Die By the Drop: Shivers and Sins Volume 1
Page 5
I thought his slap had just started its journey from swelling to bruising, but the golden brown skin mirrored Jesse’s. A red flush and red diagonal slash on my lip were the only signs he’d hit me. Already, the pain faded. The puzzling lack of marks reminded me I’d suffered other wounds that should still ache.
I traced the bruises splotching my skin, the swollen fingerprints where strange fingers had gripped me. With my fingertips, I recalled how each mark was inflicted. I stroked my throat, searched the bend of my arm, and touched my clammy inner thigh. Two—mostly closed—puncture wounds remained in each spot, and the bruises around my wrists and upper arms had faded like ghosts. Only the remnants of dried blood remained there as evidence I’d bled at all.
Steamy fog began to filter into the bathroom.
Not bad for a crappy motel in the middle of nowhere. In fact, the room, upon reflection, was pristine. Too pristine. Like it had been cleaned with fire and bleach.
I stared at my muddied, tear-stained face as steam crept into the edges of my reflection.
God, my hair…
I sniffed, hating my momentary vanity, hating the reason for my horrible appearance more. But I lifted my chin, refusing to be ashamed. I bore the marks of my struggle. I’d survived certain death in the woods, and I would continue to survive, starting with cleaning off the abuse I’d suffered.
I tugged the tie out of my ponytail and finger-combed the ragged waves. The edge of a crumpled leaf here, a bit of gravel there. I fingered a tiny twig and thought of the one that scratched my thigh on the forest floor when Jesse stripped me.
Jesse, ever-present and always watching out of the corner of his eye, made no move to touch me. So, for a minute or two, I pretended to be back home, getting ready for bed.
I wrenched on the faucet, grabbed the face soap and a washcloth beside the sink, and went to town scrubbing my face. I scrubbed behind my ears, my neck, until the foam turned pink. The splash of cold water left my face tingling and felt so good I sighed with pleasure before opening my eyes. The girl staring back at me still looked weary, but at least her skin shone clear.
I flinched when Jesse’s reflection reached for mine, but he was only after a toothbrush and toothpaste—this time. I watched him cover his toothbrush with ice blue paste until he set the tube down in front of me and nodded at another brush.
I’d never been so happy to see a generic disposable toothbrush in my life. To rip off the plastic wrapper, squeeze paste onto the translucent bristles. I scrubbed my teeth and tongue until they burned with minty freshness. I brushed until blood no longer laced my spit. Jesse snatched the bit of plastic from my hand, tossing it on the counter.
His impatience terrified me as he ushered me into the shower. He grabbed another thick bar of white soap, two washcloths, and stepped in behind me.
Pure heaven in the form of hot water pelted my head, cascading down my grimy skin. I studied the pristine tiles and sparkling white grout until my eyelids fluttered closed under steam and spray.
Jesse shoved me out of the way just as the shower got good, handing me my soap and cloth while he doused his hair and scrubbed his skin raw.
Over and over again, I rotated the soap in my hands inside the cloth, until a decadent lather dripped down my forearms. I placed the soap on the shelf and inhaled the crisp, clean scent saturating the fibers.
Jesse’s selfishness became my reprieve. I scrubbed my weary limbs with utilitarian vigor, eyes closed, lathering the length of my body. The woods, the blood, the urine, the smell of defeat, the pain of their bites, the stink of fear—I dug my nails in under the cloth and scratched all the scents free.
Until Jesse pressed his soapy body to mine.
Like the first time all over again. Him and me trapped in a bubble.
He pulled me under the spray and rinsed us off, giving me a thorough soak. Then I felt a dollop of crisp-smelling shampoo crown my hair.
He rubbed the shampoo in roughly, then I scrubbed my nails over my scalp before rubbing my fingers from roots to ends, loving the tingle. Again, the water fell. By the time he’d put creamy conditioner in my locks, I felt like a pig prepared for slaughter. He could’ve crushed my skull in his hands. I wished he would when he bracketed my face and helped the water sweep conditioner from my hair.
Too intimate.
Too close to the part where they took everything from me.
