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“We’ll get to the car, and throw my stuff in the back, but before you can get yerself around to open the door, I’m goin’ to have ya bent backward over that thing so ya perfect tits are on display. Fuck, Love, Your dress makes those beauties beg to be tasted.”

  “Do it then.”

  “Such plump nipples, so fuckin’ ripe for suckin’.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He ain’t gonna help ya now, Cutie.”

  The warm afternoon air had taken on a sudden humidity since she’d returned to the bedroom. Steph wriggled on the bedding, feeling flushed in all the right places as Pete continued to describe how he’d take her over the car. Her breathing grew heavy, and saying anything proved to be near impossible as he reached the best part of the story.

  “Love, I can tell ya now that the minute I get my cock in ya there won’t be any going slow. I’m goin’ to have ya pressed up against that car, your ass pushed into me as I fuckin’ slam you so hard you’ll have bruises on ya hips from the panel-work.”

  “I’ll still want it harder,” she breathed.

  “You tell me how hard.” The strained tone of his words told her all she needed to know about what he was dong on his end of the call.

  “You’re going to have your fingers through the loops of my collar, and I want you to pull me into you with every stroke. I want to feel you when I place my hand on my stomach. I want to know you’re taking me so hard that you can’t physically fit any further.”

  “I can’t ruin you though, Love. I won’t be done with ya that soon.”

  “I’m a big girl—I can take a little pain in the search of pleasure.”

  “Your ass is goin’ to be so fuckin’ red when I’m finished with ya.”

  “I deserve it, Baby.”

  “Keep teasin’ me like this when I get home and I’ll have to shut your mouth by puttin’ it to work, Love.”

  “You can’t call that a punishment if I like it.” Steph’s hand crept to her clit, and she pressed her fingertips against the swollen flesh. Her pulse thumped as her imagination ran wild with the image of her and Pete, together again.

  “Maybe I reward bad girls?”

  “Do you have any idea how good you feel on my tongue?”

  “Jesus, Steph. I’m close.”

  His heavy breaths pushed her toward the end. She slipped two fingers inside her aching core. A shudder ripped the length of her body at the promise of such sweet relief, and she thrust in time to his panting.

  “Tell me what you’re doing,” he demanded.

  “Fuck, Pete. I couldn’t help myself. My fingers are working me, Baby. I’m so swollen.”

  “Agh, Love. Keep goin’.”

  She brought her hand to her mouth. “Mmm, it tastes like I need you here to finish me off.”

  “Fuck. I wish I was.”

  “Oh,” she moaned as a third digit joined the glistening two in her single-handed assault. “I can feel my muscles twitch, Baby. Fuck I’m going …”

  His moans echoed her cries as they lost themselves. Even thousands of miles apart they could still be in sync with the other. The connection held.

  “Fuck, Love. I’ve gotta get this finished so I can get home to ya.”

  “Make it soon.”

  “I don’t think the little fella will let me take any longer than I need to.”

  “Good, because she misses him too much.”

  He chuckled. “Did you say ‘she’, as in your vagina?”

  “What?” Steph laughed. “You can refer to your dick in the third person, but I can’t talk about my bits like that?”

  “Love, you can always make me laugh.”

  “Funny ha-ha? Or funny peculiar, though?”

  “Both.” He snorted.

  “If you carry on like that, I’ll let you sort yourself out when you get home.”

  “She wouldn’t allow it.”

  Steph cracked up laughing. How could they go so quickly from intense phone-sex, to laughing about what they called their respective genitalia? Unique—that's what their love could be classified as. Outside of the norm. Odd.

  Perfect.

  "I love you, Pete. Don't do anything too stupid."

  "It's all I do. If I wasn't being a clown, life would be rather bland, eh?"

  "I guess."

  He sighed. "It's okay, Cutie. I couldn't do that to ya. I couldn't put you through that. I'll be home soon."

