by Kaia Bennett
“Let me go.” I tried to pull free, but he didn’t budge. He tightened his grip and sniffed the air.
“You covered your smell, the blood.”
“I didn’t want to stain the sheets. Hate making a mess when I’m on my period.”
“Probably for the best. We wouldn’t have gotten any sleep.”
He looked like a leopard, spotting a lone antelope.
“There’s that look.” His voice pitched low. I caught sight of his semi-hard cock straining his jeans. “Even now, there’s always a hint of fear. The struggle when you want me to stop. The moment when ‘don’t’ is on the tip of your tongue. But, you know you can’t stop me. You’re not strong enough. You’re not fast enough. You’re mine.”
I bit my bottom lip as he settled me into a straddle over his hips.
“You can’t see that look if you kill me.”
“I’ve seen that look my whole life. I can make someone feel terror any time I want.”
He snaked a hand up my back, grabbed a fistful of hair and wrenched my neck back. I stared at the ceiling, digging my nails into his chest.
“This is different and you know it.” I swallowed and my esophagus strained with my neck craned at an awkward angle.
“Only thing different is your lifespan. You’ll die eventually, Evie.”
“You don’t want to kill me.” I rocked my hips forwards, so deliberate and smooth he growled against my neck. “You don’t want me dead.”
His tongue caressed the galloping pulse in my throat.
“Why? Because you’re special? Is that what you think you are to me? One sad fuck in the woods and you have me tamed now?”
I said nothing.
“You think we’re going to go steady now? That I’m your boyfriend” His laughter rumbled against my jaw. “You want a letterman jacket, baby? Want me to meet your parents?”
The ceiling wavered in my blurred gaze.
“Yes, that’s it. I’ll take you home in time for Thanksgiving.” Jesse gave his hips a hard thrust to meet mine. “You’ll wear a scarf around your neck to cover the mark of my bite on your pretty throat. Mommy and Daddy will love me, I’m sure.”
“Stop.”
“Stop,” Jesse mocked.
“Don’t.” My voice wobbled and the first of my tears fell.
“Don’t. I love your voice when you beg. Beg me some more, baby. Tell me how much you don’t want it.”
My flow escaped the tampon, like he summoned the blood.
I raised my hand to his throat. My fingers didn’t reach halfway around his neck.
I hit him with a shock of agony, of deep-seeded love torn out by the roots of my heart. My mother and father hugging me. The scraped knees. The birthday presents. The Christmases. Nora. My baby brother TJ, cradled in my arms like a precious doll. His fingers wrapped around mine. My feet beside TJ’s in the sandy beaches we’d visited, first bigger than his, and then smaller. My brother and I huddled together while Mom read us bedtime stories. My Dad hugging him after the school play, the similarities between father and son so striking and beautiful. My mom combing and braiding my hair.
This struck him the hardest. He had a mirror image memory of such tenderness. Caring fingers sifted through his locks, his smaller body cradled in an embrace he thought would last forever.
I showed him love and then I tore away the emotion. I replaced the expansive feeling of safety with the prison of fingers digging into his shoulder. A looming shadow shoved him into his seat, forcing him to stare straight ahead.
When we came to, the flat of Jesse’s back hit the bed. I released his throat and braced my arms on the mattress. His glazed stare focused on me after a moment, his mind no longer trapped in the other world I’d forced on him.
“That look,” I said, mocking his earlier thirst for my fear. “There’s that look.” I licked my lips, like I could taste his confusion.
“Witches,” he murmured, but despite the curse my kind must be to his, he smiled. “I thought I told you to stay out of my head?”
“I thought I told you I couldn’t control it.”
“You’ve gotten better since we met.”
“Since you kidnapped and raped me,” I corrected. “Since you forced me to watch others die, to kill. You made a monster."
Jesse tilted his head. “Did I?”
“Don’t you see? You’ve already killed me. If you let me go, the girl who returns to my family is not the same girl you took from them.”
I trailed his jawline. He ran his fingers through my hair. I held my breath and waited, but it seemed he didn’t have the urge to twist the waves around his fist with painful dominance.
