Chapter Eighteen: Kane

The way Holly looks at me, silently pleading, makes something in me stir. I want to grab her, pull her close, and hold her as the day passes us by. Fuck, I want to do so much more than that. I was a man who’d given up everything, a man ready to kill himself, and now I can’t see a path that would lead me back to where I was.

No, the only roads before me all lead to the same place: Holly fucking Cooper.

“Kane.” The way she whispers my name is unlike any who’ve spoken it before. She’s leaning toward me, inching closer as the seconds tick by; I don’t know if she realizes what she’s doing, but I sure as hell do.

I lift the hand I have on her knee—it took me incredible amounts of self-restraint to not touch her before, but now, with the way she’s looking up at me, that self-restraint is gone—and I bring that hand to her face, lightly running my fingertips down along her jaw.

She doesn’t pull away. The only thing she does is let the sheets pulled up over her chest fall, revealing her naked top half. Before I can think better of it, before I can stop myself, I lean down and press my lips against hers, tasting the subtle sweetness that is Holly Cooper yet again.

She made me a man with an addiction in the span of a few days. She pulled me from the ledge and gave me a new purpose in life. She made me want things I’ve never wanted so badly before in my life.

I kiss her hard, but whether she steals the air from my lungs or I steal it from her, who can say? The kiss lasts for an eternity, and by the time our mouths part, we’re both breathing hard. Our noses touch, neither one of us pulling away.

“What are you doing to me?” The question leaves me before I can stop it, but it receives no answer. Holly simply wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me again—and that’s answer enough.

I wrap an arm around her bare back and hold her against me, never breaking the kiss as I lay her down under me. The granola bar and water bottle get pushed to the floor as a result, long forgotten about by the both of us.

My cock twinges with need, but as much as I’d like to shed my clothes and bury myself between her legs once more, I decide to take my time. Holly’s already naked, and there’s so much to touch, to kiss, to ravage. I reacquaint myself with her lips before moving to her neck while my hands roam up her sides and along the smooth curves of her tits.

Holly squirms when I kiss the crook of her neck, and she lets out a soft moan when my fingers tweak her nipples. Her legs writhe beneath me, her back arching. She wants to forget everything that’s weighing on her, and fortunately for her I’m well up to the task.

Everything I do is deliberate. Every touch, every kiss, every brush of my fingers over her sensitive nipples; I do it all with the sole purpose of helping Holly forget. After a few moments, I abandon my post at her neck to stick two fingers in my mouth. Once they’re wet, those same two fingers snake between her inner thighs and find their destination immediately.

My fingers glide around her clit, and she sucks in a hard breath and brings her hands to my sides, holding onto me while I work on showering that clit with all the attention it deserves. I kiss her again, harder this time, and I swallow up any moans she might make while I focus on that tiny nub between her legs.

I pinch her clit between the two fingers and she pulls her mouth off mine to gasp. Her green eyes open into slits, and I know it right then: I’m lost. I’m so fucking lost I’ll never be found again. Holly is my purpose.

“Little killer,” I murmur as my fingers pick up their speed around her clit, “I love the sounds you make, and I love that they’re all mine, just like you.”

She doesn’t argue with me. She can’t. No, the only thing Holly can do is lose herself to the fingers at her apex. Her breathing catches and her eyelids flutter shut. She cries out a sound of unbridled pleasure as her nails dig into my sides, her body spasming uncontrollably as an orgasm takes hold of her.

I’m slow in removing my fingers from between her thighs, my intention to lower my head to take their place, but Holly grabs my head and stops me. Without a word, she pushes me off her. Suddenly I’m on my back and she’s the one straddling me. It’s a very similar position to the one she took when she held that knife against my cheek—the knife that I have safely tucked away in our bags, just in case.

Obviously, things are very different now, and there’s no way in hell that I would ever complain.

She runs her hands along my body, circling my muscles, tracing my scars—and I have a lot of them. A lot of muscles and a lot of scars.

Holly takes her time in memorizing every detail about my body, but the one that draws her attention the most is the one on my chest. Not the bullet-hole; that one’s still behind a bandage. No, the one that she focuses on after traversing the rest of my torso is the wound she gave me when she tried to stab me.

Her finger lightly runs along the length of the fresh scab. The skin is a little tender around it, but obviously, I’ve had much, much worse, so I don’t so much as flinch. Besides, how could I let any ounce of pain course through me when I have a beautiful naked woman on top of me?

“I’m sorry I stabbed you,” she whispers, and then she leans down and places a soft kiss where she so recently plunged a knife in me.

“I deserved it,” I tell her, because I honestly did. I deserved a whole lot worse for doing what I did to her parents. A knife in the chest just barely scratched the surface of what Holly should’ve done to me.

“Maybe,” she agrees.

I sit up and wrap my arms around her. Straddling me as she is, she must feel the hard bulge beneath her midsection, my cock desperately trying to get free and bury itself inside her tight cunt. “I’m glad that knife didn’t go any deeper,” I tell her with a smirk. “If it had, I wouldn’t be here right now with you… and that would be the real travesty.”

She hums on my lap. “Like robbing the cradle, do you?”

