F*ckboy Psychos

by Stunich, C. M.

  I have a feeling that he’s used to being the one who takes control of every kiss, every interaction, but for whatever reason, he doesn’t resist my dominance over the situation. Instead, he relaxes into it, moving his hands to rest on my hips.

  My mind flashes briefly to Lemon, and my skin pebbles with goose bumps—in a bad way. I shouldn’t be kissing this guy for a million and one different reasons. It started off as meeting Bohnes’ challenge, but …

  It’s a lot hotter than I expected, the way his hands rub my lower back, the way he presses into me, how he keeps his head tilted down so that I can run my tongue across his perfect teeth.

  Shit.

  I start to pull back, my body aching, my overheated skin turning chill in the night air.

  I would never allow myself to be with someone who slept with my friend first and, more importantly, treated my friend like shit. I can tell Lem about this when I see her again, I promise myself, even knowing that it wouldn’t change things, that it wouldn’t matter to her.

  Whatever it is that she’s up to with Aspen, it goes beyond her usual MAD issues.

  Aspen doesn’t allow me to pull away, tightening his grip, reversing control of the kiss and fuck … I am here for it.

  I’m here for it against my better judgment, against my initial repulsion to this man, against these odd suspicions I have that he isn’t telling the full truth about who he is.

  Something is up with Aspen Kelly, and I’m going to get the bottom of it.

  A. Kelly

  I had high hopes for Scarlett Force.

  I’ve been surrounded by beautiful girls and women for most of my life. Because of my brother, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with and, if I wanted to, sleep with the vast majority of them. Again, because of my brother, I’ve only ever taken the opportunity once and it ended so poorly for me that I never allowed it to happen again.

  He made me regret it; he made certain that I’d never want to repeat that mistake.

  So, I’ve shut down thoughts. I’ve shut down ideas. I hardly even allow myself to consider kissing a girl, let alone sleeping with her.

  But when I saw Scarlett for the first time? It was as if something snapped inside of me, as if all of those rules and boundaries were tossed to the wind. I’m not going to lie: it isn’t just my brother who has issues. I know that I do, too. I’ve done terrible things. Some of them on purpose, just to get a reaction out of my father or brother. Other things I did because I lost control of myself.

  This … this is one of those things.

  Scarlett Force is one of those things.

  Her mouth is delectable, her body curvy and warm and squirmy. Does she know she’s doing that, rubbing herself against me the way she is? Doubtless she’s meaning to do it. It’s more than just a gut reaction. I know that because I’ve seen the way she reacts to … other men.

  I hold her close, even though I know I shouldn’t. Not just because of my brother and the threat he represents—I don’t want him to get the wrong idea about me and her—but also because of her lover, Kellin Bohnes.

  Everybody in this neighborhood knows who he is.

  Everybody is afraid of him—for good reason it seems.

  When Scarlett moves to pull back, I react out of instinct, yanking her even closer, holding her even tighter. As soon as she gives me the chance, I take over, thrusting my tongue against hers, swirling it around her mouth, tasting her essence and committing it to memory.

  My cock aches inside my slacks, trapped beneath the black boxer briefs I’m wearing underneath. It strains against the fabric, searching for Scarlett’s warmth, for that tight pussy I know is hiding just beneath the short, black dress she’s wearing.

  It’s fucking scandalous, for her to drive in that dress. I can only imagine the way it shifts up her thighs as she sits in that bloodred Pantera and hugs the curves of that muddy track.

  My hands slide down, pushing the dress up so that I can cup her full, round ass. Her cheeks fill my palms like they were designed to fit there, that silken skin arousing me even further, pushing me to a point that I’m not sure I’ll be able to come back from.

  My fingers dig in, encountering a bit of that plump flesh between her thighs, slicked up with her arousal, making me want to push them in so that I can feel her tight channel clenching around me. No panties, huh? Why am I not surprised?

