by Amo Jones
He would feel everything, without being able to do anything at all.
I walk around to see the spot and take my dad’s advice, then pressed the point of the blade against the fatty flesh behind his neck, and pushed down slightly. It didn’t take much pressure to penetrate his skin because my blade was very sharp, so when I saw the bubble of deep red blood surface, I sunk it deeper until it felt as though I was diving into room temperature butter.
Dad chuckled, looking up to his men and a couple of soldiers. “See, told you he was ready. He’s a Romanov, it’s in our blood.”
He puffed on his cigar as I continued to dig into flesh.
Lesson one was the easy part.
It was what happened in lesson two that really fucked me up.
“Get up,” I order, launching off her body when I realize what I’m doing.
I stand ahead of her, my eyes rolling down her body. She stands up and my eyes go to all the blood on her face, her clothes, and her hand. Something is bleeding beneath her shirt.
I clench my jaw, hooking my index finger under the edge of her shirt and yanking her into me. She pulls away, hitting at my hand. “What are you doing?”
She’s feisty, it’s kind of cute. The same way a baby cub is. She’s cute now, but make no mistake, she could probably rip your heart out. Ironic. Funny how shit slips into the puzzle so effortlessly when life happens.
I fist her shirt this time and yank her into me forcefully. Glaring down at her, she looks up at me, and I’d bet my bottom dollar those eyes would work on every man walking this earth—but I’m not every man, and she’s fucking annoying me. “Don’t piss me off, Cub, that’s warning number two.”
She continues to search my eyes. When the moment passes, I yank her shirt up, pulling my phone out of my pocket with my other hand. Shining my phone onto the gash on her hip bone, I bite my lip and drop her shirt.
“I’ll fix that.” I go to walk back to the house, but I sense she’s not following so I turn back around to face her. “You have three seconds to move, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder, Cub, and trust me, it won’t be in the way girls like to be thrown over my shoulder.”
She walks toward me slowly, and I see a flinch of pain flash over her face. “Then what?” she asks as we make our way back to the house, getting closer to everyone who is around the pool. Her questions are getting on my nerves.
“Then,” I start. “You’re going to get your ass back downstairs and stay there like I fucking said so. If you don’t, I’ll fucking kill you. You feel me? Or do I need to force the feeling on you? Maybe rub my dick on your face for a bit, until you get how fucking serious I am…” Her body stills, her face draining of any color. There’s a long silence that stretches between us. When the song “X” by 2 Chainz starts playing and I see she’s not going to reply, I continue toward the house.
Once my feet hit the concrete patio that surrounds the pool, I turn back to Beat, my eyes boring into hers. Why the fuck hasn’t she answered me. I would have expected her to have more fire…
“Yo! Man! Get your bitch back downstairs. Got some impatient girls waiting on that dick…”
Beat flinches at X’s words. I lick my lips and then slowly make my way back toward her, my eyes eating up every single inch. She gulps, I catch the movement, then grin.
“You didn’t like that did you…?” I bring my hand up to the side of her cheek and she slowly pulls away from me, but I run my index finger down her soft cheek anyway. I think I’m starting to fucking love how uncomfortable I make her. I take the last step until her tits are pressing against my chest. I skim my lips over hers, grinning more. “My bitch, that has a bit of a ring to it, hmmm?” Even as I say the words, they leave a foul taste in my mouth.
The side of her lip kicks up slightly, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was about to snarl at me.
I lick the bottom rim of her lip. “Except you’re not fucking mine, never fucking will be. Now, move your shit into the house.”
I grab her wrist and yank her toward me. As we walk past the handful of people who are near the pool, my eyes meet X, who is watching us closely. “Be back in a beat.”
