by Ashley Black
The lasso remained wrapped around his right wrist, and he tugged me forward.
“I used to play this game with Andrea all the time,” he admitted, smiling sadly. His green eyes burning into mine. “It was a lot of fun. When I can trust that you are not trying to kill me Elena, I will allow you to do that to me. We’ll see if you can catch me, as I did, you. The person who is able to deliver the most amount of lashes to the skin before lassoing the other wins.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” I replied.
He ignored me and calmly started removing things from the picnic basket. An expensive bottle of champagne first. He popped the cork into the water hole before us, and filled two glasses.
He offered one to me, pressing it against my closed lips.
I shook my head. He shrugged, and gulped it down, favoring to sip the other, and then setting it aside. I watched through narrowed eyes as he started removing packages of delicious smelling food, spreading it before us.
My stomach growled.
Noticing it, he smiled faintly. “Don’t be stubborn. You should eat,” he murmured. “Besides it’s 100% Thornton safe, my dad cooked it. A roast.”
At the mention of Bob, my face fell and a sadness rushed in.
“Don’t,” Thorn snapped. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me!”
“So presumptuous. I feel sorry for your dad.”
For having a son like you, I nearly added, but thought better of it.
Instead I reclaimed my position of hostile, kidnapped from her own event, fucked over by a supreme dick, pussy, “you seriously expect me to sit here with you and have a picnic in what is this place anyway?”
“They can’t see us here,” he said quietly. “Those who want to harm what we have. I know it’s not the prettiest, but it is a safe place to explain some shit.” He raked a hand through his longish black hair, mussing it up a little, lips turning down.
I didn’t even bother asking who couldn’t see us here. Firstly, because I didn’t want to know, and besides Thorn had told me they wanted to harm us, so they could get fucked, and secondly, because I didn’t trust a single thing this man said any more.
“You lied to me,” I whispered, I was annoyed at how hurt, I sounded.
“I always lie to you,” he admitted smirking as he sliced neatly into some a red wine and garlic smelling fragrant eye fillet and placed a huge hunk of it on a plate, heaping it with a cheesy creamy potato gratin, side of roast vegetables. He picked up a can of whipped cream and squirted it all over the feast.
All right. That was new.
Ewwwwww.
“I like it that way,” he grumbled, dark green eyes flashing defensively.
“What are you, fucking five?”
I was laughing a little on the inside. Mostly, screaming yes, but laughing just a little.
“I do it to keep you safe,” he mumbled, his mouth full of whipped cream and eye fillet. His cheeks bulging around the fill of food in that huge wide mouth of his.
“Do what to keep me safe, exactly?”
“Lie to you.”
I frowned, thinking back to the tense ride in his Sporty Aston Martin on the way to Mexico. His words came back to me.
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know. But trust me, there’s a lot about me you simply don’t want to know.”
He blushed. I had never seen Thorn look more ashamed than he was now. “I hope you know I don’t want to do that. Lie to you. I regret that. But I must. Because I love you Elena.”
Oh fucking hell. The way he sounded when he said that. The raw exquisite pain and intense fervor behind it.
“Too much.” He shoveled more food in his mouth, and chewed it. His jaw worked furiously, his dark eyes scorching my core with desire.
“Don’t ever say that to me again,” I said coldly, shivering. “You don’t get to say that. Because I love Brett. I’m marrying him next week.”
“You will not be marrying Brett,” he predicted confidently. “And don’t presume to tell me what I cannot feel Elena.”
Unease rippled within at his prediction, but I forged on, determined to hit him with my best oral punch of mayhem. Where it hurt … most.
“How many times do I have to say it Thorn? You were just a tease. I tried to explain that to you before. You helped me through a rough patch in my creativity. You are nothing but a fuck dream. I don’t actually, ever want you for real. You do realize this don’t you Thorn, Thornton, Mr. Darko, Cellrager man?”