“You didn’t keep me because I’m prey. You kept me because I’m a predator like you. Not as strong and not as fast. But I am your equal. I should be free.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t flinch or jerk away when I traced his jaw. Only the subtlest of movements gave him away, but triumph zinged through me when he tilted his head and rubbed his cheek against my palm.
“Leave no one behind to tell the tale.” He closed his eyes. His words had the weight of a mantra, something he’d been told thousands of times. “There are rules, witch. There are always rules, no matter how fast or how strong you are. Can’t out run them. Can’t break them. Even freedom has a price.” In his mind, the shadow at his back—the one from my dream—loomed large, but his need for me drew Jesse out of the cold and into the light.
“There’s no tale to tell.” I used my voice to soothe him, my dulcet tones caressing his cheek when I kissed his smooth skin. “There’s only you and me and a chance to break from this without bloodshed.”
“Vaughn?”
Fuck. Panic prickled up and down my spine. Vaughn gave the impression he’d been born to break rules. He wouldn’t break them for me. He’d push Jesse to kill me. Maybe he’d get bold and try himself. With Vaughn in the picture, my gruesome death was certain. Whatever rules Jesse spoke of would be music to Vaughn’s ears if he could only get me underneath his knife.
“Vaughn wouldn’t have to know.” My voice shook but I kept my hands steady. “Tell him you killed me. He’ll believe you.”
Jesse’s brow furrowed, then he jerked his head away from my hand. He sat us both up and stared at me with contempt and remorse.
“Vaughn’s like a brother to me. My stupid, petulant little brother.” Jesse grinned even though his steady gaze hinted at my impending defeat. “You’d have to be something epic to make me turn my back on the code, on my brother, after losing Liam.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressed my body against his whispered in his ear like a siren. “I should hate you. I should want you dead, or cursed. You know what you’ve done to me, what you’ve turned me into. You’ve taken everything from me.”
I lifted his hand and placed his fingers over the pulse in my neck. I pulled away from our embrace far enough to watch him process the speed, the way my heartbeat galloped at his touch, and my hitching breaths. I rocked my hips again and his eyelids fluttered. His growing hard-on bucked against my swelling pussy lips.
“Even though I want to hate you, you still do this to me. Vaughn hates that more than he hates me. Your brother’s jealousy is stronger than your loyalty.”
I closed my eyes and rifled through memories and fantasies to show Jesse the truth of Vaughn’s desire.
Jesse tied up and beaten. Me at Vaughn’s mercy, dying a horrible, bloody death in the bowels of some hidden white space.
Vaughn screaming, “This is how you lead!”
All my potential wasted and Jesse relegated to the number two spot in Vaughn’s crew. I showed him this, and then, I showed him what I could give him if we stayed tucked away, alone, without Vaughn’s influence.
The ecstasy he’d wrung from me and tossed to Vaughn and Liam like scraps, would be all his. He’d get things from me he didn’t dare ask aloud. I’d take him, break him in my own way. I’d show him what prey felt when the predator loomed, someth
ing he could never feel on his own. I’d show him sweetness and terror. I’d give him everything I had in me, every scream, every drop of blood I could spare.
All I ask in return is you let me live. Then, let me go. I’ll show you so many things, baby, so many things you can’t even imagine. We’ll fuck and feed and die and live, until you can’t move, can’t speak in any tongue but moans, can’t inhale without searching for my scent.
A strangled cry escaped Jesse’s lips when he imagined my teeth clenching the skin just under the glans of his sensitive cock. I kicked up the intensity of his fantasy, made him feel my breath and the slickness of my tongue on him as I lapped the broken skin. My moan echoed in his head and put him over the edge.
He wrenched himself out of the vision with sheer willpower then turned and tossed me onto the bed quick enough to give me whiplash. I thought for a moment he’d try to fuck me, but he turned his back.
Should I go to him, press him further, or give him space?
