Flawed: (A Psychological Dark Romance) (The Dark Necessities Prequels Book 1)

by Felicity Brandon

  “Okay,” she whispered in response, literally pressing herself up against his frame. Whatever else Ethan was to her at this point—a lover, an oppressor, a killer— he also represented security, and the only one Lily had. “I’ll try, but I can’t see anything, and I’m not very steady on my feet with my hands tied.”

  Ethan laughed dryly. “Tough,” he replied in what almost sounded like a sneer. “You’re staying bound, so you’ll just have to do your best, Lily.”

  He was moving then, his right arm clutching at her forearm as his other hand waved the light in front of them. Lily did her best to comply with his request. She stayed as close to him as the space would allow, but as they began to descend, the staircase became narrower, and with it, the objective became more difficult. Shoots of panic grew in her head, but the strong hand remained at her arm until Lily’s feet finally found the hard floor of the cellar.

  Ethan flashed the light around the space, revealing a much larger basement than she anticipated.

  “Wait there,” he ordered as he directed the light into one of the far corners. “It will take me a few moments to find the generator, and get it going, and I don’t want you hurting yourself in the meantime.”

  Lily swallowed, flexing her fingers behind her back. “Okay,” she whispered in reply. “I promise to be good.”

  Ethan snorted from somewhere in the shadows. “That will be a first for a long time,” he retorted. “I don’t know what happened to my good little Lily, but she’s been absent for a while.”

  She shook her head at his assessment, biting down on the response that threatened to surface. Lily knew precisely what had happened to the woman he was referring to.

  Ethan had happened.

  “Found it!” he shrieked from over by the far wall, and as he shone the flashlight in the correct direction, Lily’s eyes fell upon the thing to which he referred. The so-called generator looked older than the house, and if it was possible, in even worse condition. Lily had no idea where the hell they were, but wherever it was, the place was old. She couldn’t make out much with only the flashlight for illumination, but somehow, she didn’t need it. The smell of the place alone told her that the building had stood for a long time, the scent of damp seeming to fill up much of the air around them.

  He angled the light toward the place he now crouched, and for the next few minutes there was silence as Ethan went to work. Lily watched in virtual darkness, trying not to overthink what was actually happening. She wasn’t particularly fond of dark places, especially basements, and there was still the whole bombshell Ethan had dropped earlier in the night to contend with.

  “You’re quiet,” he murmured, and she lifted her chin to find Ethan eyeing her from across the black space.

  With only the flashlight for illumination, he looked rather eerie on his haunches, and Lily pushed down the low shudder that threatened to pass down her back.

  “I’m just thinking,” she whispered in reply.

  “That’s ominous,” he responded with a snort.

  “What?” Lily’s response was reflexive, but she was actually quite grateful for the distraction he offered.

  She was done with thinking—there was only so much one person could mull over in their heads, and Lily thought she must be pretty close to full capacity at the moment.

  “You thinking,” he answered, but his attention was elsewhere, those large hands tinkering with the generator.

  Fleetingly, Lily hoped that he knew what he was doing, but she dismissed that concern as easily as she’d pushed away the others.

  “So, a thinking Lily is ominous?” she clarified with a small chuckle. “That’s a bit rich, isn’t it, sir?”

  Ethan’s gaze flitted to hers for a second, those dark oceans of his eyes pinioning her and making her heart race once again. “And why is that?” he asked in a tone that made her belly furl.

  Lily swallowed. “Well, there’s only one admitted killer around here, sir, and it certainly isn’t me.”

  He flashed her a smile, before his gaze returned to whatever task his hands were trying to achieve. “That’s true,” he concurred. “Can you come over here, beautiful? I need the light a little higher.”

  She shifted from her place at once, hopeful that the request might mean she could finally have the use of her hands again. “If you untie me I can hold it however you want.”

  Ethan laughed. “I don’t think we’re ready for that yet,” he said as he reached for the place the flashlight was resting. “You can help me perfectly well just by holding it between those delectable thighs for me.”

  Her heart fell at his words, and she sighed as he lifted it toward her. “Fine,” she muttered. “I just don’t see why you don’t trust me. It’s not as though I’ve killed anyone.”

  The sound of his soft chuckle filled the air as he eased the torch gently between her legs. Once it was in place, his right hand rose up the back of her skirt, and squeezed her bottom gently.

  “I do trust you,” he assured her as he stared up into her eyes. “But you just had one hell of a shock, young lady, and I don’t want you doing anything silly now, do I?”

  Lily couldn’t ever remember Ethan’s gaze looking as dark or insistent as it did at that moment, and his sudden proximity made her think about sex again. She’d been so horny earlier. So horny and so wet, and then all of this had happened. Frankly, she didn’t know if she was coming or going anymore.

  “I wouldn’t have done anything silly,” she replied in an absurdly small voice. “I wouldn’t have gone to the police, sir.”

  And as the words left her lips, she knew they were the truth. The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. She’d been shocked and appalled, but never once had Lily contemplated contacting the authorities.

