Dirty Souls by Karina Halle
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure you want to know,” I say carefully.
“Well, now I really want to know.”
“How about I tell you if you hit a few more targets.”
“This is bribery.”
“Do you expect anything less?”
She grumbles but turns her attention back to shooting.
On the third shot, she hits the can again.
This time, I feel like celebrating in a different way.
I grab her, pulling her to me, one hand making a gentle fist in her hair, the other going around her waist. She’s even more flushed and glowing than before.
If I don’t have her now, I’m not sure how I’ll survive the motorbike ride back to the hotel.
And who knows what will await us there?
I push that thought out of my head and kiss her. Hard, deep, and wet. A kiss that sears me to her, making sure she feels me in the blood moving through her veins. I want to be running hot within her.
I take her over to the boulders.
I know we’re in the open desert, where it’s rough and wild, the opposite of soft and comfortable, but I don’t want that right now. I need her so fucking badly that it’s ripping me apart, making everything inside me burn.
I kiss her deeper than before, my tongue sinking into her, making her moan while my fingers fumble at her back, undoing her bra, pulling the top over her until her breasts bounce free.
“Fuck me,” I mutter, reaching down and taking my dick out, giving it a long hard stroke as I stare down at her. She stares up at me with wide, nervous eyes, her lips parted, her dark hair across her face. Her nipples are hard, tiny pink peaks against the fullness of her breasts. Her torso leads smoothly to her hips and the peek of her thighs that just beg for me to dig my teeth into them as she slowly pulls down her jeans.
More real than real under the beauty of the desert sun.
Suddenly the urge, the pure need to be inside her, is debilitating, and I’m nearly trembling at the hunger pulsing through me. It’s this animalistic, primal drive that surprises me, like I’m being reduced to nothing but basic instinct around her. She’s not just my soft Violet, she’s my mirlo, this gorgeous creature I need to claim, to take rough and hard and fast until I can’t remember my name.
Without realizing it, I’ve slipped my hand down along the softness of her stomach, finding purchase between her legs. I push a finger inside her, rubbing eagerly against her G-spot, feeling her swell around me.
“Vicente,” she gasps as she breathes heavily, her body pressing back into me, wanting more, as I push her back against the boulder. “I need you.”
Her words are so desperate it flicks on a switch inside me.
I snap.
I have to get inside her now.
No exceptions.
I quickly withdraw my fingers, rubbing them along my lips briefly, savoring her taste, as I hold my shaft, rigid and heavy in my hand and angle it into her. I try to go slow, rubbing my head around her soft opening, getting my tip wet before pushing in just a few inches.
But a few inches are enough to make my jaw clench, and I’m trying so hard to keep myself in control. She’s hot and slippery, even here, and tight as a fucking fist. I want to slam myself inside of her, bury myself balls deep. It takes all of me to try and keep on breathing, my fingers digging into her sides, wanting to be as gentle with her as I possibly can, considering the rough rock behind her, the slope of it supporting her ass and barely keeping her upright.
Against a tree was one thing, but here, in this wild place, with death chasing us under the unforgiving sun, this is something else. I hope I have what it takes to bide my time and enjoy every second, but since I’m already struggling to keep it together, I doubt I’ll last long.
As long as she comes first. I want her writhing and panting and screaming my name. Nothing sounds better.
“You feel amazing,” I tell her, my voice guttural as I push in deeper, watching as my dick disappears into her, her resistance deliciously tight. “You’re drenching me.”
I pull out in a slow slide and she shudders beneath me before I push back into her, staying cautious, my palm leaning flat against the rock.
“Fuck me,” she moans, her eyes fluttering as she stares up at me.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“Harder!”
I look down to where the thickest part of my cock is still showing. “Are you sure?” I ask her, grinding the words out as I clench my jaw. My body is burning, my muscles tightly coiled as I try to stay still. “I don’t want to hurt you at this angle, against this rock. You’re tighter than a fist and my magic cock can barely fit as it is.”
“Please.” I’m not even sure she realizes she’s said the word. Her brow is furrowed with wild impatience, her mouth wet and gaping, gasping.
“Por favor,” I murmur. She wraps a leg around me and I slip myself deeper inside her, almost to the hilt. She stretches around me with a loud gasp, her pussy so snug and wet as I roll my hips against her. I’m lightheaded, breathless, and the fire inside me builds, licking me until I’m lost in this provocative haze. The world has whittled down to nothing but pleasure and sunshine.
“Harder. Fucking harder.”
A growl escapes my lips and I slam myself into her until she’s hugging every throbbing inch. She’s yelling my name and I hear nothing but my blood rushing through my head as I bury myself deep inside her. My hips thrust, hammering in this driving rhythm. I know I’m fucking up her back, that the rock can’t be too nice to the delicate skin on her spine, but her nails are digging into my shoulders and her cries are getting more and more desperate.
I reach down and stroke her clit, so swollen and slick, but I’m pumping so hard into her that it’s nearly impossible.
