by Ashley Black
From the names, I thought they might be his Mother, Father and little sister.
He bowed before the graves for a moment, and then surprised me when he stood and took his cock in hand and pissed all over his parents’ graves, and then simply knelt before his sister’s, and pressed his forehead against it. “Alice,” he sighed. “I am an idiot. Keep haunting me, lil sis. I will probably see you soon, yes?”
And then he rose, albeit unsteadily, his head bowed in dejection, as he turned and faced all of the other graves in the little cemetery, then fell to his knees. I saw his large white hand fish into a bag that I hadn’t noticed him taking from the beach. He took out a whip and began ferociously whipping his back, his muscular inked arms working in a blur as he flung the hideous thing repeatedly over his shoulder left and then right, striking his magnificent back hard, so hard he began bleeding almost immediately.
Oh my fucking God. I was speechless. He had me fucked. He had tried to explain it before on the beach, but I still couldn’t understand why he would do this. I had no idea how often he came here and whipped himself pointlessly before these townfolk who were too far gone to judge or forgive him. Meaninglessness. It made me angry. Pointless suffering. This was beyond stupid. I refused to cry for him.
“Stop!” I shouted at him.
Stunned, he whirled on me, his face a mask of anguish. “You,” he practically snarled. He did not look at all happy to see me.
And before I knew what I was doing (because I didn’t), I was kneeling before him and taking the bloodsoaked whip from him.
He merely stared, his lips moving but making no sound.
“Jesus, Thorn!” I sighed. “You need help.”
“What I was doing does help. It is my therapy.”
“It is fucked up,” I heard myself disagree.
He was silent.
I looked at his back and winced. It was a damn mess. I wanted to cover it in kisses. Inspired. I decided to do just that.
“What are you doing?” he asked, horrified when I pressed my lips to the first welt. “Seriously, what the fuck is it with you and my blood tonight?”
“I just want to kiss it and make it better,” I reassured him.
“Oh,” he said softly. “Then by all means, please proceed. That felt…”
He didn’t finish before I was behind him kissing his back again. I kept the touch and caress of my lips gentle, careful not to press too hard. I kept my errant tongue in my head. I only wanted to give him comfort, nothing more. But above me, I heard him panting, he was shuddering at my touch, the softest of moans rumbled in his throat. This did not sound like a man comforted. This sounded like a man aroused.
“Thorn,” I asked, wary. “Are you all right?”
“I am fucked up,” he admitted.
“Aren’t we all?” I teased.
“You should get away from me, Elena.”
“And why is that?” I asked gently, and blinked, because my vision was starting to flicker in and out of focus. Odd. I heard a strange howling start up in the back of my skull and realized it was actually the wind pouring in through the trees and beginning to push us around – we were so fragile I realized. We had always been just dust pretending to be real. Any moment the air rushing around us could make us crumble.
He cried out.
I recoiled.
“Do you see them?” he asked, sounding ashamed. “I feel them, Elena!”
My vision swam. I felt like my reality was plunged underwater for a moment, and when I resurfaced and got some semblance of focus again, it was only to emerge in a world of make-believe. What the fuck now? The skin on his blood-streaked back was rippling like a breath hushing over satin or silk.
“What is happening to you?” I gasped. “Your back, Thorn.”
“Fucking drugs. Elena. No matter what happens tonight, remind yourself of that one unalterable fact. We are…”
“In a nightmare,” I concluded when he roared as the skin near his shoulder blades cracked open and black magnificent wings emerged.
Fifteen
“I see hell in your eyes,” I told him, because it was true. At least, in this land of make-believe we now found ourselves in. In this reality, Thorn had black wings that had just exploded out of his rather scarred and messed up back, and his dark green eyes were an emerald fire, the pupils shining red. They were so damn bright, it literally hurt to look at them. “It’s pretty.”
He said nothing for a moment, looking down at his hands, and then to my absolute relief, he laughed too. “Really? You think hell is pretty?”
“In your eyes, it is.”
