But I’d found it. Gabriel gave it to me.
And I found that I could do it. Get my revenge in every way I’d imagined.
“How many?” I repeated, my voice rough.
“I-I don’t know what you’re t-talking about,” he stuttered.
I eyed him, the monster in the dark all these years. He wasn’t scary now that I’d stripped away everything and exposed him for the coward he was. The overweight, beady-eyed waste of space who cried the second he lost the upper hand. The second someone fought back.
“How many little girls have you fucking raped while you got paid to take care of them?” I seethed. “How many lives have you ruined?”
He started shaking as he sobbed. “I’m so-sorry,” he cried. “I’m sorry. I can’t control myself. Please don’t kill me. I’ll stop. I promise I’ll stop—”
His pleas were cut off when a garbled wet sound erupted from his throat. I stepped back, not wanting blood on my tank top.
“No, you won’t,” I said to his twitching, dying body.
Gabriel clutched my hips, bringing my body back to his front. He gently pried the knife from my hands, tucking it into his belt.
“Jesus, Becky,” he murmured into my neck. “I thought we’d fuckin’ established I’d be the one to do that.”
I stared at the body, my mind numb. “No, you saying something does not establish it as law,” I informed him. “Despite your thoughts to the contrary, my soul is already damned. And even if it weren’t, giving this guy the death he deserved should be counted as a good deed, not a sin.”
I thought back to the little girl on the swing set. Then the little girl I was eleven years ago. I didn’t save them, but at least I avenged them.
The numbness started to recede and the reality of what just happened set in.
I’d killed someone.
The blood in my veins sped through my body hotter than before, my heart thumping and pushing it through at record speed.
Gabriel whirled me around so his hand circled my neck. “You’re not damned,” he growled, his eyes wild.
“I am,” I argued, my voice hoarse. “Or at least I will be, after I do this.”
“What?”
I didn’t tell him what. I showed him. I yanked his head closer to mine and crashed our mouths together. I knew Frenching your kind-of boyfriend after killing a man wasn’t exactly a sane move, but I had to. The blood and adrenaline flowing through me needed an outlet.
I expected him to pull back, but my body burned when he yanked me closer, his fingers diving into my hair and tugging at the strands.
“Fuck,” he growled, pulling my head back so my eyes met his wild ones. “If this is fuckin’ damnation then I hope to never find redemption.” And then his mouth was back on mine, slamming me back into an icy concrete wall. The impact scratched my arms but I barely noticed. Cold wasn’t something I even registered.
Because I was hot. Burning.
Gabriel’s touch was setting me aflame.
His hands moved roughly to yank my tank top off. I held my arms above my head obediently, knowing where this was going. Loving where this was going.
But he surprised me. The tank top fluttered to the floor and he clutched my neck.
“No, baby,” he rasped. “Not tying you up, leavin’ you helpless to me. You’re not that. You’re never fuckin’ that. I need to feel those warrior hands on me. Those fighting nails on my fuckin’ back as I fuck you so hard you forget everything but us. But me.”
My breathing quickened. I’d been fucked up in my sexual preferences for as long as I could remember so that’s why I’d responded to how Gabriel did it. Did me. More than responded. I’d just never thought he’d turn me on beyond anything by demanding this.
Normality.
Apart from the dead body in the corner.
But this was as close as we’d get.
And I loved it.
He claimed my mouth again before kissing down my neck, paying attention to my nipples. Then he moved down with deliberate slowness. Gentleness.
His hands that knew fury, brutality, and murder gently undid my jeans, like such an act was a blessing, an honor. Then his mouth fastened between my legs, working me to the edge of the earth.
To the edge of life.
Then he brought me back.
In more ways than one.
Something changed after that. Something integral, pivotal, between us. You couldn’t kill someone together and go back to hearts and flowers.
Not that we ever were that.
You’d expect doing such a thing would create distance, a yawning chasm of guilt and sin. It was the opposite.
We hadn’t spoken after, apart from Gabriel informing me someone would ‘take care’ of the body as I dressed myself. I stood on shaky legs. Not from the act that had blood staining the concrete floor, but from the act that Gabriel had performed on me against that same floor.