by Ace Gray
“Bravo.” Connor clapped from where he still ate his dinner. I glanced at him only long enough to see food and oil dripping down his chin.
Shivers rolled down my spine.
“You liked it,” he said as he shook the last little bit of himself on me.
I refused to admit that fully to myself, let alone him.
“What? No fuck you?”
I thought about wiping the cum from my chest and slapping him with my disgusting hand. But the second I went to wipe his ick from my skin, I noticed the blood. I remembered the heat of it on my hands, but I hadn’t thought about how gruesome that would make them.
Red. Bright brilliant red. It coated my palms and dappled my wrists. When I looked down, faint pink mingled with cum on my chest in my desperate finger tracks. I heaved and had to gag it back.
“Does it make you sick because it’s blood or because you like it?” Brye asked as he bent down and pushed his face close to mine. His beautiful, monstrous face.
This time, blood be damned, I did reach out and slap him.
His eyes lit with something wild as he adjusted his jaw. There was a small prick of life, maybe even pride in my chest, when I saw the outline of my bloody hand on his cheek.
“Did you just slap me?” His voice was a new brand of wicked.
“Come down here and I’ll do it again,” I challenged.
“If I come down there, I’m going to fuck you into oblivion just because I can.”
“I’ll kill you if you do.”
He threw his head back in laughter, cold and emotionless, that made me cower back toward the chair behind me.
“Don’t make it more tempting,” he said with a smirk.
“You think I’m joking?”
“No.” He reached out and grabbed me by my shoulders and lifted me. “But I’ve never deserved it more. Never craved it like today.”
Something shifted when he said it. The demon I’d been dancing with disappeared for just a moment. Sadness lurked beneath. There was a quiet and earnest honesty to his confession just like the one that had made me spit at him earlier. He had no right to say things like that. He had no heart to mean them.
Or maybe, just maybe, he was the chaos I’d noticed the first morning. All the facets I’d seen wrapped up and whirring in one package. For a second I pitied him.
But then he started pulling me out of the dining room. My feet flopped and my ankle rolled. He caught me but kept pulling.
“What are you doing? Where are you taking me?” I tried to yank my arm from his.
“You heard my father.” He shrugged. “I’m keeping you alive for now. It’ll be easiest in my bedroom.”
“Like hell I’m going anywhere near your bedroom.” I ripped my arm from his hand with enough momentum that I crashed back into the wall.
“I will keep you safe.” He said it so vehemently that I knew there was more than just his father’s command behind it.
I didn’t give a damn.
“Then throw me in that godforsaken basement.” I pointed wildly at the stairs I knew led back to that dungeon. “I’d rather be caged like the monster that I am than play house with the likes of you.”
He shrugged, but there was a battered hurt behind his eyes.
“Fine.”
I was a skeleton. Nothing more, nothing less. I had seen the bones of great creatures on display in each of the great museums, whole but hollow. Like me.
Without a choice, I played the role of a Ryan. I hated it. I hated that it was easy. That more than anything told me it was true. All of it. And the truth hurt like hell. The truth about Brye too.
Another singular tear fell down my cheek and I did what I could to reel it back in. The man who’d hung me back in this room didn’t deserve a single one of them.
“Do you like soup?” The man who had hovered near Brye stepped into my view holding a piping hot bowl in front of him.
I eyed him like he was a snake that might bite.
“It’s tomato.” He offered me a spoon.
The scent hit me hard. It was more than tomato, it had roasted red peppers and the heat of chili peppers. It was home. If my mom had served it the only difference would have been tortilla strips and cotija cheese.
More tears came unbidden to my cheeks and I tried to wipe them on my outstretched arms.
“I’m Emmett,” he offered me a small smile. “And I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
I tried to shake his concern away. He smiled reassuringly and offered up a spoonful of soup. I eyed him and the soup, unsure whether the delicious scent was worth it.
“You okay?” he asked softly and for one small moment, I saw a friend in him. I saw hope.
“Are you asking about my insides or my outsides?”
“Hummmm,” he mused as he looked me over. “I was going to say inside but...” He reached for me, his hand trailing down the curves of my body.
I jerked back as best I could as my hope crashed down and fear replaced it.
“You know you deserved it right?”
“No one deserves this,” I yelled at him with all the emotion I could muster.
“You’re a Ryan. A Ryan that back-talked a MacCowan. You deserved worse.” He offered up a spoonful of soup again. I couldn’t swallow his words, but I ached for some sort of sustenance besides hate. “Sorry but it’s the truth.”
He smiled a small smile and reached a spoonful up to my lips. I had to shove my head forward to reach and it pinched my shoulder joints.
“Hawt!” I said with a mouthful of soup as I belatedly tried to blow on it where it scorched my tongue.
“Hang around here long enough and you’re bound to get burned.”
I swallowed. “It reminds me of my mom’s.”
He held up another spoonful and a tiny bit splashed onto my chest. His big hands moved to my skin and the pad of his thumb brushed the soup away. My nipple peaked beneath his touch and for a split second, he was transfixed.
“Why are you down here.” Fear prickled the back of my neck when his eyes didn’t leave my body. I’d been touched by father and son, was he here to make some fucked up Trinity.