“My eyes eat your kind every day for breakfast,” he said thickly.
I clapped my hands enthusiastically. “Great! I survive until breakfast then!”
Thorn smirked, and then pulled me roughly against him. His wings were so soft yet fierce and rippled around me.
“You are beautiful,” I sighed. “I like you like this.”
He arched a brow. “You do?” He didn’t sound at all convinced. “Am I not the least bit scary, Elena?”
My gaze had wandered away from his dark demonic beauty to the townfolk who had emerged from their graves. I pointed. “I’m more scared of them.”
Thorn’s blazing emerald eyes widened at the sight of them.
“We should run?” I suggested, because the man seemed frozen in place, and I was a little terrified of these apparitions right now, and the hostility I felt emanating from them toward Thornton Darko. I was becoming protective of my rock star.
“Has he not suffered enough!?” I shouted at them as they drifted ever closer to us. “Let him go, motherfuckers!”
All their mouths dropped open and they issued a collective haunting wail.
Sweet Jesus.
“Thorn!” I pulled on his hand impatiently, and finally he snapped out of whatever hell dimension his tortured psyche had sent him, and he nodded at me. “Right. Run. Good idea. We should do that.”
We held each others hand’s, and plunged headlong into the forest. The tall pencil pines became a blur, our speed equal parts breathtaking and devastating. My heart never felt so full or empty all at once; it was the oddest feeling. But then again, I was getting a lot of those tonight, wasn’t I? Odd feelings. Even odder sensations.
Thorn tripped and dragged us in a freefall down into the most pristine, glittering-looking ravine. There were huge old gnarled elm trees covered with what looked like a million fairy lights, and every available surface was lit up in a green, dazzling haze. This was our safe place. He landed flat on his back after a few bumps, his huge muscular body had shielded me from the worst of our fall, and I landed atop of him and we simply stared into each other’s eyes for a moment that threatened on everlasting.
Thorn was breathing heavily, a blush tinging his cheeks. His raven headdress had come askew, so I straightened it before I scrambled off him and removed the blanket that had been tied awkwardly around my neck serving as some kind of demented cape. I reached for the biggest, sparkling tree in this place; it was truly ancient - I could feel its energy, it called to me, I wanted my skin touching its trunk. I wanted it to tell me all of its secrets.
“Elena.” He was upon me in an instant, spinning me around to face him. I could see he now had chrome horns – blood was trickling from his temples from where they had sprouted. “Wow,” I breathed appreciatively, running my hand gently over them. “Look at you. These are nice. I like them.”
“What are you doing to me?” he groaned.
“You’re the one who drugged us,” I pointed out. “If you start turning into some kind of demon, it’s on you, buddy, not me.”
He nodded, a faint smile touching his mouth. “Yes.” He pressed his body against mine, and backed me decisively into the tree, my skull bounced lightly against the glittering blinking trunk as his mouth devastated mine with a lashing of intense hot kisses that melted me from the waist down. I may well have been a puddle. I was barely holding myself upright. If his
body wasn’t pinning mine to the tree, I would be flat on my ass right now. “May I?” he slurred, his gaze dropping to my panties. “Touch you there?”
Yes! I rejoiced inwardly, but managed a nonchalant roll of my shoulder. “Sure.”
“I must warn you I am not in a gentle mood right now.”
I might have shivered, but his kisses and the drugs had set me ablaze, so before I could concoct a halfway intelligent response to that, he had ripped my panties from me, not even bothering to pull them down. I just heard the tear of the material, and felt the night air against my sex. “Thorn,” I almost choked.
He then roughly slapped my pussy hard as if to test my readiness for him. The shock of that slap had me seeing stars for a moment. My eyes started to roll back in my head as waves of pleasure rippled to my ass and back again to my buzzing center. Sweet Jesus! I had never ever felt anything quite – Fuck me! He had done it again. He slapped me harder, and I moaned and bucked slightly into him like a fool, yearning more, but what I really wanted was him inside of me, right now.