  Pistol downed another shot as he watched Trevor tuck a young brunettes hair behind her ear. They shouldn't be out having a drink, but he couldn't deny the big guy a last night of fun—especially if things tomorrow did go sour.

  Murray was secure at an abandoned hit house not far from their new motel. He'd been sure to check on the asshole before they hit the pubs. Not much the old timer could do with a gag in his mouth, and an intricate display of knot work keeping his hands behind his back. Plus, they drugged the guy as high as a kite for added security. He was effectively a puppet, awaiting its next instruction.

  A toy.

  Nah, fuck that. He wasn't as cherished as a toy. He was simply something to fuck around with when the circumstances called for it.

  Trevor dragged the skinny bird behind him to where Pistol sat. He gave them a disinterested scowl, and waved the bartender over for a refill. The middle-aged man eyed him a little too long for Pistol's liking, and he tipped his head to the side to let the guy know he didn't need to evaluate his sobriety.

  "You going to sit over here all night like a sorry bum?"

  "Fuck you."

  "Always so charming." Trevor turned to the brunette. "Sorry, darling."

  "Nay mind." She laughed a horrendous nasally whine.

  He touched his ears to check for blood.

  "You off somewhere with that, then?" Pistol nodded toward the girl who stood to the side chewing her gum like a cow with cud.

  "Thinking on it. Don't want to leave you alone."

  "I'm sure if there was a risk, we'd be in the thick of it by now, eh?"

  "Probably. I know what I'd be doing though, and that's waiting until we split." Trevor looked at the girl who leant on the bar watching the T.V. above the shelves. "Fuck it, I'll stick around."

  "I'm sure you could do better, anyways." He eyed the second-grade goods, and curled his nose in disgust. The woman looked like she carried the calling cards of half the town tattooed on her backside.

  "You know how it is, Son. You take what you can get, when you can get it."

  Trevor turned to the girl, and garnered her attention with a backhand on the upper arm. "How’s about you head out front, and I'll come join you soon, darling."

  She leant over, and slathered him with what was probably meant to be promises of things to come. The poor girl came off as a thirsty puppy; her tongue tackling Trevor like a bowl of water, and leaving as much mess.

  "I thought you said you were stickin' about?" Pistol asked as the brunette exited the pub.

  "I am. By the time she realises I ain't coming out, she'll be into something else."

  "Class act, that one."

  Trevor huffed a sharp breath, and stared at the top of the bar. "Be a fine day when I can snare anything better."

  "You think too lowly of yourself."

  "Do I? It ain't for lack of trying, Son."

  "I bet. Give it time. Change of scenery would probably help up the odds."

  "Too right." Trevor’s attention disappeared somewhere other than the place his body currently inhabited.

  Pistol snapped his fingers in front of the big guy's face. "You home?"

  Not even a chuckle. He swung his head around, and pinned Pistol with a patient gaze. "What?"

  "Ya went somewhere just then."

  "Nowhere important."

  The bartender delivered Pistol's next drink. He downed it before the glass had time to leave a ring on the woodwork. "What you goin' to do with yerself after this is said and done?"

  “You already asked me that.”

  “Do ya have an answer this time,
then?”

  "Not sure."

  "Come back to Australia with me."

  Trevor laughed, low and mocking. "Yeah, right."

  "Come off it. It's not that much of a hare-brained idea."

  "I can't just trip in and out of the country when I feel like it. I don't have residency like you."

  "Get a work permit."

  "Good on you, Son. I can see that form going down well." He lifted his hands, and gestured in front of him as he spoke. "Occupation—Contract Killer."

  "Ya fuckin' douche. I'd get ya a job at the bar."

  "I haven't tossed a singular bottle in my life. What makes you think that would be an easy grab?"

  He tapped the side of his nose, and Trevor rolled his eyes in response.

  The big guy didn’t know everything about his position at the place. Fuck, nobody did. Sure, Phil had given him a good step up by taking a chance on him with an honest job, but the circumstances in which he'd met Mike weren’t quite as savoury.

