As much as I didn’t want Ash to be with Sawyer, it didn’t matter, because I couldn’t control her feelings. She cared for him, in spite of it all. In spite of his fuck-ups. She cared for Declan, too.
And…me. She had to care for me too, otherwise surely she would’ve gone to the police after I’d tried to chain her up in my room.
Hence the issue with Ash: she never did what I expected her to do. She was unpredictable, and now I knew why. Her past was not a sparkling sterling silver. It was tarnished and stained, and it was only after talking to Markus, after he told me who the man in the video was, I knew why.
Ray. Ray Ruiz. The Midtown Strangler. I didn’t have time yet to fully research him, but after a quick glance at Google, I knew enough. I knew the body count, what he did, how dangerous he was. My question, of course, was why the hell Ash felt it necessary to hide such an important part of herself from me? Did she not trust me? Did she not think I could handle it? Whatever darkness she had, I wanted it. I needed it. Our darkness could mingle and mix and become something new and beautiful. Who didn’t want that?
Sawyer tried to smack me away from his nightstand, but the bastard was out of it. The effects of the alcohol were full-force now; I doubted he’d be able to fuck anything right now. Fucking was his specialty, always had been. I knew, even before Ash, it was only a matter of time until his dick got him in trouble, and now? Now the bastard was in the dog house, for sure.
I had the garbage can from the bathroom across the hall in my hands, and I threw out everything that could possibly get Sawyer into more trouble. I didn’t know types of drugs too well; that was always Sawyer’s department. My kind of high was not something you could get from a pill, or powder, or even liquid shot into your veins. My kind of high you only got when you made someone scream.
It’s a good thing I was going into the family business after Hillcrest, because I had the feeling that if I didn’t, I’d only end up in prison. Or worse. Maybe dead. Tempering the urge was difficult, but the family had taught me to focus my cravings, turn them into something else.
Obsession.
Obsession ran rampant in my family, among other things.
“Why?” Sawyer muttered, his face drawn back in a mixture of pain and annoyance.
I stared down at him, not feeling sorry at all for how shitty he’d feel in the morning. “Because you fucked up, buddy. You fucked up bad. You slept with Ash’s friend, and now Ash is with her ex, who’s a fucking psychopath.” I set the garbage can down, thinking. “I mean, I know I’m a little…unsteady, but I like to think I’m not that bad—”
Sawyer rolled onto his side, giving me his back.
Fine. I didn’t want to talk to the fucking brat anyway.
I finished cleaning his room, and then I did the rest of the house. Room by room, making sure there were no little baggies, no more of whatever pills Sawyer’s new favorite drug was. I was in the kitchen, going through the drawers, when Declan returned. He didn’t look happy, to which I wanted to say: join the fucking club, friend.
Tonight, no one was happy. Not me, not him, not Ash, and not even Sawyer. Sawyer might’ve gotten his dick wet, but that wasn’t any consolation for what happened because of it.
Fucking Ray Ruiz had her, and I didn’t know where she was. I wouldn’t be able to track her, to find her, because she’d tossed her phone. It made me wonder if Ash didn’t want to be found, if she ran away with him with the intent of never returning.
I couldn’t live without her. I needed her to come back. I needed to find her, to fight for her, to show her that I would be there for her, even during the bleakness and the fuck-ups. I didn’t care how dark her past was, didn’t care about her ex.
Ray…I’d get him out of the picture, even if I had to get Markus’s help to do it.
“Kelsey’s gone,” Declan muttered, crossing his arms when he noticed what I was doing. He knew what Sawyer got into, but he’d always steered clear of it. The only thing I remembered Declan doing was the occasional drink, and even then, he never got plastered. He never got wasted because once we were older, he spent a lot of his time with Sabrina, and Sabrina was two years younger than us.
“Good,” I told him, leaning on the counter. “That’s one less thing we have to deal with right now.” I stared at him, eyeing him up. He seemed…different than he used to, or maybe that was simply because he and I had been spending more time together lately, thanks to Ash. She was our common denominator, the one thing keeping us together. She was the reason we were in this house.
