Chapter 4: Aftermath and Aggression
The door didn’t so much burst open as disintegrate. The flimsy frame splintered with a crack like a gunshot, and Grady Hicks stumbled in, over-caffeinated and under-brained, his weight carrying him too far. His brother, Boyd, slithered in after him, a baton in his hand that was really just a sawn-off pool cue wrapped in electrical tape.
The neon light buzzed, painting them in sickly violet and arterial red.
Gunnar didn’t move from behind the counter. He placed the heavy receiver of the rotary phone down with a deliberate click. The KA-BAR was in his left hand, held low against his thigh, the seven-inch blade reflecting the fractured glow. His right hand rested palm-down on the Formica, relaxed.
“Shop’s closed, boys.”
Grady, all rooster chest and twitchy eyes, steadied himself. He was maybe twenty, skinny where Gunnar was solid, his face pale and pitted. “You keyed my brother’s fuckin’ Camaro!” he shouted, spittle flying. The meth-jitters had him vibrating.
“Did I?” Gunnar’s voice was flat, a stone dropped in a well. “What’d it look like?”
Boyd, older, meaner, with a gut straining his stained t-shirt, stepped forward. He smacked the pool cue against his palm. Thwack. “A big fuckin’ ‘X’, right across the driver’s side. Fresh. You were the only one here last night.”
“And you watched me do it?” Gunnar asked, his eyes tracking Boyd’s shuffle to the left. “From where? Your mom’s basement window faces the lumber yard, Boyd. Not Main Street.”
The insult landed with physical weight. Grady’s face twisted. “Don’t you talk about my mom, you fat fuckin’ has-been!” He charged, baseball bat raised in a wild, two-handed arc.
It was a clumsy, telegraphed move. Gunnar didn’t bother with the knife. He simply stepped forward, inside the arc of the swing, and drove his right fist, a hammer of bone and muscle, into the soft hollow just below Grady’s sternum.
All the air left Grady’s body in a pathetic, wheezing grunt. The bat clattered to the floor. Gunnar’s left hand came up, the knife still reversed, and he slammed the heavy textured handle into the side of Grady’s temple. Not a killing blow. A message. Grady’s eyes rolled white, and he folded like wet laundry.
Boyd screamed, a raw sound of rage, and lunged, the pool cue thrusting like a spear for Gunnar’s throat.
Gunnar pivoted. The cue grazed his shoulder, tearing fabric. He caught Boyd’s wrist with his empty right hand, his grip like a vise. He turned Boyd’s own momentum against him, wrenching the arm backward and down. Boyd yelped, bending at the waist.
For a second, they were frozen there, Boyd immobilized, Gunnar breathing steady behind him. The sterile, antiseptic smell of the shop was now undercut by the stink of Boyd’s sweat and fear.
“You broke into my place of business,” Gunnar said, his voice a low rumble in Boyd’s ear. “You threatened me. Your brother’s sleeping on the floor.”
“Fuck you!” Boyd gasped, trying to kick backward.
Gunnar’s knee found the back of Boyd’s leg, dropping him to the linoleum. He kept the pressure on the wrist, forcing Boyd’s face to the cold floor. With his other hand, he finally brought the KA-BAR around, letting the flat of the blade press against Boyd’s cheek.
“You listen. Your Camaro got keyed because you’re a piece of shit who owes money to half the county. It coulda been Chuck down at the bar, or Mikey from the auto shop, or your own fucking dealer.” He increased the pressure on the wrist. A tendon popped. Boyd whimpered. “But you came here. You thought the vet with the new shop was soft. An easy mark.”
He leaned down, his beard brushing Boyd’s ear. “I am not soft.”
With a brutal, efficient motion, he yanked Boyd’s arm up higher behind his back. There was a wet, grinding pop as the shoulder dislocated. Boyd’s scream was muffled by the floor.
Gunnar stood up. He wiped the KA-BAR’s blade calmly on his jeans before sheathing it at his back. He looked at Grady, who was beginning to moan and twitch, then at Boyd, who was curled fetal, sobbing and clutching his ruined shoulder.
He walked to the shattered doorframe, peered out into the quiet street. No one. The town had a way of not seeing things it didn’t want to.
He dragged Grady out first, his boots scraping on the sidewalk, and dumped him unceremoniously next to a hydrant. Boyd he had to half-carry, the man stumbling and crying. He propped him against the brick wall beside his brother.
