Savages

by Natalie Bennett

  From The Bestselling Author

  NATALIE BENNETT

  COPYRIGHT

  Savages by Natalie Bennett

  © 2018 by Natalie Bennett. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Covers By Combs

  Editing by: Pinpoint Editing

  DEDICATION

  To those who love reading about dark and dirty souls.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’m not going to put a long detailed warning here about all the things you’ll find in this book. They’re usually ignored anyway. Savages is the first book in a dark erotic series with an underlying dystopian theme.

  Please know your limitations. This book is full of vulgar language. If you have issues reading about very dark and depraved themes with zero regard for moral boundaries, this is not the series for you. If you want questions with simple and easy to find answers, redeeming heroes, and a guaranteed happily ever after, I’m not the author for you.

  I did not write this book in hopes it would be the darkest thing ever written, I told the story I wanted to tell. Also, please note, This is not a romance. At this point I’m not sure it could even be called a love story.

  Savages Playlist

  (Spotify)

  Let You Down-NF

  Whore-In This Moment

  Sick Like Me-In This Moment

  The Beautiful & The Damned-G Eazy

  What’s Wrong-Pvris

  Imperfection-Evanescence

  Madness- Ruelle

  The Devil In I-Slipknot

  Homemade Dynamite-Lorde

  Gangsta-Kehlani

  Take Me To Church-Hoizer

  Bad At Love-Halsey

  Heaven In Hiding-Halsey

  Him & I-Halsey

  What Sober Couldn’t Say-Halestorm

  Praying-Ke$ha

  Cut The Cord-Shinedown

  Wrong Side Of Heaven-5FDP

  Cradle To The Grave-5FDP

  Pray-Sam Smith

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Savages Playlist

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Part Two

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Deviants

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books

  Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum

  PROLOGUE

  There are no heroes to be found here, only monsters.

  I am not an exception.

  I am the devil's confidante.

  I am guilty of unimaginable sins.

  I was better off without him, and he was better off alone, but the red string of fate tied us together. No matter how much it tangled or stretched, it would never break.

  In him, I found my absolution.

  He saved me from the light by showing me the beautiful depravity that could be found in the dark.

  My beloved devil made every withering parcel of my being bloom and thrive by nurturing it with his sinister mind. He tattooed himself across my heart and took up permanent residence inside my head.

  Ours is not a story full of sickly sweet nothings, nor is it a fairytale built on illusions. The world we lived in had long ago turned cold, and our hearts turned with it. Love was a four-letter word neither of us had ever learned, and trust was a foreign concept we didn’t know the meaning of. The odds were stacked against us on all sides of the spectrum.

  Our dark paradise could only be reached by paving the way with blood and corpses.

  Some might find it hard to understand how mere human beings could do all that we did: kill without mercy. Lie through our teeth. Take what we wanted just because we could.

  It came to down to nothing other than DNA, the genes that made us who we were. The blood pumping through our veins carried a beautiful madness only we understood.

  He was born sick.

  I was fucked in the head.

  Together, we were Savages.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Past-Four years ago

  He set her on fire, but it was me he watched burn.

  Within seconds, her body was drowning in an inferno. The blaze glowed red, bathing the night sky in blood. A sheet of flames danced across her naked skin, shrinking and splitting open flesh, leaving body fluid to expel. They reached for her dark strands of hair and singed them to the scalp.

  Her mouth had been sewn shut after she was forced to repent for her sins, silencing her shrills of agony and fear. The familiar aroma of charred flesh permeated the air, filling my aching lungs with every ragged breath I took.

  The Order stood by, watching with bored expressions on their faces as the faux nuns held hands and whispered their synthetic prayers.

  I wished it were a dream, but I was wide-awake. I wished nothing more than to take her place. I wished someone would have saved us from the hate, but not one person stepped forward.

  I had tried so hard to warn her away.I’d begged her not to come back for me. Why didn’t she listen?

  My body shook with silent sobs, constricting my heart in my chest. I couldn’t move. It hurt to breathe. I felt like I were burning with her.

  I was forced to watch on as the life vacated her body, leaving her limbs dangling limply above the flames. The bones that had been exposed were slick with the greasy residue of melted flesh.

  As two men moved forward to begin extinguishing the fire, still no one said a word.

  I tried not to picture what would happen to what remained of her blackened body, knowing she was to be discarded for crows and wild animals to feast on.

  “It’s unfortunate it had to come to this,” my father sighed, removing his heavy foot from my spine. “You let me down, Calista.”

  He stepped over my body and knelt down, lifting my battered face from the dirt. His skewed logic made him believe that if my pain wasn’t visible, then I wasn’t hurting—when he was the one who’d taught me to handle abuse.

