by Callie Hart
“It’s not the key to my kinky sex den,” he says, and I’m stunned by the sound of laughter in his voice. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever heard. “It’s the key to my home. And if you have mine then it’s only right that I have a key to yours.”
“And what if I don’t want that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what that reality looks like.”
Yeah. I’ll bet. I bet he never even considered I would reject this demand of his.
“Ask yourself the question, though, Sloane. Ask yourself if you want to walk away. If you want me out of your life. Forget Alexis and Eli and the way you and I met. Think about what happened last night instead. You knew who I was, then, exactly who I was. You knew what I liked. And you chose to be with me like that.”
He waits silently, his breathing slow and measured, sending chills down my spine as I do what he told me to. I consider it. This path can only lead to trouble. A dangerous guy like Zeth, mixed up in God knows what and with whom… He was shot three weeks ago for fuck’s sake. That’s not something from his past. That is very much current.
“Plus the kid who was seeing to Lacey’s injuries has disappeared,” he says softly. “She needs her dressings changed. You don’t want me doing that, do you? I have very dirty hands.”
“Yes, I know all about your dirty hands,” I shoot back, blushing slightly when I remember Michael sitting beside me. “What would happen if I said no?”
“Then we would have problems. You gave yourself to me. You’re mine. That’s not something you can undo.”
“I’m sure lots of girls have given themselves to you. You can go back to fucking them.”
“I’m not fucking anyone but you from here on out, sweetheart.”
“Until you get bored, you mean?”
“Until I get shot and it sticks. Until you pack up all your shit and run from me. But let me just say this, Sloane...Don’t bother running. I’ll only have to come find you. Stay here and be with me. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Why, just when it might sound like he’s trying to be sweet, does he then follow it up with a threat? And why does that danger thrill me so much? I feel like I might need a few sessions with Pippa myself. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
I blow out a deep breath, and then extract the key from the envelope—it’s small, brass, the kind of key made for a padlock. I close my fingers around it, feeling the sharp ridges bite into my palm. I am a stupid, stupid woman. “Okay, Zeth. Fine. I’ve claimed ownership of your stupid fucking key.” And you have claimed ownership of me. I still have no idea why he wants me so badly but I don’t doubt him. Zeth doesn’t waste his time. I know that much about him already. If he weren’t interested, he wouldn’t be going to these lengths. I’d be well on my way to being a long forgotten conquest by now.
“And you’re giving yours to Michael?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m going to give it to him, I swear.”
A wicked growl travels down the line and straight into my ear—my eyelids flutter closed. I don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t know what I’ve agreed to, but I feel relieved. So, so relieved. I’ve seen terminal patients go through this before. They fight and fight for so long, refusing valiantly to give up, and then, when they’re told it’s just no use and there’s nothing more to be done other than let go…that’s when they find their peace. That is the sea of surrender I am floating in right now. It’s deep, and it’s only so long before I forget all about floating and let myself sink. Sink forever.
“Sloane?”
“Yeah?”
“I just thought you should know…
And then he says the two words I thought I’d never hear. Two words that splinter my heart.
“She’s alive.”
“Zeth! Zeth Wake up!” Something small and hard jabs me in the ribs. I flinch, instantly recoiling away from the contact. In the space of two seconds, I spin off the bed, grabbing hold of whoever was touching me, and raising my fist, ready to strike. I manage to stop it from coming down just in time—the person who was stupid enough to enter a room I’m sleeping in isn’t actually a person at all. It’s a broom handle. My knees are exploding with pain where I slammed down onto them when I rolled out of the bed, my heart charging like a furious piston.
It’s not him. It’s not him. You’re fine. Breathe.
I blink at the broom handle, trying to shut down the attack commands that are screaming inside my head.
“Zeth.”
