by Laura Avery
QUIVER
A DARK ROMANCE
BOOK SEVEN
BY LAURA AVERY
Copyright 2018 Laura Avery, all rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced without written consent of the author. This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Quiver is a dark romance and is intended for mature audiences only. It’s extremely possessive and crude. Please don’t read if strong sexual situations, language, violence, and bullying offends you. All individuals portrayed in this work of fiction are eighteen years of age or older.
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Chapter One
“Please, don’t let him die.”
EMERY
I shrank back down into the floor, flashbacks of the day before replaying in my mind in specs of black and white. He had come back to kill me already. Suddenly, I was having trouble breathing. Every ounce of air I tried to inhale got lost somewhere in my throat, refusing to be processed and used for life.
The man who had choked me out less than forty-eight hours ago stood in front of me, taller and larger than I remembered. He frowned as he took in my current state and puffed his lips out in disapproval. “Oh, Emery, you continue to disappoint me.”
This was it.
This was how I was going to die.
I backed away from him slowly, crumbling down to my knees and squirming my body as far into the shelf as I could manage. “I’m not scared of you.” I managed to get out with a straight face.
Deep down I was terrified, on the verge of tears. Say what you wanted about Jackson but he had never given me a panic attack, he had never made me feel like the scumbag who stood in front of my body so casually. I couldn’t put it into words, Jackson had put his hands on me before but he had never choked the life out of me. He had never grinned down as he watched the light go out in my eyes. It wasn’t that he didn’t have it in him, I knew he did, I just doubted he would take any pleasure in it.
Jackson’s mystery foster brother chuckled. “Really? That’s not what it looked like the other night when you were on the ground practically crying like a little bitch.” He took another forceful step toward me. “And now look at you, chained up in the library after being fucked like some common whore by that coward.”
I closed my eyes and tried to force my body under control. The last thing I needed was to show him how much control he had over me, how much he was affecting me by being this close to me.
“Why are you so scared?” he asked, looking genuinely puzzled.
Ugh, so much for playing it cool. “I’m not,” I lied.
“Don’t tell me it’s because of the other night.” He leaned against the bookshelf next to me. “I may have gotten a little carried away with the whole knocking you unconscious thing. Do you accept my apology?” he asked, not sounding sorry at all.
“Sure,” I gulped, still struggling to breathe.
I could kill Jackson for leaving me here.
He looked my body up and down slowly, his eyes had more pep in them today, a trait I couldn’t help but to think had something to do with knocking the wind out of me hours earlier. Did he get off on inflicting pain? Probably. The question was how long until the high wore off and he was back to being on edge again?
“Don’t worry,” he said; as if he could read my thoughts. “You aren’t my type and even if you were… I wouldn’t touch anything that Jackson put himself inside. I mean, I do have some respect for myself.”
“What do you want?” I snapped, growing tired of the small talk.
His eyes darkened. “Did you relay my message?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly. “And they know exactly who you are,” I added quickly. It was a stretch but I didn’t want him to think he had the upper hand, I wanted him to feel just as unsafe as me.
He froze and a pinch of worry crept into his features but it was gone within seconds and he was moving toward me again. “If that’s true then I don’t really have much reason to keep you around anymore, now do I?” He ran his tongue over his bottom lip in anticipation. “It might be time to send my brothers a firm message. Something big. Something thrilling.”
His brothers?
God, he sounded like a lunatic.
I tried to move my arm down off impulse only to stumble further backward in pain when I remembered I was still firmly handcuffed in place. “Shit,” I mumbled under my breath, looking back up at him. “Jackson will kill you if you touch me again.”
Jackson was already going to kill him but he didn’t know that.
He threw his head back in disbelief. “Jackson is the biggest pussy out of the three of them, Emery, which isn’t saying much, but trust me when I tell you that he’s no match for me.” I moved my head out of his grasp as he towered in over me. “No one is.”
Up until that point, I had been hoping that he was just going to deliver some kind of verbal warning, that he was just looking for another way to mess with me. Or that maybe Jackson would come waltzing back in just in time to catch him intimidating me. It had become increasingly obvious that neither of those things was going to be taking place so I did the only thing left to do under the circumstances.
I opened my mouth and screamed bloody murder.
He lunged at me right away, shoving his hand over my mouth. “You stupid fucking bitch,” he hissed. “Shut the fuck up before I slit your throat right here and now.”
I bit down on his hand as hard as I could and struggled to kick him off me. I started pounding my wrist back and forth on top of the shelf at top speed, causing a loud metal banging to make its way up and down the rows of books around us. My attacker stumbled backward at the sting of my teeth marks on his skin and I pounced on the opportunity, kicking books off the shelves around me with a loud bang and screaming at the top of my lungs for help.
He recovered quick, throwing his body so hard on top of mine that it snapped my wrist back, sending my hand into a crippled state of pain. I yelped out in pain, immediately terrified that he had broken it.