The press of his skin to mine, the curves and indents of his imposing body, the hardening flesh nudging my belly. Hot shame to rival the water flushed my skin. I knew his body. Somehow, his hands sliding down my back to palm my ass felt familiar.
Manny’s hands are familiar. Remember him?
Even the panting breaths scraping my nipples against his chest turned me on. But they also revealed something strange, something I remembered from the woods.
This wasn’t right. His heart beat against my breast, outpacing my own with alarming speed.
Inhumanly fast.
He fondled my ass cheeks with one hand and rubbed my pussy with the other. He found me wet and unwilling and ashamed.
I opened my eyes and swallowed.
“Please don’t do that.”
“I like the sound of you begging, witch. Beg me again.”
I met his gaze. His eyes were impossibly dark, no way they should be that big, that glassy black and bottomless.
“Please.”
“Please, Jesse,” he corrected.
I thought I might hyperventilate. “Please, Jesse….”
His right hand gripped each of my breasts, taking turns squeezing them so hard they swelled.
“Please, don’t—”
“Liam sent a text.” Vaughn’s voice sounded just before he ripped the shower curtain open. “Found some food and he’ll be back in a bit. But I want something sweet right now.”
Jesse sighed and gave a ‘go ahead’ gesture. His eyes sparkled with curiosity.
Vaughn planted himself against my back. Surrounded by the aroma of clean skin, Vaughn’s stench of sweat and cigarette smoke overwhelmed me. He anchored the back of my head to his shoulder.
Just before he bit into the artery at my throat I glanced sideways and glimpsed his teeth.
Not just teeth. Fangs. Long, hooked fangs slid out of his gums like a snake’s. Those vicious spikes had no business in a human man’s mouth.
No!
I screamed. He lowered his head. The pearly razors slid into my shoulder—so sharp, I barely felt them—but black and red blots of terror flooded my mind.
Frenetic flashes, snaps of pain, wails for mercy.
Vaughn’s wails of pain. Vaughn’s wails for mercy. Something from the past, something shoved deep inside, something licking the tears from my—his face.
It hurts! Stop, it hurts! It hurts!
The voice echoing in my head unleashed a tormented wail that built to a fever pitch.
Stop! Stop!
My skin tore.
It hurts so bad! Please!
A spike of pain impaled my insides. The voice shattered against the surface of my mind. Broken.
Stop!
I didn’t know if Vaughn’s voice, or mine, boomed in my mind until he roared and shoved me into Jesse’s waiting arms. Jesse responded by smacking Vaughn on the side of the head. I surprised myself by clutching Jesse’s slick body, my fingers trembling in the hair clinging to his waist.
“I fucking told you to chill. But you wouldn’t listen.” Jesse gripped my face and twisted my neck so he could inspect the bleeding.
“What are you?” Dazed, I fingered my fresh wounds with trembling fingers.
One thing to think they’d bitten me in a fetishistic fervor. But to see Vaughn’s teeth, blue eyes gone black, to hear that agonized wail still throbbing between my temples—
“You didn’t tell me she could do that shit, Jesse. She fucking saw.”
I hadn’t seen so much as felt what had angered Vaughn. Even now I couldn't make heads or tails of anything but the pain.
Vaughn shoved by us to monopolize the water. Jesse could have fooled me into thinking I had an ally, if he hadn’t pulled my fingers away and licked the blood weeping from my fresh puncture wounds.
“Kill her.” The chill in Vaughn’s voice made me shudder. “We don’t need her. Liam’s bringing something to eat, and I guarantee, it won’t be able to wiggle inside your brain like that. Creepy witch shit.” He dunked his head under the spray and shook his head, hair flying out like the pale Golden retriever I’d had as a kid.
Something to eat sounded more and more like code for someone to eat. And somehow, I’d sped up the ticking clock on my remaining life.
I wiped tears from my face.
I must still be delirious. Blood loss. Hunger. That’s gotta be it.
