by KV Rose
This isn’t happening to me.
A scream lodges itself in my throat as the darkness spins around me, but then I snap back to reality with Maverick’s groan, all male, guttural, like he just had the best orgasm of his fucking life.
My eyes fly open.
I can’t help it. I can’t help staring straight ahead. And he’s staring right back at me, breathing hard, his mouth open. I can’t see it, but I can imagine the sweat dripping from his brow.
The girl has her arms up, lost in ecstasy, and she’s panting too.
And when I look down, I see he’s still in her.
He came inside of her. My heart breaks a little more and I bite my tongue to stop from openly sobbing.
I hear him snort with amusement, and my pulse quickens as he slowly pulls out of her, his hand on her belly, just like its been on mine. His still-hard dick is against her thigh.
Then he rolls off the condom as he watches me.
And I hate myself when I exhale silently. A sigh of relief.
But then he says, “Turn over. I want to fuck you in the ass,” and I think I’m going to die.
I lock eyes with him.
He smirks as the girl laughs and does as he asks, her ass in his face, her head toward me.
He glances down at her, back up at me.
No.
His hand finds her ass.
No.
He spreads her beneath his hands, watching me the entire time.
I shake my head again. No.
I mouth the word.
He smiles, cocks his head.
I mouth it again, and I feel hot tears roll down my face.
He stills. And then he blows out a breath, turns his head as he rolls his eyes.
And he kicks the girl out of his room.
Part of me is relieved. Watching them sleep together would’ve pushed me over the edge. Part of me hates him more for it. I don’t know if she leaves this house, but he locks the door from the inside when she’s gone, after a noisy kiss ‘goodbye’. He had slapped her ass as she left the room, and I hated that that was the least painful thing I’d had to watch.
He goes to the bathroom, washes his hands, and when he comes back out, the door stays open at his back, letting light spool into the room. He’s changed into shorts.
I want to be unaffected. I want to tell him I’m going to sleep. I want to kill him. I want to carve those hickeys off of his neck.
I do none of those things. I lock eyes with him instead and watch with bated breath while he comes to sit on the bed beside me.
He reaches out to smooth the hair from my face and I jerk my head from his touch. A laugh comes from his mouth, carefree and breezy, like I’m an amusing child. He still touches my face, even as I refuse to look at him. Refuse to make it easy for him.
His fingers trail down my jaw, over my neck.
“Jealous, baby?”
Jealous? I want to kill him. I say nothing.
“I’m going to let you out of these cuffs, Ella,” he whispers, his fingers on my neck. Despite myself, my body reacts, my nipples hardening, pressing against my sweatshirt. “But you have to promise me you won’t run.”
Won’t run? Of course I won’t run. I’m going to kill you.
But I still say nothing.
He jerks my chin in his hand, forcing me to face him. “I think we’ve went over this, Ella. When I ask you a question,” he leans down close, his mouth over mine, and I want to puke. “You fucking answer me.”
I stare up into his blue eyes, his brows furrowed. I want to spit in his face.
Seconds tick by. His fingers dig further into my chin.
And then I nod. “I won’t run,” I say through gritted teeth.
He smiles. “That’s better.” He lets go of my face, reaches around for the key in his back pocket. He undoes one cuff, then the other, leaving them attached to the bed, but freeing my hands.
Blood rushes down my arms, which are tingling, and I slowly rotate them down by my sides, the ache in my shoulders making me grimace.
He pockets the key and sits back, his feet on the floor, hips twisted toward me.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I ignore him, shaking out my hands.
Gently, he reaches for my wrist with both hands, stretching his body out long on the mattress. He runs his thumb over the bones.
I almost groan at how good it feels, but when I close my eyes, I see it all over again. Hear him burying into her. Daddy.
My eyes burn with unshed tears. My throat feels tight, and I can barely look at him.
“I can’t believe you,” I whisper quietly. “I can’t fucking believe you.”