“That’s only the start,” he seethed. “Unless you shut the fuck up.”
I tried to bite my tongue but it was of little use, the pain he was inflicting on my body was too strong and all I could think was hell, if I was going to die, I was going to die fighting.
“You’re dead,” I whispered into his ear.
He smirked. “No, that’s you.”
The words were muffled into the air as his body went flying backward, shoved onto the ground. Jackson glanced at me with fire in his eyes as he gave me a once over, never taking his hand away from his foster brother’s neck. He must have figured I was unharmed enough for him to proceed because he turned his back on me again, pounding his fist into the kid’s face over and over again.
It was only after the kid managed to squirm his hands forward and wrap them around Jackson’s neck that Jackson really stopped to take in his face, to fully process who he was fighting. Realization rested there for a second but then he was struggling against his grip, trying to choke him out just as forcefully as he was trying.
“Jackson,” I whimpered, trying to get to him. I felt so helpless, so unable to protect him the way he had always protected me. I lunged at them but my wrist was still battered and held tightly in place above my head. A part of me wanted to take the plunge, to snap my wrist back completely so that it was battered enough to fit through the small hole.
Despite everything, a huge part of me knew Jackson was worth it.
I glanced back at Jackson but it didn’t seem like he needed my help, the fight in my attacker’s eyes was slow
ly fading to nothing. He might have felt like a big man when he had his grip wrapped around me but he was no match for Jackson. No, the man I had spent so long obsessing over was smarter than that, stronger than that, the evilness in him wasn’t something faked or pushed, it just existed there naturally. It was as normal as the blood that ran through his veins and the bones that held his body tightly together.
One couldn’t fake the kind of cruelty that rested there.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back into the metal shelf, maybe I should have felt mortified that Jackson was choking the life out of someone less than ten feet away from me but all I could feel was relief. He was never going to hurt me or anyone else again, Jackson was going to make sure of it. I should have felt empathy but I was drawn to the scene, unable to stop watching. It made me feel just as fucked up as Jackson, if not worse. At least Jackson was honest about his darkness, I hid mine deep down inside of me pushed far below the surface.
I opened my eyes and sprang forward again.
No, no, no.
I had only looked away for one second.
Jackson’s foster brother had dropped his hand to the side of his body; as if he had no fight left in him. His reaching into his pocket happened to fast, in the blink of an eye, then the same knife that had been held against my skin hours before was coming into my vision.
“JACKSON!” I screamed, but it was too late.
The sharp object was shooting into his stomach and blood was oozing out of him within seconds, a dark blotchy liquid streaming down his perfect stomach and through his shirt, soaking the fabric. Jackson shot forward, stunned and reached down, placing his hand on his open wound and gasping loudly. “You fucking pussy,” he mumbled.
His foster brother pushed backward, throwing Jackson off of him and started gasping rapidly, trying to catch his breath. He staggered to his feet and glanced down at me. “Would you shut the fuck up?”
It wasn’t until he started yelling over me that I realized I had started screaming at the top of my lungs. I was screaming for help, calling Pierce and Liam’s names so loud that I was sure the whole building must have heard. It was ironic that I would be calling out for two people who hated me more than anything in a time of despair.
But I couldn’t stop, I wouldn’t stop, not until Jackson was safe.
I heard a loud banging on the other side of the wall and I knew I had been heard, I knew someone was coming. I just hoped it wasn’t someone who wouldn’t be able to fight back, who wouldn’t be able to take on the psychopath standing in front of me with a bloody knife in his hand.
“Fuck,” he mumbled, hearing the same thing that I did. “Now look what you’ve done.” He took a step toward me and for a split second, I thought he was going to charge toward me and stick the blade in, taking my life as one last victory. Maybe to him it would have been worth being caught, getting in the last jab, having the last action that would seal my fate once and for all. He must have decided that whatever the future had in store for him was much better than any revenge that could have been wasted on me because he shook his head at the last minute, turning around and retreating to the side of the building the voices and footsteps weren’t coming from.
And then they were there, Pierce and Liam.
As if they had appeared out of nowhere, shouting at me and Jackson, asking what had happened, applying pressure to his wounds as he faded in and out of consciousness.
I couldn’t speak, frozen in place, my eyes locked on Jackson.
So much blood.
God, don’t let him die.
Jackson just kept saying the same thing over and over again. “Cameron.” A name. “Cameron. Cameron.” His eyes shut again briefly and he moaned. “I’m going fucking kill him.”
“Relax,” Pierce was saying. “Stop trying to talk.”
“You need to stop the blood,” Liam was saying. “Get him up.”
I felt the tears burning against my skin, my vision blurring into the red.
Don’t let him die.
Please, don’t let him fucking die.
Chapter Two
“Revenge.”