He said nothing, and continued to demolish his feast. Making quick work of it, his severe dark dramatic brows drawn together in a frown.
His lips coated with whipped cream, he shoved the empty plate aside, disgust twisting his beautiful face ugly.
“You lie to me,” he said thickly. He sounded hurt.
“No.”
“Here, I will prove it. I overheard Clarissa telling you that I have to remove the necklace right for you to be free of me? Did you know that you have to want this, for me to be able to do it? Want to be free of me that is. For as long as you want me, you will never be free of this necklace or me for that matter.”
He said all this grimly, lips still coated in that cream (that I had the insane urge to lick off them).
“You’re not making sense.”
“Well, if you truly don’t want me, if you truly felt the way you are telling me Elena. How did you call it just now? Ah yes, that I am merely a fuck dream! The best fuck dream mind you your pretty mind has ever had love.” He tilted his head, dark eyes flashing dangerously. “Then I should be able to remove the necklace, yes?”
I watched warily, as he knelt before me, his fingers stroking over the tiny raven and then walking around to the back of my neck for the clasp, then I felt a surprising blast of heat. “Fuck!” he shouted.
I screamed in shock.
His hand was on fire, it had burst into flame.
Sweet Jesus!
He shook it, and plunged it in the ice in the champagne bucket. Eyes falling shut, he tipped his head back and blasted me with dark delicious laughter. He sounded so cock sure of himself, so smug, it was an awful, sickening, grating, gloating kind of laugh.
“It proves nothing,” I disagreed vehemently.
“It proves everything.” His mouth stretched in a wolfish grin. You still want me.”
Twenty Two
“Thornton Darko, please stand, and put your hands where I can see them!”
A loud voice blasted at us.
The police.
Were everywhere.
They verily swarmed the place.
Wow!
I was so glad Thorn had pulled my mini dress back down, vain as fuck. Yes! Looking suitably outraged at the intrusion, Thorn rose to his feet folding his hands behind his neck. His huge body was shaking.
“Can’t see them there shit head!” A familiar voice roared distantly.
Bristling, and looking a little unhinged, my rock star raised his big white hands plainly in the air.
They who couldn’t see us here in this place according to Thornton, had to be magical folk, not, it seemed, mortal. How hilarious Mr. Cellrager had forgotten about those kind of people. So arrogant and assured of his warlock prowess he had ignored the more obvious threat.
Dumb humans.
The Police closed in around my crazy ass rock star and cuffed him. More surged around me, and freed me of the lasso about my ankles and the cuffs biting my wrists. They assisted me to my feet, and lavished me with care and attention.
“We have a warrant for your arrest Mr. Thornton.”
“For what?” Thorn spat. “What could you possibly have on me?”
Oooohhh, he sounded every part of an arrogant, brat prick of a rock star.
“You are a suspect in the murder of Andrea Stillman, and the attempted murder of Brett Argosy, Mr. Thornton,” one of them gleefully informed him, the one standing at a distance, his head hidden beneath a wide brim hat. “And let me tell you son, you better get yourself a lawyer,
because you are in some deep doggy doo doo. The evidence against you, is quite compelling, you will find.”
The man laughed, nodded at the five officers standing closest to the man of mayhem. “Take him in boys, I’ll deal with him later.”
They duly pushed and shoved Thorn in the direction of a flashing police car the man with the hat was standing near. The man seemed to watch Thorn’s back being turned to him with intense interest, and then he swiftly planted his boot rather decisively in Mr. Cellrager’s ass.
The impact sent Thorn to his knees.
The man then gripped Thorn’s lush black hair and yanked him with a savage snarl, to his feet. “Get in the fucking car Mr. Darko, you are going to get what’s coming for you. All of it. All at once. Your dark destiny is assured.”
Oh shit, the Cult Leader.
This couldn’t be good.
For either of us.
Fuck.
What was I supposed to do now?