His massage on my wrist stops, and he lets me go. When I open my eyes, he pushes away from me, sitting up on the bed. He runs a hand through his hair, groaning.
“You...” I can’t finish my sentence. I don’t even know what I was thinking of saying.
“I, what?” he taunts me.
Anger evaporates my tears. “I fucking hate you.”
His jaw clenches. But then he smirks at me. “Good. Now you know exactly how I felt watching you let that fucking kid put his hands all over you.”
In this moment, I do fucking hate him.
And when I get feeling in my arms again, I move.
I jump from the bed before he can stop me, grabbing the knife off the nightstand. I feel around for the ridged clasp and press it, the blade springing free.
I take a step back from him, hold up the knife in a shaky hand.
He’s staring at me in amusement. “You know how to use that, baby?”
My mouth is so dry, I can barely get the words out. “I fucking hate you.” He has no remorse. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t fucking care.
He arches a brow, but doesn’t move.
I can’t stay still. I keep backing up, knowing I’ll hit the wall soon, but I can’t stop. I want to run out of here. I want to stab him. I want to fucking kill him.
My hands feel hot. My face, too.
“Why don’t you put that down before you hurt yourself, Ella?” His voice is so calm. So unaffected.
This is the same boy who bought me fucking food. Who took me grocery shopping. Who hurt my mother, for me. Who broke a pool cue over his knee to hurt someone who hurt me.
But this is the same boy who hit me. Who denied I could love him. The same boy who locked a girl in the basement.
This is the same boy with an inverted cross on his fucking face and so many skeletons in his closet it’s like a graveyard.
He stands to his feet.
I clench my fingers tighter around the knife. I’m going to hurt him. Tears stream down my face but I don’t care.
I don’t care, even as he takes a step closer.
I don’t care, even as he holds up his hands, trying to placate me.
“Why’re you crying, pretty girl?” He takes another step toward me. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Freedom? From me?”
I step back again and hit the wall.
“You couldn’t handle me, could you, Ella? All my dirty little secrets? You only like what I gave to you, didn’t you? You didn’t mean what you said. You don’t love me, baby. You don’t know me.”
I choke back a sob.
He steps closer. Keeps talking. “You’re not hurting over me. You’re hurting over what you think I’ll cut you off from. Don’t worry, pretty girl. I’ll still buy you—”
I lunge toward him, blindly. In a rage, my hands shaking with anger, my head pounding. I lunge toward him, and I bring the knife with me, trying to sink it into his side.
But he turns away from me, and I’ve still got the blade in my hand. Still see it’s not in his flesh.
But there’s blood.
And he swears under his breath, and we both look at his bare torso at the same time.
Blood.
There’s so much blood, pouring from a deep cut down his narrow waist. Crimson drips across his inked skin, into the fabric of his grey basketball sho
rts.
For a moment, we both stare at it.
Then he brings his gaze to me and smiles. “That’s it?” he taunts me. He shakes his head once. “It looks bad, Ella, but that won’t kill me. Don’t you want more?”
I step back from him, glancing from his eyes to the blood and back again.
“I fucked her right in front of you. I slid inside of her right in front of you and you didn’t do a fucking thing about it, Ella. Don’t you want more?”
“I hate you,” I say again, a whisper. “I hate you.”
“Why?” he taunts me, lifting up his hands in question. “You thought I’d save you from that fucking trailer and your fucking mom and her shitty boyfriends that wanna fuck you?”
“I thought you were better.” I hate the taste of those words on my tongue, but I say them again. “I thought you were better.”
He drops his hands and I see him swallow, watching me as blood drips down onto the floor.
“I thought you were better. I thought you were god. I adored you.”
His hands clench into fists.
“I thought you were like me. I thought you were searching for someone to…love you. To hurt you. Heal you.”
He swallows again, his jaw clenched as he watches me in silence for a moment. “What happened to you, Ella? Tell me everything.”
