by Rina Kent
“I don’t think Judas would care.”
Gabe suddenly sat taller, looking at something over my shoulder. I felt a heated aura a second before he spoke, his deceptively soft voice coming from right behind me.
“Judas most definitely would.”
“Sup, Dave,” Owen greeted, purposely getting Gabe’s name wrong as he slid into the only empty chair at our table.
Seeing his happy face, I understood who the ‘they’ was Gabby had been referring to. Brianna and Gavin weren’t with them, though. I wondered why.
“What are you guys doing in here?”
“We can’t come see our new favorite girl?” Owen asked in the same innocent way Audrey did when she was up to something.
“Sure, you can. Where is she?”
Judas’ hands tightened and I tried not to flinch, but my right upper shoulder still had a dull throb in it.
“Can I talk to you?”
Was Judas asking permission? Now I knew hell was freezing was over. I nodded and slid out of my chair, shooting Owen a look before I walked away.
He was eyeing Gabe as if he were about to flay him alive. Seeing the warning on my face only made him grin, showing his pretty teeth and making a dimple pop that I didn’t know he had.
Judas led me up to the second level, and then back to a corner that was obscured from below by the L shaped shelves and a giant fake fiscus plant.
“Take your shirt off,” he demanded.
I stared at him in shock, and then anger. “That’s what you wanted to talk about?” I hissed lowly. “Go f yourself you pervert.”
His expression pinched into one of brief confusion, replaced by a skewed smirk and knowing glint in his eyes. “If I wanted you up here for that, the cock you fantasize about would already be meeting your gag reflex.”
I scoffed, then grinned at him deviously.
“Your ego is bigger than your dick is Judas.”
He laughed lightly, genuinely for once. I turned into such a girl when I heard that, practically swooning inside.
Without asking or waiting for permission he stepped closer to me and began to undo my top three buttons.
I just sighed and rolled my eyes. I could only begin to imagine how spoiled he was growing up, since he had no idea what boundaries or being told no meant. I studied his face, a mask of concentration as his fingers moved with agility and ease.
“Done this before have you?”
“A few times.”
“It was rhetorical,” I stated solemnly.
He smiled at me, looking so good it wasn’t fair for specimen like him to exist.
“Sound a bit jealous, principessa.”
I diverted my gaze to his shiny dress shoes so he wouldn’t see my scowl. A finger hooked beneath my chin to bring my focus back to him.
“Always keep these pretty things on me.”
Pretty? I quirked a brow. My eyes were a simple plain brown.
“And don’t worry,” he continued in the same gentle tone
“The only person who will be riding my cock and sleeping in my bed, is you.”
I had a smartass remark on the tip of my tongue. It vanished when a look came over his features I hadn’t seen before. It took me a moment to place it. He was…angry. A different kind of anger than he’d been when I mentioned Dax.
I glanced down and saw the bruise he was staring at, but it wasn’t the end of the world. I hadn’t broken anything and me shoulder checking volleyball girl hadn’t done me any favors.
“I had to be sure I was making the right decision. I am.” He touched my skin with a feather-touch, causing goose pimples to erupt everywhere he touched.
I looked back up at him questioningly.
“Audrey’s taking you home today. I’ve got something to do.”
“That something better not have anything to do with this. I’m not your problem or your responsibility.”
“You’re wrong, and for you even to say that means that beautiful brain of yours is failing. You are mine, not just for today or tomorrow, until I decide I’m done. That means I take care of you to my full ability. And, Rhia.” He paused and rebuttoned my shirt. “I’m very peculiar about the things I own. I always make sure they’re in perfect condition. If or when I want to break my possessions, I never leave a mark when I do it.”
That confession was disturbing, but I liked it. Way too much. So much that I felt touched by it. He peered down at me through his dense lashes, and my body began to warm for another reason.
“You could just let me drive my car,” I blurted out to break this odd moment.
“Your car is out of commission.”
“Meaning?” I dragged out the word.
He kissed my forehead, surprising me for the hundredth time, but not answering my question. “That’s cute.”
“What’s cute?”
“It’s cute you thought I’d be returning it to you in working condition.” He teased a strand of my hair and then stepped away.
“Judas,” I called after him in a voice still suitable for a library. “You better not have done anything to my car. I will seriously kick your ass.”
His responding laughter was a good indicator that he had definitely done something I wouldn’t approve of.
Chapter Fifteen
Judas
The body was nearly burned beyond recognition.
Not so much that I was able to tell it was female, even if her tits had been partially sliced from her body and the space between her legs more mutilated than usual.
“This was messy and rushed. They didn’t pull out her teeth,” Gavin noted, poking the crisp jaw with a stick.
“What message was this supposed to send?” Brianna questioned, popping her hip out. “It’s not Maisie…. right?” She stood tall again, frowning at the body.
I didn’t answer that. To be fucking frank, I could have seen my sister’s corpse a dozen times by now and I wouldn’t know it. When they were taken apart or burned like this it was a pain in the ass to identify them.