How else to explain thinking I saw snake teeth and blooming, predatory pupils and lightning fast reflexes? How else to describe all this witch talk? I could’ve burst out laughing if I weren’t wracked by despair. A man who got hard at the prospect of raping and killing people found me creepy?
“No. No, you don’t understand. It’s not all bad,” Jesse said. “When we were in the woods, when I tasted her, and rode the wave—”
He stopped short, shaking his head as if freeing himself from a trance. He recalled that night in vivid detail. I knew because I felt the evidence slide against my stomach, wet and hot and so solid, my pussy clenched with shameful lust.
“I just need to break her in,” Jesse mused. “You’ll see.”
My eyesight faded in and out of focus, from high to low definition without warning. My hearing, too. Like a zombie, I lifted my hands and rubbed my ringing ears. I couldn’t drown out Jesse’s effect on me. His body so close to mine, his mind so open to mine, we practically shared the same skin, the same throb between our legs. The same hummingbird-fast heartbeat. I wanted sole ownership of the space inside my limbs and mind, I didn’t want to share with him. Yet, I couldn’t stop his easy penetration. I couldn’t control the way he slid inside me.
The shower felt like a fall into the ocean now. I clenched my toes against the shower floor, like I could anchor myself to this world.
My cousin Nora died and was carried away by the current. Since that day, I’d avoided anything more than a dip into any body of water, save the shower. Nora let her feet off the ground and the world swallowed her whole.
I’d promised myself that wouldn’t be me. I’d never let the current of my emotions sweep me away. But now, I envied Nora. She’d died quick. Mine would be a slow, sinking death. Even when Jesse lifted me out of the shower and tossed me a towel I still felt the water surrounding me. My body sinking, my soul tilted back like an open mouth, choking on the flood.
6
Still dripping, Jesse dropped his towel, then tore mine away. He advanced. I retreated, until the bed connected with the backs of my thighs. He halted any illusion of escape when he grabbed the back of my head and pulled me flush to his body.
His mouth opened, but I didn’t see his teeth. Instead he revealed his tongue, sliding the muscle across his teeth the way he’d done my pussy in the woods. My clit throbbed and I clenched my thighs around the vibrating nub. I recalled his warm breath on my mound, his tongue rolling against my clit, parting my nether lips with one torturous lick. My heart thundered in my chest, mimicking the budding pressure in my sex. Already, my inner lips swelled till they touched, barely trapping my juices.
He revealed his teeth with slow, sensual precision, drawing my gaze to long, sharp fangs amidst straight pearly whites. I should’ve been terrified by the pointed tips, but fascination froze me. The gentle curve, the rounded ivory glow of the enamel glistening with saliva—I knew his fangs were sinister instruments of pain, like the cock rising between his legs.
But they could give me pleasure, too. Such painful, agonizing pleasure.
They were beautiful, like the rest of him. I’d felt his fangs sink into my thigh, experienced the caress of his tongue over my fragile skin. At the height of his arousal, his pupils completely blown, I couldn’t deny the truth staring me in the face. His fangs were real, his fangs were deadly, and part of me wanted to feel them drawn against my skin again. My desire and Jesse’s desire had begun to bleed into each other. I braced for his bite.
But he didn’t bite me. He bit his own wrist and then shoved the torn flesh against my mouth, smearing my lips with spicy ambrosia.
“Drink it. Drink it all down. I want you strong enough to take every inch of me.”
My brain rifled through disgust, fear. Why did he keep forcing me to do this? How would drinking his blood make me strong? Could I not take his monster dick without his drugged-up blood?
I abandoned worrying about diseases and STDs. If something penicillin could cure was the most dangerous thing in the room, I’d have been lucky. Jesse had made sure luck abandoned me in the woods.
My body vibrated with pleasure. I swallowed, gulped, inhaled him. I drowned in the taste. And his words made me continue when I would've stopped.
He wanted me strong enough for what came next. I needed to be strong to escape. So I chugged mouthfuls, and when he winced, I sucked harder still.
When I came back to myself, I had his wrist pinned to my mouth with two trembling hands, slurping at the closed vein. I licked him clean while the veined pulsed against my tongue. His addictive blood should’ve come with a razor blade, a mirror, and a rolled twenty-dollar bill.
