Jeremiah Quick

by SM Johnson

  She had always been so proud of her ability to lure through sex.

  Ha.

  It had never worked with him, and it never would.

  He fucked her to demonstrate how far she had fallen. To soil her, to… well, she didn't even know. Release, maybe.

  The unexpected parts made it harder, the fact that he didn't express gratitude that she loved him still, that she was willing to take all his poison and change it to something better, prettier.

  He didn't care. He mocked her, reveled in his power over her, pushing her into the dark. And all she could do was sink deeper, accepting it all.

  She couldn't fix him. Only he could fix himself.

  "What would you have had me do?" he asked, apparently stuck on her accusation of abandonment. "Stay? Repeat my shitty Senior year of high school, endure more abuse and ridicule? Or get on that bike and go looking for my Own? Because that's what I did. I went looking for my people. For Jamie."

  "Did you find him?" Pretty whispered.

  "Not for a long time."

  Silence for a few minutes. She didn't know what to say next, so she answered his original question. "I came with you because… well. Because I would have followed you anywhere, if you'd have let me. Because I love you."

  "You don't. You won't. Not always. Not when I'm done."

  "I will. I always will. I'll never stop."

  He made a noise, clearly derisive, and Pretty was offended. He didn't believe her.

  "Hate me," he said, mocking her now. "Just start with the hate, because you will. You're not one of Us. Not a pseudo, or a baby – you're nothing to Us. Because you don't fit, and you never will."

  Flashes in her head of boys wearing eyeliner, skinny enough to see the outline of bones under skin, contempt at their pretty perfect painted lips, wary hurt in their eyes. Pierced lips and noses and eyebrows and tongues. Dozens of holes in ears filled with safety pins, jewelry stabbed through like ice picks and murder, some that curved the length of the outer shell of the ear until they ran out of ear, and just hung there, stabbing the air with sharp points.

  Their demeanor, their dress, their scowling sullen expressions that said get the fuck away from me and I hate you, and please love me, all at the same time.

  How she longed to be one of them. How she was sure she had been one of them in an alternate existence.

  She had an… affinity for this darkness, but not a communion.

  A fascination, an admiration, but was too lily to pull it off – too much of a rule-follower. And much too much female.

  She wanted to be one of those boys, not pursue one.

  And then she knew. She would have to accept Jeremiah's plan for her with as much grace as she could muster. Submit to his every evil with willingness and love. Give him her tears, freely, ask him to take them, tell him to force them out of her to take into himself.

  Give up all pride, all fear, all shame and just… just be his.

  "Take my tears," she said, staring into his eyes and blinking them forth. "Have them all."

  His pupils dilated, and something happened to his eyes, some change that made them viper-about-to-strike excited, and his fingers clenched into her hair and yanked her forward, and his tongue traced the wet tear trail on her cheek, from the tear drop at the corner of her mouth all the way up to the tear duct. She didn't shudder or try to pull away. She sighed against his neck and let herself go boneless in his hands, blinking against his tongue and willing more tears to fall.

  His hands left her hair to scrabble against the white shirt, under it, fingers leaving mean little pinches in her skin, and she found herself whispering against his throat, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," and "please please please." His hands trailed from her flanks to between her legs, where his finger and thumbnail pinched the soft delicate skin there so viciously that she pressed herself harder against him, melting even closer, her breath a shuddering whimper that prepared itself to become a wail. Her tears flowed, and he kissed and licked and sucked at them, his heartbeat increasing subtly against her breast bone, his thirst never abating.

  "Stop now," he said, and just held her.

  It was hard to stop. The tears still kept coming.

  She was a fucking mess, and it made no difference. She wasn't the right girl for this, because there was no right girl when only Jamie would do.

  If he was crazy, Pretty was okay with it, because she wasn't lying, not even to herself, about loving him. The fact that he couldn't love her back drove one more big slow tear out of her, that landed on her lip. She caught it with her tongue and fed it to him herself.

