by A. Zavarelli
I’m in control and it feels good.
But Rory never lets me have the things that I want.
He heaves me up without warning and spins me around, flattening my chest against the table in front of us. I’m ass up and face down and he’s got my dress up around my waist. He wrenches my head back with a fist of my hair and tells me to take out my goddamn tits.
I shove the top of my dress down and I’m well and truly trapped now, but I’m breathing just fine.
He grabs my fingers and shoves them into my own mouth.
“Suck.”
I suck.
He drags them down to my thong and shoves it aside.
“Play with yourself and tell me something real.”
I play with myself because he tells me to, but it isn’t good and it isn’t real until he takes over for me.
“Talk, or I take it away,” he says as I grind back onto his hand.
Rory’s fingers are magic and he could use them for torture, because I don’t withstand.
“You were so fucking hot tonight,” I say. “I like you like that.”
“And what else?”
“We don’t have to be even. You can just do this all night if you want.”
“You wouldn’t be happy with that,” he says.
“No, I wouldn’t,” I agree.
He rewards my admissions with more of what I want. His palm on my tits, groping me, the other between my legs. He’s biting down on my shoulder and fucking me with his fingers and I’m close so I give him another.
“Cuddling you isn’t the worst thing in the world.”
He lets me come. And it’s hard and messy and my ears are ringing and I want him inside of me. I tell him so.
“Why should I fuck you?” he asks.
“Because nobody else will ever feel as good as I do.”
He grabs my ass and squeezes. Bites my neck. Admits that I’m right. And this really is a victory.
He seizes my hips and plows inside of me.
“Fucking Satan.”
He fucks me with hate and reverence. One minute he tells me how good it feels and the next it’s that I don’t deserve to come and I’m not a good girl and this is for him and not me.
I pout and he does the worst thing he could do to me.
He turns me around and hoists me up into his arms. Wrapping my legs around his waist and dropping me onto his cock and telling me to hold on.
We’re at eye level now.
And it’s silly of me to think he can’t hold me up with one arm and keep fucking me, because he does when I turn my face away.
He removes one hand from my ass and grabs my jaw.
“Look at me.”
I look at him. He makes me keep looking at him.
“We aren’t playing by your rules anymore,” he tells me.
“You think you’re going to boss me around and tell me what to do?”
“Aye,” he says. “I fucking am.”
I don’t answer.
It’s different, having him inside of me and watching his face this way. I could listen to his sounds all day long. The way he grunts and groans and tells me things as he plows into me. Sometimes filthy, sometimes sweet. But watching is different.
It’s intimate and raw.
“Tell me ye want my come inside of you,” he says.
And he’s already swelling. Spasming. Gripping my ass so hard it’ll bruise.
“I want your come in me.”
He yanks my body down on his and kisses me. His cock is pulsing inside of me, emptying, and he needed this.
So did I.
19
RORY
“LET’S go to my place tonight,” Scarlett suggests from the passenger seat of my car.
It’s an odd request, considering how obsessive she is about her space. But the weight of exhaustion has settled in- the one I feel whenever I do battle with Scarlett- and I can’t be bothered to make the observation.
Her building is a hole, and the more I come around, the more I hate it. Some bloke is lurking in the hallway, seedy as fuck, and he checks Scarlett out as she walks by and I tell him to fuck off.
“That’s just Ronnie,” she says with a wave of her hand. “Every building has a resident creep. Ronnie is ours.”
Ronnie isn’t the only problem I see here. The hallway smells like piss and cigarette smoke and there isn’t enough lighting and if Scarlett were being murdered, I doubt anyone would even open their door.
“I don’t like ye living here,” I tell her.
She doesn’t answer.
I want to pack her shit. I want her to come home with me and stay there. And I’ve never wanted that with anyone.
If only it were that easy with Scarlett.
I never claimed patience to be one of my virtues, but I thought I at least possessed some of it. This woman has bled it dry already.
She unlocks all six locks on her door and then looks at me because she knows I’ve got something to say about that too.
“I installed them after the butcher,” she justifies. “I don’t really need them.”
“The fuck you don’t,” I snipe.
She changes the subject.
“You were good out there tonight.”
She says this while she counts the knobs on the stove.
“You should teach me how to fight like that,” she adds.
It’s cute, how she’s so serious about it. Like it’s just that easy.
I agree anyway because I want her to start taking this seriously.
“Okay,” she says. “Want a shower?”
“Aye. Will you be joining me?”
She smiles and nods and it’s too agreeable. But again, I go with the flow… because I’m tired as fuck, and all I really want to do is bury myself between her thighs again and fuck her until my cock gives out.
Her bathroom is small, but tidy, and it smells of her perfume.
She undresses for me like a centerfold and steps beneath the hot spray.
Scarlett knows that she’s hot. But she doesn’t use it for attention. She uses it as a weapon. She’s made up of curves and softness and sex. And right now, when she’s luring me in with her eyes and her dripping wet body, I don’t even care.
