Ballistic (A Vigilantes Novel) Read online

  Something had shifted, though. Dax had supped from me, no doubt, indulging as greedily as I had, but not in a way that left me chiding myself, feeling cheap and used. In fact, my body craved more of his attention, more of his touch. And yet, my instincts warned me to proceed cautiously. He’d left me in muscle-cramping pleasure, unlike anything I’d experienced before, and though my guilt had grown weaker, I could still feel it in the shadows, waiting to swoop down and destroy my momentary bliss.

  Seemed any time within the last hour I’d begun to fall into those destructive thoughts, though, Dax had distracted me with conversation, a gentle stroke, or a kiss, heightening my desire to be near him, while teaching my brain to trust him.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Head resting against his chest, I watched his large, scarred hand swallow mine as he threaded his fingers between my knuckles. The heady scent of sex still clung to the air, tamped down by the spicy bergamot radiating from his warm skin.

  “Sure.”

  “Why …. Who are the men you chat with?”

  “Come again?” His body shifted beneath mine, and though I couldn’t see him from my angle, I knew he was staring down at me.

  “On your phone. I saw the …. One of the messages popped up. It was vibrating in the drawer, so I looked. What’s that all about?”

  He snorted and stroked a hand across my hair, easing back against the pillow. “I like to pretend to be a child and fuck older men.”

  Face undoubtedly reflecting my sudden confusion, I lifted my head from his chest, relieved to see his lips stretched into a smile that squinted his eyes.

  “I’m playin’.” The smile withered to something more serious, and he cast his gaze away from mine. “So I have a profile on this site that says I’m a twelve, or thirteen, year old. These guys, they message me. Friendly at first, but then it doesn’t take long to turn sexual. I play along, letting them send me dick pics and nasty fantasies, until we eventually plan to meet up.” He ran his fingertip down my shoulder, pebbling my skin with goosebumps. “Usually somewhere obscure, like a parking lot, or a strip mall closed down for the night. They show up all surprised to see a grown ass man, instead of a skinny, defenseless kid.” His chest rose up beneath me, exhaling quickly on a slight chuckle. “And that’s when I usually beat the ever-loving fuck out of them.”

  “So, you hunt them?”

  “I’ve not killed anyone. Yet. Wanted to, but I don’t. They don’t leave in good condition, though. Some can’t even drive after.” He shrugged, still circling his finger over my collarbone to my shoulder. “That’s what happens when you make plans to have sex with a child. You get fucked up by some crazy ass vigilante who hates pedophiles.”

  Maybe I’d grown cynical and twisted, but the thought of him doing that sent an erotic chill up my spine. “If there were more people like you in the world, maybe there wouldn’t be any Tesariks, or Jaspers. Maybe they’d feel more like prey, instead of the predators.”

  He snorted again, lifting me as he sat up on the bed. “Not according to my therapist. She says I’m just making them go into hiding. They’re missing out on an opportunity to get the help they need and heal.” From the nightstand, he nabbed a small bag of weed, taking out a good-sized chunk of it, which he separated out on the surface. He stuffed it into a metal tin, rotating it back and forth, and unfastened the lid on the shavings inside. Opening the end of a glass cylinder, he packed the weed inside and twisted in the half that held grooves, like an enormous screw. Back and forth until it filled the ridges inside. “The fuck am I supposed to do? Tell ‘em they’re better than that and send ‘em on their merry little way? Sit back and watch them pick up on some other unsuspecting kid who could end up dead? Fuck that. It’s fucking chemical.” He paused to tap his temple, keeping his attention on the task of filling what looked like a blunt made of glass. “In their brains. You can’t undo that shit. They see kids as sex objects, and nothing’s going to change that. No therapy in the world can alter brain chemistry.” Setting his lighter to the end of it, he puffed on the mouthpiece twice, until the end burned orange and a skunky scent filled the air. Thick, white curls drifted out of his mouth, and he sucked it back in, holding it in his lungs before blowing it out his nose.

  Hypnotizing, the way he smoked.

  I stayed propped on my elbow, until he settled back beside me with his back pressed to the wall, and I snuggled into his side again. “You’re passionate about this. What brought it on?”