Loud claps of laughter break out just as we make it through the opening of the formal room and toward the long hallway. There are a couple doors that lead off down here. One is another spare bedroom, another opens out onto a basketball court and gym room, the other is the entry way to my bedroom and studio. It has stairs that lead up to the studio in my room. Yanking the basement door open, I continue to drag her down the stairs, her wrist so fucking small in my hand. Once we’re back at the bottom, I eye the broken window. “Until that’s fixed, I’ll be down here with you.” I shove her onto the bed and go into the bathroom, opening up all the cupboards until I come across the first aid kit. Never fucking been in here before.
Going back to the bed, Beat rests against the headboard, drawing her legs up to her chest.
I toss the first aid kit onto the bed.
“How does this end?” Her eyes come to mine.
I let the silence drift peacefully between us, with nothing but my eyes eating up hers. When she can’t take the eye contact anymore, she pulls away, shifting her head to look to the side.
“You think I want you here? Because I fucking don’t.”
“Well why haven’t you killed me or let me go?”
I sit back down, opening the kit and tossing out some antiseptic liquid, wipes, and a bandage. “What makes you think I’ll tell you anything, Voron? Hmm? And what the fuck makes you think I’m not going to kill you? Maybe I just love the thrill of teasing my prey before making a feast of them.” And I do.
“That’s the second time you’ve called me that,” she whispers, her eyes darting to my hands as I rip open the wipe. “Are you going to tell me what it means?”
I chuckle. “No.” Then dab some of the liquid into the cloth. Grabbing onto her ankles, I yank her down the bed until she’s flat on her back. I need to stop calling her that. I need to contain all of the rage I feel bubbling inside of me and threatening to surface.
I gaze down at her. “I kinda think I like this view…” Yeah, fucking aye. Sex is a good distraction for my wrath.
She freezes.
I laugh, crawling between her legs and up her body. Her eyes stay on mine. “What are you doing?”
“Whatever the fuck I want, or have you forgotten, you’re a captive here?”
“Why are you cleaning my wound if you’re just going to kill me?” she asks, not even pushing my hand away as I roll her top up. I pause when I’ve rolled it enough to display her gash, but then keep going anyway, just for fucking shits.
“Because I don’t feel like calling in the doc if it gets infected, because I’d rather you die at my hands than by an infection, and because I fucking am. Don’t take this to heart, Printsessa, I don’t fuck with your kind.”
After dropping some disinfectant on her, I rub the lotion over her gash and then put the clean gauze on it. It’s too fresh to do anything else right now and will need to wait a day or two.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I fish it out, seeing Dad flashing over the screen.
I answer it but point to the bed. “Don’t fucking move, I mean it.” Then I turn around and press the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”
“How’s the problem going?”
My jaw clenches as I tilt my head over my shoulder slightly. He’s a shit fucking liar. “We’ve had a couple of small mishaps, but nothing I can’t handle. Why?” I drop my voice to a shallow whisper. “You gonna fill me in what’s going on here?” So am I.
There’s an audible pause over the phone, then Dad’s tone clips out. “No. Just make sure you keep her there.”
“Why?” I grunt out again, fucking over playing babysitter.
“Because it’s an order, Syn. I’m sure you can play with her for a bit.”
I turn around to face Beat, who’s now back to sitting position and leaning against the wooden headboar
d. “Yeah, I don’t think so. She’s a little too breakable for my taste.”
“Christ, Syn, I don’t mean…” he sighs. “Never mind. Just, keep her there and try not to kill her just yet. Not until I see you.” He hangs up, so I push my phone back into my pocket. Man, I’m a little insulted by his assumptions.
I walk across the room and go into a small storage room that’s beside the bathroom. Pulling open the door, I go through the duffle bag that’s in there, pushing away the Glocks and the army blades and pulling out a set of cuffs. I stand and fling them around my fingers, walking back toward the bed. I smirk at her as her eyes connect.
“I’ve decided I don’t wanna stay down here, so here’s the deal. I’m going to cuff you to this bed, and I will be back in the morning—how does that sound?”
She doesn’t answer, her eyes still on the cuffs.
I need to conceal the rage, take hold of it and not let it penetrate me. Years, I spent years waiting on this. Conceal.