I follow her to my certain doom and join her in the enclosed space. I want to pull her against me and not fuck her. I want to hold her. But she turns in my arms instead and reaches for a bottle of soap. It’s girly shit, but it doesn’t matter because she’s washing me now.
Her hands are small on my body, scrubbing me in lazy circles. She’s taking her time, and it doesn’t feel like a trick anymore, because she likes her hands on my body as much as I do. She’s possessive of me. And she tells me so in many ways.
She’s massaging my cock in her hand now. Looking up at me. There’s mascara running down her face and her lipstick is smeared from kissing me. She’s never looked as owned as she does right now.
“Do you know what I would do to you if you fucked me over?” she asks. “Do you know what happens when you break a deal with the devil?”
She squeezes my cock, and what she means is if I fucked someone else.
I tell her I won’t, and I mean it.
Words are empty and Scarlett doesn’t believe them. So I kiss her and fuck her up against the shower wall until neither of us can move and the water is cold.
We stumble to her bed in a mess of towels and tangled limbs, launching ourselves beneath the blankets in a heap.
Her room is quiet and black. The building is a hole, but this is a sanctuary. It smells like her and her blankets are soft and her skin is against mine, warm. Our feet are wrapped together and her face finds my chest beneath the blanket, burrowing against me. Her arms hang at her sides awkwardly while her teeth clack together, so I do what she can’t. I wrap her arm around me and I hold her.
The darkness is pervasive and I can’t see her face. But her heart is hammering against me, anxious. She’s the first to break the silence.
; “Do you like bedtime stories?”
This feels pivotal. Like whatever I say or do in the next moment will determine the course of the cease-fire we seem to have called. Her voice is too soft, and it’s no coincidence she’s asking me in the cloak of darkness.
“I live for them,” I tell her, and it’s the right answer.
“I know a good one,” she offers.
She isn’t herself. Her voice is different. Nervous. And she’s warm now, but she still isn’t pulling away.
“I’m all ears, baby doll.”
She tucks her head beneath my chin and keeps it there, her lips murmuring against my throat when she speaks.
“Once upon a time,” she says. “And this is the way they all start, so just get over it… there was a girl named Tenly. All the world was her oyster. But most especially, the Upper East Side of New York. Her kingdom was filled with more gowns and finery than most girls could ever hope for.”
“Tenly didn’t really care about those things, but she played along for the sake of appearances. She went to boarding school in London and learned different languages. She spent summers in the Hamptons and winters traveling abroad. She was privy to all the advantages a silver spoon could offer. Cotillions, secret societies, the holy trinity of Ivy Leagues. She’d been preparing her whole life for them. Everything was laid out for her already. The rules had been written, the board designed. It moved in one direction, with the allotted stops and notable milestones along the way.”
She pauses and I squeeze her.
“She was destined to marry a prince,” she goes on. “He was a good prince. A fine prince, from a respectable family with all the fine jewels and castles that money could buy. Tenly did not care so much for him at first, but in time, she grew to respect him.”
“It was difficult for her, to pretend all the time. By day she practiced and rehearsed her every word, and by night she lost herself in books and dreams of other worlds. A world where she could be herself and nobody would care. Her mother told her these dreams were impractical, of course, and she should count herself lucky to have such a fine life before her.”
“So Tenly did what she was told. She blended in and performed. She moved along the board and surpassed every expectation laid out for her. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.”
Her hair falls against me, tickling me, but I don’t move. I don’t even breathe as she whispers her confessions in the dark. In the only way she can. Her voice grows distant while she speaks of the way she was raised, and she’s too in the moment to know that I’m here at all now.
“The thing about secret societies is they wouldn’t be coveted if they let any old Jack or Jill in. You need to be special. You need to earn it. Some people though- like Tenly- are supposed to be shoe-ins because of their lineage. She knew she would get in no matter what, even if the girls didn’t like her. Even if they didn’t want her there. And they didn’t.”
“So, on the night of her initiation into the Birds of a Feather, she was betrayed. Not only by the Birdies, but by her prince too. She was the sacrificial lamb offered up for slaughter. The prized toy that the prince and his friends would use to earn their way into their own order. And use her they did. Ruthlessly stealing her virtue and leaving her for dead in the middle of the forest.”
“Scarlett.”
I want to tell her to stop. I’ve heard enough. But it’s a selfish request, and she doesn’t hear me. The secrets spill from her lips freely.
And I know that come tomorrow, there will be more blood on my hands.
“She couldn’t bear to go back there. To face the prince and his friends. So, she let them all think that she was dead. She fled the kingdom and never looked back. She was alone, but she was happy.”
“Was she though?” I whisper in her ear.
“Stories are supposed to end in happily ever after,” she answers.
“But maybe the story isn’t over.”
She sighs.
“You’re right. The story is still being written.”
