"Okay?" he asked. Before I could reply, he remembered what I'd asked him and smacked me instead. "Don't answer that. I don't care."
There he was, my evil lover. My sick companion. My twisted soulmate. He gripped my hips and hissed as he pulled back and slid back in. It was tight. It was dry and the pressure on the unexplored area of my body made me screw my eyes shut and grimace as I tried to relax. I shuddered when Elias spat and a warm trickle ran down my ass to where he was inside me. It made things easier. It made things wet and added friction to an already burning atmosphere. I opened up, granting him access without strangling his cock and tearing me from the inside out. Elias gripped my hair and used his strength to shove my face harder into the wall as he fucked me. Finally, I could draw a breath big enough to stay awake and when I exhaled, it travelled on a moan I hadn't felt coming.
"Do you like it, Ashford?" he asked, kicking my feet further apart to hold me open for him. "Do you feel dirty? Degraded? Do you feel me owning you?"
I nodded. I squeezed my eyes shut and answered him, refusing to use my voice because I didn't want to hear us together.
A few hours ago I'd loved this man.
An hour ago I was innocent and I was devoted to him.
Now? Now I hated him and I remembered the goal I'd set myself when he'd locked me in the dungeon.
I wanted to ruin him with all the things I'd taught him to embrace.
I wanted to ruin myself because I couldn't let him love me. I couldn't love him back. I had to end this.
The revolting anger I had for him, for us, for everything our connection stood for, tore through my body and made me reach between my legs.
"That's it, Ashford," he grunted, slamming into me and making me cry out in pain. "Good little princess."
I cried again, allowing the tears to fall. A princess. I was a princess. A dark princess of evil and deviance.
How had I got here? I'd just wanted to serve champagne in a loft.
He'd done this. He'd brought us here. He'd destroyed me.
I came. My fingers stilled over my clit and ripple after ripple took me on wave after wave of tortured release. I pled with Elias to stop, but he'd listened to my earlier instruction and he refused. When my knees buckled and my pussy clenched and clamped down on my fingers, Elias wrapped his arm around my waist and lowered us together. My knees landed in a pool of blood, my hands gripped the dress on the ground beneath me, and Elias' hand on the back of my neck forced my face to the ground. I could smell blood. I could feel death. I could sense the evil around us and I came again, crying out as the tears began to fall and my body betrayed me like the man fucking it into extinction.
He was a beast. He pounded me over and over again, until the stone grazed my cheek, and the blood stained my cheeks and traced the corner of my mouth as I tried to breathe.
My husband was lost. I'd encouraged him to become someone I didn't know or trust and he'd gone. He couldn't feel his fingernails cutting my skin. He couldn't hear himself calling me a filthy harlot. He couldn't taste the blood as he wrenched my arm behind my back and bit into it. He couldn't feel me leave him. He couldn't feel himself push me away. He couldn't feel the reason why I needed this, to sever the trust I'd formed for him. To burn all bridges that would have led to a future for us.
I was a fucking queen.
It was about time I took the crown away from the man who had destroyed my belief that we could run the empire together.
I knew exactly why she was doing this. I knew what she wanted from me. I'd spent my life learning how to spot manipulation and that's exactly what my Ashford was doing now—even now—with my cock buried in her ass, my teeth cutting her skin, my words cutting her like a blade to her heart.
She thought she could make me feel guilty. She thought she'd finally feel guilty if she felt something. She thought she could hate me, herself, us, if she allowed me to ruin her and take my pleasure. She hadn't accounted for her own pleasure. My stupid Ashford thought I couldn't feel her come for me; she thought I was oblivious to her ecstasy when the truth was I lived for it.
I knew how to deal with guilt. I knew how to cope with self-loathing. I knew how to switch it off and summon it when I needed it. I'd learned how to compartmentalise. I'd learned every trick in the book. Including hate. I really fucking loved hate.
Trixie could hate me all she wanted for what she thought I made her do. My feisty Ashford was what I loved most.
