by KV Rose
“Lucifer.” That’s Ezra’s deep voice. The name he calls the other boy startles me for a minute, but then Maverick’s fingers are working my clit again and I let it go. “Go. Home.”
I feel the couch shift.
Someone’s gotten to their feet, but I still don’t open my eyes.
“Did you know Luce is married, Ella?” Maverick asks me, his voice low, his hot breath against my neck. “He’s married and he’s staring at your pretty little pussy right now.”
I feel my core tighten. I’m so close. So fucking close…
“Spread your legs wider, pretty girl.” He licks my throat as he keeps fingering me. “Let him see you.”
Without thinking, I do as he asks, and Maverick pulls his fingers out of me, shoves my underwear to the side so my swollen, bare pussy is exposed.
My eyes fly open and I try to slam my legs closed but he stops me with one word. “No.”
I might’ve still done it, but my gaze is locked on the boy with the dark blue eyes. He’s staring at me with a clenched jaw, his hands in his pockets. And then, without a word, he turns around and leaves the room, stomping down the hallway, slamming the door shut after him.
Ezra chuckles but I don’t dare look at him as Maverick’s fingers slip back into me.
“Lean back, pretty girl.” He bites my shoulder. “I want you to finish in front of my brother.”
I close my eyes, feeling slightly more relaxed now that there’s only two of them. I lean back against Maverick’s chest, my legs still spread wide.
“Can he touch you?” he asks me as he plays with my clit. “He won’t make you come, Ella, that’s just for me. But I might need his help.”
I doubt that, I want to say. But I’m back to the edge again and I just want the release. Wondering if I’m going to regret all of this when the sun comes up, I slowly nod my head.
And someone’s fingers come to my pussy, pulling me apart and spreading me wide.
Maverick keeps circling my clit, but I know they both can see me. Every intimate part of me.
“Damn,” Ezra says in a whisper, and my cheeks flush.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Maverick asks, and I know exactly what he’s talking about. “Just wait until she comes.”
My breath catches as I arch my back and Maverick says, “That’s it, pretty girl. Come for me. Let us see it.” He keeps stimulating my clit with his thumb, but he pushes two fingers inside of me and the fullness undoes me completely. With the sensation of Ezra’s fingers still holding me apart, my orgasm crests.
I gasp, every nerve ending in my body tingling as I fist my hands against the side of his legs. But Maverick isn’t done making demands. “Who are you coming for?” he asks me, thrusting harder. “Who do you belong to?”
“You,” I gasp, “you—”
“What’s my fucking name?”
“Maverick.” I say it over and over again. “Maverick, Maverick, Maverick.” And when I’m finally finished, and Ezra’s hands are off of me and Maverick’s palm covers me, I float back to the ground, reality sinking in.
And I don’t care if it makes me seem like the nineteen-year-old girl that I am, but I twist in Maverick’s lap and bury my head in his shoulder, hoping to God he doesn’t laugh at me and push me away.
God seems to listen.
Maverick’s arms wrap around my back and he pulls me close, kissing the top of my head. “You were such a good girl,” he murmurs. And then he shifts me in his arms, picks me up like I’m a child, and stands to his feet.
“I’m going to bed,” he tells Ezra, and without another word, he walks out and carries me upstairs, letting me drift off to sleep in his bed, his body curled around mine.
Chapter Thirteen
“No, you nut!” I slap her hand away from the raw cookie dough. “That shit can make you sick!”
It’s past midnight early Friday morning, and it’s going much better than last night. Tonight, there’s no broken glass. And I don’t have to share.
Ella ignores my warning, dives her fingers into the raw cookies on the baking tray anyway and pinches off a piece, popping it into her mouth before I can stop her. She backs away in her bare feet, covering her chewing and her smirk with one hand.
I put the cookies in the oven, set the timer, let her think I’m just gonna ignore it. And then I spin around, crash her against the kitchen table. She catches herself on her palms, still chewing, shaking her head and trying not to choke.