My arms become steel around her back, inescapable. “Am I robbing the cradle, or are you coming on to the crypt keeper?”

“Maybe a bit of both,” she admits. “You’re pretty sexy for a crypt keeper.”

“And you’re—” I stop myself before I say something truly bizarre. “Let’s forget these analogies before things get too weird.”

Holly nods, grinning like a madwoman. “Fine. Now are you going to bend me over and show me again how much stamina you have for an old man?” Her lips curl into a mischievous grin, and she runs her tongue along her bottom lip in a gesture that makes my cock twitch.

A challenge I will gladly accept. I kiss her once before I pull her off my lap. Holly crawls on all fours, her round ass more than inviting. I hurry to get off the bed so I can take the rest of my clothes off, and soon enough I’m behind her, getting into position.

Having Holly on her hands and knees before me, her back seductively arched, is enough to make my balls ache. My cock needs no help in finding where it belongs. My hands curl around her hips, and without a warning, I slam into her behind and fill her up in one smooth motion. She gasps at the sudden sensation of my cock inside her, and I respond with a rumble of my chest.

Fuck. She really does feel so fucking good.

I rock my hips, dragging my cock out of her before slamming it back in. From this angle I can hit her core deep, and every time I thrust deep she moans. Our bodies are in sync, moving together in unison as I fuck her from behind. I hold onto her hips hard, memorizing the way she looks bent over in front of me.

Sexy as hell. Not a single blemish or scar to be seen. Just smooth, pale skin and the erotic arching of her back as she takes me in again and again.

I fuck her long and I fuck her hard. I give stamina a new definition. I might feel like I want to erupt immediately, but I push it off countless times as I pierce her from behind. Her core is slick, and her pussy takes everything I give it.

But of course, I can only push off the orgasm for so long. Eventually being inside Holly becomes too much for me to bear, and the only thing I can do is lose myself to the searing hot pleasure that’s been building ever since I pushed inside of her.

The orgasm hits me like a storm, and I rock my hips against her hard enough to knock her off-balance. The only reason she stays up is because of my hold on her hips. At the very last second, I pull out and grip my slick cock with my hand, pumping along it as I would be as if I was still inside her. My eyes squeeze shut, and a low, gravelly groan comes from me as my cock twitches and empties its load onto her beautiful ass. Shot after shot of cum, it seems like an ungainly amount, but that’s what happens when you keep pushing an orgasm off.

It takes everything in me to pull away from her and fetch a face towel from the bathroom to wipe the cum off that bubbly ass. As much as I plan on fucking her more, who knows how long we’ll be stuck in this room? No crusty sheets for us.

We spend the morning getting lost in each other. I have her every which way, and then some. Both my cock and her pussy get quite the workout. It’s not a bad way to spend the day.

Merry Christmas to us.

There’s nothing on the news until the twenty-seventh. Holly’s in the shower when the evening news starts. Just one half-hour each night, for all the major stories breaking nation-wide. Surprisingly, the death of the heir to Cooper Enterprises is the leading story.

It’s probably a good thing she’s in the shower, because the newscaster does a short run through what happened thirteen years ago and explains how Holly Cooper was miraculously unharmed the night her parents were killed.

“But her luck ran out, it seems, this Christmas,” the newswoman says, holding a no-nonsense expression. “Authorities are still searching for the cause of the explosion, but there have been no reports of any survivors. Howard Giles, the man taking over Cooper Enterprises in light of recent events, put out this statement.”

The screen flashes to a blue screen, where a transcript appears word by word as, I assume, Howard’s voice reads it aloud. It says nothing important, just that he’s saddened by the accident and he hopes Holly is in a better place now. He’ll run Cooper Enterprises while holding the memory of Holly and her parents close.

Blah, blah, blah, a lot of pointless shit, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it’s definitely a good thing Holly didn’t have to hear that useless message.

The whole story gets barely two minutes of air time, which I suppose is still a decent slot, considering it’s the national news block. When Holly comes out with her hair damp, the newscaster is talking about some charity that sends Santas to hospitals with sacks of toys for the children with cancer.

“Anything?” she asks, slow to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Yeah.” The moment I say it, she perks up, and I give a quick run-down of what I saw.

When I’m done, a look of determination sets on her face. “It’s time, then. We catch Howard off-guard. It might be easier to do it soon, while he’s focused on taking over and getting everything to run like he’s always wanted.”

“Leave the planning to me. You think he’ll be in the office?”

Holly purses her lips in thought. “He’ll be in the office the Monday after New Year’s. The company has always been his life, so I’m sure he’ll be there late, way past everyone else.”

The next few days are spent planning and getting a route memorized. It’ll be quite the drive to get there, but once we do, we’ll have a few stops to make before we can do what needs to be done.

I know places to grab everything we’ll need. Disguises, weapons, a fake job to get us in the building. It’s doable. I might have to pull some favors with the Guild, which means doing a few more jobs for them pro bono, but it’ll be worth it. I’d gladly do whatever I could if it means Holly will get her revenge.

And then… I don’t know what’ll happen. I don’t know where Holly will go, but I do know that anywhere she goes, I’ll follow.