  It didn't make everything a lie, did it, the fact that he couldn’t love her?

  How many times had that been true, a dozen? More?

  Only once it wasn't, and for a long stretched moment she wanted to be at home, with every nerve ending and every hair follicle. Home.

  She almost said it out loud, but instead said, "I want to fix you, Jeremiah, but I can't."

  For some reason this made him laugh, which softened his eyes and made him look incredibly sad, incredibly lonely.

  She didn't want him to feel lonely when she was right fucking here. That hurt her as much as anything.

  "I know you can't, Sunshine Girl." There was something in his face she couldn't read, something that, for one brief flicker, was dead and terrifying.

  She had suffered at his hands. He'd spanked her, caned her, starved her, raped her, mocked her. He filled her heart, and then smashed it to jagged little pieces.

  He'd filled her skin with lines and symbols, controlled her body and all its systems.

  He'd eaten her tears, licked at her eyes, poked his tongue into her tear ducts.

  None of it was as terrible as that one brief flicker of nothing.

  Whatever was going to happen was worse than what had already happened. Much worse.

  She promised herself grace. She would love him even unto her death, even as his hands choked her, if that was his intent. She vowed it.

  "This is magick," he said. "My magick." He arranged her on the bed, propped almost upright with too many pillows at her back. He straddled her, his cock hard and obscenely lewd against the pristine white panties, and cradled her face in his hands.

  He was so thin she could count every rib. Bones beneath skin, and so white and lean and strong it took her breath away.

  This was a moment of such profound importance, his hands on her face, his eyes staring into hers, but not just her eyes – her soul, herself, into every part of her. And he said, "You need to be you. Not anything else for anybody – just you." And then he whispered, "I'm sorry. So sorry."

  And while she was turning that apology over in her head, trying to figure out if he was sorry for the past or the future, he reared upright, his hips pressing hard, holding her down, and he reached to the nightstand and scooped up something that he held hidden in his fist.

  There was a noise, a click, and then a singing swoosh, and Pretty blinked, trying to comprehend the bright blade.

  It glowed in the night of his room, sharp edge and glinting steel, and understanding caught in her throat. The apology. He would kill her now.

  "Jeremiah, no," she pleaded, thinking of her family, of all she had left to do. She had yet to learn how to be herself – he couldn't take it away from her now, could he? Eradicate her before she even started, was that what he wanted?

  "Trust me, Pretty," he said, and thrust the knife into his inner forearm, nearer to wrist than elbow. Clear through.

  Pretty stared at it in absolute horror, the knife handle on one side of his arm, the tip of the blade showing through the other. There was a spot of blood where the knife tip had nicked his thigh. She stared at it, wondering why there wasn't more blood. She turned her head the tiniest bit to see his face, just in time to see him grimace. Now she couldn't even name his expression, some sort of satisfied glee, some sort of expectation.

  And then he held his arm above her and pulled the knife blade free. Blood splatter
ed across her white shirt, so hot and unexpected that she flinched. Each drip spread like magic marker on wet paper. It was very bright, and decorative, and reminded her of snowflakes. Except not.

  It landed on her chest, her stomach, soaking into the whites, this red spreading gore.

  He traced the blade oh, so delicately along her cheek and, although she felt a sting and the ooze of blood, it hardly hurt at all. He lifted the blade to his mouth, licked it, and smiled.

  She had no idea how she managed not to pass out.

  She did, however, make a squeaking sound, tiny and choked, and hoped the sound came out in a loving and accepting way.

  He dug into the wound with two fingers, then painted her lips with his fingertips. And after that, he forced his fingers past her lips and past her teeth, deep into her throat.

  She gagged, and didn't know if it was because of his fingers or the blood. Did it matter?

  She was crying again, and he ate what she imagined were red tears.

  "I told you, start hating me now," he said, and that made her cry harder, and her headshake in the negative made him miss a tear or three.

