Dragging my hands over my face, I replied with a nod. I was exhausted. I’d been inside Shadow all night, her perfect little body and sexy moans had made me take her over and over again. She’d been as tight and hot as I had known all along she’d be. Three years I had waited for her, and the wait had been more than worth it. However, I didn’t like how she also affected my emotions. A fuck was a fuck, but with Shadow it was different. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was about her, but I knew she had gotten under my skin. The way she looked at me, her eyes sparkling with something other than pleasure had made the beat of my heart speed up and the need to satisfy her grow until all I could concentrate on was making her come with an overwhelming ecstasy.
“Take her out and find a secluded site,” I said to Devlin as we both continued to stare with sadness at Mouse. “Don’t be seen.”
He nodded as I left him. I needed to find Shadow. Where the fuck was she? I just prayed that she hadn’t done something stupid. I knew she wanted to leave our torturous life, and it was only because of her sister that she was still there. My heart clenched when I knew this could push her over that line into the inhumane Phantoms we all became after time.
The corridors were bursting with people as the start of the day saw many Phantoms begin training or receiving their specific assignments. My father had called for my presence, most likely to receive my own orders, but he’d have to wait until I sorted this shitstorm out. He couldn’t find out about Mouse or we’d all pay for what Joel had done.
Quickly answering my phone when Rogue’s name scrolled up, I stiffened when apprehension controlled the tone of his voice. “You better come to the courtyard.”
Without answering him, I pocketed my phone and broke into a run. I would lose my shit if Joel had hurt her and bound her to the cross again. I was just waiting for the time to end him without the fall-back of it coming back to me.
However, when I entered the courtyard, I realised my worries had been completely the wrong way around.
“Holy shit!”
Rogue’s worried stare found me and he winced. “I can’t find her,” he whispered.
The blood in my veins froze as my eyes beheld the scene before me. Joel was nailed to the cross. A cavity in his chest displayed the void inside, his heart now slapped at the base of his feet and his toes tinged with the colour of his own blood. His naked body missed an essential part but as my eyes lifted to his face, I found it. His dick was protruding from his open mouth, a silent scream evident on his dead face.
“Fuck!” Bullet’s gasp broke me from my horrified stare and I turned to her.
“Did you find her?”
She shook her head, her wide eyes still fixed on Joel. “Shit.” She chewed on her lips for a moment then looked at me. “I might know where she is.”
“Tell me.”
Nodding, her stare once more fixed on Joel. “Down by the stream there’s a secluded spot between the two big trees. She often goes there when she needs to be alone.”
Looking at Rogue, his sadness made my gut twist. “I’ll find her,” I told him as I slapped him on the shoulder.
He nodded. “I’ll see to Joel.”
Giving him a nod of thanks I tore from the courtyard and made my way down to where Bullet had told me.
As soon as I pushed through the heavily laden trees I saw her. She was sat cross-legged, staring into the fast flowing water. My heart surged when I noticed she was still covered head to foot in Joel’s blood.
“Hey, love,” I whispered as I walked up behind her hesitantly.
Her head turned, and what greeted me sliced something deep inside, the pain in her eyes making my breath catch in my throat. “I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey,” I said as I sat beside her and pulled her to me. She curled up and pressed against me, her heartbroken whimpers making my soul weep with her. “Shh.”
“Will you try and save Mae?”
Tensing, I tipped her head back, making her look at me. “It won’t come to that, Shadow. I won’t let it.”
She smiled sadly. “You know he will kill me for this Isaac. Please accept it and grant my request. I know he will go after Mae after my death.” A sob broke from her and she squeezed her eyes closed. “I couldn’t allow him to live for what he did to Mouse. He should have come to me. Making my friends pay is cowardly and unforgivable.”
“I know,” I said as I held her tighter.
She was right; Frederik would make her death painful for this. We never, ever took one of our own out. It was in the rules; the very first rule. Only my father was granted permission to terminate a Phantom. And Shadow would pay with her life.
