Red

And just like that, the woman in his life left him.

***

Red

It had only taken three days for the swelling around her eye to go down enough for her to see again. Every time she had caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror she whispered, "pussy motherfucker." Then she had congratulated herself once more on killing Mueller. That was two unintended murders that she had under her belt and both were totally justifiable. If she wasn't who she was, someone would probably give her a medal for killing both of them.

It was just a shame that Wolf was part of the wreckage this time. She wouldn't let herself think about him or she'd go all soft and there wasn't time for that. She was in pure survival mode now.

All that work, all those hours on her feet and living like a pauper and what did she have to show for it? Red punched her open palm in frustration after she counted what she had managed to bring. She had counted it twice, just to make sure she hadn't missed a dollar.

Four thousand dollars. Four thousand two hundred and sixty-four dollars and probably two bucks in change. That was it, Red let out a long sigh as she sank into the despair of it. That was everything between her and the street. That was all she had to keep a roof over her head and food in her belly. It wasn't nearly enough to stay off radar forever, which left her with only shitty choices.

She could work for cash but with all the bureaucracy in place to prevent illegal immigrants from working, there weren't many of those jobs. Besides, it was all slaves wages too. Red was too fucking smart to waste away washing someone's dishes 18 hours a day so that she could exist.

She had chosen the Star Inn for its anonymity. It was the cheapest, smelliest hotel she could find that took cash and didn't ask for identification. It was okay for a few more days, but then what? She couldn't get an apartment without showing someone a driver's license. Going legit was impossible like this.

Red wondered if there weren't already a warrant out for her arrest. She wore the hood down low to cover her face as much as possible when she went to go buy cigarettes. Gas stations had good security, even out here in the sticks near the Indiana border. She didn't need anyone to find her because they were looking for someone who stole gas.

Dammit, she really couldn't have planned this to be anymore fucked up. She puffed on the cigarette furiously and decided she'd really need to give these up too. It was money literally going up in smoke.

Without legitimate employment, that left crime. Red had never been caught robbing anyone but it wasn't without risks. One time was all it would take and Red would be back in jail. This time forever.

She wouldn't turn tricks. She couldn't. She'd done it in the past, when it was the difference between eating or not. Now, how could she go back to that life? She had barely been able to stomach sucking off old men long before she'd fallen in love.

Because that's what it was, wasn't it? It scared the shit out of her. Handcuff her to a radiator, set her on fire, but love? She had promised herself after Yuri that she'd never fuck with feelings again. It was worse than giving her kerosene.

Still, she went to bed and imagined Wolf's powerful arms around her.

Sleep hadn't come quickly or easily since she had bolted and that night, a thump on her room door woke her up out of a sound sleep. She felt something prickly down the back of her neck. It was a warning. It was something she rarely felt except for when she'd been in jail.

Red looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was 3:30 am, too late and too early for anyone on the up and up to be outside her room. She whipped back the thin blanket and the sheet and hugged herself as she thought about the possibilities. If it were Chicago PD, they would just break down the door. Unless it was one of Mueller's friends looking for a little payback.

She tiptoed to the door, opened it slowly and silently and stared out into the night. There was a duffel bag on the threshold. A big, black duffel bag that looked like it was full. A big, black duffel bag like Yuri used to pack money and weapons in and sometimes cocaine.

Was she being set up? Was it the drug dealer in the room next door? It wasn't an accident, that much she knew. People kept close tabs on their big, black duffel bags.

She drug it inside and quickly slammed the door shut and put the chain on. Red walked back and forth and nervously twisted her fingers as she paced. Should she just say fuck it and open it? She lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring as she considered her options. She turned on the light by the television. She knelt with the cigarette jammed in her mouth as she tugged the zipper to the bottom.

Holy shit, it had been a long time since she'd seen so much cash. It was stacked and banded neatly, each stack was labeled $5,000. Jesus Christ, just from the quick scan she did, Red counted more than half a million bucks.

Then there was the letter.

It was folded in thirds on crisp, off-white paper and it smelled like him. She inhaled deeply and picked up the waft of scent that Red had memorized already. It was subtle, maybe soap, maybe his cologne. It lingered on his chest and she loved it. His muscular chest with the thicket of black hair. It was the softest hair and she wanted to feel it against her chest as she looked up at him. She wanted to be pressed against him as she melted into his body. Jesus, she could almost feel him inside her if she just closed her eyes.

The letter was handwritten and she smiled as she traced her name.

"Red,

If I can find you, then someone else can. If you won't be with me, then at least let me help you with what I can do. This is enough money to really start a new life. There's identification, a passport, etc., in the envelope. Be careful and be free.

