by Jayla Kane
I wouldn’t though; I already knew, even if there was nothing incriminating in it, I wanted it just for myself. To remember what she made me become, and who she was. The disaster we were together.
When she was totally spent, I was left standing there with a mess on my pants and in my chest—my heart was sore. Twisted. Ruined.
Her cream was all over me.
I hated her.
I still loved her.
I hated myself for it.
“Liar,” I said, taking a step back and a deep breath before I spoke so that she would know this meant nothing to me. “I own every part of you now, you know that? And you like it,” I hissed, and she hid her face in her arms on the desk. I almost felt pity, but then I remembered her refusal to even tell me if he was really dead. Fuck her. “You’re mine, little bird. And don’t think I haven’t got plans for the rest of that tight little body.”
I didn’t.
The plans I’d made… She destroyed them years ago, when she held my hand and lied to my face.
But I could make new plans.
I could find new things to do to her, now that she’d submitted to my rule.
“Get out of my office,” I snarled, and she immediately stood up and pulled her panties over her hips and her skirt down. Defiance showed in her face as she grabbed her bags and strode past me, deliberately knocking into my torso as she went.
“Thanks for your time, Master,” she hissed, then slammed the door behind her.
And then I was alone.
Rock hard, full of hate… And completely alone.
Chapter Fourteen
Raven
I hated him.
I hated everything about him—most of all, I hated what I recognized of his old self beneath this new, tyrannical veneer. I could look into those hazel eyes and see him there, the glimmer of the boy I loved so much, buried in hatred. Jake and I avoided each other most of the time in high school, the volleys in our war peopled by infantry instead, and it was strange to think that this was the most time we’d actually spent in each other’s company in almost five years. But here we were. Sineater to his Game Master. Enemies.
And still… Something else.
I walked as quickly as I could to my house, then around to the back. It was one in the morning. I unlocked my mom’s car, made sure no one was looking, and crawled into the backseat; there was always the chance one of my sisters or my mom might be in my room or just wandering around the house, even though it was the middle of the night, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I unfolded the blanket Baby kept there for when I had to pick her up after cheer practice and huddled on the floor, as low as I could go, yanking it over my head. And then I cried.
I cried so hard it hurt my ribs, my face—I cried so hard I was covered in tears and snot, wet everywhere… Including down below.
Because that was what really sucked.
It wasn’t that Jake had wanted to hurt me. To humiliate me, to make me feel degraded and owned and completely his.
It was that I understood why.
It was that I felt like I deserved the punishment.
And even then… Was it really punishment at all, if I wanted it so bad? If what I craved was his face in my most private place, sniffing and licking and biting and tasting before he ripped into me with his cock?
Was that my punishment for refusing to tell him whether Tristan was alive or dead?
That wasn’t punishment at all—that was fucking ecstasy.
Sure, he’d smacked my ass; I would have bruises tomorrow. But…
And you want me to fill this tight little pussy. Don’t you…
That was my chance. That’s when I could’ve turned around and told him to fuck himself, and reported him to the Dean. That’s when I could’ve pointed my finger at him and said, too far, motherfucker. Way too far.
But I didn’t.
And not because his hold on me was that strong—I wanted to see the Vault, but not at the cost of my dignity.
…Apparently I wanted Jake more than that, though.
And I was ashamed.
That’s why I cried.
I cried because I wanted the punishment—I deserved it. I hadn’t deserved all that dumb shit in high school, the public brew-has and the messes and the loneliness. That was all bullshit, because it made what I’d done so impersonal, so silly.
And what I’d done was no less than betray him. Utterly, completely.
I wanted Jake’s punishment—maybe, if we’d been forced to stay in the same room alone for longer than never while we were younger, we could’ve hashed this out… But now, there was a tower of thorny pain and hurt and guilt between us, a gulf we couldn’t breach… And a need we couldn’t deny.
I felt it when his fingers were inside of me. Gentle. Searching. Rough, but not because he was hurting me—because he wanted me. Wanted to fill me with himself, to make me cum. Wanted me to drown in him, to submit, to show him I craved that connection. He could’ve done so many things then, but what he did was humiliate me, remind me constantly that I was his slave, that I was ruined… And give me pleasure. Perfect, blinding pleasure. Just a taste of him, and nothing more.
So I cried.
I’d ruined everything. Everything.
Chapter Fifteen
Raven
I crawled into bed that night and let myself succumb to the exhaustion that still haunted the edges of my vision. When I woke up, I immediately realized I hadn’t even looked at the assignments someone snuck into my bag; as I was unloading it all on my desk, looking down at Rose Avenue, I realized that Jake sent someone here, to my room, to get it. They’d come inside, been here, been near my family. A shiver ran all over my body in genuine horror—had anyone noticed at all? I’d been fielding questions from my mom all day; she’d left this morning early for a long trip out west, and her text messages were peppered with emojis meant to lessen the panic in her questions… Had she been worried not only because it was my first day, but because she knew something strange was going on? Had she seen someone leaving my room and hoped it was just a new friend? That didn’t sound like her.