EMERY
Pierce and Liam refused to let me near him the entire car ride home, shoving me in the back of the car and demanding that I shut up every time I started screaming or trying to put my hands on him. They were the pure example of complete control while I was a walking panic attack. It made me wonder how many times they had been in situations like this before, situations where everything was dangerous and falling apart and it was up to them to make it go away as quickly and quietly as possible.
“He needs to go to a hospital!” I yelped up from the back.
“No hospital,” Pierce said firmly. “Dad would lose his shit.”
“He’s going to die!” I pleaded.
Liam shot his head around and killed me with his gaze. “No one is fucking dying, Emery.” He turned back to his brother, placing his hands deeper into the wound. “And no one is going to the hospital either, it’s not what Jackson would want.”
“Of course, it’s what he would want!” I pleaded.
“I already called Carl, told him to get to the house,” Pierce mumbled.
“Carl? Who the hell is Carl?”
“Did you tell him it’s pretty deep?” Liam asked his little brother, not bothering to wait for a replay before looking down at his other little brother again. “Jackson? Jackson? Can you hear me? Everything is going to fine, you hear me? Everything is fine.”
“I’m going to fucking kill that son of a bitch,” Pierce stated.
“Get in line,” Liam added.
“Who is Carl?” I yelled, still trying to get a look at Jackson.
“Our doctor,” Pierce said, his tone laced with annoyance. It was clear he was only answering me in hopes of shutting me up for good. “He helps us when we get into situations like this.”
“Situations like this?” I gasped. “Jackson doesn’t need some shady man with dirty tools coming to his house and digging into him on the kitchen table! He needs a professional!”
“You think we would give him anything less?” Pierce snapped.
“Shut her up or I will,” Liam seethed.
Pierce looked back at me, training his eyes on mine. “Shut up, Emery.” Something about the way he said it made me listen instantly even if I didn’t fully want to. I might have felt something strong for Jackson but this was still their world, and I was still just a guest along for the ride. My opinion didn’t matter to them and it never would. This was their brother, their blood, and as far as they were concerned I was just a prop in their world. I had no say and being devastated about it wasn’t going to change it.
“He needs to go to the hospital,” I mumbled to myself again.
“He wouldn’t want to go to the fucking hospital, Emery,” Pierce said, hearing me even though I hadn’t intended him to. “Don’t be ridiculous.” The car was pulling into the driveway of their house, the driver slammed hard on the brakes before ripping his door open. “If he goes to the hospital, if the police get involved, Jackson won’t be able to get revenge.”
Revenge.
Right, everything was about fucking revenge with them.
They were out of the car, doors slamming as they rushed Jackson’s half limp body inside. He was fading in and out of consciousness and I wanted more than anything to run after him, to hold him and tell him that everything was going to be okay. Only I wasn’t allowed, I wasn’t Jackson’s girlfriend, I wasn’t sure I was his anything. And that meant I had no say in any decisions being made concerning his health.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat in the back of the car, crying and frozen in place before my cell phone started to ring. For a half-second, I thought maybe it was Pierce, telling me to come inside, telling me that Jackson needed me, that they needed my help.
I regretted the thought just as quick as it had come
Why did I want to be a part of them so bad? They were awful and controlling, so obse
ssed with the wrong things in life. Yet they had this powerful bond, this magnetic force that I longed to be a part of. I wanted to be accepted by them.
God, I wanted their approval.
I wanted to be able to boss them around when it came to Jackson and for them to take me fucking seriously about it. If the roles were reversed, if I was the one hurt, Jackson would be all over the situation, dominating every second of it. No one would think to question him, no one would dare to second-guess his authority. Me? I wasn’t granted that same privilege and I wasn’t sure it was something I could handle any longer.
My anxiety only grew when I saw whose number was flashing across my phone screen. I hit the answer button and pushed open the back door, swinging my legs out and letting them fall with a thud onto the slick driveway. “Has anyone ever told you that you have awful timing?”
Charlotte sighed heavily but didn’t respond.
I slammed the door shut and crossed the driveway, peering in at the scene that was unfolding on the dining room table in front of me. Jackson laying there with his shirt open while his brothers huddled over him. A man I had never seen before was hooking him up to an IV, a suspicious looking doctors bag sat on the table next to him.
Who the hell was this sketchy ass doctor they had on call?
Charlotte’s heavy breathing on the other end of the line reminded me she was still there and I brushed away the tears I hadn’t realized were falling from my eyelids. “What do you want, Charlotte? Or did you just call to see how many more lies you could manipulate me into believing?” I asked sarcastically. “Your webs already tangled enough, don’t you think?”
She didn’t respond again, her breathing grew more rapid. I waited until Liam pulled Jackson’s jacket further to the side and I could see blood spilling out onto the wooden surface under him before I spoke again. “If you aren’t going to say anything, I’m going to hang up.”
She paused for a few more seconds before finding her voice. “How is he?” It came out as a whimper, almost as if it pained her to speak the words out loud. She sounded ashamed to be even thinking it, let alone giving in to the temptation of asking about something she shouldn’t even care about.