“I-I’m—”
My fingers go to her sides, tickling her gently as she tries to squirm away. “What’s that, baby? I can’t quite hear you.”
She jerks in my grip, swallowing down the final mouthful of cookie dough and shoving her palms against my bare chest.
“I almost choked, you asshole!” She slaps me playfully, and I pick her up, throw her over my shoulder and spin her around.
She’s laughing, her hands on my low back to keep her from falling off and crashing to the floor as I spin her faster and faster.
And then her fingers still against me.
She stops laughing.
I stop moving.
She’s still hanging upside down, and I know she’s staring right at my back. It’s not like she wouldn’t have seen it earlier, or after I fucked her in my bed this morning and left my shirt off. But now it’s up close and personal.
Shit.
I set her down on her feet, take a step back from her, my hands dropping to my sides.
She’s staring up at me, a slight crease between her brow. Her hands are on the table at her back, her foot sliding up her calf.
Silence stretches between us.
And then she says, “Mavy—”
“That’s not my name, baby,” I scold her gently.
Her gorgeous red lips tug up into a smile, but she shakes her head, running one hand through her hair. She’s wearing my shirt and her underwear and nothing else. I think I wouldn’t mind seeing that in my kitchen every damn day, but I know that’s foolish. The cloud of lust making my head spin.
I’m not made for marriage, and besides that, Ria… I don’t let myself think about that. About her.
Ella swallows. “What happened to your back?”
I exhale, run a hand through my hair and turn to the island in the kitchen, reaching across the sink to grab the vape off of it. It’s already loaded and ready to go.
I bring it up to my mouth, but she closes the space between us and covers my fingers with hers, pulling the red vape down.
She gently pulls it from me, and I let her.
She sets it beside the sink and turns to face me, crossing her arms. “Talk to me.”
I run my hand through my hair. This conversation reminds me of last night’s, before Lucifer and Ezra came over. And that conversation did not go well. And I know it’s my fault. I know I’m an asshole. I just wish…I wish she’d open up to me. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Maverick.”
I don’t like this. Now I guess I know how she felt.
“You know my secrets. Tell me one of yours.”
I don’t actually know her secrets, but I understand I know more about her than she knows about me. Still, my jaw tightens. I fold my arms, mimicking her posture, leaning against the sink as we stare at one another. “Tell me, Ella. Tell me…what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
She blinks, taken aback as she looks down at her feet, rocks back and forth on her heels. “I don’t know,” she finally says, looking back up at me. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
I smile. “Nu uh, baby. That’s not how we’re gonna play this game—”
“It’s not a game, Maverick!” she snaps, dropping her arms and stepping toward me, her playful demeanor gone.
Here we fucking go. The thing about Ella is she doesn’t like nice. She doesn’t like calm. I think that’s why she goes to that fucking school. I think that’s why I fucking like her. I think she enjoys our arguments, and I think�
� I think I do too.
“This isn’t a game! You follow me at work. You follow me at home. You hurt my mom, take me back here like you fucking own me or something!” She jabs a finger in my chest, her face flushing pink with her anger. “You let your friends touch me, show me off like I’m a fucking toy! I don’t belong to you! And you don’t wanna tell me shit about—”
I grab her wrist, yank her close to me, cutting her off. “I’ve never heard you say so many words at one time, kid.” My mouth is over hers, our lips touching. “It’s a shame it has to be fucking bullshit.”
She opens her mouth, but I press my palm against her lips, cutting off her words.
“You do belong to me.”
She jerks her head away from me, tries to yank her wrist out of my grip too, but I don’t let her go.
Every muscle in my body is coiled, and I feel hot all over. Like I just want to fucking break something. Like I want to rip her apart. Kiss her until she can’t breathe. Until she disappears into me, and me into her.
