Chapter Two
By the time they reached Mac's sorry excuse for a house, the girl was out cold. She was sprawled out across the seat they shared, with her head mostly on his lap. And despite the heavy shaking of his right leg, and the wild way he'd protested when she'd first begun to lean her weight against him, nothing seemed to rouse her.
He pulled into his driveway, and briefly considered leaving her in the truck. But Walter could drive by any time, and Mac had promised him to be more discreet. So Mac threw the girl over his shoulder and hauled her into the house, depositing her in the bathtub in the vague hope that she'd clean herself off when she woke up. And anyways, he didn't share his bed with the women he fucked. Tonight would be no different.
Mac trudged back into the kitchen and opened up the fridge. It was sparse, containing just a moldy pizza and a few six-packs of beer. He had just popped open the tab of the closest Bud when a voice from behind him called out "Mac?"
He turned on his heel, disgruntled to have been startled in his own home, and found the girl standing at the edge of the kitchen.
The blood on her body was dry and flaky now. Her feet were still bare. And he couldn't help but focus on the inflection of her voice when she said his name. A question to it, for the first time since he'd spotted her. As if she needed confirmation that he was real.
"Right. Now you're fuckin' awake. After I hauled your lazy ass inside," Mac spat, closing in on her.
But if anything, his sudden aggression seemed to put her at ease. He heard her let out a slow breath. She was smiling again.
"This is your house," she said with a sense of wonder, like it were some great reward to be here, of all places. Mac grimaced, and pushed past her into the living room. He shook out his jacket, letting his pack of cigarettes and lighter fall to the floor. He heard the girl trailing closely behind him.
Mac felt frustration boil up in his veins. He focused all his attention on lighting a cigarette, pulling it to his mouth and sucking hard. He turned around and blew out a thick breath of smoke into her face.
"The fuck do you want?" he asked her.
"You," she immediately replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. In the half-second it took Mac to recover from that confession, she softly asked him, "Can I take a bath?"
Mac took another long draw from the cigarette, letting the buzz of the nicotine wash over him. "Do what you want," he eventually said, walking away from her to plop down on the couch by himself. He alternated between chugging down his beer and sucking on smoke, and listened to the girl venture deeper into his house, finding the bathroom and turning the water on.
Mac was four beers in when he realized that sitting on that couch, giving the girl her fucking privacy, was a shot to the nuts more than anything. He promptly jumped to his feet and strode right into the bathroom, finding her soaking in a tub dingy and reddened with blood.
The sight had him grinning at her lewdly, palming his growing bulge. And he was almost disappointed when she didn't jolt or startle when he burst through the door. Instead, she shot him that same iridescent half-smile, watching him lazily while he leaned up against the sink.
He'd intended to fuck her. Knock her around a little at least; whatever would make this whole situation less infuriating. But now he was more enthralled with watching her. Aside from her head and shoulders, the only parts of body peeking out of the water were the crests of her breasts and the tips of her knees. Something about that was even more appealing than all the bitches he paid to strip bare.
"You got a name?"
She cocked an eyebrow at him, but said nothing.
"Still with the silent treatment, huh? Typical bitch..."
"You should pick one," she said suddenly, in that ever-soft voice, and Mac's eyebrows furrowed together in confusion.
"The hell do you mean 'I should pick one'?"
"A name you like," she continued without really answering him, "Give me a name you like."
"Yeah? How 'bout stupid slut?" he shot back rudely, but her face betrayed only amused exasperation.
"I'm serious, Mac. Take some time and think about it. Whatever name you want."
He eyed her curiously. "You tryin' to play it off like you don't got a real name?"
"No, I had one. But now I want a new one. One you gave me."
He took another drag of his cigarette. "Y'really are nuts, huh? Just fuckin' nuts... I like it." He threw his still-lit cigarette into the bath, and it sizzled ominously. "Bath time's over."
Mac disappeared through the open door, knowing she'd be close behind him. He leaned against the kitchen counter, and a few seconds later, the nameless girl stepped through his bedroom and living room, now wearing one of his old flannel shirts. There was something pleasingly grotesque about knowing that at a time, there'd been just as much blood on her skin as on that shirt, but both had been scrubbed back to their former glory.
The girl moved towards him, stopping when there were only inches between them, and they were breathing the same air. In better light and closer quarters, Mac could see her scars now. They were old, doled out before she'd reached teenage-hood certainly. And really, they descended in a pattern that bordered on beautiful, stretching from the side of her neck down across her back, and picking up again at the inside of her thigh.
The marks were faint as anything, a crisscross of lines that he could hardly feel under the thick callouses of his fingers when he reached out to trace the alluring path.
"Do you like me better without it?" the girl asked; it startled Mac out of his haze.
