Page 18 of Keeping Her Under
She was giving me the choice.
Trusting in me completely.
When I put her into a coma, the thought of fucking her wasn’t just a primal need. It was a desire to get closer to that raw, utter dependency she had on me.
And that Asher would approve of. It’s what he chases when he finds his own people to fuck.
But I can’t show him that in a picture.
“I’ll introduce you when she wakes,” I say.
He whistles. “Getting that serious so soon is pretty gay, cuz.”
“Being pan is pretty gay,” I say pointedly.
A devilish smile flashes through his red beard. “You’re just jealous because of all the ass I’m getting. There’s so many people to fuck if you just let yourself be free.”
Given my childhood, I rarely indulge in sex. A hand or a toy is my usual preference, but Asher went the other way after being raped by his father. He fucks more than he breathes. Personally, I don’t get it. I can’t see how he can possibly bear to have someone touch him however they want to. But how he handles his shit is his own business. None of us cope the same.
“And oh, look, at that” he says, nodding at a car on the horizon that’s whipping from one lane to another. It’s still too far away to make out any of its details, but its swerving headlights paint a clear enough picture of either drunkenness or lunacy.
“Come with me on this one,” he says.
“I’m good,” I reply. “Just be ready for tonight.” I start to open the car door, wanting to be out of here if he decides to give chase.
“Of course, darling,” he says. “Pick you up at one.”
“Don’t say it like that,” I scoff.
“Homophobia is so last century,” he teases as he keeps his eyes on his potential target.
“The issue is incest, dipshit. We’re related.”
He shrugs as he starts the engine. The swerving car is a red convertible with its top down – and there are two people in the front seat. “Only cousins,” he says, “and incest is only bad if you can reproduce.” He cocks his head to the side. “Though they did make two male mice do that recently, didn’t they?”
I shake my head as I step out. “They still used a female’s oocyte. They merely removed the nuclei, then reprogrammed a male’s skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, deleted the Y-chromosome, added an X-chromosome from another cell, and fertilized the egg with another’s sperm. Though interestingly, that also led to the eradication of trisomy 16 –”
“So… fucking a dude is or isn’t going to get me pregnant?” my cousin says slowly as the flashy red convertible whips past us. It has a male driver, with a female passenger – blonde with a big perky rack, whose top is also down. And they’re young, college kids maybe. Fucking catnip for him.
Shaking my head in exasperation, I say, “Isn’t.”
“Cool. Then I’ll pick you up at one, sunshine.”
“Fuck off,” I say, but he’s already gone, his lights flashing. Off to chase his own pleasure.
Twelve
At eleven-thirty, I head out of my house for a late-night run. After leaving Asher to continue his shift around eight, I went to the site where Summer had totaled her car as he’d told me her phone had never been logged.
There was evidence of the wreckage still littered around the foliage –shattered glass glinting through the leaves, chipped paint scrubbed across the trunk of the tree– but anything big had been cleaned up already. I’d known the likelihood of finding her phone would be slim, especially in the dark, but I’m still frustrated that I failed.
As my feet slap against the sidewalk, I push my irritation out through my legs. The muggy night air clings to my skin as the harsh lights of the street lamps light up my route. I can smell the well-kept gardens and fresh-cut grass. The dogs I pass don’t even bark. The neighborhood I live in is nothing like Summer’s. There’s no threat here. No danger of going out for a midnight run. She’ll like it when she moves in.
But first I need to find her boyfriend. I can’t have him hanging over her; the scumbag will try to weasel his way back into her life once he hears she’s living it up in some fancy neighborhood, in some rich fucker’s house.
I grew up with enough lowlifes like him to know he’ll never stop until he bleeds her dry and destroys every part of her he can.
My hands tighten into fists as I imagine them around his neck. Once I find him, no one else ever will.
