Skin (44 Chapters #1)

by B. B. Easton

  I walked over to the cages by the window. “Who are these guys?”

  Knight leaned back on the bed, resting on his elbows, and said, “That’s Igor, Banana, and Sweetie.”

  “Let me guess. Igor is the iguana, Sweetie is the snake, and Banana is the canary.”

  “Banana is the snake because she’s yellow, and I named her when I was like, seven. Sweetie is the parakeet. She was my mom’s but I brought her up here because Candi’s dumb ass kept leaving her cage open and the fucking cat almost ate her. And yeah, Igor is the iguana. She’s a little bitch.”

  Girls. They were all girls. Little helpless girls that he put in cages and fed and protected from danger.

  Wanting to lighten Knight’s shitty mood, I turned and said, “Hey, I have your Christmas present! I thought you might want to go ahead and open it since I’m gonna be doing family stuff all day tomorrow.”

  It worked. Knight smiled and said, “Okay, but you have to open mine first,” as he hopped up and disappeared into his closet. A second later he emerged holding a big cardboard box.

  We sat on the bed next to each other, and Knight handed me his gift. Of course, instead of wrapping it Knight had drawn a huge, lifelike, tattoo-quality bow on top of it in black marker.

  Talented bastard.

  I opened the box and pulled out a fuzzy, super soft leopard print blanket. It was almost as soft as Knight’s head. Almost.

  Knight said, “I found it at Trash. It reminded me of your fuzzy purse. And you’re always cold, so it can keep you warm when I’m not around.”

  Awwww.

  I thanked him and gave him an exaggerated kiss, then unfolded the blanket in one big motion and wrapped it around my shoulders. It was heavenly.

  Reaching into said purse, I pulled out a much smaller box, which, of course, was decorated to the nines. Pier 1 had put me in charge of holiday gift wrapping—probably because it kept me from rearranging all of their displays—so Knight’s present was dripping with stolen wrapping paper, ribbons and bows.

  I’d ordered his gift online the day after I lost my virginity. When Knight finally broke through all the packaging he looked at me with an unreadable expression.

  “It’s to replace the one I ruined,” I squealed, barely containing my excitement. “I ordered it from England!”

  Knight held up the white T-shirt with the logo for the band The Last Resort silkscreened across the front and smirked.

  “Thanks,” he said, “but I like the original one better.”

  My face fell. “Oh, I thought I got the same one. Sorry.”

  “You did,” Knight said, reaching underneath his pillow. “But I like this one better.” With that, Knight produced the blood-soaked shirt he’d laid underneath me on Colton’s bed the week before.

  “Ew! Knight! You fucking sleep with that thing?! That’s so gross!”

  Knight ignored me as he held a particularly large rust-colored stain up to his nose and inhaled deeply.

  I covered my face with my blanket so he wouldn’t see me blush. How was it that something so nasty had me feeling so giddy? Knight pulled the plush fabric away from my face and said, “I love the shirt. Thank you.”

  “I love you,” I said, wrapping the blanket around us both.

  We tumbled to the bed where we cuddled and kissed and kissed and cuddled until my boots ended up on the other side of the room, my jeans ended up around my ankles, and Knight’s fuzzy blond head ended up between my legs under my equally fuzzy leopard print blanket.

  He asked me if I trusted him before he went down on me. I thought it was weird, because the last time he’d asked me that was when he took my virginity. I didn’t regret a second of that—even if it did still hurt to pee and walk up stairs—so I nodded and let my legs fall open to him again.

  Of course, by the time I felt my orgasm build I had forgotten all about Knight’s little question. I had practically forgotten my own name. Until I heard the unmistakable sound of a butterfly knife being flipped open, that is.

  Shit!

  I felt the knife bite into my inner thigh, but before I could even register the pain Knight’s mouth was there to soothe the sting as his fingers took over the fucking. The bottleneck of opposing sensations—pain, pleasure, desire, fear—competing for the attention of my brain resulted in a full-body short circuit. I convulsed like a live wire and saw sparks behind my eyelids.

