He watches her over my shoulder. Cilla’s in her bedroom, sitting on the bed, combing out her wet hair. Her face is serious, her eyes far away.
“What’s the girl to you?”
“Piece of ass.”
“Nah. More than that. Piece of ass you got plenty.”
“I don’t know. Different kind of ass.”
He chuckles. “I’ll go back to the floor.”
I barely hear him. I’ve got my eyes locked on Cilla as she stands, strips off her towel and walks into the closet. When she returns, she’s wearing a tank top and a pair of panties. She climbs into bed and switches off the light. I can still see her face. Night vision lens. She’s lying on her back looking straight up into one of the cameras. It’s like she’s looking right at me.
I wonder about what Hugo said. “What’s the girl to you?” I have no fucking clue.
Cilla slides one arm beneath the duvet and I know the instant her fingers find her clit. My dick gets hard as I watch her, her hand shifting the blanket as she spreads her legs and rubs herself beneath it. But it’s her face I’m more interested in. She’s got her eyes closed and she’s caught her lower lip between her teeth. I reach to turn up the volume on that camera and I feel like the cost of the ultra-sensitive microphone has justified itself when I hear her quick breaths of air, her tiny gasps. Hear her make that sound when she comes, the one she made when my dick was splitting her in two. I rub my erection over my pants. I don’t want to use my hand tonight. I want her. I want her slick, tight pussy. Want her heat, her warmth. I want to fuck her again. Make her touch herself again while I watch. Make her come again.
“What’s the girl to you?”
Cilla draws her hand out from beneath the covers, rolls over onto her side and closes her eyes, this time to sleep.
Dirty girl. Doesn’t even wash her hands.
“What’s the girl to you?”
I don’t fucking know. A distraction? Why did I take her to Rockcliffe House? Why did I open the house again? I haven’t been there once since Ginny. Since my uncle. I always knew I’d have to go back. To face the past. Face my failing. Answer to the ghost of my sister.
Too many ghosts in that house. Hell, everyone’s a ghost but me.
9
Cilla
I wake up to sunshine pouring in from the bedroom windows. I hadn’t closed the curtains and after so many consecutive days of rain, I turn my face toward the bright light and, despite everything, it makes me smile.
At least for a minute until I move and am reminded of the night before by the soreness between my legs.
I sit up, drawing the blankets to my chest and remember how, after dragging myself to my feet and out of the library, I’d hurried up the stairs when I’d heard Helen moving around in the dining room. Shame had burned my face and I couldn’t imagine anyone seeing me in that state. I’d wanted to lock the door but there wasn’t a lock on it. At least not from the inside. I noticed, however, that while I’d been out of the room, someone had installed a sturdy latch to the outside. Nice.
But after all of that, after the fucking, the humiliation of coming, after scrubbing my skin raw, I’d lain in bed and, at the memory of Kill fucking me, I’d slid my hand between my legs and made myself come again.
I push the covers back to get out of bed, and go into the bathroom to shower again. As if I could wash away the shame I feel. I don’t look in the trash can where the heap of soft violet silk lies. The ruins of the dress. Like the ruins of my dignity. Is this what he wants from me?
After the shower, I go directly into the closet and choose a pair of jeans, a sweater and a pair of boots. At least I have my own bedroom. At least I’m not expected to sleep in his bed. I go to the door, half expecting it to be locked, but it opens and there’s no guard outside. He gave me the rules yesterday. My room, kitchen and library. I guess he’s testing me so he can have that opportunity to show me how he’ll punish me.
Not yet, Killian Black. I won’t give you that satisfaction yet.
I head down the stairs and into the dining room. I want coffee. And I want to go outside. Sit in the sun, even if the temperatures are freezing. Helen must hear me because she comes through the door carrying a silver coffee pot and wearing a smile.
“Good morning, Miss,” she says.
It feels strange that she’d call me Miss but I leave it alone. I make myself remember she’s part of this, of his world. She’s not my friend.
