by Skye Warren
I struggle in earnest now, using all my strength to push him off me. Because it’s terrifying to see him this way, because it hurts worse than anything. Because I think he wants me to fight. I can almost hear his voice in my head. That’s what monsters do to pretty little girls.
And pretty little girls are expected to fight.
I yank and pull at his arm, trying to dislodge it. I twist my hips, fighting to close my legs. None of it moves him. I’m trapped by his hand and his cock. Trapped by the relentless pain.
He could end this quickly.
He’s waited so long to do it. Minutes, hours. Years. He could have come inside me and been done. That’s not what monsters do. He’ll make this last for just as long he wants it to. I could be held underneath him for eternity, feeling his cock spear into me, rubbing me raw.
His expression is torn, somehow both despairing and smug. I must seem like some kind of sacrificial lamb to him, a sacrifice on the altar of his wickedness.
It’s how I feel as the pain consumes me, threatening to tear down my sanity. I think I might really be losing it. My sanity, my consciousness. I almost wish I could black out, so I wouldn’t have to feel this. He could fuck my limp body until the end of time, and I wouldn’t feel a thing.
The bed rolls with every thrust. The scent of our combined musk fills the air, along with the metal of my blood. It feels like I’m adrift on an angry ocean, and he’s the storm bearing down on me. He batters me without a care for how I’m ripped apart and torn.
He closes his eyes against whatever he sees in my eyes, focused on his own pleasure now. He’s in his own world, fucking me, using me, drenching his cock with me again and again.
His breathing is harsh, surrounding me. I listen to him breathe in and out, the sound pained. Tortured. Does this hurt him, fucking me forever? Or is he always hurting, the caress of my inner flesh a temporary reprieve from a lifetime of suffering?
His eyes fly open, and I see in them so many things—possession and hunger, anger and fear. He shouts into the huge room, and it echoes off the walls. He jerks roughly, losing his rhythm. Then again.
Then he stills, pushing and pulsing against my hips, his whole body trembling.
He stares into my eyes the entire time, letting me see everything inside him, a vortex that sucks me in deep. His cock flexes as he bathes my sex with warm come. It stings the newly stretched skin, and I flinch as we both hold ourselves rigid and locked.
The second the last pulse of his cock ends, he wrenches his entire body away from me, pushing off the bed.
It’s strange to breathe easy after being constrained for so long. Strange to have nothing on top of me, between my legs. I can’t move, though. I’m collapsed on the bed, just wreckage left behind.
His hand is shaking as he runs it over his face.
He gives me one last look. Full of accusations. And longing?
Then he stalks from the room, leaving me behind in a puddle of my own arousal and blood.
Chapter Seventeen
I wake up back in my bedroom to the sound of knocking. I only vaguely remember leaving his room and wandering through the third floor. There were so many of them. I actually got lost again, confused about which floor I was on—expecting to circle back to where I started only to discover new rooms. Ivan was nowhere to be seen, so when I found my bedroom again, I took a shower, fingers careful against tender skin, and then climbed into bed.
Voices drift up the stairs, and I force myself to sit. The room spins for only a few minutes, and then I gingerly place my bare feet on the cool wood floor. I find my clothes in the dresser, along with some new things I know I didn’t buy—a pink dress with a white pinafore. I finger the silky-smooth fabric, a strange pang of longing in my chest. He must have ordered Luca or someone else to get my clothes from my apartment. That means I won’t be returning for a while—probably never.
I’m limping by the time I make it down the stairs. Ivan fucked me with the intent of hurting me, and he succeeded. Through the open door, Blue’s low voice confers with Ivan, while Lola shoots questions at them both. Why didn’t you call me when you found her? Was she okay? She might have needed me.
Bless her.
Somehow she took it into her head that we were friends, years ago. She started caring about me, and then I couldn’t help but care back. I tried to be like Ivan, cold and ruthless. At sixteen, cast out and alone, it had seemed like a romantic ideal I could try to reach.
Try and fail, anyway.
I care about Lola. I care about the rest of the girls. I even care about the Grand, which is a building.
And most of all I care about Ivan.
Luca is standing in the hallway a few feet away from the entryway. A respectful distance, but one where he can still hear everything. He watches me approach in silence, taking in my limp.
“What a good guard dog,” I purr when I get close.
His eyes are hooded. “Did he hurt you?”
He already knows the answer to that. “Why, are you going to defend my honor?”
That earns me a dire look before he stares straight ahead.
The room falls silent as I step into the doorway. I straighten, hoping to hide my soreness. Ivan’s gaze finds me first, snapping to me as if he knew I’d been there. He looks like he usually does, rough but well crafted, his tailored suit caressing his powerful body. I would never have imagined those scars underneath, such a smooth veneer covering a rough underground. It mirrors the flash bang of Tanglewood itself, covering up a gritty underworld. Ivan stares at me, and I stare back—both of us reeling, I think, from what we did last night. What we shared. I gave him my virginity and he gave me honesty, but I think his gift was greater.