He knelt, getting eye-level with the sobbing man. “You tell anyone you were here, I’ll say you tried to rob me. My word against two known tweakers. You tell anyone about my friends who were here earlier, and I will find you. And next time, I won’t use the handle.” He patted the knife at his back. “Now get your brother and get the fuck off my street.”
He went back inside, found a broom, and began sweeping up the splinters of his door. His hands were steady. The adrenaline was a familiar buzz, a flavor he’d almost forgotten. It left a metallic taste in his mouth, not fear, but a cold, clear focus.
An hour later, the door was patched with a sheet of plywood. He was wiping down the tattoo chair, the scent of disinfectant overpowering the last traces of sex and violence, when a soft knock came from the rear entrance.
It was Jenny. Alone. She slipped in, her eyes taking in the plywood, the unnatural neatness of the shop, the fresh bruise darkening on Gunnar’s shoulder where the pool cue had grazed him.
“Heard there was a disturbance,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
“Resolved,” he said, tossing the rag into a bucket.
She walked up to him, not stopping until she was inches away. She reached out, her fingers tracing the edge of the bruise. “Marla’s hiding at the library. She’s scared shitless. Not of them. Of what she did here. Of what she wants.”
Gunnar said nothing. He looked down at her, at the concern etched in the lines around her eyes.
“You hurt?” she asked.
“No.”
Her hand slid down his chest, over the solid plane of his stomach, down to the buckle of his belt. Her eyes held his, a challenge and an offer in one. “Prove it.”
The cold focus in him thawed, transforming into something else, something hotter and more immediate. He didn’t move. “I’m not a trophy, Jenny. Not a reward for a fight.”
“I know exactly what you are,” she whispered, her fingers working the buckle open. “You’re the man who protects what’s his. And right now, I want to be what’s his.” She popped the button of his jeans, pulled down the zipper. The sound was loud in the quiet room.
He let her. He watched as she sank to her knees on the clean linoleum, her hands pushing his jeans and boxers down his thighs. His cock, half-hard from the residual adrenaline, sprang free. She didn’t wait, didn’t tease. She took him into her mouth with a fierce, desperate hunger, as if trying to suck the violence out of him.
Her head bobbed, a ruthless rhythm. She deep-throated him, her nose pressing into the coarse hair at his base, gagging slightly before pulling back, a string of saliva connecting her lips to his tip. “Fuck,” she gasped, her voice ragged. “I saw them drive off. Boyd crying like a baby. It was the hottest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.”
Her words, filthy and approving, pushed him over the edge from semi-hard to fully, painfully erect. He tangled a hand in her hair, not guiding, just holding on as she worshiped him with her mouth. She slurped and sucked, her tongue mapping his veins, swirling around the head, her hands cupping and squeezing his balls.
“Gonna make you forget them,” she muttered, pulling off with a wet pop. “Gonna make you remember this.” She stood up, turned around, and bent over the tattoo chair, hiking her skirt up over her hips. She wasn’t wearing panties. Her ass was bare, her pussy glistening and already swollen. “Right here. Right where I was before. Where they tried to ruin it. Take it back, Gunny.”
He stepped forward, his cock nudging against her folds. She was soaking wet. He pushed inside her in one long, brutal stroke, sheathing himself to the hilt.
Jenny cried out, a sharp, gratified sound, her fingers clawing at the leather of the chair. He fucked her like that, standing, holding her hips, each thrust a punctuation mark to the night’s chaos. It was not making love. It was reclamation. Each snap of his pelvis was a nail in the coffin of the fear, the anger, the intrusion.
“Yes!” she chanted, pushing back against him. “Fuck yeah! That’s it! It’s yours! It’s all yours!”
He pounded into her, the chair squeaking violently on its base, his
The air in the shop thickened again, heavy with the smell of their sweat and the sharp, clean scent of the antiseptic he’d used to wipe away the brothers’ intrusion. Gunnar’s thrusts were a relentless, punishing rhythm, each one driving Jenny’s body forward against the leather chair. Her moans were muffled, strained, her face pressed into the headrest.
“Harder,” she demanded, the word cracking on a sob. “Fucking ruin me, Gunny. Make it so I can’t sit tomorrow without feeling you.”
He complied, his hands tightening on her hips hard enough to leave bruises. The sound of skin slapping against skin was obscenely loud, a counterpoint to her choked cries. This wasn’t tenderness; it was a claiming, a desperate rewriting of the evening’s script on their own terms.
He felt the tight coil in his gut beginning to unwind, a floodgate of sensation ready to break. His rhythm faltered, became rougher, more urgent. “Jenny…” he growled, a warning.