  I looked into his cold, grey eyes and hoped he saw the hatred I no longer bothered to mask. If I had the strength, I would have torn out his jugular with my teeth.

  I had done everything he’d asked of me, even when I didn’t want to, when the aftermath always killed me a little more each time.

  I suppressed parts of me to appease him, but no matter how hard I tried, it was never good enough.

  Once upon a time, all I wanted was for him to remember I was his baby girl. No
w, I wanted him dead. I wanted to feel his blood between my fingers and keep his head as a trophy.

  “Feel better…now?” I wheezed out, choking on phlegm.

  “You’ve learned nothing from any of this; you are truly hopeless.” He squeezed my cheeks and then shoved my face back in the dirt, a look of disgust twisting his features. “Your sins will eat you alive.” With one last shake of his head, he chuckled and regarded me with unfeeling eyes before standing up and strolling away.

  “Take her past the border and leave her,” he demanded over his shoulder to my brothers, who had been standing by watching the events unfold.

  “If you don’t kill me…I will kill you,” I called out to him.

  He continued walking away, not bothering to give me so much as a backward glance. My hope that he would turn around and end it all was gone just as quickly as it had arrived.

  My brothers rushed to obey his command. They each grabbed an upper arm and began dragging me face down across the ground. I gritted my teeth as my hands were secured behind my back with strips of twine.

  “Let’s get this over with; I haven’t eaten supper yet,” my eldest brother grumbled, lifting me up and tossing me in the bed of his truck with an irritated sigh. I let out a soft grunt as my side impacted with the plastic floor.

  A second later, the engine revved, and I was flying forward as the truck sped off into the night.

  Much quicker than I expected, signs warning that we were about to leave a safe zone began to appear on the trees.

  I remained on my stomach, trying to come up with a quick plan of action. I knew once we reached our destination that the inevitable would be moments away from happening.

  And I was right.

  Seconds after the truck came to a full stop, one of my brothers dropped the tailgate and grabbed hold of my habit to pull me out.

  “We could fuck her now,” my younger brother, Noah, whispered, pressing his elbow into my back to keep me pinned down.

  “No, Judy is enough for me. Besides, look at her, she’s filthy.”

  At their words, my stomach twisted into a knot, acidic bile rising in my throat. Judy was our thirteen-year-old cousin.

  How did I not know this was going on? When did my brothers start feeding on the bullshit our father spewed like every other brainwashed acolyte? This shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did.

  The entire Order was made up of one, giant incestuous family exchanging body fluids.

  “Suit yourself; I don’t care what she looks like. I only want what’s between her legs.” Noah laughed. He gripped the dark fabric around my waist and started sliding it up.

  “Make it quick; I’ll wait in the truck.”

  The sound of retreating footsteps had one of my worst fears quickly becoming a reality. I was really being left alone to be violated, which was normal under usual circumstances, but never by my brothers.

  “Don’t,” I choked out, struggling to move away.

  “Shhh,” he blew in my ear, pressing the side of my face into the bed of the truck.

  Grabbing my cloth underwear with one hand, he easily tore it away. His heavy cross amulet pressed into my back as he crushed me with his weight.

  I heard the telltale sound of his belt being undone and my stomach turned to stone.

  “Stop,” I pleaded a little louder, my voice chock-full of emotion.

  He cleared his throat and spat into the palm of his hand, rubbing the DNA we shared between my ass cheeks. I swallowed repeatedly to hold down vomit but when his disgusting, hard cock pressed against my sensitive hole, it erupted from my mouth and dribbled down my chin, leaving an acidic taste on my tongue.

  I thrashed from side to side, trying my damndest to dislodge him, failing miserably. My haggard body protested at the movement, radiating with pain. Louis Armstrong began to croon out the words to What A Wonderful World from the truck’s cassette player, overshadowing my pleas and sobs.

  “Hold still,” Noah growled, flipping me over so I was on my back, forcing my head to lie in my own vomit.

  My shoulders screamed in their sockets, and twine cut into my wrists.

  “Please don’t do this,” I begged as he settled between my legs. He covered my mouth with his hand and managed to shove half his length inside me.

  Vigorously shaking my head back and forth, I freed my mouth and sucked in a breath, releasing it on a broken scream as he pulled out and pushed back in. Friction coupled with dryness tore the delicate tissue, making me bleed. My mind blanked, unable to believe that this was happening, that my sweet little brother wasn’t moving inside me, moaning his pleasure in my ear.

  Nausea tossed my stomach. I couldn’t get out from beneath him and I was wasting all my energy trying, but I had to do something. No one was going to save me.

  Adrenaline had my pulse racing at a hazardous speed. I could hear my heartbeat thundering in my ears. With a single-minded focus, I lurched up and brought us nearly mouth to mouth, catching him by surprise.

