Chapter Nineteen: It's All Washed Away
Tig had made it back to the criminal safe house without incident. He was extremely careful to not speed on the clear and open roadways. He took no chances of being pulled over while he was coated with Hale's blood.
He hadn't been able to get away Hale's still-warm, white-collared corpse fast enough.
Tig left the radio off and the windows cracked open to let the cigarette smoke out of the nondescript van.
Rosamund had fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room with the dirt-smudged windows.
She had drank too much, too fast with Gemma and didn't stir when Tig stopped the van in the driveway and cut the headlights.
In one of the upstairs room's, Gemma heard Tig return to the gravel driveway and stayed put as she heard the front door softly click open.
Tig closed the door behind him and nodded a greeting to one of Marcus's reinforcements who disappeared into the attached garage.
Tig walked quietly to where Rosamund was sleeping on her side under the burnt orange quilt and smoothed his hand down her linen-draped side.
"Don't wake up." Tig murmured as Rosamund stirred and rubbed at her eyes, struggling to sit up when she could vaguely see his face in the dim light.
"You're here," Rosamund whispered, her voice choked as she continued to shed the layers of sleep.
Tig raised a hand to cup her jaw, only his hands were startling clean where he'd scrubbed them clean before climbing behind the van's wheel.
The darkness that clocked the room also concealed the spilled arterial blood that had gushed from Hale to saturate the rest of Tig's clothing.
Tig fumbled at her hips to keep her from fully rising, he didn't want her to see how he had returned to their temporary home.
Even though Rosamund couldn't clear see the blood practically painted from Tig's shoulders to the tips of his boots, she could smell it, a heavy metallic fog emanated from him.
Rosamund had known from the second before she opened her eyes that Tig had taken a life from this world. She knew that he had pulled the monster out from under the bed and eviscerated it after setting fire to the monster in the closet.
"Come here," Rosamund offered as Tig allowed her to push his hands away and rise to her feet.
Rosamund closed her small hand around Tig's larger hand and tugged him to the downstairs bathroom and narrow shower stall.
Tig and Rosamund didn't exchange many coherent sounds, choosing only soft sighs and grunts as Tig allowed Rosamund to peel off every stitch, layer, and smidgen of his clothes, before she followed suit.
Tig licked his lips and swallowed hard as his eyes swept from the crown of Rosamund's head to the nail bed of her right, fourth toe.
Tig moved with ferocious fluidity and caught Rosamund up in his naked arms, squeezing her close until their bare flesh was pressed together.
Rosamund's words were stolen when Tig smashed his lips against hers, fucking her mouth with his tongue before he lifted his lips so she could breathe.
"Do you want me to clean up first?" Tig asked, his pupils dilating in his pulsating orbs, his cock growing and throbbing in time with his growing heartbeat.
Rosamund shook her head, her breathing reduced to shallow pants as Tig danced a couple fingers down the front of his body until he could tease his fingertips through her silken, intimate folds.
A groan of satisfaction moved through Tig's chest as he teased her tight opening, bobbing his index finger in her wet tightness, shallowly fucking her as he dropped to his knees.
Rosamund watched in what seemed like slow-motion as Tig pushed and pulled at her until he could bury his face at the apex of her thighs and began to fuck her wet opening with his tongue.
Tig's urgent thrust of his tongue made Rosamund arch against his face, gripping the small sink top for balance as his insistent teasing and prodding pushed her to a climatic precipice as he reached down and yanked his rapidly hardening cock free.
Tig smiled against Rosamund's soaking wet, pink folds as her thighs began to shake, before focusing on drawing the tip of his tongue in erratic circles around her over-stimulated clit.
The handful of seconds before Rosamund came so hard that her body quaked and she felt an electric charge inside her, Tig rose fluidly to his feet and quickly sank his cock to the hilt inside her tight center, stopping only when their intimate flesh smashed together and wetly kissed.
"Oh," Rosamund managed as she moved her grip to Tig's shoulders and upper arms, clinging as though he was a mountain amidst a category five hurricane.
Tig smoothed a hand to cradle the back of Rosamund's skull when she dropped her face to the curve of his neck, whispering incoherently, her words a hot exhale over the thudding pulse in his throat.
"What'd ya say baby?" Tig murmured as he slid his thick fingers through the silken fall of her hair, the strands snagging his ragged cuticles, silently begging her to repeat herself as he slammed his rigid length into her in a metered rhythm.
"You came back. You came back," Rosamund added on a series of breathless moans.
"I'll never be that far away again," Tig vowed on a primitive growl as he felt his balls tighten up and pull close to his body as his climax was all but immediately imminent.
When their feet eventually touched the floor and they'd caught their collective breaths, Rosamund and Tig took a long shower, letting the hot water clean away their combined body fluids and the dried blood of the dead that clung to Tig's skin in dried maroon patches.
Rosamund Marie Vinzenci looked down and watched the soapy water, stained with the last of her uncle Jacob Hale Jr., wash down the shower drain.
Rosamund never asked what happened to her uncle.
Tig and Rose never again spoke of Jacob Hale Jr., and she was never again afraid of the dark.
A peek into their near future, showed Tig and Rosamund settled outside of Charming, not a long drive if traffic was on his side when Tig would head into Charming to Teller-Morrow.
As soon as Rosamund had complete control of her money, she'd purchased them a sprawling farmhouse on a decent chunk of acreage. Gemma's childhood home had lost the appeal with the recent murderous blemishes and ongoing police investigation.
Clay and everyone injured eventually recovered, some left in chronic debilitating pain or opiate addiction.
Life moved on as usual for everyone at Teller-Morrow, Chuckie's forensic work on the computer files provided Clay with enough ammunition to buy himself a senator if he was so inclined.
When it was quiet and she was alone, Rosamund struggled with not finding and destroying the memory card and copies of files of which she was most certainly a key player. She hated knowing that she was continuing to be exploited even when her tormentor was dead.
Whenever those feelings grew to be too overwhelming, Rose would take a slow walk around the house, tracing her fingers over the glass bauble Tig had bought for her after a trip to the east bay with some of his brothers.
"You wouldn't be alive if something hadn't changed," Rosamund whispered as she danced her fingertips over the paper-thin glass, woven hearts, joined with a blush pink blooming rose. "You'd never be truly loved," she spoke to the silent tabletop as her eyes landed on the sparkling brilliance of the ring on her fourth finger.
Rosamund looked up and moved closer to the window as Tig drove down the length of the long, dirt driveway. Plumes of dust kicked up under his wheels as he parked and found her eyes on him as he walked up the driveway, every step closer to the front door.
"Or find a place for your heart," Rosamund said as she heard the front door squeak as Tig pushed it open.