  I had high hopes for Scarlett Force? She’s shattered them. She’s exceeded them. I want to find out more, against my better judgment. Even knowing what my brother will do if he finds out about this.

  A hard hand grabs my wrists, pushing my hands away from Scarlett’s ass, and our mouths part. I open my eyes to stare over her shoulder, meeting the ice-blue, almost white, stare of Kellin Bohnes.

  “Enough,” he says, and in that one word, I can see it. He’s used to being obeyed. He’s used to people scrambling to follow his every order lest they meet a violent end at his hands and the bones inked into his flesh.

  I’d be afraid of him if I hadn’t met a monster who is, at the very least, his equal if not his superior.

  “Shit,” Scarlett murmurs, and then she’s ducking out between us and yanking her dress back down to cover her naked ass and cunt. Why she isn’t wearing panties under that short, tight little dress, I have no idea, but it’s making me feel crazy. It’s making me want to rip out my hair with both hands and drive my Mustang so fast that the entire world is blurred at the edges, so fast that if I were to wrap it around a tree, my life would snuff out in an instant.

  I rub my hand over my jaw as Bohnes looks me over, and then I say something that I know neither of them will understand: “If it weren’t for my brother, I would wait for a moment away from Bohnes, and I would fuck you so hard and so raw that you’d never even consider looking at another man.”

  All of this, of course, in Japanese. I’m fluent in it, because of my mother. My brother isn’t, and I know it makes him crazy that I have at least one skill that he doesn’t possess. I mean, other than empathy. I’m not sure if he envies that, too, or if he pities me for it.

  Scarlett stays where she is, looking up at what little she can see of the moon while I turn to look Bohnes straight in the face. A muscle ticks in his jaw as he scowls at me, rubbing his hand across his throat, as if he’s considering wrapping that same hand around mine.

  “Get lost,” he tells me, and the words are absolute. I flick my gaze over to Scarlett’s back. As if she can sense me staring at her, she turns around to look at me, her long dark hair shimmering with silver highlights. I’ve never met anyone with hair as dark as mine but whereas I’ve got an almost blue undertone, hers is straight-black. As endless as the night without stars.

  I exhale, clenching and unclenching my hands at my sides.

  “It’s his party,” she says, shrugging her shoulders as I stare at her. As if we didn’t just share a moment there. Absent Bohnes’ presence—and the mental image of my brother looming over us—we’d have fucked right there on the hood of my Mustang. “If he says you go, then you go. Get lost, Aspen, and go spend time with your girlfriend. You might think of Lemon as Prescott trash, but she’s a better woman than you deserve.”

  Scarlett takes off for the stairs that lead to the front porch as Bohnes watches me in a way that warns I’ve now entered his radar. He’ll be watching me, particularly when it comes to Scarlett Force.

  I curse under my breath and head around the back of my car, climbing into the driver’s seat and taking off before I get myself into anymore trouble here tonight.

  As it always does, trouble follows me home anyway.

  As soon as I walk in the front door, I see Yua. She’s the head of our household, a woman who was both housekeeper as well as nanny to me growing up, more mother than my actual mother. Not through any fault of her own, obviously.

  Yua is covered in bruises, her round face swollen and misshapen, her eyes downcast. I’ve always loved her but, once again, my brother has managed to destroy this relationship the wa
y he does all of my others. Yua Ito no longer loves me. As soon as she greets me, I know that for a fact. I know that my brother did this, delivered these blows as if they were from me.

  “Okaerinasaimase, Goshujin-sama.” She bows at me and stays bowed, as if she dare not lift her head until I offer her permission. Welcome home, Master. Yua has always called me by my first name, sometimes even with affectionate honorifics. But master? No.

  I hate it.

  I hate that I can feel her pain and confusion, and I can’t understand for the life of me why she doesn’t already understand the difference between my brother’s dark conscience and my twisted, twilight colored one.

  I stopped trying to convince people of that long, long ago. Both my brother and I are persuasive, both of us consummate actors. We know each other far too well. But how is it fair that he’s my blood, and he was born wrong, and I have to suffer his torments day in and day out.

