Sinner (Starlight Book 3)

by D. N. Hoxa

  “You ready?” I asked Evan, making the fake smile of evil in my face grow wider with too much effort. He was now pale as a sheet. His eyes kept jumping from my face to the pliers in my hand. But he didn’t move. He didn’t speak.

  I very slowly took his index finger in my hand, despite his attempts to curl his hands into fists. He was shaking now.

  Please talk. Please talk. Please talk. Please…

  He didn’t. I straightened his finger and held it tightly before I very slowly put the thin nail in between the small jaw of my pliers. I was shaking, too, but he didn’t notice. He was looking at his fingers.

  “Here we go…” I breathed, and I hoped that he couldn’t hear the stress in my voice.

  Horatio turned his back on us, and Aaron took a step forward. I knew it was costing him to watch almost as much as it was costing me to do it. I slowly squeezed the handles of the pliers until I had a firm grip on Evan’s nail. He let out a small cry when he felt the coldness of the iron.

  I prepared myself and ignored the beating of my heart in my ears. I also ignored the beads of sweat that were forming on my forehead. Evan, who was already filled with sweat everywhere, squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

  I held my breath. And I…I couldn’t. I let it slip.

  Goddamn you, Star! Pull your shit together, I yelled at myself in my head.

  “Oops!” I said, smiling and sweating like a pig. Evan let out the breath he was holding and kept breathing like he had run a hundred miles nonstop. He looked at me and at his fingers, and at the pliers in my hands.

  Come on, come on. Stop me! I pleaded, but I kept my smile on for him to see. Shit. He wasn’t stopping me. I took his face in my hand again.

  “Are you sure you want to try your luck again? I assure you it won’t slip the second time,” I tried again. But he kept breathing heavily and didn’t say anything. He was going to make me do it.

  “Okay…” I said, disappointed and desperate. I grabbed his nail with my pliers again and squeezed hard. Evan cried again and shut his eyes tightly.

  One, two, three…

  The door behind us opened. Oh God!

  I hoped the relief hadn’t shown on my face and now pretended to be pissed off when I saw Jack’s face at the door.

  “What?” I yelled for extra effect.

  Evan’s finger was shaking violently in my hand.

  “Sorry, I need one of you,” he said in haste.

  Aaron turned to look at me in question. I wanted nothing more than to get up and run after Jack, but I would never leave it to him to do what I started. I didn’t mind hating myself. He didn’t have to.

  “Go,” I told him with a nod.

  “Are you sure?” He didn’t seem convinced.

  “Yes, I’m sure!” I said, shouting a little more than I intended, but I was high on so many negative emotions that it was getting hard to control them. “I’m not going to leave you with all the fun.”

  I winked at Evan who was now white as a sheet. I swallowed the big lump that had formed in my throat and turned to Aaron again, begging him to just get gone already. He seemed to recognize the look in my eyes because he didn’t push.

  “Find me when you’re done,” he said, and without another look Evan’s way, Aaron left us alone.

  The second I heard it close, I felt just a tiny bit better. As much as I didn’t like to admit it—and I shouldn’t have—I didn’t want Aaron to see me do things like…that. There was no stopping me when the situation was as it was, but I still preferred he didn’t see it.

  “The third try is the lucky one, right?” I said, even though I was pretty sure that if he wasn’t scared shitless, he would’ve figured I was just playing pretend. But it wouldn’t have done him any good because as much as I wanted to puke my guts out and just get the hell out of there, I was still going to go through with it.

  So for the third time, I did it, and this time, without giving myself the time to think twice, I pulled the pliers up.

  The loud screams that came from Evan made me want to claw my eyes out. They were exactly like the ones I’d heard from people being tortured by the Council, over and over again. And I’d hated them so much. I’d despised them. And now, I was the one who was causing the screams.

  I am just like them…

  I stopped moving.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t become more like them than I already was. I was already a monster. Aaron was right. I was doing the exact same thing I was preparing to go to war against.

  I made myself look down. Evan was still screaming even though I’d stopped pulling. His finger was a bloody mess. His nail was torn halfway from his finger, and I couldn’t see a damn thing from all the blood. My hand, too, was filled with it.

  Vomit filled my mouth. I was a split second away from letting it go all over Evan’s lap, but I made myself swallow. I had watched worse things done to people, and I stopped feeling after the fourth or fifth time. But I had changed so much ever since I joined the RR. I wanted to laugh in my own face. I couldn’t even watch tortured people anymore, exactly when I most needed to. The irony…

  So I took a deep breath and prepared to stand up, when…

  “No! Stop…stop…I’ll…I’ll tell you…” Evan cried.

  He kept shaking his head, but his eyes were squeezed shut and his tears kept streaming down his cheeks. I couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t seen me put my pliers away. I smiled widely but this time for real.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so from the beginning?!” I said, genuinely pleased as I stood up and reached for my chair again. I rested my back on my seat but kept the pliers in my hands, mostly because I didn’t want Evan to see how much they were shaking. That would definitely blow my act. Horatio had his arms crossed in front of his chest and was looking intently at the floor in front of him, but it was fine now. It was over. I had only hurt him a little—he’d heal within hours from such a wound, and now, even if he refused to talk again, I was going to just drop it.