But then he shook his head and his look along with my observation vanished into the dark of the basement.
“To give you a warning,” he said as he offered up another bite.
“I think it’s a little late for that.” I yanked on the chains hanging above my head as a reminder just before I bent down for more soup.
“This one’s about Brye.”
I didn’t answer. His name still sounded like nails on a chalkboard to me. He did wait for a reply, he didn’t seem to want one. He just ladled up more soup and held it for me. When he spoke again, he was just as casual as he has been before.
“If you’re not careful, you’re going to ruin him.” He scooped up another bite, but I didn’t bend for it. I was going to ruin him? My body froze in disbelief. “And if you do,” Emmett continued offering the soup up to me again. “I’m going to ruin you.”
I rolled over and tried to open my eyes. They wouldn’t cooperate. Nothing in my body would. I felt like I’d been hit by a fucking train. I felt the sunlight warm my face, but otherwise I was consumed with achy pain and the dull thump of fresh wounds on my back.
What the fuck did I get into last night? I asked myself without a real answer. I remembered having drinks with my father. I remembered the bitter taste of the drugged up wine. But everything else...
When I finally managed to pry my eyelids open gore greeted me. I shot upright in bed and looked around at the blood that had stained my sheets in wild, violent patterns. My first thought was that someone had died here last night, but then I looked down.
I remembered the drinks. And then going down to the basement to collect Filly. She’d been so broken....
“Oh holy fuck,” I swore and became a tornado of bloody sheets and blankets as I remembered what came next..
I’d ruined her. Her makeup, her hair and so much more. She�
��d dulled, her sunshine fading into a haze. She was beautiful but broken. And I was the one that broke her. It had made her hang all the more limply from the chains in the basement I’d shackled her to.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I swore under my breath as I sprinted down the stairs and pivoted toward the basement, using the banister to help me slide through the corner.
I hadn’t meant to leave her down there. I hadn’t meant to string her up at all. But the things she said, the very essence of her was kindling for my temper. And fiery passion in my veins. She’d liked blowing me last night—her body did anyways. The sheen on her thighs and the way her fingers curled into me were undeniable proof. But she’d fought me. She’d slapped me. And she’d told me in no uncertain terms that she’d rather be strung up naked than in my bed.
“Fuck,” I swore again when I envisioned her naked and waiting downstairs for me. The throb in my head wasn’t the only one in my body anymore.
I all but ran down the stairs to her only to stop the second I reached the concrete. She was more destroyed than I imagined. Dirt smudged her skin head to toe—well anywhere that blood hadn’t left small pink finger tracks. Her hair was stringy and shooting off in every different direction with some of those same pink highlights. The crusted white tracks of my cum still covered her chest. Her innocence had been stripped and she was everything hedonistic, everything debased.
I wanted to eat her whole.
But I slowed myself and recounted everything I could about last night. About the story that my father had told, about the way it tore her to shreds.
“Are you okay?” I asked automatically.
She startled and jerked on the chain trying to turn away from me.
“It’s just me.” I walked into her line of sight and held up my hands in surrender. The tear tracks that cross crossed her face almost drew my own. “It’s just me,” I repeated softer, sweeter. “And I’m here to say I’m sorry.”
The word just popped out. The shape and taste of it felt foreign in my mouth, but when she sagged with relief after I said it, I knew I’d never take it back.
“Can I take you down.”
She nodded where her head hung between her arms. I walked over to her and wrapped my hands up and around her to the latches. I was about to click them open when she sagged into my chest. She shook a little.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I folded around her as I spoke and nuzzled against her as I hugged tightly. The simple gesture was just as odd as the apology, but I meant them both. “I let my temper and the drugs get the best of me.” I ran my nose along the curve of her ear. “I’m paying for it today.”
“The drugs?” She sniffled.
“Among other things.” I tried to smile at her but couldn’t quite make my body comply. “Don’t drink the wine. It’s all laced.” I held her for a heartbeat more then reached back up for the cuffs. “And don’t trust anyone. Not even me.”
She looked up finally and managed a small smile, even if it didn’t reach her eyes. The heavy click of the steel was the only sound besides my thundering heart.
“I can carry you.”
“I can walk.” She shoved away.
Her baby deer body all too quickly folded in on itself and her small knees crashed to the concrete. A ragged howl shook her body and I squeezed my eyes shut against the sound. I wordlessly reached down for her hips, pulling her back to standing and helping to steady her.
The curve of her ass fit perfectly against my hips. I groaned and tightened my grip on her.
“Got it?”
She nodded, took two steps then fumbled again. I darted for her, catching her just before she careened back to the floor. I didn’t ask her this time, I just scooped her up and cradled her to my chest. My whole body protested, pain shot through my back, but the pain she’d been through... I blew out a deep breath and step by slow step carried her to my room.
When I set her down, she looked around. Her head swiveled from side to side as she took in the frames stacked floor to ceiling, tight to each other that made a wallpaper all their own. The masters that we had fallen for together were reflected back and something twittered in my chest. Wonder replaced her hurt for a second before she schooled it.
Then she turned the same evaluating gaze on me.