I watched him for clues. His back expanded and contracted with exertion. I couldn’t see his face, but his labored breathing told me I’d struck a nerve. The balance between dominance and submission had never been broached for him. He’d always been the hunter, never the hunted. I gave him a strange pleasure. I gave him a taste of fruit he convinced himself he could never bite into. The shadow at his back must’ve told this great leopard he could only have the illusion of roaming free.
He swept his hair over his shoulder and put distance between us by stomping to the window.
“You’re not telling me things I don’t already know. You saw where Vaughn comes from when you rifled through his head. He was forged in hate, it’s his natural element. But he’s still family, the family I chose. So was Liam.”
“And you feel safe with family who would turn on you if they were strong enough?”
Jesse snorted and turned away from the lake view to give me a sidelong glance. “Safer than I feel with a witch. I can take Vaughn easily. It’s you I need to watch my back with.”
I gritted my teeth and stilled my shaking hands by clenching the ruffled sheets. “Maybe it’s the kidnapping, rape, and murder you need to change. Maybe you’ll feel safer when you’re not mowing defenseless people down for pleasure.”
Jesse didn’t look ashamed. I doubt he knew shame as an emotion. But he seemed to process my pain as something other than amusing or arousing.
“I’m a vampire. I can’t be anything other than what I am. We kill. We fuck. We bond over both. Like you and your family sitting around that table. You tear into dead things, things you ripped out of the ground, and mowed down to put in packages. You’re a predator, too, or so you say. You should understand.”
“My mother taught me not to play with my food before I ate it.” I clenched my fists against my building rage.
This time, Jesse gave me a broad grin, all teeth and malice. “Humankind has done its fair share of torture, rape, and murder, witch. Humankind has done it all and perfected it a thousand times over. For all your human talk, you’re not human, Evie. Go back far enough and you’d be burned at the stake. Strung up on the rack. Or maybe you’d have been tucked away on some plantation in slave’s quarters and treated to far worse than you’ve been dealt. At least I’m not forcing babies on you. All that is what humanity has to offer your kind, and no blood to heal your wounds. Humans are a disease, an infestation. And we’re the cure.”
“How can you say that like the fact that humans do bad things justifies what you’ve done and who you’ve hurt? You used to be human yourself, didn’t you? You and your mother? Your father? Would you want them to die that way?”
Jesse broke out into that rich laughter that rattled my bones with fear and made me clench my thighs with hunger.
“What about Liam?”
Jesse’s mirth dissolved.
“I saw who he was before he was attacked. Changed. Whatever you call it. He was kind. He was in love with a pretty girl named Anna. He was happy. The Liam I knew was a perverted version of that person, but he hadn’t lost all of his humanity. He died just as scared and helpless as your victims. He died the way I will die, if you let Vaughn have his way. Liam didn’t want to die in pain and neither do I.”
Finally. I’m getting through. Finally.
Jesse’s gaze wavered and his eyes bloomed that distinct and terrifying black. I thought he’d kill me then and there when he balled up his fists. Every movement he made, from the downward tilt of his chin, to the tension in his shoulders, left me shivering in fear. I held his gaze but I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had a heart attack before he struck me.
“I’m going out.”
I blinked, thinking I’d misheard. “If I were you, I’d lay back and enjoy the amenities without trying to run away. There’s security cameras and the house is on lockdown unless you know the code.
He grabbed his backpack off the floor.
“I’ll be back tomorrow. Vaughn won’t be back for a couple of days. You’ll have my decision before then.”
I didn’t have much hope, but what little I had bloomed in the dark. Maybe I’d won my freedom. Maybe I made him think beyond his own cruel pleasure.
I dared to hope, until he paused on his way to the door.
“If you ever bring up Liam again, I’ll let Vaughn carve his portrait into your back.” His voice went flat. The air around him crackled like ice. If I touched him now, I knew I’d find a steel wall guarding his desires and secrets.
And just like that, the spell is broken. I went too far. I pushed the psychopathic and weirdly fragile vampire too hard.
I blinked as Jesse sauntered out of the room and down the stairs. What did my mistake mean for me now?
