Vigil Read online

  In this position, there was less room for him, and he didn’t fit in quite as easily.

  I made a little noise as I struggled to accommodate him.

  His lips on my eyebrow. “You okay?”

  “Uh huh,” I managed. “You’re just big.”

  “Mmm, you do a very good job at taking me, baby.” He kissed me. “Taking all of me.”

  I gasped at the term of endearment. He’d never called me that before, and I liked it.

  I opened my eyes.

  He was looking down at me. His eyes were so blue.

  And I felt shattered in that moment, under his gaze. I felt so connected to him, open beneath him, jammed full of his thick cock, his chest pressed against my naked body.

  “Fuck,” he whispered.

  I touched his face.

  He shut his eyes. A shiver went through his body, and he went stock still over me, not moving, not breathing.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, so I didn’t move either.

  We both lay frozen together for several seconds.

  But then he kissed me again, his mouth fierce on mine. And suddenly, he was driving himself in and out of me, piercing me deep with every stroke.

  Shit. He was going to make me come again if he kept up like that. I was going to have an orgasm just from his cock. I moaned.

  “I want to be inside you forever, Cecily,” he muttered against my mouth. “Forever.”

  Augh. That sounded fine to me.

  * * *

  I rolled over in bed, only to find myself in the circle of Vigil’s arms. He was wrapped around me, his hulking form taking up most of the bed, even though it was a queen size. He mumbled in his sleep, tightening his hold on me.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  I hadn’t expected him to be here when I woke up. We’d fallen asleep together, our limbs entwined, but I’d thought he’d wake up before me and sneak away.

  But he was here. Waking up with me in this bed as if he was a normal man, and we were a normal couple, when we were anything but that.

  Hell, I wasn’t even sure if we were a couple. I knew that I couldn’t have anything resembling an official relationship with Vigil. We couldn’t go to the movies or go out to dinner. He’d look a little out of place in his outfit. He’d draw unwanted attention.

  The problem was that I was really starting to want things like that. The way we’d made love last night had been intense. Something powerful had passed between us, and I knew he’d felt it too.

  I propped myself up on the bed, looking down at him. His mask was a little bit askew on his face, and it was uneven against his nose. Was it uncomfortable? He seemed to be sleeping through it.

  He couldn’t go anywhere with me in this costume. But now I knew who he was underneath it.

  I hated the idea of Callum Rutherford. I hated everything about him. And even though I knew that Vigil was Callum Rutherford under that mask, it still seemed to me like they were separate people.

  But that wasn’t true. Underneath his outfit, Vigil was Callum. And if he could make love to me the way he had last night, then there must be more to Callum than I thought. I wasn’t giving him enough credit. I needed to give him a chance. I couldn’t have a boyfriend who wore a mask.

  All I could have with Vigil was sex.

  And I desperately wanted more.

  I took a deep breath, and carefully, slowly, I pulled the mask away from his face.

  He stirred a little.

  There he was. Callum’s flawless, rich boy features peered up at me.

  This was the man I’d made love to last night. As much as it didn’t feel like it was true, it was.

  His eyes fluttered open.

  I tried to smile at him. It was strange to see his face like that.

  His hand went to his forehead. “Where is it?” he said in a tight voice. “Where’s the mask?”

  I held it up. “I only thought that we should—”

  He snatched it away from me and pulled it back over his face. He sat up, extricating his body from mine.

  I was suddenly aware of how naked I was, and how covered he was.

  I pulled a sheet over my breasts.

  His feet were on the floor. His back was to me. His voice was a dark threat. “Did you take it off or did it fall off while I was sleeping?”

  I hugged the sheets tighter. “Does it matter?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “It’s only that it’s a little silly, isn’t it? I know who you are now,” I said.

  “You don’t understand. I wear this so I don’t have to be Callum Rutherford. So, I don’t think it’s silly, no.”

  I twisted the sheets between my fingers. “Well, you are Callum Rutherford. No matter what you’re wearing.”

  He turned to me. “You hate Callum.”

  “I’ll try not to,” I said. “I don’t actually know him. You. I don’t know you.”

  He caught my chin with one hand. “You do know me. You know me better than anyone. You named me. You brought me to life. You’re the only one who knows me.”

  I parted my lips, trying to think of how to respond.

  But he was across the bed before I had the chance, pressing me down into the pillows, his mouth on mine, his body settling against mine. The length of him pressed into me, and it made me feel warm and weak.

  I kissed him back, running my hands over his back, over his muscular ass. His body was perfection.

  His lips moved from my lips to my jaw, my neck.

  I gasped. “We shouldn’t do that, Vigil. We shouldn’t splinter your personality like that. It doesn’t sound healthy.”

  “I don’t care,” he said, his mouth moving over my collarbone. He was peeling the sheets away from my flesh, uncovering me.

  My body felt loose and languid. God. I wanted him again. “You’re only one person.”

  He bared my breasts. He closed his lips around my nipple.

  I cried out.

  “Whatever one person I am right now,” he said, “I’m yours.”