Hate wasn't all that far away from lust. Lust wasn't far away from death. Death wasn't far from love...and love wasn't far from hate.
The cycle had begun.
Trixie's body ate me up. Her ass swallowed my cock with thrust after thrust, loosening for me, tightening for me, claiming me while I claimed her. She would come again. She would give me that feeling again, when she arched her back and little tremors rippled along her spine; when she gasped and choked and tried to scream past the suffocating pleasure; when she pushed back against me and pulled away from me; when she clamped around me and tried to push me away. I'd let her final orgasm extract mine. I'd let her wallow in that guilt too.
She came gloriously, slamming her fists to the ground, gripping and twisting the blood-sodden dress beneath her as she tried to turn away from me. There was no escape. I held her hips and stilled us both, allowing every clench of her ass to carry us both closer to euphoria. My body shook, my fingers dug into her; my cock jerked as I held back...until the last minute.
When Trixie reached her high, the stars within her grasp, I let go and shot my cum into her, feeling each spurt as if I were drowning in her body.
Trixie was motionless, the sounds of her heavy breathing the only evidence she was still alive, as I eased out of her with a grimace.
"You can't hate me," I said, smoothing her hair down so it travelled down her back.
"I can and I do."
"You can't escape."
"I will."
"You're risking your life."
"It's already over." She sighed. "I killed a man."
"It's one life, Trixie, in a world where he would have gladly killed you for a few seconds of pleasure."
"Could he have done that in here?"
"So we should have kept him here? Fed him and cared for him, kept him warm and safe, until he was ready to die?" She said nothing. She wouldn't even look at me. She was disrespectful and I was done being patient. "We're supposed to let another criminal stay on the streets while we keep him here because you wouldn't do what needed to be done? Because you'd happily fuck the man who killed him but wouldn't kill him yourself and let that man, your husband, fuck you and love you the way you deserve?"
Trixie kept her head turned away from me and a thousand icy shards penetrated my soul at her rejection. Is this what Ambrose had foreseen? Was this our fate? My duty would lead her to fulfil her destiny and cut me off from the future I'd earned?
"Fine." I stood up and pulled my trousers on. "If that's the way you want to play it, Trixie, I'm game. But remember, I've had three decades of practice and centuries of influence."
"Okay."
I wanted to beat some respect into her. No, I wanted to beg her not to do this. I wanted to fall to my knees and be the weak one begging for forgiveness. I hadn't wanted to force her to commit murder, but what else could I have done? Agreed that he deserved to live? Defied my father and grandmother? Failed the only mission I'd been given after a lifetime of training?
I couldn't let Trixie see my weakness. If she did, I'd be history and wouldn't leave anything behind to influence future Blackwood's.
"Okay."
It was all I could say, when a thousand other words and phrases and pleas swam around my mind.
I left Trixie behind and exited the cell. She'd think I'd abandoned her. She'd think I'd left and wiped her pain from my memory. I didn't.
I walked the hallway and stood in the doorway of the next cell. I listened to her tears and allowed them to chip at my heart. I felt her pain and prayed I could take it aw
ay by absorbing it for her. I listened to her throw up, clean up her parents' killer and, finally, I watched her leave the Sector in her bloodstained wedding dress, stumbling over the cobbles as pain crashed into her like waves against the shore.
What was I supposed to do now? I stood outside my bedroom with my hand on the door.
This wasn't supposed to be how the night ended. I looked down the hall into the dark shadows of the next corridor, where Elias chambers were held. He was always in darkness. Even the hallway that led to his bedroom deterred people. It shut people out. It encouraged them to run. I shouldn't have ignored the warning I'd felt when I first met him. I shouldn't have drawn him. I shouldn't have given Ruby a reason to bring us together. She’d known that morning, that I belonged to Elias. She knew that that one night had been enough to trigger all the seeds she'd spent years tending to. She'd known that we would grow quickly, develop instantaneously. Did she know our rose bush would be overrun by thorns of hatred and confusion? Had she foreseen my rejection? Had she anticipated Elias' multiple personalities standing against each other in conflict? Just how much of this did we have control over? Was any of it real? Was any of it ours?