  “I know, beautiful,” he replied, leaning forward to graze his lips over her skirt-covered sex. “But I just wanted to make it easy for you, and that means you and I spending some one-on-one time together for a while.”

  “A while?”

  Her question hung in the air as he crawled the short distance back toward the generator. With the light higher, he seemed to get straight back to work with little effort.

  “Yes,” he confirmed as he blew the dust away from the surface nearest him. “And don’t forget how you address me now. All errors will be corrected when you’re punished later.”

  Lily gulped at that, her sex clenching as though it, too, had been listening to his response. “Sorry, sir,” she whispered, grateful for the first time that the darkness concealed the new blush that rose to her face.

  “How long, sir?” she probed, fidgeting in her place. “How long will you keep me here?”

  Ethan fixed her with another one of those searing looks. “For as long as we need, beautiful,” he replied in that same low tone he’d employed earlier. “We’ll take as long as we need.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  She looked fucking delightful standing there by the side of him, her wrists still bound behind her back, and her thighs now clamped together, holding the flashlight between them. Ethan dragged his attention away from the temptress with the torch, forcing it back toward the old generator. The thing was older than him, but he was still hopeful it would work. They’d made things to last in those days, and in all the years they’d lived here, it had never let the family down. In fact, in all those years, the only thing that had consistently disappointed Ethan had been the man who’d bought it in the first place.

  His father had spent many hours down here in the cellar. It had been one of his spaces—the place he had come when he was pissed off, or just pissed. Ethan remembered it all too well. There had been a time, when he was much smaller, that his father had let him come down, too. Ethan had watched him tinker down here for hours, and that was how he’d learned so much about the place—and about the generator—but as soon as his youngest brother arrived, followed soon after by Kitty, something seemed to change in his dad. Something broke, and the man detached from the whole fam
ily. He’d become colder and more distant.

  More frightening.

  “Why did you do it, sir?”

  Lily’s voice interrupted Ethan’s thought process, and for a second, he didn’t reply, merely turning his face toward the direction her question had come from.

  “Why did I do what, beautiful?”

  Of course, Ethan had a pretty good idea to what she was referring, and he wasn’t crazy about getting back into that conversation again. Not yet, anyway, but she had asked him nicely, and as his gaze took in the look of her, he could tell it was taking every ounce of her courage to ask him at all.

  “Kill all those women.” Her voice was barely even a whisper now. “Why did you kill all of them, sir?”

  He sighed. It was almost impossible to explain his motivation. How could the lion explain to another gazelle why it had wanted to chase its cousin, why he wanted to rip it to pieces? There was no other reason—it was just in the lion’s nature to do those things—it was just what the lion did.

  That was Ethan. He was just stronger, fitter, darker.

  Ethan’s eyes fell back to the generator. Everything looked good. If he could just get the alternator to respond, then they should have power within a few minutes.

  “It’s not easy to explain,” he murmured after a moment. “And nothing I say is going to make it any better for you, Lily. I’m sorry.”

  “I just want to understand, sir.”

  Reaching around the alternator, Ethan found the switch that ran the combustion engine. Inwardly he hoped that his sketchy memories of the generator would be enough to get the thing going again now.

  “I know,” he answered. “And I know you want some logical response. You want to hear that they deserved it in some way. That I was doing something honorable by killing them, but I really wasn’t. There is no happy ending, I’m afraid. I am only the man you see before you. Nothing more and nothing less.”

  His finger pressed down hard on the switch, and after a second, the low whir of the engine filled the space between them. “Success!” he cried, rising to his feet as his eyes rose to meet Lily’s. “The house should have power.”

  Ethan took a step toward her, reaching down between her legs to ease the flashlight from her thighs. “Thanks for holding this for me,” he murmured as he pressed his body up against hers. Placing the torch down on the floor next to them, Ethan’s hand moved around Lily’s trembling body.

  She shivered as his fingers grasped her hair, and the other hand snaked around her waist, holding her body against his. “So, you just killed them for fun, then?” she offered in a small voice.

  Ethan sighed. He was getting tired of having this dialogue. “I killed them because they had something I wanted,” he mumbled as he leaned into the sweet smell of her hair. She was truly delicious.

  “What did you want, sir?”

  Lily sounded pretty close to terrified now, her body emanating tension as he stroked the back of her neck tenderly. His was a foolish response when he considered it. Why would the hands of the killer reassure her—even if those were the same hands she had sought to bring her pleasure so many times before?

  “It depended,” he told her. “It wasn’t always the same. Sometimes I wanted the sex, and sometimes I just wanted to exert power over them, but it was never more than that. None of them ever meant a damn thing to me.”

  No one had. Until Lily.

  “Oh,” she mumbled, and it sounded as though she was close to tears. “So, you just took what you wanted, and left them?”

  Ethan shifted the hand at her nape to the side of Lily’s face, drawing her focus north to meet his. “Yes,” he replied in an even tone. “I just took what I wanted. It excited me. It made me hard and happy.”

  “And now?” Lily sounded almost pained.

  “And now I have you, Lily.”

