What the f**k was he doing? What the f**k was he doing to her as well as himself?
He’d stared into her eyes and seen something he’d never believed he would see, something he sure as hell hadn’t expected.
He’d seen a woman he finally wished he could share the future with.
A woman who wanted him more than anything at that moment.
Until he’d tasted the burning response of her need and turned her away, not fully satisfied. Aching. Dreams in her eyes.
Before he could stop himself he turned, his fist flying out and cracking into the wall behind him.
“Goddamn it!” The words burst from his lips as he punched through the drywall, fury mixed with a hunger he knew was going to destroy him erupting inside him.
His hands buried in his hair then, pushing the strands back from his face as he grimaced at the feel of slick warmth against his knuckles where he’d busted them open.
This had to be over soon. It had to be finished before he made himself crazy, because with God as his witness, he knew his self-control where she was concerned was eroding fast.
He was going to have her. And like she said, once would never be enough.
* * *
She’d been a fighter after all.
Pulling the black truck into the shelter of trees that bordered a shallow creek, he slid it into park before taking a deep breath.
He was sated, for the moment.
Physically, sexually sated.
The need to inflict pain, to feel the fear that raced through a delicate, weaker body, to see the blood flowing and feel the clench of rejection as he raped and tortured was now fulfilled.
For the moment.
Sliding his gloved hands from the steering wheel, he opened the door before stepping slowly from the truck.
His boss hadn’t made this trick with him.
He’d helped though, at first.
He grinned as he walked to the back of the truck.
Finally, after only a few hours, even his boss hadn’t had the stomach for the pain he could inflict.
Even that old bastard hadn’t been able to hold up against her screams, her agony, and her pleas. He’d had to walk away.
Strange, how men such as that couldn’t stomach the actions they condoned, even requested.
But after the son of a bitch had left, she’d screamed harder, begged until her voice broke and only croaks of agony were emitted.
It was over then.
Once they broke their voices, the only satisfaction left was to watch the blood flow. To run his tongue over each slice as he f**ked the lust out of his system.
Finally, he just slit her throat.
She might have been breathing through the last few hours, but she hadn’t been there.
She’d stared sightlessly up at the ceiling of the basement, her gaze distant and even the terrified, pain-filled croaks hadn’t been there.
She’d lasted two days and it had been damned good. Better than he’d ever imagined she would be.
Sighing deeply at the thought, he lowered the tailgate, grabbled the end of the tarp, then pulled the body slowly from the bed.
He’d bleached her from head to toe, inside and out, under her fingernails, her toenails, and everything in-between.
There wasn’t even a speck of dust on her body. She was as clean as a surgical table with nothing to link her to anyone.
Carrying the broken body to the edge of the creek, he laid it down before gripping the tarp and quickly flipping her body from it.
She’d be found here quick enough.
Rolling the slick material up, he moved several yards from it, pulled one of the gloves from his latex-covered hand, and dropped it behind a tree.
Moving against a thorny bush, he laid a torn piece of denim on one of the thorns, careful to make it look as though the material had ripped from the jeans against the bush.
The pants were Logan Callahan’s, as was the glove. Both had his sweat on them, and nothing more.
He’d been careful to make certain he’d shaved his legs clean and wore specially coated long underwear beneath the pants to ensure no other DNA or material was left behind.
One down.
This would incriminate Callahan as nothing else could. Prison was in that boy’s future, he’d just made sure of it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The tension between Logan and Skye was growing thicker by the day, Logan admitted five days later, and they weren’t even coming in contact as often as they had before. They’d watched each other across the expanse of the side yard. From the upstairs master bedroom as she too checked the windows each night.
He almost grinned. He saw her more now, he thought, than at any other time since she had moved into the house. And he was growing hornier by the day, which he hadn’t thought possible. If he didn’t lose the hard-on torturing the hell out of him, then he was going to have a permanent indent from his zipper pressed into the thick shaft.
The night before, he’d walked na**d into the living room and pretended she wasn’t staring from the living room across from him.
Then, before she went to bed this morning? The little wench. If she’d been na**d it wouldn’t have aroused him more. Dressed in a black floor-length, flowing gown and a see-through black chiffon robe with just the slightest little train behind it, she’d blown his f**king mind.
That was the romance in her.
Fuck him six ways from Sunday but that romance had never been the turn-on that it was now. With this woman.
He’d known it was there. He’d seen it in the softness of her eyes every time he looked into them. He’d felt it in her kiss and in the innocence of her response when she’d come in his arms.
But son of a bitch! God have mercy on his black soul!
She’d looked like a damned fairy princess or something and his dick had responded with an iron hardness that had been damned uncomfortable. All he wanted to do in that moment was replace the innocence with pure sensual, sexual knowledge.
With a temptress’s heat.
A lush, sexual goddess who knew how to make him insane and used it ruthlessly.
But even in her innocence she was already doing that.
At times, he found himself actually having fun with the teasing games they were playing.
Then, he would glance across the yard, wouldn’t see her, and the disappointment, the loneliness, would grip him again.
Son of a bitch, he wished Rafer and Crowe would track down whoever had hired the bastard who had attacked Rafer’s fiancée, Cami, last month.
As Rafer and Crowe worked their end, Logan had been attempting to work his during the day, but his excursions into town weren’t too successful.