“Good morning. Where’s Kill?” I clear my throat. “Killian.” To say his name feels so strange, especially the abbreviated version of it.
“He’s not back yet, but he did send a package for you. Would you like me to get it now or after breakfast?”
“A package?”
“Yes, Miss.”
I shake my head, eye the pot of coffee. “Now, please, and some coffee?” I wonder about Kill not being back yet. Does that mean he went out last night? After what happened in the library?
She nods and pours coffee into an elegant cup. The table is set for breakfast for one.
“Would you like something warm to eat?” she asks.
I see the toast on the table and shake my head. “No, this is fine. And I...” this feels so weird, like I’m asking freaking permission. “I want to go outside.”
“After your breakfast, I’ll call someone to take you.”
So she knows I’m a prisoner. She knows the rules he set for me. She’ll probably report back to Kill. “Thanks.” I don’t mean it.
I sip the coffee and butter a piece of toast. A few minutes later, one of the girls from the night before enters carrying a large-ish box. She sets it on the table and leaves.
Setting my toast down, I look at it. Read the return address. It’s from the Apple store. I open the package and inside, I find a brand-new laptop. Suspicious, I pick up the envelope on top and open the flap to read the note.
You earned this last night.
Rage boils in my gut.
Fuck. You. Killian. Black.
I slap the note back in the box and stand, close the lid and call Helen. I’m fuming.
“Yes, Miss? Changed your mind about breakfast?”
“No. Here. You can throw this away.”
I shove the box at her. She doesn’t take it at first, but I push and she extends her arms.
“Miss?”
“In the trash, Helen. Right away.” I’m fuming and walk out of the room, try the front door only to find it locked. I look around, not sure where to go, what to do. I don’t want to go back to my bedroom. I’m too angry. But I saw a pair of sneakers in my closet earlier, and some running clothes. I head up and change into them and go back downstairs. This time I don’t wait for Helen to come to the dining room. Instead, I walk into the kitchen.
She’s startled but I don’t care.
“I want to go for a run. Now.”
“Of course.” If she’s offended by my rudeness, she doesn’t let on. Instead, she picks up a phone and a moment later, there’s a man at the kitchen door. My babysitter, I guess.
“Keep up,” I snap, running past him and jogging around the terrace, past the swimming pool and into the wet, knee deep grass. I’m heading into the woods. I need to run, burn off some of this anger, because when Kill gets home, I need to be in control of myself. Because I’m going to tell him what I think of him and his stupid gift. I’m going to tell him where he can shove it. He thinks I’m some whore? That I fuck for money? For things? He can go fuck himself.
10
Kill
As if I don’t have enough on my mind, when I walk into Rockcliffe House, I see the laptop sitting on the kitchen table and from the look on Helen’s face, it’s not good.
“What?” I ask, opening the lid of the box which isn’t closed fully.
“She didn’t want it, Killian,” Helen says, turning her attention to the dishes.
The note inside is out of its envelope. I know exactly why she didn’t want it.
“Helen.”
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She switches off the water and faces me, drying her hands on her apron. “Yes?”
“The girls can wash the dishes. That’s why they’re here.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I want them to do it. Not you.” She’s too old to work so hard.
“Okay, Killian.”
“Where’s Cilla?”
“In her room. She went for a run earlier and after taking a few books from the library, has been in the bedroom.”
“Did she eat anything today?”
“Exactly one bite of toast. She got very upset when she read the note,” she says, eyeing the box. “She seems like a nice girl, Killian—”
“It’s not that kind of relationship, Helen.” I open the fridge, grab a beer and twist off the cap. My back is to Helen.
“You don’t have to isolate everyone, you know,” she says.
I don’t respond. Helen’s known me for as long as I can remember. She practically raised me and Ginny.
“Be gentler with her. She’s scared,” she continues.