“Good girl,” he rumbled. The spongy head of his cock left damp trails against my belly. “You’re ready now. I can smell how much you need my cock, baby.”
He licked his lips like I’d turned into a juicy steak with arms and legs. The world shuddered, then expanded.
My high-definition sight coincided with a jolt of adrenaline-flavored lust. Jesse tested the waters by sliding an insistent hand between my legs.
I swayed when he impaled me with two fingers. The rough penetration hurt, so unlike the gentle caress I’d come to expect whenever I felt a hand on my pussy. But the pain mixed with a glaze of pleasure, coating me inside, easing the way for his thick fingers. I rocked into him as he curved them into the sweet spot nestled at the roof of my opening and melted over his palm.
The juicy sounds of shame gave me away even when I tried not to moan. I failed. A miserable failure, staring blankly at Jesse’s broad chest, while he wrenched a gushing orgasm from me, inspired by his bruising probe. My panting breaths echoed in my ears and my hips pumped, searching for more. I became a raw nerve, desperate for shelter, and clinging to the source that stripped me bare.
“Please…”
Stop.
“Please fuck you?” Jesse grinned, a demon with black eyes and needle-sharp fangs. “You beg so pretty, baby. How can I say no?”
He pushed me onto the bed, wrapped his hand around my throat, and despite my legs tucked into my chest, he settled between my thighs. I pushed one hand against his belly, while I used my other hand to scratch the fingers gripping my throat. He reached between our bodies and his fist closed around his shaft. I didn’t feel his fist, still several inches away from the head, pulsating like an electric toothbrush against my cunt.
Too big. You’re too big!
“Please, don—”
He shoved himself into me so hard the world went red from the shock.
Somehow, until the moment he breached my body, I’d hoped I could escape him. Or sway him to be gentle.
My body had accepted Jesse wouldn’t be gentle, but in my mind, the girl I used to be cowered in the corner of the cage. She cradled visions of making love to Manny. She cradled visions of happiness. Kisses and smiles, the touch of a lover’s hand on her cheek. The soft moan as he slid inside her.
The happiness I’d once felt in a man’s embrace floated away like ash on the wind.
The beast gripped the bars of
the cage, bared her teeth, and drank in the pain. She lapped the rough impaling like water, unconcerned with what the girl lost. Survival, power, lust. She wanted Jesse, wanted more of his strength because his strength made her stronger. She rattled the cage, shaking it back and forth like a metronome, like one body driving into the other. And the bars bent the tiniest degree. She roared in victory, loud enough to drown out the girl’s cries. Loud enough to draw me out of pity and back to my quest to stay alive.
When I came back to myself, I heard the swift slapping of Jesse’s flesh against mine. My own animalistic growl of frustration. Sweat and come joined us.
My sweat. My come.
I had no control of my body. He’d wrenched my orgasm from me like he had everything else.
Oh God. How could I? How could I come for him? What’s wrong with me?
The beast growled and drew into a crouch.
You’re not in control now. But you will be. Watch. Wait. Grow strong.
I would watch. I would wait.
Jesse growled above me like a demon, grinning when I sobbed from the pain, but spread my legs farther.
His blood sang on my taste buds, and he filled me, not just from the hips down, but from the inside out.
The sprawl of his hair gave the illusion of a curtain as the wet strands parted from the force of his thrusts. Vaughn would be out of the shower soon. Liam would come back. What then? Had he let me live just long enough for them to have a turn tearing me apart?
I can’t let that happen yet. They’ll kill me. They’ll make me beg to die before they do.
Harder. Faster. I stared up in horror, beaten and bruising from the inside, losing oxygen, losing my mind, losing it all. A rush of heat raced over my skin and a flood of juices coated Jesse’s cock. God, he struck so deep inside, filling me to bursting, smacking my swollen clit with his pubic bone. I arched, my breasts throbbing, nipples pebbled into painful points. The pressure built like a tidal wave, starting between my legs and crashing into my primitive mind, obliterating my body with crest after crest of sensation.