She knows nothing about the Unsaints. The 6. My real life. She’s an escape. She’s what my life might be if it could be something else. If there wasn’t a girl locked inside my basement. If there wasn’t a price on her head. A price I’ve gotta pay in five weeks.
This, between me and Ella…it’s nothing. It can never be anything more than nothing. But if she wants to make it hurt, if she wants to make this painful, too, our time together, then that’s fucking fine with me.
She lifts her free hand to slap me and I catch that wrist, too. I spin her around, shoving her against the sink, holding down her hands and she snarls up at me. She lifts her knee to kick me, but I press my legs against her bare ones, shift both of her wrists to one hand, and then I snatch up the chef’s knife from the block on the counter.
She stills.
Her entire body is frozen, her eyes wide.
I held a knife to her throat in the woods at Liber and she didn’t react like this, but then again, she had taken a fucking handful of Xanax and been drinking.
I skim the point of the blade down her bare arm, beneath the sleeves of my shirt.
I watch as goosebumps rise on her skin, look down at her as she swallows.
“Don’t you?” I ask her softly, gliding the knife back up her arm, under the sleeves of my t-shirt and down again. I can feel her pulse in her wrists, still held in my other hand, my body pressed against hers. “Don’t you belong to me, Ella?”
She shakes her head. “No.” The word is low, like a growl, and her eyes are narrowed, even though I can see it: her fear.
I press the tip of the knife harder against her pale flesh, caressing it up and down her arm. “What would happen,” I ask her, licking my lips, “if I…slipped?” I nod toward the knife.
Her eyes widen. Mouth opens. But she doesn’t answer me.
I feel my dick growing hard and I know she feels it too, against her stomach. I nudge my leg between her thighs. “No one would hear you scream, Ella. Not here.”
She sucks in a breath, her body still frozen, anger replaced completely with fear.
“No one would know you were missing. Not for nearly a week.” I glide the point of the knife up over her collarbone, to just under her chin.
She jerks her head up, flinching. I lay the flat part of the blade at her throat.
“Not until Connor missed you, huh? But Connor doesn’t talk, does he?” I smirk at the anger returning to her face, her features hardening, her jaw tight. “You ever kissed him, Ella?”
She doesn’t answer.
I tip her chin up higher with the knife. “No. Not him then.” I sigh, let her wrists go. With the knife under her chin, she’s not gonna move.
I grab onto her waist instead, fingers digging in. “When you stopped me last night, who was it? Who was it that had hurt you, huh?”
Her pale skin flushes pink.
“Is that the worst thing you’ve ever done, baby?” I lean down close, my forehead to hers, the knife still against her throat.
Her hands are against the sink, as if to steady herself.
“Who did you let fuck you in the ass, Ella? If I own you, and I can’t, then who could?”
“You don’t own me.” Her words are angry, through gritted teeth. She doesn’t want to open her mouth very wide, doesn’t want this knife to cut her. “And he didn’t either.”
“Who?”
“Fuck you.”
I yank her hair back, tipping her throat up higher so she’s forced to look away from me, forced to stare at the ceiling. “Who?”
She swallows, and I watch her throat bob against the flat side of the blade. The sharp side, though, that’s still angled toward her chin. It would be so easy. So easy to make her bleed.
“Fucking answer me, goddammit!” I yell at her, and she flinches, screwing her eyes closed tight. “Tell me why you let me treat you like this.”
Tell me why I like to treat you like this.
“Tell me why you want me to hurt you, when your fucking mother does enough of that for you.”
Tell me why I want to hurt you.
“Tell me why you’re fucking starving for attention.”
Tell me why I am, too.
“Tell me why you want to get out of your fucking head, Ella.”
Tell me it’s for the same reasons I do.
“You hate yourself that much, huh?”
Tell me I’m not alone.
“You fucking hate your life? You wish you were someone else? Anyone else? You wish you hadn’t done what you’ve done? You wanna start over? You want to be someone somebody could love?”