But I wouldn’t allow that. My father would believe it was me who killed Joel. As much as I wanted to free her from this life, I wanted so much more than death for her. I wanted her to live, and I prayed that one day, even without me, she would be able to look up to the sky and smile. And as I lifted Shadow back off my knee and placed her back on the grass, I pressed my mouth to her forehead. Knowing what I had to do came easy to me, and it made me recognise the feeling that beheld me over Shadow. I was in love with her. But she could never know.
“I’ll be right back. Stay here,” I breathed into her hair as I closed my eyes and inhaled her sweet scent to memory. It seeped into me, calming the erratic beat in my chest and soothing the pain of what I had to do. I needed it to make my next journey bearable. I needed her unique scent to carry me into hell.
ISAAC DIDN’T RETURN as I sat there between the trees, watching the sun disappear behind the horizon. I wanted to go with it, follow its path down under the ground and welcome the darkness. My heart beat furiously in my chest, yet I didn’t want to feel it anymore. I wanted it to still, to take one last beat and leave me to slither into hell.
I was so tired, my body trembling with exhaustion, my soul subdued and begging for freedom. My insanity had become the very thing that kept me alive, the torture it lived through driving my heart to keep pumping blood around my body.
Finally pushing my weary body up, I blew out a breath and went to accept my fate.
The Phantom home was quiet when I slipped back in. It was supper time but I didn’t bother heading to the dining area in the southern section. I wouldn’t be fed again, and strangely, the calmness that saturated me and granted the constant pain a reprieve didn’t want to be fed. I wanted to leave this earth hungry because that was the only thing I could feel right then. My heart still beat, my soul still held my spirit up, and my mind still placed random thoughts in my head, but I didn’t feel any of those things. Numbness and detachment shielded my despair from my upcoming death.
I thought of Mouse, Woods, and my mother on the slow walk. I smiled. For the first time in a long while, I smiled. I was eager to be with them, to be taken from this horrific life and finally feel the heat of hell on my skin. I knew without a doubt they wouldn’t be there to welcome me, but my mind played with scenarios where, once a year, heaven and hell joined to party and welcome in the New Year together. I laughed at that thought, the faint chuckle the only sound in the empty corridors as I took the journey to my master.
I frowned when, on entering Master’s quarters, an eerie silence welcomed me. Master’s quarters filled the entire north section. It was split into two; the front section where he conducted his business, and the locked and secured part where no one ever ventured was to the rear behind a door. We all speculated about how regal it would be, and what actually went on behind that door, but in reality, none of us wanted to find out.
A group of people stood in a circle surrounding something, and when Isaac turned to me, his eyes wide and worried upon seeing me, my body shivered with anguish.
“What’s going on?”
Isaac swiftly walked to me, his long legs pacing him quickly, and he took my hand then pulled me out of the room. “Isaac?”
He didn’t speak to me as I strained to look over my shoulder at what was going on. I squinted when I managed to
see a part of someone on the floor through a gap in the mass of legs, a shock of black hair and what looked like a pool of blood against the paleness of the ivory floor tiles.
“Isaac?” I panicked, pulling out of his grip as I raced across the room. My heart exploded when I saw Rogue’s head sitting a foot from his body, a pond of his blood the only thing joining it to the neck of his body. “NO!”
Isaac caught me when the world went black and I fell to the ground, the dead eyes of my friend the last thing that I saw before the abyss welcomed me.
It all became too much. Upon opening my eyes, I didn’t want to accept that my life went on after the death of Mouse and Rogue. I wanted to follow my friends. I wanted them to take my hand and escort me on the journey they had taken. I couldn’t breathe through the agony of grief clutching at every organ inside me.
Isaac held me, his silent support giving me more than he could ever imagine. “I want to go with them,” I whispered as I rocked with the pain of their deaths. “I – want –to –go – with –them! I can’t do this anymore.”
The sobs that tore from me hurt my ears and I curled even deeper within myself, hating the sound of my defencelessness. Three years of suffering burst from me in a current of snot and tears and pain and misery. I longed for Mae, for my mother, for life beyond the realms of this living hell.
