Chapter 24 - Ares

24

Ares

Delaney is dead. She has to be. The screams coming from that backseat, the blood… I can’t see it, I’m too far away, but I can smell it. Sharp and metallic. A bitter tang in the air.

“Delaney!” I scream it like I’m in pain. Because I am. He’s fucking killed her. Delaney. Fierce, perfect, Delaney.

I yank harder on the cuffs, pain spiking up my arm from the fucking bullet hole through my palm. The shot obliterated the bones there — It’ll probably never work right again — but that’s not a concern right now. Right now, I’m thankful that my hand has been shattered beyond repair. Half my job has been done for me.

I wrap my other hand around the broken one and squeeze. Blood, along with a fresh wave of pain that makes me retch, oozes from the wound. I clench my eyes shut and think of her. I squeeze harder.

Crack. Crack. Crunch.

My bones fold in on themselves, the size of my hand shrinking enough that I can slip it from the loop of the cuffs. I use the gate to pull myself up.

“Delaney,” I rasp.

Cradling my hand to my chest, I stumble through the dirt, my vision shrinking to the back of the patrol car. That shithead deputy is still on top of her, probably taking in what he’s done. Fucking enjoying it.

“Gonna kill you, son of a bitch. It’s gonna last, and it’s gonna fucking hurt.”

I drag him, one-handed, out of the car. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t respond at all, and as he sags off the seat and hits the ground, I can see why.

Deputy Aaron Flores is dead.

The blood pooling underneath him, covering his uniform, isn’t Delaney’s — it’s his. In an instant, he’s nothing to me, forgotten about, as I lean into the car and spot her. Delaney lies still, her eyes open and staring. For a heart-wrenching second, I think she’s dead too. Then she blinks.

“Del… Baby.” I lean in, touching her tentatively. Her eyes flash to me and she squeezes the knife in her hand. The switchblade I gave her.

“It’s okay. He’s gone, honey. He’s gone. You did it.”

I wrap my hand around her wrist and pry the knife from her trembling fingers. She lets me have it, which is probably a good sign, and then, even better, lets me help her from the car. She looks down as her feet bump over Flores.

“Don’t look,” I prompt her, tipping her chin to focus on me, and then we move slowly to the front of the car, clinging to each other. I prop her ass against the bumper and the flash of her panties through the open zipper of her shorts makes a new rage pulse in my chest.

“He didn’t,” she says.

I swallow hard and meet her eyes. Two sparks of green through the sea of red smeared across her skin.

“I got him before he could.”

I nod, a little relief easing the tension in me. I cup her face with my uninjured hand and try to clean off some blood with my thumb.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I’m not.”

She means it too, and all of a sudden I’m faced with the little girl that stumbled into my yard in the middle of the night. That crashed into me and fell on her ass and looked at me like I was a monster.

That little girl who was already drowning in darkness. I wonder, if I had done something differently back then, could I have saved her from all this?

I yank her close, suddenly desperate to feel her against me, make sure she’s alive and unhurt. Her arms snake around my waist and I bury my face against the top of her head. When I breathe in, I smell only her. Not the blood or the stench of Flores’s cop car. Just Delaney.

“How do you it?” she mumbles into my chest.

“Do what?”

“Deal with it. After you’ve… killed someone.”

I take a deep breath and I feel her matching it. “Do you feel bad about what you’ve done?”

“No,” she says simply. “But it’s like… My body feels wrong. My heart is racing and I feel… I’m all shakey and my head is…”

She shakes her head, her hair whispering back and forth across my lips.

“Adrenaline. And probably shock too,” I reply.

When Delaney pulls back, she looks hollowed out. “What do you do, after you do that?”

She tries to crane her head, searching out Flores. I catch a fistful of her hair and yank her back. It’s an accident, how sharply and desperately I grab her, and I feel like an asshole until she makes this little gasp and her eyes flare.

All thoughts of her as a little girl disappear. Now, she is a woman and my thighs are pressing into her hips and I want to kiss her so fucking bad.

“I…” I swallow against the dryness in my throat. “After I’ve killed someone, I get drunk, I get stoned… And I fuck.”

Delaney inhales sharply. Her throat bobs. “Well… You got any booze on you, Ares?”

“No.”

“Weed?”

I shake my head.

“Will you fuck me, Ares?”

There’s a heavy beat, like we’re waiting for the starter pistol, then we crash together — lips and teeth, hands grappling for each other. Pain screams at me when I stupidly try to grab her hip with my shattered hand. She leans back, breathless, and arcs an eyebrow.