"Without what?" he rasped.
She gave him that same exasperated look, as if the answer was obvious. "The blood."
Mac thought about that for a moment. Finally, he told her, "If you're gonna be covered in blood, I'm gonna make damn sure it's your own."
He'd looked her right in the eye as he said it, and hadn't missed the flicker of pleasure at his words.
"Yeah, you like that don't you?" he drawled, holding her by the neck with one hand, "You're all kinds of fucked up."
Mac grabbed a knife off the counter, and skimmed the blade down the side of her face. She didn't so much as flinch. If anything, she looked disappointed.
"What, that ain't dangerous enough for you?" he spat, growing frustrated.
Abruptly, the girl snatched the knife out of his hand.
"The fuck do you think you're—" Mac began, but before he could finish his statement, the delicate girl pulled open the shirt she was wearing, and sliced the blade across the thin skin at her own collar bone.
Mac licked his lips as he watched the droplets of blood sliver down her chest. But again, even an injury in a place that had to be all nerves garnered no response from the mysterious girl. She was eyeing him expectantly, waiting for him to respond. And when a moment's worth of waiting still resulted in sustained silence, the girl let out a frustrated huff, and raised one hand to the wound she'd inflected on herself.
She brandished four well-kempt nails, and dug them into the cut, scratching at what had to be bone.
Not even a gasp. And at that, Mac's eyes narrowed in vague understanding.
"You can't feel it," he surmised, "The fuck are you on?"
"Nothing," she said softly, "Didn't take anything. Wasn't slipped anything either."
"So what, you didn't feel nothing earlier? That's what you're saying?"
"No," she immediately insisted, "I felt you."
And that provided Mac with an uncharacteristic sense of relief. He'd come harder than a freight train, and it would spoil the memory to think her apparent pleasure had been an elaborate act.
"Y'ain't makin' any fuckin' sense," Mac growled. "You're lyin'. You're high as a goddamn kite."
She seemed more disheartened, afterward, than affronted.
The girl looked down at her feet, appearing somewhat self-conscious. "It's just...what I am," she said softly.
And given that this was the first time Mac's antics had startled any sort of response out of her aside from composed amusement, Mac finally took her words seriously.
"You can't feel...what?" he asked her, "Anything?"
"I feel most things. Just not pain. I can't feel pain."
"At all?"
"At all. For as long as I can remember. It's some sort of genetic disease, I was told. I bleed. My bones break. And tomorrow I'm sure I'll have bruises from where you hit me. But I don't hurt; I never have."
It was the most she'd spoken at once thus far.
"That explains somethin'," he mused, "But not why you were out in the mesa tonight. Or why you were covered in blood. And it wasn't yours."
"No. It wasn't," she said simply. As he watched, the girl raised her bloody fingertips to Mac's lips, hovering just above them. "But this is."
Without a second thought, Mac dipped his head and pulled those bloody fingers to his mouth, sucking them clean. With the taste of her still on his lips, he pinned the girl between himself and the kitchen counter, and shoved his coppery tongue into her mouth. She moaned against him, and Mac smirked smugly.
But even as his fingernails dug into the soft skin of her hips, hands roughly palming her breasts and pinching at her nipples, this new tidbit of information rolled around in the back of Mac's mind, irking him. She couldn't feel pain. Mac, he'd never be able to make her feel it, no matter how hard he tried. Even killing her wouldn't satisfy the need, because she wouldn't feel that either.
He wanted to hurt her. He'd hurt all the others, and the thrill of their pleading moans satisfied him more completely than being inside them. At least, it had.
Mac wanted to scare her as well. The power of it could have him coming untouched, seeing in a girl's eyes that she were completely at his will. But this girl, she'd never fear him either. Not really; not the way he craved.
And what reason did she have to be afraid? There's nothing to fear without the possibility of pain and death, and this girl hadn't the framework to understand either. This new information left his skin itching and too tight, a sickening combination of arousal and distaste. The excitement of such new territory butted with the desires and rituals he'd honed so well over the years, and he was left with frigid bitterness.
His mouth stopped moving against hers, and the girl noticed before Mac did.
She pushed her hair out of the way to look up at him. "It's okay if you don't want me now," she said softly, voice tinged with a well-accepted sadness. She went to move away from him, but Mac grabbed her wrists fiercely, shoving them against the countertop.
"We stop when I say we stop," he growled. He may not have known what he wanted to do next with this vexatious girl, but he knew that he was the one who'd make that decision. She didn't get to walk off, or look so fucking sad about his indecision.
But when he grabbed at her roughly, he saw the girl's pupils blow out wide and black. He spun her around and slammed her hands down onto the counter, a position familiar enough to jolt him back in his comfort zone.