  Another hit of his blunt, and he handed it to me. “Ah, you don’t want to open that door, Nic.”

  I’d only smoked weed once in my life. Found a joint left out after one of my mom’s parties that I mistook as a cigarette, and I’d snuck out behind the shed to smoke it. Only took one hit for me to realize I’d gotten it wrong, and I spent the whole night tripping out on thoughts that the neighbors dog had been watching me like a spy, while laughing my ass off over it.

  “Why? What’s behind it?” One long inhale, and my chest damn near crackled as the smoke infiltrated my lungs. Nothing like cigarettes. I coughed out puffs of smoke, handing it back to him.

  “Lot of fucked up shit. Fucked up shit.”

  “Try me.”

  “Look, you see me as I want you to see me. But I had a moment in my life when I wasn’t what you see. I was defenseless. Weak.” Frowning, he set the blunt to his lips again.

  “And you don’t think I’d understand that feeling?” Getting hooked on Hedonic hadn’t been part of my plan when I decided to infiltrate Tesarik’s group.

  “Goddamn, you don’t give up for anything, do you?” On a sigh, his jaw shifted, and he flipped the Zippo at the end of the pipe to relight it, inhaling again. A couple more hits, and he sniffed, glancing over at me then back to somewhere toward the end of the bed. “So, I was eleven years old, and we lived about four blocks from the middle school. I used to walk it everyday. To and from school. One day, this guy pulls up alongside me. Flashes me a police badge and says he’s an investigator for the Detroit Police Department.” He shook his head, drawing his knee up, where he rested his elbow. “Honestly, my first instinct was to run like hell, but I didn’t. In retrospect, I wish I’d gone with my instincts. Anyway, he told me my mom had overdosed, and he was going to drive me to the hospital. All sounded legit, ya know? I mean, looking back, motherfucker must’ve watched us for months to know my mom was a junkie.” His lips flattened, brows pinching together again, as they did when something was about to get serious with him. “So I get in the car, and I notice the lock on the passenger seat is broken. It clicked when he locked it, but there was no way to manually unlock it. There was no button on my side, either.”

  As his hands gestured in the air, a warm fuzziness settled over me, calming my muscles in spite of the anxiety his words brought to mind. “Anyway, he’s driving opposite to downtown, and I’m watching hospital signs pass, saying it’s in the other direction. You’re going the wrong way, man! We end up parked behind this rundown housing project, a real shithole. That’s when he pulls out a gun and tells me he doesn’t have to hurt me, as long as I do as he says.”

  His gaze fell away, and even through the high taking over my senses, my heart sank at what I anticipated would come next.

  “The guy tells me to get out of the car, so I do, and as he’s holding the gun to my temple, he tells me to drop my pants and put my hands on the hood.” Dax thumbed at his nose before clearing his throat, and I could feel my heart pounding against my chest, beating inside my ears to the nervous rhythm. “So I did. He kept that gun to my head the whole fucking time. Must’ve taken maybe three minutes, max.” He puffed his blunt again, holding the smoke in his lungs as he twisted the cylinder around, studying the end of it, then exhaled. “I just went numb. All I could think about was how the bullet would feel if he accidentally shot it. Wondered if I’d even feel anything.” Dax shook his head. “Motherfucker drove me home after, as if he knew I wouldn’t tell anyone. And I didn’t. Not until I got older. I kept that
shit bottled inside of me for years. And anyone who even came close to doing me wrong after that got the business end of my fist.”

  Any other woman might’ve wrapped her arms around him, probably cried for him. But I knew from my own experiences crying would only make him feel weaker. Instead, I kissed his chest, over his heart. It made sense to me right then, why he’d risk his life to find me. My abduction was another injustice to him. Another predator staking claim on a defenseless lamb. “I’m sorry this happened to you. Trying to survive a bad situation isn’t weakness.”