But she was already moving. Just as the first, inevitable pulses started deep within him, she shoved herself back against him, forcing him to slip out of her with a wet, sucking sound. Before he could process the sudden, aching emptiness, she spun and dropped to her knees on the hard floor.
She took him back into her mouth without hesitation, her fist wrapped around his base, her other hand cupping his balls. She looked up at him, her mascara smudged, her lips stretched around him. Her eyes held a challenge, a dare to finish what they’d started.
She sucked him deep, her tongue working furious circles under his head, her throat relaxing to take him farther. The sight of her—wild-haired, on her knees, utterly consumed—was what finally broke him. A raw, guttural shout tore from his throat as the orgasm ripped through him.
She held him there, feeling the violent pulses on her tongue. Then, as he began to crest, she pulled her mouth away, keeping her fist moving on his shaft. She aimed his throbbing cock at her own upturned face.
The first hot stripe landed across her cheek. The second hit her chin. The rest spattered over her closed eyes and forehead in thick, pearly spurts. She took it, her mouth open in a silent gasp, not flinching, letting every drop mark her skin.
For a long moment, the only sound was their ragged breathing. Cum dripped slowly from her chin onto her blouse. She opened her eyes, the white fluid streaking through her lashes. She smiled, a slow, defiant, filthy smile, and wiped a finger through the mess on her cheek.
She sucked the finger clean, never breaking eye contact. “Now everyone will know,” she said, her voice hoarse. “They’ll smell it on me. They’ll see it in my eyes.”
A heavy fist hammered on the plywood-covered front door, three loud, impatient thumps that echoed through the silent shop.
Gunnar’s head snapped up, all post-coital haze vanished. He was pulling his jeans up before Jenny could even stand, his movements crisp and automatic. He zipped his fly, his expression shifting back into the cold, assessing mask she’d seen earlier.
Jenny scrambled to her feet, wiping hastily at her face with the back of her hand, smearing the evidence rather than erasing it.
“Gunnar Bjornstad!” a voice boomed from outside, deep and authoritative. It wasn’t Grady or Boyd. It was older, harder, laced with the gravel of chain-smoking and disappointment. “Sheriff Moss. Open up. We need to have a word.”
The pounding came again, harder this time, shaking the plywood sheet on its temporary screws. "Bjornstad! Now or I find a key!"
Gunnar placed a steadying hand on Jenny’s bare shoulder, his thumb brushing the still-warm skin. "Back room. Clean up." His voice was low, a command softened by the rasp of recent exertion.
She nodded, the defiant glint in her eye replaced by swift calculation. She grabbed her discarded panties from the floor and vanished behind the stained curtain that separated the shop from the private space, just as the sheriff's shadow filled the jagged gap where the door had been.
Sheriff Moss didn't enter so much as occupy the threshold. He was a broad, stoop-shouldered man in a brown uniform worn shiny at the edges, his gaze moving slowly from the plywood, to the swept-up pile of splinters, to Gunnar standing shirtless beside the tattoo chair. His eyes, pale and watery, missed nothing: the fresh bruise on Gunnar's shoulder, the sweat gleaming on his chest, the damp patch on the fly of his hastily-done jeans.
"Gunnar." Moss's voice was dry, like leaves crumbling. "Heard there was a disturbance. Sounded like a damn tree coming through your front window."
"Sheriff." Gunnar reached for his t-shirt, pulled it over his head. The fabric stuck to the sweat on his back. "Quiet night."
Moss’s eyes lingered on the broken doorframe. "That so?" He took a single step inside, his boot crunching on a missed fragment of wood. "Door tells a different story."
"Had an accident," Gunnar said, his tone flat, rehearsed. He leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. The stance was casual, but it pulled the fabric of his shirt taut across his shoulders. "Moving the new sterilizer in from the truck. Slipped. Took the door with it."
The sheriff's nostrils flared slightly, as if sampling the air. The shop smelled of antiseptic, yes, but beneath it lingered other notes: female arousal, sex, the coppery hint of fresh blood from Boyd's split lip. His watery eyes scanned the room again, pausing on the single, still-damp towel draped over the tattoo chair. "Heard Grady and Boyd Hicks were making noise downtown earlier. Talking about payback for a keyed car."
"Wouldn't know," Gunnar said. "Been in here all night. Sterilizing equipment."