The voice is solid. Calm. Firm. I look away from the pale wood now lying on the floor at my feet and find Lacey standing in the doorway, her worn, pink terry towel robe pulled tight around her body. It’s threadbare but the girl just won’t throw it out. Her skin is so pale that she looks like a damn ghost. She knows not to bother me if I’m in my room and the door’s closed—something must be up. The girl is smart. She knew to prod me in the side with something from a distance instead of approaching me on the bed. It’s rather undignified in the same vein, but then I’d rather suffer the indignity instead of hurting her.
I suddenly realize I’m naked. I always sleep naked. Straightening slowly from my defensive stance, I fix a questioning look on Lacey. “What’s up?” I clip out. She doesn’t blink at the fact that I’m as naked as the day I was born. She doesn’t blink at the fact that I attack people in my sleep, either. We know not to probe each other, to go digging in places we’re not welcome. She understands. She has her shit and I most definitely have mine.
“I can’t sleep. I don’t feel all that great,” Lace whispers. “Do we have any painkillers?”
When your housemate decides to kill herself, there are certain precautions you take when she comes home. Got codeine in your medicine cabinet? Paracetamol? Knives in your kitchen? Bleach under your kitchen sink? Yeah, I don’t. Not anymore. Not until I’m sure Lacey’s straight again.
I pad barefoot to my bedside table and grab the pack of Tylenol I keep there to take the edge off my hangovers. They can be fucking brutal depending on how hard I punish myself, or how bad the nightmares are. I pop two pills out of the blister pack and head for Lacey, offering them out in my hand. She rolls her eyes.
“Jeez, Zee, you’re being a retard.”
“You’re the retard.” I glare at her. She knows I haven’t forgiven her for the shit she pulled yet, but she hasn’t said she’s sorry. She never will. I’ll die holding my breath before that ever happens. I expect a part of her is actually waiting for me to say it: sorry, Lace. Sorry I dragged your ungrateful ass to the hospital yet again. Sorry for saving your life.
But you know what? Fuck that. She’s being a selfish bitch right now. I watch as she tosses the pills down her throat and swallows them dry. And then I cross a line.
“Why, Lace?”
She doesn’t bother pretending not to know what I’m asking her. All of those doctors at the hospital, each and every one of them, must have asked her the same question. She tucks her crazy hair behind her ear and tugs on the cuff of her robe. I’ve broken a secret accord between the two of us.
She knows, though. She knows she can’t brush me off. She knows she has to tell me something, be it all the truth or just half. She frowns, anger flickering in her eyes. “You know when you wake up in the middle of the night and your heart’s pounding? When the dream feels so real you can still feel and hear everything ringing in your ears, crawling across your skin? When you can even fucking close your eyes without being terrified?”
I remain still as marble, fiercely studying her. She knows I experience that on a nightly basis but I won’t admit it. Shit, no. I will never admit to being afraid again. Not ever.
Lacey accepts my silence. “Well I don’t feel that anymore, Zeth. I dream…and I wake up and I’m not...not scared anymore. I’ve accepted it. My body’s accepted it. There’s something very wrong with me,” she whispers. There’s a horror in her eyes that I understand all too well. Whatever happened to her, somewhere along the way her body has commi
tted the darkest act of betrayal: it started enjoying it.
“Dying is the only thing I’m afraid of these days,” she breathes, “and I need to be afraid. I need to not feel like…like I do. I’d rather be dead.”
She looks like a little lost girl with her grungy robe, and her messy hair, and her haunted blue eyes. I look away, nodding. “What do you need?” I ask. I can’t hug her. I can’t hold her. There are some things I can do, and there are some things I cannot. Won’t.
“Nothing,” she tells me. “You’ve done enough.” Her face takes on a vacant stare as she focuses on my chest. “That doctor, she wanted me to go see her friend. Said she would help me.”
“And what did you say?”
“Told her the truth. That there’s no point. There’s no fixing something that’s not even vaguely what it used to be. I barely feel human, Zeth. I’m like one of those statues left behind after Pompeii. The shape of me’s still here. The outline of who I used to be. But the rest of me is gone. I’ll never get it back again. I’m just ash and stone.”