  “Story doesn’t even bother me anymore. Too many therapists trying to crack into my head, trying to justify what I do. Like I need a reason to seek out these sick fucks.” His tongue swept over his lips, leaving a wet shine across them. “Maybe I’ve just become the stronger species. Every bastard I meet up with is one less kid who has to live with that shit. Yet, people like this therapist think that I’m the bad guy.” Pipe still dangling from his fingertips, he prodded his thumb against his chest. “I’m the one messing with the food chain. Even if the cops wanted to track these assholes down, their hands are tied. These depraved little pricks get nothing but a slap on the wrist. Ones who’re out to fuck kids, but I’m the bad guy for finding them first.”

  “People will misjudge you. But don’t let them change who you are.” The words echoed in my head with a staggering familiarity, and I screwed my eyes shut to will away the surfacing memory.

  With a chuffed laugh, he shook his head. “You should write fortune cookies, you know that? Seriously. That’s like … the best advice I’ve ever been given.” He patted my thigh, setting the blunt down on the nightstand. “C’mon. Get dressed. I need to show you something.”

  It baffled me the way Dax could so easily distract me from my thoughts. For so many years, I’d struggled with the cyclical nature of them, a never-ending loop of falling, trapped inside my own memories and nightmares. The mere sound of his voice peeled me out of an emotional hurricane brewing inside my head.

  “What do you need to show me?” I asked him.

  With his tight butt mere inches from my face as he stood from the bed, he glanced over his shoulder. “Just get your ass dressed.”

  Wind whipped through my hair as I stepped out onto the rooftop of Book Tower, the lightheadedness from the weed giving way to the view ahead.

  I’d always felt like I had a pretty good handle when faced with terrifying moments, but staring off at the never-ending horizon had me questioning my experiences up until that point.

  The sun had begun to set over the west side of the city, making its slow descent into the shadows of nearby buildings. My heart thumped an unnatural rhythm as I scanned over the tops of buildings below us, ones considered some of the city’s most notable skyscrapers.

  Dax leaped onto the parapet, sending my heart rushing up into my throat.

  “What are you doing?” The nervous wobble in my voice exposed the fear hammering through my veins.

  “Ten years of therapy. Fights. Medications. All I had to do was come up here for everything to make sense again.”

  “You’re not going to jump, are you? ‘Cause I’m not going after you, if you do.”

  His chuckle sounded deeper than before, raspier. “I’ve found myself a number of reasons not to jump, as of late.” He hopped down from the edge, sending my heartrate back to normal, and strode across the gravel toward me. “So, that thing I wanted to show you … you gotta promise to hold very still and keep your eyes toward the sunset. No matter what.”

  “I don’t like where this is going.”

  “You will.” But his eyes and the bewitching grin that stretched across his face told me I was in deep shit, whatever he had in mind. “You’ll do as I say, yeah?”

  “You’re not going to throw me over the edge?”

  “Ah, I don’t know if I can answer that, but I promise you’ll enjoy every minute of it.” Hands planted against my ass, he backed me into the wall and lay the kind of kiss that left me weak in the knees on my lips—the kind that made it hard to say no. The soft, but demanding kind, with his tongue in my mouth and a rumble in his chest, telling me he was ravenous for something.

  He dragged my bottom lip between his teeth, the possession in his movements rendering me unsteady, stunned by the aftereffects. “Will you trust me?” he asked.

  In the seconds that followed, my mind teased out the complicated equation of instinct over experience, adding a new variable to the mix: the unknown. “Okay.”

  At that, his eyes lit up like a kid at a candy buffet. The cold stonewall scraped across my palms, as Dax positioned my hands flat at either side of me. “You keep your hands to your side at all times.” He stood in front of me, shadowing me, and leaned in to my ear. “I want you to watch that sunset. Commit it to memory. And never once take your eyes off it. Hear?”

  “Where are you going?”

  No sooner had the question tumbled from my lips than Dax dropped down to his knees in front of me, his eyes rapt on mine during the chore of unbuttoning my jeans. Cool air hit my thighs, as he tugged them and my panties down to my shins and shifted his gaze to my exposed half.

  “Wait.” I set my hand on his shoulder, which he promptly flattened against the wall once more without so much as looking up at me.

  “Keep your hands on the wall, and your eyes on the sunset.” The way his tongue swept across his lips reminded me of a wolf, and when he pressed his thumbs at either side of my pussy, putting my still-tender clit on display, I sucked in a sharp breath, ignoring at least half his directives.

