into a state of Zen that I never find anywhere else. Except maybe when Karma’s sleeping in my arms, the scent of our lovemaking still clinging to her skin. But now, the pool of light cast by my headlight seems to be shrinking in the onslaught of those darkness-born monsters.

A pink and green neon blur materializes into a sign for a roadside motel and I signal, then make a turn before I think it through. But it’s time to let the monsters have the road. I’m hoping we’re both too tired to speak anyway. I think I might even be too tired to fuck.

“Finally,” Karma says as she pulls up beside me. “I was about ready to fall asleep. Do you mind getting the room and I’ll wait here?”

“Sure,” I say and walk to the office, where a middle-aged guy with his pants undone is lounging on a ratty sofa, watching an infomercial for some sort of magical soap.

He doesn’t ask many questions, I pay cash and am again standing next to Karma in under five minutes, kinda wishing I had that guy’s boring life instead of the one I have. But if I had his life, I’d never get a woman as beautiful as Karma for the night, let alone a whole week.

This place is neither here nor there as far as towns go, which is probably why we’re the only guests, going by the lack of other cars in the lot. I lead the way to our room—number 13.

“Empty motels always give me the creeps,” Karma says as she closes the blinds on the room’s single window and pulls the moth-eaten curtains closed for good measure. “If I was here alone, I probably wouldn’t sleep a wink.”

She starts unpacking our food on the rickety table for two under the window.

“I spent a lot of my childhood in places like this,” I say, no idea why. “The emptier the place was, the better, as far as I was concerned. Though they rarely were. Mostly they were all filled with junkies and hookers and other types you never want to meet.”

She stops what she’s doing and is looking at me with this weird mixture of pity and shock. I should’ve kept quiet, but Honey’s been on my mind a lot again today. She’s been dead for a long time, but her stories are still very much alive. I wonder if we’d be on the brink of getting our revenge against Devil’s Nightmare MC if it weren’t for her stories of the good old day. Possibly not.

“Did she… did she bring her johns home to the room?” she asks, holding a pack of jerky in her hand like she’d forgotten what she was doing.

“No, she didn’t, but the guys she called her ‘boyfriends’ weren’t much better.” I take the jerky from her hand and sit down. “Honey had the worst taste in men.”

“My mom wasn’t much better,” she says and sits down too.

“Hooking up with a guy who sold you… I’d say she was worse.”

She looks very sad again and I could just punch myself for making it happen.

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