  * * *

  Three orgasms later, Vigil tried the door to my room and found it locked. He laughed helplessly against the door. “Trapped in my own house.”

  Was it his house? When he was Vigil, did he think of himself as owning the things that Callum owned? Oh, hell, this was all too fucked up for words. I was an idiot to be part of it at all. I needed to start thinking with my head instead my… well.

  He grinned at me. “I promised you breakfast, and I’m going to get it for you.”

  I was lying on the bed, amid the scattered pillows. I was kind of starving, but I didn’t want to admit it, because once I did, we were going to have to broach the subject that he couldn’t eat breakfast with me in his Vigil suit. There was something too weird about that.

  Maybe I could reconcile the sex part. After all, people sometimes liked to use costumes for kinky little sex games. We could call the Vigil costume that, and maybe it wasn’t that weird.

  (Okay, it was, but…)

  Eating breakfast dressed in spandex with a mask obscuring his face, though? That was crossing a line somehow.

  “I’ll swing out the window,” he said. “And I’ll be back.”

  I bit my lip. “You’ll be back, or… Callum will?”

  He hesitated.

  “You can’t eat breakfast with me as Vigil. It’s obscene.”

  “No,” he said. “The way we were with each other yesterday morning when I wasn’t in costume. That was obscene.”

  “It’ll be different,” I said.

  He swallowed.

  * * *

  While he was gone, I took a shower, and then I put on the news when I was getting dressed. I wasn’t a big fan of watching the news on TV, preferring to get my news from the paper, but I didn’t have a paper, so I had to make do.

  Yesterday, I’d spent the day vegging, not keeping up with current events. I needed to check in quickly, just to see what was going on in the world.

  Not
to mention the fact that being cooped up here had kept me from checking in at The Sun-Times. Even though I had the weekend off, I usually swung by the offices on my days off. The news moved fast, and being away for too long could mean missing something very important.

  I found a local news network, but the minute I tuned in, my stomach turned over.

  “…found last night with this message carved into her skin: ‘Keeping vigil?’” said a woman in a blue suit, her expression grave. “Clearly, this is meant for the masked vigilante that has been calling himself Vigil. The Phantom’s attempt to kill girls has been thwarted by Vigil until last night.”

  A picture flashed on the screen of a seedy pub on the dock.

  The woman’s voice continued. “This is the club where twenty-two-year-old Janis Lansky was found last night. Her legs were cut off, as is The Phantom’s M.O. Ms. Lansky worked as a dancer, and is survived by two small children.”

  I felt cold and clammy all over. Last night?

  So while Vigil was fucking me, The Phantom was killing another girl.

  “Our correspondent, Tim Matthias is on the scene,” said the woman on the screen. “Tim, what can you tell us?”

  “Not much, Sheila,” said Tim. “The police are still working on locking down the crime scene. Ms. Lansky was found this morning by a coworker. She had been brought back to her place of employment and put on some kind of display, but we don’t have any more information on it than that.”

  “This is just a horrible thing,” said Sheila. Now the screen was split between them.

  “Oh, absolutely tragic,” said Tim. “And I think the question on everyone’s minds is, ‘Where was Vigil?’”

  “This is prompting conversation from all over the city on whether it’s a good thing for us to be dependent on a masked madman to save us from another masked madman,” said Sheila. “Is Vigil keeping us safe, or is he simply egging men like The Phantom on?”

  “We have to ask the question if we’d have someone like The Phantom if it weren’t for Vigil,” said Tim.

  The door to my room opened.

  Callum stood there. He saw my face. “See, this is why I didn’t want to be here if I wasn’t in the—”

  “No,” I said. I pointed at the television.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Nolan had brought food for us, but neither of us felt hungry. In fact, neither of us had said much since I’d switched off the television. Callum had switched between two other channels, making sure he got the entire story.

  The Phantom had killed another girl.

  Vigil hadn’t been on the street to stop him.

  Because he’d been with me. It was my fault. I’d distracted him. We’d been caught up in each other, and we didn’t have any right to do things like that. Not when there were girls in danger.

  But after the third time I’d heard a news anchor go through the whole sordid deal, I’d snatched up the remote and turned off the television. I didn’t need to hear it again. I got it. I knew what had happened.

  Now we sat in silence, the blueberry pancakes on our plates growing cold.

  “I made you a promise,” Callum finally said.

  A promise? I didn’t know what he was talking about. “What?”

  “I told you that I wouldn’t let him kill any more girls.”

  Oh. That was right. It was our deal. It was my price for not revealing the identity of The Phantom. “Don’t worry. I don’t think exposing Barclay’s identity right now would help anything.”

  He dragged a hand over his flawless features, his face blank. “I failed that girl.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s my fault,” I said. “I distracted you.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I kissed you. I undressed you. I started it. I was so intent on making sure that you didn’t write that damned article. You made me so angry I couldn’t see straight. But then… when I’m in that costume, everything’s different.” He sighed.