“Thorn,” I sighed, then my hand slipped inside his briefs and a smile lifted my lips as I found him ready for me. I didn’t think at that moment I wanted to let my new toy go. He felt exquisite in my hand, and I liked what it did to his breathing when I touched him like this. I liked hearing how deliciously unhinged he was becoming. I gently stroked the entire length of him to the tip of his sensitive head and back down again.
A growl tore from his throat as my other hand fell to his shuddering magnificent muscular ass lit up so beautifully in the moonlight. I squeezed it appreciatively. “You feel amazing.”
“Is that so?” he arched a brow, his eyes burning fervently into mine. “Wait until I’m inside of you.” Then his gaze dropped. “If that is what you –
I gripped his shoulders and swung my legs up around him, and he moaned and positioned me against the tree, and drove into me hard. Thorn was right. He was not in a gentle mood. Holy hell! As his hips slammed into mine, he drove into me again and again; there was no working up to it, nothing, just his cock, with my pussy twitching and shivering in shock around him. I held on tight. “Fuck me hard,” I encouraged, my lips tickling his ear. He tasted so fine.
He thrust ever more urgently, and I felt myself very quickly dissolving, falling to pieces around him, my facade of control crumbling away as I screamed his name. I didn’t look away from him. His gaze claimed mine and dared me not to. Even though his bright demonic eyes hurt to look into directly, we did not break each other’s stares until the moment we arrived on the other side of all of that dark frantic mess, to my relief. I think he had broken me. I was convinced of this. I felt oddly numb down there, and let myself go limp in his arms.
Then we were hit by floodlights, flashes, and loud excitable voices. ‘Thornton Darko, the man himself behind the wildly successful Cellrager found fornicating...’
What the fuck? I had stopped listening at fornicating.
“Shit!” he hissed, pulling up his briefs; he looked ferocious as he hastily wrapped the black cashmere blanket around me that I had abandoned at about the same time as my dignity. Reality was fighting its way back in to my drug haze, and it was asking the same question on nauseating repeat.
What have you done, Elena?
I blinked dazedly, and saw our little magical ravine laid bare. I realized in abject horror that we had just fucked against the fairy lit tree in the rather beautiful garden of someone else’s residence. Nice.
Sixteen
Coffee is cancelled indefinitely
So is our engagement.
Good luck with Mr. Cellrager. Looks like you’re going to need it.
“So Brett can send a text message after all?” Aaron attempted to joke as he set down the third cup of double-shot espresso before me. “I’m so sorry, Elena. I expected that ending his future with you was worthy of a painting at least.”
I gratefully muttered my thanks, and tried to stuff still more caffeine into my body. That, and the copious amounts of water I had consumed since turning up at Daniel’s apartment, had helped my hangover immensely. I was quite convinced I didn’t want to touch alcohol or strange hallucinogenic drugs again.
Thorn and I hadn’t spoken after the dark mayhem of last night, after he had pushed me into a taxi to Aaron’s, and faced the feral interest of the media and a rather irate neighbour. What a spectacle we had become. I could barely believe all of what we had experienced had happened in just one night. It was insane. It was, I suspected, something resembling normal with someone like Thornton Darko.
Aaron scanned his phone for a moment, and biting his lip, he waved the thing in front of my face. “Final comment I will make about this mess as your agent. This is fucking brilliant!”
I groaned, my head falling into my hands at the sight of a very clear picture of myself staring in horror out at the bright lights and cameras, Thorn’s huge inked arm around me. I looked a dishevelled mess, with streaked, smudged black makeup and a demented-looking raven headdress sitting at an odd angle upon my head. The blanket I remembered Thorn wrapping protectively around me had slipped, and I was flashing a white shoulder as well as my breast, the white lacy bra pulled down, leaving nothing to the imagination. Shit.
“Really?” I muttered. I had just lost Brett; there had to be a silver lining to this mess.