Lola breaks the silence, rushing across the room and flinging her arms around me. “Oh my God, we were so worried about you. Ivan called us when you went missing.”
I aim for a smile. “You know me. I always land on my feet.”
The worry in her wide brown eyes doesn’t fade in the slightest. “What happened last night?”
My stomach flips. I’m guessing she doesn’t know I tried to leave for good. Otherwise she wouldn’t be so happy to see me now. Something tells me I won’t be able to evade these questions for long. They want answers. Ivan will want answers.
I need to be seated for this. I’m already swaying on my feet.
Lola notices immediately and guides me to the sofa. “Candy. What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
I feel a little sick, thinking of telling them the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. The lingering soreness between my legs doesn’t even register in the face of this.
Blue is watching me with a hawklike expression, not missing a thing. I’m guessing he can see how I’m moving stiffly too. And Ivan…is Ivan. Stone-faced. Unreadable.
It’s like being in love with a statue.
Blue clears his throat. “Candy, I’m taking this threat against the Grand very seriously. We all are. We’re working closely with the police department, but we’re also conducting our own investigation.” His expression turns wry. “As you can imagine, it would be helpful if we could find him first.”
First? If they found whoever did this, the police department never would. They’d just find an anonymous body in the river six months later.
“The blood?” I whisper.
“Sheep’s blood,” Blue answers grimly.
I should feel relief. At least it wasn’t a person who had to die for that. But all I feel is dread, because there are sheep on Harmony Hills. He’d have easy access to it…
Blue comes to sit in the chair near the sofa. Lola is on my side, probably for support. I feel caged in, tensed. There’s nowhere to run. I don’t imagine Luca would let me leave anyway. “Ivan says you have a guess as to who’s doing this,” Blue says.
Ivan remains standing, leaning against a hutch, arms crossed. He doesn’t move in any way to acknowledge Blue’s words. He doesn’t even acknowledge me—just stares into my eyes.
I look down. Shit.
“Little one,” he says softly. I’d know that voice anywhere. I hear it in my dreams.
His cold facade cracks for just a second, letting me see inside. To how much he needs me to do this. To how much he cares about the Grand and the girls who work there. To how much he trusted me, that he called Blue to get this information from me—even though Ivan doesn’t want to believe it’s connected to my past. He doesn’t love me, and after what I saw of his body last night and how hard he fucked me, I think he even resents me. But he trusted me enough for this.
I take a deep breath. “I think the person doing this…might be from my past. From where I was before I got to the Grand. It’s a place called Harmony Hills. From the outside, it’s a farming community.”
“And from the inside?” Blue prods gently.
Lola hugs my arm tighter, a silent and strong witness.
I close my eyes. “From the inside, it’s a religion. Everything, from where you sleep and how much you eat is determined by how…by how sinful you are.”
The room has grown deathly quiet, almost as if the house itself is listening. It’s that stillness that allows me to go on. “People don’t get to leave. It’s not a choice. If someone thinks about leaving and people find out, they’ll disappear. Not take their stuff and leave, they’ll just…disappear.”
Lola’s face is solemn. “Why didn’t they get caught?”
“It’s really isolated. Far away from any city and they’re mistrusting of outsiders to an extreme. We’re told the world is a bed of sin, that the only salvation can be found by turning our backs to it.”
Blue raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment on that. “You think someone from there is doing this?”
“Someone in particular. I mean, I don’t know if he’s doing it by hand, but nothing happens from the church without Leader Allen ordering it to be done. He’s the voice of God.”
The silence that follows is thick, and I realize that I didn’t qualify my statement. I didn’t say he’s the voice of God for those people. I just said he’s the voice of God. My face heats in a blush. “Sixteen years of indoctrination is hard to lose,” I say weakly.
Ivan’s voice is soft but unmistakable. “How did you get out?”
“My mother. She was—” This will be the hardest part. I can already feel my throat closing up. I clench my hands together. Lola puts her hand on top, warm reassurance. “She was his whore. She had been a prostitute on the outside. When she got pregnant with me, she went to Harmony Hills so that Leader Allen could…could save her soul.”
“Why did she send you away?” Blue asks. “Did she grow disillusioned with the teachings?”
“No. I don’t think so.” I shiver against the ancient shame. Thousands of men have seen my naked body, have lusted after me, but all of that can’t erase the filth of Leader Allen’s dark lusts. “I think she saw the way he was looking at me.”
Lola makes a strangled sound of outrage.
“She didn’t even try to go with me. Maybe she believed what Leader Allen said about women being…evil. About leading men to temptation.” My laugh is hollow. “Maybe she wanted to save Leader Allen’s soul.”
Blue’s eyes are shrewd. “Why do you think they’re responsible for the messages?”
I meet Ivan’s gaze from across the room, and the fury there lends me strength. “That’s the stuff he’d always talk about in his sermons, how God had sent down shepherds to guide us. How he had to handle the stray sheep so they wouldn’t lead the rest of us to sin. I know it’s a common enough theme in religion. It might not be connected to them, but…”
This is where my voice cracks, and I stare at my lap, unable to go on. I’ve already told them more than I’ve told anyone. This last part, it will break me.