“I can’t…” I wept and vomited at the extent of it all. But Isaac just held me, his strong arms protecting me from myself, his many kisses in my hair soothing the cruel bite inside my skull as insanity corroded my mind.
My body ached with devastation and my bones splintered against the punishing crush of my broken soul. When would it ever end? When would God finally grant me peace and take me away from a life that ripped everything from me in unrelenting barrages of mercilessness? There was nothing left of me, nothing inside me that could carry me through the rest of my days. After everything that the last three years had tormented me with, Mouse and Rogue’s death had finally taken the last part of my strength and annihilated it.
“Why Rogue?” I whispered as my body shook with despair. “Why Rogue?”
“He loved you,” Isaac whispered after a long silence.
His words and the whispered way he said them made me lift my eyes to his. Isaac stared down at me, his eyes telling me what he couldn’t voice. Bile hit the back of my throat and I narrowed my wet eyes on him as my head shook from side to side. “No,” I hissed out as I scrambled away from him, the realisation of what Rogue had done hitting me with a force that winded me. “Tell me he did not... he didn’t… please….”
When Isaac lowered his eyes and nodded, the world around me died right along with me. “He loved you, Shadow. Enough to die for you.”
My vision blurred when I tore into Isaac as the pain inside me became unbearable, my lungs burning with the deluge of pain surging through me. “NO!” I screamed as my fists laid into him. “No!”
I couldn’t breathe as everything broke from me in a swell of hatred and rage. “This is your fault! It’s all your fault. You should have killed me!” I cried as my punches continued to break his skin. “You should have killed us both! I hate you! I hate you!”
My mother. Mouse. Rogue. My father. They all died at my hands. All of them were dead because of me. And I deserved to follow them.
“I have to tell Frederik.”
Isaac chased after me as I ran from the confines of his bedroom, his arms wrapping around me as he stopped me in my mission. “Get off!” I shouted as I struggled in his hold. “I deserve to be with them all.”
I gasped when Isaac’s firm hand slapped my face, my head spinning to the side with the force of his slap. “Rogue died so you didn’t!” he bellowed at me, his anger now as intense as my desolation. “I was willing to die for you! I tried, Connie! I tried but I was too late!”
My name from his mouth froze my body and I stared up at him.
“Don’t throw his love back,” he whispered as his hands framed my face tenderly. “Don’t make his death a mockery. You go and tell Frederik it was you who killed Joel then everything Rogue did was a waste of his life. Honour him, Connie. Accept the gift he wanted you to have.”
His mouth crushed against mine, his tongue seeking out my tears and taking them from me. His arms pulled me tight against him, his devotion to me smothering the pain that cursed me and granted it peace.
“Carry on living,” he whispered as he grabbed the hem of my t-shirt and lifted it over my head. “Use what Rogue gave you. Be the Phantom I need you to be.”
My fingers slid into his hair when his teeth trapped my nipple through the cotton of my bra and he tugged. Dropping to his knees before me, he unbuttoned my jeans and pushed them down my hips, exposing my wet flesh to his mouth. He ate me like a religious man starved of bread and water, his worship on my throbbing cunt breaking my insanity and bringing me to my knees, where he pushed me back, ripped off my jeans and continued his idolisation. Orgasm after orgasm took me to the gates of heaven and back as he feasted on every drop of arousal that flooded his mouth.
And when he slipped me over onto my stomach and pressed his thick cock against my arse, I nodded. “Take me there,” I pleaded. “Please.”
“Have you ever?”
Shaking my head, I looked over my shoulder at him. “I’ve never been loved there.” His eyes widened on me. He knew what I meant. My anal virginity had been taken from me in a horrific way. “I need you to give me back the pleasure.”
He gazed at me for a moment and I wasn’t sure if he was angry or sad. Maybe both. But he lifted to his feet and rummaged through a drawer, coming back to me with a small bottle of what looked like oil. He kissed his way down my back, his tongue tracking each welt and I shivered when I felt a cold trickle between my buttocks.