“My mother used to…tie me up, did you know?” I close my eyes, feel the tears run down my neck, beneath the collar of my sweatshirt. “When she went out, she used to cuff me as a kid. She’d put a movie on, but they weren’t long enough so I’d close my eyes and make my own. She’d cuff me and when she stumbled home and my stomach growled, she’d scream at me.”
I hear him move toward me.
“Don’t touch me,” I whisper, keeping my eyes closed.
He stops moving.
“Then she met…Shane.” I can see his big brown eyes. The way he was so clean. So unlike the rest of my mother’s hookups. He was clean and had a job and he bought us food and he bought her flowers and he’d tap on my door to tell me to turn my lights off at night because I had school the next morning. And I’d roll my eyes and grumble about it but inside…I loved it. I loved that someone wanted to tell me what to do.
Someone cared.
“Mom didn’t know a good thing when it was trying to get her into rehab. Trying to feed her. Trying to keep her…home. She didn’t care, and she still went out, and she still disappeared. But I was older. She couldn’t restrain me. And Shane wouldn’t have let her.”
I don’t even hear Maverick breathing.
“But he had to travel for work, and one weekend he was gone, and I was starving and Mom was out. I hadn’t been able to find a job from our last move, and there was nothing but beer in the fridge.” I wipe the back of my hand over my closed eyelids. “I drank it. All of it.”
“Ella—”
“And when Shane came home I was feeling sick and he was feeling…angry. Because the police had told him my mother was found in a car with three men. She was…” I take a shaky breath. “She was fucking them.”
“Ella, you don’t have to—”
“So he fucked me. It wasn’t my first time.” I laugh out loud at that, blink my eyes open, my vision blurred with tears as Maverick stares at me, one hand reached out toward me like he wants to touch me but he knows I won’t let him. “But that wasn’t enough, because he got drunk, too. And when he fucked me there, it was my first time. And it was…” I swallow, my face warming at the memory. At the confession.
But Maverick doesn’t deserve it.
He drops his hand, his eyes hard.
“Maybe I did think you’d save me. Maybe I did think you’d take me out of that life. But you’re not who I thought you were.”
“And who did you think I was, Ella?” His tone isn’t full of spite and it stabs me deep in the chest.
“Better. I thought you were better than what I knew. But you’re just scared. You’re scared to open up. Scared to own what you want. Scared of whatever secrets you’re keeping because you think they’ll make me run. So, what do you do?”
I take a step toward him and his eyes don’t leave mine even as I hold the knife up. “You do something you know I’ll hate. Something you know will hurt me. So I’ll walk out and leave and you’ll never have to open up.” I drop the knife to the floor, watch as he flinches with the sound. “Well guess what, Maverick? You got just what you wanted. I am walking out.”
I step around him and he grabs my arm, pulling me toward him. “No, you’re not, Ella.”
“Get your hand off of me.”
“Ella.”
It was a promise. A warning. A threat. It was the way he said my name every time he wanted me to stay, every time he wanted me under his control. It was the same tone I’d listened to these past few weeks, because I was stupid.
Stupid to think that a steady fuck and a man who shoved food into my mouth as payment was in love with me.
“Get your fucking hand off of me.”
His lips turn up into a smile. “I appreciate the swearing, Ella, but no.”
“Go find her,” I taunt him instead, switching tactics. “Go fucking find the girl you kept in your basement. Drag her back here. Maybe tell her about all the times you fucked me. Go bury your self-loathing into someone who can take it, because I can’t, Maverick. I fucking can’t because I hate myself enough for both of us.” I yank out of his grip, and this time he lets me.
He lets me go.
Chapter Twenty
Of course she ran.
I tell myself I’m glad she did. After that...with the girl and the knife and the fucking anger and the way I wanted to pin her down and force her to stay...
I’m no better than Lucifer. Than my father. Than Jeremiah. I’m no better than the 6. Than every other dumb fuck on this planet lucky enough to find a girl who looks at them like they’re god and then makes sure to spit in their fucking face while they’re already on their knees.
