I hated him. He was everything bad that happened to me.
But he was the only time—other than dancing—that I felt alive, too.
Being with him was like dancing. Dancing with death.
After a few more moments and the room had fallen quiet again, I hugged my knees to my chest again.
“I know you’re there,” I told him to wherever he was standing in the room. Where I always knew he was standing, because the house was heavy, it was too quiet, and I could smell the cloves on his clothes, the fountain on his skin, and the hot on his breath.
“And now you know…” I said, “I always close my eyes when I come.”
In high school, he’d asked if I closed my eyes in pleasure, and now he had his answer.
He didn’t move, and neither did I. I no longer cared. I was tired of wondering what he’d do. Now he was wondering what I could do.
This was a game to him, and that was fine.
He just wasn’t the only one playing anymore.
Damon
Present
I leaned over the bathtub, my hands gripping the sides and hovering less than a foot from her mouth as I watched her masturbate.
Jesus Christ. She was beautiful.
And mine. All mine whether she fucking liked it or not. She’d do this for me. Only for me from now on.
A lock of hair spilled down her face, getting sucked between her lips and back out again every time she panted.
Mine. This was why I tolerated Arion. Because her little sister was my favorite little cunt. God, look at her.
Her body waving and hips rolling, her tits bouncing, her legs spread wide and hanging over the rim of the tub… The trickle of water teased her little clit, and I ran my tongue across the backside of my teeth, wanting to be the water and taste what it tasted and do to her what it was doing.
She danced even when she wasn’t on her feet.
She rode it out, fucking and coming as she threw her head back and moaned, and I dropped my eyes down her body, remembering all that I had touched and taking in the new in all the years that had passed. The same taut tummy and toned thighs. The same tight, round ass and tits, nipples poking straight out and built to be sucked.
But her hair was longer now, a few more muscles in her stomach and legs, and her pussy… The tightest thing I’d ever been inside of. She was a woman. I wouldn’t have to be gentle with her this time.
I raised my eyes to her face again, cocking my head and watching her eyebrows etched in pleasure and pain and wanting to kiss her so I could taste the sweat above her top lip.
Did she think about me? Did she do this a lot? Was she dying for it that badly? Did it feel as good as having a man between her legs?
It had been so long since I was spent like she looked now.
She lowered herself back into the tub, tucking her knees up to her chest again, and calmed her breathing.
No, do it again. My dick was so hard, and if I slid it inside her right now, how wet would she be? God, what was she doing to me? Do it again.
“I know you’re there,” she said.
And I shot my eyes up to her eyes, seeing her stare off at nothing, serene and resolute.
“And now you know…” she went on. “I always close my eyes when I come.”
I remained there, the fire in my body a moment ago now turning to ice. She knew I was here. She’d known from the start. I thought it was odd she left the door open. I just assumed she thought she was alone in the house. Can’t fault me for watching what happens in plain sight.
But she planned this.
And I raised my hand, bringing it to her face, claws bent and starving to grab her pretty little neck, but…I drew back. Provoking me was her goal, and that was not how you were going to wind up in my bed, little Winter.
She thought she was strong. She thought she could play with me.
She could try. I had you once. I’ll have you again.
I rose silently and stood there as she finally got out of the tub, wrapping herself in a towel, and left the bathroom. I quietly followed, stopping just outside the bathroom door and watching as she trailed down the hallway, no turn of the head to hear if anyone was behind her and no fear that anything was at her back, and entered her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
I inhaled a deep breath, feeling the silence of the house and anticipation for the long nights ahead. Ari and her mother were gone.
Her father was gone.
All the ducks in a row.
Walking into my room, I shut the door, seeing Mikhail’s head pop from where he’d been asleep on the bed. He jumped to his feet, wagging his tail and tongue hanging out of his mouth.
I couldn’t help but quirk a smile as I dug into my pocket for a treat. He gobbled it out of my hand, and I petted him with the other, stroking his blond head. Amazing how some animals knew not to bite the hand that fed them while others couldn’t deny their nature to be what they were.
“I can’t sleep, boy,” I told him, smoothing both hands over his head now. “It’s not so complicated for an animal, is it? Why can’t the things I need be basic?”
Or physical?
I wanted to fuck. I wanted it slow, feeling her fear, her desire, and her mouth giving back what I gave to her.
But I needed her mind.
“It’s all in my head,” I muttered.
The control. The memories. The knowledge that our bodies betray us, and it was the brain that was the prize. That the mind knew what we really wanted, not the body.
“Wake up!” I whisper, shaking Banks. “Get up!”
She lifts her head, still half-asleep. “What? Huh?”
I rip the covers off her and grab her wrist, pulling her out of my bed. It’s like dragging a five-year-old. My sister is fourteen, but she’s still so lanky and skinny compared to me, and I’m only a year older than her. My boxers and T-shirt hang on her like drapes.
Footfalls hit the stairs outside my bedroom, and I’d forgotten to lock the door.
I shove Banks into the closet, and she sits down, knowing the drill. I put my headphones on her, metal music playing. “Don’t come out until I get you,” I tell her.
