by C. Lymari
Or maybe I was already beginning to burn up and I had yet to feel it.
Everything hurt.
All I knew was pain.
My body was in a constant ache.
My head throbbed. It didn’t matter if I was awake or asleep; it got to the point I couldn’t outrun it. My mouth was dry and sour, the bitter taste of desperation on my taste buds.
My body was hot, and my blood felt heavy. My skin itched, and even if I scratched, the sensation wouldn’t go away.
Part of me was ready to claw my skin away, to try to find some relief. It was the drugs or the lack of drugs. I twisted and turned, sure that I was going to go crazy. At moments, I was in the room Ren had thrown me in, and at others, I was back with Silas.
“Damn it, Ember,” was growled but sounded far away.
My head tried to loll toward the sound, but just the thought of doing that had me drained.
“So stupid.”
I woke later, shivering. This was irrational because earlier I was hot, my skin flushed and sweaty. There was a blanket wrapped around me, but that wasn’t enough. My head felt full and fuzzy. Pressure all around that had me whimpering in pain.
Make.
It.
Stop.
It was too much.
My body shivered again, a violent wave of coldness rushing over me. I tried to lift my head to see if I could find something to give me relief.
“So fucking stupid.”
The shivers didn’t go away; they stayed with me the whole night, keeping me company and keeping me miserable. Water was poured down my throat, but it wasn’t what I needed. My throat was raw from screaming and begging.
“I’m going to hurt you.”
I thrashed some more, trying to get away from Silas.
“I’m not going anywhere, Ember. Remember, you asked for this.” He grinned at me.
How did I ask for anything? There were two things I asked for in life, and I never got either of them. I wanted a mother, and she left this world as soon as I came to it. The other was a father, but his empire was more important than I was.
“You’re going to regret betraying me.”
Silas hated how freely I gave myself to Ren. It took effort, but I smiled at him. If I was dying, I wanted the last word. I wanted to make it count.
“You’ve done everything to me, and I’m still not yours.”
I underestimated him yet again. I saw blurry hands at my throat. He wasn’t choking me like he had when he raped me—not this time. This time it was just two fingers at each side of my throat. I didn’t fight it all when instead of feeling cold, I started to feel nothing.
I stayed in a state of delirium, hot flashes, and shivers for a few days. With the voices inside my head waging war on me. With the demons that lurked in my mind promising sweet nothings. It was dangerous to be in a state of “in-between”—you never knew what would come out of your mouth. The heart spoke freely when it wasn’t guarded.
I woke up shivering, even though I was under blankets. It felt like a dream, the fact that Ren had taken me. Not like a good dream, but in the sense that it didn’t even feel real. There was no sign of Ren in the dark room. I let my eyes wander, trying to find any clue as to where I might be. No windows, barely any homey touches to the place. The only thing this room did smell strongly like was like him.
I tried to sort through my hazy memories, trying to figure out what was real, what was a delusion, and how much time had passed since he’d taken me. Now that I was waking up, I felt the small buzz of a headache. Turning my head to the other side, I saw a door, and it took strength, but I made myself get up. That was when I felt a small thud pulling me back.
The damn fucking dog collar.
So that wasn’t a dream. I brought my head back and went for where the leash connected with the collar and managed to open it after several tries.
Getting out of bed was easier said than done, but when I did, I felt wobbly, but not entirely weak, which was odd.
The door wasn’t a way out, but it was a bathroom. It smelled like Ren, like his cologne and aftershave. I leaned against the frame, just taking in his smell, and it gave me a sense of familiarity and comfort. Great, I was starting to develop Stockholm syndrome, wasn’t I? I was a fucking guppy, I swear.
As my body shivered, I decided I could do with a hot shower. Maybe that could make me feel more human. Stripping off my clothes, I stood under the shower, letting it warm me. I was so tired I sat in the tub, not caring for anything else. I just closed my eyes and wondered when the hell my life got so fucking complicated.
“You’re having withdrawals.” Ren’s husky tone interrupted my thoughts.
He stood a foot away from me, watching me, his eyes tracing every inch of my body. When I didn’t say more, he continued to stare at me before he spoke again.
“Why?”
“I’m a fucking addict. That’s why,” I spat.
Ren let me soak in the water for a little while longer, and I was grateful for it. I was aware of his eyes as I made a move to wash up. I didn’t know what kind of fucked-up I was when I started to feel hot for other reasons other than the boiling water. It was a mix of shame and arousal. When he made his way to me, my whole body became alert. My nipples pebbled, and my pussy ached. Yep, I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome. The only acceptable explanation for why I was acting like a hussy now. As I washed, I noticed dark bruising by the vein in my arm. I turned to look at Ren, but he gave nothing away.
The more I stared at him, the more I desperately tried to think about what happened between him kidnapping me, my delirium, and today. Ren turned off the shower, then grabbed a towel and picked me up. Neither of us said a word as he took me back to the bed.
“You lied to me.”
“What?” Ren replied.
“You knew me.”
There was silence. Ren sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard, bringing my body between his open legs. My back to his chest, he wrapped his arms around me. It seemed so mundane, so out of place, I almost laughed.