It’s good she isn’t here. Far the fuck away from me. I should’ve never gone after her at Liber in the first place. I wasn’t in the right headspace and clearly, neither was she. What kind of nineteen-year-old wants to get hit by a stranger?
The same kind that wants to remember what it’s like to fucking feel: attention, hate, some sort of cruelty to remind them that they’re alive.
I can blame it on her age all I want. Her mother. Her fucking life. Shane. I can dismiss her and cut her down, but the truth is... I understand why she wants it.
That cruelty. That fucking chaos. It makes her feel like someone cares. Cares enough to hurt her. To make her learn a lesson. To want to teach her, like I do, even if it’s with violent hands.
Gods do that sometimes. They bring a lesson from the pain.
When my phone buzzes in my back pocket, I already know who it is.
And when I’m kneeling at Father Tomas’s feet, hands on my lap and head bowed, I make myself think about them: Malachi. Sid. Brooklin. Ria. Ella.
Everyone I can’t let go of. Everyone I can’t save.
I told Father Tomas not to talk as soon as he walked in, and he had sighed. Rubbed his temples. Clutched that fucking Leviathan cross around his neck.
But he didn’t speak. And he still doesn’t, with every flick of the whip.
I don’t stop thinking about them, even though the pain makes it hard to hold on to their faces. To Malachi’s the most.
I wonder what he would look like now.
I wonder if my father would be different.
My mother.
I wonder if there’s something inside of them that’s still soft. That still loves themselves. Loves me... Brooklin...
I don’t feel it anymore. My body does, the way it jolts with every hit. The way my palms are flat on the floor, my side throbbing from the knife.
Ella.
This is a reminder. I can never be the type of man she needs. I can never be the type of man anyone needs. I can’t even be who I need. The most
I can hope for is to be a good brother. To help Lucifer. Sid. Atlas. Ezra. Cain. Even if it means breaking them apart, too. But I know better than most that getting broken means you get put back together.
Sometimes stronger.
The best I can hope for are moments like these, to remind me that all this pain, all this blood, all this humiliation... I deserve it. Because I’ve done worse.
The pain bleeds through again, just like the warmth on my back, trailing down to my pants.
The next flick of the whip and I go to my forearms, forehead against the cool cement of the garage floor.
Father Tomas pauses. I squeeze my eyes shut, breathe in the few seconds of relief.
But he’s good. He’s so good.
He doesn’t stop for long.
Chapter Twenty-One
The bar is surprisingly full, considering it’s nearly one in the morning on a Wednesday. I hitched a ride, and the men I rode with are here, too, ordering shots and grinning at me like they think I’m going to pay them back at the end of the night.
Maybe I will.
I took off my sweatshirt when I left Maverick’s, dropped it in his yard. I’m in a white cami, black leggings and worn sneakers. But no one seems to care that I’ve been in a Guinea pig shed, and no one knows I watched a man I thought was god fuck another girl inches from me on the same bed.
The guards outside of Maverick’s neighborhood questioned me when I walked out, but despite their guns and their grisly appearance, I told them to go fuck themselves. And damn, did that feel good.
Much like tossing this third shot back in a bar where no one IDs anyone feels good.
The bartender is the same one from when I came here with Maverick and his friends, and he’s eyeing me curiously, but he doesn’t stop pouring tequila shots for me and the two men on either side of me.
“Ella?” one asks me, twisting on his stool to face me.
I knock back another shot and feel my stomach burn, the room sway in front of my eyes as I turn to take him in. He’s probably in his thirties, with a five o’clock shadow and a white t-shirt and jeans, muscled forearms.
I nod once. “Yep,” I say, that single word thick on my tongue. “And you?” I didn’t ask their names. Didn’t ask them shit. They said they were on their way home from a late-night restoration job, but when I requested this bar by name, they were all too eager to join me.
