Chasing Bliss (32 page)

Wolf and Vida never stopped fucking; they didn’t even hear him. Chase took his shades off and
put them in his pocket. He pushed his cap back so Wolf could see his face and stood next to him to
his right. Chase was grinning. “Nothin’ like dyin’ in a nice piece of ass, huh, Wolf?”

Wolf’s eyes flew open, and he stopped mid stroke. “Oh shit. Oh shit! Smoke!”

Vida turned her head and started screaming.

Chase started laughing. “
Stop fucking!
” Chase yelled at him. He pushed Vida away from Wolf
with his knee and grabbed Wolf’s considerable manhood with his left hand.

Vida scrambled away from them and pressed herself into the headboard, screaming in short
bursts, like she was too damned scared to let out a full-blown shriek.

Chase’s right hand came up brutally under Wolf’s balls. Candlelight glimmered briefly on the
ultra-sharp blade of his razor before it separated Wolf from his engorged genitalia. Wolf howled
as Chase threw his severed penis across the room. It hit the wall with a small
thud
and fell to the
floor. Blood spurted from the place it had been, soaking the sheets. Vida was still doing that choked
screaming until Chase clipped her under the chin, still holding his razor. “Shut up, Vida,” he said
as her lights went out.

Wolf, meanwhile, had fallen off the bed, onto his back, his hands clutching for something that
was no longer a part of him. He stopped screaming and started making great gasping, whooping
sounds—sounds of absolute shock and terror.

Chase leaned over him, careful to avoid the warm crimson spray. “Hey, aren’t you married?”
he asked curiously.

“F-fuck you, Smoke!” Wolf stuttered.

Chase slashed his right Achilles’ tendon. “Wrong answer! I asked you if you are married. It’s a
simple yes-or-no question, motherfucker!”

Wolf burst into tears. “Please, man. Pl-please don’t—”

“Fuck you. Answer me!” He slashed his other tendon.

Wolf screamed through his tears. “Yes! Yes!
Please!”

Chase laughed like he’d just heard the world’s funniest joke. “Well, your cheatin’ ass just earned
a scarlet letter!” he yelled and slashed a capital A in the man’s chest.

“You’re fuckin’
crazy
!” Wolf screamed.

Chase nodded, grinning maniacally. “You goddamned right! Die, you troublesome motherfucker!”
Chase stuck his razor behind Wolf’s ear and dragged it deeply across his carotid artery. Blood
gushed out in a red-hot deluge, spurting and spraying with each remaining pump of Wolf’s heart.
Chase didn’t remove his razor until it dug into Wolf’s collarbone. He wiped the blood on the bed
sheet and sprinted out the door and down the stairs.

He was so full of adrenaline that his ears were humming. He took the stairs two at a time and
raced out the front door, making himself a blur. Chase sprinted through oncoming traffic and into
the next block. He slowed to a trot, and J.T. threw the passenger door open. Chase got into the car,
and J.T. pulled smoothly into traffic.

“He gone?” J.T. asked.

Chase’s smile was gone; he was coming down. “He’s a fuckin’ memory. I don’t feel good. Take
me home, J.T.” Chase stripped his gloves off, and Corey put his hand on his shoulder. Chase sighed
heavily and put his hand over Corey’s. “I’m sorry, Corey. I’m a really bad person.”

“You’re my brother, Chase.”

Chase blinked and nodded. “That doesn’t change the fact that I’m a bad person who does atrocious things—
but I guess that doesn’t matter as long as Wolf is dead, right?” Chase wasn’t mad when neither one of them
answered him.

They drove back to Chase’s loft in relative silence, only stopping to get rid of Chase’s bloody
gloves and his jacket. J.T. parked Chase’s Charger in the garage and took Corey home in his own
vehicle.

Chase rode the elevator up to his loft and stopped in the kitchen for a bottle of water. He felt
terrible. His head hurt, his chest hurt, and he was tired as hell. More than that, he had to wonder,
Who the fuck was that guy who snuffed Wolf?
Do I even know him?
Chase was not going to kid himself
about the level of violence he’d displayed. It was gruesome and horrendous. Wolf may not have
been a poster child for goodness, but no one deserved to die that hard or that terrified. Chase had
lost control and tortured him. Chase’s brow creased with a worried frown.
Who the fuck is living in
my head? This shit is scary.
He knew
that
was what Cyrus didn’t understand about him.

Chase took his clothes off and got into the shower as thoughts of his big brother wandered
across his mind. Cyrus didn’t understand that after Chase went past a certain point, there was no
going back. When Cyrus shot him, it took absolutely everything he had not to slice him to shreds,
brother or not. In doing that, Cyrus had literally taken his life into his own hands, and Chase was
angry enough that he could have killed him that very day—just as angry as he was when he took
that menacing blade to Wolf and carved the hell outta him.