******
I hear the knock on the door even though the radio is turned up to ear-splitting volumes. I have no neighbours, not for a good mile or two, so I never have to worry about noise complaints.
DUM DUM DUM.
The thuds practically shake the glass in the window frames that overlook the city in the distance.
I pause in folding my laundry. It comes again. Bang, bang, bang. Whoever it is, they’re getting pissed off.
I immediately think the worst: it's him. But then I remember—Zeth has a key. He would just let himself in if he were here. Why the hell did I agree to that again? I skid down the hallway in my socks, picking up the baseball bat I always keep propped up again the wall behind the front door. I peer through the spy hole and my stomach drops. I spin the bat over and over in my hand, chewing on my bottom lip.
He may have a key now but for some reason, Zeth is hammering on my door at ten a.m. on my only day off this week. He looks absolutely furious, the spy hole glass distorting his face. He looks a like a giant.
"Sloane. If I let myself in and I find you in there, things will get mighty awkward." His words aren't shouted. They're spoken at a conversational tone, like he knows I’m standing on the other side I'd the door, staring at him. He looks right at the spy hole and arches his eyebrow.
Fuck.
I pull the door open, scowling at him. "What are you doing here? Couldn't you have sent a text or something?" A twitch develops at the corner of his mouth and I realize he's trying not to smile. He's eyeing the baseball bat in my hand.
"I could have. But I didn't."
"Well you should have."
"I wanted to see where you lived." He smiles a secret smile and I know what it means. He already knew where I lived just fine. He looks ridiculously hot in his tight black tee and leather jacket, his jeans hugging him in all the right places. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark clothes...I'm almost surprised to see him out in the daylight.
"If I don't invite you in, are you going to be stuck on the threshold?" I feel particularly smug about that one. Zeth does the eyebrow thing again and steps into the house.
"You think I'm right out of a horror film, don't you?"
"Well this is hardly a fairy tale, is it?"
"It could be. If you let it."
"Oh yeah? And who are you supposed to be? My Prince Charming?"
He snorts at that. "No, silly girl. I'm the big bad wolf." He looks around with a blatant curiosity that does nothing to dampen his predatory vibe. If anything, it looks like he's searching for the exits, documenting all possible escape routes. Not for himself, of course. For me. Wondering which way I will run.
"What are you doing here, Zeth?"
"I told you. I wanted to see where you live."
"No, you didn't."
"Oh? You know me so well already?" He picks up a photo frame, studying the picture of me and Alexis at summer camp. We look like two peas in a pod, smiling, both in braces. He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be handling my belongings, doing mundane things like flicking through my unopened mail that sits on my kitchen counter.
"Hey. Do you mind?"
"You live here alone."
"Yes."
"Good." He carried on investigating the place, leaving the kitchen to head through to the living room. The place is pretty empty, just a couple of bookshelves, the beaten leather sofas, a tiny flat screen that I never watch. His gaze lingers on my guitar leaning against the wall in the corner.
"You play?" I ask him.
"No." He turns and finally gives me his attention.
"You done snooping?"
"The only room I'm interested in snooping around in is the bedroom, Sloane. Right now I'm just making sure your house is secure. And it is."
"I know. I spent thousands of dollars making sure it was burglar proofed when I moved in. Now if you don't mind, I have housework I should be doing."
Zeth smirks, like the idea of me doing housework is the funniest shit ever. "This friend of yours, the doctor," he says. "I want to meet her."
"What?"
"I want to meet her."
"Why?"
"So I can gage whether she can help with Lacey."
Help with Lacey? That takes a moment to sink in. Is he asking for help for his friend? Never in a million years did I think he would ask that. Mostly because the girl seemed adamant that she didn’t want help. It doesn’t matter that she promised me back in the hospital—I’ve been lied to by enough people to know when someone is telling me something they think I want to hear.
“My friend’s name is Pippa. And why the hell should I help you?”