  I should murder him.

  I’ve thought about it many, many times before. I’ve even planned it more than once, gotten a gun, walked into his room, stood over him and stared down at him with his lips gently parted in sleep, passed out from too many sleeping pills.

  Each and every time, I find myself with gritted teeth, with my fingers wrapped around the butt of the gun, and I just can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t. I’ve tried. So I’ve given up on that, too. If my brother is going to die, someone else is going to have to do it.

  “Goddamn it.” I curse and rub at my face again, feeling exhaustion sweep over me in a wave. I have one nice moment in a sea of shit, and this is what I come home to. The expletive makes Yua flinch, and I storm past her, down the hall and into the formal living room where my brother sits on the sofa, his arms thrown out across the back of it on either side.

  One of our new maids—one of the ones he hired for a very specific purpose—is between his legs, sucking his cock as he fists her hair, pushing her down harder and groaning unashamedly.

  “Aspen,” he calls out cheerily, mimicking me even as he’s getting head from a girl who gets paid minimum wage to wait on him assiduously, hand and foot and pussy. I squeeze my hands at my sides so hard that I feel like my bones might break.

  I consider grabbing the decorative vase just ahead and to the right of me, perched delicately on an elegant, slender sofa table, hefting it up, beating my brother’s face in with it until we no longer resemble each other, until he’s nothing but pulp and bone and blood.

  “Welcome home,” he continues, grunting and thrusting his hips up several times before shoving the maid girl away and scowling at her as she tries to frantically wipe droplets of cum from her lips with her hand.

  The whole thing makes me sick, but I know better than to stand up for the poor girl. It’ll only bring her worse trouble in the end. My brother never comes for me because he knows that I can take him on personally. Instead, he goes for everything and everyone around me, most especially those that I love and care about.

  Just like my first and only girlfriend.

  Because I had her, because she liked me for me, he had to prove that he could take her regardless. And take her he did. He fucked her and used her for months, paraded her around in front of me, even toyed with the idea of asking her to marry him before he cast her aside like so much trash.

  I could never love a girl who didn’t hate my brother the way I do.

  As he tucks himself back into his slacks and then uses his foot to shove at the maid girl, I find my mouth filling with bile.

  “Get us some tea—and hurry up,” he snarls out as shivers take over me and those violent urges start to drown out everything else, until I’m worried that I might have another blackout. Sometimes, when I go dark like that, I do horrible things, and then I struggle to remember doing them at all.

  My brother rises to his feet, looking me over and tsking in disappointment.

  “Where have you been?” he demands, as if he’s my keeper, as if I’m not allowed to do a damn thing without his permission. I would rather cut my own tongue off before telling him where I went tonight, so I shrug instead.

  He smirks at me as the maid girl scrambles to her feet, bows her head at me, and takes off. Likely, she blames me for this entire incident the way that Yua does. Fantastic. Yet more dark marks to my name.

  “What have you done now?” I ask, and then I realize something strange.

  The fish in the large tank, the one that separates the living area from the informal dining room, are still. More so than that, they’re floating near the surface. Dead. They’re all dead.

  My throat gets tight and a muscle in my neck jumps as my brother throws his head back and laughs. The sound of it digs into me like claws, and I force my mind back to my kiss with Scarlett, the warmth of her body, the violent tangling of our tongues.

  I think about that as I try not to scream.

  My thoughts stray back to the time I told my brother in a rare fit of honesty that the fish our father likes to keep, that they calmed me down, quieted my mind, that when I looked at them, I could recall memories of our mother that I thought were otherwise lost.

  It’d be just like my brother to do something this sick, this bizarre and vindictive, to file away that memory for years and then wield it against me. Figures. He loves killing animals. It’s a way for him to get out his urges that don’t involve our father scrambling for some sort of cover-up, paying off families, burying evidence.