Shaking my head, I stepped into my room and closed the door behind me. I crossed the room immediately, to the easel that had been set out sometime while I was in the dungeon. I'd never painted before. I'd always stuck to sketchbooks and old pencils stolen from the shop. I sat at the stool in front of the easel and looked past it out of the window. I didn't know which brush to choose. I didn't know which paint to select...so I stood up and tore the tattered and frayed dress from me, placing it on the windowsill against the backdrop of the estate at night. I could hear the music from the dining hall as the family filed out onto the terrace below. I could see the faint golden glow from candles and chandeliers. I could smell the night bloomers, with the faint tinge of cigar smoke. I could smell the lingering scent of the feast we'd been served, and the stench of sex and death that clung to my skin and weaved its way around my hair, half in the braid Ruby had plaited, half of it ripped from the pattern as I murdered a man and then demanded my husband fuck me.
Everything about this situation was perfectly disgusting. It was the definition of elegance and the culmination of centuries of evil with nobility as an excuse. It was everything I'd longed for, everything I'd come to love, and all the things my instincts told me to hate.
I woke up slumped on the easel and sat up wearily, rubbing my eyes. The sun was just creeping up from behind the trees on the far end of the estate—as far as could be seen with the naked eye, at least. I yawned, stretching and cracking my aching neck.
What I should have done was climb in bed and sleep away the rest of dawn. I should have tried to forget the pain lancing through my body from the assault I’d begged for on my wedding night. Even if I’d cried, it would have been better than the emptiness I held that had settled where hope once resided.
I felt nothing, and it was far more worrying than the betrayal I knew I should feel; the love I should have felt slip away; the happiness I lost my grasp on with the guilt I should have felt for killing a man.
I looked down at my hands. They were stained with blood and the cuts from the glass wept as I clenched my fists and opened them again, expecting them to look different. I expected they’d look like they’d taken a life, that I’d wake up with his name tattooed on my skin, a tally mark branded deep in my flesh—I had no doubt his wasn’t the only life I’d take in this world.
How could things go from so promising to catastrophic? I was living a disaster, in the middle of a war I had no power over, and I couldn’t escape.
But what if I could?
I glanced out over the green lands of the estate, kept safe by shadows that would gradually fade over the next hour.
I had an hour to make my escape and emerge from the grounds in the sunlight, as the underground slinked back into their hiding places, their façades in place, and I’d be safe for twelve hours. Maybe more. I could do this.
I stood from the stool and winced as I pulled a pair of trousers on—loose fitting in case I had to scale walls and run from the dogs. I hissed as I pulled a t-shirt over my head, making the pained sound again as I tugged a hoodie on. I didn’t think about where they’d come from. Perhaps Elias had another training session planned. I thought about the morning in the barn, about the man who professed his love for me inside a stable. I thought about all the multiple personalities and all the promises—and deceit—each one held. How could I think all of them could love me enough not to have made me do this? How could I think I could love them all, unaware of the evil they possessed?
I snuck from my bedroom, dodging the worn floorboards so I didn’t wake anyone up. I didn’t even know who was here, who slept next door or opposite, or who held any of the rooms in the quarter I’d been gifted when Elias first brought me here.
What was I doing?
I must have had a fucking death wish. Perhaps murder will do that to someone who hadn’t wanted to do it…not really…but Elias was right, I had made the move of my own accord.
No. I shook my head. I’d been manipulated. My emotions had been used against me. The love and pain I felt for parents I’d never known had been handed to me as a weapon my mind wouldn’t let me refuse. I descended the stairs quickly, forcing my feet to move fluidly despite the pain in my back and legs…and ass. God, how it hurt. It hurt more the next day than it had at the time, and I wondered how long I’d feel the physical reminder of Elias inside me before it faded like my happiness here.
The front door wasn’t locked. What was the point when you had dogs on guard who had no doubt been trained to kill?
