Page 50 of Wicked Lies Grow Wildflowers
“And I assume it’s what we suspected as far as motive?” Mark asks.
“Yes sir, he had plans of expanding his so-called empire into your territory. He wanted to get to you and Liam andwas intending to use Liam’s son as a distraction so he could work deeper into your network.” Not a lie, but not all of the truth either. I refrain from mentioning Maeren, not wanting to endanger her in any way.
“Just what we expected from that sorry son of a bitch. I’m glad he’s out of the picture, not so notorious anymore, is he?” Mark muses.
“No Mark, he’s not,” I say as I look down at Simon's dead body, his flesh pulled away from his face. I thought it fitting to have a little fun with skinning The Skinner, just for the poetry and irony of it all. Especially since he was so sure this would be my own end. “Oh, and tell your team they’ll need two body bags, his bitch got in the way and I had to put her down, too.”
Mark lets out a loose laugh, “Good work Paxton, never leaving any loose ends, are you?”
“Never. Goodnight Mark.” I hang up the phone and enter the dining room, finding Maeren sitting at the table, everything still in place from dinner earlier in the night. I take note of her appearance, the blood, the haunted look in her eyes, the way she trembles, and the bracelet she ripped off, thrown next to her on the floor.
Maeren surprises me by speaking first. “Xander, I—I’m so sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am. I should have listened to you. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you,” she breaks off.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Maeren. I understand. Fuck,I’msorry I wasn’t able to protect you better than this. I’m sorry you had to go through tonight and everything leading up to it. I wish I could’ve stopped them sooner. God you have no fucking idea how sorry I am.” My voice cracks and I can feel tears filling my eyes for the first time in many years. The feeling is foreign, but not unwelcome. No emotions are unwelcome when it comes to her. I want to experience everything I can with her, good or bad.
Maeren nods and I approach her, pulling her chair out and kneeling between her legs, holding her blood streaked face in my hands. “I love you, you know? I really fucking love you Wildflower, and God you’re so beautiful right now.” I take my hand and wipe at the small cut on her throat with my thumb before bringing it to my mouth and tasting it, the tangy iron running over my tongue. Her pupils dilate at the action and she whispers my name, the sound husky, before pulling my face to hers for a kiss.
Our tongues meld together as our mouths fuse, and I know with absolute certainty that she’s mine forever. I want to taste her on my tongue until the day I die.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MAEREN
My mind isfuzzy with so much grief and yet the only thing I want to do right now is melt into Xander. I can worry about the rest later. He breaks our kiss to prop me up on the table, throwing dishes onto the floor and out of my way before gently laying me down. My heartbeat picks up as I anticipate his actions. He climbs over me and licks across the cut on my neck, moaning as he does so. “You taste so fucking good,” he groans.
His hands rove along the bottom hem of my stained and ruined sweater before slowly crawling up to touch my breasts. He pulls me up to sit and removes my sweater and bra before reaching for the pie. “What are you doing?” I ask, eying his every movement, unsure of where this is going.
“I was late to the celebration, but I can still have dessert.” His eyes hold a wicked gleam and I’m not prepared for it when his scoops up some of the pie and spreads it on my nipples. He sticks his fingers in my mouth, making me suck the filling off of them. I don’t think I’ve ever been so turned on in my life. I think this is the pinnacle, and how fucked up does this all make me? I don’t have time to ponder it much before he takes a can of whippedcream and trails it from my sternum all the way down to the waistband of my jeans.
“Xander, what?—?”
“Shhh…” he cuts me off, “Just trust me.” I watch him as his blood stained mouth closes around a nipple, lapping all of the pie filling off of my breast, moaning as he does so. He then works the other one before trailing his tongue down my body, licking up all of the whipped cream. I could almost orgasm from the sight of that alone. Almost.
When he reaches the end he unbuttons my pants and pulls them down along with my underwear. He grins up at me, looking as sinful as the devil when he says, “Now for the best part.” He spreads my thighs and coats them in bloody handprints before delving in. A few laps of his tongue later and I fall off the edge, briefly forgetting all of the horrors of tonight.
Xander madea few phone calls after turning me into a buffet and then took me home. Tohishome. For the first time, I’m staying the night here. He buzzes us through the complex’s security and carries me inside to his bathroom. My mind is still ten steps behind, trying desperately to make sense of everything from tonight. Trying desperately to keep myself together.
Xander sits me down on the edge of the sink and helps me out of my clothes, dropping the bloody garments in a heap on the floor. He turns on the water in his large walk-in shower, and when it starts to steam he takes his own clothes off and helps me inside. I zone out a bit as the water beats down on my skin, running red as it washes all of the blood away. I stare and stare as it drips down the drain, my eyes unfocused. Xanderwordlessly and with so much tenderness scrubs me head to toe. I continue to stare at the water, watching as it turns from bright red to clear, all evidence of the night gone from my skin except the shallow cut across my throat, still red and angry. My mind zeros in on that, on knowing someone hurt me, cut me, someone aside from my mother. I feel violated—Iwasviolated. I start to panic and I can’t take in enough air.
I back away from Xander and sink to the floor, a sob caught in my throat, my fingers itching to scratch at my arms and I’m too tired to resist the urge, so I tear into myself, ignoring Xander’s muffled pleas begging me to stop, begging me to come back to him.
I’m pulled into his lap and he wrenches my hands away from either of my arms and holds them in a vice as strong as steel. He rocks us back and forth under the stream of water, muttering my name over and over and over, leaving gentle kisses on the back of my head until I’m lulled to sleep from the beating water and my bone deep exhaustion.
When I wake,I find myself tucked safely beside Xander in his bed. I take in the scent of him, having missed it so much, all the while hating the whispers of it that were left in my own apartment. I turn my head to face him and the arm he has wrapped around me tightens.
“We need to talk,” I tell him. I don’t want to have this conversation, but it needs to happen.
“Yeah. I suppose we do.”
I sit up in the bed, noting that he has me in one of his t-shirts, I smile at that. “No lies,” I tell him. “I mean it.”
“I will never lie to you, Maeren, ask me anything you want. I’ll always tell you the truth.”
I scoff a little at that, but while I’m angry I’m also so fucking tired, my words coming out soft. “The truth. What exactly is the truth? Why did you just show up at my mom’s house? How did you know where she lived? Why were you after Simon? How did you know who he really was? Why thefuckdo you have a gun and why are you so okay with killing and thenflayingthe dead bodies? Who are you, really?”
He chews on his lip for a minute before proceeding, “You know I have my own company, I told you that much and it’s true. I really do work on website building, but I do more than that, too. I do a lot of . . . freelance work, you could say.”
“Freelance work. Right. That’s why you’re just equipped to kill people includingserial killers, on a whim.” My words are accusing. Good.