“Tell me how the rest goes. The part where she meets her new King. Because fuck princes. Tenly needs a King.”
She nods into me and continues.
“Okay. So, she meets this King. He was a good King. A fine King. A strong King. And all over the land, panties dropped for him whenever he smiled at the maidens.”
I snort, and she smiles against my shoulder.
“He was charming and funny and brave, and everything a good King should be.”
“But…” I say.
“But,” she answers. “The thing was that for all the King’s good qualities, the princess had none.”
“Bollocks,” I tell her.
She is quiet for a while after that, lost in thought. I don’t press her, and eventually she comes around on her own.
“Rory,” she whispers against my skin.
“Aye?”
“I think she might’ve given him her heart. If she still had one to give.”
“The story isn’t over,” I remind her.
She nods and allows herself to relax into me, breathing me in the same way I do to her.
“Tenly.”
She doesn’t answer, and I don’t expect her to. So I just tell her what needs to be said.
“They’re dead, sweetheart. They just don’t know it yet.”
20
SCARLETT
SOME PEOPLE ARE nobody's enemies but their own- Charles Dickens
I still recall quite vividly, the discussion we had in our English Lit class that fateful day. We were reading Hamlet. The topic of discussion was how he had sacrificed his relationship with Ophelia in favor of his descent into madness.
It is exactly this thought that I wake up to. Tangled up in Rory.
I have my own descent into madness to pursue, and sacrifices will need to be made.
There are only two days now.
Two days and I have not told Rory about Alexander.
Nothing I do is without intention. I was not vulnerable last night. I was prepared to sacrifice. Sometimes the truth is better motivation than a trick.
And it was with intention that I told Rory that tale. He volunteered to avenge me, just as I knew he would.
That’s when things took a left turn.
The trap had been set. All I had to do was tell him about Alexander AKA Agent Royce.
A girl like me doesn’t ask for help.
She sets it up in a way that someone offers instead.
Rory did offer, in his own way.
I know that I can’t take down Royce by myself. He’s well aware of my modus operandi, and I don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of drugging him. A physical altercation is out of the question because I’m not Mack and I can’t take him down alone.
Adding to that is the fact that he’s a federal agent. Which means he needs to disappear without a trace. Literally.
No DNA. No blood. No breadcrumbs leading back to me.
I don’t have the resources for something like that, but Rory does.
All I have to do is tell him.
But the nagging voice inside my head won’t shut up.
Royce isn’t just an ex-boyfriend.
He’s FBI.
FBI and mafia don’t mix.
This could mean trouble for the syndicate, and no doubt about it, Lachlan Crow would not sanction a risk like that for me.
Rory would probably do it, anyway.
And I am torn.
There are two voices in my head now, at war.
Don’t drag him into this, the first voice says.
All the while, the other is telling me we don’t give a fuck and let’s just do this already.
Moral dilemmas aren’t my forte.
I’m paralyzed with indecision when Rory wakes up beside me.
He kisses the mangy looking hobo that I am sans makeup and doesn’t blink an eye, and this does not make it any easier.
“Gym?” he asks.
“Oh.” Right. “Sur
e.”
We shower again. Together, again.
And everything’s becoming too comfortable. And I feel like I can’t fucking breathe.
It only gets worse as the morning progresses.
Once my hair is braided and I’ve got makeup on, Rory walks up behind me and snaps a picture of us with his phone.
“Did you just take a selfie with me?” I ask, horrified.
“I did.” He smirks. “Get used to it, Satan. I want lots of pretty pictures of you on my phone.”
As if that comment weren’t bad enough, he introduces me to ‘the lads’ at the gym as his girlfriend.
“You want to put a collar on me while you’re at it?” I ask. “Property of Saint?”
“Not a bad idea.” He grins and flashes me the fucking dimples, and I tell him to put them away because that shit doesn’t work on me.
“Alright.” He tosses me some hand wrap thingies and says, “let’s do this.”
After showing me how to wrap my hands, he dives into professor mode. But professors aren’t supposed to be like Rory and he’s too close and he keeps cracking jokes about how he’s coming for my ass and my tits or whatever. He gropes me and I’m not learning anything other than I’m not capable of learning when there are hormones involved.
I have no focus.
I shouldn’t even be here with him right now, wrestling around on mats and listening to his dirty talk/self-defense.
I should be at home, determining how to take down Alexander. Because it’s evident that I’m not going to tell him. That for once in the last decade of my life, I’m going to do right by someone.
And I have no fucking clue why.
“Sweetheart, ye aren’t even paying attention,” Rory says. “I’d have killed ye about three times by now if this were real.”
“Just show me what I need to do to inflict the maximum damage,” I insist.
He frowns and then says the worst thing he could say to me.
“Scarlett, what’s wrong?”
I glance around the gym, and people are staring at us. At me. Like I’m an uppity bitch and I shouldn’t even be here.
I know they’re right.