A long silence stretched, broken only by the faint hum of the neon sign. Moss finally nodded, a slow, grinding movement of his head. "Accidents happen." He didn't believe it. The acknowledgment hung between them, a fragile truce. He looked past Gunnar, at the flash artwork on the walls, the pristine needles in their sealed packs. "I've been telling my wife I'd get her a new tattoo this year for 3 years now," he said, the subject changing with a jarring, bureaucratic suddenness. "Maybe I can send her down to check out your portfolio."
"Sure thing, Sheriff," Gunnar said, his expression never shifting. "Be happy to show her."
Moss gave one last, slow look around, his gaze skimming over the curtain at the back. He tapped two fingers to his brow in a mock salute. "You get that door fixed proper. Town ordinances."
Then he turned and walked out, his heavy footsteps receding on the sidewalk. Gunnar didn't move until the sound of a cruiser engine faded into the night.
The curtain rustled. Jenny emerged. She had cleaned her face, but her hair was still a wild cascade, and her skirt was crooked. The scent of sex clung to her, undisguised by water. "He knew," she said, her voice a whisper.
"Of course he knew," Gunnar replied, staring at the empty doorway. "He just decided it wasn't his problem tonight."
The adrenaline of the fight, the Sheriff's visit, the lingering threat—it all coalesced into a sharp, painful knot in Gunnar's gut. He felt raw, exposed, the careful civilian shell he'd built cracking under the town's familiar pressure.
Jenny saw it. She crossed the space between them, her bare feet silent on the linoleum. She didn't touch him with her hands. Instead, she pressed her body against his, her forehead resting against his sternum. He could feel the frantic beat of her heart through his thin shirt. "He wanted to see if you'd flinch," she murmured into the cotton. "You didn't."
His hands came up, not to embrace her, but to grip her upper arms, holding her there. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling the cheap strawberry shampoo and the musk of their earlier joining. The knot in his gut began to twist, transforming from tension into a different, darker need.
"Jenny," he said, her name a rough groan against her scalp.
She understood. She pulled back, her eyes searching his. Then, wordlessly, she sank to her knees again right there on the hard, public floor of the shop, in full view of the shattered doorway. Her fingers went to his belt buckle, her movements deliberate, unhurried.
This was different. Before had been reclaiming, marking. This was solace. A brutal, physical prayer.
She freed him, his cock heavy and already hardening in the cool air. She didn't use her mouth this time. She spat into her palm, a crude, wet sound, and slicked him with her own saliva. Then she guided him to her lips, taking him in with a deep, swallowing acceptance that made his knees weaken.
He looked down, watching her work. Her eyes were closed, her features composed in a mask of fierce concentration. Her head moved in a slow, relentless rhythm, her throat opening to take him deep before sliding back until just the crown remained between her lips. She repeated this, again and again, a mechanical, worshipful piston motion.
The fear, the rage, the cool calculation—it all liquefied under the heat of her mouth. A profound, almost unbearable tenderness threaded through the raw physicality of the act. She was taking the poison out of him, pulling it into herself with each suctioned draw.
Her hands came up, one cupping his balls, rolling the tender weight, the other pressed flat against his lower stomach, holding him as if to absorb the tremors building there. A low, continuous moan vibrated from her throat around his shaft, the sound traveling straight up his spine.
"Gonna come," he warned, the words strangled.
She increased her pace, a frantic, hungry bobbing. Her free hand slid between her own legs, hidden by her skirt, and he could see the tensing of her thigh muscles, the quick, desperate circles her fingers were making. She was chasing her own finish, using his pleasure as fuel for hers.
The orgasm, when it tore through him, was seismic, a wave of pure, shuddering release that buckled his posture. He gripped her head, his fingers tangled in her hair, not to guide but to anchor himself as he emptied into the welcoming heat of her throat.
She took every drop, swallowing convulsively, her own body jerking as a silent, internal climax gripped her. She stayed there, holding him softly in her mouth as he softened, until finally, with a wet, soft sound, she released him.
She rested her cheek against his thigh, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Gunnar, swaying slightly, placed a trembling hand on her head. They stayed like that for a long moment, two survivors in the wreckage, connected by something too complex for words.
Finally, she stood up on unsteady legs. She kissed his chest, over his heart, a soft, dry press of her lips. Then she smoothed her skirt, tucked her hair behind her ears, and walked toward the back door without a backward glance.
"I'll send Marla 'round tomorrow," she said, her voice hoarse but steady. "She'll want to see you're still in one piece."
The door clicked shut behind her, leaving Gunnar alone in the neon-lit silence, the taste of copper and forgiveness still on his tongue.