Page 40 of Along for the Ride

We don’t get a response to our video. I’m not sure my boss believed it, but we tried our best. Well, she tried her best. I look over at her and swell with pride. She did so fucking good. Even though I almost choked her to the point of unconsciousness, she held no ill feelings toward either of us once it was finished.

Guilt taps on my shoulder when I remember how delicate her throat felt in my grasp. How much I enjoyed that fragility beneath my fingertips. It was hard for me to pull away when all those sweet endorphins fired off in my brain, but Karson’s groan ripped all those feel-good hormones away from me. It also didn’t help when I realized she was running from a man who’d done something similar to her. She seems to understand the difference, but it still concerns me. Especially since she knows how much it turned me on to choke her like that. It’s one thing to fuck a killer, but it’s another to fuck a killer who got hard at the thought of killingyou.

I like this girl more than I’ve liked anyone else before—including my wife—yet the primitive urges to end her sometimes bubble beneath the surface. I can’t cherish her without thinking about how her death at my hands would feel. Good, probably. So fucking good. But the aftermath, after the high wore off, would break me. The act would be self-sabotage of the highest level.

A heavy silence presses down on us as we pull into a motel parking lot. There aren’t any hotels where we are, but I don’t think Leana minds as long as there’s a bed. I wish I could guarantee it would be a clean one, but we’re in the middle of nowhere and I don’t have high hopes.

I throw my jacket to Leana so she can hide her blood-stained shirt before we head toward the front desk. A young girl mans this family-owned shithole, and she hardly looks old enough to drive, let alone run a business.

“Two rooms, please,” I say.

She nods, hands over two keys, and has us sign a paper as she marks off two rooms with a dry-erase marker. What an archaic method. It’s discreet, though, and I like that. I pay her and she shoves the cash into a box beneath the desk.

“Thanks,” I tell her before we head down the hallway.

We head outside and walk toward our rooms. Duct tape and cardboard cover window damage to one of the rooms along the way. Rust has eaten through the metal roofing over the walkway, giving us a glimpse of the night sky through the many holes. The scent of piss overpowers my nose as we pass the vending machines, and I make a mental note to ignore my growling stomach. The place is an absolute dump, but what can you expect for fifty dollars a night?

I toss Karson his key, and we part ways at the metal stairwell. His room is on the upper story, and I can only hope the floor doesn’t collapse and send his bed on top of us as we sleep.

Leana and I enter our room to the high-pitched squeal of aged hinges that have never seen WD-40 in all the years of their existence. When I flick the light switch, the bulbs send out a fluttering strobe before staying on with an obnoxious hum.

She slips off my leather jacket and hands it to me, her lips tight. I reach out for her, but she ducks away from my arm. “I’m still processing what happened earlier,” she says. “I understand you and Karson did what was needed to keep me safe, but it was still...a lot. I didn’t expect you to enjoy choking me so much.” Her gaze falls to the crotch of my jeans before flitting away again.

“I’m a killer. I like to hold life in my hands before watching it crumble in front of my eyes.”

Her eyes rise to mine and burn through me. “You fantasize about killing me? Is that what you’re saying? Should I be concerned?”

I laugh. “Aside from my brother, I don’t usually keep things around that I want to kill. He likes to toy with his prey, but that’s not my M.O.”

Her chest and chin rise in unison, and her little show of courage is adorable. “What if I don’t want to be kept? What if I want to leave?”

I step into her, forcing her back against the wall as I lean into her. “You’re mine, wanderer.”

“You can’t make someone stay with you.”

My hand rises and twirls strands of her blonde hair between my fingers. “I can when thatsomeonesaw what you did. There’s no going back after what you witnessed.”

“So I’m stuck?”

“There’s worse people to be stuck with.”

“Worse than two fucking contract killers? And I think it’s more than that. Hitmen don’t get turned on by hits. By killing. You two are sick.”

I saw the lack of shock on her face when she walked in on Karson with a nearly severed head in his hand. We might be sick, but she’s got a little touch of the illness herself. “We are sick. Very fucking sick. We’re horrible, vile men who will stop at nothing to get what we want. And wanderer? You’re what I want.”

“Well, I don’t want you!” She looks away, her body language betraying the lie she tells.

“Have you ever fantasized about killing someone?”

“What? No.” She tries to meet my gaze, but she looks away again. Another lie.

“Tell me your fantasy. Who have you thought about killing, and how did you want to do it?”

“I don’t want to play this game,” she says. She tries to move past me, but I push closer and hold her in place. “What part of ‘I don’t want you’ don’t you understand?”

I put my knee between her legs and spread them. My hand leaves her hair and dips down the front of her jeans. She strains against my hold, her hands wrapping around my wrist to stop my descent, but I can already feel what I suspected. She’s wet. Soaked.

“Yeah, you don’t want me at all.” I push my fingers inside her. “You don’t like that I could kill you, but youlovethat I’m too fucking obsessed with you to do so.” I kneel before her, taking her pants down with me. “It turns you on to know you made a big, selfish killer weak enough to drop to his knees. Even though I have a taste for blood, you want my tongue on your pussy.”

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