A reckless smile curves Zeth’s mouth upward on one side. “Pippa, huh?” He looks like he’s enjoying some secret joke. He stalks slowly across the living room, his face suddenly all danger and destruction. I feel like I’m being hunted. I back up as he gets closer but the damn wall stops me after three paces. Zeth leans into me and grazes the bridge of his nose across my jawline, breathing in a deep breath. Inhaling me. “You’re going to help me for four reasons.” His hands rise up and find my hips, working slowly over my body, taking their time, until he reaches into my jeans pocket and pulls out my phone. I remain frozen solid the whole time, rooted to the spot. He’s touching me. He’s touching me and it’s broad daylight.
“One,” he says, dropping his eye contact to look down at my phone, “you’re going to call Pippa because I asked you to. That’s the only reason you’re ever going to need from here on in.” He starts keying the buttons, then, scrolls across the touch screen, frowning gently. “Two: you’re going to call Pippa because you’re a doctor and you want to help Lacey.”
He hits the call button on my cell and holds it out to me. I take it from him, slightly dazed by the fact that he’s so close to me and I’m practically drunk off the smell of him, and also because I can’t say no. He’s already too commanding, too powerful, too confident in himself for me to doubt that I’ll do what he’s telling me. The phone starts to ring in my ear.
“Three: you’re going to do what I ask you because I’ve decided I’m going to help you. I’m going to help you find Alexis.” He raises his a finger to my lips to stop my from saying anything before I can get a word out—no thank you, no it’s about fucking time. Nothing. “And fourthly…” He bites down on his bottom lip, tugging it between his teeth, and I know I’m ruined. I’m ruined for every other man on the face of the planet. He leans close again, pressing his lips against the shell of my ear. I’m shaking before his hand even slides down the front of my jeans. “Fourthly, Sloane, I’m about to make you come. And you’re going to be very grateful.” The pressure from his index and middle fingers parting me, working my pussy lips apart to find my clitoris, makes me gasp.
“Are you ready?”
I tense every single muscle in my body. A deviant spark flares in his eyes, daring me to deny him. I don’t. I can’t. He slides his fingers forward, groaning,
pushing them inside of me, his gaze firmly fixed on me. I suck in a sharp breath, fighting the urge to let my eyes roll back into my head.
“Sloane? Sloane? Are you there?”
I haven’t even noticed the dial tone stopped ringing in my ear. “Shit.”
“Well, hello to you, too.” Pippa sounds mildly entertained by my greeting. Zeth looks about as evil as a man can as he thrusts his fingers inside me even harder.
“You want me to stop?” he whispers.
I shake my head.
“Then you’d better get talking.”
A penetrating wave of pleasure shudders through my body. I can’t do it anymore—I close my eyes. This is it. He’s going to be the end of me. I can feel it.
“Pippa, hi…I…I need to ask you a favour.”
Whoo! I wrote a book! Thanks for everyone who supported me through this process. There are quite a few people to acknowledge, but first I have to thank my man. Without you, baby, I’d be a gibbering wreck, still trying to figure out how to open photoshop! Thanks for cooking me dinner, making sure I brushed my hair before I left the house, bringing my copious amounts of wine, and generally ensuring that our apartment didn’t go up in flames at any point.
Marion Archer, the best editor ever, your kind words and witty commentary made revisions actually fun! Thanks for all your hard work and putting up with my ridiculously tight deadlines!
The Misfits, you know who you are. You’re fantastic friends and I love ya to death! I wouldn’t have gotten through this without you.
Thanks to the terrific Frankie Rose for breaking her no work ban to format for me—you’re a life saver and you did a fantastic job. Thanks also to my beta readers, Helen, Pamela, Tammie, Dana, Dessuré, and Maria. Your feedback was invaluable. And to my ARC readers! You are vast and you are legion, and I am so grateful to each and every one of you!
I hope you’re joining Zeth and Sloane for the next instalment of their Deviant journey! ;)