  As I recovered, Knight rolled on a condom and crawled back up my body. There was blood on his mouth, which I was getting used to, and madness in his icy eyes.

  When Knight pushed into me my pleasure-pain index was only heightened. It hurt, but I was getting used to that too. Couldn’t get enough of it, actually.

  I tore our shirts off, needing to feel his skin on my skin. His bedroom door was wide open, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything that didn’t involve being devoured by Ronald McKnight.

  Knight sat up on his knees and pulled me up with him so that I was straddling him in the middle of the bed. His vampire mouth claimed mine, and the taste of every bad thing on his tongue made me crazy.

  Reaching between us, Knight swept a finger along my fresh cut and smeared a dot of blood on the tip of my pert, pink nipple. I watched as he sucked it off, and I came all over again.

  Once we’d regained consciousness and were pulling our clothes back on, Knight said, “Promise me that you’ll tell me if I hurt you. Okay? Or if I’m freaking you out. You have to fucking promise.”

  “Honestly,” I said, fastening my jeans. “Since you asked, I am a little freaked out that you let the canary watch.”

  Knight swatted me with his new T-shirt and laughed, “It’s a fucking parakeet.”

  He shrugged the shirt on and walked over to the cage. “She can talk, too.” Tapping the wire frame, Knight said to the bird, “Sweetie, say hi to BB.”

  Squawk. “Go fuck yourself.” Squawk.

  Knight beamed with pride.

  I giggled. “Does she not like me, or is that all she can say?”

  “Oh, she hates everybody,” Knight said, opening the cage and letting her climb onto his finger. “I taught her w—”

  The next thing I knew the air was filled with white fur and yellow feathers and the sound the world makes as it crashes down around you.

  Candi’s cat must have tiptoed in through Knight’s open bedroom door when we weren’t paying attention. All I knew was that one minute Knight was happy, and the next minute he was kneeling in the center of his demolished room, in a bed of broken glass and World War II medals, holding a tiny, lifeless bird to his cheek.

  Knight’s face crumpled into deep ridges of pain as he pulled his knees to his chest and rocked back and forth. He sobbed and rubbed the bird’s motionless body against his face the way I imagine someone would cuddle a recently deceased child. The sounds coming from him pulled stinging hot tears from my eyes. I wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but I had gotten pretty familiar with that particular time bomb, and I knew it was too late.

  As Knight stood up and stormed down the stairs the countdown timer in my mind read 00:00.

  Boom.

  We’re all dead.

  The sounds of Knight shouting and Candi screaming and furniture smashing and glass breaking shook the walls. It echoed up the stairs and bounced down the hallway and filled me with dread. Especially when another clock came to mind. The one on the VCR that said it was almost four.

  I had to get him out of there.

  I followed Knight’s trail of destruction through the house. My heart pounded with closed fists against my ribs as the riotous clamor of things breaking and Candi’s screaming got louder. Where was I? How did I get there? When would I wake up?

  I stepped into a two-story great room at the back of the house that looked like ground zero. The only things left unbroken in that room—including the two people inside—were the floor-to-ceiling windows that flanked the two-story stone fireplace.

  It was a nightmare. A living nightmare. Knight was sw
inging an iron fireplace poker like a baseball bat, smashing the glass panes out of every single built-in cabinet on the left wall of the room. Candi was screaming and shielding a nearby curio cabinet full of dolls with her body.

  “Do you love this?” he shouted, smashing another cabinet door. Reaching in and pulling out some porcelain trinket, he yelled, “What about this?” just before chunking it at the wall beside her head. It must have been a music box because when it shattered a few sad, errant notes filled the air.

  Candi covered her face and screamed at him to stop in that high-pitched girlie voice of hers. Knight ignored her, shattering another cabinet and pulling out a large wedding photo in a crystal frame. His forearm was bleeding.

  Holding the picture out toward his mother, Knight took a few steps closer to her and screamed, “Do you even love him? Or do you just love his money?” He smashed the frame on the edge of a bookcase.