Run, Red.

Wolf"

She dropped to her knees and held the paper to her breasts. With one act, he had made her love him even more and now that was the most heartbreaking thing of all.

The least she could do was get away with it.

***

Wolf

It was Spring in Savannah and unlike home, it was warm already. In Chicago, the chilly days of March and April seemed to just be an extension of winter. It was gray and dismal, like his heart. Since he had arrived in Georgia though, he felt renewed. It felt like the warmth had seeped into his bones and perhaps his heart had begun to thaw. He could feel the ocean nearby, he could smell the fertile ground and lose himself in the lushness of it all.

He had spent the last two days getting acquainted with the area. He was just another tourist, a nondescript man that no one would ever pick out of the group. He wore a hat and kept his head down. He had walked the cemetery that was nearby and sat in the square and meandered down Bull Street just to take it in. It seemed important to get to know where she came from; where she had been born.

Addison Riley that is.

Addison Riley was the owner of Ace Security. It was a startup computer security firm in the area. Ace had scored some impressive contracts since opening their office in Savannah. The company ran tight and lean and they were known to be extremely aggressive, just like the owner.

The gossip among the locals was that Addison Riley was known to be as quick and efficient with her speech as she was in her work. There was absolutely no drawl, no slow, drawn out syllables, no friendly twang. For whatever reasons, she never directly answered the question, "You're not from around here." The locals just thought she was shy.

She was a woman of few words but so far, from what he'd been told, what little she said was considered important. It didn't even dilute her intelligence or her intensity that she was so pretty.

Yes, he thought to himself as he watched her from the street. She was truly pretty with her shiny hair and her shiny, barefaced complexion. She smiled at the computer screen occasionally and her bottom lip curled in a way that made his pulse race.

Ace Security had small but tastefully done offices in a building on Oglethorpe. The main advantage to the location was the twelve foot, floor to ceiling windows. Addison left them bare, which kept the entire space on display to anyone casually strolling by. She must like the light and wide open spaces. Perhaps she'd been cooped up for too long, somewhere small and claustrophobic. Whatever the reason, he liked that he could watch her work.

Her hair was almost black, the color of a dark pool. It was a tinge past chestnut and the light reflected in the dark well that was her hair. Now she wore it in a tight, careful knot on the top of her head while she worked. In fact, the way she dressed seemed designed to make her as sexless as possible. With her hair slicked back and tucked away, she also armed herself in oversized jackets and baggy pants. But there were certain attributes that she couldn't do anything about.

Being in the south had done nothing to change her milk, white skin but then again, she worked too much to be a sun worshipper.

And those eyes.

He had been on the other side of the coffee shop that Addison frequented when he first saw her close up again. Damn, it had been three years but no time at all had passed when he saw the eyes. All it took was one look at the blue eyes and every moment washed over him once more.

He had decided just yesterday that his initial assessment of cold, killer eyes had been wrong. They were ocean eyes. They had unfathomable depths and they had a million colors in them and they were still, after all this time, mysterious.

She walked to and from her office to her condo on 37th street. She strolled, she rambled. It felt odd to watch her amble like she had nothing but time. It was a carefree walk that showed none of her previous guardedness. She dallied, she took in the scenery and never, not once, did she look back over her shoulder.

The last few days, he wondered if she'd forgotten the game entirely. If she didn't even walk like Red anymore, if she never looked around corners or kept her hands curled into fists, then what would happen? She didn't seem to have the electric crackle anymore. She was missing the fuse that just might make her explode.

Had Addison swallowed up Red? Had Mirabelle come out to play dress up? Was one too many aliases the straw that broke the camel's back? He didn't want to admit that the question that really haunted him was whether or not she'd forgotten all about him.

Fuck, it stung to think that he was walking around with her little R dug into his flesh and that she had moved on. Unscarred and unscathed. If he approached her, would she look at him with a half smile and say, "oh, yeah, now I remember you."?

She had always been too cool for him.

He'd almost left the night before. He had watched her on what looked to be a date. It had lacerated his heart but then there had been that handshake at the end. Cool and direct, she may be more Addison than he had expected but that move was pure Red.

He was about to find out if she could still feel him at her core. Tonight was the night and it was impossible to keep the current that coursed through his body completely under control. He felt like he might jump out of his skin as he followed her home. Not too close, not too far, he followed the trail of her scent. Twilight closed in around them and he breathed in the dogwood blossoms and azaleas but it was under that. There was the hint of some expensive cologne that she wore, something that Addison would have picked out. She probably just dabbed a dot or two on her pulse points in the morning. Still deeper was the original scent. His inner beast had picked up the trail like they'd never left it.