Ash was also the reason we were faced with a problem I wasn’t quite sure how to solve, but something would come to me. It had to. I couldn’t just let Ash slip through my fingers like something intangible, like air itself.
“So now you’re going to tell me what happened,” Declan said, giving me a frown. Declan wasn’t the toughest guy around, but I could respect him. A little. A huge change from how I felt about him months ago, but Ash had the habit of changing things.
Changing how I felt, what I thought, what I was willing to do. Ash was my life, and I wasn’t about to let Ray fucking Ruiz have that life.
“I assume you already know what happened at the party, or at least part of it,” I said.
Declan nodded. “Kelsey slept with Sawyer. She didn’t know who he was.”
“Yes, but before that I found Ash in the basement, about to be raped by some lumbering fucktard,” I said, watching as Declan’s eyes widened. “And that lumbering fucktard was egged on by Brooklyn.”
“Brooklyn?” Declan could hardly get the word out.
“The girl Sawyer made dye her hair pink,” I clarified. “The girl he wanted to be Ash, to use to get over Ash.” I shook my head, feeling annoyed. Clearly Sawyer’s plan backfired. “If I wasn’t there…” I trailed off, unable to finish the sentence out loud.
If I wasn’t there, silently watching from the shadows, Ash would’ve been raped. Brooklyn and that lard in the Batman suit would’ve done it, and I would’ve wreaked hellish vengeance on them both. I left them passed out in the basement, although Brooklyn was Ash’s doing. They weren’t dead…
Yet.
“So you saved her,” Declan whispered.
“I did, but…but not for long. I fought with the wannabe rapist for too long. By the time I left the basement, she was already out of the house. I followed her, but I was too far away.” I closed my eyes, picturing the way Ray reached out to her. “She went home with someone, and I was too far away to stop her.”
I didn’t know whether I should tell Declan the whole truth. At this rate, I might as well, since there was little point in lying. He knew everything else already, but that…Ray was a type of problem I could handle, but Declan…Declan was different. Declan wasn’t me. Declan had been lost in depression until Ash came onto the scene. How much could one girl really change him?
For the answer to that question, all I had to do was take an inward look at myself.
“How’d you get her phone?” Declan asked.
“I found it on the side of the road,” I told him, feeling the phone’s heavy weight in my pocket. “She threw it out of the car.”
Declan thought about this. “And the guy she went home with was a stranger? How are we supposed to find him?” I knew what he meant: How are we supposed to find Ash?
“I took a video of him, and I sent it to one of my older brothers. He’s very good at finding people,” I said. “He’s working on it, but I don’t think he’s on the radar. Wherever he is, wherever Ash is, they’re hidden.”
“Why?”
“Because the man she went home with wasn’t a Stanton student,” I said. I could picture Ray’s face easily, and could imagine pulling him apart bit by bit just as effortlessly. “My brother recognized him. Ray Ruiz, better known as the Midtown Strangler, who got off on a technicality.”
Declan paled. He looked as though I’d just punched him in the gut. “We were talking about the Midtown Strangler in one of my classes. He�
��he took Ash?” Alarm was evident in his tone, so much so that I knew he had to know the details about Ray’s crimes. He knew more about him than me, judging from the terrified and worried look on his face.
I wished I could tell Declan that Ray took Ash. That he stole her, kidnapped her, and we had to go on a righteous mission to get her back and bring her home. But, alas, that was not the case. Ash had been freaking out due to what happened in the basement, due to seeing what she saw upstairs. She’d run from the house, and Ray pounced on her when she was at her weakest.
“No,” I spoke after a long while, earning a quizzical stare from Declan. “No, she…she went with him.”
Declan didn’t quite get what I meant. “He picked her up with a line or something?”
Shaking my head, I said, “She went with him like she knew him. She went willingly.” Ash wasn’t stupid. She might’ve been weak in that moment, but she wasn’t stupid. She had to have known who Ray was, what he did, what kind of monster she was getting in the car with. Ash had to have known.