  Phil had been a junkie not that long ago, and his habit had cost him a wife a house, and his savings. Yet the guy still begged, borrowed, and stole to feed the habit. Pistol happened to be the man contracted to collect the due, when they'd managed to strike a deal.

  Phil gave him a job—he gave Phil a hand out of a shit situation.

  The road to sobriety hadn’t been an easy one, but neither had his break from dirty habits. The two of them had managed to lend the other moral support over the years he’d been in Australia. Two guys trying to make a fresh start.

  “Tell you what,” Trevor said with a tip of his chin. “If you get me a secure job by the time your flight leaves, I’ll be on it, if not the one following.”

  “Deal.” Pistol stuck his hand out.

  Trevor engulfed his hand, and shook it.

  ***

  The rain hung thick in the air the next morning. Each drop seemed to take an inordinate amount of time before it hit Pistol’s clothes with the same effect as a water balloon, covering him in huge splotches.

  Fucking rain.

  He huddled closer to the front door of the hit house, and did what he could to keep his cigarette dry. Trevor was inside with Murray, giving him a tickle to wake the fucker up. The sorry excuse for a man had thrown up all over himself while they were out last night, and for a fleeting moment, he’d thought the guy had to have choked on what was stuck behind the gag. If he said that those milliseconds hadn’t brought disappointment his way, he’d be a bald faced liar.

  All night Pistol had thought about what they’d do to the guy. More importantly he’d mulled over how he’d snare his mother. Last reports were she’d been whoring herself out at a local gang house which was a fucking letdown. How the fuck was he meant to get her without a ruckus if a dozen or more drug-fucked, drunk, and unpredictable fellas surrounded her at any given time?

  He tossed the butt out into a puddle, and listened to the sizzle as life extinguished itself before him. If only it were that simple. But such a quick execution for his sorry excuse for parents would have been showing lenience. He couldn’t give them the soft option out of this life. Not when he’d been forced to bear the suffering of a childhood stolen from him. Not when he’d been forced to grow up well before his years dictated, and by some of the most gruesome ways imaginable.

  What fucking kid is supposed to know where his ‘father’ keeps the boning knife? And yeah, not a boning knife to be used on animals, but on men that have crossed the old man’s path? What kind of fucking childhood is that?

  Shit, he didn’t know who Peter Pan, Tom and Jerry, or The Looney Tunes were until he was a teenager. Fuck. Hadn’t that made him the laughing stock of his school. Kids found it entertaining to mock him about his limited knowledge of popular culture, but little did those fuckers know, he could have dismembered their body and stashed the pieces before the lunch bell rung.

  Yeah. What a childhood that had been.

  Pistol shook the rain from his jacket, and nudged the door to the house open with his shoulder. Trevor stood with his back against the living room wall, arms crossed as he watched Murray moan incoherent abuse at the two of them.

  What a sorry fucking sight.

  To think this man had ruled, and kept the people of their hometown in fear for the better part of four decades. And now, here he was, reduced to nothing more than the spitting image of a senile old man by none other than his so-called son.

  Wasn’t karma a bitch.

  “You with us, then?” He shoved the butt of his hand against Murray’s forehead, snapping his head back on his shoulders.

  “Fuckin’ … useless … urgh.”

  Drugs still in effect then, huh?

  “Good morning to you, too.” He rounded the crate Trevor had propped Murray up on, and punched him square between the shoulders. The old battle-axe expelled the air from his lungs, but sat firm.

  Not quite broken, yet. He didn’t expect any less. The guy would be a hard one to bring to his knees, but he had a plan.

  “We’re pickin’ up Ma later on. Thought you two might like to have one last dance before you go.”

  “Her … fault.” The words still fell staggered from his lips, but the clarity had improved.

  “Agh, now. Don’t be like that. I never saw you do a thing to help us all those years.”

  “Didn’t need it.”

  “Aye? That so? You going to tell Colin that when ya see him on the other side? Oh, hang on, you ain’t goin’ to the same place, are ya?”