“If you need to use the bathroom, now would be a good time to tell me.”
She doesn’t answer again, her eyes closing. Why the fuck is she so submissive? Or maybe she knows she’s going to die, either way, she annoys me. I like a submissive girl who knows when to be submissive. If a chick is like that constantly, it just dries out the juice.
I go back to her, snatching one wrist and clamping the metal cuff around it. Her eyes finally open, her thick lashes fluttering up as her eyes come up to me.
My hand slows as I fastened one cuff to the small poles in the headboard, my cock swelling in my pants.
I lick my lips, grinning, my eyes on hers. Then my thumb goes to her lower lip. “Well, damn, princess, with these lips around my cock and those pretty fucking eyes peering up at me like this, I might just stay down here.”
Her eyes slant away, and it’s then that I notice for the first time that there’s a spark behind her eyes. Just fleeting, and it’s gone before I can over-analyze it, but it was there. Maybe she isn’t as submissive as I thought.
I put my leg over her waist, straddling her as my knee sinks into the mattress. I secure her final wrist onto the other side of the bed and then look down at her, tilting my head. Her eyes are straight up, right on my cock.
My hand flies to her throat and I clench it roughly until I feel the organ click under my palm. “Don’t fucking ask for things you aren’t prepared for, Cub.”
Her eyes fly up from under me. “I didn’t ask for anything,” she whispers out huskily, or maybe it’s because of the lack of oxygen. I loosen my grip. Is she taking the piss right now? Gazing up at me like she wants me to fuck her into next Sunday. I could. I would. She’s way the fuck above average, which just infuriates me more. She must be fucking with me.
Let me test it.
I lean down, my legs coming between hers. “Maybe not with those lips, but you did with those eyes. Watch it.”
She licks her lips again. “I don’t mean to. I—”
I shove my knee up, pressing against her clit. “You what?” I rub her up and down. “You wanna fuck my cock, Cub, maybe fill that void in your chest with my nine-inch dick?” My hand comes to her tit and I squeeze. “The thing with a nine-inch cock, is it leaves a nine-inch hole. Not just in your cunt, either…so I’ll say it again.” Then my hand flies to her chin, my finger clenching her cheeks as I squeeze roughly until her lips tighten together. “Don’t fucking ask for shit you can’t handle. You think you can handle a man like me, Beatrice? You have no idea. I make the boys you bounced around with before look like child’s play.”
I swing off of her and storm up the stairs. I need a fucking drink, and I need my dick sucked before I end up riding this little toy right into the Bermuda Triangle and she disappears forever.
“Pick It Up”—Dr Dre
My heart is still pounding in my chest hours after he slammed that door and left. He’s so stupidly intense. He reminds me of a Pitbull, sets off unease throughout my entire body because of his unpredictability, and is as messy as my mind. After tossing and turning for a couple more hours, I find my mind slipping deeper into unconsciousness…
Blood hit my nostrils like a metallic river of lead rushing right in front of me.
Ash particles float across my flesh, flying up to the burning ceiling, before it opens up to reveal stars in the dark night, glistening down on me. Heat crashes into me as the flames that eat up the wood of the house threaten to lick over my skin.
A silver blade flashes across my face, but not in a threatening way, and that same metallic smell drifts past again as it moves past me. A dark trench coat steps out from the shadows, with a smudge of green, dancing in the distance.
“Where am I?” I ask, confused. I look up at the people who were standing on my street. My street?
Is this my street?
Yes, this is my street, because that’s Bindi’s house not far down. I remember Bindi.
“How can she just forget minutes after?” a voice asks, and I don’t recognize it.
Should I?
“Shhhh,” was the next voice that sounded.
Goosebumps break out over my skin all the way down to my toes.
Who am I?