  Evan opened his eyes, and the crying finally stopped.

  “Start talking.”

  15

  The knuckles on my right hand were torn a little, but it didn’t hurt. Evan’s jaw was as strong as fucking iron. I didn’t plan on hitting him, but the jerk called me a bitch after I told him that I was planning to wipe the floor of our Base with Samayan’s face. And he asked what my plans were himself! So technically, it wasn’t my fault. I got an angry look from Horatio, though.

  Still, I now had everything he knew, or so I hoped. He told me about where they were keeping the werewolves, where they were training them. In St. Marie’s River. And of course, I asked him where the hell that was. Turns out it’s in the middle of the fucking border that divides Canada from the US. Right on the border. But what really pushed me over the edge was what Evan said when I asked him how the hell that was possible. Because borders were supposed to be well protected.

  Evan told me how. The office in the government that dealt with the supernaturals? They were cooperating—or more like acting like Samayan’s puppet—and hiding the view from the eyes of the world. They were in charge of that area, and they masked the location perfectly. And it was underwater, for God’s sake. Who makes a training area underwater?!

  I kept shouting that, and when Ella giggled for the third time, I had to stop and control myself. I met them all in the kitchen after I told Horatio to prepare Evan for the next day. I was going to take him to the SKO, feed him Veritas, and make him tell everything he told me to the rest of the world.

  First, Horatio laughed because he still didn’t believe I could find Veritas. Then, he complained, said we didn’t know what Veritas would do to him because of the potion. I didn’t care, or so I told him. But he didn’t argue because he was sure that we would have no Veritas. He even said so.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t hang around in the kitchen because I had stuff to do, and when Ella complained that she hardly saw me anymore, it nearly brought me to tears. I thought I’d nev
er see the day in which I’d be so close to my little sister again.

  Marie was putting dishes into a giant washing machine like she usually did after lunch. The others made room for me as I walked through, and it never got any easier to swallow.

  “Hi, Marie,” I greeted her with a weak smile.

  “Star, hello,” she said and turned the faucet off. “How are you?”

  “Good, I…” I leaned closer to her ear, just in case someone was eavesdropping. “I saw Everett. I told him you said hi.”

  I looked away from her because I had no idea how she was going to react.

  Seconds ticked by and I didn’t even breathe. I had no idea what was going through her head. I didn’t know if I’d done good to tell her or not, but I had promised her. And it was over already, anyway.

  “Thank you,” Marie finally said, then gave me a kiss on my forehead, which made me feel like a little girl.

  She wasn’t crying, smiling or nervous when I looked at her. She just had that expression that people had when they were sad, but they had already accepted the sadness as part of them, and now it was okay.

  “Anytime,” I said, and I backed away slowly.

  “Your boyfriend’s looking for you!” Ella called just as I was about to slip out the kitchen door.

  I turned abruptly.

  “What? I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  She grinned.

  “Then you should probably tell him that,” Ella said, and before I could think of something to say, she turned back to Kate and Jack.

  She was talking about Arturo. I had successfully avoided him lately and not because I didn’t want to talk to him. I was afraid of what he might…ask of me. I didn’t know exactly what I should call him, but I knew that he wasn’t my boyfriend. The only one I would willingly let use that title was Aaron. And he was the only one that never could.

  With a deep breath, I headed for Aaron’s office, and I kept reminding myself that things could’ve been worse. That he could’ve been dead. I’d rather he was never with me than that he was dead. So I swallowed hard and prepared myself when I finally saw his door. I didn’t bother to knock, I just opened it and was going to step inside the same way I always did. My mouth was already open and my words halfway out when I stopped in my tracks.

  My whole body froze. I felt like I just swallowed an elephant.

  Aaron was leaning against the corner of his desk, and in his arms, red hair peaked at me like sneaky little snakes. She had her arms around his neck and he was…kissing her.

  I couldn’t breathe…

  “Star, what are you…” Aaron said when he finally unburied his face from hers and looked at me.

  He pushed Audrey away from him and the look she gave me almost equaled the one I gave her. I wanted my fucking fists on her face as many times as it took to break her skull and leave her dead on the floor.

  But Aaron called me again, and my eyes traveled to his. I felt like the whole thing was happening in slow motion. He took one step forward and called me again. I didn’t know how I looked to him, what my face said. I just knew how I felt when I saw his ocean eyes.

  I felt cheated. I felt like he’d ripped a part of my heart out.

  But I wasn’t cheated. He had every right to kiss whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I mumbled, and before my tears could spill and make an even bigger mess out of everything, I walked outside and shut the door. I walked ahead without seeing, without direction. I should’ve turned my senses on before I opened that damn door! Then, at least I would’ve been a little more prepared.

  Aaron was calling my name. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t turn to look at him.

  But I was at a dead end.

  I opened the first door to my right and walked inside. The room was almost completely empty but for a few paper stacks and plastic bags with stuff I didn’t care about inside. I didn’t even bother to remember the blueprint Aaron had given me to make connections. I went to the end of the room, and I stood there, facing the wall, praying with everything I had in me for him to leave me alone. I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t look at him. I just needed all of it to go away.