“No!” Thorn’s face had deepened to the most startling shade of red, the man looked like he was about to ignite. His dark green gaze flashed in my direction and was stuffed full of pain. He fought, and wrested with the man, just aiming and thrusting the frightening physicality of his chest at him. He impact knocked the man’s hat off clear off his head. Yep definitely the cult leader, with those black eyes, and the black cross over the right side of his white gaunt face now laid bare in the late afternoon sunlight.
“No! You demented fuck. I will not be your dark savior. I will not have any one pray for me, worship me, do any the fuck thing for me. “
“Not you, Mr. Darko,” the man returned snidely. “What you are. Because what you are is the gateway to another way. A reality worth living in.”
“You are mother fucking crazy! Leave me alone!” Thorn screamed hysterically. “I mean this. All my life. It hasn’t changed. LEAVE ME ALONNNNNNNEEEEE!”
I hadn’t realized I had started crying until a kindly officer standing beside me, completely transfixed at the sight of Mr. Cellrager losing his shit, thought to offer me a clean pressed white cotton hankie.
I sniffed loudly, and accepted it.
It was the little boy I heard in Thorn’s tormented voice, I decided. Crying out for help that had wrung the tears right out of me.
This poor, rather fucked up man.
Reduced to this.
A raging, ranting, foaming at the mouth mess. The mother fucking Cult Leader hadn’t been kidding when he said that saying this phrase ‘your dark destiny is assured’ would make Thorn lose his fucking mind.
What this man had suffered, I could only imagine with a malignant presence like the Cult Leader in his life.
“You wish to be left alone?” the evil nameless man sought clarity from my puffy faced, raging rock star.
“YES!” Thorn practically spat in his face.
“Then enjoy your time alone in your cell, Mr. Darko,” he smirked and fluttered his fingers in dismissal as the other officers pushed Thornton decisively into the police car.
“You’re going to be there a very long time.”
Twenty Three
When I had driven back to Ashby in the military loaned jeep Thorn had been considerate enough to leave the keys in, still rubbing tears that kept stubbornly spilling from my eyes, Bob had called me also crying brokenly, telling me he had made a terrible mistake telling Thornton Darko that he was dying.
I had disagreed that this was a mistake. Thorn had to know, this was too big not to share.
In that strange bizarre intensely emotional burst of conversation, as I sped away from hell, Bob relayed that Thorn had become increasingly erratic and unhinged since telling him the news of his declining health.
My mind had verily exploded with Thorn’s actions since Brett rescued me from Mexico. The shower vomiting dirt all over me, his odd and scary appearance at my book signing, and the bizarre little picnic that had ended in his rather epic arrest.
Yeah, the man had a point.
And he worried at the lengths Thorn would go, to save him. He was exploring some darker arts. He was delving into more risky satanic rituals and practices.
He ended the call, begging me to stay the hell away from Thorn.
You are the death of him.
You must know this Elena. Deep in your soul. Don’t you feel it?
One of you is going to break. It isn’t going to be you. It will be my son. He cares too much. He loves too much with that stupid big heart of his. It will cost him everything.
I shivered, reflecting on Bob’s words.
It was three days after the arrest of Thornton Darko.
The news of it, was everywhere.
His supporters. His legion of fans, the freak army were foaming at the mouth, feral over the audacity of these allegations.
His powerful social media movement pushed another agenda, a side of Thorn I guiltily indulged in on my devices when I couldn’t sleep, and the words for VANQUISH ME, my next book, refused to come.
Thorn the social justice King. Thorn, the protector. Story after story piled on of how he had helped so many artists, struggling families, even discarded circus freaks after their ‘sideshows’ had stopped delivering the gold to the circus owners.
He was their formidable leader.
And they were savage. Insanely pissed, at his false imprisonment.