I close the fridge and face her. “She should be scared.” I pick up the box containing the laptop and walk out of the kitchen, draining half the bottle and setting it on the dining room table before going up the stairs to Cilla’s room. I don’t need this right now. Today has been a shit storm. She’s here for stress relief. Time she learned her place.
Not bothering to knock, I enter her room.
Cilla’s pulled a chair up to the window so her face is in the waning sun. She startles, drops her book as she stands.
“Knocking is polite,” she says after clearing her throat.
“It’s my house.” I go in and drop the box on her bed.
“It’s my bedroom for the next month.”
I go to her, but force myself to take slow, steady steps. I need to keep a tight leash on the anger she manages to bring up in me. She must see it because she backs up a little, although there’s not much space to retreat. She puts a hand on the back of the chair.
“Nothing is yours. Everything is mine.”
“Including me. I know. Did anyone ever tell you you’re like the bully on the playground?”
I stop a few feet from her. “Maybe I like being the bully.”
“You would.”
“I gave you a computer.”
“As payment for fucking you.”
“You said you need one for work.”
“I just wanted mine. I don’t need a brand new laptop, especially not when it’s in exchange for…that. I’m not a whore. I don’t need your money. We made a deal but that didn’t mean I gave you permission to treat me like a prostitute.”
“Permission?” I feel my eyebrows rise. “You needed to give me permission?”
She bends to pick up the fallen book, moves to the side, putting more space between us. I close it, back her into the wall, cage her in with my hands on either side of her head.
“I don’t remember asking permission being part of our deal.”
Emerald eyes stare at me. Her thick, dark bangs come to her eyebrows and only make the green seem starker by contrast. Her mouth is open and I see where I bit it yesterday. Tasted her blood. I touch my tongue to the tear on my own lip where she did the same to me.
“What’s the girl to you?” Hugo’s voice repeats in my head.
Maybe she’s my match.
My gaze drops to her chest where the V-neck sweater leaves her flesh bared. She’s wearing black and her hair’s down. I touch the softly curling strand that rests on her breast, then tuck it behind her ear. Her breathing changes, comes shorter, then stops altogether. She stands perfectly still and I feel her watching me even as my gaze hovers over her lips, the curve of her collarbone, the smoothness of her skin. I touch the necklace she’s wearing. She’s had it on since the first night. It’s a fine gold chain with a small cross hanging from it. I take the cross in my hand.
“Jesus won’t save you, you know,” I say, not looking at her, studying the cross instead. Ginny had one like it. Trapped beneath the rope, the cross had embedded itself into her skin when she’d hanged herself. I remember feeling the divot in her skin after I’d cut her down, torn the noose from her neck.
I remember feeling how her neck had broken. How her head lolled to the side when I laid it on my lap. I hoped it had happened fast, at least. Hope she hadn’t suffered.
No, that’s bullshit. She’d suffered long enough to do that.
I close my eyes, my head is bowed so Cilla can’t see my face. I don’t realize I’m squeezing until I feel the chain break, until I hear her gasp. I don’t look up. Instead, I close my fist over the little figure of Jesus on his cross and steel myself, forcing those images away, burying those memories deep in my gut. Willing myself to not see the chair she’d used lying on its side, not see her shoe on the floor beneath her, in a puddle of piss dotted with red. Not to see the blood on the insides of her thighs, the ripped sheets of skin.
I step back, turn away from Cilla, my hands on my face, my eyes, rubbing away the pictures that haunt me every day, every night.
“Dinner's at eight. Be dressed and at the table.” I force the words out, my voice sounding strange, haunted.
On the verge of a break.
I walk out of her room without turning back, head to my master suite at the end of the hall. Inside, I strip off my clothes, change into running gear, head back downstairs and out the back door. From there, I run. I run hard, not caring that the ground is still soaked after too many days of rain, not caring that darkness has descended and that the woods will be pitch black. Not caring about anything at all but the exertion, the exhaustion of muscle, the pain which is the only thing that can force away those images.