I shoot up from the bed with sweat pouring down my temples. The dreams I had came often—and were often the same. When my pops was alive, I tried to ask him about them, because I’d relived the same one over and over again for as long as I could remember. So vivid, so colorful yet so dull at the same time. Pop’s would say that it was my mind mixing my fear with reality. We gathered it was about the house fire my parents died in, but that’s not how it happened. The neighbor, who was my then best friend Bindi’s aunt, was outside having a smoke when she saw the smoke and flames coming out of my parents’ window. She ran into the house and took me out, but by the time we were out, the house was already going up in flames. My pops continued to ask me if I remembered anything from before that or after, and I always said no. I remembered Bindi, but even so, the memories of her were very broken, as they would be. Who remembers every detail they had at age eight? Not me.
There’s something frightening about the dreams I have, and every time I wake up from them, I have to sleep with a light on. It would unexplainably send goosebumps over my skin. I don’t know what was worse, not knowing what happened before and around that time or maybe knowing.
“Nawwww.” Lenny tosses a bottle cap onto my lap and I shove it off. “That’s not why your old man is doing this.”
I lean my head back on my chair, stretching my legs wide out in front of me. “Yeah well, I got nothing else.” After putting Beat back downstairs, I kicked everyone out of my house but Lenny. I needed space to think. To decipher what’s going on.
“So, I am confused, though. He wanted you to kill her initially?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. You can never be too sure with him, he’s too smart. He makes a move without consulting anyone or even hinting at said move. Man.” I lean forward, running my fingers through my hair. “It would be so much fucking easier if I could just eighty-six her and move on. My old man is being sketchy when it comes to her.”
Lenny doesn’t answer me so I look up at him. “What?”
Testing, testing…
“She’s weird, right?”
And there it is. Lenny doesn’t like anyone, and he treats people like shit mostly, unless they mean something to him. That little pause he did at the top of the stairwell when he came down to get me didn’t go unnoticed. He’s starting to grow a softie for her.
“That’s cute. Real fucking cute.”
He looks at me, confused, but before he can ask me and pretend he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, my phone rings in my pocket and I pull it out to answer, my eyes flicking back to Lenny briefly.
I answer it. “Syn…”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me she’s still breathing.”
I shuffle, cranking my head. “For now, and are you going to tell me what I’m doing here? She’s a
witness. Can place all of us there. With anyone else, this would be an open and shut decision. Maybe I should just drag her ass to The Pen, then it’s done. I got more important shit to do.”
Pause. Take the bait, old man. Give me a slip-up.
“Listen to me, Syn, you are not going to kill this girl. Not yet.”
I exhale. I can feel my patience wearing thin, and that never happens with my old man. “What do you need me to do? What’s got you so fascinated with her?”
He doesn’t answer. “I’ll be around sometime soon. Make sure she’s still there.”
Then he hangs up.
I drink the rest of my whiskey, pour another, and then drink that one too.
“What’d he say?” Lenny asks, laying back on one of the sunbeds, his eyes looking directly up at the sky.
“I need you to make sure Katiya doesn’t come over—and if she does, tell her I’m away and the girl is out of bounds.”
Lenny doesn’t answer so I kick his chair. He wakes up. “You hear me? Make sure no one goes down into that basement…”
Lenny watches me carefully. “Fuck,” he whispers, slowly getting up. “She about to meet the reaper, huh? Shame. She seems like a nice girl and she’s hot as fuck—”
“Lenny, shut up and do as you’re told.” It’s no surprise he thinks I’m about to go in there and put a bullet between her eyes. I’ve done it before and I’d do it again.
“Is she though?” he asks again just as I reach the open doors that lead back into the sitting room of the house.
“No, fucker.” I shake my head, disappointed in my right-hand man losing his grip. I need to play with her a bit, dig deep and see why the old man could be so fascinated with her.
A rough hand slams over my mouth and my eyes pop open.
“Scream if you want, no one can hear you down here…”
I gulp. I won’t scream, I won’t give him the satisfaction of doing that, so I remain quiet, my eyes slammed shut.
The bed squeaks under Manik’s weight, and he slowly climbs on top of me, one hand still firmly over my mouth.