That’s why we all did it.
My famiglia didn’t do it as much anymore. We only burned or mutilated a body if we needed to send someone a clear message, clearer than what had been done here.
We’d moved to feeding them to the swine, which involved shaved heads and pulled teeth as those things were hard on their stomachs.
“It was a poorly executed warning. Marcus or Evie’s way of telling me to stay away from Rhiannon.”
“Girl’s fam is almost as fucked-up as ours,” Owen moaned. “You really think she got no idea what they really do for a living?”
“She doesn’t.” I turned away from the burnt flesh prison and walked back to the car we’d ridden in. “They’re too careful, too normal. Living well below their means.”
“And they’re not her real family,” Brianna corrected him.
“What do we do with this?” Gavin asked. I could picture him nudging the burnt body with the toe of his Ferragamo shoe.
“Send one of the mules up here for it. They can knock out two of our problems at once.”
I opened the trunk and stared down at Erin Moore. He’d been hogtied, and his left wrist was broken, the bone sitting at an odd angle. I reached past his sweaty face for the extra rope and left him there for the moment.
“No one saw anything when you took him?”
“Nope. He followed Bri into her car like a kid going for candy. Dad’s got the cameras handled,” Gavin replied.
“People are going to miss that one,” Owen commented.
“Good thing we won’t be around to pretend we give a fuck then.”
I wrapped the rope around the base of a tree twice and tossed Gavin the excess length.
Bri followed him back to the trunk to assist with Erin.
“Yeah, about that. When do we leave?” she asked.
“Soon. They know we’re coming already. I’ve only got a few last things to tie up.”
“You sure Riri is going to be willing? I r
eally like her. I don’t want to kill her if this goes completely sour.”
I stared Bri down until she diverted her attention, letting that be answer and warning enough.
“They took away two of ours, we need to return the favor by gradually taking every one of them. They won’t exist once our famiglia have finished raw fucking them up the ass for the second time. But I’m keeping Rhiannon. End of discussion.”
He’s ready,” Gavin sung.
“Get him out.”
Erin was lifted from the trunk and dropped onto the muddied terrain like he weighed nothing, his muffled pleas affecting none of us. We were desensitized to all of this. It was just another day for us.
He was just another body in the many we would have to take care of in our lifetime. All he’d do was apologize, but he wasn’t sorry for what he did he was sorry this was the consequence.
I didn’t care if he would have simply tripped her, no one was to touch her. He would have done something else the next day maybe even the next. Using fists were a temporary solution. Now he wouldn’t have the chance to so much as breathe her direction. Perhaps it was extreme, but the way I grew up, it was necessary.
I would go to much more extreme measures in our future. It came with the territory.
One end of rope was attached to a hitch beneath the car, excess rope had been knotted around what was already binding him together, the rest I’d secured around the base of my tree.
“Let’s go. I need to call my papà, with an update. Let him know its not Maisie and get a mule out here.”
“With the mess this is going to make, have him send two,” Owen replied.
I climbed into the passenger seat, leaving Gavin to drive and Owen and Bri to hop in back. I watched in the mirror as Gavin drove downhill, the rope extending out behind us.
It would snag soon, and Erin would either feel his bones and a few tendons disconnect, being left alive until a mule arrived to finish him off with a bullet to the head, or he’d be torn apart.
I would be satisfied with either option.
Chapter Sixteen
Rhiannon
The next week was uneventful.
Judas picked me up and took me to school, behaving as his usual asshole self, and Audrey took me home. School had done a total 180. No one said shit to me anymore or tried anything, making the place tolerable.
If my parents knew what was occurring in their daughter’s melodramatic life, they weren’t saying anything. They’d officially entered a kiss ass stage I didn’t care for. I wouldn’t hold a grudge against them, even moms and dads could screw up, but I wasn’t ready to play happy family either.
Not to mention the weirdness going on in our house. I’d waited for one of them to ask why I wasn’t driving my car. Why it was sitting in the driveway with no visible issues and not being driven.
It had been returned with my key fob in the cup holder by a massive sized man named Tony. The fob might as well have been a decoration, the car didn’t run. It didn’t do anything.
Mom and Dad hadn’t asked about Dax either or if I was still hanging around Judas. I was positive they’d saw him picking me up a few times, but they hadn’t said a word about it. I wasn’t forbidden to see him even knowing he was exactly that. Forbidden.
In their eyes at least. I knew for whatever reason they wanted me to stay away from him.
Thing is, I couldn’t.
He was like the mole on your body you weren’t all that fond of, but you accepted. Eventually, you might even grow to like it.
I passed by one of gymnasiums, walking towards the exit of the building. I needed to get to math on time today.
If I had a hope in hell of passing the test, we were expected to take every Friday. I had fifteen minutes to pre-study.
I’m not entirely sure why I was trying so hard. My grades had always been okay without the effort, though the courses were about one hundred times easier as well. I guess after meeting with the guidance counselor here and them eyeing me as if I were a zoo animal sent in for examination, I was wondering what the point was.
