Page 67 of Shattered
“He’ll get what’s coming to him,” I said. I took longer than was necessary to bandage his hand, moving slowly and tenderly, as if he were a delicate child I was afraid of hurting, or a loose cannon that I wasn’t prepared to handle. I guess he was more towards the second. “I just know it.”
“How can you be so sure?” he asked. He narrowed his eyes. “The world is a cruel place. Men like him go on to live into old age, wreaking havoc along the way, justice never reaping its weary head.”
That may have been true, but Sage City had a secret weapon. At least for now.
“He’ll make it right,” I said quietly.
“Who’s ‘he’?”
“The Angel.”
As soon as the words came out, I cringed. I know how pathetic it sounded to say that, looking up to a serial killer like he was a damn superhero, but I was tired of pretending like he hadn’t affected me. I trusted Rourke to do what was right, even if his idea of justice was screwed up. He was actually willing to stand up to the face of evil, to defend those who couldn’t do it themselves.
“Death has followed you since he, ‘the Angel,’ came into the spotlight,” Garrett said in a cold voice, mocking the media’s nickname for the killer. My eyes widened and my lips fell open. “The servers told me about your roommate and Aldrich. And now your friend is gone.” His gaze was unfocused. “How can you be so sure about the Angel?”
He was right, wasn’t he? It’s not like my life had gotten any better once I met Rourke. I couldn’t blame Rourke for Aldrich’s death, but I knew he was responsible for Colin’s, and now, it was possible that he had taken Jake’s life too.
How could I trust him, if he did the one thing I asked him not to do?Don’t hurt Jake.Was it okay if he went against my requests, for the right reasons?
Maybe therewassome truth to what Garrett was saying. Maybe it wasn’t right for Rourke to make those kinds of decisions. Maybe it was wrong.
“I brought something,” Garrett said, breaking into my thoughts. He removed some material from his pocket. Pieces of leather, misshapen and stitched together, with tiny slits for eyes, a hood that would hang over broad shoulders, shielding onlookers from his identity.
A cold sweat came over my body. “An executioner’s hood,” I whispered.
“In your terms, you agreed to anything,” he said. He stood, looking down at me, and offered me his hand. “Does it scare you?”
The piercing holes for eyes. The patchwork surface reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster. The leather worn and faded, as if it had seen many people die beneath it.
I was drawn to it. Haunted by it. I looked at it and saw Rourke’s glassy, vacant eyes.
I took Garrett’s hand.
Once the hood was over his face, there was a familiarity to it all. The roughness of the bandage wrapped around his palm was like the callousness of Rourke’s leather gloves. Without even thinking of what I was doing, I found the controls for the lights and dimmed them lower. The urge to light a candle was strong within me, throbbing for that comfort.
But this was Garrett. A club member. A man who wanted to screw me and pretend to be the wielder of life and death. Like his tattoo.
I could never blame someone for their fantasies. I dreamed about a murderer taking my body, fucking me like I was his,only his. What did it matter if Garrett wanted to make himself a nameless, faceless, bringer of death, while screwing me into submission?
A breath caught in my throat.
“Bend over the couch,” he murmured. A chill ran through me, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I took off my bottoms, keeping on my top until hetoldme to take it off.
Was I recreating it, or was there something about the mask and the lighting that made it hard not to think of Rourke? Garrett’s fingers slid up and down my lower lips, gliding from the wetness, and the subtle rustling of his button and zipper made every muscle in my body clench, bracing for what came next.
Wasn’t this betraying Rourke? He would know, just like last time. He would take one look at me and know that I had slept with another man. That I let him use my body. A body that I believed was Rourke’s.
So why did this feel right?
Was it because it was a job, and I knew Rourke would understand that? His mother had done the same thing; he had to understand. Or was it something else? Something worse?
Garrett’s cock thrust inside of me easily, but it hurt too. I was still sore from Rourke, but it felt good too. Because if I hurt, I hurt for Rourke, and maybe that made it okay.
With each deep thrust, I thought of him: the way his glove flew across the room when he took off his jacket, the swell of desire making him so desperate that he didn’t care about hiding himself; the scent of his sweat and the leather competing to dominate the atmosphere; the flickers of shadow and candlelight whenever he touched me; the war of pleasure and the desire to live making my orgasm that much richer, like I would die if I didn’t have that unbelievable bliss. The way his facial hair had tickled my neck, his soft lips on mine, a touch that he gifted to me. A touch that he trusted me with.
These were the things I thought of with Garrett inside of me. Rourke, only Rourke.
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