And yet she still went with him. She still tossed out her phone like trash, as if trying to forget us, forget me. She went with a killer, and she was God knew where with him. I wasn’t the type of man to believe in God, but right now, only an omnipotent being could tell where she was, whether she was even still alive.
My breath caught in my throat as I watched Declan pull out his phone, probably to look up Ray’s name. That thought hadn’t occurred to me before.
What if Ray killed her? What if he was killing her now? What if I saved Ash from Brooklyn and her Batman only to deliver her unto a worse evil? I never wanted her to be raped, but knowing she was in the hands of a serial killer was not a good thought.
The mere thought of Ash being tortured, cut into, stabbed and strangled was the most horrifying thought I’d ever had.
If she died…if that fucking monster killed her, I would do my damnedest to track that motherfucker down and end his miserable life—and make sure he screamed in agony in his last moments. I would kill him with no hesitation whatsoever, with no planning whatsoever. I would make Ray Ruiz rue the very day he decided to come here and take Ash.
Ash already belonged to a monster.
Me.
Chapter Three – Ash
Sunlight streamed through the window, and I stared at the sun’s rays as I lay with my back on the bed. The bedroom was on the second floor of the house, and I knew the morning sunlight hit me, danced across my face and my flesh, but I couldn’t feel it. It didn’t warm me. I was still so very cold.
I knew why I was cold. I wore nothing but a slip, and I was pretty sure this satiny, soft dress belonged to the owner of this house, or one of them, at least. And beyond that, I was ninety-nine percent sure she was dead. Stuffed in the basement or buried in the backyard. Something. I doubted my ex had good credit after what happened, let alone a job to afford a nice, quaint place like this.
The moment I felt stubble grazing my inner thighs, I closed my eyes. My stomach was full of bacon from breakfast, and now…now I was about to be full of something else. I wasn’t sure I wanted to, though. At this point, I didn’t know what I wanted and what I didn’t want. I was just sort of here, floating along, going along with whatever he desired. It was easier that way.
But the stubble…the stubble was really making me cold, because it made me remember things I didn’t want to. So I did the only thing I could: I closed my eyes, doing my best to ignore the stubble, forget where I was and why I was here, and pretend, just for a little while, I was with someone else.
I pretended the voice drifting up from between my legs belonged to someone else. Someone else whose tongue knew just how to work me. Declan.
“You taste so good,” Declan’s voice entered my ears, and I let out a sigh as I felt his tongue glide across me, circling my nub. I arched my back, my head resting on a pillow that wasn’t mine as I felt his hands travel along my outer thighs, stopping only to grip my legs as he buried his face in my pussy.
Declan’s hands were so soft, so warm and inviting. They warmed up my cold body, and his tongue warmed my core, made me ache with a desperate, carnal need only one thing would fill. When his tongue began to apply more pressure to my clit, I bit my bottom lip to stop myself from crying out, but it was a wasted endeavor. The high came all the same, the orgasm sweeping through me before I could stop it, before I could smother it.
Strangle it.
Wait, no. No strangling.
It was because I lost myself to the word, because I’d thought of his signature, that I no longer heard Declan’s voice. Instead, it was all Ray as he said, “I can’t wait to be inside of you again, amorcito. It’s been too long.” He was slow to lift his tanned face from my sex, giving me a messy smile. His dark hair was scruffy, his hazel eyes sparkling with mischief. A handsome man, a man nearly double my age.
“Shh,” I shushed him, closing my eyes yet again once the orgasmic high faded and my body was once again my own, no longer lost in the sensual bliss. “Don’t talk.” Me, begging him. Me, demanding his silence. When I heard his voice, his accent, it made it all too real.
I didn’t need him right now. I needed…a lot of things, none of which I’d get.
I needed comfort. I needed a good guy. As he fumbled with himself, getting himself ready, my mind went to the older brother. To Will. My poor Will, hurt because of me. Attacked, because he’d gotten too close to me. Was it wrong that I felt for him too? My feelings were a mess. I was a mess.