Still, that’s all it takes.
I lean forward, sweat dripping off my brow and onto her chest. “Come with me,” I whisper hoarsely.
And she is. She’s moaning, then screaming my name and swearing, and I don’t hold back. With a guttural groan, I come, the pleasure ripping through me, turning me inside out. I swear and cry out, my cum blasting into her as I go into some mindless, hypersensitive state. In this moment, I’m without thought or self-awareness—I’m just an animal, fucking in the wild. There’s just the two of us connected under a primal sky, the way it’s been since the dawn of time.
I come back down to earth slowly, trying not to collapse onto her lush body. I push myself off the rock and then hold her, gently placing her on the ground.
She looks up at me through the dark strands of damp hair, her face red and beaded with sweat, her eyes heavy-lidded and completely sated.
“Did I hurt your back?” I ask her, turning her around after she fastens her jeans.
I wince. Red marks and bright dots of blood make up the path down her spine.
“Ouch,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Worth it,” she says. “Even if it scars. I don’t ever want to forget this.”
The sun seems brighter now, stronger, even though we’re a few hours out from sundown. Maybe it’s just that Violet makes my world come alive in ways I never thought possible. Maybe her sensitivity, the way she sees and experiences the world, is getting through to me.
I can only hope that’s not true. You don’t last long in this line of work if you feel more than others. Only the strong and the armored survive. You need an extra layer of skin, of Teflon, of Kevlar.
Which begs the question, once again, what the fuck am I doing?
But the question comes and goes with the wind.
I watch her get dressed, pulling her tank top down. She’s going without the bra, stuffing it in the pocket of her jeans she’s just pulled up. I have to say, with her tits, it’s almost a crime to cover them up.
I need to figure out how to keep this forever. Her, me, the open desert. I don’t fucking need anything else. I may be young but I know enough that sometimes you don’t need the wor
She comes over to me, weak-kneed and wobbly, like I fucked her so hard it’s not easy to walk. Smiling. My heart.
I zip up my jeans. I’m about to tell her we should head back to Palm Valley before it gets dark when a motorized buzzing sound steals my attention.
I look up to the left and see a small drone flying above us.
Slowly. Like it’s watching us.
Fuckers.
In the midst of sex, I probably wouldn’t have noticed if it was watching us for a long time.
Violet’s eyes are trained on it in awe.
I take the gun out from my ankle holster and take a shot.
Like shooting a bird out of the sky.
The drone explodes in the air, falls to the ground in pieces.
“Vicente,” she says, though I can tell she’s impressed I managed to hit it on the fly like that. “That was someone’s drone.”
“I know.”
“You can’t just shoot other people’s stuff.”
“Oh yeah?” I walk over to the wreckage, putting my gun in my pocket for now. “Who knows what it could have recorded? Like I’d share any of what we just fucking did with anyone else.”
I kick at the pieces until I can see the memory card and then snatch it up, turning it over in my palm.
“What is it?” Violet asks, coming over.
I show it to her. “Just the memory card.” Then I take out my phone and insert the card into the reader on the side of it.
“You’re viewing their footage? You know it probably went to a live feed, right?”
I nod as I open the file. I have to make sure.
It goes straight to video, and I watch as I rewind it.
It’s not what I expected.
The footage flashes by in reverse.
There’s a bit of us fucking, then the drone takes off.
Then there’s miles of desert footage.
Footage of the drone heading above the highway we had ridden in on.
All the way back to Palm Valley.
All the way back to the hotel.
Our hotel.
Someone followed us with that drone.
Someone who had to have been within a certain distance to signal the drone’s operations.
We have a lot of drones around the compound at home. They do our surveillance. Juan, one of our security tech guys, operates a lot of them. He sits at the security console on our property and he can control a few at a time, all operating as far as several miles from the compound. They transmit to him like cellular data and come back to roost like trained falcons.
Which means whoever sent the drone to follow us might not be close by.
But they will be.
We may still have time.
“We have to go,” I tell Violet, shoving my phone into my pocket and grabbing her by the arm. I grab the gun from beside the boulder and place it in her hands. “Hold on to this.”
“What’s going on? What are we doing?”
I don’t answer. We reach the bike and I tell her to get on.
“Vicente, please,” she cries out, looking terrified, grasping the gun like she no longer understands it. “What was on the video? Whose drone is that?”
“Someone was following us and they’re going to be here pretty soon,” I tell her, starting the bike. “And they aren’t going to be happy I shot their drone.”
“Vicente.”
“Please. Get. On.”
She stares at me for a moment until she reads the urgency in my eyes. Whatever she sees, it scares her. She clamps her mouth shut and swings her legs onto the bike like an old pro.
We kick up dust on the dirt road until we get to the main one and then turn to the right.
“Why are we heading the opposite way?” Violet yells in my ear. “The way out of the park is behind us!”
“Because whoever is following that drone is coming the other way,” I yell over my shoulder.
“What?” She can’t hear me well.