I stumbled to the bathroom, brushed my teeth with a trembling hand and too much toothpaste, because my numbed fingers couldn’t squeeze the tube right. I looked in the mirror and wondered if next week I’d be looking at my reflection or if I’d be dead.
At least you’ll die with clear skin and glossy hair, a girl in the cage quipped. This time, the first one appeared, the first girl who looked so much like me I hurt when I thought of her. I didn’t get that luxury. No vampire blood ever made it into these veins. We weren’t special predators like you, Evie.
When I got out of the shower, I skipped the tampon, lathered up with lotion and pulled on tight, torn jeans and a gray tank top. The feather necklace glinted in the light when the sun hit the gold. The bracelet I’d taken as a reminder mimicked the necklace, the gold in the cat’s eye gemstones twinkling.
I hated what the necklace represented, but I stroked the pretty detailing. I traced the bumps and tapers of the feather, the grooves along the edge. I thought of how Jesse had ripped the necklace off his victim and then placed the same chain around my neck while I recovered from mortal wounds. I didn’t dare take the thing off and risk his wrath.
It has to be unlucky.
I clenched the chain, ready to rip the links from my neck and toss the broken pieces away. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to.
In the kitchen I slathered bread with honey mustard, Swiss cheese, lettuce and tomato. I wondered all the while where the fuck the food had come from.
Everything is fresh, like it’s been bought recently. When had he managed to get a fridge stocked and with whose money?
I’d begun to believe Jesse and his crew were slumming. Or maybe Jesse had been slumming. Maybe Vaughn and Liam were the strays he’d collected, the family he built while he ran away from invisible cages. He had money and access to things like a cleaning service and a grocer. If this house had been seized during a kill, he’d have been forced to leave before discovery.
The curtains were open, everything looked pristine, and he had food ready for his human—witch—when we arrived in the middle of the night. Jesse wasn’t in any hurry to leave this house. And maybe his care for me meant he wasn’t in any hurry to kill me, no matter what Vaughn said.
I curled up on the couch after I ate, turned on the T
V, and dozed. I convinced myself I’d changed Jesse’s mind about my fate. I needed to be careful, but if I wiggled a little deeper into his mind, I’d be able to sway him. I’d be his true equal, my voice louder in his mind than Vaughn’s or the shadow figure dwarfing him in his guarded memories.
I startled to wakefulness and struggled to a sitting position. The TV had gotten louder. I searched for the remote, thinking I’d laid on the volume button by accident.
I felt cool plastic on the side of my face and the swift lick of a tongue on the back of my neck. I sobbed out a breath before going cold and still with terror.
“Honey. I’m home,” Vaughn whispered in my ear.
21
I hadn’t heard a door open. I hadn’t heard my life slip away as I dreamed about saving myself, but I knew Vaughn’s presence meant I would die.
“Made yourself nice and comfy, huh?” Vaughn turned my face with the remote. I met his crazed blue eyes, his malicious grin. “What’cha been up to, witch? Giving our great and powerful leader some special attention?”
He tapped the remote against my pursed lips, then shoved the end into my mouth. My lips stretched wide around the plastic. I tried to escape, but he grabbed my hair and pinned my head to the back of the couch.
He forced the remote to hit the back of my throat and then pushed farther, triggering my gag reflex. His pupils dilated while watching me choke on the phallic symbol. My eyes flooded with tears. He didn’t pull free until I’d swallowed three quarters the remote and almost retched. I gasped in a deep breath, relieved when he tossed the remote and in the next heartbeat, my breath froze in my lungs when I wondered what would come next.
I swiped drool from my lips and tears from my eyes. With a cough I said, “He’ll be back any minute.”
“Oh you know everything about him and his schedule now, huh?”
Vaughn hurdled the back of the couch in an easy hands-free motion and landed next to me. He slung his arm around the back of the couch, dropped a heavy hand on my shoulders, and pulled me close. He smelled like sweat and sex, death and nicotine. And malice. A bouquet all his own.