In the throes of killing Wolf, Chase had felt a strong physical release—like letting steam out
of a pressure cooker. It was almost orgasmic. He’d felt better immediately and wondered why he
hadn’t done it sooner. Chase shook his head and winced. He’d
liked
it.

“I’m a sick fuck. I
am
crazy. God help me.” He said it out loud, but he couldn’t bring himself
to admit contrition, at least not to himself. He didn’t give two shits about Wolf, and that fucker
deserved to be greased, though maybe not like that.

Chase got out of the shower and dried off. He moved to the mirror and looked at his chest. He
had a very serious bruise, just like he expected he would from the force of that bullet against the
life-saving Kevlar. Since it wasn’t going to disappear in the next five minutes, he had to wonder
what Bliss was going to say when she saw it. She’d freak out, but he wasn’t going to lie to her.

He went into the bedroom. Bliss was in his bed, lying on her side with her back to him. As
horrible as he was, he still loved her with all his heart. It wasn’t infatuation, and it wasn’t a crush.
He couldn’t even begin to describe what he felt for her. Looking at her like that, with her hair fanned
across the pillow and one small, honey-colored shoulder peeking out from the sheet, smoothed him
out. He slipped into bed behind her and put his hand on her shapely hip. “You asleep, Bliss?” he
asked, knowing she wasn’t.

Bliss was an extremely light sleeper, but she didn’t answer him. In fact, she didn’t even move.

He kissed her shoulder. “You mad at me, Bliss?”

Still nothing—just the steady rise and fall of her breathing.

“Bliss? Come on. Don’t do me like that. Be mad, but
please
talk to me.”

No response.

Chase tucked his lips in and looked away from her. “You don’t want to talk to me, Bliss? All
right.” Chase was bent out of shape by it, but he wasn’t really tripping because at least she was
there in his bed—
their
bed. He got up to give her space to be mad at him like she had every right to
be. He went out to the kitchen in his boxers and bare feet and took a beer out of the fridge. Chase
took the cap off the bottle and turned it up. He drank half of it and rubbed his hand across his lips.
Chase wished Bliss wasn’t freezing him out, because he needed to be close to her.

He picked up the bottle of pain pills Tasha had left for him and threw them in the garbage,
deciding that he deserved every ounce of pain and that he’d suffer through it like a man. He left his
unfinished beer on the counter and went and sat on the sectional with his face in his hands.

Even though he was upset, he wore a smile. He was a peculiar man. Yes, he got shot by his
own brother and had just mutilated a guy to death, but what really upset him most was that Bliss
wouldn’t talk to him. Her silence was fucking him up, but he still needed to give her some space.

“Chase?”

He took his hands down, and there she was, standing right in front of him. It wasn’t like Chase
at all to let someone get that close to him without him knowing it. Now, it was his turn not to
answer
her
because he couldn’t. Chase leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and clasped his
hands in front of him. He closed his eyes against the completely unwelcome sting of tears. Chase
wasn’t a crybaby, but he
was
emotional, and as his mother used to say, “a little high strung.” The
events of the day had taken their toll on him.

Bliss sat next to him, as close as she could get. She put her fingers in his hair, mindful of his
stitches, and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t know you needed me like this. What
happened? What’s wrong?”

He looked at the floor until he felt the water in his eyes dry up.

“Chase? Baby, tell me. Talk to me. I’m here,” Bliss coaxed. Her fingers left his hair and rubbed
his back.

He wanted to say something salty to her for ignoring him, but he couldn’t. He could never talk
to Bliss like that, and Chase didn’t want to argue with her. He just wanted to love her and for her
to love him back. He smiled a little softer and put his hand on her knee. “It’s nothing. I just had a
really bad day.”

Bliss grew very still. She stopped rubbing his back and stood up, looking at his chest warily.
“What happened to you? How’d you get that?”

He smiled sadly. “Cyrus shot me.”

Bliss was horrified. “
He what?
Oh my God, Chase! How come you’re not dead? You should be
dead from that!”

Chase looked at her unhappily. Once again, he had brought her to the brink of hysteria. “I was
wearing a vest, Bliss.”

“
What?
I mean, thank God you were, but what were you doing wearin’ a vest, Chase? Why do
you even
have
one?”

“I have my reasons,” he said quietly, folding his arms across his chest. He felt the conversation
he’d been dreading bearing down on him like a freight train.

She narrowed her eyes at him and folded her arms across her chest too. “Reasons? What reasons,
Chase? Tell me, because I really think I need to know.”