And I shut the door just as my bedroom door creaks open.
My mother, barefoot and dressed in a deep purple slip and robe, enters my room, a surprised look on her face when she sees me still awake.
She smiles and locks my bedroom door before heading across the room to me.
“You’re still up?” she asks, the musical tone to her voice making me wince.
It sounds surreal, because it has no place in what happened in this room. Nothing is happy or innocent.
She approaches, putting her hands on my face and patting my skin to feel for a temperature or some shit, but the touch turns intimate. A languorous drag of her fingertips. How her hand softly falls down my neck. How she stands close enough her breasts graze my bare chest through her nightie.
“Trouble sleeping?” she asks. And then smiles, teasing me. “Someone needs their sleeping pill.”
My sleeping pill. Because it’s medicinal for growing boys to have their dicks milked by their mothers.
She caresses my face and shoulders, looking up at me like I’m still eleven and always her boy.
“I can take care of anything my son needs.” She smiles and comes in, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Such a beautiful boy. You’re going to be a powerful man someday.”
She presses her body into mine, and I close my eyes, trying to go to that place I always go. Where I can pretend she’s someone else. A girl at school. Some chick in my class.
My mother is still young, only sixteen when she had me, so her skin is still tight from youth and years of dancing, her black hair is long and soft, she smells good…
I’ve had sex with others. Girls around town. Women my father keeps. I can do this.
And if I want it to stop, who will I tell anyway? My father won’t care. No one will, and telling will make him angry and mak
e people laugh at me. I’d be weak and an embarrassment to him.
I can’t tell.
This isn’t a big deal. My mother isn’t unusual. Men look at Banks the same way my mother looks at me. That’s why I hide my sister. So they won’t go after her.
I see so much shit, and I don’t know if it’s wrong, but it never ends, and I’ve gotten used to everything that happens in the late hours. Maybe it happens everywhere and nobody talks about it.
But she rubs her hand over my dick through my jeans, and I just can’t.
“No, stop,” I growl, stumbling back. “I don’t want to.”
I don’t fucking want to. I won’t tell, but I’m not doing shit I don’t want to do anymore.
But she protests, “Damon.”
She advances on me but stops, and looks down at the floor. Picking up her foot, she inspects the smears staining the wood. “Is that… blood?” she asks me and reaches down, lifting the ankle of my jeans and seeing the blood soaked into the hem. “Oh, my God, what have you done?”
Not enough, apparently. I’d completely forgotten about the cuts once she walked in, because the broken skin wasn’t enough pain to mask the shit she brought with her.
Taking my hand, she drags me into the bathroom adjoining my bedroom and pushes me back against the countertop, lifting up my foot.
“Are these cuts?” she exclaims.
Like you’re shocked. She knows what I’ve been doing for years now. The cuts I hide under my feet. The scars under my arms and hair. The slices, pricks, and burns that are covered under my boxers until they heal and then I do it all over again. I’d gotten creative in hiding the shit I did to release pain.
She wets a washcloth and pushes me back more, so I sit on the counter, and lifts my foot.
But I jerk away. “I can do it!”
She slaps me, and my head jerks to the side, the sting of her hand burning across my face like fire and ice. I close my eyes, grateful for it. A cool sweat breaks out all over me.
“There, there, now,” she soothes like I’m five. “You don’t need to talk. Remember what we said? You don’t need to talk. I always know what you need.”
She wipes up the blood, applies Band-Aids to the five slices I made, and checks the other foot, sighing in relief that it wasn’t injured.
“You need to be careful,” she tells me. “The basketball team needs you. You can’t hurt your feet like that.”
That was why I did it. It didn’t hurt my game at all. If anything, I played harder and faster, so the pain of running on that court would exhaust me, so I couldn’t think or fight when I came home.
“Better?” she asks.
She doesn’t wait for my answer, though. Coming in, she wraps her arms around me again, kissing my cheek and trailing more over my jaw and mouth.
“Such a good boy,” she whispers. “So much energy. So physical.” Her hands move over my body as her kisses get wetter and longer. “So much endurance and muscle. So much power.” And then her hand reaches between my legs, massaging my cock. “Such a good, growing boy.”
I grip the back of her hair, and she moans as my fingers dig into her scalp and I stare at my reflection in the glass shower door.
Bitch.
Slut.
Pussy.
Nothing but a fuck.
“Rachel Kensington’s mother called me,” she says, licking, kissing, and panting against my neck. “She said she found you and her daughter half naked on their couch last night.”
I take her waist in my other hand, kneading the flesh through the silk, never blinking as I stare at myself and letting all the emotions rip through me.
Anger.
Shame.
Fear.
Violence.
Pain.
Sadness.
Helplessness.
They float through, jumbling together until I can’t identify one from the other, and it’s not even me in the reflection anymore. Everything in my brain leaves, my mind turns off, and my hands stop shaking. I’m just a body.
This is me.
I am me.
“She was glad nothing serious had happened,” my mother goes on.
Rachel who?