  “I told you … I’m not … I don’t do foreplay.”

  “Well, it’s time you did. And if you don’t like it, you can tell me to stop. I promise I will.”

  Eyes on me, he dragged his tongue up my slit, defying my resistance, and while it was the hottest fucking thing I’d ever seen in my life, it terrified me. Games like those had always been a means of manipulating me.

  I make you feel good, you do whatever I want, Vinco had always said. So I’d played along, because doing what he’d wanted meant getting my next pill.

  What price would Dax place on my pleasure?

  I bucked my hips, feeling his fingers curl into them, holding me still.

  No, please, my head battled, but his hands against my skin stirred objection. I didn’t know which to trust, which one had been programmed and which was real.

  “Dax … I feel … dirty. Maybe after a shower?”

  “You’re not dirty, Nic.” He pressed his lips between his thumbs and sucked, lapping at me, as though trying to capture the melting drips of ice cream from a cone. The deeper his tongue ventured, the more I wanted it. “You’re beautiful. The most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Panicked, I tipped my head back, curling my fingers into tight fists, and exhaled a forced breath, my mind desperate for diversion. “Then, I question what you’ve been looking at all your life.”

  A deep chuckle rumbled from his throat, but it didn’t stop him from sucking the juices he’d roused. “I’ve been everywhere in this city and have seen some pretty breathtaking views.”

  “You’re comparing me with that?” I jerked my head toward the orange-red ball of fire sinking beneath the buildings. “You’ve been staring into the sun too long.”

  Everything felt good—his tongue against my flesh, the cold stones pressed against my back, while his hands kept me steady, the wind carelessly blowing my hair—so different from the nights when Tesarik would bury his face between my thighs while he’d stroked himself to orgasm and expected me to lap it up. His fat fucking nose had prodded every crease in the most awkward and demeaning experience of my life. The very thought sent a shudder down my spine, and every muscle in my body begged me to push Dax away as he moaned into my pussy, his practiced tongue clashing with the thoughts in my head.

  “Yeah, that’s what I want to see. So fucking wet.” Fingers spreading me wider, he growled through the merciless burrowing of his tongue.


  I clamped my eyes closed, the air growing thin as his stubble tickled my skin. It’s Dax, I reminded myself, mentally willing the thoughts of Tesarik and Vinco away.

  His tongue painted my seam again in long, wet strokes, and as if an invisible thread had hooked itself somewhere deep in my belly, it tugged downward, into my thighs.

  Look at you, on display for the whole world to see what a whore you are. My mothers voice chimed in, too, my head reeling in the chaos of all those voices. Nothing but a couple of filthy sinners making sport of it.

  “Dax, wait!”

  “Keep your eyes on the sunset, baby.”

  Opening my eyes, I focused on the soft pinks, oranges and yellows that colored the distant horizon. Detroit existed under a suffocating gray dishwater sky most of the time, but the view before me was made for canvases. The kind of awe-inspiring beauty from which I couldn’t look away.

  Beautiful, like the two of us. Nothing filthy, or wrong about it.

  Hands slapped to my ears, I let the bright light blind me to anything else, and all at once, the voices gave way to the first moan that escaped me. A pleasure-glutton sound so foreign, I couldn’t believe it’d come from me. It lulled me, drawing my head back against the stone, my eyes shuttering out the view, until that ambient glow flared behind my lids and I could still see the burnt shadowy circle of the sun, smack in the middle.

  Dax’s tongue sent chasing vibrations across my skin, strumming my libido in perfect rhythm to his fervency. The delicious buzz demanded I grind my hips to its tempo, meeting his tongue with small thrusts. The string connected to my belly pulled tighter, and at the unexpected invasion of his fingers, my lids shot open. In and out, he pumped them, his lips working in tandem with each delicious stroke. I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. Had never felt anything more there than the harsh jabs of greedy fingers. Nothing so reverent and attentive, with slow and easy strokes, like deadly weapons made only for a skilled and patient master.

  “Please, Dax.” Ecstasy dripped from my voice, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what the hell I was begging for. Climax? More?