“Your hand. Maybe we shouldn’t—”

“No,” I say, cutting her off with a brutal kiss. I bob down, scoop her up, one arm under her ass, and set her down properly on the hood of the car. “Don’t need two hands to fuck you.”

Delaney scrambles out of her shorts, her panties going too, and then reaches around to unhook her bra. Her hard nipples poke through her shirt and my mouth waters. Has been watering ever since I saw her like this on the couch last night. My cock throbs and I realize I’ve been hard for way too long. Maybe ever since I realized she’d stuck that pig and bled him out.

“You’re a warrior,” I tell her as I sink to my knees. “A fucking goddess.” She opens her legs for me and I trace my tongue up her inner thigh. “Good girl,” I murmur.

There’s a touch on my head, her fingers threading through my hair, and she firmly tugs me back.

“I’m not,” she says. She looks like she wants to say more, and I wait. This woman with her legs spread in front of me can take as long as she wants, to say whatever she wants, and I will fucking wait.

“I’m covered in the blood of the guy I just killed, Ares. I’m not a good girl. I don’t want to be a good girl. Not your good girl, or anybody’s. You understand, right? Being good, being nice, it’s never gotten me anything, but being bad… being a dirty, filthy, broken thing… That’s what I want to be. That’s real, Ares. So call me that. Call me a slut. Call me a whore. Because you’re not degrading me or dragging me down, you’re helping me take back those words and stitching me together with them.”

She lets go of my hair, her fingers finding mine on her naked thigh and squeezing. Her flesh is supple, so soft and warm. The blood is drying and flaking off. I dip my head and lick a stripe through it, tasting the tang of her kill. The thought of degrading her, while loving her, makes my cock throb harder.

“You’re right.” I press a toothy kiss to her skin. “You’re fucking filthy. Gonna make you filthier, though.”

She pulls in a quick breath, just as excited as me. I snake my working hand under her thigh to hold her open, and dive forward, my mouth latching onto her sweet, wet pussy.

She tastes amazing, sweet and salty, the ghost of the first orgasm I gave her lingering in her slick. Delaney’s moans turn high and strangled when I suck her clit between my lips, lightly scraping with my teeth. She grips the back of my head and holds me there against her cunt, her hips making tiny circles.

“Oh, God,” she whimpers. “Ares… Fuck, that’s so… Oh, God…”

I work her up good, until she’s twitching and shivering and mewling. She’s close, but I’m a selfish fuck and I want to feel her come on my cock, not on my tongue. I push off the patrol car’s bumper and scramble to my feet, yanking my sweats down and taking out my cock. Delaney’s eyes go wide as I step between her thighs. I don’t give her a moment to look, to question, I just grab her hips and dip low, notching myself at her opening like I’m deserved this.

She whines my name. I tell her to shut up.

I thrust in. My brain goes still and quiet for a blissful second and I throw my head back, groaning.

“Fuuuuck. God, this cunt is…” I rock back and slide in again, this time bottoming out in her. Breath rushes from Delaney’s lungs and she clings to me, steadying herself. Her face is pinched with pain and I press my lips to her sweaty temple.

“Knew you’d be tight as fuck, baby,” I grunt. “Am I hurting you?”

She nods.

“Want me to stop?”

She shakes her head.

“Didn’t think so. Fucking whore.”

Her body shudders, her pussy spasming around me. God, she really does like that shit, doesn’t she? I start fucking her hard, thrusting into her like she’s only there for my own pleasure. I bruise her hip with my fingers, double over and bite hard on a peaked nipple. She whimpers and moans like she’s right on the edge. Her hips buck up to meet mine with every thrust, searching, desperately, for more.

“Tell me, Delaney,” I huff into her ear. “Did you like killing that prick? Say yes and I’ll fuck you in the backseat of that car. I’ll fuck his blood into you. I’ll make you come on his corpse.”

Delaney’s body tightens and snaps, her orgasm exploding without warning. She screams out, her head thunking hard back against the hood. I don’t stop, don’t even give her a fucking minute, because I’m close too. So fucking close.

Visions flash in my head: it’s every dirty, filthy thing I’d never let myself picture with her. Taking her from behind, her cheek pressed against the side of that dumpster outside Oscar’s; her plump lips wrapped around my cock in the corner of the Wastelander bar, desperate for my cum even with so many eyes on her; driving her into some secluded field and fucking her over my bike. She comes on my mouth, my fingers, my cock — all the while I’m calling her terrible, awful things. She loves it, and so do I.

I pull out fast and paint her blood-stained skin with stripes of cum. It spatters up over her tits, a little on her chin, and as she blinks owlishly at me, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glassy, I realize that I’ve fallen in love with Delaney fucking Jackson.