  "You can't love me for this part." He said, exasperated. "You'll fuck up my magick."

  She almost laughed. The darling delusional dear.

  "But I do. And you can't stop me. And that's my magick," she said back. It was the truth.

  She couldn’t fix him, but neither could he make her into everything he'd thought he could.

  She'd always believed he was the person who had the most notable impact on her life, but that wasn't true at all.

  She was Light and he was Dark. Neither of them would ever manage to change each other all that much. And yet they had an undeniable compatibility that didn't have to make sense. It just was a thing that was. An existence. A connection. She would never hate him.

  Chapter 28

  Pretty wanted to explain about connection, about love, but words failed. Jeremiah's eyes glittered and his face descended. His lips pried open her mouth, his hand rising to rest the flat of the blade against her jaw. His tongue found hers for a brief tangle before he pulled away. She watched with horror as he tongued the wound, then loomed close to kiss her again.

  She whimpered and tried to recoil, but he was having none of it, and almost seemed careless of the knife as he wound his right hand, blade and all, into her hair to hold her head in place.

  His blood tasted like blood. Not more or less horrifying than her own, not empirical and wonderful, not like a drug – just copper salt red wet.

  "Poor Pretty," he murmured against her lips. "I'm getting you all dirty."

  The front of her shirt sported pinkish streaks and red blotches, warm in some places and cooling in others, clammy against her skin.

  His pale chest was streaked and smeared and he looked as if he'd just murdered someone. Her, she supposed. He looked like he'd murdered her. A sticky red smear colored his chin.

  He pressed his arm against her mouth. She knew what he wanted, and tentatively, delicately, touched the tip of her tongue to the wound. Here, at the source, he tasted like she expected Jeremiah Quick should taste. Like himself.

  It was right, even if Pretty was conditioned to fear and loathe it. Warm red, wet to damp, not so much different than tears.

  She closed her eyes and imagined tears.

  Taste of old pennies.

  Blood covered Jeremiah's hands, Pretty's mouth, coated her tongue. But it wasn't until he started petting Pretty's hair that she cringed away, picturing strands and locks in matted tangles.

  She shuddered beneath him, opened her eyes, and what she saw in his – or didn't see, to be honest – made her rigid with fear.

  He was gone. His eyes were empty of everything she associated with Jeremiah Quick, blank holes seeing nothing, or looking so deep inside himself there was nothing outside of himself to see.

  His lips were moving, but soundless, and when she turned her head to put her ear closer to his lips, in the hope of capturing words, she heard nothing and felt only the tiny puffs of his breath.

  Puff. Puff.

  Or maybe Pretty, Pretty.

  Pretty wriggled and pulled one arm free, and tapped the side of his face with her open palm. "Jeremiah. What's wrong?"

  He didn't answer, but reared up, releasing her hair, knife still in his hand, and slowly, deliberately, cut a line across his abdomen, just beneath his naval.

  It wasn't deep, like… the edges didn't flap or flay, just… thick red welled to the surface.

  The air around his head filled with sparking lights – and Pretty wanted to think she was making this up, faery magick – except she wasn't. She saw it. She felt it, her hand, tracing through the magick like a child might trail fingers through a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

  Enchanted.

  He dropped his upper body on top of her, letting his weight fall, going limp, as if utterly relaxed or utterly exhausted. He was slight and weighed almost nothing, practically a guarantee that she was the heavier of them, which for some inexplicable reason embarrassed her.

  She tugged at his left arm, frenzied, making it bleed more and more, and she could feel it leaking through the fabric of her shirt, leaving trails of gore like botched surgical trace.

  He seemed to recover, and in a surge of energy propped himself up on his hands, leaving her momentarily bereft, missing the weight of him, and he called her "Pretty" as he rolled her to her stomach, tugging and turning, shifting the pillows at the same time so they were under her hips. Before she even thought to struggle she was pinned again, and he was bleeding on her back, and scrabbling at her sweet white ceremonial cotton panties until he caught the waistband and yanked them down so they hobbled her just above her knees.