Was it wrong that when I felt a cock nudge my entrance I pictured it belonging to Will?
I inhaled sharply the moment I felt him push it in, and even though I shouldn’t, I wrapped my arms around his back and hugged him closer to me. I wanted to apologize to everybody, to tell them I was sorry for fucking up, but I couldn’t. I’d been spiraling, and now I’d finally hit rock bottom. It was a terrible place to be, but I didn’t know how to get out of it.
Climbing out seemed impossible, so why not just surrender to the inevitable?
It wasn’t Ray who fucked me then, it was Will. My mind said it was Will, so it was Will. Will’s cock, gliding in and out of me. Will’s grunts from the chest above me, the chest I clung to for dear life. Will’s hips rocking back and forth, filling me up with a kind of pleasure I’d almost forgotten.
There was something so primal about surrendering, something so carnal about letting a man have you and feeling him inside. My mind didn’t want Ray; it wanted Will, it wanted Declan. Basically it wanted anyone else but who it was in reality.
Alas, reality was reality, and there was no escaping mine.
Ray fucked me like a wild man, like someone who hadn’t had their drug of choice in years. Someone who’d fallen off the wagon and had no hope of climbing back on. I was the prize, the treasure that had been kept from him for so long.
It wasn’t even that long, not really. A year? Maybe less? I didn’t know. Time ceased to matter the moment I realized he’d found me again. Ray had found me, gotten out from the trap I thought I placed, and he wasn’t going to let me go again. I was his. I’d always been his.
I turned my head toward the window again, my eyes open just enough to see the blue sky outside as my body jostled against the bed. I didn’t want to feel bodily pleasure, and yet, my sick, twisted body did. I was cold, but Ray made me warm. I was a traitor to everything I believed in and everyone I’d ever met.
What was wrong with me?
Pressure built inside of me, and my body reacted of its own accord. My inner walls tightened around his cock, and another orgasm spread through me like molten lava. This time I couldn’t hold back my wail of pleasure. This time I cried out, my cry as loud as my lungs would let me be.
Ray grunted above me, slamming his cock as deep as it could go. My release must’ve helped edge him toward his, because in the next moment, his shoulders were tensing above me, and he nearly collapsed on top of me. His thrusting slowed, and he didn’t pull out of me right away, b
ut when he did, I felt him take a piece of me with him. My soul, if I had any of it left.
“I forgot how good you feel,” Ray murmured, rolling beside me. He wrapped an arm around my stomach, moving it beneath the slip I wore.
I could feel the mess of our sex starting to leak out of me. It wasn’t the only thing leaking out—a tear had formed, a single tear, and it made its way out of the crook of my eye and onto the pillow below. Thankfully my back was to Ray, so he didn’t see it, didn’t question me on it. Ray had no idea how fucked up I really was right now. He didn’t know how broken he made me.
Once I was sure I wasn’t about to burst into tears, I muttered, “Why did you find me? Why didn’t you just run?” Ray had to have known that the police were probably watching him. Hell, he could’ve led them right to me, and then I’d be wrapped up in this. Ray couldn’t be tried for the same crime again because of double jeopardy, but I could.
An accomplice I was not…but I knew. I could’ve been a key witness, could’ve testified against him, but I was too scared. Too frightened. I tended to shut down when things got tough.
I was never strong. I was always weak, and this just proved it. I was a sniveling, weak wimp who ran away from her problems, time and time again. A person could pretend to be strong, could feign inner strength, for only so long before the walls crumbled and reality came to light.
“Amorcito, you know there’s no one else out there for me,” Ray whispered into my ear, causing me to shiver. “It’s only been you.”
“And those girls that you killed, what about them? What were they to you?” I knew bringing them up probably wasn’t a good idea, but right now, me and good ideas rarely saw eye to eye. Bad ideas were more my thing. We were tight.
Ray set his head behind mine, resting it on the same pillow. “They weren’t you,” he finally said.
Psycho: A Dark College Romance (Hillcrest University Book 4) Page 2