Page 65 of Fury

“What the fuck?” I grabbed the knife from her.

I wiped a hand across the blood just above her pussy. She had cut over the tattoo of the Smoking Gun skeleton. I gripped her bleeding arm. Another small red line rose up in blood there, about two inches below her wrist.

“Baby—”

“Finish them both for me.” Our eyes met in the steamy mirror.

“What the hell are you talking about? Jesus.”

“I want to obliterate their brand and put your mark on me. And one over my wrist. Just like yours on your face. I want it on me.”

“That’s crazy.”

“You finish it for me.”

“No. You don’t want that.”

“I do. I do. Today we say goodbye for however long, maybe forever.”

“That’s not true. We’ll have another day and another and another. We’re gonna make it happen.”

“Until then...please.”

I scanned all the ugly bruises and scars over her beautiful body. “Baby...”

She gave me a watery smile. “This is my choice. This mark I want, and I want it from you.” Her voice was thick and determined. “Why should I only have scars of what they did to me? Of my stupidity in ending up with them? Why? Why can’t I have a good memory on my body? So that every time I see it, touch it, I’m filled with the good that is us, the good that these two days brought us. Knowing it matches yours. Last night was fantastic. It made me feel good, feel free, powerful even. I want to remember that victory every day, I don’t want to forget. It’s going to be a rough road without you. I need this, Justin. I need it from you.”

I took the knife from the sink and pressing my lips together, I sliced the two dashes along the line she’d made over the tattoo. The letter “F” rose up in red on her pale flesh.

“Finish my wrist now.”

I slashed quickly on the delicate skin of her wrist. Dropping the knife in the sink, I licked over the wound, and she let out a cry. We were both marked with each other, for fucking ever. Not just skin and blood, but soul deep, that shadowy place where twisted secrets are spun and hidden from even ourselves.

Lifting her up on the edge of the bathroom counter, I spread her legs wide with a shove of my hips.

She dug her hands in my hair, a line of blood skating down her arm, another down into her cunt. “Yes, yes. One last time.”

“Stop talking like that.” I dropped to my knees on the damp tile floor and kissed her pussy, licking at her blood, her wet heat.

She clung to me, crying out, her blood smearing my face.

Making every moment count, every moment between us last. Wherever and whenever. Even here in a motel bathroom in Who Knows Where, South Dakota at four twenty in the morning.

“This is just the beginning,” I said against her skin. “Just the fucking beginning.”

17

“You sure?” Fingerasked, again,buckling the saddlebag on his bike.

“Positive,” Tania replied.

“This is the best idea. It is.” I shifted my weight, ignoring my sudden inability to breathe properly. Ignoring the early morning heat bouncing up off the asphalt of the motel parking lot making me even more lightheaded, even more dizzy.

Finger stared at me and Tania, calculating, regretting.

“You go. You’ve got to go,” I said. And he did, he had some club business to take care of in Nebraska today.

“Go,” Tania added.

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