  The door opened behind me. I squeezed my eyes shut but didn’t move. I kept my head down, and my hand on the cold wall to hold me in case I lost balance.

  “What the hell was that?” Aaron asked, and he sounded furious.

  “Go away, Aaron.” I tried to make it resemble a warning but I think I failed.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what that was.”

  “Nothing. Just leave me alone, okay?” I felt like a teenage girl talking to her parents.

  “I’m not gonna leave you alone. What are you doing, for God’s sake? What the hell are you doing?”

  He put his hand on my shoulder to try and make me face him. I resisted and pushed his hand away.

  “Aaron, go. Leave me the hell alone,” I hissed.

  “Why did you run away like that?”

  “I didn’t.” He was so close, I could feel the heat from his body, and it wasn’t doing me any favors.

  “Why did you run away like that, Star?”

  “I didn’t run away, you jerk!” Why the hell was he still there, anyway? I was the one who refused him over and over again, and Audrey was the one he could kiss whenever he wanted.

  This time, when he spun me around, I couldn’t stop him. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook.

  “Then what did you do, huh? If you didn’t run away, what the hell are you doing here in the janitor’s closet?”

  Shit. He had me.

  “Fine!” I shouted, because I was too angry to hold it in me any longer. “I ran away! I ran because I couldn’t fucking stand the sight of you kissing her. There. Satisfied?”

  I breathed like I’d just been in a marathon. His face was too close to me and we all know how dangerous that could be, so I tried to push him away. He grabbed my wrists before I even had the chance. He took both my hands and pinned them to the cold wall behind me.

  “Confused is what I am. I don’t get you, Star. You want me, but then you don’t want me? And then you do, but you don’t, not really. And then you get mad at me because I kissed another girl?!” Aaron said, desperate now, and he was right.

  With my awful luck, my tears heard him, too, and so the little fuckers were now unstoppable. They spilled all over my face. It was so not fair! I didn’t want to cry. I had about a million things I wanted to say, but I kept my mouth shut because I knew that if I opened it, my voice would break. The tears were already enough for him to see.

  Aaron brought his face even closer to mine, confused out of his mind. “What the hell are you doing?” he whispered, still pinning me to the wall by my hands. I looked away to wherever and tried to calm myself down, and when that didn’t work, I reached for the air around us. But it was already too tense, almost cracking with electricity.

  “And what the hell am I doing?! I promised you that I was never going to come close to you again, but here I am! Right behind you, again.”

  Aaron sounded a bit angry now, too, but angry at himself. I didn’t want to be the one to make him feel like that, but control was no longer mine, either of my body or of my emotions.

  “Are you fucking playing with me? Is that is?”

  It was almost funny—so funny that I looked up at him and laughed, even though my tears were still falling.

  “Yes, you douche! Of course I’m playing with you.”

  And still after everything, the way he looked at me, like he hated me and wanted me at the same time, made me want to go insane. My laughter died as I fell into the ocean of his eyes. God, I loved him so much, and I hated him for that, for having that effect on me. It just pissed me off because I was my own person, but with him, my body, heart, and my thoughts really belonged to me.

  “I hate you,” I hissed, but not nearly as angrily as I’d hoped I would sound.

  But Aaron let go of my hands. He didn�
�t move away. He grabbed my chin in his hands instead, and whispered against my mouth: “I hate you, too.”

  When he crashed his lips against mine, every cell inside my body exploded into tiny fireworks. I genuinely intended to push him when I put my hands on his strong chest, but somehow, somewhere in that half a second, I willingly surrendered the little control I’d fooled myself into believing I had. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him to me, even closer. He devoured me with his mouth, with his body that had mine pinned against the wall, and with his hands that just couldn’t seem to get enough of me. He pulled my hair just enough and gave himself access to my neck. I cried in pleasure as every cell in my body thrived with want for him, all of him and only him. Nothing else existed.

  He had me high again. I took his face in my hands and pulled his lips to mine because I was dying to taste them. I couldn’t get enough. I gently explored the impossibly soft texture of his cherry lips with my tongue, but he didn’t let me finish it thoroughly. His lips and teeth and tongue didn’t have the patience for gentle.

  He bit my lower lip like his life depended on it. He sucked on my tongue, letting out sounds that explained exactly how I felt, and his hands traveled up and down my back before they cupped my ass and he pulled me up. My legs wrapped around his hips on their own accord, and I felt his long, hard erection against my center.

  We both almost screamed in pleasure, and he whispered my name, over and over again until I fell in love with it. I arched my back against the wall and tightened my grip around his middle. He searched for my mouth with his again, and I gave it to him gladly. His hands, his fingers, left fire where he touched me, under my shirt, on my back and then my stomach. When he reached my breasts, we both cried out again. Eventually, his shirt ended up on the floor. It must’ve been my doing. And mine, right after—his doing. He then buried his face on my neck, collarbone and continued to my now naked breasts, right after my bra disappeared somewhere, too.

  “My God, baby. Look at you…” Aaron whispered against my skin.