  The tears came then. Ethan could tell—even in the darkness. It wasn’t just the low sobs that caught in Lily’s throat that told him the truth, but the way her chest rose shakily, before crumbling again under the weight of all the emotion.

  “Shhh,” he soothed, pulling her head toward his chest gently. “Don’t cry.”

  It took a moment before Lily could even compose herself enough to reply. “But all of those women. They didn’t deserve those things to happen to them, Ethan. Sir.”

  He blinked into the black at her words, the statement making him pause. In all the months he’d been hunting, he’d never once given a moment to the notion of what his victims deserved. He just didn’t see things that way. He saw injustice everywhere he looked—on every street corner—life was unfair, and the rich got richer while the poor got poorer. So, what difference did the untimely demise of a few women make in the grand scheme of things? If there really was such a thing as karma, then Ethan had never experienced it, and he certainly didn’t fear the prospect.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Lily’s reality blurred, and for an unquantifiable period, she lost track of time and space. One moment she had been in the black depths of the basement. She recalled the warmth of Ethan’s hand against her skin, and vaguely, Lily remembered her brain’s response. It told her she should recoil in horror. It told her feet that they should flee. Apparently, it didn’t matter to her mind that she had nowhere to run to in the darkness—that she was bound in a strange place with a self-confessed killer. The instruction had been stark, but still, she had chosen to ignore it. Lily had felt the warmth of his palm, and despite the angst that resounded about his admission, she found she just couldn’t leave it.

  It was a stupid, bizarre and frankly shit decision.

  Lily had known it then, but there it was. It was her decision, and she had made it.

  It was like Ethan was the sun, and even though Lily knew she couldn’t withstand his proximity forever, she equally couldn’t walk away—she couldn’t survive without the heat and light he offered her. She knew without it, she would simply wither and die.

  You might die anyway, a small voice in her head reminded her helpfully, but Lily shrugged that assertion away. She might die, it was true. Ethan had a history of killing, and he hadn’t been afraid to tell her when he was asked, but in her heart, Lily didn’t really believe he would kill her. There had always been something about him—something inherently dangerous—something that had made the small hairs on her arms stand up when she met him. Lily had known it. She’d always known it, yet Ethan’s enigma; his ability to exert power over others and control them had always been the thing that had drawn her to him. And like the proverbial moth to the flame, she had gone. Knowing she would burn. Seeking the scorch.

  When she opened her eyes again, Lily found she was in a large, leather chair. She didn’t know how much time she had lost, or even if she had really opened her eyes at all, because this place—this room—looked eerily familiar. Slowly, she turned her head, easing it right and away from the crackling fire. Her gaze took in the space, reporting back its findings to her stunned mind, though Lily was struggling to process what she saw.

  She was in the large rectangular sitting room; the place she had met Ethan in his dreams on numerous occasions. So, maybe she was asleep then? Perhaps the shock and exhaustion of the day had finally caught up with her and Ethan had made a bed for them somewhere—wherever they were? The idea was oddly relaxing. Lily knew this place, and she knew what it represented, and since reality was filled with so much conflict and contradiction all of a sudden, she felt strangely safe here.

  Settling back into the leather, she inhaled, preparing to close her eyes. Her hands were free at least, and she was warm and comfortable. That was reassuring. Since Ethan didn’t seem to be there, she thought she would take the opportunity to just rest. That’s what her mind needed now—some time out—some sanctuary. It was at that exact moment the door in the far corner of the room burst open. Lily’s heart leapt inside her chest, just as she leapt from the large seat. In some part of her head, she had been vaguely aware of that door—she’d seen it, and s
he knew it was there—but in all the times Lily had been here, no one had ever used it. The door had never opened. Ethan appeared in the doorway, his muscular arms clutching what looked like a box of clear plastic bottles. He caught sight of Lily at once, kicking the door closed behind him before he put the bottles down on the floor.

  “You’re awake,” he murmured as he moved in Lily’s direction.

  She was standing by the side of the chair by now, her hand gripping onto the studded arm as though it somehow represented the last fragments of her security.

  “I was starting to worry.”

  Lily’s heart hammered in her chest. “Wh-what happened?” she stammered. “Where are we? Am I dreaming?”

  The questions fell from her lips without any conscious thought on her part.

  “You kind of passed out,” he explained as he neared the place Lily was standing. “One moment we were talking, and the next you’d collapsed. I was quite concerned actually, but you still had a good pulse, so I just let you rest while I got some supplies.”

  Her gaze fell over the bottles behind him. “Supplies?”

  She knew she sounded dazed and confused, but Lily couldn’t help that. It was exactly how she felt.

  “Hmmm,” he confirmed as he put the box down. “Water and some basic provisions. Remember, I get up to all sorts of wicked things, so I always have an array of the basics in the car.”

  A fresh knot of anxiety furled in Lily’s belly. “Wait—what? I don’t understand. We’re dreaming, right, like always? Why do we need provisions?”

  Lily swallowed as she tried to follow Ethan’s line of thought, but it didn’t help.

  “Lily.” His voice was warm and soothing as it washed over her, and then all at once, he closed the distance between them, those large palms appearing at her face. “Sit down. You need to rest.”