It was like that in prison too. That’s when I got so big. I lifted weights. I ran. I fought. Fuck, I raged. Pain is my Prozac. It’s the only thing that keeps the demons at bay. Without it, rage will take over. And it will level everything, leave a wasteland behind.
It will decimate me.
* * *
Cilla steps out of her bedroom at 7:59PM. It’s the same moment I exit mine. She stops dead when she sees me, presses her back into her closed door. I’m not sure if she’s aware her hand is touching her neck, the place where her necklace once was.
I smile. I almost want to say it’s to reassure her. Let her know I’m not going to hurt her. But the look I get makes me think I look like I’m baring my teeth in warning. I literally just ripped her necklace from her throat. I scare the shit out of her. It’s what I want, right? It’s what I told Helen earlier. So why do I feel like a shit?
“You look nice,” I say awkwardly when I reach her.
She’s wearing a knee-length black dress, this one with long sleeves. Her hair’s pulled up into a tight bun and her bangs pinned back.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice cautious, eyes never leaving mine like she’s searching, trying to figure out which version of me this is.
“Shall we?” I gesture to the stairs. She looks down and nods, turns to walk ahead of me. The dress plunges low and I suck in a breath at the sight of her naked back, the curve of her spine.
She shudders, hugs her arms around herself. She stops, I almost collide into her when she turns. “I should get a sweater.”
I shake my head, touch the flat of my hand to her lower back. A little shock sparks at the contact of flesh to flesh. I turn her. “I like you like this,” I say, feeling like a Neanderthal.
Her eyes search mine and I wonder what she sees. A monster, perhaps. A beast she fears. That thought equally draws and repels me. Silently, she nods, turns and we go down the stairs and into the dining room.
Throughout dinner, she’s cautiously quiet, watching me, eating her meal without a word. Drinking the wine I pour. The only sound is that of clinking silverware as we eat in silence. I know she has a hundred questions. A thousand. But she’s smart enough not to ask them.
When we’re finished eating, I set my napkin down and we stand.
She follows my lead and I notice how she isn’t quite sure what to do with her hands. I gesture for her to walk ahead of me and she knows where to go. She doesn’t glance back as she makes her way to the library where I open the door and we enter.
“Sit down.” Like the night before, I pour us each a drink, hand her a glass.
“Thank you for the computer,” she says.
I’m not expecting that, but I nod in acceptance.
“Why do you want me here?” she asks right away.
“You asked me the same thing last night.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Why did you offer yourself?” I ask. Same as last night. I guess we’re both on repeat.
She shakes her head. She won’t answer.
I slide one hand into my pocket, search her eyes.
“Do I scare you, Cilla?”
She shakes her head, but the way her throat works when she swallows, the way her eyes widen, it tells me I do.
“You’re a liar,” I say. I swallow my drink, set the glass down and kneel on the floor before her chair.
Startled, she sits up straighter, her free hand grips the arm of the chair. I put my hands on her closed knees and push them apart. She makes a sound, and the ice in her glass clinks when she sets it down. I can’t see her expression because I’m not looking at her face as I push the dress up, draw her toward the edge of the chair. I hold her legs wide, exposing her inch by inch until her pussy comes into view.
My hands squeeze her thighs. I study the wet, pink mouth of her sex, draw her folds open with my thumbs and bring my face to her, my nose to her, my mouth to her. I inhale deeply, her scent an aphrodisiac. She swallows audibly and her fingernails are digging into the arms of the chair. And when I sweep my tongue over her clit, she gasps.
I have never enjoyed eating a woman like I do Cilla. After that first taste, I devour her, tasting every inch of her, dipping my tongue inside her, taking her swollen clit into my mouth and sucking. I watch her face when I do, feeling her hands lock around my head, pulling me to her and pushing me away at once, and it’s not long before she throws her head back, giving herself to it, to the pleasure, to me, coming on my tongue, her taste the most delicious taste.
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