  Taking two more long strides, Knight stopped directly in front of his mother’s face, holding the poker in his right hand as blood trailed down his left. She recoiled and turned her face away, still shielding the little glass cabinet full of bullshit.

  “You don’t fucking care about anything but your pills and your stuff,” he seethed, looming over her. “You’re not a mother. You’re not even a fucking person. You’re a piece of shit gold digger. That’s all you’ve ever been. Pussy for a paycheck.”

  “Knight!” I screamed. “Stop it!”

  Just as Knight turned his head toward me, a figure came barreling through a doorway next to where Candi was standing and tackled him. The two men fell to the ground, but Knight got the upper hand immediately. Candi disappeared through the doorway as Knight pummeled the shit out of a middle-aged man in a business suit.

  The two rolled around through the broken glass until Knight managed to coil his left hand around the guy’s tie. Using the strip of navy blue silk as a leash, Knight yanked his head off the ground and clocked him across the face with a bloody right cross. The blow landed so hard I thought the bastard’s head was going to spin all the way around.

  Then I heard the click.

  Standing in the doorway was a tiny, shaking woman, holding a tiny little gun, with the tiny little hammer cocked all the way back.

  “Get the fuck outta my house,” she said, all traces of her pageant mom persona gone.

  Knight turned around slowly, breathing hard, his stepfather unconscious beneath him.

  “Get out!” she screamed, mascara pouring down her face. “Get out!”

  “You’re choosing him?!” Knight shouted, still panting. “He fucking beats you! He fucks other women! And you’re choosing him?!”

  “I chose him! I married him!” Candi screamed, her heavy diamond rings clinking against the steel in her trembling hands. “You’re the one I didn’t get to choose!”

  I ran to him.

  I didn’t care about the gun.

  I didn’t care about the glass.

  I didn’t care about the moaning, writhing, bloody stranger on the floor.

  I ran to my man.

  Throwing my arms around his shuddering, adrenaline-fueled body, I formed a human shield against those ugly, hateful words.

  I let him know that somebody had chosen him.

  I had.

  That night, while Candi and Chuck were at the hospital getting his nose reset, I helped Knight move out. I couldn’t believe Chuck didn’t press charges. Knight mumbled something about having dirt on him. Whatever it was must have been pretty bad for a pompous asshole like him to take a beating like that and keep his mouth shut.

  I offered to clean up all the broken glass while Knight packed, but he told me to leave it. He said Candi would just have the maid do it in the morning. Like it was a normal thing.

  We filled the back of Knight’s truck with his weapons, his clothes, and his two remaining pets and headed over to Peg’s house. She smiled when we got there and said she was happy to have him. I believed her. Peg needed a new son almost as badly as Knight needed a new mom.

  See Knight? Peg chose you, too.

  The next day I invited Knight to spend Christmas with me. In my house. With my parents. He kept his pant legs rolled down and his Lonsdale hoodie on—probably to hide his braces as well as the three-inch gash in his forearm that really needed stitches—but even without his full skinhead costume it was still pretty fucking awkward. My parents warmed up after a few mimosas though, and Knight seemed to relax a little too. I showed my mom some of the drawings he’d done for me, and delighted in watching him squirm as she praised his work.

  When I kissed Knight goodbye in the driveway that night, he said it was the best Christmas he’d ever had.

  I smiled the whole way up the stairs to my bathroom, where I stuck my finger down my throat and puked the whole day back up.

  January

  “But I want a tattoo!” I whined.

  “I told you the next time you sat in my chair I was piercing your clit. You’re sitting in my chair. I’m piercing your fucking clit.”

  “Can we do both?” I asked, batting my eyelashes.

  “Punk, I’m not tattooing a fifteen-year-old. I don’t care how much you beg. You don’t know what the fuck you want.”

  “Yes, I do,” I pouted.

  “You think that now, but I promise, what you want is going to change. If I had gotten a tat when I was fifteen I’d probably have the word skinhead written across my forehead right now.”

  “But girls mature faster than boys. I’m basically already eighteen in boy years.”

  “Ask me again when you’re eighteen in girl years.”