“Oh, sweetie,” she coos. “I understand. Boys will be boys, and she teased you, didn’t she? She wouldn’t let you have it.”
I dig my fingers into her skull, squeezing her hip tighter.
“Shhh,” she says, trying to pull away from my hold. “Little girls just don’t understand what boys need. It’s okay. I’m here.” Her lips trailed a line across my jaw, mewling as she tries to get my grip off her hair.
“You can pretend I’m her,” she tells me, my dick growing hard and hot with blood. “Show me what you were going to do to her. Show me how you wanted to fuck that silly little girl.”
No, no, no…
“Show me,” she urges. “Fuck me.”
No…
“Take what’s yours,” she growls. “Give that girl what she deserves.”
I suck in a breath, tears springing to my eyes, and I jump off the counter, swing around, grab her by the back of the neck, and bend her over the counter.
She spreads her legs and pulls up her nightie for me, bites her bottom lip. “That’s my boy.”
I hold her head right in front of the mirror, staring at her as she challenges me back.
“Do it, baby,” she whispers. “Come all inside me. Come on, come on, come on…”
And I glare at her, tighten my hold on her hair and neck, press her into the counter, and pull her head up—
She gasps, ready to get it.
And I shove her head into the mirror as hard as I can, splintering the glass, and she screams.
“Damon!” she cries out, but I can’t stop.
A wave of euphoria washes over me, and I don’t know why my cheeks are wet, but my muscles are charged, and I just want her to fucking die.
I growl, bringing her head down again and again, blood covering the mirror, and then I haul her up, her body limp and blood pouring down her face, and I hit her, sending her flying to the floor.
She coughs and sputters, and tears stream down my face, but in that moment, I knew.
It would never happen again.
This never had to happen again. I’d kill her if I had to.
Seeing something out of the corner of my eye, I look over my shoulder, seeing Banks standing there with my headphones in her hand.
She looks from my mother on the floor—bloody and weak—to me, her eyes scared.
I rush over, grab her hand, and run from the room. She doesn’t ask questions as I pull her down the stairs, through the house, and out the back doors, into the backyard.
The moon casts a glow over the hedge maze, and we dive in, knowing our way well and finding the fountain immediately.
We climb in and settle behind the water, just like I had done a thousand times before, only once with a girl other than my sister. Banks doesn’t ask me what happened or what I’m going to do. She knows not to talk in here.
Reaching under the groove of the bowl above us, I dig out the silver barrette with pink crystals I hide there, and wrap my fist around it, remembering Winter Ashby’s words from so long ago in that fountain.
Your body can only feel one pain at a time.
She was right. I’ve found that to be true.
But instead of hurting myself to mask pain with more pain, tonight I learned something else.
Hurting others is just as effective.
My mother left after that beating. An hour later, Banks and I had gone back to my room to find her gone, and we fell asleep on the bed, leaving the door unlocked, because we knew. We couldn’t stop the world from happening to us. We could only react.
By morning, my mother was gone, and I never asked where. And as time passed, my father made no effort bring her home again. I didn’t see her until a couple of years later.
And I dealt with it for good that night.
Just like I was going to
deal with Winter and the false hope she nearly destroyed me with.
“I want her to want it,” I told Mikhail, his brown eyes looking up at me expectantly. “I want her to want me, to give me her heart, and be my soft, sweet, smiling Little Devil, clutching at me and unable to stop herself.” My heart quickened. “And then I want her to hate herself for it. To turn against herself and hate that she likes it, so she knows she’s weak and pathetic and no different than any other bitch. That she wasn’t special.”
Once I see her as just like everyone else, I’ll have destroyed her and killed my obsession with her. I would’ve killed her power over me, just like Natalya’s.
“And I think she wants to play this game with me,” I joked with the animal.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Come,” I called.
The door opened and closed, and then I heard Crane’s voice behind me.
“She’s inquiring about the dog, sir.”
“Tell her the truth,” I said, smoothing the animal’s fur. “She doesn’t have one anymore.”
“She says there were sounds in the house this morning, too,” he pointed out. “Man-made sounds after you left. She got scared, ran, and went to St. Killian’s.”
“How’d she do that?”
“Uber,” he answered.
I scoffed. Jesus. I never thought of that. Woman was certainly self-sufficient.
But I remembered the first part he said. Noises?
“You think she’s overreacting?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. She seemed very sure,” he explained. “I can install cameras and an alarm system.”
“No,” I told him. “Take on more men. Two details of four each.”
“Yes, sir. She’ll be safe.”
“From everyone but me,” I clarified.
“Yes, sir.”
She was probably just overly alert. Thanks to me.
But she also mentioned a visitor at Bridge Bay Theater days ago. Someone who came into the bathroom and scared her. She thought it was me.
It wasn’t.
This house should have better security, but I didn’t like cameras or video. I’d learned the hard way to not leave evidence.
And given our affluent neighborhood and the low crime rate, Winter’s father never saw fit to arm the house with an alarm system, at the very least. Maybe I’d add one eventually. Right now, I liked coming and going quickly.
Kill Switch Page 27