“That’s what you want to lead with?” he mocked in my ear.
“You’ve killed.”
“I have. I will again. Can’t change who I am.”
His words caused a shiver to run down my spine. I couldn’t trust my senses, but if I could, I would have sworn he kissed my nape.
“Make no mistake, Ember. Anyone tries to take you away from me, I’ll kill them.”
I believed him, but I also knew I was now in the middle of a demon and a reaper: both deadly, both wanting to possess me, and both ready to get blood on their hands.
I turned my head to face him, shivering for other reasons now. “Why?”
It was a loaded question, not just why for now, but why come to me at all.
“You believe in fate?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“The dark web is a scary place, princess, and it’s full of everything seedy humanity has to offer. You went in there, and out of all the pages and places you could have ended up, you landed in my little dark corner of the world. Normally I don’t handle the hits, so it’s rarely me you get to speak to. That day it was. I got curious, so I backtracked your connection.” He stopped talking to pull a strand of my hair back. Then his hand glided across my cheek. “That was your first mistake. You didn’t cover the webcam. Right away, I knew you were a rookie—a scared little girl. It was so easy to see you. I saw the fear in your eyes, and it called to me. I wanted to feed off it.”
He sat up, but brought me with him as he leaned into the nightstand and pulled out a picture of me taken from the screen of my laptop. I felt chills all over me as I saw the picture. My eyes shone a bit, the pupils dilated. Unshed tears and fear were written all over my face.
“I memorized your face. It kept haunting me, so after a few days, I did a reverse search on you.”
I held my breath. Not because he was revealing the truth, but because his hands started to move up and down my thi
“Ember fucking Remington,” he whispered against the skin in my neck. “I was doing another job, but fuck, I was obsessed. I knew you’d come back, that you’d seek me out again, and I wanted to be close. I left the west coast and came east. I had no ties; I could do as I pleased. In the meanwhile, I dug up more information on you. That was when I saw the flaw in your security.”
I gasped because his fingers trailed up my thigh, slowly reaching my pussy. His index grazed my slit, moving up and down teasingly, waiting to see if I would push him away.
I needed this.
I needed him.
I needed someone else to wash away Silas’s touch. I wanted to get lost in someone, even if that someone was Ren. I wanted to forget the abuse and remember the pleasure—even if pleasure came with a price.
“It was rather easy to infiltrate. I blended in, and as I got to know you, I hated everything about you,” he gritted out.
I threw my head back and moaned because he inserted two fingers deep inside me.
“Here, I thought you were a helpless little socialite, and you were a fucking cunt.”
Ren started to fuck my pussy, showing me how much he really hated me with the strum of his fingers. He knew my body, he knew my demons, and he was still here. I wrapped my hand around his neck, pulling his hair, and he groaned.
“You were not pure, nor innocent. You were a fucking inferno I couldn’t stay away from,” Ren said as he used his thumb to play with my clit.
I was beyond caring. I started to fuck his hand as he kissed my neck, sucking on the skin by my collar.
“Ren.” I hissed as my hips moved furiously. He groaned, his fingers fucking me roughly.
“Now come like the fucking little slut you are.” He bit my jaw, and I came, my pussy gripping against his fingers.
Ren pushed me away, only to throw me on the bed. He loomed over me, his nostrils flaring, and my God, I never wanted to be owned by anyone like I wanted to be owned by him. Ren reached behind me, and then he kissed me like he wanted to taste my soul. His lips clashed against mine, our teeth clanking and his tongue biting my lips, making me arch in pain. He used that moment to snap the fucking leash in place. Ren didn’t take off his clothes; he unfastened his belt, pushing his boxers down, letting his dick spring free.
“Are you clean?” he asked as the tip of his dick prodded my entrance.
“Yes,” I said breathlessly as I licked the blood from my lip.
“Good,” he ground out as he started to push inside me. “I’m going to fuck you raw, princess.”
My answer was to arch my back and spread my legs wider to give him more access to ruin me.
“You’re drenched.” His husky tone was filled with lust, and his eyes had gone inky. “You came to me, Ember. Now. You’re. Mine.”
His fingers dug to my hip bones as he fucked me savagely. It wasn’t slow and cautious. It was hard and calculating to make me feel just exactly who I had let in my bed. It was a slow burn for me, because he was taking his pleasure, making sure I barely found my own.
“Ren!” I shouted in frustration.
He smirked at me as one of his hands came to my belly, pushing me down as he thrust in and out of me. “I’ve put up with a lot of your bullshit.”
Before I could respond, his mouth came to one of my nipples, and he bit it. I yelled in pain but felt my pussy grip him tighter.
“While I own you, no one else gets you,” Ren growled.
He reached for the nightstand, bringing out the black scalpel. I started to pant, remembering what it did to me last time.
“My body…”
Ren let the sharp edge trail from my throat down to my chest, making the blade glide down my breast.
“My pussy—” he said with gritted teeth before he let the metal handle glide over my folds.
“Fuck,” I moaned.