The sofa cushions shift, and Lola moves away from me. They’re leaving, I realize distantly. But then Ivan’s hands are lifting me, his arms around me. He pulls me onto his lap, the way I was the night in the dining room. Except I had crawled into his lap that time. This time he put me here—and in front of Lola and Blue too.
I look up at him, and I know the questions are plain in my eyes. His expression is severe but not unkind. “Finish it,” he says softly.
He might only be giving me this comfort to get the information out of me. A man like him could be that ruthless. I don’t care. I soak up his warmth and his strength, curling myself into a tight ball and pressing harder into him.
“A week before my mother sent me away, Leader Allen called me into his room for private prayers. He had done that before. Usually he talked about my mother, told me she was a sinner, that there was a demon inside her, that we should both pray for her soul so she didn’t wind up burning for eternity.”
Ivan strokes my hair, almost absently. I’m not sure he knows he’s doing it.
“This time…this time was different. He asked me if I was serious about shaking off the shackles of sin, if I was willing to do what it took to fight evil. He said it would be hard and scary, that only a true disciple could survive it.”
He did more than just talk to me that day. He touched me, only outside my robes. It was enough. Enough to change the look in his eyes from a suggestion to a promise. And it would have escalated quickly if my mother hadn’t sent me away. I always wondered how she knew that it had gotten worse, if somehow she saw him with me that day. That she might have seen us is more shameful to me than the act itself—and for that reason I don’t tell Blue and Lola. I don’t tell Ivan. They don’t need to know about that detail. It would only enrage them, and it wouldn’t bring us any closer to finding the culprit.
I open my eyes, startled to meet Blue’s gaze. Of the three people in this room, I’m the least close to him. Lola is my best friend, and Ivan is my lover. Even Luca, standing outside the door, is like a brother to me. Though Blue worked at the Grand, we were never close.
I still see murder in his eyes as I describe something I now understand to be a form of grooming. It sickens me, because back then I hadn’t seen anything wrong.
All I had wanted to do was please Leader Allen.
The very worst thing is that even though part of me understood the look in his eyes, part of me knew what he would ask of me, I had been willing to give that too. Anything to please him.
Just like my mother had been.
“He said that other people wouldn’t understand, that they were not adhering to the word of God. So we could…we could never tell them what we did. I hadn’t talked much during these sessions, but I had asked him then, why didn’t the sinners outside Harmony Hills read the Bible. He told me that some of them didn’t care, that they were disciples of the devil. But he said that some of them, they did care, but they were following false prophets, misinterpreting the scriptures.”
My hands curl into the soft fabric of Ivan’s shirt, needing that anchor. He tightens his hold around me.
“He told me that one day, with my help, the people would find their path to God. He said that’s why he needed me so much. He said…he said, ‘So there will be one flock, one shepherd.’”
Lola sucks in a breath. “John 10:16.”
“And the other one, he didn’t quote it exactly, but it would be hard to think of a member of his flock who went more astray than I have.” I manage a wry smile. “I kind of made it my life’s mission for a while there.”
“Find out everything you can,” Ivan says to Blue. “I want any information the police have on disappearances or criminal activity. I want financial records. Everything.”
Blue nods. “I’ll find out if any of his flock have been taking trips recently.”
“They won’t leave a paper trail. If they’ve evaded the cops this long, they know how to be careful. Besides, we already know that whoever’s fucking with the Grand is good. That’s why we haven’t found any trace of him.”
“What should we do?” Luca asks. “A preemptive strike? Hit them and then they’ll know not to fuck with us.”
/> “I have no desire to harm innocent people. And I have no desire to hit a hornet’s nest when I have my own snake to deal with at home. No, we find out if they are involved before we move on them.”
Luca narrows his eyes. “But if they’ve covered their tracks that well…”
Ivan’s eyes glitter. “I’ll find out if they were involved, even if I have to go there myself to do it. And if they are, I’ll rip them apart.”
Chapter Eighteen
For most of my life I’ve been torn by guilt. Guilt over the demons inside me. Guilt over my gender, my body, my desire. Being born a girl marked me as evil, according to the teachings of Harmony Hills. Even though I’ve been gone for years, I’ve never been able to shake the sense of shame.
I find Ivan in his study. His desk in the Grand is carved wood, contrasting with the stark concrete basement. His desk at home is just the opposite, an industrial construct of slate and steel set in a wood-shelved library. He sits behind the desk, facing the windows behind him.
Dusk creeps over the city, pushing yellow rays through textured windows. From inside you can’t see the bulletproof glass that protects you from the outside.
Ivan doesn’t look up from the photograph he holds. He doesn’t stir when I put a hand on his shoulder. “May I?”
Wordlessly, he holds out the picture. Blurry shapes form a black-and-white panorama. The silhouette of a man is hidden partially by a hood. He’s raising something up. A paintbrush? The brick wall behind him glistens with blood.
“Is it him?” Ivan asks.
I study the man, but he’s only a shadow here. A suggestion. “I can’t tell. I’m sorry.”