“Your first book from that Witch and Wizard fuck-me-dead series hit number 1 overnight,” Aaron shrugged. “Visibility is good. But the publisher is pissed.”
I raised my head, and looked at him. “What?”
“Yeah. They don’t think it’s great for your image.” I noticed his eyes were twinkling in amusement.
“Then they would be fucked in the head,” came Daniel’s voice.
I was on my feet at once , wrapping my arms around the tall Scandinavian looking ice lord – that is what I affectionately called him, - because he resembled one – huge, skin of ivory, with dark blue eyes, and white blonde hair that was spiked to perfection. He had glittering silver makeup around his eyes – having just returned from shooting something extraordinary and pretty to look at no doubt. It was perfectly unfair to all women folk that he was gay. The things I had previously fantasised about doing to that body of his, not to mention his mind, would induce a lifetime of blushes.
“Publisher is happy with the visibility, yes,” Aaron affirmed. “Even if it is with a devil worshipper who got away with the murder of his last wife.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” Daniel murmured into my hair. Then he stepped back from me, and his sympathetic look cut up my soul.
“Don’t look at her like that or she’ll cry!” Aaron warned.
Daniel’s gaze dropped. “All right. I’m headed to the gym, just wanted to check in on my favorite temptress.”
“She doesn’t respond well to name-calling either,” Aaron said.
I glared at him, then I touched the makeup below Daniel’s eyes. “Awww, how sweet, in such a hurry to see me that you left without removing your makeup.”
Daniel’s dark blonde brows rose, and he peered in the window’s reflection at himself and laughed with a shrug. “When the gym calls, I don’t fuck around.”
“Babe,” Aaron complained. “You did an hour there this morning; give it a rest will you? Actually, once I’m done being a half-decent friend to Elena here, put your ass in bed, and I’ll come and find you.”
Daniel looked horrified at his suggestion. “I would never dream of taking you away from your friend in her time of need.”
“Actually,” I rose to my feet. “I should get going. I need to write. I’ve almost finished that book, and I need to start another one.”
“Oh?” Aaron’s gaze narrowed on me after he and Daniel gave each other a quick hello-goodbye kiss. “Which book is that?”
“The one Thorn has requested I write,” I said seriously.
“Thornton can go fuck himself.” Aaron looked angry, then his expression softened a
s he reached for my hand and squeezed it. “Honey, please don’t put on a brave face for me. How are you? How are you really? I mean you were basically… date raped.”
I took a deep breath and shook my head. I couldn’t answer. I had an invitation crumpled in my hand, and I unfurled it and spread it before him. It was an invitation to Brett’s show for that damned blonde gallery owner he was no doubt inside of right now. “Will you come with me tonight?”
Aaron’s brows rose. “You’re not serious?”
“I want to go and support him!” I insisted.
Aaron frowned. “Why would you torture yourself that way?”
“Because I love him,” I moaned. “And I want to be there tonight. I want him to know I give a shit about what moves him more than anything else.”
“Have you thought about how he might feel about you showing up?” Aaron asked gently. “Seriously, you are the last fucking person he wants to see after last night’s news of your rather compromising position with Thornton Darko.”
“He can throw us out,” I reasoned.
Aaron sighed and shook his head. “You know he won’t do that. Fuck’s sake. Please don’t do this. Is there anything I can do to convince you not to?”
I shook my head. I was definitely a selfish fucking idiot. But I wanted to go. I wanted closure. Brett had made it clear that there would be no coffee, and I wouldn’t make a scene, but damn it, I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to explain. But what was there to explain I wondered? I had fucked Thornton Darko in a drug-induced haze, and duly ended our engagement.
My phone beeped. A message.
Thorn.
My heart fell to my feet.
Reluctantly, I looked at the message.
How are you? What colours are you?
Really?
I frowned, and elicited from Aaron a quiet utterance of “fuck” when I opened up the bathrobe I had been wearing to peer at myself. Holy shit. I was bruised all along my thighs, my collarbone, and where there wasn’t a purple blemish, there was a red flush of love bites.