  I snagged his lower lip between my teeth and bit down as hard as I could.

  “Ah, fuck!” he garbled, immediately pulling out of me.

  His fist and pain simultaneously hit the right side of my face. The impact forced me to let go, but not without tearing a soft piece of flesh from the inside of his mouth. I spat it out, along with the blood I tasted on my tongue.

  He jumped up and swiped his face with the back of his arm. With nothing to balance me, I fell off the gate of the truck. Before I could get my bearings, his boot kicked me square in the stomach.

  Gasping, I managed to roll onto my side, receiving another kick to my back. I bent my spine, pulled my shoulders in, and tucked my chin to my chest to form a protective ball.

  “Fucking bitch, you’re not even worth it.” A glob of spit landed on my cheek, and his hand came down and attempted to tear the necklace from around my neck.

  When he failed to remove it, he kicked me one last time in the back of my head. Pain exploded in my skull, and I saw stars.

  A door slammed, and then they were gone. As the taillights faded, darkness eagerly swallowed me up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When the sun rose, the heat rose with it.

  Sawdust and little bits of grass clung to my sweaty, swollen face. I was still on the side of the road, battling with myself not to give up.

  My father would never expect me to survive and that had me realizing for the first time in nineteen years that I was free. This was not where my story would end—not when it hadn’t even begun yet.

  I was so goddamn tired, though. The thought of moving almost gave me anxiety, but I couldn’t continue to idle on the side of the road. If someone out here found me in such a pathetic condition, I stood no chance against them.

  I tugged at the twine around my wrists for the hundredth time to no avail. Gritting my teeth against an onslaught of pain radiating from my ass, I used my core muscles and legs to push off the ground, hissing as my ribs protested.

  Once on my feet, I swayed and fought to stay upright. Glancing around through one good eye, I took in the scenery surrounding me.

  I’d never been to the Badlands before.I’d never been allowed to venture away from The Order. I had no idea where to go. Left and right were both long stretches of road surrounded by fields of…nothing.

  Taking a gamble, I chose right. I avoided the smoking blacktop by walking along the edge of the street. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do, but at least I was moving—albeit slowly. I walked and walked and walked.

  My chest heaved with every strangled breath I took as I attempted to get some saliva in my mouth. Sweat rolled from my brow to my cracked lips.

  How long would it take for my heart to give out? Every pump of blood it pushed through my veins was like a solid rasp on a bass drum reverberating in my brain. All the aches and pains from the day before were now stiff and sore. My left eye had swollen to the size of a golf ball, limiting visibility. My habit only added to my struggles,
the heavy black garment weighing me down and serving as a beacon for the sun.

  Eventually, I stopped to rest against a tree that offered some semblance of shade, telling myself it was just for a few seconds. My vision was fuzzy and my legs could barely hold me up. The view looked the same as when I started, making me feel like I hadn’t really gone anywhere.

  I knew that I could survive this. I just needed to keep walking for as long as I could without falling down. I willed myself to believe that everything would be all right; no negative thinking, no analyzing or processing anything that had happened.

  When I began to doze in and out of consciousness, my inner voice failed to get me moving again. It wasn’t until a cool rag was placed over my face that I woke enough to realize I was in a moving vehicle and my hands were free.

  “Is that her?” a man whispered. I think my head was on his lap.

  “I’m not sure. Is she doing anything yet?” another man answered, sounding a little farther away.

  “Well, she’s breathin, isn’t she?”

  “Smartass,” the distant voice grumbled.

  “Why do they make them dress like nuns? This holy shit fries my brain.”

  “You know they’re a bunch of freaks, bro. I just hope they don’t have Tilly.”

  Tilly! He knew Tilly?

  She’s dead! I tried to tell him, but my mouth wouldn’t work.

  Hearing her name broke open the floodgates I was trying to keep closed. The memory of her body burning to a crisp was all too fresh. It was an ugly festering wound I didn’t know how to begin fixing.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to give myself a minute to fall apart and mourn the first person I had found friendship with, but I was too mentally and physically exhausted.

  As I began to slip away again, I felt grubby fingers back on my skin, finding their way to the cross around my neck. I must have made some sort of sound because the gentle touch disappeared when my head lolled.

  “Can you hear me? Can you tell me who you are?”

  I could hear him, but I couldn’t tell him who I was because I didn’t know. I could tell him what I was supposed to be and what I was made to do; that ever since I was a little girl, my daddy used me as a pawn to further his agenda, passing me around to men three times my age since I was a ripe eleven to perform sexual favors. I was a living, breathing sex doll for a colony of men and women. I was condemned and convicted for being different and misunderstood.