Zelle, on the other hand, had been oddly silent. My sisters and I chattered constantly, given that we didn’t exactly have a huge social circle, and I hadn’t gotten a text from her in almost two days. The last time I saw her was when I headed out, her excellent latte in my hand. Baby texted me constantly, but that was to be expected—she started her senior year of high school next week, and was frantic with excitement. She attended a different high school, a private academy an hour away, where no one knew the Creepy Kellers. My sister and I took turns driving her after a lot of fighting with my mom. She let us, though, in the end, and Baby—known to her friends at her school by an abbreviation of her real name, the intolerably perky ‘Missy’—had experienced a much happier version of ‘normal’ high school. My mom had a defiant streak that Zelle and I shared, but we were wolverines when it came to Baby. We wanted her to have something fun, something decent, to look back at high school and cringe for the usual reasons, not because someone painted a pentagram on your locker with a used tampon—that’s what happened to Zelle the semester before she dropped out and disappeared. My experiences were a little less mean girls, a lot more typical jock-bullying in the end, but we wanted better for Baby either way. At any rate, Zelle was the only one who was acting out of character; I should check in with her, I thought, and shoved the pile of work across my desk, deciding to head downstairs. If she wasn’t working the counter, she was probably in the back, doing inventory.
My mom had a good head for business. When she came home, pregnant with two little girls in tow, she was all of twenty four years old, had no life experience beyond singing in bands and reading palms for rent money, and not a single friend—at least not until the Warfields. Even my grandparents were stretched to the limits of their tolerance by her reappearance; I know, because Gran told me, years later. She was a kind woman, but I’ll never forget the residual exhaus
tion that shone on her face. “Your mother bit off more than she could chew,” was all she said, and all anybody would say, particularly whenever the subject of Baby’s father came up. No one knew who he was. Sometimes I wondered if Mom did.
That was a lot for my grand-parents to handle, but they did their best.
In the end, we spent a lot of time with them while Mom changed things in the shop, and she created a thriving business—while breast-feeding Baby, herding Charlie, Zelle and I around to preschool and play-dates, and reversing the roles so that she became a care-giver for Gran and Pop. They died when I was six, within a year of one another; no drama, no illness, just asleep and then gone. My mother, being my mother, consented to a pretty normal funeral but kept a small witchy shrine to them behind the counter. I thought it was morbid, but I also understood the need to grieve.
I nodded hello to my grandparents’ portrait as I clumped down the stairs, tiredness still rattling in every one of my bones. Zelle was behind the counter, and I slid onto a stool. Every one of us knew how to work all of the machines back there and could make a damn good cup of coffee, but Zelle was the best. She had a knack for it. Without asking, she started making me my favorite—a toffee machiatto. An indulgence we didn’t usually allow ourselves, or each other, given that it was such a pain in the ass, but she whipped it up for me and set it on the counter. Before she could walk back to whatever held her attention before I appeared, I reached out and touched her hand. “Hey,” I said, and she glanced over at me.
“Hey,” she said, and started to move away again. Her face was closed, unreadable. I tightened my grip and wagged her arm up and down like a puppy with a bone.
“What’s going on? I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“Are you sure that’s true?” She leaned on the counter and raised an eyebrow at me. “Because I’m pretty sure I haven’t heard from you.” My older sister has my mother and I’s pale skin, but hers is dappled with light brown freckles. She has gorgeous hair, true auburn, burnished with gold, and deep brown eyes the color of mahogany. Zelle is beautiful, but she doesn’t play it up; none of us do but Baby, and if I looked like her I might consider making an art of high femme as well. Baby has black hair like mine and my mom’s, but gold skin and almond eyes that are caramel in color. She looks like an Italian model from Vogue, but with boobs. I look the most like Mom from a distance, but up close you can see the little differences; Zelle got my mother’s delicate features, her rosebud lips and wide eyes. I must take after my father a little more. “I figured you were busy with school.” A cloud passed over those deep brown eyes, and I narrowed mine in return.
“You’re just as much of a crap liar as I am,” I said, and sipped the drink she made me. Perfect. “What’s really going on?”
She sighed. “Did you really put your name in for Sineater?”
“Yep,” I said, and she rolled her eyes at the ceiling.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Do you suddenly believe in fairy tales, Rae? Are you completely crazy?” Her hands slid to her hips and her mouth hardened. “You know what else I heard? That Jacob Warfield is Game Master.”
“You heard right,” I said, then shook my head at her. “I wish you and Christa would include me in these little chats. I feel like you must talk about something cool, something that isn’t me.”
“I’ll add you to the thread next time,” she said, her voice undercut with frustration. “Seriously, what are you thinking? After all the shit he put you through in high school?”
“This isn’t high school.”
“No, it’s not,” she snapped. “The stakes are a lot fucking higher. And from those bags under your eyes I’m going to go ahead and guess you got in. Did you?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you that,” I said seriously, and she rolled her eyes again while emitting a low groan that made two of the customers sitting down the counter glance over at us in alarm.
“You’re not supposed to join the goddamn Society, you fucking moron,” she grumbled. “Since when do you believe all of mom’s crap, huh?”