“Relax, my love,” he urged when he slipped a finger into my backside and I tensed. “I promise I’ll make you feel so good.”
I trusted him, the only person I could ever trust in this sad life, and I did as he asked, making my body relax into the thickness of the lush carpet that covered his once hard floor. My body tingled with pleasure when he pressed two fingers into my pussy and worked my arse until I moaned loudly and pushed myself harder onto him.
“Ready?” he asked gently as his nose nuzzled into the dip of my ear. Nodding, unable to speak, I pressed my backside into his groin, encouraging him.
My fingers clawed at the carpet as he slid his cock into my arse, the pressure overwhelming as he nibbled at the soft skin on my neck. “Oh fuck,” I panted as he pushed slowly all the way in until the fullness made me catch a breath.
“Jesus holy hell,” he hissed out as he drew the tip of his nose across the nape of my neck. “You okay?”
I moaned, meaning to say yes but all that came out was a voice of my pleasure. So I nodded again. He drew out of me so slowly I had to clench my teeth against the sensation of it, but when he pressed back in, I lifted my bottom and the angle seemed to accommodate him a little more. Isaac was big, his cock fat and long, and I was apprehensive that he might tear me but his tender devotion to pleasuring me made me writhe in bliss beneath him. Sensing my need for more, he sped up slightly, his cock sliding in and out of my arse so perfectly paced that the feeling of him pushing and pulling built a climax so quickly I choked on my own scream when it suddenly burst inside me.
“Shit, Connie!” he cried out.
A sob tore from me at the sound of my name once again leaving him with his loss of control. Isaac was always so disciplined with his feelings, and I realised that when he was emotional he couldn’t control what he said, hence my real name bursting from him as his own orgasm took him into the sphere of ecstasy. And I gave him that. I made him feel so good that he lost control. And that, with the wave of bliss rolling over me, brought me back over the edge until I was screaming his name with the heat of rapture that gripped every bone in my body.
I had fallen in love with the man who had taken so much from me. I had loved him for such
a long time that when he rolled over onto his back, groaned and broke wind, I just sighed and rolled my eyes. Love is a strange thing.
February 2008. Aged 17.
ISAAC SMIRKED AT me as he stood before me, a long strip of silk twisting through his fingers. I sat on the edge of the bed, completely naked, and looked up at him. Without saying a word, he placed the material over my eyes and pulled it tight into a knot behind my head. Shivering, I reached up to him but he stepped out of my reach.
“Naughty,” he whispered in my ear. Goosebumps exploded across my skin with excitement. “You can’t touch, birthday girl.”
My heart was trying to beat out of my chest when, slowly, he dragged the tip of his finger along my jaw, his tender touch making me turn my face into his caress. But suddenly he yanked my arms behind my back and bound them in another tie.
“You are not to move until I tell you.” The tone of his voice was stern as he moved across the room, his voice quietening the further away he got.
The last three months had seen Isaac and me become close. The cold nights after Rogue and Mouse’s deaths had hardened me. I was no longer the emotional mess that had threatened to consume me back then. I had become harder on the inside and colder on the outside. I was known as the Cold Bitch in the Phantom residence, and that was fine by me. Frederik, who still punished me for any slight mistake, had also grown to respect me. I was his finest assassin but I figured if he ever found out it was me who had killed Joel then that respect would be lost, only leaving behind his cruelty.
After a while, when I thought Isaac had left me, I jumped when a touch wisped across my breasts. It was feather light, barely decipherable, but it brought my body to life, my skin tingling as I pressed into the stroke. Leisurely, the contact ventured down the front of my body, the back of his fingers lightly brushing against my skin until they started to draw circles on the inside of my thigh. This was so unlike Isaac. He was usually rough and needy, his dominance making his caresses firm and bruising, and although I loved that, the way he was touching me now made my breaths come in small pants.
The Beginning of Connie and Isaac (The Blue Butterfly #3) Page 12