“Because!” I answer and gun it, overtaking a truck and a travel trailer.
The sun is lower now, and in an hour it will be gone. Light moves fast in the desert. I don’t want to be stuck out here when that happens. I have a feeling that the person with the drone is most likely Leo Madano, and Leo Madano might know this area better than I do.
I’m not sure how long the main road through Joshua Tree goes on for. When I feel like we’ve gone a safe distance, we should probably pull over somewhere hidden, look it up through the GPS, and make a plan of where to go.
But I don’t have a plan. And Violet needs one. The last thing I want is for her to not feel safe with me after all that.
There does seem to be a lot of traffic heading toward us, which makes me think there’s probably an exit to the park.
I look down at my stomach where Violet has wrapped her arms around me, the gun still in her hand and pressed flush against my shirt. I can only hope I'm going fast enough that any passing motorist won't notice it. I can also only hope that it's not going to go off by accident.
I can also only hope that there won't be a time when Violet will have to use it.
We continue to burn it down the blacktop. The stark rocky hills spotted with the iconic Joshua trees are turning a shade of cream and orange as the light in the desert begins to change. Shadows are getting longer, creating crevices and gullies where there were none before. Everything I see out of the corner of my eye is ambiguous, spelling out danger.
Then the traffic begins to fade as the elevation lowers and lowers, the road gradually taking us from the high desert down to the valley below. Through glimpses here and there between the mountains and the stacks of boulders that stretch on as far as the eyes can see, there's a peek at the snaking lines of Interstate 10.
Freedom.
"Vicente!" Violet screeches in my ear and I look up to see a black SUV gunning it right for us on the wrong side of the road, cars honking as it barrels down on us, closer and closer.
This isn't an accident.
"Fuck," I swear. With the SUV and normal traffic taking up both sides of the highway, there's no choice but to take the bike off into the sand. "Hold on!" I yell back at her.
We go flying over the lip of the highway and land on the rocks, dirt, and sand with a thump, dust kicking up everywhere as the wheels spin for traction. Violet's grip gets tighter and I'm even more afraid of the gun going off, but then the bike finds its groove and we speed through a patch of sage brush, heading who the hell knows where.
I look over my shoulder to see Violet's fearful eyes and then beyond her to the SUV swerving off the highway to follow us.
What the fuck? With the rocks and craggy terrain, I'm having a hard enough time managing the Harley here. I don't know how the SUV is going to handle it.
But it doesn't matter, because when it comes to trying to kill someone, persistence is key.
And this SUV isn't here for a friendly chat.
They want us dead.
A group of boulders pops up and I shift the bike around them sharply, heading in what I hope is the direction parallel to the highway and towards the way back. But when I swing the bike around, gunning it forward, bouncing endlessly over the terrain, the SUV cuts in from the other side and for a moment both of us are almost beside each other.
The windows are tinted black so I can’t see who is driving but I know we don't have much time. Without slowing down, I grab the gun from Violet's grip, raise it up, and take aim.
The driver's window of the SUV shatters, the car slowing down and veering off to the side.
"Did I hit him?" I yell at Violet, having to concentrate now on getting us to the highway again, only one hand on the handlebars, which makes steering more difficult when it was already pretty impossible.
But Violet is catatonic. No help there.
I look back over my shoulder to see her wide-eyed. The SUV has regained control and is coming at us faster now.
It takes me a second to realize what's wrong with this picture, and it's not just that the driver is still okay enough to follow us, and it's not that there's a gun pointed at us, it's that the man holding the gun is as white as a sheet.
Almost like an albino.
There's barely any time to act after that.
I yank the bike to the left, hoping that Violet has enough strength to hold on and lean in the right direction, then we’re spinning around in a whirlwind of dust that rises up to the sky.
The albino man fires but we're too fast and the bullet just misses us.
Violet screams. Whether it's from the near miss, the biking maneuver, or just everything, I don't know.
I have to focus.
Zero in.
The SUV is braking hard and swinging to the left to follow us and I yank the bike around again, this time to the right. Through the mess of dust and blowing sand, I take aim and shoot.
I hit the albino guy right right in the arm, the gun dropping out of his hand, left behind in the SUV's wake.
That hit felt good but he deserves so much more.
There's no time to dwell on it though, since we're not out of the woods.
I gun the bike toward the highway, seeing snippets of the traffic through gaps in the upcoming boulders.
The SUV follows right behind.
They really don't give a shit what this looks like.
Neither do I.
We roar through the boulders, the sound of the Harley’s engine bouncing off the sides and building to a deafening scream.
There's some relief when we hit the highway and start heading back toward Palm Valley.
The relief builds when it takes a while for the SUV to pull onto the road behind us.
It continues when we speed away, getting one, two, three, four cars ahead of the SUV. People may notice I’ve got a gun in my hand, but if they do, I’m gone before they can get a good look.
Violet doesn't relax her grip, as she shouldn't.
This car will follow us all the way back to the hotel.
Things will have to be dealt with.