Cinnamon and cum. Sweaty, vicious sex. Piss and a bloody wound and spit. Red, the woman and the color, inextricably joined, multifaceted, there were layers upon layers.

He twitched on the inside although he walked like a tourist and smiled politely at passerby's.

He waited. He'd been waiting for so long that it almost seemed like she had happened to someone else. It almost felt like he'd read about her in a book or she was an urban legend. And yet, no, he thought as the deep purple of the sunset turned so a soft gray and finally, around midnight, to black, she was real.

He had watched her unwind her hair and when she tossed it back, the waves cascaded down both shoulders. He thought as he studied the ripples of espresso colored hair that she must have to color twice to blot out her natural crimson.

She began to undress and here she was completely Red. Her nakedness was so familiar. He had memorized every inch and in his mind's eye, he could recite every curve and every line.

Then there was the tattoo. At the base of her spine, the one that he'd always wanted to know about and he'd never had the chance to ask. The word that seemed to have marked her. The letters that said she belonged to someone else entirely and that thought had made him burn.

He read it tonight and held his breath.

She had put on pajamas, very proper, navy blue button up pajamas, which he found amusing. She had watched fifteen minutes of a show while she heated up her dinner. It was leftovers in a foil tin from an expensive restaurant. She opened a bottle of Cabernet and had a glass. She even had one of those expensive, vacuum sealing wine stoppers. It was something that he could see Red roll her eyes at.

It was all very Addison.

There wasn't a cigarette in sight but she tapped her fingers impatiently on the glass coffee table when she had finished eating. Like she hadn't quite killed the urge and she still longed for a smoke, he bet.

How very Red.

Addison went to bed with a noise machine. He thought it was very considerate of her to have turned on the mechanical device that emitted ocean waves or a thunderstorm. It was enough noise to rock her into sleep and never notice the two clicks in the deadbolt that would allow him access to the condo.

He crept through the living room and turned just in time to avoid the squeaky floorboard near the club chair. He made his way slowly down the hall, past the kitchen and then past the half bath. As he turned the corner and entered the bedroom, he realized all at once that Red wasn't gone at all. She had just gotten so much better at the game.

The bed was empty and even with the noise machine on, he could hear the slicing, metallic click when she flipped the gun's safety off. She took a step toward him and pressed the barrel between his shoulder blades.

"I was starting to think you lost your balls," she murmured. She sounded highly amused and not even a trifle alarmed.

He put his hands up. "Not at all, just enjoying myself." And he was. He was hard as a rock in the front of his pants, aching actually.

Red kept the gun where it was and reached around his body. She must know, must sense his need because her hand went straight to his cock. She fondled him up and down, slowly, torturing him with her hand as she whispered, "oh my god."

This wasn't what he had planned but he admitted that the plan was shot to shit. Jared would trade cuffing her to the bed and raping her sweet, pink asshole any day for this. For her sighs and her kisses and her rapturous moans as he went down on her. Maybe without the cuffs, she'd pull his hair and push him down hard on her dick.

He had forgotten long ago if he would rather fuck her or be fucked. There no longer seemed to be any difference or separation. It had all just become making love.

"Can I kiss you?" he asked with a nervous tremor in his voice.

"You can try," she said like a dare.

He kept his hands up in surrender as he turned around. She was lovely, even with the almost black hair that wasn't hers. All of it belonged to a woman that Jared had made up for her, just in case. Addison Riley was his gift for Red. She was even more important than the cash but she had come with the price of a broken heart.

He didn't touch her with his hands, just his lips. Soft, feather soft kisses, closed mouth, tender reverent kisses that made her whimper.

She set down her gun and wrapped her hands around his neck. Red opened her mouth and her breath on his lips made every nerve explode. It had been three years ago and yet there had been absolutely no time at all. All this time, his body had been on the precipice of this since they left her attic bed.

"I was worried that you had forgotten about me," Red confessed before she licked his bottom lip like a tasty morsel she could hardly wait to bite.

"Never," he told her before he gave her his mouth entirely. He slipped his hand down the back of her pajama pants and asked, "You changed your tattoo?"

"Yes," she turned for him and let Jared peel the pants down halfway so that her gorgeous, round bottom burst from its confines. "I thought this was more appropriate."

It must have been painful, to have a needle pass over and over in such a sensitive area, especially the second time. This one had to be darker, more ink, larger letters to hide the original. He touched it, traced the letters one by one as he dropped to his knees behind her.

W-O-L-F.

"It's perfect," he whispered before he gave her his tongue.