I twist around, throw the knife across the fucking room, a strangled cry coming from somewhere deep inside of me. The knife clatters to the floor. I grab her by the throat, jerk her into me and smooth back her hair as her eyes fly open, locking on mine.
Malachi was running, because she was coming after him next. He was running, and my mouth was dry. My stomach hurt. I was…empty. My eyes adjusted to the bright lights outside of the closet, and my pants stuck to me, wet and cold. She was laughing, and I heard their footsteps on the stairs.
I couldn’t hear him, save for his quick little feet.
Just her.
She’d thrown the closet open after I’d been in there for so long, the day had slipped into night and then morning. I could see it, the sun rising outside of the bay windows of my parents’ house.
I pushed myself to my feet, feeling woozy.
Malachi.
I ran after him, even though the world was spinning. I sprinted up those steps so fast my shaky legs were burning, but I saw her. Saw her maid outfit, the black hem of her skirt just above her stout ankles. I saw veins in her calves.
I heard her laugh again and I wanted to die.
But she wasn’t going to hurt him. She wasn’t going to get to him. She wasn’t going to put him in that closet.
I flew under her arms, and she tried to grab my shirt, but she got a hold of my shorts instead. She screamed, feeling how I’d soaked myself in that closet, and she let go, and I kept going.
I saw his blonde head, his little legs churning as fast as he could, but she was still after us.
“Keep going, Mal!”
He looked back, and there was a slow grin on his face as he saw it was me. His big brother. I’d come to save him.
But he listened. He pumped his arms, his striped shirt loose on his small body, and he kept going. He skidded down the hall, into my parents’ room. I watched as he threw open the balcony, and I glanced back.
She was only a few feet from me, her eyes bright with joy.
Joy at our fear.
I turned back around, kept running.
Malachi was on the balcony, his back against the railing as he stood on one of the wicker chairs from the patio set my parents had their breakfast on every morning they were here.
“No!” I screamed. “Get down!”
But I kept running.
And she kept runn
ing.
And when I reached the balcony, I felt her fingers grasp my shirt, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t let her take him, too. Not again. I couldn’t listen to his screams in that closet. Listen to his little fists beat against the door. His feet kicking against the wood while she laughed.
I couldn’t.
I didn’t stop running.
I didn’t push him.
But I didn’t stop running.
“Maverick!”
Someone’s arms are wrapped around my back, gentle against my bare skin. I’m on the floor in the kitchen. I see the knife at the far end, underneath the lip of the cabinet.
“Maverick.” Her voice is softer this time, my head against her shoulder, her hair tickling my face.
I squeeze her tighter, my arms around her, too. “Ella.”
“Maverick,” she whispers, but she doesn’t pull away, doesn’t try to look at my face.
“Ella,” I say her name again, and breathe her in, pulling her into my lap. She straddles me, leaning against my chest as I hold her. And she holds me, too.
My body is hot, uncomfortable. I want to crawl out of my own skin but I force myself to stay where I am. To not move. Not fidget. I remember throwing the knife. I remember getting on the floor, too. Remember pulling her to me. Holding her tight.
It wasn’t a flashback.
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?
It was just me. Reliving it. So I never forget.
“I’m sorry.” The words sound strange. Feel strange. But I mean them.
She shakes her head against my shoulder. “No.”
I frown, but don’t argue.
She exhales against my shoulder, her breath warm against my skin. She feels so good in my lap, just like this. I meant what I told her.
I do own her.
But right now, she owns me, too, and it’s gonna hurt like hell to give her up.
“Tell me, Mavy. Tell me a secret.”
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?
“I killed my brother.”
She goes still in my arms. I close my eyes, holding her tighter. Don’t get up. Please don’t get up. Please don’t leave.
She doesn’t. She doesn’t speak.
“Please don’t ask me questions.” I can’t tell her my other pleas. I’m not that brave, so I stick to this one. “Please don’t. Not now.”