  The knife was still in his hand, the flat of the blade against her cheek. She was nervous of it there, but it was just a resting place, not a threat.

  He used his thighs, his knees, to push her legs apart, virginal panties making that popcorn cracking sound of fabric about to tear. The flat blade metal pressed harder against her cheekbone, unmoving, no give. Hard enough she would have a bruise.

  How could she ever translate this time with Jeremiah Quick into a simple explanation? She would not call him a madman, or an abuser, or even an enemy.

  He was none of those.

  No.

  Because the real story, the truth – he was her lover now, in every sense.

  A dark and twisted lover, yes.

  The blade left her cheek, drawing away from her field of vision, and her heart sped up, and her mouth went dry, wondering if he would tear her open.

  From the corner of her eye she saw a flash of it again, no longer glinting, just dripping red. She tensed and flinched, and heard a hiss of sucked in breath, and warm drips spattered the small of her back. She could imagine his blood there, bright and red on her pale flesh. He held her down with the flat of one hand, though she didn't fight him, and he squirmed a little bit downward, repositioning himself.

  A finger trace along her spine – all the way, all the way down…

  Swirled through the warmth, drawing patterns of fluid ever lower, down, lower, lower, coaxing it between her buttocks… and pressing bloody fingers into her anus, one thrust timed with her breath, curving, thrusting, using his own blood as lubricant.

  Oh. My. God.

  She arched away, still on her stomach, and made some little noise, thrusting her hips tighter against the bed, trying to escape. There was no escape. He shushed her, petting her hair.

  She flung her head up and looked at him over her shoulder. His red fingers plunged in and out of her, and it was so… carnal… so obscene, that she started to shake.

  Depraved. And yet… something else too, again, like he knew her, the whole of her, because he breathed into her ear, "So Pretty, but such a dirty girl that loves the Dark," and something in her cunt she hadn't noticed was tense released its clench.

  Flood of hot wet want, her hips thrusting back against him, her f
ingers finding his other hand in her hair, entwining and clutching, holding it, howling into the pillow and snapping her head up to fit in the hollowed curve of his neck. She felt a hot slash across all four fingers of her right hand – she'd forgotten he held the knife – and then she turned her head and noticed the shade was up and the window open, and yes, a storm was just starting or just tapering off, and the thunder and lightning felt exactly right.

  He pulled his hand away from her grip, and curled both around her hips, lifting them, his legs urging her knees beneath her, and, when she accomplished both these things, the flat of one hand pressed hard against her back, urging her shoulders down, her face buried into the pillow.

  Too much. Too exposed, and she hated it, ass lifted into the air for his eyes, his hands. She must have made some sort of sound of protest, for he said, "Hush. You're all right," although Pretty didn't know if he meant okay, physically, or in the sense that he cared for her, at least a little.

  He pressed his hips against the obscene portrait of her, and she could feel him, hot and hard.

  More wet warm slippery for a few seconds, then slightly gritty and dragging, and this time his fingers going in further, and she moaned in capitulation to this ugly and strange pleasure.

  "More," he said. "Again." And she let him coax the sounds out of her, unsure what he wanted, and unable to think it through, unable to give him anything more than mindless noise as his fingers slid in deeper, then out, and in again.

  When she was nothing but an endless whimper, Jeremiah said, "All you have to do is relax and push against me, and it will open you, and it will hurt less. You know how. Try."

  She obeyed him because she was so well-behaved, and his fingers slid deeper, and he was lying because the pain was deeper, too, and bigger, and she wanted to jerk herself hard away, to escape it. She couldn’t escape it. The whimpers morphed into cries, a combination of helpless noises that she couldn't seem to help or stop.

  "Look," he said.

  She turned her head.

  He held his cock in one bloody hand, the fingers of the other still buried inside her, and she was taken over by a shudder because he was red-smeared and grinning, happy in a way she'd never seen him.