"Keep yer hands where I put 'em," Mac growled, pulling her backwards by the hips so her ass jutted out attractively. Her body trembled, but the girl made no attempt to disobey.
"You listen good," he rasped, "Do what I say, and I'll make you come. Anything else and you get nothin', got it?"
"Yes," she whispered shakily, and Mac grinned at the side of her face. This...this he could work with.
"That's what I thought," he snarled. "Now listen here, first rule's no talking. Not a word unless I say otherwise."
Shoving two blunt fingers inside her, Mac nodded his approval when she swallowed a moan.
"Second rule's you don't touch. Don't touch me, and don't touch yourself, unless I tell ya I want a show," Mac said into the crook of her neck. He withdrew his fingers from her tight, wet confines and replaced them with his cock, allowing for no preamble before thrusting roughly inside. She groaned wordlessly through her teeth.
"Third rule's, you only get to come when I say you can come. But you know that one, don't ya slut? S'how I had ya comin' all over my big dick earlier. You like big dicks, dontcha?"
He punctuated the question with a particularly vicious thrust, which had the girl's palms sliding across the linoleum tiles.
"You answer me when I ask you a question," Mac growled forcefully. Finding her clit, he rubbed it hard, teasing her with the prospect of release. "You like big dicks?"
"Yes!" the girl gasped, back arching.
"Whose big dick do you like?"
"Yours! Yours Mac," she nearly sobbed. Mac could hear the way she kept swallowing those little noises building up in the back of her throat, and the girl's struggle to obey him was a heady rush.
He smiled to himself at how satisfying this kind of fuck was, albeit different. Each time she clenched around him, each time she shivered all the way down her spine, Mac knew it was in an effort to stave off the inevitable.
If he couldn't punish her with pain, he'd do it with pleasure.
Too soon, Mac found himself dangerously close to losing it. But judging by the way the girl was squirming with his every movement, she was just as ready.
"You wanna come?" he asked, teasing her.
"Yes, Mac," she moaned.
"That's what you want, huh? You think you deserve to come on my cock?" Fuck, he was enjoying this.
"Please," she whimpered, growing desperate, and Mac stilled completely inside of her.
"Beg me for it," he whispered in her ear, hot breath snaking over the sensitive skin and striking her alight.
"Please Mac," she murmured in a rush, "Please make me come. I need you. I need you to. Please."
I need you.
The words made Mac's cock pulse, and his chest tighten unpleasantly in surprise. But even the shock of it couldn't hold him back now, not when he had this mystery girl panting and writhing against him, begging with her mouth and her hips and her whole fucking body.
"Yeah, you fucking need me, huh? Need me to make you come. Need me to make you feel good. Such a whore for me." Mac mouthed uncharacteristically at the knob of her spine, wanting to feel the pleasure vibrate through her. "Do it. Fuckin' come."
And as if Mac had flipped some sort of switch, the girl convulsed around him on demand. She shuddered hard, and bit at her lip in an attempt to stifle the grateful moans. Mac's hips jerked against her, drawing out her bliss until his own orgasm crashed into him like frozen rain. A million bolts of molten ice careened straight through him, and Mac froze against her, savoring the feeling.
He was hardly surprised when upon stepping away from her, the girl toppled to the floor. Without bothering to hitch up his pants, Mac sidestepped her and headed straight back to his bedroom, slamming the door in his wake.
Hours later, Mac awoke to a call from Walter- and not the good kind.
Though that being said, talking with Walter was never good, per se. Their chats tended to range from subdued aggression to vicious shouting. This one, though, took the cake.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Mac?! Are you fucking stupid? I told you- no more bodies," Walter shouted, unreachably livid.
Mac might have garnered up some hostility to match, if not for his honest confusion.
"What bodies?" he barked back.
"What bodies? What fucking bodies? The three you left out in the mesa, you worthless piece of shit! Just around the corner from the fucking lab!"
Mac went silent as Walter continued on his rant. He would never shit so close to where he ate; Walter had forced him to learn that lesson years back. And as of last night, Mac had been thinking that the mystery girl's appearance so close to his cave was just an eerie coincidence.
And it might have been a coincidence. If not for this.
Mac hung up on Walter without bothering to defend himself and stomped out into the living room, where the girl was curled up into a miniscule ball on his aging couch.
When he rounded on her, she was already looking up at him with wide, alert eyes.
"Cops found three bodies out in the mesa last night," Mac said slowly, "Right around where I picked you up." He cracked his knuckles methodically. "You know anything about that?"
Mac's blue eyes were deep ocean dark, and glimmering with barely-concealed rage.
The girl looked right back at him with doe-eyes, and appeared to be biting back a smile. She let him stew in his anger for a beat, before finally opening her mouth to speak.
"Only three?"