I wasn’t following any of these people to college. I knew it was because of Judas that I’d been approved to even be here. Plus, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. At all.
The center of my mind’s obsession appeared at the end of the hall like an apparition. Not having bothered with a uniform jacket I could see the contours of his body beneath his shirt.
He stood in front of the doors with both his hands in his pockets, watching me approach.
“What are you doing here? I thought you would’ve left already?” He’d been gone before the final bell rung almost every day lately.
“I need to talk to you.”
“And your phone isn’t working?”
“It’s not that kind of conversation.”
Oookay. I went to amble around him, which ultimately meant I went no further. “I don’t have time for you right now Judas.”
His hand shot out and wrapped around my wrist.
“You always have time for me.” He started walking in the direction I’d just come from, attempting to pull me with him.
“No,” I protested, breaking away.
“Did you just tell me no?” he tilted his head to the side, regarding me with a closed off expression.
“Yes. I told you no. I know that’s not a word you hear very often. You can’t just show up and make me do whatever you want. That’s not how the world works.”
“It’s how my world works.”
Oh, here we go. I shook my head, continuing to shake it as I turned and went back the way I’d been going.
“No is a word that carries a negative quality where you’re concerned. I think we need to remove it from your vocabulary.”
I laughed at his audacity, slamming into his chest a second later as he easily walked past me, and then stepped right into my path, gasping when he suddenly lifted me up, bending my upper half over his shoulder to carry me. His hands went right to my ass, gripping it firmly.
“Judas!” I slapped his back.
He ignored my protested, carrying me all the way into the locker room, and to the last row of lockers.
He sat me down and I realized we couldn’t be seen from any other vantage point.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think?”
I stepped away from him, unable to read his expression or mood. I wasn’t afraid of Judas, but his unpredictability ensured I was always on my toes around him. My back hit the tiled wile that bridged the small connection between gym lockers. It smelled like Lysol and air freshener.
“I didn’t bring you in here to hurt you if that’s what you’re thinking. I brought you in here so that I could lick, suck, and fuck your pussy with my tongue.”
“What?” The air whooshed from my lungs.
“I’ve been thinking about it all day.” He stepped closer to me. “Lift your skirt up and spread your legs.”
I couldn’t discern if he was being serious or fucking with me. He had a penchant for messing with my head. The vent above us served as a reminder as to where we were.
The chiming of a bell signaling I should be in class studying for a math test wasn’t a strong enough deterrent to make me walk out of the locker room. I fingered the hem of my skirt, slowly lifting it up.
“Good girl.” He took another step closer, bringing his hands to my hips, stroking the skin there with his thumbs. “I don’t think I’ve told you how beautiful you are lately.”
“Thank you…” I mumbled.
“You know I heard something the other day.” He hooked his fingers in the elastic of my navy boy-shorts and began to slide them down. “That you’d send the king away when you were done with him.”
“That’s not exactly how it was said.”
“The point is, some people got the idea in their heads you were queen, but in order to be that you’d need to claim the king.”
His fingertips ran down my thighs, making m
y breath hitch.
“The point is, I never did. I wouldn’t,” I replied absentmindedly, watching him lower himself, taking my underwear all the way down with him and lifting my leg out of one side.
“Don’t lie to me. You’d love to make it official your mine. So, I did it for you.”
“What?” I said, much in the same way I had moments ago.
“Why do you think no one’s bothered you? People are practically going out of their way to pledge their lives to you.”
“Why would you do that? What happened to hating me?”
“I love to hate you as much as you love to deny you wouldn’t love me down on my knees worshipping the ground you walk on.”
A breathy laugh unfolded between us.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“What I am is about to devour your soul through your pussy, so spread your legs and stop delaying the inevitable.”
There wasn’t a rebuttal for that. I did as he said, moaning the second his warm tongue licked up my slit. “Your pussy taste like all my new favorite meal,” he groaned. His tongue dipped inside me and then slid up to circle my clit. He lapped at me for a moment before his entire mouth was covering my pussy, doing exactly as he’d just promised.
I clamped my lips together and bit my tongue to stifle the moans threatening to burst from within me, grabbing hold of his hair. He pulled back slightly to suckle on my clit—hard—pushing two fingers inside me and pumping at a frenzied rhythm.
He ate me for so long I wasn’t sure how hadn’t gotten lockjaw. He just kept going, his fervor never diminishing.
The look he cast up the curves of my body was full of delivery when his teeth bit down on my hardened bundle of nerves.
“Fuck…Judas!” A rush of fire went coursing through my veins, I came convulsing around his head, squeezing it between my thighs. My own hand was the only thing containing my moans. He continued to lick and suck until I was forced into another orbit of pleasure, whimpering as my back arched off the wall.
He rose slowly a smug grin in place. I was still trembling and trying to catch my breath. He kissed me, tenderly at first, nipping my lower lip to gain access to my mouth, turning it carnal. I could feel my come and juices all over his face, taste them on his tongue.