  Murray spat at Pistol’s feet. “I’ll see you there, though.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt about that. I’m sure ya will. But see, I had a choice in that. He didn’t.”

  “You can’t let it go.”

  “Fuckin’ oath I can’t. You stole me brother from me, equally as guilty as ma. She may have been the bitch who choked the life from him, but it was you who never stood up for us. You’re either a fuckin’ coward, or not deserving of a single breath you’ve drawn on this earth.”

  “The only coward around here is you.” Murray sneered. Bloodstained teeth added to the menace.

  “Fuck you, old man. A coward wouldn’t be here right now, tellin’ ya how it’s going to be. See, I’m gonna draw you a little bath to soak in before ma gets here. And Trevor? Well, he’s goin to be a good dog and do as I tell him. He’s gonna make sure you’re fed and watered. Wouldn’t want ya carking it before the old lady gets here.”

  Murray laughed, low, and long. “Jesus. You’ve got it bad, huh?”

  “Just after some light entertainment, old man. See, I got a few questions for ya, so I thought we better draw the show out to give us enough time to have a proper heart-to-heart.”

  “What makes ya think I’ll give ya any answers?”

  “I fuckin’ know ya will.”

  Sun warmed the room as Steph stretched, and rolled to the side of the bed. She threw her legs out before she could change her mind about getting up, and headed for the kitchen to make a coffee.

  The minute Pete left the country her heart had lodged itself firmly in the back of her throat. Every cell in her body had been certain the outcome could only be bad, but since talking with him last night something had found peace.

  She felt reassured.

  Not that she could place a finger on what exactly made her feel that way, but instead of counting the days he’d been gone, she was counting down the days until he returned.

  She dropped a teaspoon of coffee into the mug, and added one of sugar before mixing the milk through the concoction. The kettle boiled away, drowning out any further thoughts she still had knocking around about Pete.

  Sunday had passed in relative calm. She’d read a little, spent some time in the sun weeding the small garden the property had, and even managed to wash the rod. The whole day had been close to what she could have called domestic bliss—only it was missing the vital ingredient, her man.

  The brew in her mug warmed her from the inside, while the sun at her back windows w
armed her from the outside. For the first time in forever she was cosy, inside and out. Everything had its place. She’d nutted out how Pete fit into her life, and any doubts she’d had of them making it long term vanished like a stain in the wash.

  Magic.

  A small part of her still begged in the background for her to take it slow, to heed caution to her sudden happiness. But fuck that. She’d spent too many days already, wasting her time with the worries of what-if. Now it was time to take the bull by the horns, and ride the damn thing out.

  So what if life fell apart every now and then? That was what it was to be human, to feel, to learn. Nobody ever got anywhere by staying inside their comfort zone. To live her life as she should she had to take risk, and with a person like Pete by her side, she could see that working for her.

  Hell, if he’d been through half of what he had—what he was—then she could bloody well manage to move past a couple of incidents with the Peterson boys. Life went on, and now that they weren’t in it, she had no reason to stay under her blanket of fear.

  Get at it.

  That was all she needed to do.

  She turned for the bedroom, and headed to retrieve her phone from the charger. Best way to see if this good mood would last was to put it to test.

  ***

  “You know, you can have a break anyway. Even if your plans did fall through.” Barbara smiled, her hands clasped on the desk before her.

  Steph shifted in the hard seat, and smiled in return. “No, honestly. I’d rather save the time off for when I’ve got something worthwhile to do.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  “Positive.”

  Her boss stood, and punched the button on her phone to forward all incoming calls. “Tell me if I’m being out of turn—” She walked around the desk, and stopped beside Steph, leaning into the edge. “—But you’ve seemed a little distracted of late. Is everything okay?”

  “All good. Thank you for asking though.”

  Barbara shrugged. “I don’t normally enquire about my staff’s personal lives, but I see a lot of potential in you. I feel you however, don’t.”

  “To be brutally honest, I don’t know what that potential is meant for.”

  “How do you mean?”