Ren rubbed the handle of the knife on my clit. The coolness of the metal had me squirming. He wielded the handle like a weapon, using pressure against my clit to the point I throbbed. He then removed the scalpel, and I saw where his palm was bleeding from gripping it too hard. He brought the handle to his lips and licked my juices from it.
“It’s all mine,” Ren stated as he slammed back into me.
He kissed my mouth as I moaned into him and felt his cock pulsate inside me with the warmth of his release.
“You asshole,” I spat, trying to hit him. I was still horny and tired, and my body felt hot and cold, my hands clammy. I was a fucking mess.
“That’s payback, baby,” he replied.
I glared at him as he rose and fixed his jeans. I lay in his bed, my legs still spread, his cum dripping out, and I didn’t have it in me to care anymore.
“You’re going through withdrawals. It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he told me before he left to the bathroom.
I closed my eyes for a second, waiting for that feeling I always got after sex. The one that reminded me of how wrong it was, but it hadn’t come. Even though Ren had treated me like a whore, I didn’t feel like one.
I closed my eyes, starting to fall asleep when I felt a warm cloth between my legs. My eyes sprang open, and Ren was right there, a joint in his mouth while he cleaned my pussy. I still throbbed from the orgasm I was denied, so when Ren used the rag to clean between my legs, I let out a soft moan.
The asshole smirked at me, kneeling on the bed as he kept adding pressure. He had the joint in his mouth as he rose above me, and his finger moved in circles around my clit through the fabric. My legs spread, and my hips bucked. Ren smiled at me. He threw the cloth away, and he bent his head to give me a shotgun pass. I greedily opened my mouth as he blew the smoke into my mouth. I was an addict, and the hit started to calm me.
“That should take the edge off,” he said before he took another hit and put his head between my spread legs. I was about to rise on my elbows to see what he would do, but I felt him blow the thick smoke at my sensitive clit.
“Ren,” I moaned.
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he bit my clit gently, making me spasm; then, he sucked it into his mouth, and I screamed. My hand went to his hair as I rode his face. The harder I gripped his hair, the harder Ren fucked me with his mouth. Once I stopped coming, he came back to my face, his lips dripping with my release.
“Kiss me,” he growled.
My hand went to his face, bringing him down to me, and I bit his lip first, tasting myself and weed. Ren then took complete control.
“I’m going to take away with your vices and just leave with you with one addiction,” he promised.
Before I could ask which one, he got off the bed.
“Rest.” He looked at me, still naked and lying on his bed.
I had no idea what he thought, and I didn’t want to ask him. Ren closed the door, turning off the lights on his way out, and I fell asleep.
I was so fucked.
The taste of Ember’s pussy was still on my tongue when the door to the main house opened.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I gritted out when Pam strolled in.
“Oh, I’m sorry. While you went to get your little puta, I was out trying to figure out how to get out of our mess!”
Pam was killing my vibe.
“The mess you made, you mean?” I asked, and she flinched.
Pam glared at me, her eyes becoming tiny slits taking in my appearance.
“I hope her pussy works miracles,” Pam said before she walked to her room.
“It does enough to take off the edge,” I bit back.
I was aware Pam’s eyes were on me as I took a seat. I took another drag of the joint I was smoking before I made Ember come on my tongue. That was a mistake, one I couldn’t take back, and fuck if I wanted to.
“There’s a fight,” Pam told me while she grabbed her laptop.
“Who’s hosting?” I asked.
I told Ember some of the truth, but not all of it. We came from different worlds, and even though her world and mine often crossed, I wasn’t sure how much she knew. In my world, nothing came without a price, and power always did.
Pam and I had grown up on the streets. Our dads were in the same gang, and our whores of our mothers dipped before we could even remember them. When my old man overdosed and Pam’s landed in jail, it was just the two of us fighting tooth and nail for a place to rest our heads at night. Since an early age, Pamela was good with numbers and shit while I’d made a name of myself solving my anger with my fists. Blood was fascinating to me, how just nine pints kept us human, alive. Take a little too much out of our fragile bodies, and that was it, game over.
How did someone get as fucked-up as me? Life. Streets. Shitty foster parents, you name it. My first kill was at fourteen. I killed the foster dad I had at the time. You’d think Pam would be the one who would have gotten in trouble, but the fucker preferred little boys. It was a messy kill; if it weren’t for his wife helping us clean the mess I’d made, shit would have gone downhill fast for me. She was tired of his abuse and was glad her old man was dead.
Killing was an addiction. It gave you a high that you couldn’t get anywhere else, and the thrill of not getting caught, well, that shit, you couldn’t get it in any dime bag or shoot it in your veins. It had to be experienced with a blade. Any fucker could grab a gun and kill someone, but to cut them open, letting them bleed—you had to mean it.
“Are you even listening to me?” Pam huffed.
“Who?” I asked again.
“The Estacados.”
The underworld was like the one percent. It was exclusive, and once you were in you were in, and we didn’t get disgraced if we fucked up—we paid with our lives. If you didn’t know someone, you’d heard of them. And in my world, the more people who knew of you, the more power to your name.
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