“I…I might hate you.”
“That’s fair.” My heart hit against my chest. “For a minute, I hated you too.”
“Did I hurt you?” She crooked her finger toward my still bloody back.
“Yes. But then again, so did I.”
She straightened her shoulders. “I don’t know that I’m sorry.”
“Fair.”
I wanted to reach out and touch her, to smooth the hair out of her face or run the pad of my thumb across the beautiful bottom lip that I craved. I wanted to comfort her and for my touch to mean something. She eyed me, skeptical but silent.
“Oh, come on,” I tried to lighten the heavy between us. “It wasn’t all bad last night.”
“What?” she snapped.
“I saw you get turned on. I felt you find your own rhythm.” I smiled at what I could find of the memory. “You suck dick almost as well as you kissed me the first night. Even then you wanted it.”
“Excuse me?” Fire lit up behind her eyes. “Are you saying I enjoyed what happened yesterday? That because I kissed you, I wanted you to stick your dick in my mouth?”
I had to hold back the purr. “I’m saying that you knew damn well what was going to happen in that moment and you didn’t fight it.”
“That’s how people justify rape.”
That four letter word stung as it slapped across my cheekbone.
“I would not rape you,” I enunciated each word.
“What do you call yesterday?”
My temper welled in my chest and bubbled over. I shoved my arms on either side of her, backing her flat against the frames behind her. Each of us jostled them with our own wild thump. My face was inches from hers and the smell of sex, of me, still clung to her.
“I call it keeping you alive.” I narrowed my gaze and pressed into her space a small bit more.
“Don’t you dare put that on me. Any of it.”
“My father is a goddamned monster. You don’t know what he would have done.”
“From where I sit, so are you.” She swallowed. “So am I.”
She had shown her teeth and seen her claws and hated both. That first day I’d been convinced that the darkness called to her, that it even attracted her. Now it was everything that repulsed her.
I reached for the nearest wine bottle and threw it, relishing the boom of it breaking against the wall, the tinkle as it rained down and the splash of the wine inside it as it fell to the floor. Stupid fucking wine. If I hadn’t started drinking I wouldn’t have decimated the line of attraction and repulsion between us.
“Don’t let her get to you,” Emmett said from behind me as I leaned over the sink and let my shoulders roll with the heave of my chest.
“I wrecked her yesterday,” I said by way of an explanation through gritted teeth.
“Who cares.” He came to lean next to me on the sink “You’ll wreck someone else tomorrow.”
I looked up inside to see him shrug. There was something soulless behind Emmett’s eyes and lately, it had been growing.
“Stay away from her.” The warning was more of a compulsion than anything.
“Already spoke my piece.”
“What?” I stood to my full height and looked down at where he leaned on the counter. “What did you do?”
“Look, Brye, you’re not mad that you’re a monster. You’re not mad that you fucked her mouth. You’re mad that she’s not. You’re mad that it bothers her.”
“I’m mad that you talked to her,” I seethed. “Did you touch her?”
He didn’t even have the decency to answer. He just looked down and started to clean the dirt from under his nails. It was answer enough for me.
“I will punish yo
u for that.”
He flinched, but he knew better than to turn or walk out. I let one fist fly and then another, one for talking to her, one for touching. I saw red around him. Fury that he was interfering, that he might convince her... of what I didn’t know, but damned if I wanted him to have anything to do with my girl. My fist crunched into his jaw then I slammed into his stomach. He doubled over with barely more than a sound. His silence set off screams inside me. I was the prince and he was a nobody. He should respect me. He should yield to me.
The challenge formed before I even realized. I was going to make him cry. One of his tears for each of hers.
It was a barely conscious decision to knee him then slam my elbow into his exposed kidneys. He crashed to his knees. Had I had shoes on I would have angled to break his ribs. Instead, I shoved my heel into his bent neck. Finally, a haggard yelp slipped from his squished neck.
“Do you yield?”
He mumbled pathetic sounds.
“Do you yield?” I asked again. I took a deep breath as my shoulders heaved and my chest puffed up.
“Stop, Brye,” he bellowed as he flattened to the floor.
I kicked him once for good measure and he folded in on himself, rolling to his side. I folded on either side of him, sitting on his chest and pinning him to the herringbone wood floor beneath.
“She’s mine to keep. Mine to keep alive.”
“Yes, but when it’s time for her to die, will she yield or will you?”
One fell blow to the head was all it took for his head to rock like a small doll to the side. His face went lax as blood pooled beneath his turned face. I smiled at my handy work as I stood and padded back to my bedroom. I studied the patterns on my hands and for once didn’t compare them to Pollock or the modern works I’d most recently seen. Instead, I wondered what it would look like if it were hers. If it were Filly’s lifeblood lost forever as it leaked onto the floor.
As much as I’d needed some space from her before, I needed her back now. I rounded the corner to find Filly with her arms wrapped tight around herself, trying to shield or hold herself together, I couldn’t tell which. She looked so small standing in front of my wall studying a print that was longer than it was wide. I knew which it was without looking too hard. Amongst the Van Gogh and Monet and Manet, in between Rembrandt and Vermeer was Guernica by Picasso.