“I just needed to see, Zelle,” I snapped. “I have to. You know why.” I caught her eye and her face paled, her cheeks draining of their usual warm hue. “If there’s any chance—any chance at all—I have to take it. I have to know.”
“There’s not.” She bit her lip, staring at me. “You know it’s impossible. It can’t be done.” She pulled something out of her apron—a letter, I realized—and then stuffed it back in, blowing out a hard breath as if she were remembering something all over again.
“I mean, yeah, logically,” I said, shrugging. “It’s all insane, right? But who gives a shit? I mean,” I looked at her imploringly, hoping she would get it, “what else am I supposed to do?”
“Live with it,” she snapped. “Like I do.”
“You’re not the one,” I hissed. “You didn’t do it. But I did. And I’ll join the fucking Society and sell my goddamn soul if it means I can make it right.”
“But you can’t,” Zelle said, sadness welling in her eyes. “You know that. You’re doing this… You’re just punishing yourself, Rae. And for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” I corrected her. “I’m doing it to make sure. To make sure I did everything I could.” Something occurred to me, and I reached out and wrapped my hand around hers. She stared down at it, deep in thought. “Hey… I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“Yeah,” she said softly, still staring down at our hands, hers spotted with freckles, mine pale and smudged from god-knows-what. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry I forgot.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said absently, and then one of the customers waved her over. Tristan’s birthday was yesterday. No wonder she’d been a little off radar. And Jake… What did he do to commemorate it, besides snatch up new Sineaters and drag orgasms out of them? I sighed, shifting in my seat; my asscheeks were sore, and my lips were a little raw… Down there. I didn’t regret it though, and that’s what bothered me—the memory of his fingers in my body didn’t fill me with anything but lust. I’d sobbed my guilt out in the car, I guess, and all that was left now, the morning after, was the memory of how good it felt. How bad it felt to feel so good. “What are you thinking about?” My sister stared at me as she walked back over, and I shook my head, trying to forget the night before. “You look weird.”
“Nothing,” I said, but her eyes were watching me with a scrutiny I knew I needed to escape, before her blunt questions pulled more uncomfortable information out of me.
“Are you in the Society or not?”
“Bye,” I said, pulling my back-pack over my shoulder and grabbing my drink. “You’ve got a letter to burn, I see. I’ll catch you later.” This was kind of a joke, in our family; Zelle, for whatever reason, burned all of our junk mail. It was the dumbest thing, and we all gave her hell for it.
“It’s your turn to pick up Baby,” she called, and I stopped in my tracks, groped my pockets and found the car keys. I gave her a thumb’s up over my shoulder as I walked out to Rose Avenue and turned towards the Institute.
I had three classes today, and they didn’t start until eleven. That was originally supposed to give me a gap in my schedule that I could use to fill in at the shop, but it looked like the Society would be keeping me up until the wee hours instead. I appreciated that Zelle hadn’t even asked; she told me at the beginning of the summer, when I informed her and my mom that I wasn’t sure I was going to Harvard, that she would cover for me whenever, no questions asked. Maybe she knew all along what my plan was. Zelle wasn’t without ambitions of her own, but she’d been… Listless, I guess, of late. She hadn’t seemed her vivacious self very often recently, and I thought it was just because Charlie wasn’t home as much to pal around with her, but now I wondered if it was something else.
Had she been dating somebody? Had they broken up? With her I could only guess; the thing about the Kellers, myself included, is
that even though we’re terrible liars and we don’t often bother, we’re also very private. If you don’t ask the right question, you never get the real scoop.
I tried to focus on the street in front of me, the passing other students and the odd traveler seeking a small-town experience. Ashwood was a beautiful village, if absolutely tiny. It was almost remarkable that it had survived the shift away from farming, but here we were, with a living Orchard—not that anyone was allowed in it, as it was rumored to be full of monsters but was instead, I suspected, full of apples—and several small family farms. My mom had proposed that we start a Farmer’s Market over by the train station; there was a big field behind it with no discernable use. It belonged to the Institute, but maybe whatever they’d planned to build there had fallen through. At any rate, the City Council refused to grant her a permit. They were in for a fight, though—I knew she was going to make the case for a Christmas Market this year, and she’d have a good number of people in town supporting her, Creepy Keller or no. It was a good idea; there were a lot of visitors around then, taking a break from the city while their vacation days were intact.
I stepped through the entryway to the Institute and immediately tensed, even as I started down the path between the tall, swaying trees lining the walk through the Commons. I felt like Jake would know I was here, almost as if by magic—as if the tether that he used to make me stand last night when I was with Percy was suddenly reactivated, every muscle in my body attuned to serve his needs at a moment’s notice.
It was infuriating.
There was only one need of his I really wanted to serve, I realized, and that felt like a splash of cold water in my face. I didn’t want to be an obsequious, sycophantic slob—not that he understood what any of that meant, probably. I didn’t want to make him like me, even; I wasn’t too fucking keen on him these days. But… I couldn’t believe it, but the memory of his hand inside of me made me so wet I could feel it, my jeans sticking to my body as I strolled the path. Un-fucking-real. Maybe I was just really pent up, I told myself. Maybe, if it had been any other guy…