  I studied my fingernails. “Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe we should take it to mean that we shouldn’t ever be together again.”

  He looked at me sharply. “Don’t say that. You and that fucking mask are the best things that ever happened to me.”

  I was? Really?

  But why was the mask so important? He was a very rich man. He could have anything he wanted. How could being a masked vigilante be one of the best things that ever happened to him? I didn’t understand. There was so much I didn’t know about him.

  And even though I’d been very intimate with him last night, the man sitting across from me at the table still felt to me like a stranger. He didn’t seem like the same man I’d made love to. It was disturbing and strange.

  He got up from the table. “No. I just need to figure out how to balance it. I don’t want to stop making love to you. Ever.”

  I felt my insides lurch. I liked him saying that. I couldn’t deny that I did. I took a deep breath. “It’s going to take more than balance.”

  “What do you mean?” He went to the railing, gripping it the way he’d made me hold onto it last night.

  Memories of the night before slashed through me, and for a minute I was engulfed in them. The feel of his hands on me, his shaft in me, his mouth against mine.

  I gulped, pulling myself together. “We’ve got to stop The Phantom once and for all.”

  “Stop him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I already told you, Cecily, I won’t kill him. I can’t do that.”

  “I’m not talking about killing him,” I said. “I’m talking about exposing what he does in the most public way possible, with so much evidence that no one will be able to deny that he’s guilty. I’m talking about the kind of story that I wanted to write in the first place. A story that blows it all open.”

  He turned slowly towards me. “I don’t know. I don’t think it would make a difference. He’s still going to be Hayden Barclay. He’s still got tons of corrupt people at his fingertips.”

  “Corrupt, yes,” I said. “But are they people who will condone the actions of a serial killer? I know that the mob is responsible for murder, but they don’t kill people for fun. They only kill them when it’s necessary. Even corrupt people who are making money from organized crime are going to think that a serial killer’s messed up in the head.”

  “He’ll weasel out of it. He’ll make it look like he didn’t do it.”

  “Well, that’s what we have to stop. We need iron clad evidence against him. We need to make it so obvious that he did it, that he can’t weasel out of it.”

  “And then you publish that story?” Callum came back to the table. He sat down.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But, of course, all the credit goes to Vigil, for taking down The Phantom.”

  He considered. “Maybe it could work.”

  “It will work,” I said. “You and I can work together to find the evidence we need.”

  “What kind of evidence we talking here?”

  “We need the legs, Callum.”

  He grimaced.

  “Seriously? Did you just make a face?” I said.

  “No,” he said, sounding sullen.

  “Vigil would not make a face,” I said. “Vigil would not use that tone of voice.”

  “And you wouldn’t talk to me like that if I was wearing the damned costume.”

  I sighed.

  He took a deep breath. “All right, so you’re saying that we’re going looking for women’s legs. The legs of the victims.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Some of those girls have been dead for a long time now. What makes you think there’s anything to find?”

  “They’re trophies. He removed them for a reason. He’s keeping them somewhere.”

  Callum grimaced again. “Why would he do that?”

  “Don’t you know anything about serial killers?”

  He shrugged.

  “Serial killers like to keep trophies.”

  He looked at me blankly.
/>   “They’re like keepsakes from the murder. Something to look at, so that the killer can relive the crime again.”

  “Ew,” said Callum. “I would never do something like that.”

  “No one’s saying you would.” I looked at him, feeling suddenly cold. “Why would you say something like that?”

  He picked up his fork and cut off a bite of his blueberry pancake. “No reason.”

  No reason? It was completely out of left field to personally identify with what the killer was doing. And to deny that he would do something like the killer, he had to have been identifying with him. Why would he do that? “I don’t suppose you feel like telling me how you’re connected to Barclay, do you?”

  He popped a bite of pancake in his mouth and chewed.

  That was strange too, wasn’t it? Two minutes ago, he’d been making grossed-out faces. Now, he was eating?

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “You already know too many of my secrets.”

  That reminded me of the strippers that he paid to be his girlfriends. Why did he do that? Was I sure that I could trust this guy?

  No, I realized. I wasn’t. In fact, rationally, everything about him screamed at me to run away. He had identity issues so strong that he seemed like a different person when he put on a costume. He claimed to be connected to a serial killer. He’d been unsure that he could have sex with me if he were facing me. All of those things taken together sounded like they added up to something pretty weird and scary.

  And yet, here I was, calmly eating breakfast with him after being intimate with him last night.

  Well.

  I was going to get a really good story out of this.

  I was.

  Maybe I could convince myself this was all in the noble pursuit of the news, not just some stupid thing I was doing because I was becoming cock whipped.

  He caught my gaze with his blue eyes. “Cecily? You okay?”

  I nodded. I was a little sarcastic. “Fine. Everything about this situation is just fine.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Well, things are crazy, I’ll give you that.”

  “But you’ll help me with The Phantom?”

  “You’ll keep my identity secret?” he said. “And you promise me The Phantom lives?”

  “I promise not to kill him myself,” I said. “That’s the best I can do.”