In these clips I saw a different side to the death metal messiah of his wildly successful musical outfit Cellrager. I saw him giving an actual genuine shit about the people he was connecting with. A softer version of my prickly prick. Thorn volunteered at suicide watch, he deliberately liked pages of artists who were challenged in looks, audience or fans, but certainly not in talent. He detested those who applied a ‘formula’ to their art, bending over and taking it for the insane wealth.
“Bad ass is no longer a term I associate myself with,” he looked distressed, staring straight into the camera. Dark green eyes flaring, lips twisting in a wry smile. His index finger ran absently over the ring in his chin. “Because everyone is mis-using it, has fucked that term. See a bad ass is not someone who is fucking delusional. A mean false human to folk. Sugarcoating shitful slivers of reality and ignoring the abscess in their soul. A bad ass is not someone who hurts people by overlooking them because they don’t shit rainbows or gold. It is simple. A bad ass is just being the fuck real, and giving a shit about something bigger than YOU. Yeah mother fuckers there’s something bigger. It’s called LIFE. It is teeming around you. Connect with it sometime or don’t call yourself a bad ass. You are just sheltered. Sheltered by your community, by your following. Sheltered behind your lap top. You think you’re so hard core throwing around your pretty words? But you’re still just a sheltered, over-indulged little fame ass licking hole of SUCK aren’t you now? But bad ass? Hell to no. Get out of my ocean. I will find you and eat you.” He snapped his jaw, grinning widely.
I loved him I realized again, unhelpfully.
Like this.
But was this all skilled fabrication?
I might get to the end of time and never truly know this impossible, insane man, Thornton Darko.
I was silently thrilled about that.
However, I digress.
The third day after Thorn’s arrest, I found Brett in our lovely hobbit den, in a mood.
That was a ‘mild’ way of putting it.
The man was in a rage.
In the only way I knew Brett could be in a rage.
My man didn’t tend to trash hotels or bathrooms of bad motels. I blushed on reflection at my antics.
He was pacing, trembling, hands balled into fists, flushed rose red, brown eyes glittering with pressure. Marching back and forth, like he was, on duty, on sentry. At war. Or, preparing for such.
His lean muscular torso was bare he paced. Sweat falling over his brow.
“What is wrong?” I asked quietly, looking up from my content edits. Grateful for the distraction from my soul sucking book . Even if it was in the form of a
n angry hot artist soldier dude.
Hmmmm that was still nice.
I felt like I was getting to know my Brett all over again.
And I loved him so much it hurt.
It went beyond hurt.
An insistent ache.
“He’s free,” he moaned unhappily.
“What!” I threw my laptop aside and was on my feet in an instant.
Brett turned from me and punched the wall.
It was the first time I had seen him use violence on an inanimate object.
Beneath his shaking fist, the thing actually cracked into a million of tiny fault lines; they reminded me of spider legs.
“Babe,” I began.
“That man is evil. Somehow he used his warlock mind fuckery powers and made all that evidence stacked against him go away. It is all gone. They’ve got nothing on that lousy fucker, when they had everything, Elena. I know people inside the force. It was enough to put his ass on trial and convict him of what he did to me,” Brett stabbed a finger at his chest. “To that poor wretch of a wife of his.” He snapped his fingers, brown eyes wet with despair. “It’s all gone.”
“Hey,” I gently took him in my arms, and shivered at the bliss of his hot body pressed to mine. “You are so fucking hot gorgeous one.”
He laughed a little at that.
I took his hand from the wall, and kissed it. He had busted his knuckles open and they were bleeding. I ran my tongue over them, lapped up the blood, sucking, licking, and then dropping butterfly kisses.
He grunted.
I hoped he couldn’t hear or feel my heart pounding in ugly sickening dread that Thorn was free.
I hoped, as always, that my mouth distracted … enough.
I didn’t want Thorn anywhere near me, and yet, he would be, because I wanted that didn’t I?
I was so irretrievably fucked.
Brett pressed even closer to me, and I felt his hand fiddle with the zipper of my dress.