I was insane. I didn’t know what security measures had been taken here. Surely a grand estate—one of four in the centre of a city drowning in poverty and deprivation—would need more than dogs to keep it safe. More than men with guns who wouldn’t be afraid to pull the triggers—if they made it in time.
I didn’t have time to think about that now. I had to try. I had to at least attempt to break free so I knew I hadn’t lost all control.
Even as I made my way out of the house and across the lawn, I felt the magnet pulling me back and I turned to look up at the dark house. Elias was asleep in there somewhere. My husband was in his bed, sleeping peacefully and dreaming away the torment I knew he carried with him every day. I didn’t have time to care about him, either. I didn’t have time to worry about how much this would hurt him—one of his personalities, at least…I hoped. I hoped he’d feel something other than relief, because I knew I would. Despite us only knowing each other for a few months, I’d never felt so at home. A single tear fell from my eye, hinting at a feeling of loss and grief for something that was never really mine, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything, but the need to hurry up and make my escape.
I didn’t know my way around the estate. I didn’t know where I was going, who else was here, and what waited for me the deeper I got. I couldn’t remember what waited for me outside, where I’d end up if my feet landed on the ground of freedom—some sort of it anyway…again, I hoped.
It was quiet. Eerily quiet. It was fucking terrifying, navigating in near darkness and hoping someone hadn’t got in like I was desperate to get out. I didn’t want to be killed here. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be whilst looking up at the blue sky with the sound of water trickling in the distance. I wanted to die near the sea. How far away was the ocean?
I was stalling, I knew I was. I was stalling because, deep down, I didn’t want to go. Maybe I wasn’t leaving forever. Maybe I just needed a little time and space, something I hadn’t been granted since I’d climbed in the back of Trace’s car with my grandma, what felt like a lifetime ago.
I passed the garden and stepped into the woodland. I’d estimated I’d have an hour before sunrise, but I’d never expected it would feel like I’d been walking for days to get to the edge of the estate, and I was still no closer to the walls. Or ga
tes. How was this place blocked off from the rest of the prison? I struggled over rotting tree trunks, fought my way through blossoming bushes of wildflowers and stumbled over jagged rocks as I navigated a natural path through the forest. I could see a clearing ahead, wide open with blue skies in the distance and birds flying overhead. I walked a little faster, ignoring the tightness in my lungs, the heaviness in my legs and the ache that made me pine for my Elias.
When I emerged from the woods, I paused, my feet scraping the sandy gravel and spraying a cloud of dust to smother me. I wafted it away and coughed, waiting for my vision to return. It must have been a mirage. Perhaps I’d been walking for days and my mind was trying to convince me I’d found what I was looking for.
A town.
A village.
It looked like something I’d seen in a medieval textbook in school. The tiny little one story houses with thatched rooves and tightly packed mud and stone blocks, were arranged in a circle around a village centre. It was so small I could make out the entire village from the edge of dense greenery. There was a market in the centre; not the kind that erected daily for trade—money was of no importance here. The residents wore simple clothes; beige linen trousers and white cotton shirts and blouses. They smiled as they perused the stalls and swapped one thing for another. Bread was exchanged for vegetables. Linens were swapped for knitted blankets. Terracotta pottery was traded for handmade pans. People smiled and conversed; they talked and laughed with ease; they basked in the morning sun as children ran around them and played together on wooden bicycles, or with little hand-carved chess pieces.
What was this place?
I worked to count the houses. Six in the inner circle, twelve in the middle circle, and twenty-four in the outer circle. Forty-two houses. Forty-two families lived here—one large family, in a simple, self-sufficient village with running water pumps, vegetable patches and happiness.
It poured from the communal area in an inviting warmth. I took another step, and another, and another, until I was at the edge of the market, staring at the apples in the basket on the end stall. The entire village froze, and all eyes fell on me. I wasn’t wearing beige and white; I wasn’t a member of this community. I wasn’t part of this world within a world within a world.
The Uprising (GRIT Sector 1 Book 2) Page 2