  Once upon a time, he knocked a nest of baby birds out of a tree. All but one of them died. I scooped the baby up and took it inside. With the help of the Internet, I was able to figure out what sort of bird it was. I cared for it, fed it, kept it alive.

  Until one day when I came home and found him with the bloodied bird in his hands. He told our father as I sobbed that the dogs got ahold of it, but we both knew that wasn’t the case, not at all. Dad told him to put the poor thing out of its misery and then bury it.

  But you know what my brother did? He buried it alive. And then he came and told me about it; he smiled; he laughed.

  “I’m sure it’s dead by now though.”

  I know he’s waiting for a reaction from me and that I shouldn’t give it to him, but I do anyway. I grab that vase—it’s probably worth a fortune—and then I smash it against the side of the sofa table, leaving only a single sharp shard in my now bloody hands.

  I hop over the sofa and then I put that piece of glass to my brother’s throat, right up to the thumping pulse of his carotid. I fantasize about killing him, about the way his blood would spray me and soak me, and how I would love the hot, scalding copper stink of it.

  “Do it,” he breathes, his dark eyes on mine, his smile vicious and unafraid. “Kill me, Aspen. We both know that you want to.” He reaches up for my hand, pressing the glass against his own skin as crimson droplets well.

  I jerk backwards, slicing my own hand in the melee, and then I fall to my knees on the rug, panting and shaking and bleeding everywhere. I lift my hand up to stare at the cut. It’s deep and ragged and ugly; I probably need stitches.

  My brother squats down beside me, reaching out to swipe my hair back from my forehead.

  “Where were you tonight?” He grabs a handful of my hair and yanks on it, but I slap his hand away hard. I won’t tell him, and he knows it. But it’s killing him. It’s breaking that careful control he tries so hard to cultivate.

  “Boys,” our father warns, sweeping into the room and looking at the broken vase and the blood and the dead fish. His eyes widen and he grits his teeth, squeezing his hands into fists at his sides. “Who did this?”

  My brother rises to his feet, shaking his head at me like he’s disappointed before he touches two fingers to his throat and then examines the blood glistening on his fingerprints.

  “Who else?” he queries innocently, looking down at me with a terrible smile. “Ash did it, didn’t you, Ash?”

  I spit at him, shoving up to my feet, and then I look him dead in the eye.

 
“I kissed the most beautiful girl tonight, one who would never let you kiss her, a girl you could never have. That’s where I was. As soon as she saw me, she could tell. I know she could.” All of this I deliver to my brother in Japanese, and I relish the anger and frustration on his face because he can’t understand any of it. Not a word.

  Our father can’t either. He claims our mother was the love of his life, but he never bothered to learn her language. I doubt that he’s capable of loving anyone—not even his favorite son.

  “You’re nothing but a pathetic disappointment—as per usual,” Mayor Kelly snaps at me. “You’re nineteen now. It’s time to get your act together, Ash. I’ll be taking the cost of the vase and the fish from your trust fund.”

  My brother laughs at me as I shove past him, heading up the stairs toward my room.

  I take out my anger and frustration with my painful, bloody hand wrapped around my cock, dreaming of Scarlett Force, of her perfect mouth and her perfect ass. More than anything else, I think about the fact that when Aspen is Aspen, she despises him.

  But when Ash is Aspen …

  I sigh, coming so hard that I nearly pass out. It’s the first release I’ve had in years, and it feels incredible, like a door is opening and ushering me into a brand-new future.

  I won’t ever allow myself to truly pursue Scarlett—it’s far too dangerous—but the dream is there, and I’ve lived on dreams and fantasies since my earliest memories.

  I know how to live, while barely existing at all.

  There is no Ash Kelly, just Aspen Kelly and his all-consuming hatred.

  Scarlett

  Despite losing to Bohnes last weekend, Widow doesn’t change his daily routine. He continues to park directly in front of me every day without fail, and he keeps coming to the library to sit in the corner and read.