  Although I hated being told ‘no’ more than anything, the fact that Knight assumed that we would still be together in two and a half years made my little heart go all pitter-pattery.

  Knight handed me a shot of Southern Comfort. Damn, he was serious about this piercing. He didn’t bust out the shot glasses unless he wanted to get me numb.

  “Can I at least tell you about the tattoo?” I asked, accepting the whiskey with both hands.

  “Uh huh.” Knight’s back was to me, and he appeared to be sterilizing something pointy.

  I took a sip of the fire water, followed by two or three deep breaths, then declared, “I want a knight.”

  That got his attention. Knight turned around and looked at me with a furrowed brow, as if he wasn’t sure that he’d heard me correctly.

  “The knight,” I specified, “the one you said was going to be your next tattoo—I want that one.” Taking another gulp for courage, I lifted my left hand and tapped my ring finger with my thumb, right where a wedding ring would go, “Here.”

  Knight’s confused scowl slowly slid off, revealing my favorite smile underneath. Leaning forward he kissed me with that cute, freckle-faced grin and said, “If you still want that tattoo in two and a half years I’ll be the luckiest sonofabitch on earth.”

  He kissed me again, deeper that time, and my insides erupted in anticipation. The burn of the whiskey in my belly, the tray full of clamps and needles and gauze, the boy I loved telling me we had a future. Pleasure and pain. That was our thing. Couldn’t have one without the other.

  When Knight finally pulled away from me he had a full-fledged erection that I really wanted to attend to.

  But Knight had other plans. At least for the moment.

  Flashing me an evil grin, he asked, “Do you trust me?”

  Those were becoming my four favorite words in the English language.

  Before I was done nodding, Knight began removing my ripped jeans, tiger-striped tights underneath, and one of the new lacy thongs I’d bought with my Christmas money to impress him. I was cold as shit, and colder still once he wiped between my legs with an antiseptic towelette.

  Jesus. Was that what he did at work all weekend? Play with other girls’ pussies? I’d have to ask him about that later.

  Knight tinkered around some more at his station, then laid a square sheet of plastic wrap over my vag. I assu
med it was part of the piercing setup until Knight leaned over and licked my clit through the clear material.

  The fuck?

  I watched in awe as the area I thought was about to be impaled was lavished with pleasure instead. From that angle, with that lighting, I had no choice but to watch. Damn, it was sexy, and Knight wasn’t even touching me. His talented tongue flicked and sucked at my polypropylene-covered slit while his latex-wrapped fingers held the sheet in place.

  I finished the rest of my shot, let my head fall back, and gritted my teeth in frustration as he teased me. I needed more—something wet, something hard—something to get me all the way there.

  Suddenly, Knight’s mouth was gone. Then I heard a zipper. Looking down, I watched in rapt wonder as he stretched a condom over his swollen cock. Placing the head of it at my entrance, underneath the sheet of plastic wrap, Knight flashed me a salacious smirk. But he didn’t fill me. Instead he snapped off his gloves and put on a new pair from his station.

  I writhed against him, seeking some kind of relief, as he lifted the plastic sheet and clamped a delicate pair of steel tongs onto the left side of my hood. I winced and gripped the edges of the chair, thinking my tender, oversensitized flesh was about to have a needle shoved through it.

  But Knight continued his torment, instead. He pushed his latex-covered cock into me, maybe half an inch, before withdrawing, and massaged me through the plastic with his latex-covered fingers. I was agonizingly close to coming, but he just kept me there. Right where he wanted me.

  I’d been tortured in that chair before, but it was nothing like that. The anticipation drove me mad. At any given moment, I could be fucked or impaled. Which would come first? The pleasure or the pain?

  Just as I was beginning to consider hitting Knight out of frustration, Knight’s cock filled me to the hilt in one swift motion and my body gratefully detonated around it on contact. While I was busy cursing and coming, Knight tore off the plastic wrap and pierced me in yet another swift, fluid motion. The sudden pain caused all my muscles to tense, my pussy to squeeze even tighter, and heightened my orgasm to a level I never dreamed was possible.